2013 poetry

on a white couch

white_couch_poem

 

Poetry doesn’t prove a thing.
It disproves the authenticity of language,
the permanence of meaning and the
universality of reason. Suddenly,

I thought, on the couch, while
reading a history of Christianity. Christ!
what if that’s true. Dispensing order
the poet returns to a formulation
of disorder, a verbal approximation to
natural chaos. I thought,

while sinking in the couch. Silly
ruminations, I often say. But not
this time. I think I was on to some-
thing. Poetry as the last human act,
a summary of lived, thought, felt
experience, an attempt to crystallize
our plight in an image of poetic flight. I

thought, while slouching and setting
the book on the table. I wondered.
Have these architectural feats of language,
these monuments to image, any
lasting foundation other than soft voice?
That’s the question,

I pondered, while breathing deeply on
the white but dirty couch. What if this
coagulation of exasperation, these
swollen metaphors of pain, are merely
dissonant echoes drifting in the void?
I hypothesized,

while heavy on the couch. That is white
and somewhat stained.

Contemporary Poetry

language as crust

language_as_Crust

really believing
two of the greatest
musical quivers
boundlessly

I burst quite sick
into history
with how many heads
always holding symphony,
art otherwise despair

consider one literary
thing, make it your bed
and invariably perish
simultaneously with every
thing else

really believe
an absolute nature
factually accused
of producing
nothing

to be a seer
more indeed than describe
but misconstrue
into artless paralysis

walking in reality
but in truth
to bear torrential
truth

do not enter
a tree or song
but life

life, nay, breathe
into something featureless
who knows what reasons
mysterious dissolved them
as examples of this process

merely accept this object
as contour groped in darkness

possibly decades
in the making
itself a memory ago
where I promised
to write language
as crust enveloping
experience

Contemporary Poetry

toward the soft constellation

soft constellation

I can tell you where I’m going, because I’ve been wrestling with remembrance toward the soft constellation and I scream in a loud abstraction: I aim beyond the tedium of destinations and I will tell you. Migrating like ink into the empty apartment, and the warmth of the sun sinks into my bloated pool of blood. The craftsmanship of carving windows onto the pale walls of silence. My voyage is a concentration of shadows amplifying the dominion of dust. The dialect is a purification of vision, to observe the structures that remain hidden behind the brightness of fear. This is where I’m going, dragging behind me the image of the ocean. Because I’ve lifted up the endless darkness that pulsated like an essence on the surface of the world. There is where I’m going, toward the equilibrium of the mirror, in a gigantic leap within.

Contemporary Poetry

when the cities collapse

lump_of_poetry

Set the feeling down. Like a stone
you brought from the outside
from a neglected garden.
Let’s be naked, gooseflesh
and fling your thoughts (true or delusive)
as your dirty lingerie, on the couch
I bought the other day, from a
man w/ a beard and jesus christ
what a beard he had.
Let’s lie down, like a century
like centuries do
in a stomp and muddled
like all centuries do.
But we don’t care about time,
only care for licked flesh, the skin
that philosophy grew around our muscles
and wrapped us in that idealism of matter.
Then we pluck desire as echoes from our eyes
and we’ll press against each other
like two enormous skies
up against the other
like two skies crushing a cloud.
And then we’ll stare at the walls, the floor,
the ceiling, we’ll say it’s paint, wood, concrete
and something beyond that, and something beyond
that and something or other beyond the last beyond.
But you’ll be asking questions, what about the fire,
the tomorrow, the singularity of human encounters
and the wounds of the galaxy. But I say, shut up
drop the politics and judge the day
as a lump of poetry merely.
After a while when the cities collapse
and you’re back with your heavy stones
crossing chasms and delving infinitudes,
remember what I said tonight, judge the day
merely as a lump of poetry.

Contemporary Poetry

A rose above fury toward sea

copper_sea

A rose above fury toward sea
life holy hole
I here stretch the song
of earthly length
to dwell in portrait and silk,
bushes of fire
decorate the string of minutes
like quick summits expiring
everywhere, every orient
framed in the dark charcoal
that is art of the dream,
a sky beneath violence toward star
death anchored across
thin perfumes of morning and love,
I hear strange technologies
building a mad edge,
in fog twine comets and flora
coexisting with the habits
of our blood, everywhere
every white memory
finding a violet conflagration,
to sleep united with some knot of
violin in the tremors
of the sudden heart;
that rose fuming with essence toward a copper sea.

Contemporary Poetry

the care of the self

care_of_self

When I awoke today
I looked at my exhausted limbs
and there – THERE was a wave of tremendum
shafts of wild fascination
hanging from every bit of skin
as by whim, as by holy pendulum
I’d like to judge and proclaim
the final voice is nothing but noise
I rage.
I remain.
Hidden in a territory that history does not interrupt.
A soft sinuous sense like solitude or silencing.
Oh man, how’ve danced and surrendered,
circling the city as a mote swerving around the shafts
of light in this barren room. Alive and extensions
of some unknown cause. Fluttering like a scream
in the barbarity of ignorance. I am proud, a huge
pound of ignorance. A huge pyramid of bliss.
I was a dream. A mirrored mirage.
But now, full of fascinatum
I have the holy stream of eternity
wasted as a shadow
below my feet.
I’ve spilled the moonshine over my bare breasts
in the agony of madness.

Contemporary Poetry

Against finality

savage_offspring

 

There must be beasts
that crawl like moons
behind the city buildings

I stare at their fumes
that spiral toward solitude
and the streets like swollen
veins struggling against
the violence of light

I have not spied them enough
nor have I done fair scholarship
to deduce their silences

I am more of a theologian
deducing with furious axioms
their temptation to laugh
and recording the syllogism
of wings that chisel
the silk of decay

they are beasts of atmosphere
and dawn and the noise of eclipses
and in one ambitious hallucination
we coexist with their rosy disasters

who are they, the monsters
these vehicles of modern destiny?

I cannot answer.
There is no final system.
The roads are covered with
the round tears of the desert.

The news has not reached paradise.
we are here to stay – on earth, at noon –
with our blue and sentimental beasts;
whatever savage offspring of our dreams.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

origin.

origins

origin.
When nothing had yet
lured electron.

Before beginnings,
when totality
was numb and coiled
like a tongue.

The buds
savoring
a patch of permanence.

Illumine the solace
when the folds of eternity
were not yet

outstretched.

Omnipresence
was a droplet deep
of dense darkness.

Then a slither of light scarred the night.

A new hunger
clung to the breast
of heaven
till
it began to bleed
a timeless light.

Becoming.
Outpouring curls of colors.

The clouds
the mud
and the appearance
swathed in shadows
& painful pulse.

Contemporary Poetry

twigs of being

twigs_of_Being_poem

I would call it rain,
but it’s just a drop,
that slithers through
the contours of the
heartbeat.

I suddenly
become still,
like a branch
suddenly strapped
to a shaft of sunlight.

If I could peek
inside
to witness
a constellation of twigs,
flickering and shudders,
after each clinch,
as the hungry drop
tunnels through
the expanse of feeling.

At that moment,
language tangles up
into a yarn of illusion.

It falls still wet with joy.

I am planet
eroded by pleasure,
a hard knot of memory.

But everything is quiet,
only for a chime
every time
the drop clinks
against an organ
or a thought.

Contemporary Poetry

nuance of sense

edge_of_creation

It was in 2013
when I started
dancing –
in the moral sense
of the word.

It was this
year when in
my hole, still
timeworn with despair
that I laughed –
in the philosophical
sense of the word.

It was under
a pale circle
in the sky
that I shouted:
‘more, more!’ –
in the maternal
sense of the word.

It was in
momentary empty
flight when I shot
over the aching nothing
to touch the inchoate
rim of creation –
in the real
sense of the word.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry