You.
And the world
is your shadow.
You pale like
the archeology
of a voice,
of a concept.
You.
Sleeping like
a classical representation
of philosophy.
You.
And the measurement
of the universe.
You
like a visible
collection of
fictions.
You, metaphysically
and verbally a
sign.
You the threads
of an octopus.
You.
My fundamental
posited
truth.
Here is language
standing in the world
like an obese piano
here are my lips
caressing chaotically
a plaintive arpeggio
a strung mass
of sea splatter
struck by mechanical
whim
I sense freedom
in verbal form
that suckles the
shadow behind
vocal foam
here are the colors
aligned in black mountain
& white valley
here the world
trickles in echo
here is language
standing in the immense
like sculpted fluid
here are my lips
opening like rain
the bouquet of sound
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
Yesterday there,
could have written
a poem, a tunnel
to something greater
than what we amassed
in many units
of cyclic century
I could have, yesterday.
Created a segment of fiction
that borrows truth as tool
and made universe
a cog in a bigger dream
Yesterday, there
was only need for one hundred
twenty-one words
to serve as ligament
between the earth
and a single
human heart
I could have, yesterday.
Covered my eyes, my eyes
with pungent dust and
swallowed the interior
of a cloud. Something vague
but elementary, could have
been spoken
Yesterday there,
could have left legacy
to some mad prophecy,
I could have dropped
an ounce of voice
into the hole
that is an abyss
above us.
A poet holds a word
like a heavy tragedy.
A poet holds a word
like a loud apocalypse.
A poet holds a word
like an epic miniature.
A poet holds a word
like a historic voyage.
A poet holds a word
like the cup of disease.
A poet holds a word
like the blood’s island.
A poet holds a word
like the axis of light.
A poet holds a word
like the noise of truth.
A poet holds a word
like an immense event.
A poet holds a word
like a vital bone.
A poet holds a word
like the spine of god.
A poet holds a word
like eternity’s tear.
A poet holds a word
like the basis of the earth.
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.
A common blink. The human
act. It’s 3.50 am and I am
a swirl of smoke with swing
in the bar but no cigarette.
I dance alone, snapping
fingers, closing eyes
fun against the circumference.
I drop a sigh and it tumbles
down the ankles and hits
the bubbles of the dirty
dance floor. I think,
I’ve been once
a fetus. An ounce.
A particle of blood.
Now, I blink and participate
in the trigonometry
of the complex. The act.
This is a vein of music.
I dangle and dance.
Brushing against the
solitary totality.
I’m blinking without a
cigarette. Squashing
the disease of saliva,
the last residue below
my feet.
Singling out the lonesome
route of the human
noise. Arms casually
spiraling toward the touch
of fat air. The fat noise.
I blink and light
is splattered onto conscious.
I dance. 3. 59 am and I barely am.
when 3:13
it was foggy
and too careless
to measure the vastness of solitude
when 3:15
a slither of divine ache
clashed against a clump
of earth
probably though
it was against my
awfully wakeful heart.
when 3:17
my extended hand
kneads the air
and the eyes slough
a peel of memory
towards a new gloriousness
when 3:29
I show my membership card
staff smiles. They know me.
I ask: what’s the time?
3:29, they say.
3: 38
the southernmost minute’s gone
3:39
without consenting to our isolated reasons
when 3:43
I begin reading:
Religion is the last subject that the intellect beings to understand. In our youth we may have resented, with proud superiority, its cherished incredibilities; in our less confident years we marvel at its prosperous survival in a secular and scientific age, its patient resurrections after whatever deadly blows by Epicurus, or Lucretius, or Lucian, or Machiavelli, or Hume, or Voltaire. What are the secrets of this resilience?
when 3:45
I don’t want to smear eternity
with another coat of futility
when 3:59
got up comically
confusedly
coquettishly
can’t wait for spring to come
when 4:01
outside again
ready to concoct
some opaque purpose.
when 4:05
with a beer
throwing away the wreaths
of opinion that cling to my hair.
when 4:26
murmuring:
everyman’s angelic grave
4:26
surrender the surrounding suffering
4:27
for a sparse minute of peace.
I am going to die.
But there are days
when flesh titillates
and joins the circus
of the sinews
and there’s ecstasy
in the flesh
as if it were loaves
of bread soaked
in froths of bliss
and the moment’s trapeze
is a vehicle or an aspect
of levitation
and neighbors witness
a whiff of shadow
swirling in dimly lit
orbit
and forget noon
dawn or wood
head or heart
being here
in physical perpetuity
in whirlpools of hairs
and hairs and hairs
and bones
veering
towards a dizzy
orchestration
until I become
a mote of sound
that has permeated
the intermediary air.
The self is a function of life.
Every aspect
of life as experienced
by so-called man
is within the realm
of nature, the universe,
totality. Nothing is
outside it,
nothing
belongs to something
other than itself.
Life is a manifestation (
for lack of a better
word
) of what nature
is doing.
My ego
is not independent
to the field
of nature, it does not
confront or exchange
with any external.
All my memories, actions,
thoughts, insights,
responsibilities, etcetera,
do not belong to
me.
They are all part
of that function
that life
is portraying
through a living organism.
The experience
of being-hood is a sort of modulation of life itself.
There is no center or
self that engages with life.
Rather life is engaged with nature.
In other words,
I’ve never experienced
anything.
One could say,
I am the illusion
of being a drop of water
inside a totality
that is itself all water.
The IT has been doing ITSELF.
Nothing belongs to me per se.
Even this instant,
these words, these attempts
to define what’s happening
are not me nor belonging to me,
but aspects of what life
or, sub specie aeternitatis,
what nature does.
Life is, a Spinozan could say,
a mode in nature. I’m inclined to say
there is no one
perceiving this, life itself
is busying itself with life-stuff,
nature-stuff, thought-stuff,
society-stuff, and so on.
There is no me
in all of this.
There is only a recurring
sensation that life – the
experiences that compose our definition of life –
belong to me.
But that sensation
is itself an impression like any other.
Can death be overcome?
Only a thought
that suggests that “I will die” exists,
but not the actual death of the self
– because there is no self.
Beyond Language 
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