absurd poetry

the decline and fall of Being

being_and_nothingness

 

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.

Contemporary Poetry

the joy of Heidegger

desolation_landscape

 

Throughout itself,
ordinary nature
would no longer
be its opposite.

Truth occurs

within itself
no longer in earth

but open,
clearing, never rid of primal conflict

notice this Open

the world of paths
lighting
the self-closing
center

at bottom
intended to denote
that the essential
has rid itself
of everything
concealed.

 

(All the words, including minor phrases were extracted from page 53 of Heidegger’s essay The Origin of the Work of Art, found in the book Poetry, Language, Thought as translated by Albert Hofstadter, printed by Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Contemporary Poetry

oblivion obliged

When Midas asked Silenus what fate is best for a man, Silenus answered: “Pitiful race of a day, children of accidents and sorrow, why do you force me to say what were better left unheard! The best of all is unobtainable—not to be born, to be nothing. The second best is to die early.”
– Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)

oblivion_obliged

Whose torn bolt
was released
on the curvature of time,
who left this mass
of obscurity as a stone
in the sky,

have I begun
to carve enough
misery

from this chunk of night,
or designed
a chorus of smoke.

Its slanting invasion
made us embrace
like twins of twilight
and the irony

of it all
we are abundance
in its thirst,
dancing like swirls
of sweetness in its mouth.

To be happy mud
smeared
on your breasts, I said.

But I could hear
you muttering
the wisdom of Silenus.

Unable to rephrase
the meaning of silence

we laid still
like two
immobile spots
of darkness.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

to be absurd

daylight_squirm

To be absurd from feeling to toe,
I’d punch the snow to disfigure
the torso of beauty
to join the mad soliloquists
the drunks and hopeless angels
with whales swimming in
their eyes of quivers.
Rapidly the curves of snowfall
impact the distant slums and they are
carrying pain too beautiful that we
stare and suffer. I cannot add a because,
a therefore, a necessity.
The event has sweetness
that only forgetfulness with relish.
I am too vague a vacuity too vain a villain,
being an absurd contemplator
the suspense of my erosion
is my only occupation.

and yeah, the feat of beauty
on daylight’s squirm.

 

Contemporary Poetry

ultracold

car_speed_india

 

Relieved bowels
before pain is áh vowel,
consumed
me ended. Death
is a petty leaf, to sleep beneath
a pretty earth. What word will last
and last
oracle come past
my lips
when I’m almost stiff
and conclusive gasp. ‘A
Spanish mutter or aspect
while curling and reaching
for aspirin,
could be a joke and I laugh
blue with smoke blurring
the vision
of what existence
once
was but no more mission
but rest
but forgetfulness
but lo and behold
I shall say, it is time! me
becoming ultra-cold.

Contemporary Poetry

prelude to a philosophy of meaninglessness

philosophy_of_silence

I want to write
clear and distinct ideas
expressing how life
is a short sojourn
in an unclear and
indistinct domain

that my philosophy
become the instant
when words ricochet off
the build of reality

to expose the futility
of the understanding
and dilate the aperture
through which silence
sinks

I want to make sure
that the veracity
of my principles
is unverifiable

that the meaning
of my verse
emerges as
a blur of music

I want to leave
the cloud of phenomena
to become a single
dab of mist
throbbing in the
chaotic extent.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

echolike

echolike_dada_automatism

Look at the fountain, how it stretches its arm-like foam and spurting bouquets of gurgles; it leaves no echo in the sunlit conception. I know what it was. A word. Burgeoning and birds, no, butterflies came to squeeze its melancholy. Ah how it flows, echolike and here I am rewriting the misery of boredom, nay, a resistance to ineffability. I wonder how many have seen a human skull (like the one I saw today) and thought to themselves: I will fight till the end. It would be prudent to say: idiots! Some days when bliss is spilt and the cock is dry, you really become a skeptic, doubting the lyrics of the mother. Whose mother? The one with the ring and the beautiful array of beats that threw us off and made us tame soldiers. What can we expect when we’re abandoned and hungry seeking the lost pictures of meaning. I can’t imagine how to end this, this sick exercise of automatic writing. I could throw in some words I admire: echo, emptiness, essence, elixir, elapsed, echo. Oh I keep repeating that one.

Contemporary Poetry

BEWARE: Technologists of the obscure

technologist_of_the_obscure

 

 

By understanding the fundamentals of ambiguity the technologist of the obscure harnesses the power to create suitable artifacts (not to be confused with anti-facts) that encrypt the purity of communication into a meshwork of impenetrable significations. This technology, having being exploited by philosophers for ages, has surreptitiously leaked out and fallen into the hands of the architects, engineers and builders of unearthly images and unintelligible utterances, a group of formidable sophists that work relentlessly in the advancement of their art. Commonly grouped together under the heading of ‘Poets’, these deserters of lucidity utilize a wide array of techniques to camouflage their superficiality and produce, to all appearances, objects of intelligence. Their methods include the avoidance of the vernacular, the exploitation of the thesaurus, and the occasional usage of logatomes. This alchemy of language can reach such degree of high abstraction that the reader can momentarily forget the existence of the earth. Such manipulation of perception, while not yet proven to be lethal, can lead to a long-lasting veneration for the incomprehensible. While there might be some value in fiddling with obscurity, it is highly unlikely that straightforward communication will ever be supplanted by the monstrous impenetrability of the ambiguous.

Contemporary Poetry

the meaning

the meaning

and this that I
see is not a symbol
but the meaning itself

I see
the world
bloated like a vein,
pushing, thrusting
its contents forward,
violently,
towards a new woven
germination.

It does not stall
nor does it rest
at every corner or turn,
it continues like a flood,
as the blood of phenomena
surges through every vessel
of this quivering world.

There is no pause,
no break in its
wild mutations.

I cannot say that I understand
this upheaval, these eruptions
as the muscle of matter convulses
as the nerve of energy pulsates.

But I see a clump of red push,
the flare spreading from night
towards some illusive perpetuity,
the multitudes of twilights
flickering like feathers and swords
in this horrible clash of sensations.

This I see, not a representation
but bulges of smoke billowing
at the end of a sprouting disaster,
whiteness overflowing with obscurity
darkness softening into a monsoon
that shall cast billions of pearls of light.

 

 

Modern Poetry

schematization

You now
must know
what it is to crave a glass of water
or to sip a kiss;
to be so reckless as to flood
the heart because it is a crater of chalk
and you’re tired of its empty dusty frame.

I don’t remember what
kind of day it was.
Full of sun with
musky winds, dark with
impalpable clouds, perhaps
flat and drunk in sapphire.

I don’t care what kind of day
it was; a day to forget like all
the rest had I not begun to count
the breaths I’ve taken in despair.

I began stooping like an imbecile twig
that bends with every paddle of the wind
as if an essence had broken into milliard
tiny mirrors on the sidewalk, and I had
to count and sew them back into a remembrance.

I plead for the pallid crust of light that envelopes me
like a bulky perfume to melt into a song of shadow
or even for a single mindless mote of dust
to land catastrophically on me and pierce
this ferrous mold, I want to watch my holy skin
fall away and leave a naked and unwashed soul
standing erect like a pagan odalisque.

But don’t show her mercy, kick her out
of this world drama, let her run barefoot
back to her incomprehensible origin.

It could have been a year ago, while getting on
a bus that I conceived of grabbing silence
by its throat and squeezing out a peep;
I had been so innocently prone to believing
that the world was a gigantic bird suffocating
me with its kaleidoscopic feathers but
now I feel at home because suffering
sets as a sun behind the panorama of knowledge
and even if it is reborn every day I dream
at night of being a thin echo of fiction.

Amen.

Contemporary Poetry