metapoetics

Tautology

For poets make sad mechanics with their lyric lore
– Byron

tautology_lyric_poetry_byron

A rock is heavy
hard supposedly static
with jagged edges
and deaf surfaces
like a stone or a pebble
in fact they are the same thing

language is light
flimsy supposedly manifold
with soft melting angles
and loud exteriors
like a concept or a word
in fact they are the same thing

poetry is buoyant
insubstantial supposedly spontaneous
with brilliant measures
and reiterative layers
like a sadness or a depth
in fact they are the same thing

 

 

 

21st century Poetry

a thing imagined

new_poetry_2013

Preferably soft,
jelly-like
but resilient to heat
and the precarious nuisances of the jungle
tender but defiant
able to camouflage among
stones and clouds alike
its softness must be delicate
but decisive not necessarily static
as it can be allowed rigidity at times
equivalent to that of taut velvet
not too colorful nor flaunting
the impenetrability of black or white
capable of evaporating without dispersing
(i.e. losing its cohesion without sacrificing its wholeness)
different from the rest of its kind
without becoming an example of freak
it should waver at twilight at the risk
of turning ambiguous but never incomprehensible
its upper part magnificent
and evasive like the current of time in a dream
its lower part glorious and ubiquitous
like dawn in a desert’s sky
preferably sophisticated without being pompous
straightforward without being wholly divested of enigma
and existing mainly between
the eternal and the transient.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

how to write a poem

contemporary_poet

The trick is to close the eyes.
To look for the thing
crawling below the carpet of darkness of the lids.
Remain still like a hunter. Do not stir
even if a sliver of light echoes through the emptiness.
You’re looking for a boom.
It starts with a swirl of symbols
curling around each other
in wild experiments of mutation.
You’re looking for a spark, an isolated
hazardous word that will scale
up the fence of perception, to consume
the whole plantation of thoughts.
Venture into this plague of accidents,
advance as a whirlwind upon the dunes of ash.
Soon the darkness begins to burn bright,
you are a sun leaping into a single atom
witnessing a birth to the naked eye.

 

Contemporary Poetry

the art of definition 

the art of definition

There is no method for definition: to learn how to define. Definition is a consequence of imitation, its foundation so deeply grounded in our perceptual models of reality that any reform would only be an aberration of the original fortuity. We learnt to use a system of language through imitation and even the precision of mathematics remains illusory as a result of being an imposed code of rules embedded in the ambiguous amalgam of imitative language.

I would live,
dedicate my entire life
to defining a single word
properly – justly. 
That word would be:
	melancholy
I do have other candidates,
perhaps I would define another
still stranger word: mysterious.

What is mysterious?

That which cannot be grasped intellectually.
That which is still unknown, unexplained,
perhaps the truly mysterious is
that which can never be explained by thought,
that which is intrinsically unknowable. 

Here I am defining a word with other words. 
But I would not stop there. 
I would access zones of intuition,
a series of instruments predating language,
like an amulet that contains an entire cosmology
or a monolith that served as genesis to historical memory.
I would anchor my word to other unreliable words,
vague words that by their very nature would
serve as examples of the intangibility 
of my definition for mysterious.  

I would, for example, make mysterious 
synonymous with Life, Happiness, Nirvana, etc 

ect.

Contemporary Poetry

allness

allness

Here in my face
I feel gravity
when light and darkness
are only found in
two eyes that brush
with memory the
portrait of movement

what am I to do
when language’s gone
astray
smashing against
a window like a dumb
bird

we discovered
that the only thing
in heaven are rocks
and columns of gas
that the soul is
an inaudible whisper
returning to nameless,
to a wind to a wave

little man, I hear the elements say:
logic swallowed the world
and reason spat out an abstraction
so, little man, let’s start over
with a new skin around language
caressing the river of change
as only the surface of infinite

dip before death your body
in emptiness
O manifold, never compare
abandon the mistake of identifying
body with body and mind with mind
rather cling to miracle as petals
do to their perfume
and drop judgment like a stone
thru the air and little man
open the mouth the eye and your
bouquet of fingers in the madness
that moves worlds as auras
around the light of stars

fast, construct a minute that is
young fountain and invent a word
that will finally deflower infinity

little man – I hear a voice from all
elements strangling me with all
greenness that is a red orchestra
conducting as a blue cloud
the dance of the night around itself
allness allness

I have a face and it is a seed
at the threshold about to cleave root
in the manifestation of music
so profound
that it enters an orbit
around the love of everything

Contemporary Poetry

almost

concept

I’m tired of the world
Listening almost analytical,
Blinking and blinking,
Yawning.

And telling stories.

I want to turn off the world,
like a light bulb.

I want darkness to be orthodox.
Like a blanket I
fold into heretic squares of vision.

I’m tired and about
to doubt.

And the sun
Is a big smile
I cannot fuck

I want to smile.

But the dumb
lung is coughing
the truth
away in dirty
streams of saliva.

Fences were beautiful
concepts of once.

Only one time.

To be, shortly.

I almost cried.

Contemporary Poetry

on the origin of things

origin_of_reality

There were no instructions
and everything had a gleam
with no in between.

Even for the mind
there was no concept
nothing to break off
from the rhythm
of nature’s
self-portrait.

There was no suffering
of a thousand of years
and the mountains
were idiots with hands
in the sky.

There were no rules
of proportion and
we were born
in the middle
of gray.

In the midst of howls,
the happy blood-stained
gesture, but there was no
relationship with being
and non-being.

We killed until
ethics was an abstract
form of tool. And language
built a house for
loneliness.

This was long ago.
When something came
to dance and we were its
feathers.

Contemporary 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

this alone is clear

pond_of_universe

enswathe me
with the leaf
of another name

if a violet flower
quivers like ornament

on the ephemeral rawness
of this earth
so a tiny poet

cleaves like thistledown
to the thin vastness

of the word

if it was genuine
my standing by the pond
weighing the quantity of universe

in these thoughts

if it was certitude
that clung as cascade
to the branches

of renewing blood

upon exiting the flesh
I thought unto death
to look back toward

this pallid clarity of ash

this has been important to me
to fling final words as anchor
in the hidden plethoric ;

time as billowing toward
some lambent exit

without us,
this alone is clear
all these residual things

will remain
spilled in darkness.

 

Contemporary Poetry

beer and smoke

beer_and_smoke

The carvings in the wood. Steps up, turn right, unzip, let it rip.

There is some necessity for being unconscious of the process.
Of the origin. Of the consequence and significance.
There is some necessity to intonate without ideal,
to fling actions all of the sudden
as dice without any odds of winning.

Fix hair. Zip, down the steps. Smoke fury of flurry. Beer; what’s the score?

The second, while being a vehicle of careless novelty, is actually
heavy, almost pregnant with the expression of expired millennia.
Seamless actions operate unconscious of the thrust of heavy history.

Running out of beer. Was it 25? Come one Jones, put it in the box!

Poetry is an exercise in distillation. An appropriation of the
universal, namely, to compress the universe into the right word.
It is mutiny against language, a futile revolution against excess.

For fuck’s sake, that’s it. What a poor effort. Let’s grab a bite.

There is nonetheless an element of arbitrariness in all postures.
The only sin is definition, that is to say, narrowing the flux
to one single image, fluid as this representation may be,
that will necessarily congeal the real nature of impermanence.

The clouds are suspended as the self. Return my symbol; I’m under the influence of the absolute.

This is not the language of the everyman. But the poetic is an
elevation of ordinary life, a dissection of the vital rhythms
that run through the flesh of form and the bone of force.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry