metapoetry

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

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

metapoetics: a simple song of sand

song_of_sand

I have a minute to sing,
that is to say,
to open the mouth and exhale sound,
or, one could say, to release
a melody-scented breeze,
perhaps even,
while stretching its meaning,
one could say,
to extract from the lungs
a billow of rhythm,
or even more wildly poematic,
to secrete from the lips
a blossom of chords,
which can also be put,
if one indulges in poetic flights,
as,
radiating threads of harmony
from the oval aperture.

And I’ll sing of the sand,
that is to say,
of the minuscule shining cells,
or, one could say, of the worn
establishment of rocks,
perhaps even,
while stretching its meaning,
once could say,
of Blake’s innumerable worlds,
or even more wildly poematic,
of time’s corrugated vestige,
which can also be put,
if one indulges in poetic flights,
as,
soft volumes of exhausted earth.

But I only have a minute to sing, so I sing a simple song of sand.

Contemporary Poetry