new poetry
Inside the screech of an owl
Three poems published (buried) at The Screech Owl.
Poems titled:
- The Postmodernist
- Four.
- Hardly a time for poetry.
—
THE POSTMODERNIST
exploits
the game of reason
to escape the predicament of truth,
s/he operates the machinery
of logic
only to jam it
with its self-generated contradictions.
The new literati
are not avoiding the difficulties
of meaning,
they are stirring the flame
that will one day consume
the substance of our values.
The postmodern human
does not rise above the ideology of symbolic interpretation
and gladly participates
in the confusion of verbs and vituperations
aimed against the metaphysically-drained
ambiguity of the world’s narrative.
The certainty of facts is no longer
the underlying foundation of knowledge; rather,
the elusiveness of truth
is what impels us to disclose
what lies
just beyond the grasp of language.
—
Four.
Is it ridiculous
to open the door,
and expect the world
to dissipate
like the isolation of a cloud.
Is it worth
inventing a concept
where sadness is all
puckered and arguably
thick as a shadow.
Is it futile
to attribute to movement
an arm that ends
in the grasp of decay.
Is it strange
to find in this image
manifold flames
slowly wounding the eyes. \
—
Hardly a time for poetry.
I have tried to avoid
negating the
exaggerated passions
of the poets.
There is a colossal amount of desire.
And any contradiction
of the size of the sky
is often no more than the obscured
simplicity of a pebble in your hand.
I have been sympathetic
while successfully demystifying
the emptiness that gathers in pools
inside the poetry of the modern.
Some time ago
when the edifice of silence
merged with the horizon of knowledge,
many placed the value of paradise
in the service of an absurd rage.
I suppose that the reason
we expose our insights in the light
of years is only to remember
the minute cave of their origin.
After we have transcribed
the entire system of our impulses into monuments of smoke,
we can then go on and specify
how many illegible dreams transcended
the ordinary realm of the image.
The question as to the real significance
of the rapid decay of our art
does not bother me so much now
as the hopeless need to lose oneself
in the numinous stage of the ineffable.
the swamp of volition
There must be
a method
to turn off freedom.
To waste motion in a curve
and glide down the city
as cascade.
To be sunk in the fumes
of machines or dance
in front of a choir
without any bullshit.
To undress in the cold
sensations of the crowd.
To chew the furniture of words.
To fall into the sound of water.
The idea of thought
would be framed
in museums
and memorial sites.
Like an ancient artifact of struggle.
All the small things will float in the air
and we’d decorate the problem of life
with the husks of memory;
without choice
life would be a nail
deep in the crust of flux
and language moss at the rim of our lips.
Contemporary Poetry
rockn’roll
I paid
and he asks
how I’ve been
he left a shapeless mass of laughter
in the air
I’ve had a hangover for days
he says: rockn’roll
yeah it hurts
and the hard Furies strangle
each idea with a whip of flame
and in that throb
one must find a quartz
of moonlight under a window
and breathe in an avalanche
and heed the noise
dripping from the tiny tick
of the heart
sharply
the eyes begin
by the sway
of a moon drawn by wings
to sleep
and here
skirting a crater
at the roof of a boundary
I am
washed by a beam of music
pocketing the fog
and perfuming the worn rags of clouds
like in fable
or inside a final
visit.
Contemporary Poetry
from above
They found a bulge
between Amaliegade
and Esplanaden
and it was in the news
and the hearts
shook with dread
a long sack of skin.like flesh
growing from a thin string
into an enormous
bulk
a man stood drinking the ship
in a circle of dizziness
the lights of police
and the endless of an image
no one could understand the revolution
and beauty of the bulge
it was hauled off the street
like a rainbow
as a miracle of the flame
as heresy from our pedestrian slopes
factories puffing shades
roaring with flags and chords
of iron ringing
in the suburbs
it is pronounced that this age
will collide with the pillar
stumps of science
and melancholy is a growth
like tumor
in the heads of those
that gaze with wonder
from above.
Contemporary Poetry
us
They told me to squeeze
structure
into home
and open windows
to air out essence
see I have been obedient
shedding coats of laughter
like films of light over
a miracle of corner,
and this thing
consciousness is hanging
like dust
in the atmosphere
but we’ve
made arrangements
and passion is hard
like furniture,
mahogany and steel
like dream and real
together bound
in braid
somewhere near
the end of this
and the world
tiny pretty thing
climbs into the air
like a moth
to disappear
over the object
and become invisible
like the rest of
us.
Contemporary Poetry
Memory has become an uncomfortable lump in my consciousness.
It quivers
constantly and endlessly
ripens into new peculiar
shapes.
Needless to say
it increases weight
every minute,
often requiring immense
exertion to fit it in a corner
so it does not overshadow
the timid appearance of
the present.
It branches out
like a gluttonous tree
in all directions,
wavering disparate aspects
of itself without logic
or internal organization.
A primeval adolescent kiss,
a manure fight in the fields,
a quote from Montaigne
the location of masking tape
in a storage room, all mingle
shamelessly like an orgy
of bacteria in the Petri dish
of my mind.
Language is forced to perform
extreme feats of lucidity
to convey the peculiar manifestations
with which memory
fuddles the intellect.
I imagine a day
when consciousness of the present
will be completely drowned
by the swelling tsunami of memory,
leaving the brittle instant of now
floating like débris
on a flood of lifelong reminiscence.
Contemporary Poetry
19A
A saint is a stain on white monotony
aloud he thinks: I
am a strange dot among the government of lines;
a mystic is a calm slip into abyss
all joking aside he says:
above the city leaps into tower;
a shaman is a subject under the tyranny of wholeness
aware of segments he asserts:
a fraction is mind lost in the order of totality;
alone in the world every man wonders:
afraid like a leaf in autumn my life
amidst the rain;
a poet is an absolute ark of air
abstruse and above all
a little puddle of reflection
at the end he writes:
a full world and its aura
asleep inside a shoebox
an allegory for barefoot monks.
Contemporary Poetry
arterial aerial
Cleave to that place
arterial
the vessel no the aerial
where fading flight merges
with being and life
is no longer
an only particular
thing
but interior of great
continuity
of circulation density
dripping
in center toward
multiplicity
and radiates back
into blood
the skin, your eyes, your hands
the fur of the world
at your fingertips.
Contemporary Poetry
Q&A
Father what is bigger than the moon?
The earth my child.
Why?
Because if the earth were an empty bird’s nest,
it could fit several moons inside.
What’s bigger than the earth?
A sun my child.
Why?
Because if a sun were an orange
then the earth’d be a tiny crumb of bread.
If you were starving, which one would you pick?
What’s bigger than a sun?
A galaxy my child.
Why?
Because if a sun were a bee,
a galaxy would be a swarm of bees
flying in hypnotic circles, ellipses
and parabolas around their hive.
What’s bigger than a galaxy?
Human thought my child.
Why?
Because thought is like a net
that can catch all the bees in the universe
and put them in a jar and study their
colors, structure, venom, instincts,
language, and habits.
What’s bigger than human thought?
Emptiness my child.
Why?
Because thought is like a tiny bubble in the vast
sea of nothingness that surrounds us, leaving
little more than a local ripple on the surface
once it expires.
What’s bigger than emptiness?
Mystery my child.
Why?
Because mystery is the quality that all things
share in their being or nonbeing.
What’s bigger than mystery?
You my child… you.
- dedicated to my unborn daughter
Beyond Language 
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