poet

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

a song in language

language_and_World

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

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

one hundred twenty-one words

abyss_above_us

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.

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

existence as fiction

existence_as_fiction

Our existence is an exercise in fiction.
And it’s through a perversion of this art
that fiction becomes simulation of reality,
thus problematic.

The task is to comprehend
the problem without attempting
to provide a solution for it.

The greatest actors convey
an understanding of the problem
and are applauded as heroic
because they continue thriving
in contradiction with the unsolvable
(fictitiously real) problem.

This is theater of the mind
and valiant acts have been written
with the futility of blood.

The tragic hero’s only
certainty is his ineffective success
and our only consolation is his
acceptance of suffering.

This is our pathos.
The tragic man makes the problem
his only audience.

He must feign suffering until its pain
becomes as real as the simulation of the problem.

He then says that the salvation is unattainable,
that freedom is nothing more than
the purest state of fiction.

And in the irony of his language, he’s dead right.

 

Contemporary Poetry

Against finality

savage_offspring

 

There must be beasts
that crawl like moons
behind the city buildings

I stare at their fumes
that spiral toward solitude
and the streets like swollen
veins struggling against
the violence of light

I have not spied them enough
nor have I done fair scholarship
to deduce their silences

I am more of a theologian
deducing with furious axioms
their temptation to laugh
and recording the syllogism
of wings that chisel
the silk of decay

they are beasts of atmosphere
and dawn and the noise of eclipses
and in one ambitious hallucination
we coexist with their rosy disasters

who are they, the monsters
these vehicles of modern destiny?

I cannot answer.
There is no final system.
The roads are covered with
the round tears of the desert.

The news has not reached paradise.
we are here to stay – on earth, at noon –
with our blue and sentimental beasts;
whatever savage offspring of our dreams.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

A wordless lump of dream

little_soul

I placed in my mouth
a wordless lump of dream
[          ]
and earth was clean
for a while
with little-souls
gliding-without
the-weight-of-shadows
hours deep in music
while opinion was
a remote latitude
and the future had no
literature or comets
and the ebb of morning
was an impossible mutation
of white and sound,
I had been masticating
this wordless lump of
dream
{          }
and faces had meadows
with rich fogs
cutting the edge
of smiles and drifting
through silver breezes
and the earth
was clean
for a while.

Contemporary Poetry

a minute’s peace

minute_of_peace

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.

 

Contemporary Poetry

I have discovered nothing

the_outsider

I have discovered nothing

no potent spasm in truth’s tinge
no certain depth in writhing divinity

I have no enlightenment

no broad scar laid on the slope of thought
no electrifying branch igniting the empty length

I have not discovered any principle

no sinking song hardening the stone
no plaited temple wall where war reclines exhausted

I have no message

no filament of yarn towards Ariadne’s love
no hidden sarcophagus where suffering lies embalmed

I have discovered no primeval essence

no visiting visage vanishing vastly
no substitute for this sum of smoke

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