The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

bonebrushing the edges of the res interna (upper transcend)

Category: poetics

November 25, 2008

Images

Dirty young hipster sleeping on the Philadelphia subway, one eye half-open, headphones falling down around his head, greasy hair sticking out from under his hat. Not a dime in his pocket. Once he was a student — now he works two part-time jobs — printing flyers is one of them, the one he sort of likes. He’s lonely — hooked up with a girl three weeks ago but she never called him back — probably because he’s poor.

His Dad died of cancer three years ago. His mother is struggling in a town upstate.  He isn’t religious — doessn’t go for that sort of thing — distrusts that sort of thing.

He does drugs with people he calls his friends — he’s up late — that’s why he’s sleeping on the subway.

—————————–
Joe Lawyer. No stories there.

The Widowed Mother in a town upstate, receptionist at a print store — has watched the economy blow through and wipe out the companies that used to use them — staff is dwindling — young people don’t stay, head down to Philadelphia, but its hard to get jobs down there as well. She feels herself getting sick, getting creaky, there’s medical bills to pay off, the mortgage, her younger daughter’s college tuition — getting harder and harder — there’s a man who comes into the store every now and again — she doesn’t think she’s beautiful, she’s old and fat, and she doesns’t know this man from Adam and part of her is sort of happy to be done with it — but she’s very lonely without her children, who never want to talk to her — and her situation is precarious — she sort of wishes she’ll be asked out —

Advertisement
Leave a comment
May 8, 2008

poesie on gray mornings

it’s easy writing poems on gray mornings
false sympathies with gray clouds make me mopesome
but twisted tongues speak broken lines
and it’s not so hard to write them.

the old pot shattered on the sidewalk,
murky water leaking out
chasing out cracks to hide in,
maybe find a little secret seed waiting somewhere dark
and when laternight the stars come in and take their seats
seed and sap all mixed up will burst together
giggling and bowing at their encore

small flower, full cup, another promise,
sun bright on little boy grinning, green eyes watch and wonder, love

Leave a comment
May 5, 2008

Cardenio

“give me an empty space, and I have a stage. Give me a man walking across it, and I have a performance.” — Peter Brooks, the Empty Space, or something or other like it.

The refusal to come home — it punctuates both Quixote and Cardenio’s respective tales — the inner Cardenio, and the outer Cardenio — Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty tilting windmills furiously like Orlando, oranges hanging from trees and shiny new strip malls — wild, man, wild, postwar excess — the V2 Megarocket hanging over our heads like the old damoclean twin-blade razor — after forty days in the desert, I return, glasses broken, bearded, with my axe across my shoulders — Nina thinks I’m boring, a slug, well that’s ok, I can dance the tango, I can twist like the stars.

Terrorists, Members of Congress. Sitting there — put the powder in the spoon, light the candle, bubbles, now breath deep and boom – catch you on the flipside, Jackson / slash slash double slash plusgood — slip my silver key into my electric horse and go rocketing down the highway, into the great greeny beltlands of the American Southland, where Electric Jesus sings and dances, and they’ve got electric chairs atop their steeples, and the deep dark memories of racewars are emblazoned in our jeans and instincts — everything we are, shaped by the simple force of not having died — we are the some total of all those that did not die — I am the Alpha and the Omegacon, I am the transforming biobot, we are the great nanomachine society ringing ringing ringing in my ears – ringing ringing ringing in my ears — nano nano bot bot nano nano bot bot — boom fall up down boom fall up down — sentences, thought, silence, picture walking, the planes zoom up and here we sit together on the water, it’s bigger than a paddle-boat, bigger than a paddle-boat, rise and fall and up and down — paddling through the waters, sprinkle some water on me — oh, let it rain on me, let it all come down —

 

Leave a comment
March 17, 2008

notes from news years

new years with the disco biscuits, my eyes starry, by myself at the front of the stage, things getting strange and heavy, but the sound sounded great, like I was in an echo chamber, or they were using some incredible three dimensional reverb — I was right in front of the stage — and I looked over and saw a kid, man, what’s the difference these days, a man dressed like a kid, going through people’s coats — in my reverie darkness, and assuming the worst, I wrote a story for him, of the man-child who goes to these shows and steals a wallets in order to eat — realizing that this was this creature’s role and purpose, this was what it did to eat — and what was my purpose — but I had no purpose, I was a watcher, this was my Carnival, my Festival, my License, but some people were working — for sure, for sure —

 on the other side of the barrier, a black man-child sits tripping hard, staring at glowsticks in his hands that he was making dance the danse macabre — was that this man-child’s purpose? Had someone fed him something to reduce him to this state, animal, his mind caged by bone and blotters, sitting there, forebrain gone?

 Or the fire jugglers after the show — this was their new years too, and they were working, throwing fire in the air to delight the crowds —

 The music was good — so good — insane — but distracted by the music, and then seeing through the music, the world in its dark strivings crystallized and betrayed a terrible terrible prison where rats in a wheel run endless circles, conditioned to press a button for daily bread and daily shocks, and the music distracts us from the work, the bone-crunching soul-crushing, the raking of shit, the farming of greener soylent, the grinding of bonemash —

Time. Time & Change. Frightening words. Love. Love too.

Leave a comment
March 13, 2008

dreams of elsewhere

sometimes I dream of Elsewhere, and the dreams are always strange, like dreams are, but doubly strange because of the utter strangeness of the place – the rooms and layouts of rooms change and shift — last night I climbed stairs and the building was on the wrong side of the street, and the stairs led to an upstairs apartment which sort of exists but does not exist —

when I wake from such dreams, I wake smiling, happy for the visit, and the beautiful strangeness of memory.

seems like dreams, dreams must have been the beginning of magic and gods and all of that back in the ancient past of our race, when everything was new and yet to be learned. Sometimes, in the gray shady area suspended between waking and dreaming, I am back there, to my own ancient past, when I was young and learning things for the first time. It is a strangely alienating experience, and it makes me think back to F.N.’s Birth of Tragedy, and the suspicion that all our knowledge and turning towards the world becomes, like the yellow pages of an old book left to the elements,  an ossified apollonian construct of foreknowledge and anticipation that blocks our view of the absolute dionysian reality underneath.

In the place between dreaming, the pages of my life fall away, and my soul is fresh and naked and exposed, and I feel the world pressing up against my self, and I experience it again, as if for the first time.

1 Comment
August 23, 2007

Chelsea Hotel

Clearing my throat – listening to new songs everyday – still in love with the past – sometimes a song is so good you have to hear it twice – and sometimes the next song is so good you forget to go back – and one day I’ll die – I don’t want to die alone – –

 and I must sleep —

But then I hear a song I’ve heard before, a song I’ve forgotten that I’ve known.

Festival International Benicassim. Be there. Be square. Be there.

Leave a comment