September 25, 2011

September 25, 2011 in gratitude to Whitman and Ginsberg

Under the austere glow

of New York sunset,

between towers adjusted for perspective:

We are commanded by Whitman to:

“Sound” our “barbaric yawp,

over the roofs of the world.”

Indifference is only apt

for those not afflicted.

And so long as you are conscious,

the friction is poised to ignite.

Here:

in the rhythm

of drums, cans, flutes, guitars,

feet, and vocalizations,

is potential.

Avoiding the pitfalls

of possessive language,

creating a new sense,

which is older than language itself.

To bind by frank understanding and love

and contact and awareness,

which dismantles the machinery

of dead-pan eye consumption

with wanton lust

for the electric candy colored

glorification of god.

We are the dissent,

which is the organic byproduct

of production.

We are the scattered masses

churning in the belly of Moloch.

We are young girls cornered and maced

by obscene police,

protecting the unseen entity.

We are 80 plus arrested for speech,

criminals only in the stench of

a mad Orwellian dream.

We are the collective body

howling over the expanse of:

streets, parks, rivers, oceans,

states, countries, continents,

and universe.

The collective yawp,

back to the first moment,

demanding to be reborn,

awake and aware.

Good-Bye Philadelphia

Good-Bye Philadelphia

The most acute observations

Deliriously board,

Growing tired and fat

Stroking the mind at full length,

(by counting the speaks on my wall).

Onslaught of visions before I am even awake,

This silent repetition,

I am a mammal seeking missile.

It is best to swallow words

Before the mind turns its’ filter on.

It is best to view with the eyes of 22 years,

Or confusion and solitude,

The great wait of liberation.

It is best not to suffer too much

For the sin of idle time,

It is what makes the breath and

Body poetic.

What do you want to hear…

About inspiration?

I have a slight headache

& a tendency to despair.

But I also have silence & the runny egg

Of thought before dawn.

I curl my foot into a ball

The stillness of 6am begins to get to me.

I think of letters I need to write,

Watching the snake of aspirations devour itself.

Suffering in the protracted peach palace,

To recreate.

Distant from the moving frames,

Blowing and bowing,

Boiling the thought down to a pearl,

Exiting the asshole, anxious and seeking love

On the beautiful frozen steps,

By the ubiquitous neon signs,

This cradled child,

Product of glue & promise & paranoia &

Pillows & loathing,

Burnt televised tubes seeking

Sanity in reflections,

Hollowed crack of electric guitars

Burning traces of class and unity.

A photograph of uselessness,

Borrowing points to practice

Uncertainty with an eye

Towards progress.

So we begin with this:

The insanity of notion,

Locked and reached,

Desirous and delirious seeking angels

To accept my worn shadow and cigarettes.

Quit the job, pushing baskets of bright cans &

Mad with love drove boxes and cynicism

To Philadelphia.

Spent money on books & food & wine,

Adjusted to hysteria, locked gentle trees

In great glass vials,

And rubbed my fingers in the spit of her streets.

Today is my good-bye.

Good-bye strange jobs, unions,

Hand rolled cigarettes and blues.

Good-bye crazy angels who washed

Their assholes for the common good of the world.

Good-bye theologians who got drunk

And tried to convince me Christ

Was just a sad-eyed sexy soul.

Good-bye shelves of wine and cigarette ash.

Good-bye steps where I talked to angels

Over invisible, innumerable nights.

Good-bye electric play of the proletariat,

& hoagies stuffed with knowledge.

Good-bye muffled conversations of drunken loneliness,

Heard through these empty walls.

Good-bye saintly uncles who perfected chess in

Their chain smoke longing.

Good-bye countless books,

Passed between bed sheets,

Killing time or expanding it.

Good-bye first poems of public

Old bookstores & bearded bards of adoption.

Good-bye final cigarette stomped out

In dental office parking lot.

Good-bye country bars where I belted

In smoke, songs for the ageless.

Good-bye Bed where we laid

Exhausted in our arms,

Building heavens’ with

Conversations, sex, and laughter.

Good-bye faces who burnt their essence

Into my skull.

Good-bye first candles towards eternity

And the loss of God.

Good-bye terror of repeating the past,

Realizing this is; of coarse, absurd.

Good-bye long highways of blight,

Followed by wilderness,

Golub mountain peaks, valleys,

And the soft fog of mourning.

Good-bye every breath or thought or song or moment.

I return you in the grateful

Understanding that I am

Born with each new moment.

I acknowledge the greatness

Of all your quirky perfection,

And gassho to the great heart

Of

Philadelphia.

Art????

When people talk about ontology in relation to art, they are always searching for some abstract grandiose way of characterizing various things. Now, there is nothing wrong with “abstract” thought in art; in fact it is paramount in many ways to the creative process, but what puzzles me is the strong desire in critics and artists themselves to name everything, specifically in relation to the abstract. This compartmentalization of form and ideals tries incredibly hard to classify everything. Why? What good is this identification system, especially in relation to art? I will make no claims that art is somehow “elusive” and therefore not able to be understood, but rather that art is simply a reflection of a specific idea or moment, and that is all.

This is not to downplay the importance of art, as it is often the very thing which propels movement forward. The importance of the abstract though, is a means to an end. By looking at things from unusual angles or points of perception, we allow ourselves to create new ideas. The problem occurs when we apply this same way of thinking to the understanding of art. By doing this, we separate ourselves from the creative process, making it nothing more than a side point: something to reflect upon in the aftermath of it's creation. The ontology of art is art. In other words, the “being” or “essence” of art is art. It is beautiful, poetic, majestic, and awe inspiring, but it's existence is in and of itself.

This is what we need in a future poetics. A direct reflection of everything, without the incessant ego trying to name everything. When we can move away from this point, and towards a more honest and frank art, we will begin to create art, that truly reflects the universe.

Hurricane musings

8/27/2011

4p.m.
The sky is beginning to tear itself apart, with sporadic bursts of water.
There is an unsettling quiet as it builds behind the naked eye.
So for now: coffee, pot pie, and waiting.

9p.m.
The anxiety I feel right now is unlike
anything I have ever dealt with before.
I wish I understood the root of this.
I've lived through many blizzards in the mountains,
but somehow, this is different.

Threw up, first full blown anxiety attack.
Feel better now, heading to the hotel
to hopefully calm down.

11p.m.
Tea, and a moment to sit helped,
now the storm might not hit until
tomorrow morning.
Learned the hard way that the 24 hour
news cycle is vomit inducing.

The signs have begun the rattle
and the winds really does sound
like the devils howl.
Non the less, I do feel better.

8/28/2011
Wild visions, signs rattle violently,
jesus my gut feels strange,
whole body seems alien like
being drunk of some old forgotten fear!

2a.m.
Fire alarm went off,
whole floors of confused people up
and nervous, now back to sleep
while I sit awake and worried,
wishing I had someone to talk to.

3a.m.
Distractions!
Jesus what I wouldn't give for em' now!

4a.m.
Fear is such a strange thing,
eventually it exhausts the body
so much it becomes incapable of
feeling it.

6a.m.
Still more than anything,
I need to avoid the news.

poem -
(Information)

25 hours,
onslaught, buy or fear
it continues like stone.
Always laying its pretense
d
o
w
n

Unified by desire,
moving materials
placement,
aligned monetary symmetry,
blessed by the gaping mouths.
No real hunger when it's spoon-fed,
no real production
when it's produced.
Without cause or ideal,
manic purchases,
or loss of appetite,
as in broken sinks collecting fear,
as in over stuffed as we are,
with information,
info
info
info info info info info info info info!
The snake which devours its' own tail!

5p.m.

It is finished, haven't slept in hours.
Good night.

Vanish

A formal apology for silence,
the emerging memory of places and scents,
every gesture,
departing footsteps,
the fog of four a.m.
A pas de trios with a celestial gaze
to the bark of familiarity.
A place full of objects,
full of disorganized sequences.
A place with a great empty table,
full of wine and insects.
And all the cards vanish,
and the numbers structure the faces,
and the ace is a burning clock,
and the joker is seeking God,
and the king has no kingdom,
and the queen weeps in fear of:
bugs,
spilled milk,
emptiness,
hair,
contact and empathy,
ovaries,
sunlight moving up dirt roads,
of coming home,
coming home.

And the ink bleeds to ash.
Everyone knows the deck is stacked,
so we smoke cigarettes and make love in the woods...
come to breath and bath in absence.

A great list, ordered sentences, summer heat,
the milky thought of repetition, blinding the eye of god.

Bar

The people sit,
catatonic, sweating,
while she squeezes limes,
and the television distracts us,
(we are quite content with this)
they talk about their poetry,
and the worth of others,
as the bartender sways her hips,
and we collectively dream of greatness.
The bearded man and young girl,
slowly get loose,
expelling the Greek,
the light catches her glazed eyes...
We are bombarded with images,
a thousand points, rising to the surface,
extracted bits of brilliance,
warm wood,
the presence of home.
And what of this?
And what of us?

Coney Island

The boards stretch towards,

the horizon, bending in,

and the rain has ended

as they chase recurrences in Bronx twilight.

The cyclists, couples, cooks, bums, and fishermen

are all fixed out there.

So am I, I suppose,

sitting on this sticky bench,

with a beer, under the shadow

of broken rides and tin gates.

The barmaid mixes drinks,

and washes the tables with grace,

and I feel like getting drunk,

and I haven't slept,

and I miles from certainty,

but something...something makes me calm.

Perhaps familiarity, or the familiar

of the unknown.

I am...going to be here a while.

The rides have all shut down,

suspended sculptures of sex & eyes & youth.

And I want so much,

contact implicate in it's inevitability.

A drunk stumbles to catch his footing,

the clouds swallow an already hazy sun,

a woman bares herself under the showers,

to remove sand,

perhaps to feel...

An old man washes a pear,

delicately.

Something about salt and sand and shadows,

suggests form and curve/

the importance of rocks and the

ways sleep eludes us.

This Poem

This poem is ugly, because it's a connection between the object, and the objectified. Because electric attention attains nothing, & a string of prophetic words leaves the throat parched. This poem is awareness, because you are chasing shadows among plastic glasses: full of reflection full of soft tones, full of notions. This poem is drunk with insignificance, the ink leaking from point to point, a broad stroke of moment between the thought, and the word. This poem is Marxist, infused with history and love, and the products of production, and steal, and the indifference of promise: the need and ability which is silent, the burden of chatter which astounds the attention. This poem is manifestly fraudulent, like identity, or god, or commerence the exalted evolution of movement and the void. This poem is a contradiction, exalted humility the pretext of language, which assumes no assumptions. Tomorrow is the day of the Lord, but the sky is empty.

Dishwasher

Dishwasher

Sometimes when asked my vocation,

I answer “dishwasher”.

I learn more about the soul

From a stranger smoking wet

Cigarettes on a street corner.

Or the hooker who perfected

The five minuet trick,

Who taught me economics.

I wash dishes and listen

To the girls gossip:

About who is fat or ugly or high or strung out.

And I can’t stomach it.

So I keep the coffee hot

Watching the quick dance

Of consumption.

The history of it all.

Conversations matching the sweet

Cups of electric radio.

Everything still and bright,

Just like the moment before death.

And I watch or listen,

Distinctive hum of cycles,

Dots forever strewn from light to light,

The madness of wage, drifting trough this life

Silent and aware.

Revolution

Revolution

If I didn’t understand it then,

I get it now:

As a poet exchanging

Warms coins

And prewritten sentiment

To earn my keep.

Watching old men

Cough out sugar and smoke.

If I didn’t care then I do now:

Ten o’clock cancer

Belting monotonous hormones

Over plastic and glass.

And as a cynic,

Catching scents and worn

Paper,

Learning life by the sadness

And fatigue of purchased goods.

If I didn’t notice then,

I will now:

Waiting for the bus,

Listening to the lull between,

The silence where I think about

Pasta and whiskey,

Or the way the space between branches

Catch the street light haze.

If I didn’t understand it then,

I get it now:

It begins softly,

Until is rises in ecstasy.

Ten

I. This can not be it!

Something which

Half heartedly boils itself,

Aimless and aimless

Not even aware of aim or:

Less we admit to seeking

Dust under our own eyelids,

There is only the sound,

There is only the sound.

II. Collected dust

Pools of rain, here:

Following these…deeper

But still just following,

Secret poems between

Breast and thighs,

Trail without signs,

Leading…leading.

III. Through the bowls

Something dissatisfying,

Seeks it’s own stench ,

In gratitude, reach deeper,

Catch yourself catching it,

No: this is not the way

To go about changing.

IV. A great struggle!

Within our hands, grab & grapple &

Fix, and lose it again, and regain:

Return.

Breath…this is going to take awhile.

V. When struggle ends:

Acceptance, obedience, and gentleness.

No, this is not the wild

Same self

Lacking the ability or necessity,

You are not the enemy I had once perceived.

VI. Great joy!

Returning home atop

These mysterious things,

Music and dance and sex and wine,

Everyone joins!

Everyone begins to grow great beards

And wild hair!

VII. I am here:

Joy has subsided,

That which left footprints

Is transcended.

Idle…idle…idle…

Ideal.

VIII.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

IX. There is only sound.

There is only sound.

And laughter, happiness, sadness, trees.

Ordinary becoming ultimate,

Ultimate becoming ordinary.

One and one makes one.

　

X. The circle is complete.

I return to the first face I saw,

And that face returns to me.

Walking I smile at strangers,

They return the smile,

and begin there own thoughts with:

This can not be it!