Language & Literacy A Writing Life

Complilation

June 18, 1998 · College Poetry
11 min readConstellation: Interconnection
Writing & CraftPhilosophy & ExistenceSolitude & Isolation
Recognition of Space 1 I am one who is afraid of flying. When I am born, it is of a legacy, of a dream wrought in the imagination of the window waves. I am One Without Myself, a pig in a blanket of solitude; A God within a demi- monde. A man on the water. 2 I unwrap my pieces into a cloth from which I dangle into the night like a child escaping from Daddy. I am born everyday that I die. I must speak, I must move. 3 I am a legacy, of a legacy, from the sea and beyond the sea. 4 But who will listen to a dream? Last time one of Them came around, we incorporated Him into the System. And so it's not a matter of listening any longer-- I will sing of trees, and of blossoming buildings reaching up to fuck the sky. 5 I am one who is afraid of crying loud enough so that anyone could ever listen. When I die, I feel squares of concrete screaming in my bones. I trip in a car, one block after another, until it takes me to where I forgot I wanted to go. I am One Within Myself, a fish in a school of fish; a sea that can never make an unclouded sound. A rock within the swaying break of the earth. 6 I wrap myself in sheets in order to preserve this order of the sun that has issued forth from the bellies of the drums of the dirt. I die every night that I live. I must sink, I must stop. 7 This peak is climbing me up up and into the wind seeping through the space, tossing the duds on the line to a smooth dreamy dance. I feel such gravity that I feel as one who flies. The strict buildings move into the clouds, creation of man and sky. This earth and this sea within me makes me tremble in ecstacy-- or is it fear-- at the sight of the sunmoon rising down down against the windows, just as the darkness forms into a tear. Cosmogony I The eye sets matter in motion, desiring all it alights to be as it is, as it was, as it ever will be-- a moving likeness of eternity. Rooted in all things, standing infinite, alone, riding the waves of chaos, forming structures that struggle to be what they are. Time is a space bound by necessity, by the messianic rising out of sea-bed to face old death in the bloody freshness of new day. II But what of what is not of vision, of imagined projection of future? What of the moments that might have been, that were not chosen? These possibilities engrave the skin of now with tragic silence, filling wet, slapping mouths with emptiness that can never be touched. Endings thus become beginnings, endless twistings around a point, a drop of solitude pointing, falling back to meaninglessness. III When we fucked she said I thought I was flying. I think of holy war, collision of earth and water, destroying, creating. We watch ourselves, mouths breaking apart in terrified hunger as we execute the duty of instinct. This is what we can do, together, this is where we will go, together. The sense of falling. The scents of rage. Note to God Am I wrong to desire more than who I am? Is this constant sense of failure a rock in the stream, diverting water from the path I would take? The dust of our past draws my skin to dryness; indeed, my tongue is captured by the moon of your silences. So how can I continue to play these everyday chords when my essence screams with the eternal infernal emptiness of perfection? I wish to be baptized in the name of Nothing, so that none may hold onto me. Never again will I allow you to love me, to enwrap me in the breaking waves of your hair as I struggle to under- stand; no, I will not live again. Living safely is living dying. You left me; you will leave me forever until my land is submerged from the blows of my sand trying to make your ocean see. So must I leave you, withdrawing into the thick warmth of solitude, refusing to accept the cool strokes of memory. I will no longer listen to the sounds of distant dreams, far-away thunder, directed claps of faceless applause. I will leave this sacred space and look for some comfort with the pigs. Reincarnation Well, it all began as a lotus in some god's belly button-- or shall I say continued, the twining lines based on the spreading sheets of connecting universe (they danced parallel until one fell into its own force of desire). And so here forth I rise, the product of a hairy, green imagination. (The scents of flame winding into a window from which he gazed back into her space for one last time) I plan to extend the stay of the tower so that I may drive the last drop into the breaches of the upper atmosphere. I wish to escape this earthy heaviness. Molecular binaries branch out like highways into emptiness, and I feel the poison of concrete in my cells. But I must continue building this mount of illusion because I cannot afford to fall again. (in other words, I am alone, and I am alone, and no black hole can make me whole again.) The clouds birth tears upon my shoulders as I break through toward that further calm of a solitary vision. ( This is my horizon, these are my lips, and I can only breathe and I can only breathe, look, how my shadow gasps in the circles of a star ) . Integration Once upon a time The world opened up So that the only voice that sang On the page was death. The clamor of a thing Resonates soundly Against its own skin When there is naught else but space. And thus began And beget the process Of enfolding. He learned the ways Of the salty pump, the sweaty pimp, The preacher and the pen, And he listened To the wind blowing Him mad sentences of ecstasy— All in order To escape the divine disorder That came out anyway, Swallowing him like a whale Before spitting him out again. Towers rose, lighted, Like myths Before the sun. Amplified, the electric Solo launched: I can only this moment Live, meeting place Of the eternal, The face of the earth I wander, Taking new delight Upon each found crevice, yes, For I know What doesn’t lie beneath. Finally, he finished And he returned To the land That had been waiting, spread Open like a mask To take him in And crush him Until he surrendered his tongue Back to the sky. The end. You Taught Me How to Eat You taught me how to eat by growing me to hunger. You drifted by, fins spread, until I was man enough to frighten you. fishing fingers, crossing mouths, we have broken apart, and now you are gone. You split in the rebirth of a sun. I reeled on the beach of time, swollen with new breath. I chased your memory with wine. Now I walk the earth as god swam the sea. I loved one fish to feed myself. Ministering the Contact Let’s begin with the particles: the plastic form of balance upon which lay, scattered before our stations like haphazard explications, the vehicles of a necessary poison. What, Uncle Albert, can’t you clear the transmission? We’re getting smashed because we’ve got something to say that we have not learned yet how to think. But that’s just the local news; Word has it that God has come again; indeed, that he’s been fucking around the earth like a satellite on the course to apocalypse. The implications are manifest. Sacredness is a curse that cannot be transcended. So thus, we must grow higher until we are so heavy with the burden of our own life that we are forced to realize that we are floating each alone in an infinite universe. We’re speaking the same language now, at least. So thus, you understand that I speak of tables and of containers bestride them and of a constant lifting beyond that surface that empties then into separate stomachs. We are drinking in these germs together, and who will be sick, and who will pass out, and who will rise, their heads on fire to outstrip the sun? Tree (Re: Vision) My limbs sing in the air of fire, of a burning infinity of universe that coils into heat— and when it cools it sizzles on the street crackling beneath the roots forming the uniform of all Things-- ain’t tit what you taut me hot momma?. Two by one: note the main Thrust of the Structure. Keep Him occupied. The energy of my span wrinkles the past into my skin. The future lies in my arms and I fuck her slowly, firmly, filling her with the current of my web of voices, until she grows full and is taken away by gravity to bear life somewhere else. Before such a Thing, how can One manage the thick sap of inner struggle in a solitary confinement of a real world? But such thoughts begin to burn away into the façade of energy Alert Head command: the flood has commenced. Prepare to die. We’ll meet again later and do dinner. A Numinous Movement in the West I. Intro: Penile Implantations It was a world of suffering, I thought, watching the crew from a window marching from day to night with numbers stamped on their foreheads like produce of a machine fueled by money. Captain Kirk! I canna control it any longer! The drudges always break just when you could use them to save your own life. II. Body: Synthetic Shields A Famous scientist Holds that the Universal Ether bears vital Germs, which, impinging upon a Dead World would bring Life to it. --The Frontier in American History {capitalization by editor} Sometime in the night of an 11th or somesuch figure came the aliens baring gifts of war. There was nothing I could do, once the cradle of the System was nailed down. I decided I’d have to take the hit, and hope there’d be escape in the burning wake. But They could see into the sea of sleep; They hunted me Down, to the roots of my DNA, until I could no longer refuse to accept their level of the story. III. Conclusion: Forest Nightmares Will it be an affluent Union, this Bridge in the gaps of space-time, channeled by the freckles of the sun? Can such skinned bear the stress of awareness? Or will we fall back to fighting amongst what we see? Odo watches my face, but remains unassertive, taking my orders as long as they fit into the structure of society. IV. Synopsis: Perpetuation Here the visions parted. Leto said: Remove your suit mask, father. The Preacher obeyed. --Children of Dune (spaces between lines added) The line must be continued so I have to run a bypass at the next available encounter. We will be satisfied. We will be fulfilled. We will Get Our Way. I must learn to give Them what They want. I must learn to hold Nothing back. I must learn to burn, I must learn to live. Variations of a Drone in the Empty Sky-Plane /.. I’ve been thinking a lot lately—about the Presences and all the terrifying Beauties of the Moment. Being here, watching my face shadowed in the reflection of the sun in the glass. I see the cities, the lights burning like liquid concrete into screams of green-red-stop lights telling me when to go. To keep going I’ve been smoking cigarettes even though I hate them for the damage they do to my public image, let’s say, Just as something to do, another Way Out, another one of those Zen-Tantric- Become the One Bible stories, waving my stub in the wind as if I were writing myself into flame. Does this make sense? Or does sense make the vivid wrenching dream of blood and wrath that raids our Beginning Systems with Recollection Viruses? It is unimportant, perhaps, that it is raining like delicate steel drummers upon the fascist metal overhangings over dorm-Cell windows, or that it is 4:38 AM, or that I am falling, that I’ve been spinning Out of my Self and Into a Myth that’s writing itself into my computer wall even now as we speak like strangers meeting in the dream realm of a bad dream. ..\.. Starting over begins the making of Sense. Change, eruption, spilling out onto sheets and then laying low, chilling out for a while before doing it again, hopefully better this time, hopefully farther, higher, bigger, better. We’re Capitalists on the Inside. We’re down and we’ve gone on trips enough times so that we know what it’s like to be Alien. It’s thus possible to be both negative and positive at once. It’s a simple equation of balance, of a focusing upon the space of a breath. Puff! You’re gone and then when you come back down, it’s a little bit different, a little bit more heavy with reality. She’ll lay like a toasty pumpernickel loaf on that surface of the bed, pushing up the space between you until you feel lost in the gravity of Your Own Place. It’s the Hang Out they’re looking for; make sure you don’t stick out too much. ..\..\Headquarters Looks like He’s arrived at the beginning, and filtered to the end like a stream, He puts us into Place. There’s no time here; so of course there’s no Us. So let the Translator say: When He looks in the Eye the World is Dismembered into the fractionless State of Eternity. (He places the Orders on the phone to the Delivery Place, and He takes the Biggest Hits of all Time when the going gets rough). And so He is Here, and He is Now, and He is Going to take a piss. ..\..\headquarters\BallOunces Understanding begins to get the Better of you, once He finally gets you alone, in the Reflection. It always comes just when you thought it was moving to a different location. I been going off like a dimestore gun fucker, and I guess you deserve a break. ..\headquarters\ballounces\Moral_Of_The_Story Here’s the filler that years of interpreting the connotations that meaningless inactive moments have argued into being. here’s the bastard of a continuum of Mistakes that Create Beauty out of meaningless moments. heres that fucker heres that mother/ father breed of a moment that is meaningless. Listen to the Milky Extension of Silence. We Will Sing