| A poem in five parts | |||
| 05:25pm 30/04/2012 | |||
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Pushing Beads on an Abacus I. Abattoir The fragrance of jasmine wafts from the stick of incense Burning slowly beneath the portrait of the Buddha And fills the room of the Confucian abacist. Ruthlessly efficient in his magisterial arithmetic, He accepts a cup of tea from an obsequious courtier As taxes and tariffs are calculated. Today I make my own computations in order to prove the theorem That while the world sleeps, Antithetic artistic currents can in fact be more awake Than an entire trading floor of portfolios and funds instantly circumnavigating the globe, Investors squaring the circle as money changes hands; That the calculus of the elite Makes sure that those who stay up all night Drinking whiskey and shooting billiards Are punished to the fullest extent of their own peculiar law, Sent to the abattoir to watch their comrades slaughtered, Doomed to their own personal hell. II. Manifesto Here we stand, huddled and weeping over the annihilation Of the bronze idol on the mountainside to which we formerly bid obeisance. We must now acknowledge that man as keeper of the Earth is being destroyed. Yes, we have dared to imagine a world Where, written in capital letters and with furrowed brow, The spark of genius infuses our banners and emblems. Ink is pressed from the ribbon into words on pamphlets As energy from some other dimension streams out of the faucet Yet the peasants still refuse to take to the streets. We compose little poems describing fleeting states of mind But the embodiment of the epic is dead. For a man to be a true rebel requires complete and stark separation From every institution that attempted to raise him: Until then he is a provocateur. Has time perhaps finally slowed down? Might we have emerged safely from the bohemian years, Confident in our part as contributors to a new order? III. Necropolis The orchestra warms up for the overture to some afflicted opera, The last song for the last existentialist. Oboes whine and strings squeak before my sole seat in the audience, An ethical chameleon slithering up and down the beanstalk From the book of enlightenment I keep secured in my top hat To the catalogue of sins and depravities Hidden in the soles of my monk-strapped suede shoes. I recline in the plush velvet seat, ready for the performance As a member of the guild of artists scattered across the world, Always in locomotion between the huts of those who safeguard us. The musicians all have their hair cut short like soldiers or prisoners, And as my glance meets that of the tuxedoed first violinist The discomfort of eye contact forces me to look down. This painting is on permanent exhibition in my mind's museum Where arrays of little trinkets are stored, dusty and forgotten, And scraps of paper covered in illegible writing flutter about. The song begins and I close my eyes in cadaverous adoration. IV. Elegy That I could travel back to Europe In the time when frock coats with silk-faced lapels Could be seen casting shadows on cobblestone Before the Gothic revival churchs and courthouses. Perhaps my place would have been in a rented room above a rich widow's adobe, Surrounded by books, candles and perhaps a small housecat, Lamenting my position as professor of old in a time of industrialized academicism, To be either ignored by my rivals or eaten alive by my critics. Such narrations are not flights of fancy But bridges connecting coffehouse conversations of present day To the stories embedded so deeply within the primeval alcazar, Stories of love and pain and longing and disillusionment. And so some little part of the basement of my being Still sees you and me resting on the vertices of an impossible triangle Repeating up and down the disfigured double helix of memory, Despite the overpowering distance between us That grows greater with every heartbeat. V. Pushing Beads on a Abacus Charming the animals with my bamboo flute, I lead them to the obelisk by the roaring creek. Etched into the ancient stone is a halcyon mascot Where Adonis bathes in resounding deathly power, An aura to reach those who bear a different kind of mark. The stranger in the star-crossed cloak has extended his hand And solemnly offered his bait to the world But the dog never barked, Or perhaps he was muffled by the cacophony of the second-story underground. I push the beads on my little pocket abacus, Each one jerking a marionette into contorted poses As it moves a muscle in my brain. From our unique vantage point beyond the black and red battlefields, We have gradually come to understand How the electric constellations taken from just one second of a life Can generate enough pages of prosody To fill a mausoleum of haunted bookcases. |
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| A poem about a man whom you may have known | ||||
| 09:08pm 03/04/2012 | ||||
Memory is often unfaithful to reason, And the evanescing reflection I can see of you still Between the ripples and waves of River Time Defies the years that separate our respective tenures As interpreters of the riptides that would tear you apart. 'Tis a fool whose arrogance feasts on isolation, But only a slightly wiser man whose earthly knowledge Finds itself acquainted with those revered by history For that knowledge, while erudite and noble, Is still but earthly: The mighty Hudson is only a semiotic token. Your body was once carried through those rushing waters Until dusk drew upon a life unknown to me then But as I stand here among the silt and pebbles, The detritus collecting eternal upon the surface Of this strange spherical expanse spinning through the universe, I feel you, Mauro, in the deepest cavern of my being— I feel you. |
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sick| A new poem | |||
| 01:42pm 21/03/2012 | |||
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On the Cusp of Sagittarius (for Robert) Where were you when the planets were born? Were you with the poets at the corner café, Drinking your coffee made of divine water, Poring over your books bound with cosmic dust? Or were you lying on origin's beach with arms outstretched, Letting the cool, refreshing summer night's breeze Surround you, pervade you, become you? Your eyes, like two ghostly televisions Broadcasting the static emanating from Hugo's grave, Stare into mine, the dreamer's, and tell me, "Someday I will return those words." You do not know that if that sentence were your last, If you were to be buried tomorrow beneath rain and flowers And funerary contemplations from Poe and Baudelaire above, I would still stand like Voltaire in the Bastille, Conniving with my pen, under shadow of licentious wordplay, To bring down the crown and scepter, the square and compass, And replace them all with the regalia of the soul. Those words! words of love but not that of Candide and Cunégonde, No, rather spirit inklings, hints from within, That you are perhaps to be my guide from here to hereafter. You hurt from the universe's cruel disregard. Shoulders saddled with ephemeral corporeality, Your neck bows as the grand humanistic barrel rests atop your head. But do not forget, wise maven, old master, That of all things beyond the reach of hands and fingers, Of all that is invisible and out of earshot, It is to your tutelage which I humbly bow. |
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| A silly little untitled rhyming poem | ||||
| 01:04pm 27/02/2012 | ||||
To drink Father's whiskey," Said John to his big brother Jake, "But to drink of his beer, I admit that I fear, Would be a much bigger mistake." |
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silly| A poem | ||||
| 03:37pm 22/02/2012 | ||||
Out of the fata morgana came one word from the mage's lips, Running out of his mouth and down his long gnarled beard; A conjured cajolery in the dead heat of the winter that wasn't, Phantom snowflakes dancing around my face And alighting on my eyelids and nose. His epithet praised my efforts at attempting to turn a mere life Into a piece of artwork in and of itself, To frame every scene in oil pastels, To bow a moaning cello behind every misfortune But I sign that idea's suicide note with every step of my shoes. The student will eventually defeat the master, And cerebral duels will determine the champion of the world, Our little world of diners and streetcars and coffeehouses. Interlingual plays on words capturing homespun brilliance Are pornography for the covetous, Who derive a lifestyle from the delusive spectacle of locution And are sure to note the surrealist irony Of telling time from a stopped wristwatch. Research exposes ambiguity, so let us cling to theory. The lines in our faces deepen minute by minute As we subtly pretend not to take sides, feigning impartiality When in fact we all have our viewpoints That collide in midair, feathers flying out and settling to the ground, Leaving only me, standing alone in front of the full-pane window, Staring outside at the trucks as they drive by through the darkness. |
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full| A poem in seven parts | |||
| 10:05pm 15/02/2012 | |||
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A Pilgrimage from Birth-land to Mecca I. Prologue The safety of the womb encases the origin of every spirit's cortex As it transmigrates from its role as the last narrator Of a long, weary story, spun by an out of date apparatus, To the carrier of a new script to be acted out By the thespians of the moor. II. The Unexampled Culture of Dilettante Penury If you are content with mortality, Then read no further into the gilded manual of princes and paladins; Stay indoors and forgo the opportunity to learn firsthand The difference between a crowd and a movement. Contrary to what you might believe, There indeed exists an oasis obscured within the dark shadow Cast by the adolescent superego, if you can locate its coordinates On the antediluvian, timeworn map scroll of the great desert. Mouth parched and muscles aching, One crawls on hands and knees to the misplaced pool of water And drinks up, absorbing revitalizing expressions of sardonic curiosity And appellations accrued from public protestations, Jaywalking through the busy streets in life-affirming solidarity. That was our jungle, that was our city. We made halfhearted attempts through the years At preserving those ties But in the end, we were helpless to the centrifuge. III. The Quill and the Quandary The hammer is merely a tool. One can sculpt the likeness of da Vinci from a block of marble And prop it up in the corner of the writing-desk Or one can take it to the rail tracks and pound in ballasts. It's hard to tell what's really magic and what's just sleight of hand And so he gradually reconsiders his stance as a philosophical firebrand, A technical violation of the code of chivalry That his forebears conspired to grow within him, A vine to strangle the foliage that has shone in the libertine light Streaming down from far, far above. He vacillates between following instinct and succumbing to the menace, The sergeant of duress doling out orders. Sleep provides no refuge, for his nocturnal cogitation, While ever turbulent, Tends almost completely now toward the virtues of vocation But there's at least time for one more dream. IV. O Peixe I could construe a chance meeting on a street in Brazil. You and I would exchange niceties And then again part ways And my heart would spiral down from the top of the staircase Weaving in and out of every temporal baluster Until it finally reached the now at the very bottom And you'd go off to rejoin the floating ghosts Of everyone I've ever known, All contained in a room in my brain whose door creaks open When darkness falls, either by chance or design. That's when I occasionally let myself in to mingle with you, Who, like me, lack no distinct anarchic strain of disorganized passion, Even though the mountain, climbed, Would surely scoff at its newfound conqueror Who was naïve enough to believe that it cared. V. A Man of the World Past deviancy has left its lesions, never to heal, And while he plays the jester, manipulating exoteric marbles Around his neck and down his shoulders to his palms, He still wears the iron vest, dimpled where the bullets hit And pierced through to the glass vat of ink carried in his mind always. Now that part of his life is but a fading blemish on his skull, A skull that contains a paper trail of people and numbers. Struck by sudden vertigo from time to time When he finds refuge in the bottle of sap carried in his jacket, He lies in bed and wonders if there could have been another way. The mutinous imps that once screamed in suffocation Now lie completely lifeless in the field between the two trenches of soldiers, One side fighting for the fire of youth, the other for perceptions of decency. In the end, self-discipline and apostasy of all that is wild Have left him so unwillingly ordinary. VI. Chromatic Aberration No more textual platitudes Appearing and disappearing from the book you've written The opus magnum encapsulating each hardship and joy With the privilege of the common language in your hand, And no more excerpts from the dialogue between antiquity and modernity That has persistently gone on through each stage of your life. These have all been replaced by weary resignation As you approach the tipping point, The maelstrom's fitful circumvolution Sucking the poison out of your wounds in vain, For the odds are indeed in favor of occasional chaos, Of chroma's dilution seeing reds, blues and yellows Streak and blot into a melancholy postmortem Like a carnation withering under the fearsome power Of the summer sun. VII. Afterword There is a peacefulness surrounding every gravestone. Crows fly far above, indifferent to all the chains of events That have preceded the slabs of granite inhabiting the old cemetery. People will drop flowers from time to time As they quietly visit the final resting place of the human being they once knew But the fable has come to an end, And the saga can only continue on some other, unexplored plane. |
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| A secret poem | ||||
| 06:14pm 05/02/2012 | ||||
-- I am posting this poem here on the evening of Sunday, the 5th of February, but it will remain friends-locked until Thursday the 16th, the date of release of my first chapbook, "The Passion of Anywhere." I will debut it at the very end of the featured reading I am doing in Beacon in support of the book, after which this post will be unlocked to the general public. So for now, it's a secret poem of sorts... shhh :) Dossier Coercion pluming out of the high-rise smokestacks, I stay low to the ground as not to be asphyxiated. I dress incognito in layman's clothes, Clipboard in hand, canvassing the masses, Selling the idea that we can extract energy from madness, That we can mumble in tongues and find poetry in what we hear. A running commentary with my imaginary companion Provides subtitles for the incongruous film Running on limited engagement in that solitary and unique cinema Within the minds of my brothers and sisters; My guardians and nestlings who are very far away But nonetheless cross my path when least expected and most needed. In the interim, with a single and unparalleled greed, I rake in the chips from the craps table Erected in the distant corner of my submarine library. They will tell my story from beyond the veil As fiction, I am sure, For from the day of mutilation to the day of transcendence Hidden truths have all been revealed too late for the presses, Although in a brief stroke of luck I retain a small part of what was once mine. Trained sensibilities egress evolution's black box, Compartmentalizing facets of manhood Into that which is natural but inefficient, Perpetuating the great societal cyclone in whose eye I calmly stand, And that which furthers the cause of thought and consideration, Notwithstanding its often murky origins. There is a kernel of beauty in every optical illusion, Every misheard lyric, every deleted scene. We substitute alien designs for naked glory As we pioneer the furtive wood, counting family tree rings That represent fused parentheses encasing the eons of infected custody That have all led to this distorted dystopia. |
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creative| At last a new poem, albeit a short one | |||
| 12:42pm 12/01/2012 | |||
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A Game of Skill and Chance Closure is a luxury ill-afforded by the meek. The reclamation of the adder's sting Sees the old prophet curled up and dying, Muttering out an alibi to his tormentors, Feeling the agony of the civil thumbscrew. Awe of knowledge is now his only saving grace, But all of his new, riveting ideations Will have to wait for next time. |
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| A poem | |||
| 10:17pm 04/12/2011 | |||
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The Commune Versus the Hermit. "I used to either laugh or cry: Now I bother to do neither." —Besieged and boils scratched down to the muscle, Photographic evidence is required to truly believe In the fruit of the eye lens' curvature. With great power often comes great sorrow, But one can choose between self-deprecating asceticism And corroboration of one's intellect via artistic communalism. An elaborate fantasy world of my own making Takes place within the confines of my brain And the final book of the epic saga is nearing completion; I find myself staring down the deepest well, Gazing at the ripples from the rain above And I'm not sure if I like what I see. In transit through the canals of my youth, A train makes its way through a dimly lit subterranean passageway. We are undergoing the final analysis, The merciless scrutiny of the microsope observing our very roots, Mixing in the cauldron the deepest love and the sourest hate. Do not look too deeply into poetic implication; Squeeze beneath the portcullis before it lowers and hits the stone floor And before you confess to a crime you have never committed For we shall see what happens. |
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| A poem about the monastery | ||||
| 11:14pm 29/11/2011 | ||||
My mind is clear like a pond of swimming koi As I stand near the marble statue of the praying priestess, Her hands clasped together in reverence. You and I have let the autumn breeze cleanse our spirits, And now the feng shui of the trees and flowers Surrounds us with an auspicious energy. The agenda of truth has the calmest of propaganda. When it has become rare to catch sight of dawn, To join the birds in a chorus of gratefulness For the next phase in the eternal rotation of the earth, This spot will always remind us That all the suffering we have endured And all the falsehoods that have invaded our minds Can be disintegrated by those teachings That have flowed through the current of time, Like those koi, swimming within the pool of water, And tell us that we must let go of illusion If we wish to be free, free of the constant pressure That is really just misguided ambition. |
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tired| A new poem | |||
| 04:24pm 22/11/2011 | |||
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Logical Detours It's judgment day in the court of small claims. The princes stand in formation And usher their subjects into lines, All clad in the garbled costumes of authority. I might not ever change the world, But in the corridors of my studded power Cult status is par for the course. Delusions are comforting, And if that makes me arrogant, Then the fortress will have to face my legions, Armed with the spears and arrows of our craft, Who will not settle for humility Even in the face of elusive perfection. Ideals would not be ideals if they were attainable, But should we not still strive for them? All I can think of now are worst-case scenarios And straitjackets from which one cannot escape. Everything looks different in the psychic snow And it's apparent that something is ending, Like reading my obituary in the newspaper The day before I am to die. Have I forgotten how to live? How to button my coat, how to lace my boots? The detective's eyes are on my back, Always following my trail; The two banks of the river of morality Are separated by many years of bitterly learned lessons. I stare down from the bridge between them And finally find peace, Hiding in plain sight amidst the gold and the silver. |
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| A shorter poem | |||
| 03:06pm 15/11/2011 | |||
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Monolith I'm safe at home under the shadow of the protective monolith, The uniformed stone guard watching over my gardens, Always stationary but faithful and ever loyal. All the fur has been shaven off of my raw pink hide But there is a symphony being played In all the colors of the rainbow, And the odometer of the vehicle carrying me From Tartaros to Uranus Is about to turn over to zero. |
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| The title is Dutch for "Criminal Misery." | ||||
| 03:36pm 13/11/2011 | ||||
The light flickering overhead Plays with my mind like a little toy, A yo-yo bouncing up and down the conceptual string. I have been sent on a quest to either escape or accept death, And it's a big planet to roam, It's a primordial zephyr wielding the knife To sever the tenuous cords of reality, Plunging into my gut to free the chimera So that it may rear its head and howl. I've spent years cultivating the right environment For departure into the clouds, and it now comes to light That there is no stereotype or superstition That does not have basis in reality. I have caught sight of the very tail end of the comet, But it has nonetheless ignited my fuse And I spark and sizzle until I, too, am in flames And I slowly burn out, flopping like a fish aboard the deck Of the great ship sailing over the bend in the ocean to points west, A ship that no one can ever see, For its sails are made of a golden fabric known only to the gods. |
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| A poem | |||
| 01:29pm 13/11/2011 | |||
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This poem deserves a little explanation. There's a band out there that I don't particularly like called Vampire Weekend, and their big song is or was called "Oxford Comma." The first line goes, "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?" Well, this is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek response to that. The Serial Comma (dedicated to Vampire Weekend) Within imperial orthography Intricately inscribed on the manuscript, Editors of yore agonized Over your presence or absence. The twenty-first century has seen most cease to notice Whether your little semicircle of ink Made an appearance between names or objects, Delineating the then from the now, the why from the how. Well, Oxford comma, I give a fuck about you. |
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| Novel #3 | |||
| 02:21pm 11/11/2011 | |||
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Yes, I am working on yet another novel. I promise I'll finish them all someday. It's called "Points South," and here's the first chapter. ( Chapter 1 ) |
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| Read 1 - Post | |||
| A poem | |||
| 05:15pm 07/11/2011 | |||
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Whirlwind The whirlwind picks me up From the last extant colony of the motherland And deposits me in the faraway desert. It is the tornado leveling everything I have known To leave a clean plateau of opportunity, The J train pulling into Manhattan late at night To let me off from the outer boroughs of sensation. There is a wardrobe of masks within my skull And its revolving door swivels to show them all; Today I hide behind the one adorned at birth But they will all appear in time, And tomorrow I shall bear that of the runaway, The romantic outlaw up for ransom. I am eager to explore the lineage Of the fractured family tree Spanning the length of the Louisiana Purchase, Its members linked by a metopic shibboleth Only detectable by the eyes of its fellow bearers. The gateway to the next chapter awaits, And I am being transported by the old whirlwind. |
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| A long poem | ||||
| 06:07pm 02/11/2011 | ||||
Mother knows best And she'll put me to sleep forever, The boy who liked to play With the light from the swinging door as a child, Waiting while going through the motions, Spattering paint across the canvas, Always in flux. Under the bed was the only place they couldn't find him, Those dark yet innocent beasts of yore. Now I'm buried in October snow. I've volunteered sensitive information, Loquacious in my punctured manner of speech. It's unclear who has said what, But I know that I want more! I'm like an old man standing before his grave, Remembering all the appointments he never kept And the visions that he could never be sure were real. Normal conversation useless, I ration my spoils, Divide profundity into little portions for the years. Forgotten lines leave their mark But I can recall that I wanted, that I still want more! A keepsake from half-consciousness, The sadistic music telling me that I'm closing in on death: More, more, a final verdict, more. The rivalry between the two sides of the county line Clashes in battle, silver swords and shields glistening beneath the sun, And it's clear who will be the victor, The sad slow waterfall of the invisible temptress. There is no room for compromise. I'm a mouse scrabbling between the walls and floorboards, Weaving yarn in and out of a hungry spool, And I feel like I'm king, King of the ants and bees and hornets. A swift breeze releases all responsibility Till it comes rolling back with the tumbleweed Down the deserted main drag Of the city of ragamuffin renegades. The time has come to return the children to the womb, All mouthing the shape of one word, One word that no longer makes any sound: more. |
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| A poem about my upcoming twentieth birthday | ||||
| 12:25am 28/10/2011 | ||||
Two decades built out of spare parts Recovered from the junkyard Where they have all been discarded: Those split-second decisions That led to wasted years, And chinks in the armor of respectability. In the throes of pathetic retrospection, Fact and fiction collide As I assemble a montage for whomever will listen. Just as I cannot repeat words twice, Things will never be looked at quite the same; Never again will the truth bother To make itself known, for it knows That it cannot be handled, That it is and will be eternally misunderstood. There is an eroticism surrounding all the letters a to z And every kid in the neighborhood got one, A glyph to begin their birth certificate; I was stuck with the very last of them: zed. Now I abandon it for a new calling, And I will squeeze my identity till it's dry. Two decades built out of spare parts, And all my eggs are in one basket, Vulnerable and waiting to be cracked. |
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| A prose poem | |||
| 09:10pm 24/10/2011 | |||
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Gypsy Tetrachord Four notes, three intervals. A minor second, an augmented second and another minor second. The diaspora of this theme has reached my clarinet from Romania, Bavaria, Russia. My fingers bend the air stream flowing from my embouchure and shape the sonic oscillations into a melody that evokes my spiritual ancestry. I could play for the vagabonds, the new bohemians who frequent the coffeehouses and bookstores, and perhaps they, too, would feel the power of this gypsy motif. |
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| A poem | |||
| 08:41pm 24/10/2011 | |||
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Reckless (for Cyd) I should have known you were a madman. No reasons can be disclosed, For I have been sworn to secrecy And must, for at least this time, hold my tongue. The many layers of the atmosphere have become the audience For a nom de plume highway cataclysm As we ignore all road signs and the pretense of the legal scroll. So come out for a curtain call, A last hurrah before you finally molt into a mortal being. It may be true that the farther we wander into the woods, The longer it will then take to reemerge, But it's such a lovely day for a hike. |
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chris_gazeent |
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Friends Info Calendar Pinky-- the music |
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