| flight |
[ |
captured: 12/11/07 @ 1:38am
| ] |
So close to the ground, there is buzzing, fizzling, little men spinning on their particular axes preaching their particular speeches. Truth, self-evident, drips down their lips like spittle. Men’s eyes flicker, mesmerized, kicking that tiny stone with their tiny feet, choking on the glut of life. To think is impossible – there is the clink of glass, clatter of coin, a symphony of guttural smalltalk. Absentminded, I float. It is a reflex.
Here is what it is like, to fly.
The first thing that grips you is your skin contracting. Pressed into a tennis ball – no, a bullet, like the whorl of a crow’s voice squeezed into that ugly release – I am wingless Icarus, tempting the sun’s fancy. I realize this is the cold, burning away priorities, terrestrial stain, flesh. All around me, mangled clouds hang on aerial gallows. It looks like a baby’s cot, like the butcher’s wares. I am reborn. Broken and unexpectedly, I rise, and for the first time, I see – unending deep blue guillotined by a sea of treacherous white. Above, a tired white eye spears mine. There is no sound but white light. I whisper a truth, my truth, and only you hear it, loud and clear. I am dust, and all my framed heart is but a solid monotone, melted white, compassion sublimate. The brightest speck is my eye, and in that moment, my soul unmoved and unchanging, I see all.
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| The Riddle, by W. H. Auden |
[ |
captured: 10/08/07 @ 9:21pm
| ] |
Underneath the leaves of life,
Green on the prodigious tree,
In a trance of grief
Stand the fallen man and wife:
Far away the single stag
Banished to a lonely crag
Gazes placid out to sea,
And from thickets round about
Breeding animals look in
On Duality,
And the birds fly in and out
Of the world of man.
Down in order from the ridge,
Bayonets glittering in the sun,
Soldiers who will judge
Wind towards the little bridge:
Even politicians speak
Truths of value to the weak,
Necessary acts are done
By the ill and the unjust;
But the Judgment and the Smile,
Though these two-in-one
See creation as they must,
None shall reconcile.
Bordering our middle earth
Kingdoms of the Short and Tall,
Rivals for our faith,
Stir up envy from our birth:
So the giant who storms the sky
In an angry wish to die
Wakes the hero in us all,
While the tiny with their power
To divide and hide and flee,
When our fortunes fall
Tempt to a belief in our
Immortality.
Lovers running each to each
Feel such timid dreams catch fire
Blazing as they touch,
Learn what love alone can teach:
Happy on a tousled bed
Praise Blake's acumen who said:
"One thing only we require
Of each other; we must see
In another's lineaments
Gratified desire";
This is our humanity;
Nothing else contents.
Nowhere else could I have known
Than, beloved, in your eyes
What we have to learn,
That we love ourselves alone:
All our terrors burned away
We can learn at last to say:
"All our knowledge comes to this,
That existence is enough,
That in savage solitude
Or the play of love
Every living creature is
Woman, Man, and Child."
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| And |
[ |
captured: 05/14/07 @ 12:05am
| ] |
|
Love is, a glottal gasp, a reciprocal transitive, a reversible incapacitation; just a phase, a face in the window, a struggling superlative, an anchor in the throat; an assumption, an involuntary displacement - of air; a concussion of feeling. A pout, a poem. A wet on the cheek. An empty lung, expanding warmth.
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| Barefoot |
[ |
captured: 03/25/07 @ 12:34am
| ] |
|
When I kicked off this dusty day, and shrugged off my shoulders, I was thrown about within my head. It started as a hum, a heartbeat, or a murmur, full and round and whole. I thought it was the silence, when silence sometimes has a rhythm, hanging like an orchestra; or the fridge, chanting an absentminded, whispered word. I ran a wet finger on the rim of my cranium, I can still hear it, a note so shrill it might've rung from one end of the universe to the other, flaming chariot of a note, too high and too close to the sun. And then suddenly I was the sun, the sun's note like fanfare, pirouetting on my axis, with light that filled you with white - searing - soothing. Light has a sound too, when it's bright it's also harmonious, the loudness and suddenly it's you, your voice and, I touch your voice, the sun in your eyes, touching you, you hair your cheek and I hear for once what you have to say
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| Fault |
[ |
captured: 01/19/07 @ 11:03pm
| ] |
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Sometimes they fix you up in a little plastic chair and make you watch videos about big words like Commitment and maybe they made you into a believer; faithful, consistent mealtimes and a side hobby, an excellent choice for the future leader (is that what they call you), and as a whole, conclusively fitter and happier; sometimes you know when it's one of those moments where you had to be there, Volvos with rainy complexions gliding on their waterwings, so hot a day there's sweat above the lip, sitting on toasted tiles, your skin yellow-gleaming yellow like the road, you were careless (you have careless hands) and you missed the picture, could've been us, almost-perfect.
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| There is a way out |
[ |
captured: 12/20/06 @ 11:07am
| ] |
I play games with myself. I spin my bottles, on bad days I peel my roses. Maybe today. A day to win; back upriver we wagered our first kisses, first bases, thought I nailed it the first time we shared an umbrella, thought maybe not, thought maybe you figured me out.
Woke up on the freeway today. Bigger and better, the sun was in the glass. The sun, the sun light. As a feather. Steam, from the heat of the moment. You were in the steam I thought, we play between breaths, a game in your eyes, unreadable moist eyes. It stings where it matters, a little. Stings to lose.
Your turn-
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|
[ |
captured: 12/07/06 @ 11:17pm
| ] |
with these scissors i can cut my strings, a real boy at last, if not for your love and your breath still wet on my neck
oh that was so real
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| And the War Won |
[ |
captured: 10/03/06 @ 11:36am
| ] |
Look what I can do, you said, and left to bide the hours. Shutting off the sharp and time, kick the ache on the safer shore, licking our sores and sides. Watch the tides wash at your name, the sun waits. Passion hibernation: you miss Christmas every year and maintain a safe distance. You're saving it for the larger picture, because we have to pick our battles and win the war.
I don't want this easy-living crowd, so flat with their open minds, their press release love songs. I want a dirty duel, redden my eyes and hands and get this party really started. I'll say what you want, and we'll beat the beat at their own game, see? Turn the heel and turn the odds, because that's your thing. Being here is gratification enough, greater good enough, said it all before. We fight to make this work, give it all you got, you're all so fighting stupid - I've seen what you can do, just don't leave in shellshock.
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| Softly |
[ |
captured: 08/13/06 @ 6:46pm
| ] |
I miss the whirr, the burden of conversation; I miss hearing a cardiac stampede. Time flutters past - each beat of its wings a curl, emphatic, magnificent. This space is mine, the place where nothing happens. Still air nervous, filled with the worser phrase; then I stutter, stumble over a word, and another.
It's quiet now. Time is hungry, half-hearted and draining. It's like that when we hold our breath, the last note on the last verse, the final stop at the end of the line. I close my mind's eye: your skin electric pallor, lips pink, shy, dissolving; I was always the smaller one, I could hide better, and waited while you sorted out a schedule for a better life. We'll both forget the breeze, and grow up.
I wake, suspended in activity - I know I know it's only been hours but I hate it when you go.
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| Nighty-night |
[ |
captured: 07/22/06 @ 10:50pm
| ] |
We take time, to breathe and think, and truly sigh at things that really cost you. We take a while, to rise and to sink, and then try, try to buy time and again tell a lie about those you care about, tell another that we'll be alright in a while. We take time, some time, and take some more; it takes time to turn the tide, it took a year to turn you. Red numbers count down the hours we can remain like this, it feels like hours, the way your hair falls on my face, the way my shirt smells more like you than me. Time for gossamer words - it's our cue, centrestage, hell if we're starcrossed in our own playground. Stand up and tell them how much you love me - and don't say my name, I like it better that way. Red numbers tell me that time's up.
The lift doors open.
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| Jesse |
[ |
captured: 07/13/06 @ 11:53pm
| ] |
On screen, near unseen, two fuzzy shadows in an apartment as bare as they are, I just wanted another try. New world desolation, old world order; handful of flowers, an echo, an icon, one of those thoughts that count. We can weave words however poor we get, we'll get high to get by, keep biting those hooks. That one on the cheek made you gasp, unsettled you, while the naked lightbulb hanging from the uneven ceiling painted the air. We make brazen idols when no-one knows whose god is left. Our lungs lock. We fell in rock love in my bowler hat and your medication, our lips lock.
Through the phone we shared a sigh.
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| Open road |
[ |
captured: 06/21/06 @ 6:04am
| ] |
|
Cold feet, adrenaline rush, the works. We're complex like this guessing game, another arms race of words and wit. We're so alike, concave, exploiting our avant-garde, making the most out of this gutteral mediocrity, fill the air with celluloid cliche. Unnecessary, unmeant, linguistic totalitarianism, the whole package. Carriage shopping and pensions are urban wasteland; ever since I pursed your heart by the Cydnus we've been sublime absolute. I don't want flowers over set lunches; a little more posh, a little more chic would do though. I will keep you my secret like you have kept me yours, birthmarks and bitemarks whole. I like shotgun glory, you'll wait it out and soak in the now. You tell me this is a marathon so please slow down, I think we're more alike than they think and whoever said opposites attract was at least slightly mistaken.
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| Shock value |
[ |
captured: 06/18/06 @ 1:47am
| ] |
Brand our hopes with your name, while we play hide and seek in the nuance and curve of your words, deconstructing breath, flash-freezing echoes, done it all, said it all, returned to sender and done it again. You are fabulous in this distempo, in colour, in completion. We are the wizards of indie cool, spinning poetry from sultry afternoons.
But these are just words. In the dust, in this race to catch the heat of the moment in metaphor and pause and purpose, we smother memory and impression. Watch the little people come and go, diluting the passion with their grey translations, mistaking monuments for mediocre, Sunday-sweet romances. No-one will remember our sweet nothings, but I don't care; because you used to be impaired, unwell, fabulous in distempo, while you let me linger speechless.
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| Week 6 Lecture 11 |
[ |
captured: 06/11/06 @ 10:48pm
| ] |
Kinetic breath, a porcelain face, dusty skin, sun-stained fabulous, you lean over. We throw gossamer words around, suspended in necessity, the curve of your lips faded pink, your chest falls and rises heavy. Can't settle your gaze, like nervous dragonflies on and off me. I'll look away, you make it good. Then you hold your breath, count to three and leave a pink painful signature on my neck. You're lovestruck placid, you think you can break me like a promise. I watched sweat bead above your lips, writhing in your seat because it's too hot and it's too slow and you whisper something in my ear and the lights come on and we pretend we're asleep like everyone else.
But what is it to you.
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| We Rob Banks |
[ |
captured: 06/08/06 @ 4:50pm
| ] |
Got the whole world conspiring against our groundbreaking sync, breathtaking, inexorable, record-making, you make poetry difficult baby, because you're so smooth with your words and your tongue. If art is revolution then you're worried you don't make enough of it, you're living the lesser life, waking, working on unassuming mornings, missing out on the psychedelic nostalgic. This is what I call inevitable heroics.
The system's got the ball rolling, the brace in your chest, a deep breath and it's off to pen stains and uncertain unconsciousness. Heroes don't have a choice because they're part of the revolution, masthead for the madness, first place in a hamster wheel race, a race to another renaissance. But you're not my hero. I've got your ticket stubs in my pocket, smooth, folded with your thrill, like how we held hands and pretended to be collected. In tune. In focus. In sync.
This is no time to feel inadequate. Gun in one hand, oath in the other, there's no way we're turning back, even if you're still afraid of heights and plebeian awe. Inadequacy is for the little people, the murmurers; you're strong enough, we'll make it fine in this outpost against the excruciating disquiet of our day. The greater good is our new bourgeoisie: we're rebels without a cause because you can get a cause for half-price off the assembly line. This is our time, our Iwo Jima; let's pretend we're Bonnie and Clyde on crack, let's declare war on this undecided, petty witchhunt and make the tabloids tremble with our groundbreaking sync.
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| Ain't no mountain |
[ |
captured: 06/04/06 @ 2:13pm
| ] |
Perhaps you don't see it, miniturizing everything and putting it in your pocket, keeping little loves by your heart, living the little life, little lies can't hurt much, can they? Fold yourself and hide in your drawer; you are strong, strong enough to make the night last, strong enough to lift us away from the little people, strong enough to keep little secrets under your tongue.
Climb our hopes with your poetry, never stop trying, never stop the music, never stop. You can't hold the world upon your shoulders, they'll find your kryptonite, someday they will; or perhaps it's just me. You'd cut your hair and lose your strength, your eyes, to prove the all-dancing all-destroying destitution of what we do.
Someday you'll see how big everything is. You'd punch the clock, make the world gasp and shake and swoon at what we have, so what if you're eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves, so what if they threw you out of the cosmic primal party in Paradise, so what if Saul has mustered armies that would shoot us upon sight? You're no longer the Man of Steel, but what difference does it make; I have you and you have me and there is nothing bigger than that.
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| Lions & Tigers & Bears |
[ |
captured: 05/27/06 @ 12:39am
| ] |
Black, with two sugars, is the colour of the morning. Still, with words and chance, the air gets curiouser and curiouser; outside, everything is a rich lilac, inside, the green shower is spluttering and spitting. It's the morning after, after an ordinary day, before an extraordinary one. It's the miraculous transition between the mundane and the ecstatic, but we don't know that yet, and we don't need your help.
We got the afternoon; you're so brave you don't care what they say. It's the second Creation in the prism of your eye, they ask where the hell is this beauty you see, you carry the answer in that tune. I like your sensuality in the passive, I like your redefining romance, I think you're so pretty. In your world, showers are green, and skies are lilac.
It's that time again, I wish I could write poetry off the cuff! If Michelangelo saw you today; Would he have sculpted David a different way? No, not really. You're so brave you apologize everytime a date goes wrong. You take everything into your hands, he ain't heavy, he's my lover. The world is your giant, try shooting that in the head. Keep hiding, keep it up, until the end; lilac, the colour of the morning, what light through yonder window breaks, they ask. It is the east, and you are my sun.
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| Carpe bloody Diem |
[ |
captured: 05/21/06 @ 2:33pm
| ] |
They say we're mice, God's playthings; we're ants, chaos in the anthill running running away from His Almighty Magnifying Glass. Running, running through His Divinely Ordained Maze, watching whitewashed walls, waiting, waiting. How do we know what makes her come, and what makes her stay?
It's ten thirty, the town is fabulous, sitting in a dusty date of a dusty life, looking for the toilet, looking for the one thing that we think makes us remotely happy. The toilet doors say 'homme' and 'femme' like they're so made for each other, brazen tired faces caught in each other's exaggerated gender, timeless, and I think this is it, this is the torment that defines us. This is what makes April the cruellest. This is the cheese.
They say we're mice, God's playthings; I say you scorched it all. Screw the cheese; eat the walls, eat the mice, eat the maze, eat the white. And when you get to His Infinite Pomposity, eat Him.
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| So Radical |
[ |
captured: 05/14/06 @ 10:58am
| ] |
You were borne to lay us waste with your art and temper. Were you born a demon baby? A little less satisfaction, a little more fire and brimstone; I love the twitch in your face when you pretend to pretend, when you take all the love and give nothing back, when you lace your words with a secret.
We need something to happen in this express generation, before we can start again or stew in delusion and keep our peace. Happiness is written in the number of zeroes in your bank account, you wouldn't have it any other way. Last Sunday I saw you in the garden where the box grows on the tree. You've heard the stories and yet you're still afraid of losing the day. You are Pandora, Cassandra, a million other people who stood at the birth of other demon babies.
Are you afraid? What's your happiest memory? What am I wearing in your mental image of me? No one blames you for giving in, for holding back. They want to get it right, you want everyone to like you. I'm just afraid that there's no version of the truth but your own. You're Sisyphus, Prometheus, unafraid of the wrath of the Gods, only if everyone's on your side.
You are so damn human, it's sexy. Perhaps you still think you hold our lives on your little finger, and this is the way the world ends. A lazy Sunday where everything's been done twice before, and we're all afraid to try something new. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
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| Carte Blanche |
[ |
captured: 05/06/06 @ 8:45pm
| ] |
I don't know how we can ever make it up to each other. This is where your chest-thumping mallet-slamming sense of justice has left us, stranded where everything's boxed up into left and right. Bring on the anarchists, I can take their shit; better revolution than allowing careful phrases and trigger-happy Latin expound on the rules of life. Scribe the moon, engrave your hatred upon my forehead and tell me the sociolinguitic implications of you.
If it means so much to you, be my guest. Put your troubles and tears in a cheque (do not return to sender if undelivered), sell that guitar, blow up a building and hold someone's heart ransom. We race against what we're worth, repay the hugs and sweet somethings, and all the times we lay in someone's arms crying (because time is money). Lay the guilt on thick, because it's a mile high apology for the sum total of your being.
Don't play God. To me you're worth more than you can ever pay.
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