What was nine months prior?

each pearl appears
distant, crystal

memory of memories suffused
with globular ice 

not suspended in time as i think it

a bit of detritus retraced
a misshapen sphere

only retains the contour of its secret
home

For Renaldo Arenas

Now I am a child-knot:

I open my head,

and free prodigious strivings and writhings of sand-colored thirst,

they are bashful and run for her skirt

- the balooned mesh with which she wipes rain from my head

and beaded morsels of my own skin

I am younger still:

a fetal cloud arisen from neighboring sounds:

the wet gush of a summer fuck that feels cool,

and then warm

and then cool

and then loud

I am not with you,

and the earth is not a perfect orb,

though she spins...

as the pelts of fauna limp after their feet,

dizzied by miraculous jagged beams of liquid light

that tease away the curtains of their skin,

we are young and knowing as we blush with prayer

A Slender Distance From Where Shared Time Began

The house stood unassuming, yet abashed in its display of caution. Stark red spread thick on aging panels – shrubs carved to match their peers within a rolladex of shapely lawns. The owners fed me chocolate and cinnamon gum when we went to their door.

I can feel air rushing by in torrents as I aspirate the motion of my wheels by screaming like a banshee; it is my way of bending gender at a prepubescent age for the sake of peeling paint; it is my way of releasing future phantoms.

Now the house goes whizzing by while I think of my mother's son fading fast around the corner of our aging home. Years past, this bicycle was his. The morning he was struck, the summer sun massaged us through the leaves and wet the corners of my eyes and mouth, like a dry wind turned wet and hopeful.

Later, he learned to drink and draw blood from nimble fingers, cry while coming and eat chocolate from a lover's hand.

One day his patterns will refurface a slender distance from where shared time began.

Muybridge Horse

For legs now grip the air, four legs that crunch down on glistening white dust, then rise again to meet the echo of their clopping, as snow sometimes makes a sound in its descent. A dry whinny against air and whirling hooves that would levitate with Muybridge in brittle stop-frame. Now, horse and rider tumble down a hill slick with fresh powder, matting fur against the icy velvet luge of autumn straw. Tail beating against time, flank pins rider to the earth, mashing her cheek against the frost.

Hand flails to face to meet the gush as morning light infects the dream. Breeze from the open window upsets the room in rythmic gusts, casting her hair across her pillowcase in a crosshatching of streams. For an instant, this pattern exactly matches that of the lattice surrounding her bedroom door, itself a mere replica of Gothic ivy. Then it is tossed back across her face, where she lays a trembling forefinger, still searching for a trace of blood.

Beyond the wall, the adjacent room holds no trembling young girls or boys, no furniture at all. Months before, when the room contained nurses, a body and a bed - sunlight bleached the latticework around the door pale earthern brown. Even now, she hears the slither of those vines coiling around the knob – but it is locked, and will remain so until she returns to the Muybridge horse, half-frozen to her wall, floating through the air while resting safely beneath a pane of non-reflective glass.

through the pores, she opens, though unwritten

through the pores, she opens, though unwritten

with air amidst her face and form

she breathes with open skin

she talks of flowers wilting through the pores

and angels wilting still-born

like an injured bird cast down to earth 

from tree-top withered song

the tangles of her theme unweave

as she breaks free from her cocoon

Myth is reborn...

Myth is reborn,

and scavenged for lice

that which feed on what feeds

together, 

in a self-same current

All is mist

and the faithful stroke of a complex sin

releases vapors of a self-same silence

together,

as these patterns recoil from birth

Eyes overcome the richness of a dilapidated beach...

Eyes overcome the richness of a dilapidated beach

by resting anchor on the surface of the sun

she speckles sight the way she speckles pigment

against the skin like paper thieving specters from the air

A weight of cherry heat, 

cherry oak and tears made marble

as with frost, the wind may cauterize this womb of softly curling vapors

Here, leaves have the quiver of light, 

and we, the sputter of words

As both glisten through a shell of compressed ash

 

we stop and listen for a voice

If I have it right...

If I have it right, 

(and chance will refute this theatre,)

then desire, too, will dissipate 

on the horizon of thought,

a glowing ember envisaged in a dream

         () () () () () () () () () () () () () ()

perhaps the mirror splices fate...

perhaps the mirror splices fate

the way water chisels stone

carving our expectations over centuries

though the mirror has its analogue in the question of the One

a vehicle of yearning is found in every gated crevice of the mind,

a mind that holds the expectant grasp of flesh and yet never holds it own,

tumbling for centuries over falls that gush unnoticed

Thoughts On Incongruity

Stealthy canopy is made to last, 

a cloth of fluid fibers 

that unrolls before the sun

...an orb as a symptom

of a whittling that pivots 

in a lasting state of latency

...a geometry that limits

the curvature of silence

in a lasting state of friction with 

the One that loves

 

winter moth

a visible ache on the horizon 

performs, 

soon flakes

the dandruff of an alphabet

in a month when moths are tethered to the earth

with a single tilt we may upend 

the poles of daily living

and rescind all life cast down to earth from a seance in the sky

...emerge sober from a riddle of sleep

...emerge sober from a riddle of sleep 

that lacks the sour swoon of sloshed regret

for you have not yet damaged your liver from drink

though the follies of night-REM still usher form through a fantasia

How does time arrive damaged?

For, you once held an anchorite in the womb

Now arms sprout and drift 

through the poles of the globe;

  as you gawk at the cleft lips of Pangaea

untitled poem written after reading Stanislaw Lem's One Human Minute

a complete or impressive collection...

recently asked,

'is there something within

that determines without

is it mind that permits all matter to move,

or perhaps matter that enables time 

and its resemblances to float freely through the mind,

and offer Either/Or - as at confession

for we haven't any sand,

and yet the hours somehow betray a linear movement through the desert

...of divine or prophetic tokens

Early Machinefabriek recordings

Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek, the Dutch sonic alchemist, has compiled an assortment of recordings spanning the years 2001-2004.  For those readers who are not familiar with his work, Rutger has had an EXTREMELY prolific career; he has released well over 50 recordings under this moniker since 2001, and this does not include his work on remixes or in collaborative efforts.  Though his recent work has largely been comprised of field recordings, much of his work employs far more traditional compositional elements.  This collection of early recordings is often quite catchy!  As the liner notes admit, this work owes a heavy debt to late nineties post-rock and classic Warp Records mad scientists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre.  Despite the relative ease with which these influences may be discerned, the collection never staggers.  In addition, Rutger has cleanly woven the tracks together with his latest mixing/mastering.  The result is quite arresting.

He has provided a link on his own site which may be accessed here.

Enjoy!

the color in her cheeks spiders at my touch

the color in her cheeks spiders at my touch

dancing like a cloud, 

whets this paper

born from a physic that excites; as I trace 

anew I create a new sound; 

all frosts over as new waters 

converge

We call it by a name...

We call it by a name as if there were yolk within the sound 

and an umbilical connecting our tongue to the world

When wind teases dreams spilt upon the pavement,

there is no sound as they transform, only movement

and a growing sense that time is the great modifier,

ever reinventing its own composition

(I often sew thoughts to my ears

and watch them billow like poison smoke

drawn from the earth's remains)

Day is not the light that permeates

Day is not the light that permeates

our love affair with paper

is not in the way we eat and sluice

the flavor of the Fall

nor the solar tap that enables time

to cannibalize our dreams
 by trailing glucose in its wake

Grace appeals to praxis,

leaves a residue upon the refractor:

the protean plasm with which we grease the gears

A ravine bleeds through a canyon

A ravine bleeds through a canyon; here, Christ washes.

Water cascades over her face and down her shoulders,

cleansing resin from her hide. As sediment thickens the water,

the liquid becomes course, offering a palpable skin speckled through

with earthen pigments. But the pool is unable to breath.

Like this woman, the water is choking under the care of meek fiction, meek time excited by distillations of a glowing dervish in the clouds; and yet, her voice grows more piercing still while she gasps for air.

Now, imagine scanning Christ from the shallow depths of the pool to the fraying tufts atop her head. Does Christ not confuse? For, Christ is neither in those spaces where texture engulfs the moment nor in those phases where thought is animate; she is in repose.

But what if you and I were to climb down her throat – what then would we see?

A vestibule of brittle teeth and lavish pinks within the mouth...the plush corridors of a mechanical vault that is neither flesh nor metal.

Pulse

Pulse

a

communicative babbling           coils 

of a mantra cycle

spiral along the curves 

of space         sound a fissure in clouds

some seek the proud

sight of matter

sight that grounds fantastic movement 

within the bedrock of spherical drums

while others follow dreams' admixed color

through the marrow of skeletal suns

The Eye That Envelops Your Soul Is the Color of Sand

Everything that graces the sky traces a line through its nebulous flowers. Today is a day for flying things to excite the viscera of my denial.

Is there no region above me worth more to my eye than that which appears closest - the false lining of heaven speckled with streaks of avian magic and too with the sheen of morning's emersion? When her flapping messengers entice me to laugh at how effortlessly they glide, the world again feels whole.

There is a river beyond the bounds of physics that melts through our homes by shifting the geometry of our precarious void; I've come to rest in its nurturance of everything I can't remember.

Scanning the sky is just like flying to meet the mountains or straining to meet the arms of a mother that is always in flux.

New Track - "Leviticus: A Bridge"

I drove to Montreal last night with my friend, Julie, to see Australian trio, The Necks, perform at La Sala Rossa. Their performance was both mesmerizing and difficult; a small number of people left the room before the end. The piece they played reminded me a good deal of "Townesville," a live recording they released within the last couple of years. However, last night's performance was marked by a very purposeful mid-section of atonal/tonal propulsion - that which created a maelstrom of rage and sorrow.

Inspired in part by this performance, today I finished up another piece of my own. No sonic manipulation a la Forester this time.

Sound sources: Mikro Korg Synth, Turntable, assorted samples, Pro Tools.

Enjoy!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0o9ulr

New track - "Dread Unfurls"

This is no doubt the most extreme, (or at least formidable) piece of music I've yet produce. It resembles some of Pan Sonic and Mika Vainio's sonic territory as much of that of Yellow Swans. Handle with care.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/p8572z

Mariner's Dilemma

Axis is fade and float until foam engulfs the coffin;

ocean explodes in a breeched birth upon the shore,

casting feet first upon the sand

Strands of light, the gestures of a sun in conversation

dance upon the dock in flagrant spasms

Knowing sight may eat away the sound

I've been told the sea is both gold and purple...

I've been told the sea is both gold and purple

in places where the sun leaves fluorescent traces

of its own whirling lava. Myths of formula and

chance enfold from the arms of formless Shivas.

I've lost the cunning use of I in games of worship

in places where the name of God remains a rhythm

of the collective pulse we seek in dream.

I've held the pulse of infants in a mind that is not inward

but curling 'round the antechambers of a house that has no walls.

My name is never spoken.

"A Chirping Renaissance"

I've created yet another piece with Leafcutter John's freeware program, Forester - this time utilizing samples from an acoustic guitar improvisation recorded earlier this week. This piece will also be included on a yet titled EP, which I hope to assemble for physical release by the end of February. Enjoy!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/p64msd

New Track!

The last couple weeks have been kind of ridiculous; I've spent plenty of time playing around with turn tables, synthesizers, guitars and effects pedals and very little time finishing the work from my fall semester (yikes!) However, I'm happy to report that my experiments in composing/recording seem to be improving in quality - I'm quite proud of this new one :) It's titled "Michael Knows That We Must Know Something," and it is dedicated to my friend Michael Lambert. Hope you enjoy!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/qhpjrt

1/7/10

an age of iron distends

through the fabric of a capitalist dream

it focuses space with a fragrant lens

smelling of soot and subservience

the age of iron is built up through the skin

with chiseled bone

it erects new houses of loss

with myopic pearls

encodes the old pleasures

and markets our loss

in a system of thought

made of dangling carrots

What is this video game-inspired madness!??!

Here's a bizarre appegiated little ditty. I swear I didn't lift it from the soundtrack to Castlevania for NES. Or did I?

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5md86t

To Carve With Care, A Life Within Dreams

Here's a new piece written within the last, oh...30 minutes or so.

Hope you enjoy :)

to carve with care, a life within dreams

floating, as if as in stasis

howling at best for a rupture of mind

a recurrent means of floatation

tossed to and fro, with less than a word,

with less than a mattress of color

silk made a sea that is tenuous

"she may sing, she may sing, she..."