Subjective Worth

For Jacques Roubaud

2011-07-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

Fate feels you twitching:
the shapeless mass of plain denial.
Yet there is nothing plainer.
No thing more real.

In metered dance, the tongue becomes a patient lance of the ineffable.
A frost forms on the words; we fail to dream
beyond the confines of the load.

at the mouth of the river

2011-07-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

little may

little may

dream thought through time

What force cradles time

with such magnitude
as that offered in the depths
of the dream?

little may
awaken time

(I drag a comb
through the silt
at the mouth of the river
floor to scavenge
for a miracle)

in a fractal prison of fractal hopes

with curtains drawn

in a tapestry of imploding lights

(Plush fabric of a miracle

with such uncertain terms)

little may
little may

offer a soul with a form thought may feel
(as if sense were born beyond the body)

little may
be the soul of sense that time cannot erase

(but what is thought?)

nothing.

a mechanical framework of infinite forces
exerted upon infinite strands

an unraveling forest

little may
little may

(but what is thought?)

little may
awaken time in

an unraveling flourish

i am the am not of oblivion

2011-05-02T05:49:00.001-07:00

violent wind through the trees

loose and thrashing through me

shakes a soul from the leaves

i am the am not of oblivion

blends with breeze what with words

appears dead inside me

sharp as shrapnel shaken loose

from a hemorrhaging pearl

coursing forward with weight

and with injury and fate

trailing backward as leaves down a hillside

i am the am not of oblivion

mother, harness some breath

from your body and then

believe "nothing believes nothing and then..."

For Antonin Artaud

2011-04-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

The dry, ratcheting breath of aimless thought

scalds the mind where it races

upon ice

with token symbol

clustered like a snowflake

as it melts into my hand

Amend the darkness!

- screams that pull the stars across an abacus

with a desperate breath

your soul engulfs

my private speech

and imparts a caustic lilt to the howling wind

Cult of Absence

2011-03-10T08:06:00.000-08:00

A placid state with little movement in the streets; an abysmal quiet suspended from the ear.

To beat the setting sun, to catch maybe a glimpse of fire oozing through those icy sapphire husks.

Fast now over brick-work; legs are loose, distended cords and the body is all physics.

Portends the evening with it's sky peeled back like the rind of a spoiled citrus.

Clouds run long against the rot.

II.

Within dreams, a derangement of sense - a cascade of image and feeling like the textural seething of insects- a kaleidoscope of the transpersonal, each living painting etched by fire into an inner night.

A hunger strike invites the hollow; folds of flesh transform the pattern.

III.

To seethe inside a dream of silk. A cobwebbed dearth of insect light. Of silent mirth.

IV.

In the ocular night, all is sound.

The seething of light becomes texture and weight upon the base sugars of an apple core.

Where the ants are not marching triumphant, but seething in time.

My tongue teases reason off a sea cloud,

2011-03-07T05:39:00.001-08:00

for it sits where it cares to,

and infiltrates the mind's city with a spectral embrace.

The salty character of damaged songs

that always speak without speaking

and prescribe time as a feature of a chariot race.

I want less movement

flowing backward from the words I make;

I want the sea, if not the salt,

a fretless tide that is never damaged

– unlike the words I make.

Beneath This Frozen Ground

2011-03-05T15:42:00.000-08:00

I tease the night together with a soft light
lapping my face like a wound...

A bitter star labors by the bottom
of a silent cloud (or a magic cape)
that disfigures the darkness
of the deep freeze that ponders back
through inky pools of time

Is anger beneath this frozen ground
beneath our fire, believing nothing,
beneath our dreams deft, muted presence,
cognating light as a silver flower
or a virgin birth?

I dreamed a morphing every-shape
until it caved
and the night assembled my world as a finite place
that suspends our shared beliefs

To Suffer With Oneself

2011-03-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

...and to lose that ancient fight – the willingness to suffer with oneself – is to hold death within the lungs and yet continue to breathe. But even this is a romance honed while we are awake and knowing nothing else; when pain burrows deep within the mind, it renders time obsolete, and like real death, denudes the very fabric of experience, as if to challenge Heraclitus with a deep and lasting darkness...

...we know not the mind; we call it home, anchored by our senses to incalculable strands of movement, sound – the likes of which dissolve into a stream of meaningful locutions, patterns, judgements. We call this home. We call this “I” this self, this we, this royal We; this pronoun engenders careful scrutiny of what we see and hear and come to believe to be outside our home...

...and to lose that ancient outside, from which each derives the willingness to suffer with oneself...

Assembled Hieroglyph By Night

2011-02-28T07:00:00.001-08:00

- Invite a question with your speech, but do not speak.

- Refurbish Latin hieroglyphs from German cherubs sporting clubs...

These thoughts are not angelic; though,

they mold our spirits

(and this is not a dictum from the clouds)

- Let sound perform the theatre we impose on soiled shrouds.

- Peeling back an earthen veil reveals a thirst for angel's blood...

...day-lit narcissus bloom becomes a cannibal by night...

- When we began, we felt the rain upon our tongues and drank

Is this a lie?

Is this a hope, a romance honed by the gradual impoverishment of sensory life?

Drunk on the colors of our raceways...

- The phosphorescent haze of “stop n' go” beamed through a single bead of sweat

A Preference for the Salt

2011-02-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

“Taste the salt” - the result spawned

rhapsodic waves of ocean breath

besiege this little island

lined with splays of crystal ice

A calm deluge of miracles

a thirst for skill
spread

thick and lapping

coral lyrics at the bay;

a reef of silver dendrites melting

faster than the word from voice

a distant oval

2011-02-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

The rope controls motion like an oustretched hand,
a veined sand sliding coarse
lancing my face swell
bulging bluish,
grape-world time inhabits

an instant is a thousand listless
carousels upon sodden earth

open mouth a distant oval

What was nine months prior?

2010-12-25T06:20:00.000-08:00

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

2010-04-12T18:13:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-01T08:02:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-26T09:46:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-03-24T13:35:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-03-21T15:31:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-03-13T08:41:00.001-08:00

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...

2010-03-10T05:58:00.001-08:00

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

2010-03-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-24T14:21:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

...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

2010-02-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-14T19:05:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-14T18:17:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-02-12T11:09:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-03T12:07:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-01T09:53:00.001-08:00

Pulse

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

2010-01-26T07:17:00.000-08:00

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"

2010-01-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

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"

2010-01-23T13:17:00.001-08:00

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

2010-01-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-01-18T14:01:00.001-08:00

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"

2010-01-16T06:01:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

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!??!

2010-01-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-02T19:35:00.000-08:00

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..."

Even the Dew Is Porous - 2 Track EP

2009-12-31T08:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a free download of two new pieces, one of which is a bit of a remix of "An Elegant Explosion of Zen," a piece I composed earlier this year. Though it may be foolish to refer to these tracks as an EP, they do seem to keep good company. Hope you enjoy!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8a8hv6

Playing On the Riddle of Speech

2009-12-24T15:42:00.000-08:00

Words are not on but in and of the body

Words are not inside (the book) but twirling (from its pages)

Speech (as heard in whisper) is our mirror

We seek the quintessential ear

that frames sound's flight from earth,

a water-pocket in the throat that burns through weeping

Fear: the wet revolutions of a hiccup,

a purple light allowed entrance to the shallow

reposit of a tumbling river

"Hey Kool Thing..."

2009-12-16T16:09:00.000-08:00

4AD records is offering a free download for the holidays. Just thought I'd post it here.

P.S. More of my own music coming soon...

A New Order....egad!

2009-12-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

For the sake of inclusiveness (and not to mention publicity,) I've decided to change the modus operandi for this blog. Think of the new version as the tree from the 1940's children's book, Caps For Sale; its many facets will be like so many monkeys wearing brightly colored hats.

In this spirit of diversity, I present a link to download an eclectic mix for the holiday season; may it help you find your inner ape.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/rofm17

Here's a ramshackle track-list:

Harmonia and Eno - Sometimes In Autumn (Shackleton Remix)

Celer - Cantering In a Copper Dress

Oneohtrix Point Never - Betrayed In the Octagon

Byetone - Plastic Star

Klimek - Greed, Mutation, Betrayal

Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto - Broken Line 1

Zelionople - I Put All My Faith In Her

Radian - Subcolors

Mike Slott - Snowbirds

Ben Frost - Through the Rough of Your Mouth

in a bed, self beds

2009-11-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

in a bed, self beds

self pulls

and tugs at listless sheets

while a fever

soft and lulling

coppers the space where all is green

the textured plain

where mischief ripens

teasing out the fur of angels

while smoothing every stocking-sheath

pulled over gnashing teeth

tonguing vacancy through velvet mesh

forming a face with absent tastes

recalling love that lust remembers

a green love frail and trembling

The Future Isn't Thirsty

2009-10-19T19:51:00.001-07:00

Yet another piece related to my degree project. Hexagrams: #39 Obstruction ---> #33 Retreat

The Future Isn't Thirsty

This season, there is an over-abundunce of cacti in the foyer. Spiny and plastic, anchored beneath wood chips, they invoke a breed of nostalgia that is not compost-able. Rather, they are indestructible creatures from a B movie, able to haunt the most unexpected corners of the mundane; any moment one could lumber off the set and devour our morals. Given this threat, the guests are vulnerable; I have been hired to protect them.

To accurately play this role, they have outfitted me in the garb of Wyatt Erp, and I am drowning in my own sweat. Fifteen feet above the entrance, a giant banner reads "THE FUTURE ISN'T THIRSTY." Rolled vinyl emits a whooshing yelp as the custodial staff lowers a projection screen along the eastward wall. At stage left, key members of the press (those hired for the occasion,) flash posed pictures of W.P.C. (Water Purification Committee,) members addressing the historic importance of the event. Heard in its polyphonic grandeur, the room's chatter suggests a jungle-like diversity of sounds, or perhaps the condensed echo of rush-hour traffic were it rising to ground-level from beneath the Amazon, (the likes of which now festers with mutant-life.)

I pace deliberately around each rectangular garden, a sentinel lost to daydreams. Each garden is adorned with a mechanical fountain spring; their combined gurgle is enough to tease urine through a kidney stone. The event is meant to preserve the utopian tone of the last presidency, when it was assumed that we'd be able to save Africa.

Occasionally, my boredom becomes painful; it is then that I call upon my favorite trick. I perform a time-lapse of the moment, condensing the lobby's occupants with its furnishings, until all loses its trace of animation. Though the water's trickle continues to tickle my ear, each motor ceases to turn. The face of every guest remains awkwardly posed, exuding its own calculating glow. Guest's hands grasp outward at traces of frozen conversation, some clutching the dregs of a glass of champagne. These uptowners would be shriveled bodies were they lost in the desert. There, hands would reduce to bone, and with them, each plea in want of an oasis. For me, the oasis is real; the dream is not dead; the dream is something rooted in my marrow, the spongy profane core of my body's structure. The mystic in me screams: "The antidote for thirst still lingers in the air once every cell has putrefied, but the dream is nameless!" I realize that if I had to, I could wander through myself like this for days without end. With this, my desert-scape disappears, and the guests return to piddling about.

I wonder who built this theater. That honor must be held by the Bureau of Water Purification. I'm sure its solvent; the state subsidizes environmental projects, and these days, they're the only organization with enough money to do so.

I wonder if I really am cute in blue fatigues? Well, this CEO certainly thinks so. He's been ogling me for the past twenty minutes, his wife aghast at his lack of concern for her own fixation on the upcoming Purification Party gubernatorial candidate, a man who's tie sports its own second-rate globs of technicolor distraction. And these pricks think they're gonna save the world. I could really use a drink.

A Sense of Drifting and of Meeting

2009-10-08T07:49:00.000-07:00

This piece emerged as the third experiment after having "built" the following hexagrams from The I Ching: #55 Development (Gradual Progress) and #44 Coming to Meet. My intention here was to provide a first person account of a fractured identity. I can't help but draw my own comparisons between Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman, Kafka's Josephine the Singer and Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers; hence my bizarre dedication. Hope you enjoy :)

A Sense of Drifting and of Meeting

or an homage to Our Lady Josephine of the Flowers

A sense of drifting and of meeting. Is there something betwixt a lament and a song? I hear her calling, she who once gave shape to the operatic vowels, to the places without faces, without texture, without land. And what is between? Why can I not hear her tonal heights clearly as she soars far above the trees?

I wonder if she even remembers my face. Yet, it was just last night that I saw her out for a stroll through the park, chewing away at those florescent pink stubs of keratin - each finger bleeding as she bit. I'm not sure if she's starving herself or just nervous, but she's always at it, and her hair seems much thinner than it used to. Locks of straw. A tattered trench coat. Her aura aglow with an unkempt fragility.

And oh, how she loved nature! My skittish soprano was always complicit in a mighty chorus! She used to engage geese in the park and as she sang her lilt would synchronize with their aerial hi-jinx. Having mastered the birds she soon moved on to creating whirlpools in the pond. She progressed so quickly that she eventually learned to control the bringing of light, the darkening of the earth, and the great rushes of autumnal wind that wobble the empty rowboats. Every Sunday, she would again command the geese, though on this day she would revert to The Marriage of Figaro; this would promote a most erratic flight, scattering feathers every which way. Even the pigeons knew her voice conducted the meeting of ornithology and opera, and I have heard that if she could sing now, it might prompt the definitive merger of science and art.

Though never at rest, she would often sit with me over a latte and we would take turns sculpting and subsequently tonguing frothy beards from each other's face. We lived together for years, nursing wounded or aged creatures from the park back to good health, providing euthanasia when necessary. That's what I've been helping with lately at the SPCA. One day we brought a feral dog to the vet, who suggested that we keep her; she was a mangy, sweet little yapper. See, my singer and I used to sing together, but my voice is too rough since I had the operation. But she still sings day and night; she often keeps me awake. We were very close once. Sometimes I wake up thinking I'm still wrapped up in her dirty afghan, reeking of wet dog.

My therapist said I'll never really forget her; I'll just have to learn to love her like a sister. See sometimes the only way for me to see her is by going to the park and staring in the water so that I can dream a little about how I used to paint my nails and sing and walk my Chihuahua around the pond.

And when the wind picks up, I know it's her vibrato that causes this image to disintegrate, as the surface tension is disrupted by explosions of new rain on old water, and my newly bearded face struggles for congruence. And now the thunder scares the geese. And now the hotdog guy turns off his radio and Mozart's magic floats away.

t(w)o rise through metal

2009-10-03T13:54:00.001-07:00

t(w)o rise through metal

Such a rascal! Come sit.

Careful now;

Mommy's breasts sore

One more story but

firsta

simple

lesson bout school

Sweetie,

friends ill never

speakforyou

baby,

one can never be two

(

)

butjustone

saccharine

lolly

may get baby

through

folly

Recollection relies on the sore spots

Channels their magnetism

Assembles crude tapestries of metal into protean orbs of reflection

No common center - starry - fractured

Somehow centripetal

Wait with alacrity. Form grows thin,

form grows thinner. Flesh arms

striated, aping red ridges

of clay and boulder

Wait here; whittle the memory,

whittle away your own thumb

He'd rather you mount from behind. A mountain

spring bisects conifer from deciduous

Leaves sweep away down-stream

What rises from flesh

has stench, yet is supple

as symbol when altered

through pain

Pesky Pronouns

2009-10-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

Though I would have much preferred to not use any pronouns in this piece, I'm still pleased with its appearance and sound. There's always next time...

flowing over his lips, choices dance, flames

extend the rose-tinted orbit of each nipple

with a kiss, faith is wet, she

a vibratory chorus

unlocking new voices of revery

to hold what is lost

beneath breath

and release

what is scalding with water

like a faithful wish

lost underneath

a convex lid

each is held to a breast

bone circling

I once received a present

2009-09-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

I once received a present.

Without the aid of sight, time became a pebble

-strewn river bed; a harmonious clatter along

the bottom of existence; the light held

the milky rhythm of sand, and in certain spots

where salmon wedged between the rocks,

their silver flapping located distance;

soon, the river led me to the sea. Shadows

slid miles of beach without weather; honey

-infused nonsense oozed from the waves;

patterns bore their weight against folds

of flesh. Borges walked along the shore, jaded,

making fists before rapping me upside the head

with his shoe while condemning the whole affair.

I still remember the granulation of his hands.

can you sense the swell of newness

2009-09-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

can you sense the swell of newness

sloshing around within the chalice

of all elusive sameness

in that moment before waking

when ocean overwhelms the bay

a diaspora of fishing boats washed up along a coastal roadside

splintered worlds of boats and fish affixed like stone within its pavement

as a token, wheel-well glimmer

offers spinning mica

to those fish who cannot tease apart the light

for this highway is opaque,

just now, translucent

yet, no angler is upset while reeling in a ghost ship

as the sea eddies in an unrelenting mime

Of Urbanity

2009-09-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

Yet another piece for my degree; to lead the exercise, I "generated" the 12th hexagram, Standstill. This "changed," as it were, to the 56th hexagram, Wandering.

Of Urbanity

Defenseless, thought

undoes the noun

as when a womb

absorbs the sound

of life's fluid separations

Seismic verve wrinkles each world

and every light's

wet ovular fruit,

broken, runs along a crease

in the mergers midst each city's ferment

When there is hope, the evening sky

itself appears delicious, while

abstracted doubts ooze from the ground:

the conflicted palette

of urbanity

A Bird of Feather

2009-09-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a new piece, tentatively written for the degree project.

Birds of Feather

Engulfed by mist

language labels its history

-a colloquial organ in flight

-a familiar form

(yet how each longs for escape from blue feathers)

-a flying V

writhing within

the frost of verbiage;

-an orphaned lark

abandoning her wings

with bemusement:

(but does time remember

the task of living

as life's lattices unwind?)

Manifest

within the wind

channeling the congress of lost ravens

a voice nuzzles the velvet

that envelops the night

Leyland Kirby's world of solemn beauty

2009-09-18T11:35:00.000-07:00

Leyland Kirby is a Berlin-based musician/sound artist. Here's a little taste of his world:

a reel kunfewsin song abowt god

2009-09-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a new piece for my degree project - again inspired by a reading from the I Ching. This time I decided to approach the random "construction" of a hexagram with a more hands on approach; after a series of coin flips, I ended up with the 37th hexagram, The Family. I chose to use the two-coin method. You can read about this process here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching_divination

a reel kunfusin song abowt god

I dont noe who rote it. Just luk i even fownd it. Was in that litel kapuchino shop down by Vincents. Just a scrap of sumthin fowl under a chare all sogy and smellin of kapachino. I cud barly make out the ritin. I didnt reely get what it ment ether. But let me tell ya it was reely sumthin it was just like a forchin. See I wuz on the floor to find my mug. Itd just been knocked clean off the tabul by a big assd rich lady wearin sum kinda fansee scarf. Her kids were all hootin and hollerin about italyin sodas and I thot she was a torist. U knoe how that goes thos rich peepul that cant keep there kids in line and cud giv to shits for the rest of the wirld there ushly torists. So this big ass lady...I mene serisly...her ass was realy big...shes screamin bak at her kids and dosnt even reelize her ass is headed strate for my tabul. Cuz shes defendin hersef ginst her litul tike...and hes bustin her up big time out of no wer. I dunno how this kid got so vishus...anyway morul of the story is her big ass noks my kapachino off the tabul and tryin to cleen up I cum cross this litul scrap under my chare. I tapd it rite here.

remember the transience of our soul-talk, the muted violence

leering at the corners of each flightless word; for there are birds

that may not hover with the angels or their vices, and gaps in

logic that may yet demonstrate reality's slippery hold

Isnt that sumthin! Its like a reel kunfusin song abowt god! I mean...its like for why we should be carful not to beleev in god just cuz other people do! I gess Im not reel sure wut its abowt. But I lik it any way. So this wuman is all thumbs juglin bags of prisy clothes and her kid is throwin down hardcore like some kinda cracked out ninja...it was kinda scary...and i feel reel bad abowt it but i cudnt stop lafin cuz this kid was like a fukin manyac. Id never seen any thing like it. So after I cleen up the cofee I stuf the sogy scrap in my poket and book it outa there to chek on my lawndry. I run over to get my clothes in the dryer and that only takes about 15 minutes. Soon as Im finished with that Iv got nothin to do so I hed back over to the kapachino shop but as I turn the corner I see a cupel of cop cars parkd in front of the place and I can heer a siren sumware clos. Im prety kunfewsd so I peek threw the windoe to see whats goin down. When i peek threw the glass I see two grups of pepul in the bak of the room where i was sitin. The wons on the left arnt standin. Sum on the right are standin and sum arnt. Then I rember that was ware the lady was gettin beet on by her son. So I sneek bak insid and first thing i heer is that kid screemin and holerin lik a fukin beest so I go tak a looksee. Hes bein held down by a grup of men and skwirmin lik a fish and his eyz are way wite and freeky and won man screms to won of the othiz to tak off his belt and put it tweene his teethe. I look bak to the othur grupe and I see won of the mothurs hie heels stikin out of that bunch of peepul. Won wuman is neelin down at her side askin if she can heer her and thers all sorts of angree sownds and noyzy pepul worein with each othur but I dont think the muther was takkin at all. I hung round long nuff to see them kart em both to the ambulints and tak em away. I dunno wut happen to em but I aint to weryd cuz I think they wuz both ready for sumthin nue.

Waking Womb

2009-09-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

As is suggested by Julia Kristeva in her essay, Powers of Horror, a state of "in-betweenness" has the ability to paralyze the mind. The uncertainty of such mediatory phenomena is what compels the psyche to transmute this experience, or in the language of Sigmund Freud, sublimate that which traumatizes. However, unawareness as to the origin of a feeling of fear could be said to aid the artistic process, as it allows the psyche to invent this origin.

Upon waking one morning earlier this week, I realized that it was not yet necessary for me to rise from bed, so I closed my eyes in the hope of falling back asleep. As I began to drift off, I suddenly heard the distinct whine of a feline engaged in battle in the alley beneath my window. However, I soon found myself listening to the conversation of a fictitious couple beyond the premises of my own domicile, and too, the inquisitive mewing of their house cat. Somehow, the creature had made its way from one apartment to the next - and I could now feel every whisker of its face and each of its slender legs brush against me as it came sauntering across my bed. I shuddered; having jostled myself awake, I realized that I had just dreamed this encounter - an experience as palpable as the comforter that enswathed my body.

I would characterize this mode of consciousness in much the same way that Kristeva characterizes the experience of birth. In both cases, the experience is such that cannot be easily compartmentalized on either side of a dichotomy, (here, the examples are waking life/dream and prenatal/postnatal.) However, though my psyche could and can not easily categorize this experience during the twilight of dream-state (with a house cat that may or may not exist,) it is now viscerally connected to my being; the experience was terrifying, for it unwed dream from its isolated position in the nether region of my world; however, its comprehend-ability requires invention; for, though I felt a house cat glide across my body, the cat simply does not exist in this realm. The question remains: is there any other?

After Dark

2009-09-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a new piece for my degree project. Before writing this, I used a series of randomly generated "prompts" from the I Ching, or The Book of Changes, the ancient Chinese book of Oracular Pronouncements. For this, I generated #63, "After Completion," and #13, "Fellowship With Men."

-After Dark-

Silver country. Silver trees. Silver earth.

Our world is made metal by the light of a wrinkled face.

For many hours, our gravitas awaits;

she is overhead,

licking her lunar lips; but there, she said,

this salt - it has no taste; for it is a potion,

a mineral to be absorbed

among your people

...Dedicated to Joshua Lambert...

2009-08-31T10:17:00.001-07:00

Well, here goes nothing. After a series of casual conversations between myself and the friend to whom I have dedicated this new endeavor, a new blog comes into being, effortlessly generated while its host charred the grilled cheese. See, Mr. Lambert decided the time was right to set this blog in motion while I couldn't stop him; his god-like work was stealthy, and determined...while he typed I slaved away over a grilled cheese sandwich that no doubt left him craving an antacid.

I suppose I'll use this blog as a venue for fragmentary theoretical ramblings, related discussion, and of course, poetry - a creative mode deemed proper for pretentious mystics, curmudgeonly squirrels, tea-sippin' pluralists, hippy-dippy-gossipers and...me

Here's a new piece (though those acquainted with Facebook will recognize it. Oh yeah - I'll now use this blog as dee place for all future poetry-related posting. Word, indeed.)

cold ushers
the heat
forward

a friend
that flows through thought,
and projects its course
through the neighboring
stars - nothing more
than a nameless
quest for maybes,

hypothetical lights
that tease us-we,
with listless turns

a transmogrification
of forest fruits
that shock the tongue,

- the glistening scales
of a puckered gulp of air

Oh yes! I almost forgot - I'm hoping to generate discussion. And I mean this in the damn near Socratic sense of such a thing - so feel free to get nasty if ye' need to. Just make sure you can feel the tinglin' in your toes.