Labyrinthine street tattoo etched in grid grime
where we skulk upon the shore of cities like
driftwood trash lulling in the tide. What you
mean to say to me is nothing that a little rudeness
wouldn't cover up, that the mannequin display of
fashioned silk couldn't survive, but we think
like fish in shallow pools spiraling in locked
rock, limited in natural gestures by the creation
that preceeded our generation's scattering from spray.
I broke a pencil when I switched metaphores,
from spotlight nature to unnatural illumination
in the boardinghouse halls of madness where you
learn the sun like a message and the tired trees
hang their exhaustion like the heads of drugged homeless.
Ancient pains are brought from heavy sadness through
the doorframes peeling like old picture frames
while suffering photographs lean out
through broken shutters, holding cigarettes and bras.
When the sea rises to swallow our poverty
is when I will ask for my rights to bemoan
my lack of rights in the face of a swallowed
monolith traced by opaleye and calico bass,
when the ocean heaves its mass above the city
shore is when I will professionally cry
on the arms of a coral statue guarding the
entrance to the sunken treasureship where I
found your pearl earrings and your lips found
my kiss.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
once upon this time
I would throw on you all my aches in a fit of weakness
were it not for the wellspring connecting me like an umbilicus
to the mysterious present that constantly loses arrangement
and regains its meaning. Try the waves on the shore, they
receed to expose a barreness of sand glass considered beautiful
by children and salt spray lovers. Try the angel demon lost
in charity and giving from the hand instead of the heart.
But what solemn midnight belfry kills me with its tolling?
Their are many churches here without bells and the tide
is gathering its slime like an evil tongue across the breadth
of our uncertain shore, the edge of the known. Future tense
travels back to peasent demense; fuedalism, food riots, the
order of the sword, and this arcane armor has cracked like clay
in the blistering rust of the sea's hypnosis.
I would like to speak to someone of the old rhymes
where youths built fireships to mark the passing of great men,
and where poets were men of their word who captured the feality
of love's throne. I would tell you with a soft laugh that
we once were gods here, our travels made into marvels, but
you know how that has-been story unfolds without even the
precursing "Once Upon A time."
And I believe that suffering is man's heirloom, handed
down bloodlines through the wounds of birth. See the
war horses in the pasture, their scars are made in one
life and one life only, while we, we carry in us the
fate of our fathers like the fables carry the dark maths
of villain worlds.
were it not for the wellspring connecting me like an umbilicus
to the mysterious present that constantly loses arrangement
and regains its meaning. Try the waves on the shore, they
receed to expose a barreness of sand glass considered beautiful
by children and salt spray lovers. Try the angel demon lost
in charity and giving from the hand instead of the heart.
But what solemn midnight belfry kills me with its tolling?
Their are many churches here without bells and the tide
is gathering its slime like an evil tongue across the breadth
of our uncertain shore, the edge of the known. Future tense
travels back to peasent demense; fuedalism, food riots, the
order of the sword, and this arcane armor has cracked like clay
in the blistering rust of the sea's hypnosis.
I would like to speak to someone of the old rhymes
where youths built fireships to mark the passing of great men,
and where poets were men of their word who captured the feality
of love's throne. I would tell you with a soft laugh that
we once were gods here, our travels made into marvels, but
you know how that has-been story unfolds without even the
precursing "Once Upon A time."
And I believe that suffering is man's heirloom, handed
down bloodlines through the wounds of birth. See the
war horses in the pasture, their scars are made in one
life and one life only, while we, we carry in us the
fate of our fathers like the fables carry the dark maths
of villain worlds.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Where do we carry the true Earth? Is it in our heads, lurking there with unspoken gravity, coloring the frames that our eyes manufacture in concert with our memories, beliefs, and experience? Or is it outside of our hands, related to our voices, the way we manipulate symbolic objects with the metaphors of our physicality, the way our speech casts us as individuals among a caste?
It is one of the great secrets that people do not know what the world is. Truely and unadorned, how it exists. Science analyzes its parts, but from these parts no agreeable whole has been constructed that advances our understanding beyond scientific label jargon for processes witnessed most often in false environment. The arts attempt to teach us who we are, what our roles and lives mean, but these often go ignored due to the inherent subjectivity of the author or artist. One wonders, in terms of Creationist myth, if God himself is a subjectivist. It is entirely possible that He crafted the world from the ethos of matter the same way that Pollock splattered his expressionism across canvas, the way Monet colored his lillies; complete in style but nebulous in meaning.
One tries to gather an impression of meaning from the immediate environment. Los Angeles, perhaps the most unmagical city in America, sprawls in every direction, yet it remains impossible to escape the totality of the sky. Smog, high clouds, jet contrails, and the mad rush of helicoptors give one the feeling of giantism and the need to duck ones head, the necessity of ceiling room. But then, their are these umbilical connections to the astral, to the celestial spheres, that jar one subconciously with the impression that man has scorched even the sky, which is saying a lot, considering the Christian value placed on the upper atmosphere regarding heaven since the infant philosophies of the Gnostics. Looking down the filthy runnels of alley ways and runway-width highways gives the impression of false space; an open plain converted into a psychologist's experiment maze. Gleaning substance from people is impossible; they have given up the pain of meaning and its weight in favor of the rather depraved lightness and ease of social congress, in favor of the percieved opportunity to be worthy of material accumulation.
My searches for meaning take place not in the valley of roads and suburbs, but rather in the cobblestone-worked lanes of books. Though it is true that there are already enough people in the world, I cannot hold that same statement to be true concerning imaginary people, made up by authors for the sake of exploring various facets of real character. It is terrible, but sometimes I hold the goings on in a character's life to be of more value and intrest than the happenings in the lives of some millions of Los Angeleans. However, on second consideration, this may not be wholly terrible, seeing how fictional characters are ultimately the invention of one who possesses a rich inner life. It is that inner life I long to communicate with, that I desire to find expression for. The world of hybrid powered sedans and glam perfume is generally an annoyance, while the words from a Billy Pilgrim or Holden Caufield highlight the emotional memory of years that we could never live.
The true world for me, is it merely in my imaginings then, lying in mental pictures, langauge comprehension, and philosophical ruminations? Or is their a world stripped of the human element that passes below our notice, unobserved, cycling like the invisible wind of a hurricane in swaths of time and space?
It is one of the great secrets that people do not know what the world is. Truely and unadorned, how it exists. Science analyzes its parts, but from these parts no agreeable whole has been constructed that advances our understanding beyond scientific label jargon for processes witnessed most often in false environment. The arts attempt to teach us who we are, what our roles and lives mean, but these often go ignored due to the inherent subjectivity of the author or artist. One wonders, in terms of Creationist myth, if God himself is a subjectivist. It is entirely possible that He crafted the world from the ethos of matter the same way that Pollock splattered his expressionism across canvas, the way Monet colored his lillies; complete in style but nebulous in meaning.
One tries to gather an impression of meaning from the immediate environment. Los Angeles, perhaps the most unmagical city in America, sprawls in every direction, yet it remains impossible to escape the totality of the sky. Smog, high clouds, jet contrails, and the mad rush of helicoptors give one the feeling of giantism and the need to duck ones head, the necessity of ceiling room. But then, their are these umbilical connections to the astral, to the celestial spheres, that jar one subconciously with the impression that man has scorched even the sky, which is saying a lot, considering the Christian value placed on the upper atmosphere regarding heaven since the infant philosophies of the Gnostics. Looking down the filthy runnels of alley ways and runway-width highways gives the impression of false space; an open plain converted into a psychologist's experiment maze. Gleaning substance from people is impossible; they have given up the pain of meaning and its weight in favor of the rather depraved lightness and ease of social congress, in favor of the percieved opportunity to be worthy of material accumulation.
My searches for meaning take place not in the valley of roads and suburbs, but rather in the cobblestone-worked lanes of books. Though it is true that there are already enough people in the world, I cannot hold that same statement to be true concerning imaginary people, made up by authors for the sake of exploring various facets of real character. It is terrible, but sometimes I hold the goings on in a character's life to be of more value and intrest than the happenings in the lives of some millions of Los Angeleans. However, on second consideration, this may not be wholly terrible, seeing how fictional characters are ultimately the invention of one who possesses a rich inner life. It is that inner life I long to communicate with, that I desire to find expression for. The world of hybrid powered sedans and glam perfume is generally an annoyance, while the words from a Billy Pilgrim or Holden Caufield highlight the emotional memory of years that we could never live.
The true world for me, is it merely in my imaginings then, lying in mental pictures, langauge comprehension, and philosophical ruminations? Or is their a world stripped of the human element that passes below our notice, unobserved, cycling like the invisible wind of a hurricane in swaths of time and space?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
