Sunday, 4 October 2009

SOME WORDS ON NON-WRITING



PRECISION

Rustling memo scraps high above the town looming
We got that unshakeable impression that our coming here was out of time
Out of tune so as not to meet or come across spring cleaning in the windows a cloud
Riveted over the wood
By the time wind drifted memories the town’d
Been void enough for encountering spaces one transparent the other
Superficial to elevate high up the sky they will grow in time tall and full
As words one hardly remembers
They will later meet again but circumstances will be in the way
Collateral’s long awaited arrival will come too early eventually to
Finish off with proper dignity and substance but – perhaps –
One should not rely on
The indispensable thus static thus ending elements however unnerving absence
Seems to be at the table clad in white waiting for the visitors to go
Away leaving all the negligible and accidental spots behind
It is so weird
When revelation gets mixed up with roars of laughter proximity
Gives hope we only need some coolness from the distance
Sometimes one gets a better picture it’s only words though which do not
Ever shape up
And ask for forgiveness as they had acquired the knowledge and wisdom and
No power still is capable of turning them into reality the table is the scene of fight
Not to reveal not to allow in vain however as no coming out
Will ever sink in
And the hunch is nothing compared to music (indispensable) in the world that
Disappears abruptly in the spotlight with no audience in the front row the guests
Are having fun
No-one escapes where has eloped the eyes supported by nothing only
Adorn the head, which is so determined and committed and perplexed so
The body entertains the visitors in unproductive gestures
That mean nothing
And nothing comes to nothing pitch darkness was nowhere in sight
To catch the shadows of the chosen ones the order took over the venue wiping off
The impartiality of sentences no associations no contexts
So be it
It so often happens that the order disorganizes life which is valued by so few
I am thinking hard what to choose objects came into possession of their weight
Suddenly and leaning towards the opposite tried hard to stay
Unnamed
With no strings attached they form relationships so a voice from afar (vicinity
Would make it distrustful) was observing closely as power in the night
Trespassed silence transformed in a couple of sounds whispering that
The coming is nigh

And it all ended up with no conclusions drawn in which the dancers might have
Completed their act but here you are you receive a letter informing you of another
Season opening - professional as it were lack of powers of observation becomes
A burden for a while
Rounded off elegant statements take their places not discerning not destroying
Not creating in spite of clamour made up between the table and the anxiety and
An uncertain glance into some dry disinterested distance




OFF THE CUFF STUFF

An Apple
A smile, a friendly face, life is good, a stroll down the beach.

Knowledge
Sweet as sunlight in the rain and a pancake with blueberry stuffing you dash in to say that we are over. The world is grinning, sinister, dust goes off the eyelids. I see I must face the music. Bridges drawn up the sky is blown up the universal truth revealed, unnoticed. Is it better?

A mirror
Lifetime guarantee only please

Satisfaction
Up yours!!!

Anal sex
Extra-uterine pregnancy

Every Time I See You
Too short, too little, never often enough

Accuracy
Cumulus, cirrus, lucifer orbis out my window

J.S. Bach

God
Gosh,
Always losing those keys of mine.
When you are falling
And the voice is breaking up
Between a way and an approach
When the god above smiles in green
Calm and certain coolness falls down with you
To make the space palpable




AN EXCUSE

It has already been written and it will be again and again and again.
Empty scrolls hold all the magic. Hundreds of worlds
Uncharted, words unspoken, senses unexpressed. Fresh
Hues burning. Unheard-of halftones flowing.

Had I not heard perhaps the dissonance
A great highly artistic indispensable to no-one
Artefact of art inexpressible or inexpressive
Vacuum

Had I kept the distance and stood by the side
In its stead I watched daydreaming as my mouth
My eyes tore me apart in silence

Had I banned words from
Naming the world

Had I not recognised myself

A hum of impartiality, a pellet of irony
Musica mundana
But
I am asleep tonite between clean sheets
And don’t give a shit for sophisticated Honneger
Or crystal clear Pierre Boulez
Or all the Saints of every Here and Now

I had a dream
A teddy bear
With blood shot eyes
Changing skin

Professional
Night
Watch



A COUPLE OF WORDS ON NON-WRITING

‘t ain’t my job to guess
colours
not my duty to peel off
meanings
looks like a juicy night
rounded off nicely caressing
my lack of vigilance i tease
‘em don’t jot ‘em down
In forgetfulness I find
A fabulous word broken in half
It will be there pending between
Memory
When it crashes down with a bang
In a few years I will be there to see it
That’s it


ON WRITING

In two grams
In a couple of moments maybe
There is the future
For me to decipher
A few handsome expressions
This conversation is going nowhere
Ubiquitous unnecessary flat flavours
Of a dinner lingering near here

Banter has the shape of empty
Chair at the window and dull colour
Of untrained hand

Whoever is singing this tune
With a voice as dead as veins
Full of alcohol and the day is so sharp
As hunger
To get it
And with a stroke of luck
Arrest in a word
And liberate


DEAD SILENCE

This credit card of ours has many applications.
You can cut a throat.
You can make a line for a sniff.
You can squash a fly for fun for instance.

Silence
Around
The world

Thursday, 3 September 2009

NEVERENDING TIMELESSNESS

(M.C. Escher, Ascending and Descending, lithograph, 1960)

the
beginning


the immortality of Jesus
the Jesus of immortality
the mortality of matter
the matter of mortality

the latter of the former
the former of the latter
the end of a beginning
the beginning of an end

the
end


Wednesday, 7 January 2009

AGAPE




sort of introduction

I was delivered on the twelfth of February nineteen sixty seven and for many years since I’d lived with an entirely erroneous conviction that it was my very birth which announced the cosmic little step of Armstrong. Since the day I experienced the illusory sweetness of the first person singular for the first time, perhaps, I’d nourished that thought of mine that i had a strong urge to live in a place where five persons at most would’ve inhabited an area of about a million square miles, full of silence and the secret sound of blood slithering in the head.
Henri Michaux – a neighbour of mine - insisted that ‘the only hours that count are the still ones’. However, my personal stillness has become a burden recently, like a tombstone over a carcass that’s suddenly come to life.
Personal history’s made up of events, which – having turned into memories – become a narrative.
The former are insignificant, don’t feel like the latter…

let us say it’s easier
to write ‘bout the sublime
let’s say the beginning
favours a poem that
accepts a short and draft dream
subtle shapes slanted sceneries
stones get softer females make
up their lips and the sky’s all made up
too

i’m sweating suavely the beginning’s looking
for the end i’m seeking my fly in the darkness
of the staircase
seek and ye shall find
and it’ll even be more quiet

we’ll be moved
our perverse ideas
exposed entirely
into an open mouth

zip up and fly away
before we get slaughtered
by silence



(Cecily Brown Teenage Wildlife, 2003 Oil on Linen)



memento mori

‘Indeed, I haven’t got the foggiest
‘What you are driving at’ – roared the wind
To a fell down tree.

‘Well’ – the trunk’s vernacular was getting slightly dry – ‘tis true that
‘It has been over three billion five hundred million eight hundred and seventy thousand five hundred
‘And sixteen years now since decomposition of connective tissue began.’



love between the sheets

well, such things happen (they say)
one can find a diamond in the street
so

we look each other deep in the eye and our ears
are full of humming silence – beautiful and delicate

as feline fur it finds its way between us
making no sound measuring the distance
between word and meaning since it simply adores
the aroma of warm bed sheets and a homebrew


love in orange

a mellow smile is grinning
a ray of light is time
passing across the window pane
in cigarette smoke
it falls asleep
how ‘bout making love
anyway our wet thoughts
have been in spasms
for quite some time now
an action in blue


love for the departed

 whenever you happen to come by
I’ll surely be here as well
how about taking a nap together – gods incarnate
of never-ending warm evenings on a hot beach…
have i told you yet that we’re in love like
deep in the ocean
wide and soft
fishes sneak stealthily past
i embrace the presence
repeat the vow
and burst out laughing in the storm
between a smiling winter




(Francis Bacon, Two Figures, 1953)



wise love

 It was sweltering hot at the beginning of May this year. I’d left all the windows wide open before going to bed and when the morning had just broken I heard some terrible yelling outside. I came up and looked out from the window to see what’s going on.
‘The doorbell isn’t working!!! How’z it goin’?’ – asked Socrates.
‘My trainers seem a bit tight. How ‘bout yours?’ – Plato asked him entering the hall.
Socrates stroke his fringe and dashed into the living room.
‘By no means. I feel divine.’
‘Hello. I’ll put the kettle on’ – said I and went into the kitchen to turn some music on.
The sun was still rising above the roofs and the whole tenement-house was full of crystal clear spring morning silence.
‘You’re gonna sniff those flowers of his away!’ – said Socrates and sat, laid back, in the armchair with a book he’d taken off the shelf.
‘ Bach is so modern, don’t you reckon, Socrates?’ – asked Plato, hidden behind the vase.
‘Bach is music, that’s it’ – murmured Socrates and closed the book.
Having brushed aside his fringe, Plato leaned against the wall, stood astride and started caressing the inside of his thigh with a rose he’d taken out of the vase.


pathetic love

 oh, you’re wearing those lace knickers eventually
you mentioned unfaithfulness i’ve been
ill-treating you with

‘didn’t compose much, toured a lot’
incongruent series create a coherent
totality

i prefer miller to borges or the other way round
to cut a long story short – broken up sentences
seem to be the longest suit

a three/fourths tempo and unstable nights
everything comes together nicely in a tear
in trousers i hate confessional poetry



love and melancholy


The welfare state is drowning in words
Taxes in Texas - Texas in tatters
A notorious politician found dead, presumed innocent
Listening, observing whether their cuff-pins match

And how about a coffee
Full of flavour
A passionate kiss
A taste of timelessness




(Michelangelo Pistoletto up front, the blog author and friends inside arte povera, so to speak...)


love

a wave you are
philosophy of firmament
an apple you are
the soundtrack of a documentary
the shape of stride
a critical time
a comforting time
conjectured contour of a distant continent
a sylvan symphony
a sound sleep
the fate of the sun
a soft cittern
a land of fjords
a cave a mountain
the nahuatl answer
arte povera
arte ricca
love’s delivering
love is dying


Saturday, 27 September 2008

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS - INCUBATIO

Taoism might seem to express an approach towards fate that is similar in many aspects to that of Stoicism. However, it does so in a specific Chinese way of thinking, resulting from an utterly different attitude to the world.
Whereas our - i.e. European - culture since time immemorial (since ancient Greeks – excluding Epicurus, perhaps - that is) sees rules, regulations and generalisations as the essence of learning, whose basic paradigm brings about absolute supremacy of abstraction over everyday experience, generalisation over individual being and rules over spontaneity, the way of Tao is anything but the aforementioned.
Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the mythical creators of Taoism, contrary to Stoics were not rationalists. The ultimate reality of or in Tao is an inexpressible and miraculous mystery. This attitude originates in mystic contemplation making it similar to the approach of an artist, whose main if not the only task is to try and unveil – for a fraction of a second at least – the mystery of existence to her or himself and in consequence to the other – a spectator, a reader, a visitor to a gallery or a listener. It is also free from European moralising. In stark contrast to our culture Taoism points to that aspect of human freedom which is best represented by spontaneity. Totally free and under no pressure Tao acts fully spontaneously in each and every second.
As each and every being is unique all generalisations (including the one you are reading now) from moral to scientific to religious to philosophical to whatsoever are anything but true.
Here again comes spontaneity, which means an existence beyond (not for or against) any rules or regulations and at the same time in unison with one’s own unique nature and the ever changing harmony of the chaos, which we have all agreed to call the world.
Such an approach is rooted in and originates from disinterested contemplation (Thomas Aquinas' visio echoes beautifully here, I believe. Strangely enough).
Seconds out then…

 Driftwood

It’s no real change to forget setting the sun
And wake up to a warmer cup of tea
A silhouette in the doorway
I get laid again
I lie down to rest
So I’m here still surrounding
And the sound is coming closer
And the edge is being sharpened
And a dream
A pitch dark dream
And I drench the dream and drift

***

It may be a cruel month
Prospects are hanging in anticipation

At the river we were lurking in twilight
The bank swam up and I leaned my chin against it

Mutterings of long gone moods
Departed in disappointment

***

There’s a chair sitting in the room
The table’s stretching its legs out
All the other ones are absorbed
In chores and sucking pleasure it is
I who does not belong

It all began so wanly later
I welcomed other shades for scrutiny
And then disharmony was caused
The basic colour stayed on divided
Up into seconds isolated sounds

***

Sitting down in a chair ain’t no answer
An apple nowhere near rough estimate
So impressions have grown into the mind
Appearing as reality.
This way no answer has been offered.
Is the night leaving? Or is it just breathing
And rambling? Thoughts heaped up
Have gone berserk and flashed.
Perverse recurrence of questions
And heavy twilight where one could
Make out things that otherwise might
Just as well have stayed unnamed. Lies
Resurrected and spread all over. Guts
Dispersed with digestion. This is how
Vague reality unveiled what was too obvious
To be one

***

It may well be assumed
That the sun carves its own shape
Apart from preposterous assumptions
In deepest black which does not need a god
With crops galore in store

The weary greed of explanation
Fiddling in someone else’s pockets
And even a thirst for tea isn’t given time
For completion and in the brightness of the night
They kill infants incessantly conceiving new ones

***

When the eyes drowned
The so much hated world in despair
In hysterical laughter there occurred to be
A little room for disbelief
Whose other end vanished in the dark
Where moments fought and trod on one another
They later perched on branches meant just for them.
The mouth
Devoured the laughter and agreed to be stroked
By disbelief that
Right there was their shape

***



Fairfield Porter, Apples and Roses, Oil on Canvas, 1967

How is it possible you ask
Well,
You wake up in the morning
And the first thing you feel
Is subtle rosiness of roses
Annoying gall cuts thru from behind
The room is tumbling somewhere into greyness
In the background
Massive serenity floats down
From the indifferent roof onto
Lustful apples and right there
Unmarked
Blood is carried

You say it should be marked anew but
I suppose
A sketch is more important
Incomplete
Without exaggerated beauty

***

I had invented an utterance that commenced
And completed. In the pitch dark
Rustling noises of the coming
And going. The words focusing in
Focusing out. Somewhere, in the middle,
The sense weighted the presence.
The sentence was ready
To disappear leaving unconsciousness
A little anxious and comforting.
No more noise.
Intuition, unaccentuated, devoid of
Intonation

Monday, 22 September 2008

GEOGRAPHY OF LIGHT







what is it? well, contrary to popular belief there is a plethora of answers, most of them confusing and none satisfying enough, methinx.
let's just consider several suggestions off the cuff.
- is it a candle 'burning bright in the shadows of the night'? well it is and of course it isn't. do u fancy open flame inside your hardware?
- sure, it is a snapshot of an object made of stearin (a glyceryl ester of stearic acid, derived from animal fats created as a byproduct of processing beef used as tallow in the manufacture of candles). well partly, as it is not a photograph;
- yes it is a sought-after artifact - oil on canvas by gerhard richter, or rather its representation on a computer screen as i still have to wake up in the middle of the night at the break of dawn to earn a living, so no it's not a richter at all;
- yes it is one ray of light (an idealised beam) after another leaving signals for the eye to detect them;
- it surely is a result of billions of actions taken unconsciously by somebody called me so that eventually i could realise i'm LOOKING AT SOMETHING and name the agent, the action, the object and the relationships within the holy trinity;
- it is a lie of the mind (Lie of the Mind - a brilliant collection of plays by Sam Shepard, a must);
- nothing is real everything is possible - William S. Burroughs;
... and it has only just started ...