vacuus vox

a quick observation

2012-01-29T23:32:00.001+08:00

People in movies always wash their hands deliberately.

2012-01-29T23:30:00.000+08:00

the scariest part about loneliness is sharing it with others;
because you can be assured that no matter how unique you feel
in your melancholia, there will others who delight in the same lows as you.

2012-01-27T22:15:00.001+08:00

you have to see the way the leaves
and the foam was
left to
die gaspingly on the sand
to believe that the storm was powerful

reliably natural

2012-01-26T20:59:00.001+08:00

I be, the way a wave can trust itself to work against water.
How swift it bends around me as I interfere in its path -
I be within and without it, for it dives straight through me;
And though I am here, waves try their best to pretend I am not.

Fourteen Forays Into Zen Epistemology

2012-01-25T23:23:00.001+08:00

1.
A is B.
2.
A is not B.
3.
B is A.
4.
B is not A.
5.
A is A is B is B.
6.
A is A is not B is B.
7.
A is not A is B is not B.
8.
A is not A is A.
9.
B is B is not B.
10.
.
11.
C is A, C is not B
12.
C is nothing. C is A is B.
13.
C is everything. C, A, B do not exist.
14.
A, B, C.

Infinities

2012-01-24T18:40:00.002+08:00

"Insofar as the world is empty of a self or ofanything pertaining to a self:

Thus it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty."

- Buddha, the Suñña Sutta

Infinities

Forever is abig word, but the Australian beach spreads forever;

The Pacificresponds to the infinitude with its own, which holds center against a differentaxis.

We werecoming out of the sea and it began raining thin and powerful bolts offreshwater,

And the waythat the sand received all that rain cooed an omen of how tomorrow morning’sbeach would crumble under bare feet.

Afterinfinity, the coast will probably end in an unceremonious taper, then rockface, then dirt, then more coast.

Forever is aflimsy word, and a mistake.

Laying flatagainst a vastness of sand reminds me that Buddha tells us the world is empty.Emptiness lies, of course, outside of voidness, but not far enough to bypassintersection.

The word forit is “sunyata,” which means hollowness; I don’t feel anything hollow beneathmy palms…

I feelinfinities. I touch them with the infinite skin on my infinite body.

I feel the bloatof everlasting emptiness expand within me.

I embrace it– though there is nothing to be embraced.

the euthanizer

2012-01-19T00:12:00.000+08:00

skinny arms,
but a whimper.

sometimes when he was
wrapped in the ersatz warmth of
blankets at night in the winter -
he would imagine the cotton turning into
fur turning into the limp body of an animal draped across
his chest, the worst kind of legacy.

sometimes the ashes would come out and
they would be so small.

sometimes he would see eyes
go white in his sleep. sometimes he
would see small
soft bags
slip slowly
through heavy air.
~

I started watching Earthlings tonight and I really had to stop after the first part because I knew I couldn't take the whole movie in one sitting. Although I have a bit of a problem with basing the entire movie on a dialectic of shock (that's a cute little phrase. I might use it more later), it provides some pretty powerful arguments. Anyway, I was watching the part about pet shelters euthanizing animals, and I couldn't help but think what must go through the minds of the people who deliver the lethal injection or stuff the cats in the boxes that go into the gas chambers. What was their first experience like? And also...wouldn't they get into the profession because they love animals? What the fuck kind of job is that? People don't get into the profession of executing death-row prisoners because they love criminals - and yet the people who are qualified to euthanize animals are qualified because they care about animals a lot. What sorts of (no doubt) powerful reasons do they give themselves? Do they get nightmares? This movie is crazy scary - go watch it.

2012-01-16T22:25:00.000+08:00

that weird feeling when you can't tell
the difference between your dreams and
waking life,
it's sort of
like when you pour milk
in coffee and
the black and the white
flows through each other

2012-01-12T23:43:00.001+08:00

Your sword
Remembers the heft
Of the blood
It has touched.

2012-01-12T23:37:00.002+08:00

maybe he would tell everybody else that his deepest
most closest version of him was the oldest one which
made sense in the way he lilted it but no there was something
barely unmentioned (at least from his mouth but his
fingers did talking that went independent directions from
his lips god he was brilliant) so he was only lying with one part
of his body that was plausible wasn't it?

A Prosaic Quatrain (Or, It Gets Hard to Write Something /Every/day)

2012-01-08T22:31:00.001+08:00

Sometimes my toilet just keeps on going;
It doesn't know when it should stop flushing.
I hear the water ceaselessly flowing -
Its frantic falling, its harried rushing.

2012-01-06T23:36:00.001+08:00

god sent jesus down to find what
the good people of the world knew about
pure joy, new jazz expressionism
he never meant for it to be a big deal
so
jesus eschewed his customary flaming chariot
and came down through a vagina instead.
there was a bit of waiting time (childhood is
a drag) when he got there and he felt his hands
and they were real so that was good enough.
so god sent jesus to go apple-picking he
picked fresh fruit and threw them at pedestrians
through the sunroof of the baptist's volvo.
judas was always making a fuss but he was
the brightest of the gang, you know? its
really a shame he ended up washedout and ruined -
one day we went to the skatepark and
jesus played his music (he was into real weird
stuff at the time none of us knew how to explain it
except to listen to it) and the young kids looked
scared so we chased them off with loud shouts.
i don't really know how i got along in
the whole scheme of things but jesus was
there and he kept on saying yes god sent
me here and this is the right thing
for us.

2012-01-05T23:00:00.000+08:00

like letting go of a tensed muscle,
and feeling shivers run through the gap.

like - yes, it's okay.
it's going to be all right.

unfairness and guilt in
equal measure, as if
there was a balance to be kept in god's accounts.

2012-01-04T23:26:00.000+08:00

Hey - tell my friends that I'll be gone for some time. I don't know how long, but it
will be just enough time to deal with all that needs to be dealt with.
Always barely enough time, barely enough colour.

2011-12-25T23:12:00.000+08:00

You pulled sextant to the wind
( jazz for cats, a fantastic wormy thing )
do you know how to use a sextant?
They look like marvelously complicated,
erudite things.
There's a spot for you to look through I
hope you could see me through there,
because I'll be standing on the shore, shouting semaphore at you - no easy
feat - so perhaps You'll make faster charts.

I'd draw a map, but you know how horrible my handwriting is.

If only I could
stop the sun and
tell him to calm down
for a second because - hey dude -
there's people down here, and
they want to see you.

Für Alina / Spiegel Im Spiegel

2011-12-25T22:51:00.002+08:00

2:00am Dec 24 2011

drunk on -

2011-12-16T00:17:00.000+08:00

nah not alcohol but -
just that wonderful
feeling that Everything
is going to work out and
be happy, even when i fully know
its just a nice little thought;
nice little thoughts
feel nice and little, though.

2011-12-11T12:41:00.001+08:00

always going to be too much or not enough -
so far behind or just right here there's
always going to be never time falling
behind forwards staring into the future and
all i can see is a mirror never a window
same thing anyway i can't breathe with all
this coal smoke drifting through the air you need
air we all need to step back and come forward
and turn those clichés inside out, examine
their guts, blood
blood
blood
there it is here we are we are all lying
on leagues of sand, then rock, then
fire

2011-12-11T10:58:00.001+08:00

"What's this war in the heart of nature?"
This is your materiel.
For you to -
throw yourself
wholly in
an inferno
Hot.
Cold.

2011-11-13T14:41:00.001+08:00

the world is barely cold enough to freeze
the ice that clings around the edges of my feet.
now bend down, if you would please,
to wipe your lonely shoes off your feet, hold them, beat
them against the wall - to remove the dirt
that clings within the rivulets on the bottom of
your soles. nothing hurts
more than love.

a poetic ars(e)

2011-10-20T19:24:00.001+08:00

The Poet faded the smirk from
his face and held his fingers
against his scarred nose and slowly
repeated: "No."
"A poem can only ever be
about two things: poetry itself,
or description."
He tilted his head to the side.
"Even if it seems"
pushed ashes on the side of our parkbench.
"that the poem"
lukewarm gust, Northeasterly
"is about something else,"
cracking concrete, tree receiving and giving sway
"its always those two."

This is
both.

vertigo

2011-10-20T19:20:00.003+08:00

(something on the
edge of a building
peering over the side ---
drawing back from
sinking vertigo)
I push
it off.

2011-10-20T19:19:00.001+08:00

immutable frenzy
- and snap,
or frenzy.

end

2011-10-20T19:17:00.000+08:00

even within death's gaze, his name
would glow hot as it slid
over her tongue (like embers
bursting over concrete - like
lava - [burning orange hot])

on his waninglifebed (not
quite "death" yet) he tore, unsteadily,
a cylinder of wasted flesh through
unbroken air and clasped her arm (where
her grandfather had worn a star [and yet
this irony remained unmusterable]
for a few years - cold, damp -) and
something in his mouth conjured

"i'm half of what you need." (and
perhaps he was even just pretending
for that - [like i am
pretending for this poem to be
coming, rather than] going)
to which she replied, "i need slightly

less than two of you" which
seemed to satisfy the hum,
and intentionality, of the room.
they spoke of how we spend
half our life living, and the rest
of it is half of that.

and then he was ash, or he was the wind that carried his ashes from the ceramic to the waves.

just a quick haiku

2011-10-18T19:56:00.004+08:00

I'm barely whole, hold
- wholly - holy - fall fearless
and through gravity.

prayer for don quixote

2011-09-22T00:31:00.002+08:00

the dark around her eyes like
splashes of watercolour, thrown
like a particularly wet Pollock,
perhaps "Convergence".

the colour running down
temples barely hidden, imprinted
like a quiet de Kooning,
perhaps "Whose Name Was
Writ in Water".

don quixote, can you hear us now.
we don't know you, but we know
you're a great adventurer,
and you don't die at the end.

how do you manage something
ridiculous like that
like treading water
like this is water
or colour
or watercolour

reflection on a journey to the centre of the earth

2011-09-17T10:50:00.000+08:00

The Liar: "Hell, I
don't mean to harp
on about this, but
don't look back.
Your idiocy
will hold you behind,
but
don't look back."

Probably a lie.
or, he was
feeding
us (due to the
sound of his voice)
a truth
for once.

Growing faster.

2011-09-12T17:20:00.003+08:00

Sun is peeking inside;
Unwelcome. Unthought of.

The path of life is straight.
The path of life is not a path.

Mountains are mountains.
Waters are waters.

this was fun

2011-09-05T22:15:00.002+08:00

to lose yourself without even really meaning to in the first place

2011-08-23T23:00:00.000+08:00

i hold myself on the edge -
breathe deep - flex - hold
- tighten - close eyes - dive

into the icy waters below.
dark and cold.

"When I'm there, she's all right but then she's not when I'm gone"

2011-08-23T20:26:00.001+08:00

"Seven simple rules of going into hiding: one, never trust a cop in a raincoat. Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway. Three, if asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again. Four, never give your real name. Five, if ever asked to look at yourself, dont. Six, never do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand. And finlly seven, never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life." - I'm Not There

2011-08-10T00:04:00.000+08:00

How you
Dragged yourself
Through time - held
Motionless as you recall
It from
Its dusky arbitration.

2011-08-07T23:54:00.002+08:00

i am trading words for time,
old time for now time,
memory for desire,
inhibition for now,

2011-08-03T23:23:00.001+08:00

the reason is because

there is no reason, which

in part is because there

is no part - no delineation,

no segmentation - everything is

a line and a line is forever, eternally

almost tripping

itself up on its oneness.

but this isn't a line, because

this isn't everything - it's just some

part (no parts? i lied)

of something that's between

the thing that exists without

really having a name. call it

together - call it purposeless -

the point is, there are no new

words, only clichés and songs and breaths.

Four-word Poem on Parasitism (both Biological and Cultural), Written in Ezra Pound's Ideogrammic Style

2011-08-01T09:52:00.001+08:00

"Two people living in one small room."

- Two, The Antlers

INHIBIT INHABIT

HARM HOME

homo sacer

2011-07-28T08:48:00.002+08:00

"homo sacer" means either "the sacred man" or "the accursed man"
the reason such a humorous little dichotomy exists is because
"sacer" before christianization meant "set apart' - which could
either mean "sacred" or "accursed". but when the word was
adapted from ancient roman religion to christianity - the word
was just interpreted to mean "sacred". incidentally, "sanctify"
means literally "to set aside as holy".
so, the act of setting aside
can either be holy
or unholy.

Plain Air

2011-07-23T10:42:00.003+08:00

“Permit me voyage, love, into your hands …”

Plain Air

Life is delirious –

Life is hysterical –

Everything is barely on the edge of being bearable,

Those who no longer indulge in the flash of life

Understand very well. How can you care, Abel –

When you are relegated to the realm of the forgotten

So early on in your story? Isn’t that just hysterical?

We are not able to care, for you are dead.

And attention is wasted on the living – they are notgrateful.

They are busy pretending to understand themselves –

Or others.

This isa story about tension, and quiet fire.

Formidable – O steel beast! Permit us safe

Passageway. Sweet murmur – low and faintly distant hum.

Stale air and recycled air. Overhead compartment –

Underfoot compartment – polyester, hard plastic,

Soft plastic, metal, glass, paper, water, fuel –

This is to dry mouths and sweaty palms,

To recherché protocol and fitful sleep.

III

Falling asleep in a world that is forgetting your name,

And waking up in one that doesn’t care –

“Gain an hour, lose an hour…this is your life,

And it’s ending one hour at a time.” This is

From the turning forward and the turning backward

Of clocks. O sweet disavowal of any temporal responsibility.

If you keep flying West, dropping off hours into the sea,

Will you die at Death’s appointed time,

Or will that hour be adjusted to account for jetlag?

So close

So far

So near

We are

Held by

Electrics.

2011-07-13T22:57:00.004+08:00

to be or –

to be.

to love – (what does

that even mean?)

to live – to give – to breathe

the air of

a world that

opens wide

to receive you.

then smothers you.

and as

you are drowning

in earth’s

rich silks,

you will

feel a freedom.

living is a choice:

not to be or –

not to be.

The Dangers of Tidying Your Room

2011-07-05T12:16:00.000+08:00

I was cleaning my room when I found a box labeled "Photos. Cards." Photos and cards indeed.

The scariest part about looking through all this stuff is the horrible thought that someday, I'm going to look at photos of me now at 16 the same way I look now at photos of me when I was 5-6-whenever. Okay, existential angst aside, check out my power rangers shirt:

Enough said.

2011-06-30T10:47:00.002+08:00

hauling through
driftless and
held up in
emptier space than
what's farther
when seen from
above through the
lens of ephemerality
less time and
less space

Yggdrasil

2011-06-27T09:10:00.000+08:00

Walking in New York with Mr. Taylor when he suddenly stops and goes, "Woah! Oh. Oh wait. Just kidding. I thought that was really deep graffiti or something." He points to the sidewalk, where engraved in the concrete it says, "May I *heart* to love you". He says, "I thought it was a question, like this person was making some sort of philosophical inquiry about love. But it's probably just some guy declaring his love for May."

~

The tree that carves
itself into something
that holds a fearful
moment of numbness
which extends to the
edge on its leaves.
The tree that sears
scorchmarks of
summers spent lost
in desire, or in a
loss of hope -
"May I love
to love you" as
question just as
statement.

empire

2011-06-27T08:59:00.000+08:00

mephistopheles sits down in a bar,
he's lookin' for sin, won't look very far.
the bartender moans and turns his head,
before the sun sets there'll be another dead.
faust swaggers up with his head held low,
he swaggered on up to mephis-to.
he lays his body down and cries, "woe is me",
as M finds his job becoming damn easy.

~

point taken: it's difficult to conjure that which resists conjuring.
like memories visual or physical.

sunrise

2011-06-23T19:18:00.003+08:00

5:30.

The City that Never Sleeps wakes up.

The sky is a dense, impenetrable, blue-grey fog. A cold and infrequent wind animates trees, posters and pieces of sidewalk trash. Whereas jaywalking across Broadway during the day is somewhat risky, barely any cars drive by now, making semilegal crossings easy. A man in tattered clothes sits in a bus shelter and reads a paper. “Donnie Mulls!” is a headline.

Most shops are closed, but a few are getting ready for the day: a bearded, yet bald, man in a white shirt quietly sings a song in his mother tongue as he arranges newspapers; a uniformed Asian navigates the tables and viciously mops the floor in Ollie’s; and black-gloved workers unpack boxes, unfold tables and raise collapsed tents at the Farmer’s Market.

Some places are even open already. The Duane Reade is one example. A TV hanging from the ceiling shows security camera footage of the shop. As it cycles through multiple camera angles, something becomes apparent: the store is empty. A man purchases a pineapple juice. As the cashier rings up his order, he begins softly singing along to the music playing above. The customer starts clapping to the beat. Then, he breaks out, “Just a little better!” The two laugh.

Remnants of yesterday can be found everywhere. A puddle on 112th street, a reminder of short, but hard, rain; in Bon French cleaners, a blue buttoned shirt droops off the edge of a counter; a plastic cup lies on the floor between 110th and 111th, a parabolic arc of red liquid leading from it. Save the congregating pigeons frantically pushing their beaks into the ground, the avenue is quiet.

An M60 bus glides down the avenue. The yellow lights inside are all on, but it is empty.

"one more time."

2011-06-15T21:55:00.000+08:00

Holy crap I love Mark Strand's prose poetry. I saw this in the New Yorker today:

Provisional Eternity
A man and a woman lay in bed. "Just one more time," said the man, "just one more time." "Why do you keep saying that?" said the woman. "Because I never want it to end," said the man. "What don't you want to end?" said the woman. "This," said the man, "this never wanting it to end."

AAH so good.

2011-06-15T00:10:00.000+08:00

And is there a wind that blows East,
Carrying shampoo scents, wistful smirks,
Confused skin and misplaced words?
Will it cross that West-running wind,
The gust that carries over half-written poems,
Unplaced regret and peeling palms?
We'll call it 'summer'.

Fleet Feet

2011-06-11T08:26:00.002+08:00

Fleet Feet

What’s this fluttering over my skin?

These are the geometries of the world.

And what’s this pressure on my waist?

This is the hand of fate.

And where does this bridge go?

Hardly anywhere special.

And life – what about life?

Life is a cloud of smoke

Held aloft

By air pressure and willpower.

And love?

A map of the stars.

drifting

2011-06-11T08:25:00.002+08:00

drifting

subtle and unspeakable, rising sideways -

woke up intoxicated by the ghost of your smell.

pressed down, turned around, wrung out.

oblique curls – and something that can’t be grasped,

like black smoke packed tight against the ground,

forever melting, subtle and unspeakable.

melted by heat and light

2011-06-08T23:54:00.000+08:00

1. Heaven and Hell
are different shades
of the same unspoken
and fleeting colour.

2. So fluid,
So awkward a form.
Restless snap of the
Neck, and frenzy, and listnessness.
Silken not in
Texture, but in its
Interaction with the wind,
Your solid ghost
Hurls itself into
Grotesque positions.
Shivers with
Precedent rumor,
Nods its head,
Curls up,
Sleeps.

2011-06-06T20:11:00.000+08:00

If memory is not blurry, subtle, and quiet, what is it?
Does it transmute into mere desire?
Or does it live on as the present?

2011-06-06T01:45:00.000+08:00

light and heavy
and unfeelable

everything is
happening as
i watch it -
i can't control
anything as
it happens
in front of
my eyes.

tiredness.

tingly
tingly

metro

2011-06-05T21:09:00.000+08:00

wanted to kill some time so i sat on a bench and wrote this big boy:

proud to be a hipster.

most of it is shit, but i kind of like the beginning:

The city is more
articulate on paper
than it is in real life.

2011-06-04T23:17:00.000+08:00

God lives in a cottage in the back of the lower side of my large intestines.
He's a busy man, so I wouldn't bother visiting.
Every now and then he'll walk out and tend his garden.
He's a great tenant. Pays all his rent, never complains.
There was this one time when I told him he couldn't have a dog.
I'm sorry, but rules are rules. Even for God.

Day Three Hundred and Twenty Seven

2011-06-02T23:43:00.000+08:00

Today is a good day.
Today is a day when you can
close your eyes and
let the wind carry your
hair around the world
and back to you.
Then you can
open your eyes and
see the leaves and dirt
and lovely people who
got stuck in between
those light and dark strands.
Today is a day when you can
let things happen
as they happen,
life in motion, desire
pushing itself onto more
desire. Today is a blurry
day, it is semi-sleepy,
it is full of light and wisdom.
Today is a good day.

(Inspired by this photo. And..you know...life.)

2011-05-29T11:14:00.000+08:00

With skin
Stretched and
Macerated like
Quite fallible
Canvas over
A dried lake,
The bodies,
Collapsed,
Froze in
Obscene Tableaux.

2011-05-28T22:57:00.000+08:00

The sun is screaming
and
The ground is howling
and
The world is crying
and
My bones are searing
searing pain.

2011-05-24T23:00:00.002+08:00

Never a broken word.
Never a silent word.
Never a word.
Never a murmur of acknowledgement - Not a syllable of thanks.

Infinity

2011-05-24T20:01:00.002+08:00

[24/05/2011 7:55:39 PM] HUY: WHAT
[24/05/2011 7:55:43 PM] HUY: that's a terrible poem!!

Larry saved up for years,
Working at shipping tea.
He saved up all his money
To buy “infinity”.

He looked in all the catalogues,
To find just the perfect thing.
He placed his order quickly,
Then the doorbell gave a ring.

It was the local postman,
The one who never knocks.
He held in his small hands
A brown and tattered box.

Larry asked him, “Why did you
Ring the bell when you came?
You usually never bother to warn me,
I was expecting more of the same!”

The postman looked at Larry,
He shook his head so sadly.
He turned around and left,
Having done his job – to deliver “infinity”.

Larry felt a tinge of excitement,
He felt his beating heart soar.
He lifted up a trembling hand,
And closed the front door.

He set “infinity” down – oh my!
He cracked his fingers, then gave a sigh.
He broke open the seals on the box.
What he saw inside…made him cry.

His heart froze,
His brain exploded.
Within a few minutes,
He was stone dead.

The moral of this poem,
The moral of this story –
Is to never trust a plainclothes man
Who speaks in allegory.

So if you see a person,
Who looks a bit like Larry.
Remember to remind them
Not to buy “infinity”.

Response to a Line by MGMT

2011-05-24T18:32:00.000+08:00

"How will I know if it's working?"

It's working when it feels right.
It's working when there's nothing you want to do except it.
It's working when you want to stop doing it, but to take yourself away from it is impossible.
It being ... silence - and cold energy.

What is left

2011-05-24T00:15:00.003+08:00

Two cakes of soap, and a century of quiet.

"thicker than forget"

2011-05-23T20:34:00.003+08:00

There are events that cannot be described.

There are poems that cannot be written.

There are emotions that cannot be named.

There are words that cannot be pronounced.

There are lies that cannot be lived.

There are decisions that cannot be justified.

bob dylan: a prose poem

2011-05-22T22:32:00.000+08:00

bob dylan unlocks the big glass doors to the balcony and he opens then and he steps outside. its raining outside, and there's water on the lacquered panels - panels which perhaps harbor dead mice or insects. its raining outside, so bob dylan rolls his jeans up. these are the jeans he was going to wear last night, but last night he sadly eschewed them for pajama pants, for he was hardly in the mood to wear jeans. bob dylan, with jeans rolled and glasses in his pocket, walks up to the end of the balcony and leans on the wet rail. his forearms get wet, but he does not mind. he watches the rain. he watches the lightning, counts, then hears the thunder. the storm is far away. he sees the lights of ships through the part-fog part-rain density of the air. bob dylan, being a poet and observer of the world, tries to write a poem about those ships. it starts

"mrs hurston, if ships at a distance
have every man's wishes on board,
then what happens in a rainstorm?"

bob dylan clacks his tongue and realizes that he is asking himself an unanswerable question. either that, or a pointless one. for, it is clear that rainstorms, even the toughest ones, do not hold any sway in the way that ships at a distance conduct themselves. do every man's wishes crumble and give way? no...they merely continue existing in that netherworld of hope and lust. bob dylan steadies himself, and tries to think of a fitting metaphor that will relate the storm in front of him and the storm in his heart. he comes up with nothing. mainly because a rainstorm is only ever rain and wind, and in a few hours it will stop, and such is his wounded pride, and it is a waste of time to make metaphors out of things that are what they are. bob dylan sighs, rolls his pants down, walks back in, and resumes leaning toward his quickly approaching demise.

all rainstorms, whether sweet or painful, end.

2011-05-22T09:20:00.000+08:00

   i'm near
   i'm far
   i hurt
   i don't
   i am
   i am not
   i hate (b/c)
   i love
   i hope
   i gave up

v ->

2011-05-21T09:45:00.001+08:00

most there's in the allow me to paintbrush simplest//
terrible music to be cracking of relax stroke// most restrictive
imperative// found knuckles// intensely// minimalism writ imperative

vanguard iii

2011-05-18T22:13:00.000+08:00

Shadow creases mind as
mind's eye turns inward as
shadow reflects outward.

There are ways to silence
   your enemies.
One of those ways
   is to drown them
in a shadow.

   She is a blanket,
soft, reassuring, and ultimately
                        brutally violent.
   Foundations
       are
       shadows,
casting doubts over
the sanctity of doubt.

           There is a strange comfort
           in the darkness of fear.

Let them be
       a vanguard
against all inequity.

Let them be
   more than just
               self-assured
           hypocrites.        Let them be
                           a vanguard
                   against the (oh, irony)
           tyranny of evil men.

You, voice of reason, are no longer tolerated.
We have new
vanguards to
reassure us.        Lying is not lying if everybody agrees that
                           it is an acceptable act.
As if the denial of blindness
can restore to us all
20/20 vision.

Pripyat Classroom

2011-05-17T00:07:00.002+08:00

http://lordyo.deviantart.com/art/Classroom-4-125365764?q=boost:popular%20abandoned%20classroom&qo=0

The empty rooms are quiet, still, and bare,

They used to house a bevy of school kids.

But now? Nobody dares to enter there,

For all the human presence has been rid.

The walls are peeling, light is pooling there,

A hushed and stillborn feel this room begets.

The vibrant tone belies a disrepair,

As tables rot, and trash begins to set.

In spite of all the loss and the fear,

The Pripyat classroom quite like a host.

There are still children going to school here,

They simply do not come in flesh, but ghost.

The classroom bustles with the sound of school,

Yet on the surface, it stays quiet, cool.

vanguard ii

2011-05-16T20:34:00.000+08:00

Shadow past

three o’clock

differs slightly from

Shadow prior

two o’clock

in that

in this hour, she has lost her

spine.

Perhaps, she begins to question

the veracity of the man whom

she is tasked to follow.

Her voice is almost like

an elegy written in

slow ragtime – deep and mournful.

Perhaps, she wishes to separate

herself from the man.
- no, not like mind dissociates

from body, but rather like

mind dissociates from mind.

Split upon schizoid split.

sangfroid

2011-05-14T23:38:00.000+08:00

my grandma once said that she reads so much because she wants to forget the troubles of her life. this is me doing that, but differently.

~~

"sangfroid" comes from the french words "sang" and "froid" "sang" meaning "blood" (from the latin "sanguineus", which also means blood, which is where we get the term "jus sanguineus", which means "right of blood", which denotes citizenship granted by basis of race, or parental citizenship) "sang" is the word from which the word "sanguine", which means "cheerful, optimistic" which i think is funny, because "sangfroid" is anything but "sanguine" "froid" means cold there's a line that baudelaire wrote in "song of autumn" from his famous "flowers of evil" (or, "fleurs du mal" for you fucking purists) which goes "Bientôt nous plongerons dans les froides ténèbres"..."les froides ténèbres" means "the cold darkness", although the word "cold" barely scratches the surface of what "les froides ténèbres" truly entails - it is horrific darkness that continues infinitely, yawning and never echoing the sound of any unfortunate voice that dares gaze into its trembling depths - so anyway "sangfroid" means quite literally "cold blood", and this reflects its english meaning, which is "extreme composure and coolness in the face of danger or adversity"

"Sometimes in time’s near

unassailable sangfroid there is

a thawing

& the memory

asserts its musicality again"

- If Briefly, by Allen Edwin Butt

i fucking love poetry because poetry is truer and smarter and more genuine than anybody could ever be.

i fucking love poetry because i know so little about it, but it still makes so much sense.

i fucking love poetry because god save the person who tries to defy logical reasoning in lieu of emotional thought when they're talking to me, for i will defend rationality to my last breath - but you can make me believe the stupidest, most illogical things ever if you just put them into verse

2011-05-14T10:09:00.000+08:00

some french music critic once called
camille saint-saëns a "musicianissime"
- which, roughly, means "one who
exerts musicality in every fibre of
his being"
its true. saint-saëns lived
music. he breathed music. he ate and
slept and cried and laughed and bled
and gasped and hurt and sighed music.

i guess that makes
me a "youissime"

2011-05-11T15:32:00.000+08:00

I feel life
tangled up
into a sort of
Gordian knot.
Though I do
(k)not ~~(k)now~~ know
wherehowwhywho
tired
t ir ed

A Pun-gent Wedding

2011-05-10T15:00:00.000+08:00

A Pun-gent Wedding

I, and the apple thereof,
thus join in union
with the fruits of my labor.
We shall be as a pair,
and if there exists any
dissenting man...go,
for your opinions shall be
buried under a bushel of
affection. So, although
we can't elope,
let us now leave,
mon cheri.

hi! it's me!

2011-05-10T14:47:00.000+08:00

A virgule is a slash mark that you put at the end of a line of poetry when you quote it, and one of those little diagonal bursts of punctuation is coming up soonhere it comes,

Whew.

Hold on...did you see that?

Funny, but I'm getting the feeling that

You're missing out on all these great virgules

That are sprouting out of the ends of my lines.

Here, let me try quoting myself, so that

you can see them. "here it comes, / Whew."

Can you see it now? Funny how

You can only see certain things

When someone draws attention to them,

But if you choose to look away,

They can effortlessly dissipate;

Like virgules, or the static energy of longing.

exercise

2011-05-08T11:11:00.000+08:00

I have got a feeling
and the feeling is 'pain',
it thumps inside my head
every time that it rains.
It worms, then it wiggles
digging holes in my brain,
I can't stop the throbbing;
This truly is a bane.

Just us Two

2011-05-07T06:25:00.000+08:00

If two’s a company:

I wonder who our

Investors are,

And what they think

About the way

We are managing

This business.

2011-04-28T21:22:00.000+08:00

my cat is a banana called Peter.
actually, she's not a cat, she's a strawberry frog.
trinkets trinkle twinkle little star smartstart
milk is white, no, its white.
purple on green?

vanguard

2011-04-27T00:31:00.000+08:00

shadow easing past the yard as

hypocrites trudge.

there is music in their footsteps.

a percussive music teased out from

the joints of their suffering.

held down by their inability to

speak freely, release their minds,

such weighty chains.

shadow eases past, then you

begin to whisper.

whisper becomes talk becomes

shout becomes the world.

breathe candor into these

dry bones, dear,

it’s the only way they

can hope to

escape.

2011-04-24T15:19:00.001+08:00

Mr. Carl Sandburg
Had a voice that sounded like
Dust settled on rock.

It helps me, to hear
Him reassure me on life.
On time, on safety.

Helps me forget how
Time...ful and weak my voice must
Sound at the moment.

juvenilia

2011-04-23T00:01:00.001+08:00

first thing, you're going to
look back at this moment
and the first thing
is going to be laughter.
you're going to laugh so
so hard.
then you're going to
cry.
so hard.
cry for berryman
cry for plath
cry so hard.
their work -
so inseparable from
their deaths.
this is you.
your work -
so inseparable from
your life.
learn that...in the end
you're probably
(probably....
such a
big
word)
falling down
on something that
isn't going
to
catch
you.
know now, that may be
indeed, the case.
and if so, i
fucking told you so.
nobody is going to read this
nobody is going to know what this means
nobody won't catch you
or go with you.
nobody is standing there
waiting for you
to go
over.
nobody is waiting for
you to start
nobody is confusing you
nobody is beautiful
nobody is elusive
nobody is reading this
nobody read this
please, nobody read this.
nobody is going to
prove
me

wrong.

probably.

2011-04-22T00:00:00.000+08:00

whenshe is sitting on the edge of her bed, bent over sobbing, she looks like a sigh or a breath taken in a way that shudders and halts suddenly, breaks, shudders some more and her ragged gasps for air are like trying to hold onto life or meaning or something close to that and the world is stopping her from breathing, but she starts again, and its just tiredness and want and hurt and in the end its only ever going to be her sitting on her bed crying, and thats all there was and all there will ever be, and

The Beach

2011-04-18T22:47:00.001+08:00

“But if the captain calls, you must

run to the ship,

leaving them, and

regarding none of them.”

- Epictetus

We’re walking.

Walking on the beach, baby.

We’re walking on the beach

and the captain calls.

You’re picking.

Picking up rocks, baby.

You’re picking up rocks on the beach

and the captain calls.

I’m shouting

for you

to come

with me.

it’s time to

You pick up

a piece of wood
left behind

by a ship that

no longer exists.

That plank

is me.

We could walk

on this beach

forever

but –

The captain calls,

and it’s time to choose.

I scream until

my lungs feel

the salty air

ache within.

Please, please

come.

But, you’re breaking.

Breaking my heart, baby.

You’re breaking my heart on the beach

and the captain keeps

on calling.

And you

keep on

picking

rocks.

Sweet (by Izumi Shikibu)

2011-04-17T22:31:00.000+08:00

In this world
love has no color
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.

~~~~

Sixteen words...seriously? So fucking good.

2011-04-17T15:59:00.000+08:00

O atom bomb!
O inhibition!
O unclean daughters!
O wayward sons!
We're perverse - We've gone for good!

---

Yellow on blue through fluorescents.
This is how we paint in
in-dustrially.

---

capitalism
and all sorts of other drugs
make us feel so small

Frank O'Hara

2011-04-14T18:41:00.000+08:00

Frank O'Hara wrote poems
while they happened to him.
In a restaurant, or
on the street.
As a result, his poems feel
fresh and spontaneous
like this one does.
Most of them are about
boring prosaic life
with sudden and jarring
flashes of the sublime.
He had such disdain for
the rules and regulations
of poetry,
but his stuff is
so good.
Should I have written
'so' instead of 'but' there?
It makes sense.
Oh well,
not going to change it because
Frank wouldn't like me
thinking too hard about this.

The Table

2011-04-14T18:35:00.000+08:00

I saw Bob Dylan perform with his band last night. I think he deliberately tries to make people feel disillusioned in him. It was really surreal.

~~~~~~~~~

What’s happening under the table is:

Our knees are sliding up, tectonic plates,

And I’m stretched out below, watching the

Skyscrapers scraping blue-grey vastness.

What’s happening under the table is

Imprecise, and intoxicating in the way

It blurs and shimmers when we talk.

What’s happening under the table is

Either something that is too shy to admit

Itself, or something that is too shy to

Reveal itself. Whichever one it is, it’s

Timid when exposed to light, it wants

To curl up, snug, and keep warm within

Itself.

What’s happening above the table is:

Two, who when seated

dare

not

disturb

the universe.

Strange, strange loop

2011-04-10T10:19:00.000+08:00

   To be enveloped and
to envelop at once.
We are like
synecdoche that
breathes back into itself.
A uroboric whisper
of circles,
circles circles
   circles
   circles circles
circles and warm referentiality.
Like,
prayers prayed to prayer (
hardly any room left
for the prayee,
for the prayee is the prayer).
Bidirectional and coequal,
giving and taking,
stagger/
   /circular breathing.

VACANT

2011-04-08T22:40:00.001+08:00

Sitting on the plane
from New York
to home,
reading some
Bukowski (hence the
formatting of this
little story),
I see this girl
walk up to the
bathroom.
She pulls on the door,
obviously it doesn't
open.
So she just stands
there, despite
the bathroom
being vacant.
(green light
and all)
I don't help her.
I want to see
how long it
takes before
she figures it out.
It's kind of funny,
actually.
Then this other
guy (who looks
like someone's
brother that I
vaguely know)
comes up and walks
in the bathroom.
This poor girl
is so confused.
It's hilarious.

a dynamic built between motion and not

2011-04-08T01:31:00.000+08:00

beneath all the placid surface,
there is an antecedent tightening.
a primal (~~primeval~~) torque
that tightens,
collapses,
centripetally.

eliot: a cento

2011-04-03T02:37:00.000+08:00

"do I dare disturb"
"your shadow at
morning" "which is always"
"like" "speech
without" "speech [,]
without words", "without
motion"?

"do I dare" "show you
fear" "where past and
future are gathered"?

"I do not know"

"you and I"
"you and I"
"we shall not cease"
"burning [,] in every moment"
"the stillness."

"No poet,
no artist of any art,
has his complete meaning
alone. His significance,
his appreciation
is the appreciation of
his relation to
the" "hollow men...
the stuffed men"

Haiku Triptych

2011-04-01T00:56:00.000+08:00

It feels like a wave
held in an anti-stasis
or, perhaps, in love.

It pushes, then ebbs
making my head so scattered
like louds, then quiets.

Right now, what this is:
this moment that I now force,
is to clear my head.

dullness

2011-03-30T00:21:00.000+08:00

i'm caught up in the
small things
that you smooth over
to make a
tight layer of
love

Daphne's last look

2011-03-25T00:10:00.002+08:00

Imagine if

when Daphne began transmuting,

her skin hardening into

arboreal roughness,

she turned back to Apollo

and gave some look.

A glance of either love, or fear.

Her soft features petrifying

outwards, like crystals of

ice on the surface of water,

into a bas-relief,

a study in ambiguity.

Imagine what

Apollo must have wondered,

looking at her face,

trying to decipher her last gaze,

fixed in either love, or fear.

See Apollo stroking the tree

that was his love,

soften, bark, tell me

about the warm sap that

runs under your

calloused surface.

2011-03-23T12:27:00.000+08:00

"Forgiveness....forgiveness is for anybody who wants safe passage through my mind."

My mind’s not safe for passage,

there’s glass on the floor,

broken bits of you.

I tried to pick them up,

But I got cut.

ice

2011-03-22T21:31:00.002+08:00

I’ve never thought ice to be very pretty.

It always looks so distressed.

It strains under pressure, cracking and

expanding constantly.

Ice is tension in slow motion.

It’s a symphonic crescendo taken

slowly, at a glacial (haha) pace.

As you carve your bootprint imprints

into the slick hardness,

you can feel it almost wear away.

It seems to almost give up,

but it doesn’t. It holds, sadly,

resolute, trapped in its hoary stasis.

I just learned that word – hoary.

It means grayish white. I like it a lot.

Anyway, it’s no surprise that if you want to call

someone hostile, you call them “icy”.

Death by ice is death alone,

shivering to death.

Yet, inherent in ice is it’s death by melting.

The heat of fusion of ice is surprisingly high,

yet is not unobtainable for natural processes to

overcome.

So basically, all ice melts, and

this fact is inextricably tied to the very

appearance of ice.

It’s why ice is slippery, because it

melts on the top, right?

Anyway, there comes a thawing,

where the plates of translucent water

creak and squeak,

and it gives way (in an almost

imperceptible motion which feels

beautiful, by the way,

when you touch it with your tongue.

I’m sure you know this all already)

to liquid water.

There’s a sigh of relief from the

tensed ice as it eases into fluidity.

Yet there is still apprehension

for when winter comes,

the lake will refreeze.

A Tempo

2011-03-21T20:25:00.002+08:00

A Tempo

a tempo

As in, without motion.

For, the phrase begins with

the always aberrant

prefix ‘a’, which,

as an ante-phrasal addition,

acts antipathetically to

all affirmative assertions.

Haha, or maybe not.

If anything, a tempo

is return to regular

rhythm, radically

retreating from

restless rubato.

Impasse

2011-03-20T21:42:00.000+08:00

Impasse

That’s it, then.

You laugh, and then you don’t.

You care, and then you won’t.

We love, but then we cry.

We live, but then we die.

I once told this girl called Nobody that I loved her.

For, Nobody is a gracious acceptor of unwanted love.

You see, Nobody knows what it’s like

when the colour falls out of rainbows.

When the oceans become beaches become deserts.

She knows, she’s been there.

I asked her, “Aren’t you worried that

the disease you’re looking for,

the sickness that turns your eyes black

and your skin dry,

aren’t you worried that in the end

you’ll find out that it’s just your soul speaking to you?”

And Nobody smiled and said I shouldn’t

worry about it too much.

I thought for a while and then I whispered,

“I thought I knew you.”

And Nobody asked me who I was talking to.

“Everybody.”

“He’s a bit of an asshole.”

“Yeah, I know.”

making it fit

2011-03-20T19:47:00.000+08:00

was that ‘Pleasure’

or ‘Pressure’ that He

promised would

this way come?

or was it a lie?

either way

it's been a little bit of

both.

Something Ungained

2011-03-18T14:17:00.002+08:00

I felt a cleaving in my mind

As if my brain had split;

Something Ungained

A man is standing there, browsing absent-mindedly through a November issue of National Geographic, and I’m here, looking around at the grime-flecked tiles and the dour fluorescent lamps. A woman stares ahead, her flinty gaze interrupted by the gradually slowing blur of a train. Rows after clustered rows of sunken eyes.

It dawns on me that this just might be the purest moment such a crowd of people can share. We’re all waiting for the train. Everything else is forgotten for a moment, and our problems become indifferent. This is a temple; we, the commuters, are the worshippers of this chrome snake. Cathedral bells, or maybe warning bells, sound, and a voice that sounds like the voice in our heads coolly talks to us.

Why am I here? I lick my lips and taste coffee, and it reminds me of a similar time, it’s just that I don’t know when or where or how. And I’m standing there, and the doors open to let people in, and the flow of people like calligraphy flowing onto paper brushes past me, and I’m standing there, suddenly conscious of my heartbeat and breathing, and then I remember why I’m here, and so I walk forwards and into the train. And all from my cup of coffee.

There’s a feeling of alcohol dissolving off a palm, except in reverse, and then the doors close. I close my eyes. My balance falls far right. A set of features whispers into the darkness behind the curtain of my eyelids, and a face appears. Then, a voice telling some story about some poor African whose leg swelled up like a fruit. Then, the taste of sponge cake…and that coffee scent again.

And then it’s all gone, and I try to recall it, to make it new again, but all I can muster is the image of the apparition of those faces in the crowd.

some cliched nonsense

2011-03-18T11:20:00.000+08:00

In what you see as the gentle lapping of
seawater on the sand,
I see frantic evasion,
forever agitated in it's
dashing to and fro.
It's time
   to go.
The more I think about
   worry about
you in the thick darkness
at the bus stop
  i'm sorry
as the backlights
whispered from your body
  i'm sorry
   if
   you say it, you've got to mean it.

a tightening

2011-03-13T23:11:00.001+08:00

Do you sometimes feel that tightening in the air? It's like everything converges on you, but as soon as you reach out to touch it, it dissipates, spreading swiftly in a ragged centrifugal stutter. It's really weird.

question time

2011-03-13T23:09:00.002+08:00

Where did you go
before you were here?
And, why did you come close
come so near?

stratus symbol

2011-03-13T23:08:00.000+08:00

Clouds look like
   frozen time
   an explosion of white air
   held in tenuous stasis
They whisper,
   barely
   there.
   Or they stand firm,
   denser than the gases that compose them.