Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Shorts!


Stars and a Few New Things.

I.
I grew up on a Death Star.  My father was a member of the plumber’s union.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, but it really wasn’t like that.  We didn’t hold hands and sing songs about forests or the old worlds.  Death Stars may all be Utopias, but no two Death Stars are the same. And even Utopians have to shit.  We ate and shat and worked and made love and read the literature of dead and dying worlds from our peaceful crèches, all while hurtling through the void in a metal monster.  And, as the song goes, it was beee-eau-ti-ful.  There were times, I must confess, when I looked out my porthole onto a half-charred planet with forgotten junk swimming a halo around its upper ionosphere, and wondered: what could they feel that I couldn't?  Why were all of the books that stirred my soul from those dead worlds?  And why was I stirred by words that felt like wounds?  It has taken me fifteen years of exile to understand my own desire.  We cannot write, us Utopians, because we are a longing fulfilled and forgotten.  There is nothing left to write about.  That’s why I’m here, in this filthy little containment field on a forgotten moon.  To fulfill the longing for longing, and to write about it. 

II.
My mother was an egg, and her mother was a protein strand.  There.  I’ve said it.  It’s good to get these things off one’s chest (or whatever passes for a chest on your world—I don’t mean to discriminate).  My mother was an egg and I’m a bird, and my chest is pelted with red feathers and I can sing beautiful songs, or so I’m told.  I’m having difficulty adjusting to this life, and I have to be reminded that my burning light has reassembled itself into a trembling mass of heartbeat and blood and skin.  When I forget, the crows jab at me and cackle about cats and I fluff my feathers out like a cocoon against night terrors and gleaming teeth.  I miss being the center; it’s so cold out here and my bones are such fragile silk spun things that I sometimes contemplate making friends with one of those cats, moving on to something different.  The physics of flight evades me: if I can’t spread my thin body into a pulsing sail and ride the invisible up up up, how will I ever get back home?

III.
The universe, being only one, was lonely. Its insides churned with stars and stones, gases and genomes.  Its heart was a million burning suns, its lungs a great vacuum.  The universe sang its loneliness from canyon to crater, from river to black hole, but, being only one, there was no one to hear it.  This is a useless place, it thought, and sank into a deep depression.  The depression was so deep that parts of the universe became strange to itself.  Like a morbid man might think “this is not my hand, those are not my feet,” the universe became estranged from its extremities.  Galaxies roiled across an imagined surface, and the universe’s hunger became a demon.  The demon whispered to the universe (himself): “those are not your galaxies (hands), that is not your star (foot).  Swallow them up, and you will be satisfied.”  And so the universe ate up its own materials, gnawed at its own edges, chewed the fleshy centers of each planet until only the chewing center remained.  Being one is lonely, it thought, but being half of one is even lonelier.  It cried and cried and cried and began to feel very full.  Its insides spasmed with pain, and the universe choked with fear.  “What is this?” it called into the swollen nothing.  The pain became deeper and fuller.  The universe forgot its loneliness and gave an anguished push.  And from that push, its missing half was born, rocketed into the nothing and settling down in the places it had always occupied. The universe had born multiplicity of its oneness; from the same stone and gas and vacuum and blood came otherness and alienation.  And the universe so loved their strangeness that it gathered them gently into a single stone.  The new stone settled on the edge of a star, teeming with the purpose of the push that gave it life.  The universe swathed the new stone, the self and not-self, in gases to soothe it.  The stone cried and cried and cried; love was written into its materials, and it despaired at the separation.  The universe shrugged: the stone would figure things out eventually.  To be one, thought the universe, is to be abominable.  It sat back, satisfied, and looked at the rivers and canyons, craters and black holes, and wondered at their strangeness.  I am strange, it thought, and I am many.  The universe had no further need for demons.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Weightless

There is a wire strung here, so that we might know that we are not alone in being foolish.  A perimeter is a measure of loss, the manifest destiny of an obituary. How many years can I knot inside these walls?  The fear of loss is the harbinger of isolation.  We are where time stands still.  So many specters dangling from that coiled place, a wonder, a breath, stone belly crushed around an impossible stasis.  I would I were more than a nostalgic pleading, a rope caught between rocks.  When is it just—

There is a wire strung here, a cut masquerading as an object, a bombastic wound, a low sung loneliness.  In this cavernous mouth is the song you sing when everything is hollow, carved out, eternal, and it tastes good.  The clearing is where your mouth curls around word and tongue, a blood-deep steadiness that does not ask for an I am.  The what-ifs put me out of my mind; philosophy and desire tangled into an impossible grace that lifts the stone from my tongue and leaves a space for song.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Poetry: Interrogative

Generate me some Prophesy
with your Crew-cut Clipboard
I fear becoming an orchid
before my time is up.
Blinks twice
(a suggestion of narcissism?)
or only a Hit and Run.

I've stolen so many bases.
I feel dizzy and sick.
Can't remember my dreams,
only stale blanket smells
and
A Knowing Glance
and
Take two before bed.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Poetry: Prey

Shrink wrapped hatemail holocausts
Put your good shoes on 
And look sincere about it.
But we're all judas so  
the wrong god walks the green mile.
A traitor isn't lonely
The cause keeps him warm when
All the beds are taken.
Dandelion seeds ask if
one lonely ape loses his head,
What's the big deal?


Man is the predator that shows its teeth
And calls it kindness.
Explosives hard wired into his grey matter
A Fanatic
An interrogator of dreams
With a hard-on for possession.
the wrong god funnels whispers from
an electric chair:
sing me out of this glass cage
and I will show you an after religion,
an after death.
I will show you what comes after
the need to own.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Writer's Block

Psychoanalysis: you want to have a penis.  Everybody wants to have a penis.  If you had a penis, you would be able to produce copious amounts of highly dignified work.  Creativity is a phallocentric act.  Yay phallus!  Boo lady writers!

Phenomenology: The being of a writer in their writer-ness is a revelation of what is. The act of writing is an act of becoming.  If you can't write, it's because you're out of tune with the beingness of beings.  You are an invisible non-being thing lacking thingness.  You should either join a cult movement or stare at people's shoes until inspiration-ness comes to your typing-ness. Wooooooooooooo

Existentialism: You're not writing because you've created a reality where you don't write.  What that means is entirely up to you...don't be such a baby!  Suck it up and generate some meaning!

Nihilism: We don't give a fuck!

Eastern Philosophy:  Mu.

Western Philosophy: Me, me, me, me, la, la, la, la

Scientology:  Thetans are sapping you of your creativity.  *Alien slurping*

Christianity:  Jesus loves you but you're going to hell anyways cause you don't love him back.  Why worry about writing?  You should be worrying about your soul!!!!!!!!!

Agnosticism: We don't really know, and we're too smart to guess.

Marxism:  Your creativity is being oppressed by the state.  Kick the state's ass, become the new oppressor, and you'll write the great american novel.

Behavioralism: You're not writing because you're not writing.  Duh.....

Nursery Rhyme:  Hip-Hop, Knock-knock...you're not writing because you've got writer's block!

Seriously...can I count this towards my page goal for the day? :D


Monday, December 20, 2010

Poetry: New Things

I've Cut my self
Free & Clear of Present
Awareness, dwindled.
Drops of disphasic
Numerical Significance
Utopia Enslaved to
Power Lines. Binary Code.
Unequivocal Equivalencies
Absentminded Vacations of
Ethereal Future Spending

Hush, Now.
I have not budgeted time for this
Reality.  I will write it in for
Tuesday's the day everything will
Cave in.  I'm paranoid but I'm
told that's healthy nowadays.

Hush, Now.
It's important to be goal Minded,
Dead as the wire in my brain
Letting out little drops of blood
Tap, tap, tap. I miss missing.
Put me back in the closet, I'm
working things out. I haven't
given up, just switched brands.

I'm trying out zebra stripes
and BDSM.  I'm pissing with the light
off so I can reminisce about the water.
Falls of my childhood.
I collect the wrong kinds of pain.
I'm looking for something quick and
Brutal, Something to
Render me awake so I might dream.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Poetry: The Western Bodhisattva

Open your dead white eyes and say something re-le-vant.
The East is so romantic (I feel enlightened by Tienemen Square.)
I can disprove the existence of God because without without….

Loneliness is the sound of one hand clapping, beating against—
 the wire thin fragility of Walmart smiles (you call this creativity?)
One plus one plus one plus one is less than one lonely hand….

Please don’t try to explode things with the power of your mind.
Just hold them in your mouth until your tongue turns Black.
Why are the parts most susceptible to hemorrhage considered lovely?
Lovely is as a flower petal curled under a wet pink wyrd.

A secret you should know is that I keep no secrets, only mysteries.
A secret you should know is that there are no secrets,
Only the interpenetration of hissing fingers and lovely sores
Clasped together, white knuckled and smiling.