Dancing

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Insistent whispers from distant places,
tease & menace;

the hold is held*,
coils then melds, melts & is gone forever.

Solid & insubstantial, all objects
whole & partial
resist or yield,
or stubbornly reveal futility

to be both the cause & death of meaning:

every answer
a more graceful dancer than the question;

                            never ending
tension between existence & being.

It slips away,
                            eternally
within the reach
of a grip that cannot keep what it holds:

grains of sand in the hands of another creature

who doesn’t understand
either…

* Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Here we’re allowed*

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Here we're
            alive.

Here we are as we love & complain,
orgasm & menstruate;
vomit & piss & waste our hate
on the smallest of things.

Here we are
            with or without
mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters;

comrades or enemies;
consumers or revolutionaries,*

distinctions that mean everything
& nothing
            because we
are only an accident upon accidents,
so improbable
as to constitute a miracle:

here we're alive
                to the glorious light;

your life is not a cage, a stage
or a performance,
                it's an accident.

You're alive

            then you will die.

So laugh until you burst.

*Idioteque – Radiohead

**Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious – Against Me!

Evergreen

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With all the inevitability
& perfect frailty
of autumn’s
final fallen leaf

the secret violence of our silence,
stands exposed;

a distance so vast in a space so small.

Every word that once was shared
now hides
with their patterns obscured.

The summer is turning it’s back,
as the wind grows sharp teeth
greedily devouring the trees;
darker mornings, colder evenings.

Will the winter destroy the warmth we need,
or will we find a way to keep our dreams
from fading?

There is still hope,
not every leaf will fall:

some trees are evergreen…

There is a robot that lives in my brain*

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Warped
        the shape & sound of thoughts
contort as they rise & fall

in the darkness.

I cannot catch them all.

So now pure instinct reigns supreme
& the Will relents
to every whim
of this self-destructing machine:

object
not a subject;
the It
& not the I.

Or is that just one more excuse?

When tomorrow becomes today,
perhaps it all will change

or stay the same.

*No Future Part 111 – Titus Andronicus

The Madness of Crowds

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The talk,
        the talk goes on forever;

unfocused, the tumult of noises sounds
like the symptom of a fever.

I pick out one voice after another,
disappointed as each
seems to me to be a foreign language
I cannot speak.

It’s the silent ones I can understand,
shrouded in loneliness or pensive thoughts
        or maybe just nothing at all.

Are they, like me,
        bewildered
                as to how the past
can blend
from Spring into Winter
so swiftly?

As the noise, the
        noise goes on forever…

Sand Mandala

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For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness

Keeping Quiet – Pablo Naruda

 

Using water to gild wild flowers with gold leaf
for hours.

The technique requires practise that few will ever
master,

                            yet still you keep trying,
while the world around you ignores all that you
want to
                            give: a delicate gift;

desperate attempt to prove that you still exist,

before a silence, so profound
descends, just as you have been dreaming of
                            ever since

your first fascination
                            with gold leaf & flowers.

All of this is temporary*

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The City swells with life
& I,
                        insignificant,
stare at the people & the buildings
& the utter lack of meaning
overwhelmed by purpose:

one must stay busy.

Smoke dances the in rain
                        framed
by the sickly-white, luminescent light
of the street lights:
sentry post for every building.

They are trying to say something,
these buildings, something
more than their designer or
creators ever intended,

but I don’t know what it is
                        any more than they do.

So I flee to the nearest breath of green
& living things;

I tilt my head back,
as I lay down upon the the grass,
& stare at the immense & ancient darkness of

                        the sky…

*“Emnacipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessay and inevitable to be a mere contigency, just as it must make what was previpusly deemed impossible seem attainable”– Mark Fisher

Constant inconstancy

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It isn’t the same, it
                        can never stay the same.

No grass seeds always ready to
raise their blades again, only
                        
                        change

slow or sudden,
willed or unbidden,
                        there is only change

& nothing else.

Habit & time,
                        being & repetition
build an image of difference
                        & permanence,

but there is only change;

the one constant
                        dressed as paradox:

there is only change,
                        change

& nothing else.

Unsaved Document

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Returned now to habitude & ugly
old attitudes resume.

Refrain from razor-blades against
                                the skin
but now place them instead between the teeth
so during sleep the mouth
fills with blood

forcing shame to keep
a silence unredeemed
by graceful movement or delicate features;

eyes that do not see the open,
                                absent
of the pulsation, the differentiation
                                separating
life from death, death from dying.

Until, once again, the morning comes when
a mother bends to brush against
                                her child
& the animal rejoins the wild challenge
of existence:

begin a new day, with
different hunters, different prey yet
always the same ancient struggle
                                despite
the panic, the shit, the pain that afflicts
all living things.

Grace is acceptance, grace is
defiance;

for the hunter to eat the prey must die,
& for each to drink
the gaze must sink down toward the water.

There, where the reflection resides.

There, where there is nowhere

                            to hide.

Desire

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Mais c’est la machine en elle qui rêvait de caresses… -Sartre

Wrong words sometimes misheard
                            as the correct ones,

(Correction:
            there are no correct words,
            only those more or less sufficient.)

dreams disguised as prophecies while
                            all prophets are despised
& each day either parading,
            sombrely proceeding, gliding
            quietly by
or screaming as it runs into the night.

Were these fiercely defended fantasies
created only to be destroyed?

                            Is that why
we still desire them?

How strange it is that the urge to leap when crossing
a bridge so rarely corresponds
                            to the balance
between despondency
                            & excitement;
solidarity & isolation;

love, indifference & ideation…

                            how obvious
it seems in hindsight
that colour depends upon more than light:

if we close or open our eyes;
the strength of our sight; what
            we choose to see,
            or if

we look away.