Tu est le con
tu sais le bon, mais
toujours choisis l’exception.
Constant
répétition du mal:
pourquoi les fausses decisions et
pourquoi de la destruction de toi?
Regarde la merde se déverser sur le sol
est-ce que tu voulais, est-ce que tu a besoin?
Il y a ton futur qui se mourant:
tu es apprécier de lui faire?
For days I’ve said only
half of what I did and didn’t want to say,
& did all the things I do every day:
tried to escape.
I don’t know what I’m doing anymore
& escape makes such a mess on the floor.
Maybe one day I’ll make a decision
I won’t regret again
& again
& again:
always the same,
always failing to stand up to myself
& forgetting
to hide from the scaring knowledge
that all things are pretence
yet everything is true…
but I’m lying to you
again.
I have no pain
just a feeling of constant nausea
& all the talk of trying to escape
is just a way
to plead for sympathy;
pathetic, really,
isn’t it?
Fleeting insights
like
cinders drifting into the night,
reclaimed by the hive-mind
blind to the mantic fury of the lost
futures
buried beneath the crumbling tomb of history;
with no future,
the past becomes a desert &
the desert grows
moving toward us with the slow
creeping of midnight mist…
If I started to scream,
would you believe it came
from both pleasure & pain;
can you believe
in anything
beyond the pleasure principle,
where something waits,
impatient,
for the machines to fulfil their purpose?
But that question came to me in a dream
so ignore it:
because
this isn’t poetry
just alienation.
Is my story more exciting than yours?
Or did you get those scars in a bloodier war?
The pen can be mightier than the sword,
but guns would kill us all.
If only you could summon up the balls,
to stain the floor with your bullet-ridden corpse
or
vomit away your soul
&
say goodbye with the sound of broken bones
& a leap into the unknown.
Would your mind change before hitting the ground?
or would you leave with a taste of regret?
The war started before you were ready,
the fighting will fall silent without you knowing,
but
you were never ready for anything
at all.
“I love the sensation of shelter from
the storm.
I like it when it rains outside,
how it makes me feel warm.”
she said.
“I used to feel like that.”
I said back. “It’s a safety thing, I think”.
She said “Maybe…”
& I replied:
“It doesn’t happen now though, now the sound
just makes me sad.”
“Why?” she asked
“I can’t say I think about it
all that much any more…I just
don’t care.
It isn’t worth a waste of words.”
Then we were silent:
I was evading the question
again.
****
Created from a structure of complex
cells & cells we find ourselves in:
always questioning more than answering;
a distance between who we are & what we love;
the difference
between what we do &
what we dream:
we are everything & nothing:
both subject & object,
the language animal playing games in the cave…
We’re the process of knowing that
we’re reading this poem;
body & mind,
trapped in time &
sub specie aeternitatis*;
double-helix dance of meaning.
****
Security is the supremacy
of survival.
Natural data & culture
compel the worship of the Self,
but worship has always been dangerous:
people do not treat their gods well.
If they did there would be
less fear of Hell,
or banishment.
****
“I wish I could feel content again, like
when we were young,
but I’m trapped by everything I
have and haven’t done”
I said.
“But you are content” She
said back. “You told me once,
that only the moments of fleeting, true
feelings mean anything to you”.
“I say a lot of things my love
..and I talk far too much”
But then came her smile &
I fell silent
again.
Swept along by the causal tide,
riding the waves of time
or
if the numbers cease to speak
& the edifice crumbles,
revealing only a single peace-
full, temporal ontology,
what then?
How do we end
or continue, or begin to
make sense of it all without stories we
can now only read
but never believe?
I think a 12-hour shift
constantly on your feet,
making pointless shit for foreigners you
will never meet
could answer that question:
“I don’t care anymore.
All I want is to feed my family
& sleep beneath a roof & between 4 walls…”
Pay no attention to the world outside of your city,
or the sunlight bleeding across the sky.
Don’t look at the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson,
or allow yourself to cry.
Do not listen to the Gymnopédies everyday for a month,
while taking commuter trains;
don’t look at single-platform stations as you pass them by,
or aimlessly observe the detritus trying to hide
in the fringes of everything. Never create, only consume
but don’t drink alone so much that you
begin to loose your mind…
***
Listen to teachers & parents & always do as you’re told,
exercise regularly & deny you’re growing old.
Listen to Spotify playlists & buy the latest clothes,
have faith in reason & that technology will save us all.
Always assume a community is just a collection of potential enemies
waiting to steal all that you own.
Believe that you are where you are through merit alone,
& drink only in moderation.
Ignore the homeless, have faith in the government
& believe that you are free.
Teach your children to respect authority
& do the same yourself.
Use razor-blades only to remove hair,
not to mutilate yourself.
Learn to accept your place…
***
Choose pleasure over meaning, close
your eyes & let advertising
do your dreaming for you.
Ask no questions, you’ll hear no lies:
it’s the only way to survive.
For D
Pressing flowers between the pages of
stolen poetry books,
not knowing
or caring
how long the process took
or if it would work or
just cover us
in the evanescing colours
of broken corollas…
Gladly wasting away the day
we discussed stolen poetry & plucked
flowers;
distinctions & equivalence;
the thrill of transgression
& the ambiguity of possession.
Telluric currents of nuance
passed through us as
a consequence of curvatures
of time,
of our spines, of
the invisible line
unspoken, our agreement breaks
upon the edge of love & hate:
permanent & inconclusive
our ideas about true beauty
make it hard to live
but if you promise to stay
I’ll promise not to leave…
“With rebellion, awareness is born.” – Albert Camus
When we were young
They told us
“Never look directly at the Sun.”
& for a while we didn’t.
Not from deference
to the authority of parents,
but out of reverence
for the warmth:
It was the animal – the It
& not the I – that compelled us
to wear the warm veil of our eyelids
when we dared to approach the source
of all light & benevolent warmth…
…but we are human:
curiosity always defeats humility,
& so we looked
& what we saw
changed us forever:
suddenly
small animals stood before ancient energy,
a cosmic distance too magnificent
for our minor eyes to ever truly see;
a violence our gaze could never meet,
but only lose itself
in a fatal & final ecstasy
of rebellion.
Once
I looked directly at the Sun,
& now
I’m not afraid anymore.
“That which is light looks at me,
and by means of that light in the depths of my eye,
something is painted.” – Jacques Lacan
The gaze contains a curse & a gift, it
turns us into an object yet
confirms that we exist.
The vision of the other can either
become a prison, a figment
of our imagination, or
the one & only means of escape:
take your pick, because either way
it's not what you think;
the light decides
between a painting or a stain,
between pleasure or pain…
everywhere & nowhere but
always outside,
it will eat us alive
from the inside:
thoughts of what the other thinks,
a black hole
into which we sink
as comprehending apperception
twists the thread
again & again…
…until the light fights back,
& unties the knots: there is not (yet)
an answer, only the fantasy of two dancers
moving slowly then faster,
both tragic & absurd,
as an audience laughs
& cries as they turn.
