notebook

the notebook is an improvement upon the art of living.

–jorgen leth

last night was all about tomorrow; my dreams were pages for a probable occurrence. i wait for an event that has been partially guided and established, but as yet lacks detail. it is a line drawing without hue.

i wait to travel to the new city, and seek out a glimpse of an alternative; the capacity to project and relate and empathize all drawn over the top of a map, a map that waits for its edges.

of course, we are all waiting, but that is not the point.

the act of suspense and forced delay is the tangible endorsement of spontaneity: the silence before the scratch of the writer’s pen.

dealing in gradation, as though feeling were constructed of slanted, overlapping stripes, has left me expectant. so now, having released the bonds of public affectation and settled into a consistent understanding of love and torpidity, i prepare to board a plane and take myself to a parallel. i go to visit a lover, to make a new person old.

but it is more than this. while i could stay away forever, the existence would not be mutually exclusive, not a true parallel i would look over my shoulder constantly. this is not so much running away, as running to a vantage point in order to photograph the old life.

a dislocation, literally.

(a point strikes home, and my focus wavers accordingly.)

a dislocation akin to the illness that divided me for so long.

so then, the madness returns! of course! (did it ever leave?) it returns, not as previously experienced, but rather folded and in the form of a plan. i feel its insistence upon my back, but i am a translator for its intentions. i tell it not of what i speak, and instead exorcise its energies into pursuits of the mind. madness is a flight and i can’t stop thinking of unfamiliar streets. very soon i will be there, and very soon i will be back.

my notebook shall be full, i promise. just like the last time i went mad.

bright outlook

the weather forecast said that today’s rain
moving in from the west will initially contain
a kind of silence, a speech empty of words,
the perfect nothingness that the narrator
endless tries to present in literature,
within the covers of books.

later this afternoon, constant reappraisals
will occur alongside literature’s
endless self-investigation and removal,
with further removal and change because silence
is the sound of existence
is the nothingness of potentially creative negation.

the rain is set to clear overnight
but will resume again tomorrow, heavier,
like a millstone around our necks that weighs
us down into being, into a reminder
of the very impossibility of emerging
from existence; the reminder
that death is the impossibility of dying,
and that the rain continues, always.

hierarchy

a coarse probing, like adolescent fumble. the evacuation of consequence leaves intention and culpability. i’m done for.

drinking donated foreign beer from bottle and smoking found cigarette, i’m fooling with things. words and emotions and that. monotony is the source and the conflict, and there is a difference between this and routine–the guidelines of prose. finding an angle where there are only no perpendiculars. morality doesn’t exist without a middle ground, and i have no point of reference.

i count the hours that i might sleep. the martyr burns. imperial presence on top of an existence, as though i have an importance more than myself myself myself, cracked and split and all dressed up. there are a lot of things to hate.

i can’t be bothered. i had things to say.

you are a divide, breached, opened again. you are somewhere to start and the longing to stop, a forced subject. this is a ladder, a subservient acclimatization into cooler climes. holding control by fingertips, never second guessing. one thing to be honest, another deciding what to be honest about. nothing left to lose, don’t want to end this badly.

this is badly.

communism and others

manifesto
despite years of formal education
conversations into the small hours
research beyond my means
a critically aware mind
and an astute sense of proportion

communism remains beyond my reach
it appears to have something to do with cheap housing.

dvd
to be from a different city
you just have to smoke and talk a lot
like they do in those foreign films.

barrier to learning
as i spoke the words
it became clear that
my error was in both

translation and diction
because you started to cry
and i only wanted soup.

confessional
the difficulty with a widow
is the opening up

sorry, i meant window.

soothsayer
we have reached an impasse
moving into the new century
because most things have
been predicted but
nothing will happen.

no man is an island

first, halting myself with inadequacies,
i then overcame it all
with the knowledge that you loved words,
love words,
and wouldn’t mind if they were bad ones:

—-o—-oOo—-o—-

time stuttered as i saw the picture
over the mantelpiece

compulsion to write set like the fire
a desire to hear stories

to pour you another drink another
and another slowly

in the dim closing-time light
forever optimistic

a man you won’t meet every day.

apres midi

today i wrote with another, for another, in order to give this space. the pressure of nothing rides high. ambition is its own sword, its own fall. a rejection seen in the steam upon the window, and the gentle sway of curtain in rising radiator heat. traffic moves, moves me, and i rise and breathe and eat and work, all for the chance to say, “i had my time and now it is gone.“

it is brief, but better than none. i demand from myself a return to punctuality, consistency and that anaesthetizing dribble of prose that i sometimes call home.

glorietta

restaurants and designer shops
within my voice box were burned down.
the occupants, stunned.

pyrotechnics were in full bloom,
and the angelic orchestra then played
their violins loudly somewhere.
performed a sad, early afternoon party song
for everyone.

and their ghost mimes did scream out
into the faces of the young and old.
it’s scary; it’s not brilliant, but
it’s good that our atoms are
still alive.

ex

(originally uploaded by bullish1974.)

we met in separate glass boxes. everybody was watching. we improvised madly when the lights went off. some wanted an x. most wanted an o. and we managed to block each other when all the buzzing was gone.