26 July 2006

Come, night.

I see terrible things. A hand cupped, holding blood. Machinery clanking away, pieces of rust flaking and falling away, all spiralling out of control and into a void. A phone call in the afternoon. It is expected isn't it? At least by those with any natural talent in the prognostication business, or anyone claiming to hold onto reason . . .

A man in a robe of white, lined with red. A setting sun. Climbing up out of that metallic void to glimpse the stars, a new kind of cold, a briliiant cold. Air is crystallized, and all the world seems bent on something just about to happen. What is it?

What has caused this stillness? A phone call in the afternoon, a robe lined with red, a betrayel? Of what? Of reason, of the unknowable. What did she say? Don't ask me, I've forgotten already, no wait, the words burn like ice, they are there, frozen into consciousness. I dropped a shoe into the pond once, and when it froze over, you could see that shoe, permanently frozen down six feet in the water. A moment frozen, enhanced, brought into blistering clarity such that every detail is blinding like the sun, a flourescent exposure of all the blood in this poor machine, all the pulsing veins to ask what is there?

Love? Wait, let us dive back into the details, a setting sun, a beach, the point of seperation between land and water, between the reason and cognitive clammering of the day, and swimming through the passions, the chaotic, biological sea, it is warm I think. Wet.

She, washing, over, me!

So...
A beach, a sun setting, my hand holding her face, her warm cheek cupped in my hand, tears in my eyes, her eyes, and then a moment of such blistering perspective I wrote around it for four days refusing to focus on the immediate past and insisting on focusing all of my powers on the mental journey, the pursuit of the Deus Abscondita, the chaos, while ignoring that sharp little moment, which is now blown up to such magnificence in my mind.

Gather Your Rage. Your Out...Out...Rage!

"I am the Sting in the tail of a wasp
I hurt most when you're
Trying to shake me off

I am the conveyor belt
That runs through your local hospital
I am the triage you never met

I am the absence of activity
that built the wall
you live on top of

I am the lie that you spat forth
Pampered, constantly fed
Just for telling you you're not dead

I am the truth we all ignore
The futility you can't avoid
The row of stones in a fertile field"

A parking lot. No, not just a parking lot. 1369 Cafe. Sunday night. Underneath starlight that is so reassuring, so powerfully mysterious yet immanent and all of it seems to point to something that will not bear the describing. And I kissed her. Her lips were cold, it was cold out, thin fog made the stars hazy, and she pointed up, to the stars, and I kissed her. And then it all crashed through me. Out of the fire and through me into journals and notebooks. "GOD who is ineffable created separate beings, whose knowledge was expressable in language, such that this mysterious god may explain and reconcile himself to the void; imagine the aweful symmetry should this be true!" Written in a software design meeting. 11:00 in the morning EST.

It all seemed blazingly clear.

And yet something was missed. Somewhere the heart of rot still hid, waiting with his poison. Somewhere a heart turned cold, run ragged by this streaming self-delusion ------

The light had not penetrated all things, and rapture had passed me by. I am not one of the chosen, so now I seek a doorway to make that other bargain, and to undue the stars with damned forgery, such that men may moan and sweat and love for my sake, and not this God who hides from men. Since I cannot prove a lover.

Death to the living, long life to the killers.

Come, let us build a tower whose ramparts will rival heaven, and whose flags will scare the gods.

Come night, enwrap me with your song and tell me love doesn't exist, and nurse this coal of hatred, such that it will burn bright. Or just keep us warm.

So . . .
Making my second cup of coffee, soon enough it will be chilled, didn't quite feel like making a new pot, just icing up mug by mugful, I think. I read today, before the rain cancelled everything, sent me on my precarious road home; "to set two souls in rotation about eachother/ such that all they see is eachother - fitfully" I held that fitfully back, letting the full warmth of the sentence sink in before I threw it into discontent. It was pretty fun. I wish I had more of my material, but eh, it will come.

So...
I'm working on a three projects right now, not quite boredom's deathnell. The provisional title of my government project is "My Brecht is in Colorado - An Architectural Diatribe On Terrorist Social Networks" as the copy of Brecht that I ordered happens to, currently, be in Colorado. What a stupid idea for a title, right? Well, we will see. I think "the agency" will appreciate the bitter irony.

My other personality (the quiet one) was holding Claudius accountable for trying to mix "mirth in funeral, dirge in marriage" saying that it was impossible, a high crime, but isn't that exactly what our lives are, as Dave Eggers writes, we live, simultaneous on the virge of tears and laughter, never knowing whence our response, but out of that well of memory.

I LAUGH UNTIL MY HEAD COMES OFF
SWALLOW TILL I BURST

There is a beauty to the city, cloaked in darkness. I dedicate this next poem written on the cloth towelette stolen from the men's room, to the duck quasadilla and dirty martini I had at the Four Seasons last night.

I. Duck & Dirty Martini

Gimme something to live for,
gimme something to die for,
give me something
a word maybe,
or two or three,
a whole history
or just be silent, yes
give me that, and be silent
and let me peer into you
and nod, yes, I can stay here awhile,
yes, I understand now,
yes, this is what we've been waiting for
And now everything's gonna change.
check please.