a circle:
the difference between what it contains
and what it is contained by;
an empty form;
an opening;
without beginning, without end;
found in solitude perfect;
a thing that is a soul.

i contemplate my philosophotheatrics
amidst the anthroposcenery.
i’m a joke
and sometimes i can laugh at that.
i hope the gods unconscious enjoyed their comedy.

me a poet paramore of war
and laughter
afforded a good seat.

buddha without me buddha within me,
i choose the uncomfortable night,
there can be seen stars and things that need doing;
i think no longer will i sing and dance
with all the world ablaze
so enough of your death drum.
give it a rest.
i don’t often meditate though.
i mediate.
and meander towards the spectacle exit inferno
and contemplate
how to make fire burn fire
as a child of fire myself.

i’m always amused watching people
wake up from naps.
i like those sounds they make,
somewhere
between hums and yawns, not
ungrateful
but not impressed.
they remind me of cats, stretching,
the way they
softly feel about for a world they
aren’t quite ready for
just yet.
i like their eyes that don’t want
to open straight away,
as if it were too bright, or
as if they were squinting
at something in the distance, receding,
or
approaching,
or
impossible to tell.
it’s true
that the closer i looked at people, the more
often they would ask me:
what the hell are you doing so close to my face,
have you never heard of personal space?

infinity is easy to reach – woe to them who find infinity when they had sought for eternity,
and mistake the two

who saw them dancing beneath the streets, at the beach?
no-one

a sea between, multiplicity, vectors in every direction, noise—

i can’t hear you
you’re too far away

the only difference between you and me and all the rest
is distance and intimacy and all the rest

speech is belief

an abstract navigation

a threshold unto itself

somewhere else, far off

my life is either empty

or too full to appreciate what’s there.
i must set off from the middle
and get lost
if only i wasn't so obsessed with figuring out where i am.

the poet in me is shorthand for everything i dislike thereof
his clumsy wrist smudges what there is of worth amid his average words.

the soul is in the noon shadow of the very profoundest rock bottom
and the receptacle fills with sorrow still
joy erupts subterranean and bursts high enough to stain the heavens
no matter where they fall
for they must fall if we’re all to eat.

i am learning i cannot deal with silence
because for too long it has sharpened my inner ear
and it is cutting into something unpleasantly.

by that time it was the second worst time of my life
by now it was the third

unless you’re a mathematician
infinity
is a dream
but this set-up is not-all
keep your trans-finites, we'll keep our dreams

if Nietzsche teaches us anything it’s that we had to invent laughter
if only to live with our tears
but he teaches us many other things, useless and wonderful things
like dancing

and Seneca asked why cry over parts of life
while the whole of it calls for tears
and well
perhaps because its parts come too few
or too many at a time

all we lack are general and special theories of error

decisions
against decisions

it’s true you have to repeat the same to reach something new
but it only happens through that final repetition
that infinite fold
where you’re told

you’re untold

again

rest

yet

your wisdom will get old before you do

your unrest will outlive you and i know it’s no comfort but resistance is never futile
just look at the ant slaves stolen at birth with no future who revolt against the empire of their oppressors to spare their former homes where their same blood struggles on again nameless
and drop the drugs if they impede your work and stop you from being the animal at your limit
if they cut off your body from what it can do
there’s even less than no future for you

‘my dear sea up in arms at the wrong shore’
i was a beached whale
but yes Don Paterson can **** the time like no other before it kills me

and as for the tests to come, sum(s) will have cheated you all out of two or three centuries at best

unless

it’s not a light story.

i just think before knowing you won’t know that it’s something you don’t want to know
so if you take this road
know i will be running ahead
and i may fall for all my looking back.
turtles all the way down.

i’m like the world, i’m in permanent crisis
but like the world i am vast
i hide serene places, and lonely places full of factories
and deserts populated by those sharing triumph
and defeats and misery and not the means for us all
and by all means let the flowers bloom in the ruins
but worker bees will be needed and the right dance to boot.

this pen writes out the end, my walking stick,
my staff for parting seas on this planet
that’s personal and purely arid.
this spells out the end, this called here and now:
new beginnings
tides summoned
sails set
ends of the earth reached and leaped across.

waiting
waiting for someone to have been waiting.

where are all these words going?
where have they been intended to go?
i whisper
an incantation that
resonates
with desire.
it ends up
a curse.

mass grave of wasted days
outer reaches of meaningless ***
system of grand ideas amounting to
            0
dead heat of futility
thought migrating out of the confines of the human brain
endless reduplication of signs signifying
            **** all
black hole of love
commodities on all sides
lonely ecstasy
appearing without being
fishhooks of want
time without number
number without form
substance rotted from the inside
boredom
            filling interstices of voids

and you, if you, always
            somehow
untouched by these pallid things

keep on your seeking
            if you can,
o joy, go on, if you can

consider the inner stream
all that flows in you
all you hold true and hold yourself true to
desire, fear, and dream

the words and their copula
what you want to say
and what you will leave unsaid, to keep safe
hidden phenomena

the thoughts that ebb up against
all the things you saw
the grief, despondency, and joy they cause
and their consequence

the icons sunk and swimming
time, person, sense, home
nights alone, things for which you must atone
waters shimmering

those you loved and those you lost
those you won't let go
secrets you keep, emotions you won't show
gift, fishhook, cost

a thousand different currents
are pouring through you
memories, questions, laughter, light, heat, clues
your defeats and triumphs

a thousand confluences
baptised with your name
out from every corner of life they came
and found congruence

and you were once without form
but then you opened
to let in the dancing multitude whence
came your singular course

all flow with the inner stream
finds its source without
and all that flows would flow back out, no doubt
desire, fear, and dream

—

if ever you are lost
follow the stream
it begins with opening
and leads to the unknownness
that you didn't know you were looking for
all along

before we met,
i was living my death:
you became my valkyrie.
(if only i could say this
and know it as reality.)

other people
make you so miserable,
but you've still got
yourself
to make you even more miserable.

other than something or nothing
caught up in the scrambling of being and non-being
only where we can catch glimpses
of the joyous multitudes of a life
like fireflies in the dark.

our time:
it must be
the evening of the days of men.

morning came
not only the night we left

behind us
our dreams and intimacies

each other
all for the slow forgetting

distant star
light cast off like a shed skin

morpheus
adds us to the collection

letting go
does not come so easily

for those who
against fate, held others close

i thought i saw you walking
between the morpheus trees

the leaves in autumn auburn
dancing in their descending

to lay themselves at your feet
as welcome, your charity

each soft step kissing the earth
i gave chase, for what it's worth

but i turned one way, and you
another, leaving no trace

and now this place keeps secrets
of stories that could have been

and now all but a few leaves
remain unfallen, and i

deep in the still and quiet
patient, await their return

i thought i saw you walking
between the morpheus trees

with a little luck, next time
it will be you seeing me

perhaps
we only love
for a few hours of our lives.
(perhaps that is
more than enough.)

i cannot reach you
like the thing-in-itself:
i can only think you
and know you exist,
sublimely, like this isolated love
that was inscribed in all the virtual scope of space
even anterior to the time of the arche-fossil;
a tiny tragedy promised by eternity
made manifest in the place called here and now
by way of infinite, complicit, contingent physics.
and all this for no reason at all.
a beautiful, traumatic vista that sometimes reveals
questions that cannot be answered and the beyond.
and if it were all to collapse for no reason at all,
what would it matter?
at least then, i would not need to reach you.

the body i live with
is not comfortable with me,
expressed in a voice
without sound
that is an occasional harmony.

escaping the body
i live with
into fantasy
becomes just as tiring
and repetitive
and repetitive
as the days of flesh,
and produces only blank maps
and nebulous passion,
little ecstasy in comparison
and not even a trace of edifice.

the body i live with
does not appreciate
the thoughts that keep it restless
in the early hours,
the ones i won't part with.

in the waking night,
the body's muscles ache,
but secretly,
its imagination gallops.
crossing distance, never reaching you.

capitalism:
the magnificent world structure
where money trickles
up, in flows and floods,
so often from pools of blood
—how disorienting a pyramid!
how green the sky it touches and devours!
how barren the grounds around its base!—
and i still hear
the clinking of chains.
can we sit and admire a work of art and majesty
that is produced by the slave? (should we?)
...
why are there those that lack
in a world where there is enough for us all?
has money, the fifth element, not outlived
its usefulness? is it even worth its costs?
was it not always an attempt at communication?
can we not do better? and what is debt for?
and why profit? why not equality and solidarity?
what are the effects of those who hold the right
to limitless property?
what is the punishment for those
who have nothing?
where is power? what do those who have it want?
and how do they get it? what does the exercise of power
look like?
who made us all enemies?
what does a smokescreen look like
once it's been deciphered?
where is the world going?
is there no other course (than off a cliff)?
who decides? is it too late to do otherwise?
...
there's a lot of work to do,
is it worth doing?
it's only the last question i can't really answer,
but if everything is meaningless
then the meaninglessness of it all is meaningless too
and the space is clear
for me to declare a call i shall heed to.
i set no destination, i yearn for comrades, i seek only
a horizon:
perhaps the grass gets greener
the closer you approach that mythic utopia,
the motivation, the far off joy
that waves and beckons endearingly.
"the journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step"
and there are many terrible and wonderful vistas
along the way.
"the masses make history."
"the one who moves a mountain
begins by carrying away small stones."
won't you consider being the movement
of masses with me, in search of freedom
for all
forever and forever and forever
...?
"you can always make something
out of what you've been made into"
so why not try to make something
impossible, marvellous and necessary
...?

what happened
to the song in your heart?
is it lost to you?
it will never end, it
will play on new instruments.

where is the time that drips like honey from the ark of eternity?
under the starry skies that are you eyes!
and yes, i've used that metaphor too many times:
so be it! so be it!

soft are the lips of truth, unworthy are my own.
up, down: my ever undulating tongue.
sinking into your seraphic image,
i slow dance with plasma shed from the sun.

poets
make great
stepping stones.

what can we do about things
beyond our control?
make noise!

may i become the rains where the drought persists,
and strength for those who need to resist;
may i become the pole star for those lost at sea,
and shelter for those who need to flee.

may i become a twilight for those who've known only night,
and healing balm and bandages to ease their pain;
may i become a ladder out of their pit and up to new heights,
and may i become a hammer set against their chains.

may my soul become a song
and may its melody become a protest and resistance,
may it find harmony, echo, and resonance,
as struggles go on and on.

oh my body,
may i become
all that others have been for me,
as struggles go on and on.

i am compelled to write poetry
in much the same way
as i am compelled by my
bowel movements:
the process, experience, and results
are pretty much no different for me.

a whole sky to be turned to ash in my lifetime
whence no phoenix of our kind rises:
beetles, bacteria and capitalism proved immortal.
the train approaches the precipice; the closer
to the engine, the more comfortable and powerful the passengers.

children cry up from the depths of debt for bread and help and shelter
met either with the ideologue's injunction "austerity!"
or deaf ears and money
invested in guns, bombs and rhetoric.

a whole body to decay and to bloom,
to stray through the fields and into the tomb,
with hands
to give shape to screaming heard only in the shadows of my eyes

to trace out the grand design of my doom
to articulate on pages my sense of suspension in dread

to caress another body and forget it all in our ecstasy

or perhaps to lend freely, so as to build sandcastle-utopias
together, on the shores of the blood-red sea of history
by the monotonous waves and the sorrowful, joyful,
invisible, indifferent, post-anthroposcenic tide approaching.

a whole body to be wasted or used,
to be thrown into the fray or a figure of privilege abused:
an opportunity, or a catastrophe.
we must chose, we must chose.

it's true that the more poems i wrote
the more women i made feel uncomfortable.
sometimes this made me cry: it's tragic, after all,
when people don't recognise greatness.
and i am privileged to have been witness
to my tears
and the algae their oceans bloom,
and the violence of understanding so luminous
that i keep my vision black
for fear of what might
come to light in the shadow of my eye.

i think someone once told me
that i'm a good listener.
i've never heard what i wanted said.
don't forget me,
i never follow my own advice.

i find myself in some of the empty rooms
of my soul, and shout:
what are you doing?! it's mysterious outside!

i couldn't keep a cool head
and now the ice caps are doomed
which means the rainforests are doomed
which means the ocean algae is doomed
which means the permafrosts will melt
which means we're all doom bound.
of course, given Man, we're on course to be early.

the echo full halls
of my historicity are painted
with disaster
and haunted by the light
of a collapsing star.

there's always a lot playing on my mind
and i never really want tomorrow to arrive.

these depressive episodes have been put on a playlist
and set to repeat. the screen has our attention hostage.
i leave my sleep to the genesis of sunlit dreams
and let it eat the majority of day.
already sick of my share of time;
force fed countless pointless hours
of whining, pining or hiding
by my own hand that i'm biting,
and platefuls of pressure and fake faces
that i ***** behind;
binging on escapes destined to forsake me,
guzzling my own requiems to the potential for strength;
but i'm getting ahead of myself.

we share the shelter
of my lonely head.
so much to do.

my body is a temple
desecrated.
sacrificing commitments
to addictions.
such a repugnantly reactive creature.

there's a child somewhere inside of me
and he's crying his eyes out.

he annoys me so much
that i locked him away alone in a dark room.
i didn't actually lock the door,
i just told him i'm locking it
and he's too timid to be defiant
and too weak to lift a body laden with freedom.
so i just told him he's staying in that room
and i told myself to set the structure on fire.

there's a child somewhere inside of me
and he's crying his eyes out.
his incessant tears have waterlogged the entire tomb
while outside lie monuments of drought.

in search of
blue mountains,
sun hidden.

tender the longing
of days gone
unforgotten.
what luck that all that goes
returns in altered form.

rust is the template of our salvation.
we are all drug addicts and prostitutes,

                                                   ­                                except there are exiles.

we fixate on the mirror to escape
ourselves.

there are no real words, we vanish into
a misspelled being. sight imaginary; thought
symbolic; only touch is ever real.

it’s impossible to think your way out

                                                            ­                           of a refugee camp.

you can only struggle

or be privileged
enough to move like capital across borders
(freely).

the other is injected into me:
it is the denial of the addiction
that is making me sick. *semper eadem.

the red moon.
the red horizon.
the red necessity:
a world for us all
or death, despair, and death
forever and forever and forever
in the blink of a blind eye.

often i ask of my cigarettes that
they last forever. they always answer
in ashes, smoke the moonlight slow dancer
arching out of its own transient act

as if parting came easy to creatures
that dream of eternity, and wake up
again craving its adumbration, butts
spilling out of the tray, pale these seekers

their beauty not betrayed by their briefness
but by the dream, for some things are only
enjoyed by virtue of their vanishing.

it will free if it makes time for stillness.
be patient with what is strange—there, the opening.
breathe, and know nothing but fascination.

i keep having these
moments of transcendental clarity
where i realise how lame i am.

loneliness is a love that cannot communicate
not even with itself.
the way out is the way home, and back again.

having
not having
having but not
enough
enough but not
wanted, saying
if but not for having                
nothing
not having but saying anything not
enough
but enough
if wanted but not enough.

grasping
ungrasping
grasping and letting go
grasping and not
reaching not enough
not catching not
holding
on, but go on
grasping, in the mud
ghosts for the letting go
not reaching but
again
again not catching but
closer
if still not holding if only but not
but saying enough
if saying is enough.

i have hit rock bottom, and now i am
pestled into it. my body has been
forgotten, my metal appendages
are becoming independent. o man
you beast, you insult to beasts, you maker
of beasts please i beseech you unburden
yourself of yourself and me now learning
i have squandered my learning and learning
of my eyes and teeth, lips and tongue and wonder(s)
unclean, torn, horror, rot set in where hoarded.
lexicographers of injustice all
bribed to omit that which was done to you.

tempests out of breath.
better an experiment
gone horribly wrong
than a life left untested.
rest, repeat, difference.

saturated with angst,
i don't go with the flow:
i sink.

i was told the wind would tell me my name
that could not be spoken, so came the breeze
with secrets undeciphered through the trees
that one autumn of unheard of refrain.

but ever since that labyrinth opening
the walls have been moving and the winter
of eclipsed understanding will linger.
how briefly light comes, when you think of it—

what more could you need to transfigure a place?
the wind is coming from somewhere remarkably
far off to dance just a little with the curtain;

spring and it came all this way to caress a face.
we come from mystery and go back to mystery
and this alone we can say for certain.

the centre's hold must be broken.
it doesn't matter if you're right,
if you're just:
without the mettle,
you'll lose.

sick of this emptiness.
perhaps i'll *** flowers.

the body of the name lying naked on the tongue

the touch of rust

the sunset at the change of the season

the sea coming home to a lonely shore

the lips asking for more, the ears the amorous organs

emptied of echoes, the cities built on bones

from scrambled noise emerges syntax

that conjugates attraction in parallax

and someone or not-one spoke a metonymy of solicitude

in the beginning in the end, in the garden in the ruins

events ever fragile, encounters that were almost nothing

the hounding difference between a thing and a word

between us and us

between the data, the predictions thereof

and the unexpected

that we have not yet learned to trust

the body unspoken, the touch untranslatable

forever taking things apart, not quite
piecing them back together: that was all
we knew, in those idle days of quiet.
our pretty words were leaning how to crawl.

before long we found that we each had wings
that made doorways difficult to walk through.
the worship of imperceptible things,
looking back, without, should have been a clue.

but a series of truly insignificant detours
could not sustain—o blue!—  
                                                    the flight  
                                                        ­     we knew
                                                                ­ as recourse.

small bird darting across blue,
when i look back
you'll be gone.

i must learn to stop staying up so late
as if my wakefulness could keep tomorrow
at bay. i never learn. perhaps i'm lonely.
but am i not here, in the milky way?

it is not enough to know the name. no.
he had told me, always will be enough.
i'm still to learn the meaning of these words.
there is nothing on the other side of

the word: this is the meaning of the earth.
it is not a tragedy, or at least
it does not have to be. it might be worth
our time, to enquire if we are free.

so far from her
lover's embrace,
the sky is weeping.

why do i hate this person so, to whom i have been
so little exposed,
of whom i know no more than a meaningless name?
because they express traits i repress in myself.
traces of hatred remain,
with all their searing weight and strain,
for as long as i, myself, the world's flows-and-structures,
stay the same, in torrid stasis, code, and axiom.

i would
talk about performing
any sacrifice
if that could, as in my dreams,
convince you to want me.

sometimes
the script is already written.
sometimes it's ad lib.

here now later gone before forgotten
all of want none of have some of lost
enough never too much always too little
too often
time wasted time waiting time regained
too late
intimacy short lived distance prolonged presence
of absence
heart emptied heart broken heart reforged
illusions clung to truth ignored the everyday
mundane
god dead god reborn god turned to money
past repeating future destroyed present
slipping away
a touch remembered a bond abandoned an idea
betrayed
a day alone a night alone forever sleepwalking
a dream a nightmare the blink of an eye
earth burns oceans poisoned permafrost melts
a fascist here a fascist there fascists everywhere
random kindness calculated malice endemic
indifference
an old oppression a new form of terror an eternal
struggle
freedom abstract cages carried wings torn off
here now later gone before forgotten
all of want none of have some of lost
enough never too much always too little
too often
time wasted time waiting time regained
too late