"signifier" poems
I hear the rhythmic clapping
And feel the pounding of feet on the ground
As dust swirls and dances around
While I sit facing the sun
In all her divine beauty.
Encased in the wood of the red gum tree,
I am at peace.
Burnum carves my totem outside
Surrounded by holy men,
Loved ones and ancestors.
This is my signifier and protection.
I am Miki the moon
Recently returned to my tribe
Heeding the call of the spirits.
My people mourn deeply
But know I will come again
To be at one with them,
First I must commune with the great creator
Rainbow spirit of the sky
For now is the time for dreaming.
Mar 11, 2018
Mar 11, 2018 at 1:21 AM UTC
I dreamt this dream before I could speak it out loud,
Between the signifier and imperfect signified,
With all kinds of broken hours and promises never kept,
I tried transforming what was often said in the past.
This place would seem so real,
Made for me, trembling in the middle,
With small and growing earthquakes.
I wrote myself again—my little truths.
Looking for missing lines without wings,
Carrying stones inside my mind,
In tight, frayed bags from my beating heart,
without hope for a final insight.
Perhaps I just passed through the steam
Of a swirling, repetitive, chaotic dance,
Seeking tickets, carving an elusive imprint
With my mosaic in this human code.
Five minutes quietly slipped by.
My earned time vanished.
I had my moments going along the roadsides,
Avoiding the end of this poetic journey.
I stay wrapped in a heavy coat of suspicion.
I saw Moirés crafting another delusion.
I found a small reward in an addictive cliché,
To feel short relief from what I call my reality.
I remember what I did before,
Choosing every day not to cast a stone
Into the center of what I can’t grasp
With my breathing, human existence.
And this breath was enough.
Aug 3, 2025
Aug 3, 2025 at 2:04 PM UTC
procuring lexical polymorphism
synthesizing atypical signifier
playing blue album
awaiting tomorrow's celebrations
adding complex plugins
altering element content
watching office mascot
wheeling hue-named albums
undulating forest growth
pricing those yankees
finding layman's chaos
enjoying another victory
reviewing markup concepts
ditching error messages
enjoying relative obscurity
Sep 27, 2015
Sep 27, 2015 at 1:17 PM UTC
Is the line under
the signifier: a thing
not self-originating:
And the I that takes
a pleasure in watching
it identifies with the self
watching it happily identify
This representation of the
self in verbal and then
ideal form to be faster,
Faster, faster, because
Mommy is near and I have
wings and can ******
you with my bare hands
It's an understanding
in an unconventional way:
To say that the utterance
gives way to strength
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 11:53 PM UTC
Prolégomènes à un poème sur la disparition de notre Chienne cocker Laïka
Les Chiens et nous-mêmes
Je vous ferais parvenir le poème presque prémonitoire écrit, cet été à Letia en Corse , intitule «notre chien a onze ans» (en fait elle en avait dix ans et demi).
Ayant déjà eu, un chien cocker de couleur noire; lors mon enfance passée en Kabylie, répondant au nom de «Bambi» (le Faon de la bande dessinée de Walt Disney) j'ai appris à adorer nos meilleurs compagnons avec les chevaux et compte désormais les temps de la vie humaine en durées moyennes de vie passée en compagnie avec ce merveilleux et surtout si fidèle compagnon et ami de l'homme.
C'est à dire que pour une durée de vie moyenne de soixante-quinze ans, au mieux, je considère qu'elle correspond à cinq temps possibles de compagnonnages et d'histoire d'amitié avec un chien (d'un âge maximal au mieux de 15 ans)
Par conséquent, cinq longs temps de bonheurs nous sont donnés par la Nature pour que nous puissions bénéficier des bienfaits et de la compagnie de cet «animal», souvent bien plus «humain» et «gentil» ; hélas il faut bien l'avouer, que nombre de prétendus humains d'une cruauté inconnu dans la faune dite sauvage.
Nous allons demain et dans les jours qui viennent rechercher, un nouveau compagnon pour rester dans ce cycle de vie magique que je viens de vous révéler.
***
Notre chienne Cocker a déjà onze ans
Elle a parcouru onze ans de sa vie de Reine,
sans les soucis de l'étiquette et du labeur.
Notre chienne Laïka savoure sa quiétude,
mais se tient toujours près des valises et des sacs,
dès qu'elle observe un zéphyr de départ,
sa courte queue frétille devant sa laisse,
qu’elle prend dans sa gueule comme pour nous montrer le chemin,
car la « meute » doit se rendre ensemble sans jamais l'abandonner.
Ses deux pattes avec lesquelles elle se hisse sur les rebords de la table pour humer les plats.
Et son museau qu’elle love dans le coup de ta maîtresse pour lui signifier son amour.
Chère Laïka quand tes yeux attendrissants de cocker nous fixent je demande au Destin que tu puisses nous accompagner longtemps pour notre bonheur du présent et le demain de nos vies.
Seuls, ton museau blanchi et ta démarche moins vive, nous rappellent tes onze ans.
Paul Arrighi.
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 10:00 AM UTC
Forerunner asked
“Can you assess how much water is
there in the mountain and air?”
The aficionado of deconstruction said,
“Yes! It is not complicated;
If you drain everything through a conduit,
It is easy to measure!
So, model it and run the model!”
Forerunner enquire,
“Are you going to build a conduit
as a signifier of your existence?”
The addict of ember to exhibitionism replies
“Display the ability of tools and skill you have,
Put up the silhouette and blown up shadow,
Then wreck up when underway to allegory,
Deconstruct, search and measure!”
Forerunner smile and
Stroll away and murmurs
“Everything relative, go by the way of nature “
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 2:57 PM UTC
sifting through black rubble
i find pieces of myself
old chokes with
fractured bodies
and little burnt fingers.
the sky is a holy grey box
downpour
spiral fragments
but mostly crying children.
when will i die?
Oct 21, 2016
Oct 21, 2016 at 5:44 AM UTC
let’s talk about the time i let you kiss me
against that spit plastered
**** streaked
wall
against my better judgement
that kiss stained
your lips with
cherries in the snow
[actually let’s not talk about the time i let you kiss me]
i match my fingernails to my lipstick color
[because a man in the 1950s had a genius idea to sell more make up]
but i don't think you noticed
that signifier of high maintenance
[because we took the subway back to yours after the show]
as if i could live with a grown man
do you even watch law & order?
the fact that you knew pythagoras’ theorem
when i was being pushed out of the womb
at first turned me on
but after getting in [your] hot water
it scared me
how much more you knew
were you my apple?
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 1:19 PM UTC
One half of a crying moon sat in the June sky
An uncertain state of silence that I hate
A swarm of red lights from some farm device
Blink fiercely with a hive like intensity
Miles of metal fences leaning lazily
Held together by sandbag security
Could have been knocked over by a summer breeze
Unplanted fields yearning to be tilled and seeded
Punctuated by bare bones buildings and
Stark steel structures pulsing with electricity
Armies of insect swarm the tall lamp lights
Highways become rocky roads
Rocky roads ride out into dirt paths
Then circle back to the gravel covered tracks
Becoming the grey running highways
Nature and industry the strongest cycle
The strangest and straightest signifiers
Of nature’s outliers we call humanity
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 3:05 PM UTC
I think,
what you should keep in mind
is the thrusting
pulsation, my
veiny
body parts
do.
My heart and
others'
stop
to feel
the coursing
flow.
You don't.
But you should.
Wait for breath;
catch it and,
yes,
use it
to pull out
every ounce
of air
that seeps
from lungs
and touches
on your hollow throat.
Let it vibrate
through your empty
self, into
the
sounds,
which form
my name.
"Wo es war,
da soll ICH
werden."
--
The self is manifest in the signifier.
Aug 30, 2012
Aug 30, 2012 at 3:20 PM UTC
beauty! what a soothing tension
inside the nebula
crammed with vibrant darkness.
signified incessant, lurid
imaginary signifier chasing,
irrational lightning,
unnamed gods dwelling.
there is suffering imprisoned
in the color of your flesh,
there's false emptiness
inside hurricane’s obsessions
such frightened taste
in your lipstick
Yes, that is precisely where
beauty holds on to itself,
you just have to feel
its traces
in your tears,
in your fears
of being
so alive
May 21, 2014
May 21, 2014 at 3:00 AM UTC
In memory of Bill Berkson Poet - Rest in Peace
... cantered light-heartedly downstream to their doom.
— Patrick Leigh Fermor
Somebody down there hates us deeply,
Has planted a thorn where slightest woe may overrun.
Disorderly and youthful sorrow, many divots picked at since
Across the thrice-hounded comfort zone.
Can't cut it, sees permanent crones
Encroaching aside likely lanes of executive tar
All spread skyward.
You got the picture, Bub:
This world is ours no more,
And those other euphemisms for grimly twisting wrath,
A wire-mesh semblance bedecked
With twilight's steamy regard.
Look at the wind out here.
Delete imperative.
Hours where money rinses life like ***
Whichever nowadays serves as its signifier.
Jun 22, 2016
Jun 22, 2016 at 2:18 PM UTC
*when i'm depressed
there's always the signifier.
the ****** thumbs,
the scabby lips,
the sleeping in late
or never sleeping in the first place.
"depressed" is
a heavy heart and
sick mind
a stinging thumb
and the taste of blood
is being torn in half
"you're fine"
and "you're not"
is empty eyes and
constricted throat
dried up vocal chords
dying to break free
but choking on themselves
when asked to explain
why they
sit alone
waiting,
listening,
to nothing and
everything.
is eyes that wander
to everything they can inhale
but whisper past
the one thing they long for
they're large and blue and
love to hurt
is twisting your
already twisted spine
to sleep on a rickety thing
you know will hurt but you do it anyway
because happiness needs
underlying shades of darkness*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 11:37 PM UTC
Tell me there’s a purpose.
No.
A severed head.
The self in departure.
Crossing a river.
Light beams fall through.
There are four walls that make up the emptiness of this room.
throwing throwing throwing throwing throwing throwing throwing throwing
Language writhes.
I fail to find the contours.
Sharp and brittle, like the hop hop sting of minute glass.
pitter patter
arms thrown
out out, out out, out out, out
The word is power, signifier of a real that folds into itself irrevocably, perpetually.
I construct that which I speak, divorcing the imaginary and symbolic with a plunging knife.
God is born in ****** revolt.
Entangled in the penumbra of becoming, I birth the stranger that is myself.
Who are you?
A static noise.
Father breathing snow onto the mountain.
Hair, grey matted, a coarse empty palm.
Tell me the tale of withering.
White abyss.
The bifurcation of light from darkness.
The power of speech split totality from the world.
Purged death in freezing time.
brittle bones
circulation
a shutting door
still air
winter passing
A cool current that stutters like the clap shut of death.
I run but go nowhere.
Child crying in the empty hallway.
I speak the word but no one is there to hear it.
I circulate like blood.
Face pressed to the floor.
I repeat.
The word is power.
Tears staining my cheeks.
I am nothing but a swell.
The empty drone of the earth.
Aug 29, 2016
Aug 29, 2016 at 7:39 AM UTC
"A great artist can make art by simply casting a glance" – Robert Smithson
Not by drawing a glance,
but casting.
Imagine the studio. What
Molten materials, what
Molds needed?
Who models, and will they
Recognize their eyes, or
Is it their object reified –
The signifier or the referent
Denoted in this indexical
Congealing.
Shy, illicit, bold, flirtations, imperial,
The variations and series of directed looks,
Is this the content, or is the captured casting
The direction - just the path of pointing:
A laser beam, redone in spider web, then
done again as differentials of the air?
And what of the early work, the
Imperfections, who filed down the seams?
And would cracks in the mold shift
The glance askew, revealing
A pliers, a heater, a
Reader’s thought?
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 5:05 PM UTC
i am—i fear my continued being;
solitude trapped like my reflection;
half self-made into a slave, enabling:
the other half to be coerced freely
like the pig in its dear muck wallowing,
my semblances calling themselves happy.
in person sober always concealing:
depression has been my master since
the first memory worth remembering.
and we laugh of how life is a cinch
amid vital eyes where every smile
is beautiful—unwelcome: struggle, bile.
we, in politics still non-existent
as the spectacle explodes on our backs,
our atomisation as consistent
as series, as the urgency that lacks,
as our enemy's secret attacks that
give us illusions to keep us content
and indignant and passive and apart:
before apocalypse, and our masters.
every superficial wound or scar:
a signifier of something deeper,
a structure probably still gushing blood;
a symptom of unequal heritage.
i am a slave severed from history,
from forgotten strength of my fore-mothers,
from ignored conquests of my fore-fathers,
from my foreign birth-place and mystery,
grown comfortable in my tailored chains
and ideologies without ideas.
i groan through narcotic smoke for vistas
clear as the love i know is in your heart,
for shared stories of logical revolts,
for redemption of past revolutions,
for real collapse of tyrannical abstractions,
for my masters to fear my continued being—
for passionate thought, to be subject with you,
our loyalty fused, our direction true.
May 31, 2015
May 31, 2015 at 8:40 AM UTC
the church
corporate's
stone palace of rigidity and grief
do Satan's work
wheel house
of
lecherous priests
for crowds of power
algorithm of spiritual disaster
in an industry of lies
wet willie lick strokes
mangina ******
rituals of obedience
by **** angels
for old aeons corpse
the black robe
signifier of deceit and confusion
fits like a gothic tent
on a married daughter
"nice dress honey"
humiliators of genitals
stammer a commerce of servitude
uncertainty
and self doubt
for a vacant god
with out the life force of eroticism
guilt ****
creativity abandoned
and flowers bench press the cross
to failure
in hierarchies of shame
the bejeweled divine
huddle in darkness
pimping hallows
with the pride of the devil
for gold lame fashion and cute décor
paid for by mortified parishioner's
while **** wagging wives of God
preach celibacy
Nov 25, 2019
Nov 25, 2019 at 12:15 PM UTC
Here the "love",
the signifier,
the identifier,
The **** Sacer,
Is an anti-keyword.
Jan 9, 2022
Jan 9, 2022 at 8:55 AM UTC