"simulacrum" poems
A landscape devoid of transparent eyeballs.
When did we all become photographers?
Freeze fleeting things,
filter clouds, endless beauty a simple effect.
Funny how enclosures feel obsolete—
the graves, the houses, three-sided mornings—
when I am a share, a like,
self-simulacrum selfie.
I stand on a fascinating algorithm,
Below that it’s reposts all the way down.
Share, share a like,
share a googol of happy lives
better than yours.
Are we saying yes
to starting off yet again,
absent this time?
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019 at 8:24 PM UTC
Each lover has some theory of his own
About the difference between the ache
Of being with his love, and being alone:
Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone
That really stirs the senses, when awake,
Appears a simulacrum of his own.
Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;
He cannot join his image in the lake
So long as he assumes he is alone.
The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone,
Are always up to mischief, though, and take
The universe for granted as their own.
The elderly, like Proust, are always prone
To think of love as a subjective fake;
The more they love, the more they feel alone.
Whatever view we hold, it must be shown
Why every lover has a wish to make
Some kind of otherness his own:
Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.
6.6k
Passing through mid-century
these jazz oneironauts reached Apollonian heights
while society drifted into Dionysian drunkenness
the merchants caught on too soon
The most beautiful parts of humanity
enamored to serve the ugliest:
The merchant class, the bourgeoisie
Buddha’s undeserving in charge
If only in past centuries
those noble princesses embraced
even more lowly patronages
all this potential today could be staved off
Saved from the drive to be commodified
People stopped buying jazz as it reached its height
No more smiles to appease the whites
Jazz for the few
the noble, the individual in the know
Until this too becomes the simulacrum
The Ornette Coleman on the bookshelf
to signify your snootiness
your refinement from wealth
Aging Dads in thousand dollar sweaters
kicking out their 22 year old kids
for being ****** addled hipsters
meanwhile Bird on Verve is nodding out
and Dad’s girlfriend pops a Percocet
to deal with all the stress
Jan 15, 2022
Jan 15, 2022 at 10:50 AM UTC
Vast and grey, the sky
is a simulacrum
to all but him whose days
and vast and grey, and—
In the tall, dried grasses
a goat stirs
with nozzle searching the ground.
—my head is in the air
but who am I . . ?
And amazed my heart leaps
at the thought of love
vast and grey
yearning silently over me.
3.4k
sleepy eyes open glimpse high ceiling red wood beams house built in 1920s glance out window tree tops blue skies mountains in distance flock of birds flying east chirping sounds passing car engine accelerates inhale deep breath through nose stretch legs plantar dorsal flex feet raise arms over head stiffness in shoulder feel strange sensitivity in right pectoral above ****** cautiously examine with hands feel coarse lump growing more like nub smell moss glare down at growth protruding from chest panicky by soreness rise from bed to mirror on closet door tree stem jutting out from chest inspect dark bark like calloused growth little leafs budding this cannot be race in nervous tantrum run to bathroom suffer painful weight pulling me down clutching carrying foliated limb with arms see myself in mirror horrified stagger back to bed lie on right side branch resting on mattress breathe anxious breaths reexamine pectoral area feel sinewy roots spreading under skin across chest up neck down over stomach waist legs forget how to get home disorientated nauseous exhausted what is this flora invading me ******* kafka metamorphosis post-modern hyper-real narration without accountability jorge luis borges metaphor without mindfulness fairytale run wild jean baudrillard simulacrum psychosis room now filling with plant undergrowth stinking of earth dirt gooey slugs worms shells bugs festering climbing towards windows voracious for light warmth moisture blocking out morning sun entire body trapped in tangled twisted leafy twigs excruciating pain fright lungs gasping suffocating encroaching darkness fatigue loss surrender wake up 4 AM from nightmare scared to fall back to sleep
Mar 6, 2010
Mar 6, 2010 at 3:45 AM UTC
Either this town is without character, or my own lack thereof blinds
me to what style hums it into history. The brook's rapids are drowned
by the highway roar, central song that never passes through, spilling
over walls and roofs. A railroad collects rust between weeds, silent
authenticity. Impassive clouds remind me of other ways to witness.
And this is real, too; sadness accrues over store counters, fatigue
glowing in the pavement connecting all, cracked and rubble
facing skies a simulacrum grey. Inebriation, par for course,
a hidden semblance of a self-chosen haze within a haze.
Gravity, acoustic footfalls question my arrival here.
phosphene breath--
dark, dark mining town solstice
unearths inner rainbows
Dec 21, 2012
Dec 21, 2012 at 8:38 PM UTC
mid-air toward the icy Catskill eddies
frozen once and once again--
bridge-jump skyward watchers--
plunge of marrow tears.
you are there. simulacrum ping
-pong pop on carpet rise
another consciousness i've known
the winking soul recognitive
of grin, of inner whispered act
we finish lineless, applause of ancients drone
on trio sum in low man's song,
on kitchen counter edges,
finger tests and tested trusts,
nail clips clipping on dehiscing ****
the party. the porch. the project truth of beauty's virtue shown--
the drunken blood a lover
swirled on wet on wet undone.
your attic pillow-talk sobriety
of Green Hole fun
to echo four years, six and seventeen
the age unknown, we shared umbrella sanctity of family home:
raindrops trump the timeless wallstreet horns,
a zero sky ungains the settled hue of mind,
each thought the same, copula to void
in mythic forms we metaphor the plenum won
building dwelling-thinking sung,
the cardiac in tones--
lucid union slowing in the swirling sun--
the eddies stop again, sewn in Catskill frost..
the love we felt alive, in mid-air jump,
in Berto's cheer
we match the water's silent thrum
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 11:24 PM UTC
Pearls bleed from the pores of my skin
sparks dance where your fingers touch
the ocean neath my lashes hides in ecstasy
the sun melts in the heat of our familiarity
the mist of my yearning deepens into a ravaging wave
your burning desire surmounts the effect of haoma
a delineation of this moment weakens my knees
I clasp the air and feel the hiemal wind chime
my mind bears a simulacrum of your perfection
exulting in the reminiscence of a beau ideal
when you whisper you will be back soon
my eyes close to annul our distance too defined
turning my heart jocund, my senses sublime.
Oct 12, 2012
Oct 12, 2012 at 12:59 PM UTC
We just swallow & stitch on
flimsy pharmaceutical feathers,
with gobs of spit and wax.
We circle the sun
hoping this simulacrum,
weighs more than a hedon
We practice ephemeral mechanics,
only with bridges on the river Styx,
then wonder why winter never seems to end.
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 8:15 AM UTC
Sister and mother and diviner love,
And of the sisterhood of the living dead
Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,
And of the fragrant mothers the most dear
And queen, and of diviner love the day
And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread
Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown
Its venom of renown, and on your head
No crown is simpler than the simple hair.
Now, of the music summoned by the birth
That separates us from the wind and sea,
Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,
By being so much of the things we are,
Gross effigy and simulacrum, none
Gives motion to perfection more serene
Than yours, out of our own imperfections wrought,
Most rare, or ever of more kindred air
In the laborious weaving that you wear.
For so retentive of themselves are men
That music is intensest which proclaims
The near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom,
And of all the vigils musing the obscure,
That apprehends the most which sees and names,
As in your name, an image that is sure,
Among the arrant spices of the sun,
O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom
We give ourselves our likest issuance.
Yet not too like, yet not so like to be
Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow
Our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs
The difference that heavenly pity brings.
For this, musician, in your girdle fixed
Bear other perfumes. On your pale head wear
A band entwining, set with fatal stones.
Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
The imagination that we spurned and crave.
1.7k
Day 1: Blithe
(bl-I-the); happy or joyous
"I'm sorry but I'm rather blithe right now. It was nice to meet you."
Day 7: Convivial
(kon-viv-ve-ul); friendly, lively, or enjoyable
"The room spikes from dull to absolutely convivial just from your precence, darling."
Day 15: Pulchritudinous
(puhl-kri-tood-n-uhs); extreme physical beauty
"You look absolutely pulchritudinous tonight."
Day 16: Love
(luhv); an intense feeling of deep affection
"I love you."
Day 30: Veridical
(vuh-rid-i-kuhl); truthful; veracious
"This isn't how it used to be, if i'm being completely veridical"
Day 45: Simulacrum
(sim-yuh-ley-crum); a slight, unreal, or superficial likeness
"You were just a simulacrum for real love!"
Day 49: Lugubrious
(luh-goo-bre-us); full of sorrow or sadness
"Will the lugubrious feelings ever stop?"
Day 50: goodbye
(good-bi); used to express good wishes when parting
"Goodbye..."
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 4:07 PM UTC
I
I am in
sin
in absence
in simile
in a simulacrum
of simulation
In simulation
lies my sin
my string of simulations
of conversations
relations
with a simile
another simulacrum
of him
Feb 28, 2013
Feb 28, 2013 at 4:58 PM UTC
Hasina had gums of a prune colored play dough, much like the type which he used to mold and model into similar contraptions and cases. Contrasting with the teeth of a superb suburban plaster, the ***** contusion continued its conversation. Collecting admirers and adolescent adonis’ innocent of their sins. Since the inoculation, passed away, a pretense to nervousness approached the very essence of our chest; the bead of the brooch where we found the philtrum too close to the nose. Curling inside its own bare curves. A bed without sheet, hindered, harnessed, the horse dragged on.
We soon found that the things we feigned to hate would come close to fame, In a magazine cover sheet, handed in late.
Hasina, and her mother, certainly did not suppose that that beneath the floor boards, neither harm nor concern would be discovered. And neither was. With the way their will worked things became distributed. Disturbed guests of unwanted presents and gifts soon re-sent to other more malleable means of hospitality.
Hungered as the hundredth wolf come to late. He too howled, but not at the moon, or rather not its simulacrum of a glowing truth, its silver light, or any movements its clearly showed. Growing loose the tumor slipped out, slowly. And with a plop, pressed against the walls, The jaws dropped and the mason jar closed and posed on exhibition for lessons, and interests, obsessions, dreads, things grotesque pressed against the walls.
To be captured, resting above the skyscrapers. Where in the hours of dawn, space overlaps, a frowned pace of a clock grows fondly of the time that is lost and past.
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 7:19 AM UTC
thunder cackles in the morning
a witch is a woman
with any amount of wisdom
your words are as bland as coffee
and the dandelions are talking
for i am permanently amused
by vicissitudes and antelopes
and aggregates of moods
feelings and isotopes
hanging by psychotropic ropes
firmly financed by our fingertips
lifetimes triangulated in transitions
farm the fallow fields
and try to heal the poppies
dropping numbers
and putting aside our copies
a simulacrum of similes and shortages
as field mice and farmhands
dance on saturn’s rings
despite all of jupiter’s complexities
your complexion is never shallow
and i swallow seawater
to embrace the sweet finality of life
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 9:27 PM UTC
blood blot
a hideous music
like fixed stars
a chaos of shattered glass
you can hang your hat on
bamboo shards make a ****** wound
gold spun hair
on floral linen
blemished soaking red
like a shaking rat in a cats mouth
Hazels glistening ****** a pretense
salutes celibacy and high end moisturizer toilet paper
to shock simplicities morals
of an excretory affair
a dark chandelier hangs in the balance
torpedo runnels through chambered knots
unleashing treacherous sanity
sins crib
theater of purgation
father forgive her
she took a ****
an idealist without ideals
the grand masturbator
a simulacrum of a lubed god
in nights dragging shade
oracle of a ruddy opera and legs over head
flexed crimson wattle rolls
theories invite anti theories
light invites darkness
silence yields
shadows throat
and cacophonous whispers
a grind house temple of gods and demons
in horrendous geometry
of inflicting malice
until the serpent ascends
from black pitch hells
like a bomb through the skull
lusts antidote
waterloo of the soul
annihilation point
the cadaver smiles
Jan 9, 2019
Jan 9, 2019 at 6:28 AM UTC
Who is this impostor,
glimpsed with horror
in the department store window?
He apes my movements
but fails to capture
their athleticism,
spring-loaded inside an easy grace.
Ladies and gentlemen, do not be deceived.
Disregard those who think they know me.
This shambling simulacrum
is not me.
Perhaps my Nobel prize
is just a might-have-been,
my endowments only imagined.
But I am who I want me to be.
All aboard for the unguided tour!
Already begun, pre-planned
by an unknown administrator,
its detailed itinerary remains unpublished.
The last stage is, they say, less delightful than the others.
It passes through the poorer districts;
one sees industrial squalor and boarded-up lives.
I can leave the tour at any time.
I am who I want me to be.
Discomfort and dissolution do not belong in my world.
I am not the kind of person to ever be distraught.
So oblivion shall not swallow my love's soul.
Not all at once,
not piece by piece.
Not even a little.
Her identity must not be corrupted.
We are who I want us to be.
Jun 20, 2013
Jun 20, 2013 at 7:00 AM UTC
*They are all drunk, light footed, swank
spunky babes and daring guys once in campus
now yellowing leaves in slanting evening light
their dress, manners and assured pace suggest
"There is no need for any hurry in our lives any more"
all those songs deeply buried quickly surface
after all these years of total separation, can you believe?
They started from where they left, many decades back
memories poured out, collected in pools, happy faces
reflected on that clear surface like before,
and words regained their cadence of those days of yore
meanings deeply buried under the dead leaves of
fallen years surfaced, tickled, they giggled and shared secrets
once more as if still in teens they are
The last thing one remembers,
before slipping in to stupor is Happiness
a parakeet with colorful wings floating on the air,
lovingly calling each one's pet name in campus then,
magic that went missing from lives, all these years
was brought back by memories, they find what that means
there it was thick in the night air, past , chocking every throat,
a simulacrum of past, white clad ghost embraced them tight.*
May 9, 2014
May 9, 2014 at 8:23 AM UTC
Where did you go my queen,
Sun eluded,darkness hued the sky,
Clouds amalgamated and the sounds emerged,
Thunder tingling the mother earth,
Where did you go,you two little foot with your graceful fingers and celestial hands,
Wandering in the cosmos of obliviousness,
My mind envisaging your pastiche presence,
I see ur smile drifting on the rays of the imbued rainbow:
When the mellows of the zephyr that carried the voice of your breathe that breezed in to my breathe,
The ecstasy of tears cracked through the clustered clouds,
My hair winding as the zephyr roving through synecdoche strands...
My palm is under the influence of the dripping water,
and my eyes caught you floating, like the foliage leaf,
The ellipsoidal life carried your simulacrum,
I asked the drops of globular life that where did she impersonate you,
She limned with the bubbles that spoke chirpily:
"I saw her While I was in jaunt trip with the chariot clouds and lilting thunder,
she was strolling in the frolic fields fuddled with wallowing winds....
Her long hirsuite was in harmony with the zephyr,
As the brother zephyr was billowing in to her hair...".
I don't know where the place is,even my mind tends to imagine it,,
but I feel I too could fuse with you in the midst of that perpetual bliss,
I am waiting for you as my body transferring heat to the dripping life,
Didn't u hear those imbued silences that yelled your name...
Where did u go you plenary pulchritude,It is from you that I read what undulations are.....
If you don't come,I will...when I do...you wouldn't...
We will melt as one to the one....
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 11:48 PM UTC
Who is to say,
we cannot break our bond with the earth,
that we are too strongly tethered?
Not I for one.
Nor stone age man who leaps to death in mimicry of the birds,
nor the prisoner who, in confinement,
looks to the sky,
framed with the walls wherein he lies,
and says to himself, or herself, nay, I cannot fly.
And could I fly, I would touch the earth again,
or else burn up in the stratosphere.
Nay, nor the wild fowl, who may traverse 100 miles at a stretch,
ere they return to the earth.
Nor ashes carried in the air and bourn away upon the trade winds.
Who would admit an eternal debt to the earth,
which by every step we repay?
Least of all them overcome with wonder,
at infinite depth, at scale, at cold beauty,
at the splendid simulacrum of the cosmos.
Who then would hold me back by a leg or an arm,
who would through envy deny a splendid assimilation with the vasty domains of the other,
for what word, what momentary vocalisation of the earthbound
can in all justice give it name?
But in good faith, commit my body to it,
and I shall move throughout the eternal regions,
and circle in infinite revelry.
Deny me not this wild vanity,
commit not my body to the earth,
and I shall not call you cur, who walks upon the earth,
and there for evermore is tethered.
Dec 29, 2014
Dec 29, 2014 at 2:13 PM UTC
To walk neon beaches
The space between (dimensions)
A vibrant limbo
16 bit roads lined with palm trees
These neon beaches I walk
This purgatory between life and death
A simulacrum of reality that bleeds colour
A place isolated from existence
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 4:11 PM UTC
Tick tock went the clock,
echoing
through monastery halls,
synchronizing the actions of men,
building up modernity’s walls.
Creatively destructive,
eternal
yet fleeting,
modernity was paradoxical,
according to the Harvey reading.
Art had expanded,
abstraction arises,
and Sigmund loves his mom,
more than anyone realizes.
Our friends the id,
the ego and its super,
tell us who we are,
Freud has the world in a stupor.
A catch-22 for dear Pablo,
who will sleep with a ****
but is terrified of syphilis,
as is seen in his art.
There was power and truth,
and Foucault says we’re repressive,
but suddenly things change,
Postmodernity becomes quite impressive.
PoMo cares not for beauty,
or what pleases the public eye.
It’s style for style’s sake,
in the buildings stretching toward the sky.
Uma dances with John,
a young boy finds a severed ear,
Joaquin loves his OS,
PoMo film is, well,
Queer.
Yuppies love pastiche,
their lofts were once a workplace,
they’ve coated them with chrome,
they’ve gentrified the space.
Unlimited breadsticks
have soiled the very Italian name,
Baudrillard says it’s simulacrum,
there is no truth, it’s all the same.
We traipse through this
postmodern world,
not knowing postmodernity
is where we are.
We wear workboots to fashion shows,
we worship that reality star.
We think we’re special snowflakes,
and skinny jeans make us cool,
and media exposure’s made us cynics,
quite impossible to fool.
What we don’t realize is that
we are not our own,
we are pseudo individuals,
through PoMo we have grown.
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 11:09 PM UTC
how many tears must be shed
to baptize our parting
do I not cling
tightly enough
while the clock
ticks away life
are the marks left
on your skin
when I cannot release you
gone too soon
must the bruises
in our flesh
be as deep
as those in our hearts
shall I shatter my bones
and yours
in our last embrace
tear at our bodies
till we bleed out
give to the torch
the remains
so the ruin
of our outer selves
will reflect
that which lies hidden
within
Aug 5, 2022
Aug 5, 2022 at 11:43 PM UTC
A take on violence
The exiling waves of life
Battered a Syrian child
Swept ashore. We scrolled.
We shrugged this violence.
Eyes glued to a simulacrum of love
Expecting the controlled dominance
Of a filthy rich fictional character
We said: “It’s vanilla.”
Violence as an idea is sweetened
You gulp down the pill
But violence as a means is condemned
You still gulp down the pill.
March 6, 2018
Lyon 1 University
Mar 6, 2018
Mar 6, 2018 at 5:04 AM UTC
those hands, their hands are strong
& their skin carries scents from
places I’ve never been to before,
i let mine wander where i wish
head spinning, heavy with *****
when i open my eyes & flip,
i see but a mass of foreign flesh,
who are you & where are you from?
i never really listen to their responses,
just love how their words crash on my ears,
the way their touch brings electricity,
how the novelty keep my mind aflight
i’m just playing along, pretending
i’m just playing a role & so are you
let’s bring this image to temporary life
let’s set the ephemeral stage ablaze
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 7:58 AM UTC
There's a looking glass
In front of my face
And I'm Dorian Gray
This ersatz me does so deface
My imperfections
The only thing that makes me
Uniquely debased
Not just a notion
Forward in motion
But the corporeality behind
This simulacrum, not mine alone
The property of the hive mind
The collective consensus reality
Because I'm only as fallible
As everyone lets me be
I smashed the charlatan
With my fist and then
Vain as me it no longer was
Cracked and splintered it sat
Upon the linoleum floor
But still it implored
Smiling, smiling like a villain
Its eyes made contact with mine
And that's all that need be said
"If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me"
As it showed me what I'd never be
This simulacrum, all that you see.
Sep 7, 2010
Sep 7, 2010 at 12:25 PM UTC