"
"nor is this a fact," nor is my syntax the 'true.'
i can't use quotations in the way i'd like to,
to allow the paradoxical to seep through
in the sly act of revising 'this' honestly--
merging truth with falsity, to silently see--
grammar become a means to shatter certitude
"i can't tell the 'truth' with these ["i can't tell the 'truth'
with these{...} very words"] very words"; i really can't...
it's somewhat unfair to communicants, this rant.
let me bolster your trust by not telling it slant:
in fact, it's not poetry, not from this angle.
maybe when you read, this 'this' will be poetic?
meh, i'm relying on telling, not showing. so...
quiet's often better than such entanglement
but this is not about value, it's about truth.
sincerely, i doubt i'll keep those two separate
perhaps... if you pretend i'm a prolix parrot,
who happened through some acosmic accident
to be the transmigrated daimon-soul of Sappho,
or Hypatia, Gertrude Stein or Plath even...
(yeah, i'm like a Cretan for going on): they weren't,
'your gobbledygoo,' or 'Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.'
stripped bare at the Caesareum, being murdered
for the crime of godlessness or female wisdom
spoken in the scapegoat-hungry rule of Rome...
this is not what they were, not the whole truth, at all
and though from winds of ****** she spoke in verse
that her vast poetic fame 'was no delusion:'
and that, 'dead, I won't be forgotten,' i fail,
painfully fail, to trace into a verbal womb
the seeds of those that transformed all, yet now entombed...
for to remember them in me is to revise,
reduce, sadly in that poetic untruth found...
"this" is a gestalt, i guess i'll have to say,
a "figure-ground," a floating 'shape' in some context,
one that you embody too, somehow, not in text;
even through a distant sharing, it's realized
(hold onto the random metaphors you find,
they're probably better than what's in my mind)
and to share this with you now, to hypocritize,
it's lunacy. i mean, the moon, the poetic moon
is not a meme, is not a custom, is not a poetic fact,
in fact, it's not in this poem, and if it were--
being televised with some authentic ontic pixel-space--
here between the lines augmented mOOn for you
it would prove how unpoetic the poem is, and how
very true the moon is, if it were here, right quoteunquote"here"
ineffably punctuated
-- well, let me try
and fail again to make Erasmus proud:
the quotes would hang about romantic beams
parentheses to echo adjectival spectra streams,
an underscore horizonal and asterisks for stars.
but not these * asterisks,
or those_types of underscores--
better (parentheses) and far more "quothy" "quotes"--
the punctuation would literally ^punctuate^ the sky of my text.
time would stop. and that would be poetic.
you don't need to breathe, even; not this 'you,' in this moment
(the one i've failed to capture):
'i will put you on the moon' i say,
'and sit you buoyant by the buddha-astronaut, who,
in answer to the question sprinkles moondust in slow motion,
symbol-guiding realness, my "finger" for solution,
to present to you again, what is present to me now.
the Russian names, the rest of names, the 'face' some say cries, "sweetly,"
as if we could use the moon's sympathy,
or as if we should feel it for the white rock that elliptically defines us,
dances to our rhythm, (the tides, the ****** huntress)
the one that taught us to dance,
the one that taught us to yearn darkly in surreal eclipse
more hopefully for the chance of cataclysmic doom
some Greeks thought it was a disco ball, after enough *****, that Dionysian night,
some Greeks thought it was a disc,
like a coin that flipped just right
to match it's dance about our pearoid earth
in synchrony's anachronistic mirth.
i would lick each Bacchant clean to learn the mysteries of poem
i would lick each Bacchant clean. period. no music or noema known
this 'poem' is not a "poem"
in a very real sense
i did not make this,
nor did i compose or create it.
if you're not following it's ok, i'm barely there myself -- i'm trying to refer to...
the elliptical shape that certain publishers use
to refer to fundierung
the double-founding,
reversibility,
the flesh of passive
the flesh of active
enfleshed perceiving
the common meaning we contribute
but can't attribute to any source we express!
(however distorted) after the fact, yes! --
either all that, or the meaning you get from "this" act
doubly-enfolded, with two pairs of hands kneading the same dough,
two pairs of eyes weaving the same lOOm,
another Indra's net to sew,
in meaning you give now,
the techne of your reader's mind
and the meaning i'd wish to know,
if i were still writing what you are reading,
doing my best to ignore the title
and to write something worthwhile...
i do wish i could show it to you the way i love it in your own poetry,
but you would know that, already, without my love
without my unpoetic lack of facts, my rhymes.
free of poems, free to flout the literary sea.
free to be unwordly, and let the contradictions fly
"
-a version of the Cretan's or liar's paradox ('This sentence is false.') inspired this write and took on a life of its own and isn't meant to be an argument for anything. just an exploration of the problem of representation, a universal distrust of language and my associations. hope it didn't drive you crazy like it did me :)
-i quote Sylvia Plath's "Daddy", Stein's "Susie Asado", and Sappho's very short,
"I have no complaint"
I have no complaint
prosperity that
the golden Muses
gave me was no
delusion: dead, I
won't be forgotten
Sappho
-Erasmus wrote "Praise of Folly." the title alone comforts me
-when asked 'what is truth?' by one of his disciples, the buddha is said to have picked up a flower.
-our moon rotates at the same rate as its revolution (not sure why please inform me), so one side always faces us. the greeks thought it was a disc, literally. and when the Russians got to the 'backside' first, they got to name all the craters.
-noema:
the objective aspect of or the content within an intentional experience. NL, fr. Gk noema perception, thought understanding, mind, fr. noein to perceive, think
