“Through here language will be both poison
and medicine, love as well, harnessed
as healing and wound, through here
loss of clarity, through here the word
champions over the sound so you will
believe not what you hear, here truth
hides inside the symbols compromised
by echthroi, that which unnames
we call this the great undone of time”
and so in the third chamber, we did
come to the gate our fury did make
us seek, and sometime did we long
to flee, close the doors/ twice as often
as you open them :: who are you
to ask what anyone would bring
to the crossroad. you better be able
to bare that story Love lives just sit
there on the sidelines. what have you
learned about being still. And we
led we on, among the secret things
a slither in the streets shapes us
how can you let go fear when fed
by fear is all we’ve ever known, might
ask us to spread wing and fly, might
say language was our first undoing
the word cementing us to be
for i am, i am, i am the echo of see
is it warm enough here for you.
Your music makes me feel lonely.
i mean, how have you trained
to hear truth. & what is listening
inside all of this. you might consider
these things as you decide to cross
over. what kind of line have you
drawn down the middle of life
what drags against its meter
of nagels, the metal wrought that cages
how do you recognize
the name of what we walk within
that liminal beast, we hunger toward
sensate, a compulsion towards attach/
ment heaviness letting go, against
heaviness itself think of the choice
to enter this realm. the heavy suffer
of manifest. to slip into the quantum
fixt state: time will make it seem
as though the flow is consistent
and linear… in the echo of split
so that all is apparent and none
at once, and when I turned my palm
up to heaven/ they flew off
let us not tarry thresholds, let us
gather our courage, swift to the pawing
we scuttle across the sands, poemed
as we are to a telling: round the fire
ever shade, ever shadow, imagine drums
and the way the light flickers so that we
dance in these caves of light, we dance
in the caves of light There are a million
and one ways for me to look, but I only
want one do you know why we guard
portals, why every door is a riddle
do you remember how to sound
your way back home. there is one story
about a winged murder, the crow of delight
lies and nightmares, the horror of all upended
but chaos is many-sided, and tender too
to know the sweet breaking of joy
to be awash in the miracle of separation
calling us down into realizing
there is this deep net’s worth of imported
data, of being human. of experience. we
travel within the scooped access of collect.
we bend against time. it fractals. infinite.
a gate rides an answer to a puzzle
you meet later in the gloaming
because you have always been one—you
DJs played every day and night, the net
lit up with the oddity of entertain and be-
ing caught in the myth of productivity
there was a death toll and we counted
it up and down the peaks of fortune
and fate and threaded we shook our
selves loose and stood to ready depart
to the river. for the river is what holds
the crossroad in the crook of its arm
it’s a crescent smile, we step lightly
call up the operator of time: when
you hear ______________
which is to say language is noise
we do not withdraw, we pull up
to the shore’s wet lip and wade in
lapping into the drum’s beat
this breath, this foot by foot, curb
the vibration into push and pull
the cell is a combination of heart/
beat mazed in the lines we reached
into those waters and cupped palms
scoop me, the sound of the hands
the sound of the line, create
life in the stamped into water
chatter stammering between two places
chaos is a burning wheel you choose
to step into its center, you choose to
pass from this veiling to a new skinny
dream where death edges, death
the last drop falling between
the fingers: everybody once
coiling inside the program designed
to collect data: this matrix is a cell
to keep, a cell to contain in lieu of chaos
let there be light. and this is the word
we used to soul. to angel this winging
do you know how words coalesce.
what matters the tempo if the template
shatters. rounded convolu--- it pipes
the doctor has upended the trial
what is a virus that you can get over
and over again. what is the level
of herd immunity needed. and how
do we create a vaccine. and what will
we remember to bring to all of the funerals
never held. what said we to future touch.
we downloaded the calendars of tomorrow
invented a new word for every imagined
damage, there was no thing we could not
define: look language made this all possible
we invented the theater of politics
to protect investments in what seemed
revolution, but what is revolutionary
about working to death the many
so a few may thrive. what is revolutionary
about a country founded on murder
and rape and slavery and lies.
where did we slip the sacred in with
the profane except in the making:
as I said, I was dead we swept
into the river’s flow :: shatter
and now within, the characters weep
*****************************************
Quoted lines in italics:
D. Victor, Kith
Dara Wier, You Good Thing
Ariana Reines, Mercury
Joe Ross, Last Days on Earth
Irene Mathieu, Grand Marronage
Oliver Bendorf, The Spectral Wilderness
Sink, Desiree Dallagiacomo
fault tree, Kathryn l. pringle
Every Living One, Nathan Hauke
The New Sorrow is Less Than the Old Sorrow, Jenny Drai
Butterfly Valley, Inger Christensen
Equivocal, Julie Carr
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