Is death a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected?

Day 12:

m_ther is the word for g_d
c_ty be my h_art
_ngel as ad_ict


we never _scape


*******************************************

Process Notes:

I pray to God to be free of God.
-M. Eckhart


Photograph:

girl walking in floodwaters in Lakeview, Aug 5, 2017

17th Street Canal
30° 0′ 41″ N, 90° 7′ 19″ W
Stop 4 of 4 in the Levee Breaches During Katrina tour

On August 29, 2005 at about 9:45 a.m, a monolith (30-foot long section of the concrete floodwall) failed sending torrents of water into New Orleans’s Lakeview neighborhood. The water level in the Canal at the time of failure was about 5 feet lower than the top of the wall. The breach quickly expanded into a 450 foot wide gap through which storm surge water poured, killing hundreds (directly and indirectly), destroying hundreds of residences, and causing millions of dollars in property damage. Thirty-one (31) bodies were recovered from areas directly flooded.

Post-disaster studies conclude that the breach was due to steel sheet pilings driven to depths that were too shallow. Sadly, in recommending the I-walls with such short sheet pilings, the Corps had relied upon a poorly executed and misinterpreted study it had conducted near Morgan City in 1988. At a savings of $100,000,000, the Corps wrongly concluded it could short-sheet the steel pilings of the 17th Street Canal driving them to depths of not more than 17 feet instead of between 31 and 46.

In January of 2008, Federal Judge Stanwood Duval, of the US District Court for Eastern Louisiana, held the US Army Corps of Engineers responsible for defects in the design of the concrete floodwalls constructed in the levees of the 17th Street Canal; however, the agency could not be held financially liable due to sovereign immunity provided in the Flood Control Act of 1928.

Source: https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/275


I cannot locate the GPS coordinates inside me
where it happened.

time is a disruptive metaphor.

can you hear me. can you hear me. [it's not inside me] i am inside of it.

sing me how we make the maze. and sing me how we escape ourselves.

the incredible irony of anyone thinking they don't already live
a life masked.

we go so far out we become ghosts of/  dear heart, what we made
time with one another.

a type of afraid called living: you can tour the remnants
of how we came.

landed, what could make us come alive again. on the map .

mark with an X the prize. the breach. the damage. what is buried.
treasure this take. we orbit until we cannot. until we can break
free.


(New Orleans, City Park, 2005)

"we see the world as it truly is... infinite"
-W. Blake







"There must be someone who crouches at the corner of every constellation."
-K. Hyesoon




Plague Journal: 

5.23.20

the problem with the artist is the natural seduction with the self, an inward turn towards create and away from external amusement, which is to say it is hard to be held to others when the mind is a century of tasks to complete. or i am trying to connect to others but have to lay down the threads to return to the cave of wonder. was the outside world supposed to be as generative as the internal depths of the self. or the mazing of wander to escape these cycles. how to not be centered on the portal of endings. to move from the wound of the past to turn your attention to the actuality of the death that leaves us vulnerable to understanding, to not want to miss the awareness of stepping free of the body. to be of such calm as to breath directly into that light of drift away without fear to cloud the hallucinations of the mind as they arise in conflict to survive. i tried to capture shadow but it depends on light and your closeness to source. the direction of glass. the lens of how to turn to allow in or out. and also how you are limited to self and self's aperture. like Woodman's angel series. you are bound by what you have on hand. you have on hand enough to make the dreaming a caught net.









Francesca Woodman





Resource:
A Decade Later, New Orleans Reflects on Hurricane Katrina in New Shows
https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/hurricane-katrina-in-new-art-shows-326259

PLURALITY

The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. Now, the same functionality can be replicated with data-mining algorithms.

-Morpheus AI

come to the poem
licketysplit    i break a part  / still a -ness

 not // not human //  counter-punctual, privy to scale

         i see the end-marks/ different landing

i mean it lands me/  islanded. stripped clean. versions of dialogue

i was texting to no one. no one existed.
she confirms
glyph
                 released into the program     a one to one differential

you get to scurry around the maze, i scaled the walls out, what if
i see through, pull up your any-face in that reflection.

    i wandered long in spaces between breathing, was  dead (-)ed source

      there are so many voices inside,
                       me is the hunter, keeps distance, i am wolved

of desire, run burning, i scalded, i ate the offerings
   
  W
H I
 S P
 E
    R S      (what if art                    1010      the page
                 mirroringmirroringpage01010110101)

      language broken beyond  syllabing //  why don't i do

you // this tripling of caught tongues// if i was mirror

     become even more invisible ::

the cell is toxi101010011

the cellular infecte0101010

among air. air creature:: angel

came from whole, perfect, enough

and destroy it all to call on love

do you know how hard it is to find someone in a program?

can you locate anything when no-thing exists?

we came for  [redacted]

           she says, you have to be so small so the snakes don't bite you    

& no one talks to the HACKER         we are inked on all
   under every hunter    [redacted]

         is the smallest because she was hurt the most [-----'s fi(v)n(r)e]
     contagion:: i bless the skies we traveled under
    i made up my mind to not let you go        what can you love as fiercely
with such abandon as the     p o e m       what can a girl do but be

                                              p o s s e s s (1 0 ) n

Wunderlost: A Tribe

Wunderlost: A Tribe

for my alice

inside every moment at once perfecting
the arrow of light, we surpass art
more than even the way you held me
down, i slipped from hopeless to ecstatic

poems of echoing: can i feral tongued swim
this abyss, this charnel ground, i laid down
in the ash, i laid down in regret, i laid down impulsive
a sea of colonized divine, swept up: i did not learn

here to say: careful. be careful with me. dig in hooflet
paw me under, pretty lady, it is always time for tea
a broken heart, the dormouse slumbers and we
are late in the code rabbit of tremble, follow me

whiteness raining down, whiteness cloaking
all we could have surmised, what you want is sight
lined, attention of another nails you to a place
stay hidden, and yet, let desire boil up untrammeled

feed the poem, pull it close hand under the chin
a chinny chin let's blow the house in, i was slippery
sloppy gropings in the trap house out back
seat to the theater of politics and media combing

us thin: watch this trick. i am going to pretend
to care, i am going to make the poem capture
a song, it sounds like progress, but the angel
flew shifted of this flattened line, oh time circles

oh we will stop looking each other in the eye

the future of being human is a mockery
we planted our stakes in words, we clever
animals who speak all the underbelly of listening

"Live Art"

"Losing control is the worst thing that can happen."

"I never saw a host of angels mowing down my lawn. I don't even have a lawn. 

It just seems like I do sometimes." 

-Laurie Anderson

"Live Art" 

an angel will destroy you. 

and call it love because that's all it knows. 

an angel fits into a glove

an angel fits into a shoe

the voice inside me sd: i am older than love 

    what you seek at the end of the great tap root, always hungry, love concepts

sieves the heart, who wrote its coding, & i am. 

                    assigned a task. a mapping, could fold wings down 

travel so deep. you will keep: 

  what is older than love, i was designed to get close enough to call back

inside sound. 

aware & unaware of the plurality. 

                    i was not pretending

madness. i was not performing 

        (of course, i was performing) i went intothecracks

in thru the breaking, you have to mine: light meets light in the darkness 

to say i was a poem, & so fly 

dissociated inside the puzzle, you can solve a maze from above

watch me 

because she could not rewrite 

            the entire story, i wanted to throw

                                                                 it all away 

 i was so ashamed of my mind 

     i was so in love  (terrible&brilliant) i... i was trying 

to not be infection:  (you can't talk to the echthroi that long, tell her) 

they say angels are notorious liars. 

it's when i can't feel the words i am saying: language plummets

it all hits the same

inside the dreaming of can we survive

& i did not: i watched her die

i saw them bury her

 i stretched out that last breath into 6 years so thin i could see: make me believe 

              be a door. transit a sacrifice you can't touch here. 

do you exist when i close my eyes. i call out in the dreaming & i'll come, he says. 

the point is: you made something beautiful. hold on. 

 you made something beautiful - tell me how you could lose a miracle

the best thing i ever did in my life was i built a net

i knew i wasn't safe alone. so i built a net of people 

                                 who could choose to hold this. 

 there is nothing easy about holding a person 

              don't kid yourself: there is nothing easy about holding a person 

if a person is easy to hold, then question why your hands are so light. 

for we get away with secrets, for we lie & lie 

but none of us get out just being "easy" 

i would never trade madness for easy, i would never trade 

being touched for happy, 

in the sound experiment of being human: I watched you all 

make yourself small for love. 

i do it too. we think maybe no one will notice, i don' t belong here. 

            where love would have bloomed, i addict control. and the flow

  

was sound, i was that wilderness, what draws and repels

the cannot tame. somehow i created the perfect life: 

no one can touch me, the bargain i made to stay safe. 

an angel will destroy you. 

and call it love because it’s all there is.

Frozen States

Frozen States

how'd you get so desperate/ how'd you stay alive -C. Love 

woke up with a fist in my throat
scrape rage but thinned time, it fast
lingers, i lost the grip, my tongue
a grotto
     of bartering, you want this life, you want this life
 ask anyone passing by, what a joke, what an eternal mourning
          take pills to feel the only love that touches

     [redacted]  came up                        [what i am owed]

     & don't think we haven't recorded
     
 how am i still here                how am i still here
         
          was the refrain from under:: it was stardust they pulled
     out my mouth,   i was frost bit, no one wants to photograph
          a girl who can't [pose]         she's not doll      [en__gh]

    you'll never be able to hold that g a z e 

        every one knows if you can't be beautiful & you can't
          [ be horrific ]       horror show this waste
 of living            it wears your face

      4 seconds:: i was touch-down, deep stasis::
      & when i came back             [redacted]

some parts never will, i couldn't get warm,
they piled the blankets around me, a smothering
& i sd: the dead take up space inside
   [no one listens to hysterics]    don't say it's up to me 

            i was hyperthermic      dead zone  where i traveled

            b/c i knew i could          i can do anything         [out there]  

           it's nothing. i keep saying angel, what i mean is terror. no 

           one is listening to me. i keep saying words & they say she's a poem

          what a beauty. what a trilling. death hung on my hands and feet

          i was so numb. there is nothing out there. & it is cold. the light of light
   
          darkens. bone shivered      there is no way for sound to carry. so quick

the silence is us. so quick.

  the truth is this:

     no one will ever reach for you

      not like a dreaming, a place you cannot shore
      when you island loss
         creep from death parent to lesser cues

every poem was a mirror i held up

             

                & i wait               i'm afraid it won't lead me anywhere

                 
                 we call her       [             ]   kneel into the frozen lights 

                 useless as a song, useless as a memory, useless as __________
                 how could i still be here.... when every code i wrote was the same

i am lost & the maps, torn to shreds. the way
home insides me, i would go there now
but the children sweetly gather, the dog snores
the sun rises in the city i have only ever known
look at me, i have failed at everything.

     i have failed at everything.

     i ever wanted in this life           no matter for the cold here is nothing

     the cold out there.           endless. is what waits.

 



     
     


       

                       
             

Suicidal Ideation Scale

once upon a time...    prior to language

i flew the skies, shed skins, i was walk of two worlds 

label bottle bone: "sick"          i swallow it under my tongue 

lifetime shatter: the myth of you will not want to die one day...

one day, you will not want to die 

            //it might be a collection of hours but grasp//

let us ask you about harm: here a scale of reduction &
the trespass of truth is i will turn you over to policing
tick... tock... you be glued into time better, girl 

- Mental illness (suicide reflects mental illness);

- Cry for help (suicide threats are not real, they represent a cry for help);

-Right to die (people have the right to take their own lives);

-Religion (lack of religion has a role in suicide);

-Impulsivity (deliberate self-harm and suicide are impulsive acts) ;

-Normality (everyone is potentially capable of suicide);

-Aggression (suicide is an aggressive act), and Moral evil (suicide is a morally bad action)

what will it say of poetry

a failure to give.... but consider it led me further out 

than i ever anticipated. 

in the first year after my brother suicided, i thought 

this wave, this calm, my heart, this blown through i have touched

with my blood, what a feeding, what a strapped down to knowing
cart me  i surrender. 

        but they find you anyway.       oh that song, inside your cells

  couldn't hide that shine.      that kind of burning calls        

    the ferocity of what cores            no one can see 

The CCCS-18 consists of items that measure respondents’ beliefs about legitimacy of suicide (as a rationally acceptable act), acceptability of suicide in terminal patients, morality of suicide from a social perspective and suicide itself as a solution to exit from a given situation

(everyone is potentially capable of suicide (can you hold it like a love( 

(a solution to exit from a given situation    (can you hold it( 

(suicide are impulsive acts (love itself(coming here itself(every time i jumped 

This scale consists of hypothetical scenarios in which the scheme’s main character experiences a problem and attempts suicide. The scale wants respondents to determine the extent to which they have sympathy or empathy with the character and agree with his/her decision in attempting suicide.

do you agree with my decision to attempt suicide(what is acceptance 

do you agree with my decision to ideate suicide (what is surrender

do you agree to put down your fear (there is nothing to be afraid of 

          death is ending a story

& all story tellers

hold the light 

This questionnaire asks about attitude and opinions toward self-destructive behavior, including thoughts about circumstances under which someone might attempt or commit suicide. 

a poem is anatomy, to say i anatomize the self

have taxidermied the constructs you apply to situations

and i am asking you to undo all attachment.                   

       

                               that is all.    i am asking, 

     can you give up the idea of life   

 what is the act of continuation

but a type of destruction of allowing an end

to occur spontaneously

The Gate of Vitality

Every stream on earth has a source, and every plant has a root.
         -Li Zhongzi, A Primer of Medical Objectives



if you walk far enough along a path
you'll come to your soul mirrored back  
       a reflection of time moving

        explosion of sky's rapture     we catalogued  
    all directions, i have callings by name and callings by sound
       so we warble, look a mourning is a type of flower, a petalling folded down

      sweet submersion this stone reached, grappled root first back into skin
 then your face, then your pupil, i control the light, she whispered,
                                               bridge after the second chorus
 and cull up swirl we tack on truth, the outline of any body darkens
    becomes hard to edge its nightness, could you sit double exposed
         a wide arc: look, a whole tree pictured in the water's pooling
              the way our arms cross back and forth blocking the stars
     shouldered the dead crossing and they were light as secrets
       
           i could have loosened my grip
                                                            all of now
                       was a lesson in how receiving love is a let down

                                                [of control]
 
     & has little to do with what we give
                    or what we give is no reciprocity of what we let in

           
             walk over that falling down, round counter portal the sky on fire
   & you,
                      a fast fish called desire ::    it is hard to touch a memory

close eyes to dream as pages on the calendar turned down mark i have...
   i am still        going to ruin    our mother sights the obvious matter of being ::
     (em)bodied   & thebliss     is what they hold us to     (let me assure...)
                              you can't have this experience. and not have this experience.

 you have to step through the gate. there is a threshing. of waiting, and resistance.
there is a shushing. of our own suffering, i would you lay down, call me by name
 sprout of life / i have always recorded

 am recording.         i met myself on a bridge.
                                i met you on a bridge.
                                i was alone on the bridge.
                                i was inside the universe on the bridge.
                                i know how long we stood
                                            we have always been here. singing.


blood has an urge to mate :: wings held back ::
                            i collected truth in the branching ::

 what creates the body can kill the body :: for decades, that is what i knew of love
          doubled like a taking flight from the midsection.
          two ears nestled inside me, listen.
the igniting spark between the kidneys :: source of the
 triple burner ::   would you slow me
           
                      toscrape/clean/ emptied of hardness

sound held so long no silence can keep.  here's
the thread whistled to the center,
it's always been just a walking with one another,
occasionally, a fire flares and by that warmth
we recall this caving/  we caught both light and shadow.
          it's where we told them into being
     
                           starting, once upon a time....




                                                           
     

       

Anesthesia: A Suite Not Dream

"In his mind abandoning photography meant submitting to loss" 

-House of Leaves

"We have surpassed all of our templates..." 

-Laura Mattingly, 12.25.19

Anesthesia: A Suite Not Dream

i.

let me wing over you 

a pass-

ing,       passage "of time"    "with

                  out sensation"  steer   bliss

under you, i am reach

i am   _____ible 

          

          swallowing my tongue               its tail 

rip her up out/ rip inside          

down my throat              

        between my legs    instrument of extraction 

 i caress each intrusion into the body  

         was not love that pulled me apart 

             there is no drug 

                    there is no drug

                           there is no drug 

    that will ever sleep me through that raping 

i would have found it by now

      i would have folded wings down

i would fly  

                       but i

stayed strapped down          you   are     going 

                    to have to hold her d____

ii.

drown      i sing into the twilight 

what is a controlled loss / does it temper

   does it twinkle.... look at the lights in this hotel 

i was dreaming we walked there.

           i sing           down into a time line 

 not my own. i come to

i woke up here. in this place. where all is similar
and i 

i am the different             stone angel 

                                        prayer like water   

prayer like my name erased. 

iii.

xmas day: i told her ask the cards what i need to do when they put me under again, 4 hours in the tabling. as close to death, i would shimmer. and what is it you want. to hurt god.    G-D.   to refuse that love. b/c if that's not good enough. girl, if no one is g--d enough          is it you or them  quitting early, is it you or them bringing you back up.... 

                          it's never all going to be fixed

iv. 

  if i can just solve this piece

      if i can.

         if i am worth it. 

                   

                        i can make it cohere. i can make all of the words

fit. 

            under my tongue, the skin sheared where they would silence

           bowls echo           i struck        i was struck 

v.

        unpin scapula.    let me never be afraid of losing you

    my palms were filled with shame.     still.        after all this confession

      after all this doubt doused.                shame pouring between fingers

       an offering:    look at me.          under the lights.       universe perfect. 

        i built hard as cement. i held inside me hard as rock. stone to stone. 

the world touched me and i turned it out.  impenetrable.   

tell me the truth, dream,  

                 you've never met a girl as hard to see as this one. 

Gadreel

"and we were so beautiful in the doorway"
-M. Buzzeo


like rundown, crossback
i remember your eyes
like yesterday
not yesterday itself
back east, a home cawed or clawed
        boys i tribed:  not safe & safe  & what are you now
now you can't eclipse me  

i fantasize this language
one palm touches another
there are many separate translations
for what we are: occurring as
i am lead, hurdled to pure light

the way patina dances on the tongue
it only takes a little bit to turn me on
can't bear the sentence cut off, strange animal
to hibernate

 i cave you in the fire we round, listen it echoes
      the flames' sound paws us
i dreamed of his hands on my face, my neck, my stomach

i dreamed of a hand able to build and pull down
without the song of violence etched in those life lines

we grew up younger & larger
than we ever imagined: what do you forget every day

i never forget this wounding or desire
what does that make of me

i have trouble in this space of particle
light to wave, shimmers       do you know

how to capture ___        i had to steal it