Octavio Paz, , born this day in 1914

 

Soliloquio
by Octavio Paz

persistent, flowing through fallen shadows,
excavating tunnels, drilling silences,
insisting, running under my pillow,
brushing past my temples, covering my eyelids
with another, intangible skin made of air,
its wandering nations, its drowsy tribes
migrate through the provinces of my body,
it crosses, re-crosses under the bridges of my bones,
slips into my left ear, spills out from my right,
climbs the nape of my neck,
turns and turns in my skull,
wanders across the terrace of my forehead,
conjures visions, scatters them,
erases my thoughts one by one
with hands of unwetting water,
it evaporates them,
black surge, tide of pulse-beats,
murmur of water groping forward
repeating the same meaningless syllable,
I hear its sleepwalking delirium
losing itself in serpentine galleries of echoes,
it comes back, drifts off, comes back,
endlessly flings itself
off the edges of my cliffs,
and I don’t stop falling
and I fall
endlessly in its falling,
I fall without moving,
I fall
with a murmur of falling water,
I fall through myself without touching myself.
I fall through my center,
far from me, far off,
I am here and I don’t know where here is,
what day is today?
today is today,
it is always today and I am a date
lost between before and after.
yes and no, never and always,
this very moment and its flute solo
at the edge of the void,
geometries
suspended in a timeless space,
cubes, pyramids, spheres, cones
and the other toys of sleepless reason.
shapes made of crystal, light, air:
ideas,
in the abstract sky of the mind,
fixed constellations,
neither living nor dead,
spider threads and crystalline drivel,
woven by insomnia, unwoven at dawn,
river of thoughts I don’t think, that think me,
river, itinerant music, delta of silence,
soundless cataracts, tide at my eardrums,
desire and its eyes that touch,
its hands that see,
its bedroom that is a drop of dew,
its bed made from a single shaft of light,
desire,
obelisk tattooed by death,
rage in its house of knives,
doubt with its triangular head,
remorse with its scalpel and lens,
the two sisters, fatigue and restlessness,
that battle tonight for my soul,
all of them, one after the other,
fling themselves over,
hushed mumble of downcast eyes,
blurred murmur of water talking to itself,
no, k is not he murmur of water
but of blood,
it comes and goes incessantly through my veins,
I am its prison, and it my jailer,
no, it is not blood,
it is the days and years,
the dead hours and this instant
that is still alive,
time falling
endlessly in itself,
I hear my breathing, falling, hurling down,
I am stretched out alongside myself.
far off, far,
I am stretched out there, far off,
where is my left side, my right,
which way is north?
unmoving, rocked by the wave with no body,
I am a heartbeat, a blink of an eye
in a crease of time,
the moment opens and closes,
a hazy clarity shoots across,
is it coming or going?
does it return or drift off?
echoes of footsteps, procession of shadows
in the theater of closed eyes,
torrent of heartbeats,
drumroll of syllables
in the cave of my chest,
chorus of psalms
in the temple of vertebrae and veins,
is it death arriving?
is it day,
the inflexible every day?
today is no longer today,
a black river drags me along
and I am that river
what time is it,
cruel clock, clock with no hours?

 

HARNESSING THE OUTRAGE

“To see in the day or in the year a symbol

Of the days of man and of his years,

To transmute the outrage of the years

Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol,

To see in death sleep, and in the sunset

A sad gold—such is poetry,

Which is immortal and poor.

Poetry returns like the dawn and the sunset.”

-from “Ars Poetica”, Borges

DEATH/Rainer Maria Rilke

Death by Rainer Maria Rilke Issue no. 82 (Winter 1981)There stands death, a bluish distillate in a cup without a saucer. Such a strange place to find a cup: standing on the back of a hand. One recognizes clearly the line along the glazed curve, where the handle snapped. Covered with dust. And Hope is written across the side, in a faded Gothic script.The man who was to drink out of that cup read it aloud at breakfast, long ago. What kind of beings are they then, who finally must be scared away by poison? Otherwise would they stay here? Would they keep chewing so foolishly on their own frustration? The hard present moment must be pulled out of them, like a set of false teeth. Then they mumble. Then they go on mumbling. . . O falling star, once seen into from a bridge—: Not to forget you. To endure

REFUSING THE DAWN

 

I can Recognize, but hell, I can’t Realize so well.
I’d drink more coffee but my cardiologist insists I don’t
I’d drink more coffee but my heart man prescribes “not so smart, man”.

I’d think more whiskey would push me to bask at last in a primal light,

but my general practitioner generally frowns about practicing until I get it right.

I’d read more but eyes see less.. I digress,

I’d come 2/pray more/give in/give more/dream-sleep in/weep for once/

walk the lit dark like I used to/ Take in the dark light. I’ve so far refused to.

I can Recognize, but hell,

I don’t Realize so well.

.

S T E A D Y

 

Surely it might go

You must breathe free and steady

On by its own steam

STARES AND A LOOK

 

 

S T A R E S

Where is the wound that shines?

Well Over 50 years on

Over this  his day, on?

My Back  way against all this memorial day shite  here

I’ll intentionally send me  to a ill-shielded shy there,

Back at  again to that  day where

I’m Far  too young  to fathom,

Or even  notice  yr. crevasse,

Yr  Grande Malaise,

Yr. countdown…Yr. Pass.

It makes me madly think now

It takes  the saddest thing    to tell now..

Stuck in a stack of old NewYorkers

There’s this raw cartoon drawing;

A mere boy  drawn in black & white

Stands on a step of his own basement,  stares,

He did look down on his own  livid  apocalypse,

His lips, and the caption say

“It’s  A.O.K.”

.

Here is the wound that shines

Tonight, a glint off yr. cracked onyx ring.

I lift it  in my open fist to my lips.

.

.

L  O  O  K

.

Hope  we’re having  a heaven  so

I’ll look all about  &

Daddy can call out, (& it won’t hurt, no)

He’ll look just like he just got home from work:

“There’s my inquisitive young man,” he’d shout.

We’d have it out;

My young man’s mystery,

His young man’s misery.

We’d upheave it out. One Heavy inquiry would unfold

If he mightn’t have killed himself  he might have taught me:

“You gotta take the bite of bitter with the cold”

.

My Mother could steady things when she told me

When I was ready she told me:

“I know, I know,

With time…

We’ll  heal.

He  was  not  well.

They say  that You/

Have his look.

You  know.

You know

I say  ‘You’ll/

Try having my smile’”.

.

.

.

.

For always, again, rest in peace, daddy 3/21/1929-5/29/1959

THERE’S FOG

 

 

“Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult.”  -Hippocrates

.“In the fog you are sheltered against the outside world, face to face with your inner self. Nebulat ergo cogito.” (fog therefore I think) -Umberto Eco

.

.

There’s fog.
Then, there’s people landing planes at all hours.
There’s dogs chasing birds
on runways. And one way those people in those towers
can plan to, and see to, land planes is
the guts to go with the guages.
They heartfelt dealt with data,
Trusted all they’d seen
on their farforeign &; onlyman-made monitor screen.
As dogs flushed their fog,
hands hover over lights
and cover their old bets,
their usual action.

,

,                                                                            from 2009

surrendering you senseless

Schlafwagen und Wunderkammer (Richard James Allen)

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Verity La in Heightened Talk

(‘Schlafwagen und Wunderkammer’ is German for ‘sleeper’
or ‘sleeping car’ and ‘cabinet of curiosities’ or ‘wonder room’)

you are on the night train to Vienna
and you have already arrived in Berlin
you are about to walk home in Sydney
and you must dash back out to see
the play that is now more popular
than Hamlet in London

you are cold in your high sleeper bed
that you collapsed into
when the night heat came on
suddenly in a rush
without getting under the covers
that are now cold
that you collapsed into

you are wrapped in an old overcoat
you don’t remember owning
dreaming of trying to stay warm
in a high-raked hall of a tall-walled university
listening to a lecture on the mechanics of flashback
and your mind keeps wandering to a back shed
somewhere beyond the Wall in East Germany
full of homemade contraptions that were far too unreconstructed
ever to be sent to a Dickensian-looking patent office
piled high with yellowing documents
that curl like nineteenth century moustaches

you are in the long tail of a tall tale
a cat coiled up in itself asleep
the way those big ropes
that secure ships to their ports
are coiled into perfect circles
by nameless foreign seamen
the forever migrant workers
circling the globe
only one of whom
ever gets off the boat
to become Joseph Conrad

you are being asked by your roommate
your bunkmate your companion
what do you call someone
travelling with you on a night train
in one of the lower bunks
a person who for reasons unknown
shall remain nameless
to set an alarm so that she yes she
that much you can know
can wake up before the guard
who has no English comes with the croissants

you are sure you are reassuring her that you have
and it may be that you have
but you don’t remember in which country
or time zone you would have have-have-have done so
though you like the idea
that this act of thoughtfulness
may have occurred
and you being the enactor
if not the instigator of it

you are thinking that you may have to be the alarm clock yourself
though your clock hands are wrapped inside your imaginary overcoat
and not a lot about the rest of you resembles a device
for the capture and distribution of time

you are of the opinion that when you fell into this  sleep  in  a  cocoon  of  vibration  you
were  sure  or  at  least fairly certain that  it  would be a normal sleep that  is  to say just
like any other sleep but on the contrary  it  feels  as  if  you have been having the whole
history  of  consciousness downloaded into the data banks  of  your  body  which for an
unspecified period  of  time have replaced your usual cells but this  is  most odd as you
are  not  sure  if  you  believe  any more that consciousness  has  a  history  though  you
might  go  so far  as  to  offer  that it gets woven in to history finally realising that it was
only ever  a  visitor  to  the aforesaid state  of  you are not sure what really playing hide
and seek  in  the winding corridors and hallways of time and personality a game  it  got
caught up in but now understands it can step away from any time it wishes to exit
time that is to say whenever it no longer wishes to be part of
the here and the now
and the then and the to come

Knock, knock, knock!

so the question the guard asks you
in English by the way
is not would you care for some breakfast
but are you ready to be awoken from this dream of timelessness
or would you prefer to remain in a room of marvels
a disembodied spectacular down the rabbit hole of the fantasia elevator
taking up semipermanent residence in the cross-eyed manifesto
of time masterpieces of continuous previousness
a conspiracy of angels flocking in all directions at the holy speed of intuition
as you learn to live in the fantastic space

 

____________________________________________________________

Richard James Allen’s ten books of poetry, fiction and performance texts include Fixing the Broken Nightingale(Flying Island Books), The Kamikaze Mind(Brandl & Schlesinger) and Thursday’s Fictions (Five Islands Press), shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.  He won the Chancellor’s Award for most outstanding PhD thesis at UTS.  Widely published in anthologies, journals and online for over thirty years, Allen has been the recipient of numerous awards, nominations, grants, as well as opportunities for presentations, screenings and broadcasts, in a unique international career as an acclaimed writer, director, choreographer and performer. Further information: http://ww.physicaltv.com.au & http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/allen-richard-james.

TRICKLE DOWN VOODOO ANTICS

We say bad things about people who hurt us.

That way they’d let up to haunt & to curse us.

We didn’t dismiss their nonsense,

just cruelly,

We vent  and vanquish their malevolence.

& thus  Renewal.

The Infinite Up Against The Finite, Up Again

After a rain

I have to stand straight

As my back pain

Will let me  and  wait

To take note.

Take it all in,  Breath first.

“Skin second,”  He wrote,

Then Worked to recall.  All by breakfast.