Home (A Quick Guide to Forced Displacement)

“No human being should be deprived of his metaxu, that is to say of those relative
and mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture, etc.) which warm and nourish the soul
and without which, short of sainthood, a human life is not possible.”
– Simone Weil

Let us rest a little. 
There is much to take in here. After a long process of disintegration, 
rootedness. The life instinct exceeds bounds and gives off sparks

before breaking free 
and burning itself out 
in a flashover. 

To break free 
will take a lifetime. 

A lifetime is a type of flammable cladding 
growing anxious to ingest the oxygen in cavity walls.
The blaze burrows through at length 

and eats away at it, 
as a blaze would. Loss is the conductor,
memory the meeting place. It helps evade immunity to what inhabits old sensations. 

At the sharp end of the passage-
way        
          were they a sound wave chorus 
                 in a vessel being filled

the same memories would turn up the self-
same passageway.
                                
                                   Send in all personal inquiries and sit tight, it’s just a matter 
of investigative procedure.

And wait and wait,
for something to happen. 

Run motions of repetition to reach an entry point.
Foster, for what it’s worth, an image, 

            a destination…
                         
                                             
                                              … You left yourself at the old quarters

a human breath collection apparatus                                       in sensorial space 
gliding in and out of walls                           forever ushering new tenants in, 

hanging on for dear life, 
having only been taught hate. 

You left to see how far you’d come--

When you looked back you were a navigational hyperlink, 
collapsed, light at nightfall 
the final sight to mark your progress,

all initial and ulterior installments of escapement born out of a mere change 
of direction. 
Flux.

[Reflux.] 
You are almost always 
starting over. You feel you are changing yet again.

You’d like to ask what dead book fiction was used to shroud, 
to mask everyone’s spirit of discernment so completely--

Is it true there isn’t a valve to shut off the flow of that blue smoke in here

the outlet pressure’s going to exceed 1000 kPa 
and someone may choke to death 

before they iron out eventual bugs and safety flaws 
and add new self-correcting features, and that piece that has been lodged in you

                                                                                    internalized 
                                     
like a compression field around a nexus of events

                  might, 
                     and why not, reveal a trace 
in a case of evidence 
without clues

as from a swift underwater explosion 
during which for the subject to be transformed 
it must initially be stowed at the center of its vulnerability, it, the subject, 

and then propelled, albeit later than ever, high into the air,
into making a farewell appearance                       
on a tin lifeboat
                              surrounded by its counterparts, pain
and beauty, 
to see the object of universal contemplation
in the flashing eye-ball in the sky                 

                                                                                    reflecting, upside down,                                          
the seeing of events                                             as image, 

                                            as destination.

Not the kind one feels confined to 
but a harbor of pursuit, a transplant of the will to believe  
no less desirous than habitual,                                  
habitually a size too large. 

Because the first act of war is feeling small.

Hard to know when to stop, having arrived into the world head first, 
anonymously, the next place beside the last, so few crossing rafts.

---

Micro-Machinist 

​How much further to keep on as to get over.  
What was got to is made real. 

                                             The sound of the city waking up to life 
matched to the waking city’s unique sound print 

reveals a voice signal unaccounted for. 
The signal is a wave flowing 
through our minds and bodies, checkpoints for a longstanding 
hunting season.

Guards cash in each time it travels through

free to continue 
plaiting fresh data strands unimpeded,                           ununiform with the near- 
                                                                                                           daylight sweep 

so that we should access                                              information 
at a higher speed,                                                                  then become it.

Thoughts are slow-navigating foldings-over in a system of mere symmetry.

Not fully independent of    
to what extent 
and why 
such afterthoughts speak and act out post-truths all at once, 
images within hatch fractals, 

memories follow us back  
every .4 seconds to generate miles and miles of industrious erosion. 

                                            An investigation has been launched, 

is now ongoing, 
grows more collapsed 
from the mirage 

configured/ 
reconfigured 
in the statue eyes
we can’t escape around the room.

Insofar as the nervous mind supplies the system’s orchestra,
life awaits the big homecoming 
cheering on

                      nothing but survival training 
with a deathwish:

homelands melted 
under cypresses

dim distance 
with the birth of a neo-century of maiden spirit.
The sediment of doublethink crumbles the alveoli on either side 
of the recruit’s heart 

and compounds
a vast continuous presence--

Having come across the slow familiar missing of the soul, his own private micro-
machinist, all that commands him does not exist.

---

Click & Connect
​​

​At night tricks of light sleep 
at dark angles. 
The heart feels like waves
gently rock you 
in the middle of the sea.   

Misdirected acts of kindness.    

Proceed by connecting
the following statements:

You don’t really KNOW yourself.

You drink down nature 
so she spits you back OUT.

You remain deeply UNHAPPY.

​​Daniel Nemo is an Amsterdam-based poet, translator, and photographer.
More info at www.danielnemo.com