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
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.
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.
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 |