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, exceeding bounds, gives off sparks
before it breaks free
and burns itself out
in a flashover.
To break free
will take a lifetime.
A lifetime is a type of flammable cladding
anxious to ingest the oxygen in cavity walls.
The blaze burrows through at length
and eats away at it,
as a blaze would.
Memory is the conductor
as well as the meeting place. At the sharp end of the passage-
way
were they a substance
in a vessel being filled
the same memories would turn up the self-
same passageway,
sweet and sticky like direct and open seeing.
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 in the old quarters
a human breath collection apparatus 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--
Looking 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.]
It’s why you are 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,
plus 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 a subject to be transformed
it must be stowed at the center of its vulnerability,
it, the subject,
and then propelled high into the air
so as to reflect upside
down
in the flashing eye-ball in the sky
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 bodies.
When sounded clear it streams right through, lifesize, sonorant howl
hardened into
everyday acoustics.
Our minds deafened
turn off checkpoints at each and every intersection,
guards cash in each time it runs across
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.
Our thoughts are slow-navigating afterthoughts.
Not fully independent of
to what extent
and why
they speak and act out post-truths by default,
systems within hatch fractals,
memories pin us back every .4 seconds
and generate miles and miles of industrious erosion.
Nothing that we choose sits still.
An investigation has been launched,
is now ongoing, persists
in the mirage
configured/
reconfigured
in the eyes of statues
we can’t escape around the room.
Saying, how is the thing felt
when there’s no getting through
in order to begin to feel at all?
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 melting 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--
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 bodies.
When sounded clear it streams right through, lifesize, sonorant howl
hardened into
everyday acoustics.
Our minds deafened
turn off checkpoints at each and every intersection,
guards cash in each time it runs across
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.
Our thoughts are slow-navigating afterthoughts.
Not fully independent of
to what extent
and why
they speak and act out post-truths by default,
systems within hatch fractals,
memories pin us back every .4 seconds
and generate miles and miles of industrious erosion.
Nothing that we choose sits still.
An investigation has been launched,
is now ongoing, persists
in the mirage
configured/
reconfigured
in the eyes of statues
we can’t escape around the room.
Saying, how is the thing felt
when there’s no getting through
in order to begin to feel at all?
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 melting 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--
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,
unlived edges blend in and blow the design out of scale.
The heart feels like waves gently rock you in the middle of the sea.
Its action is to extend and contract
the somatic parameters of an interbeing
turned inward searching,
set for it a rhythm.
Proceed by connecting the following statements:
You don’t yet KNOW yourself.
You drink down nature so she spits you back OUT.
You remain deeply UNHAPPY.
unlived edges blend in and blow the design out of scale.
The heart feels like waves gently rock you in the middle of the sea.
Its action is to extend and contract
the somatic parameters of an interbeing
turned inward searching,
set for it a rhythm.
Proceed by connecting the following statements:
You don’t yet 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 |