Will I Be Still the Hero
Lately I see things
fade to a dark shade
till they wear through
their own orbit.
What strikes my eye
is an altercation of fluency.
Part concomitance
of form. Part vacuum
that sucks me in.
I am stuck between one
and zero cropping
for myself
a place in nature.
The answer
to form
is the formless--
substantive
rather than rhetorical,
factitious.
The lake which is dark
is the ceiling of a memory.
The time on the water
drinks the water.
Function without
intentionality.
I take this what
voice speaks out
that it have simply
in mind to exist
outside the occasional,
one and the same
ordinary act of speaking,
else not think of
one who wouldn’t
know then
or nor would I.
I dream of another end.
It was never for ever
for certain.
fade to a dark shade
till they wear through
their own orbit.
What strikes my eye
is an altercation of fluency.
Part concomitance
of form. Part vacuum
that sucks me in.
I am stuck between one
and zero cropping
for myself
a place in nature.
The answer
to form
is the formless--
substantive
rather than rhetorical,
factitious.
The lake which is dark
is the ceiling of a memory.
The time on the water
drinks the water.
Function without
intentionality.
I take this what
voice speaks out
that it have simply
in mind to exist
outside the occasional,
one and the same
ordinary act of speaking,
else not think of
one who wouldn’t
know then
or nor would I.
I dream of another end.
It was never for ever
for certain.
Mirror Language
The poem grows a little every time you read it.
New centers of reality are rendered
somewhere else
across
the adrenal nucleus
like a grid painting.
The wind rises:
exuberance.
Warren of polymer dots warp-bubble feathers
fall upon the lake.
Ghostdance
vertigo.
What will you do
when the gods forsake you?
Far off, long ways you must stop
and think over: all you
forget a language, because
wrong, a language forgets you.
Don’t words
articulate
the sky and land in unchecked sliding
fragments fusing a suspended
state,
turn around,
they disappear…
Did you not know
in translation
one becomes less than a person more than a person
ever was
of whom neither remembers
nothing.
Is this the limit to the poem?
New centers of reality are rendered
somewhere else
across
the adrenal nucleus
like a grid painting.
The wind rises:
exuberance.
Warren of polymer dots warp-bubble feathers
fall upon the lake.
Ghostdance
vertigo.
What will you do
when the gods forsake you?
Far off, long ways you must stop
and think over: all you
forget a language, because
wrong, a language forgets you.
Don’t words
articulate
the sky and land in unchecked sliding
fragments fusing a suspended
state,
turn around,
they disappear…
Did you not know
in translation
one becomes less than a person more than a person
ever was
of whom neither remembers
nothing.
Is this the limit to the poem?
Manifold
With the hands close to the body, breathing evenly,
the performance may refocus the sheer presence of the poem
but at the same time deny its unitary consciousness, its metaphysical unity.
In on the con–
conscious.
A near uroboric act.
Or else take it in simply
by reading—reading as searching
as being the act
that splits the mind
and sets it in a state of conflict with itself,
verging on untemporary--
until pieced back
in the only medium you experience:
one that has transitioned from another,
light coming through from a high window
out of frame.
And, at the most quiet.
All the dead poets you love stand in the empty yard.
Their arteries like yours are weighted octaves
which truly receive time.
All time already exists
in you. Both past and present
held together at once by a now in process
yet the story remains something hunting for—to let go,
let it be told,
so tell it,—let go of--
you deliver the news to no one
and know there can be none
made of any substance…
Sensors monitor the body as star-appointed witness,
venture out extragalactic,
stelliform… Things aren’t everywhere welcome
so much as deliquesced.
Reincarnations of the line’s
change-language compass
seem whole here
in a world,
a mind sectioned
by arcs and aural circles
where sense-objects burst wide open
around living grains of magic.
Decrust—and the breadcrumbs stick together. They’re atoms coming at reality
in light of a new survey. Fotomontaggi: a fresh loaf pops out.
the performance may refocus the sheer presence of the poem
but at the same time deny its unitary consciousness, its metaphysical unity.
In on the con–
conscious.
A near uroboric act.
Or else take it in simply
by reading—reading as searching
as being the act
that splits the mind
and sets it in a state of conflict with itself,
verging on untemporary--
until pieced back
in the only medium you experience:
one that has transitioned from another,
light coming through from a high window
out of frame.
And, at the most quiet.
All the dead poets you love stand in the empty yard.
Their arteries like yours are weighted octaves
which truly receive time.
All time already exists
in you. Both past and present
held together at once by a now in process
yet the story remains something hunting for—to let go,
let it be told,
so tell it,—let go of--
you deliver the news to no one
and know there can be none
made of any substance…
Sensors monitor the body as star-appointed witness,
venture out extragalactic,
stelliform… Things aren’t everywhere welcome
so much as deliquesced.
Reincarnations of the line’s
change-language compass
seem whole here
in a world,
a mind sectioned
by arcs and aural circles
where sense-objects burst wide open
around living grains of magic.
Decrust—and the breadcrumbs stick together. They’re atoms coming at reality
in light of a new survey. Fotomontaggi: a fresh loaf pops out.
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Notes:
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Daniel Nemo is an Amsterdam-based poet, translator, and photographer.
More info at www.danielnemo.com |
