TAKE HEART [21-30]

 [Collaborative Poetic Project Between Gali-Dana Singer and Stephen Ellis. Poems written in alternating lines composed by SE and GDS] 

LATELY AND FOREVER DEEPER IN DEBT

.

.

In memory lives the presence of unobserved thieves of time

Pain, penance and self-hatred are their names

all of them dress a little too nicely

.

for an occasion of revenge, drawing far too much attention to those

.

or why not use its energy to attend to the making milk solids

you might well ask in an attempt to learn the time saving technique

: Forgiveness can bring rain, even to the dry corn-fields of Calvin Cossaboon in 1957

.

.

.

*

 

 

'HONEY GATHERERS OF MIND'

.

.

Sleepy and sleepless are twins, like day and night

they are indirectly connected by a third element

which is better left unnamed for the sake of

.

feeling the quantity of its presence

.

in the dark and bright translucent enamels covering all the 24 hours

the scattered colors held in abundance by the pollen specialists of love

who seem to always forget the last letter of the bee.

.

.

.

*

 

MUM IS THE WORD

 

The force that is released in me

is not the one 'that through the green fuse drives the flower',

but is of making sense of what has never been said,

 

like a dance of road lights seen through a dirty windshield.

 

How is that I usually hear what I should see?

In the same way as a smell appears before a touch?

There is a terrible shortage of life when the things of it are all given names.

 

 

 

OMNISCIENCE

.

.

Isn't it mean to ask what does 'meaning' mean?

What we make naturally, we destroy in asking 'is it real?'

trying to narrow the field of confusion

.

Yet letting apparent contradiction live all our lives in a secret place that is the 'double' of ourselves

.

we need no meaning to mean us well

falling into reciprocal worlds of not-always-equal function or force

while the first letter of "radiance" is O.

.

.

.

*

 

 

 

HITHER AND THITHER, CALM AND COLLECTED

.

.

The passage of time can never actually reveal itself

in the finite forms of salt and separation

Whither our lucid melody of love derives

.

not from the verbal or any other auditory stimuli themselves –

.

yes, the senses will always appropriate what remains invisible

– but from the interaction of listed unreasons and a silent listener –

lucid wave moving always with lucid wave

.

.

.

*

 

 

 

IS THIS YOURS?

.

.

How different is writing on sandpaper from writing on sand?

No difference exist: Grammar will always be just grammar

no matter who is scribbling, the letter arrives at its destination sooner or later

.

The question is, what if 'life experience' is nothing but a series of 'tall tales'?

.

What the answer will be? Will it be 'So what?’

The other question is, if naked in the sea, do we 'own' our own swim suits?

The other answer will be 'Yes or no, while they contain us'.

.

.

.

*

 

 

ODDS ARE

.

.

No one will find out anything in this way except that everything is [im]possible

while the key word is elusive and impish  by its very nature

You can't make a potato from potato soup

.

But you can always make something out of nothing and vice versa

.

Logic must have contact with its application, but must have no overlap or conflict with it.  'A priori' things have no order.

The implausible will rule the world of freedom,

for those whose sensibilities have been reduced by logic, will be thought, rather than think.

.

.

.

*

 

 

UTOPIA: LET THERE BE NO TITLE

.

.

Night is talking to you in infinity of furtive gestures

Freedom's attention rightly belongs to the passage of all living concrete moments

Handing you an onion and a soft touch of Eden tissues,

.

The substance of our love is what my breathing aspires to

.

Changing the light from orange to blinding white and then making a compromise on yellow

The scent of your hankie is my delight, but onions make me weep

The taste of our tears is unforgettable

.

.

.

*

 

SHALL WE GO OUTSIDE?

.

.

The body of love is a room filled with moonlight

What is the soul of love, a window wonders

We receive it as desire, delight that enters as surprise

.

Declares the room full of itself to the brim, yet still the window wonders

.

over the marvel of wondering, what purpose making a question from an answer serves

Is it a service of love or a servitude, intervenes a chance moon ray

[Appenxix A]:  It keeps random wrinkles in our cloths and refuses to put formal creases where they belong.

.

.

.

*

 

 

 

ANY SPHINX IMAGE?

.

.

Nightly visits to a neighbouring aluminium fence closing a construction site are full of surprises

for each new dream is the blaze of reapportionment, or glory

Every change in the city lighting brings into being a new friendly monster

.

Metrics of separating the light from what you can see of it

.

Are not yet constructed by the will of municipal authorities

But moonlight will always without authority kiss the belly of every field of wildflowers

creating the truest of illusions, literally that of illumination.

.

.

.

*

 

TAKE HEART [11-20]

[Collaborative Poetic Project Between Gali-Dana Singer and Stephen Ellis. 

Poems written in alternating lines composed by SE and GDS] 

I WILL SAVE YOU WITH A WORD

.

.

In heart spring up stars asked for in their radiance flaws of which they cannot ask 

Are there flowers more faultless than fictions? In an inner chamber

Only those installed with explosive ordinance.

.

Are there means for secure disposal of imperfections?

They blossom beautifully of their own accord like intransigent teenage terrorists

hiding among the dust bunnies from the terrors of happy childhoods.

.

We never learned how to fuck.

.

.

.

*

AS LONG AS THE EARTH IS ROUND

.

.

Lining the air with an excess of fluff bulbul rushes straight into the net

tired, and dies, is not what any of us thought under trembling

a momentary death, but only  a death for a moment, to be resurrected and ringed

when the wind or tide is different as pouring across the beach, forever shaping it

to be continued as a serialised fiction with cliff-hanger endings

new sounds in panoramic ribbons of fresh tall grass in fields that are flat

will keep track of the movements of the bird and its life history, at least for a while

.

.

.

*

THE RECKLESS APEX OF HOPE

.

.

Optic content is illusion, as is 'evolution' of principle

Because we will leave out all ‘becauses’ as unnecessary and ghoulish

and anyway, saturation by 'forming' will spread anecdotally

.

So why not to go through the list of lucky symbols looking for the missing one?

.

We are blind to all those already there, luckily enough

The only ones discernible are the ones that are yet to be chosen

The ones we cannot perceive are the ones that have already chosen us

.

.

.

*

NEVER LET IT GO

.

.

Leftovers of the oil spillage hiding in the wet sand

alphabet of a toxic rhapsody the earth sings as it absorbs

stain the soles of my feet as every step stains the soul.

.

Intellect and 'science' follow the plain capacity of feeling pleasure for fancie in some common, low dialect

fleeing the beach don't forget to see in the world in a grain of sand. 

.

Speak always with love to what of toxicity makes the world 'seem whole'.

Hold a palm bough in the infinity of your hand, so the hidden might be revealed.

.

.

.

*

FROM THERE ACROSS TO WHAT?

.

.

Where both inside out futures our paths crossed,

The mirror can look both ways, but sees just in one direction.

Yes, where our faces gleam, in faces that allege our own shape and substance

.

unrecognisable to ourselves, yet promising a recollection, 

.

tulips become tulips, as they are called tulips, upon which some rely on memories of dying before they do

Do not call them tulips and they will never die.

Tulips are memory lapse as a flower garden soul lapse, lapse, perhaps as in one day home will home return, unrecognizable, and familiar

.

.

.

*

READ CAREFULLY

.

.

Do you need to rewrite me? - asks the woodworm, diving headlong into the substance of future paper pulp.

If I am to become a contract for my own death, you do

know where and when to enter the maze of eternity

.

to be born again and again into this world and our dreams of it

.

Just do not forget that there are other ways out

to live a full life freely with no need to hide behind how it appears

to scribble your line in the hieroglyphics of holes.

.

.

.

*

SAY IT AGAIN

.

.

All of our ideas become desire once more

Just as the silkworm turns the colour of the leaves on which it feeds

as your tongues dissolve into flowering pollen deep

within the nature of language

.

As the long story becomes short again as it was when it first came into being.

.

In the beginning words were just the names of things

and the names of things were the beginning

of love with no end in sight.

.

.

.

*

GOOD AFTERNOON

.

.

A fez on a brass coffeepot promises a grand sunset

for whomever is going anywhere for however we are the more so now

than ever before, when the spine of the city could not freely rotate

.

yet nevertheless encircles around the beloved and liberating form of love's true substance

.

Golden and red are always compatible as are velvet and copper

and why we tenderly call our union lilac and violet?

the dusk asks the twilight.

.

.

.

*

NOW, HERE, NEAR THE END

.

.

At the horizon, as if a separate place, blue sky provides a solution.

It fades to white, comprising all colours and non-colours of the memory

Internalized by way of how the body learns to breathe each part of it, at once.

.

Eternal marble dust the world will become one day, who will be able to inhale it?

.

The statues of marble made of their own inability to breathe, signs of what we culturally 'are',

misleading as always in the labyrinth of free air

where we are always free to be unable to distinguish between flies and bees

.

.

.

*

COMPLIANCE

.

.

Everything is fine, when the final decision is to be made

as we make it up and then must make it appear to function and be true to itself

asking  'can appearances be as true as disappearances are?'

.

Both ways of it can be had in all things: Presence involves both

.

like a greenish warbler in the branches of an unnamed bush, heard, yet unseen

or dreaming you are chewing bubble-gum when you are not, unaware that you aren't awake.

Anyway all is well, while we dream of a birdsong.

.

.

.

*

TAKE HEART [1-10]

[Collaborative Poetic Project Between Gali-Dana Singer and Stephen Ellis. Poems written in alternating lines composed by SE and GDS] 

 

VITA NUOVA [EXACTLY LIKE THIS]

.

.

Everything in a grail heart is alive

as in a peppered quail egg

that we hold against our chests from inside

each struggling to open the latch 

to hatch the uncanny universe that calls us out

yawning to catch its breath like an irregular verse

as pale and pointed as a newborn moon

.

.

.

*

 

INJURY BY BEAUTIFUL BEING

.

.

Whenever we shall purify the air braving masked crowds and crude prices

we do only what can be: Disclose to the future that can't see itself

Doing what cannot be done is the only way of being the blinds of the future

.

blind as bound to wealth, class war, powerlessness and genocide

.

as well as to liberty, love and aether

and the freedom to say to Mother's cosmetics collection: I could never be your wife

whenever we will

.

.

.

*

 

ANGELS OF OUR HISTORY

.

.

What did I try to prove jumping from the flat roof of a one-story garbage shed

simply seeing in its true being something necessary but not for this 'a necessity'

flight used to be flattened by the textbook quotation

.

until when contingency, powerful, searched me for its reason

.

promising and keeping its promise faithfully to find a way out

into the original space of the womb, where language first is heard

unless you were born out of your father's head like me

.

.

.

*

 

AGREE: CULTURAL WORK

.

.

Inasmuch that, neither more nor less, we live together joyously

In the thesaurus world of our wordiness

among beings invisible but equally, operatively 'there'

.

where wide-eyed tomatoes and eyeless peppers seem to watch over us

.

 [You mean they're not the cucumbers I always imagined them to be?]

how can anyone be sure of anything? ask the burst balloon for direction.

Of this I am sure: None of the cows in my heard have survived the year-long COVID-19 cattle mutilation epidemic

.

.

.

*

 

THERE IS NO DOUBT A BETTER TITLE  

.

.

Things being not what they seem to be, how could one

search the presences of just waking with no language to make them 'matter'?

Can the dark matter of seven dwarfs break open the Snowwhite's glass coffin?

.

Let us learn how rhythm to opening matter's depth 'is probably Eros, the breathing of 'air rose'

.

or better still let us let everything happen as if it doesn't concern us

always with, against and indifferent to the last snowflake's teardrop melted on the tongue

attempting to enunciate the last words for the final countless time.

.

.

.

*

 

CHORUS LINE

.

.

Whoever it is who is constantly changing the backdrop

Might well attend to the foreground as well

where tired thoughts enact their usual performance of 'hide and seek'

.

by neither background nor foreground, but one hand giving fingers to another's palm

.

as if a pine and a date palm enter the foreign world of each other

tree : tree for which needs no visa

but a free flight of imagination

.

.

.

*

 

SUN STAR

.

.

When drives on, the filament of now is the whole of it

yet the flowers of Ornithogalum escape

along the equatorial line, tropic, tropaic

.

always in the direction opposite to the intentional closure

.

: there could be a new emergence in Armenia

if 'the apricot-made wind' will overlook it's dubious nature

like your palm it will circle my navel as it laughs.

.

.

.

*

 

TOLD TO STAY PUT

.

.

Celery, leek and cabbage suspended on the invisible threads

if ever there is time to eat in moonlight

do not consume yourself with worries and self-doubt

.

Mother says I am a boy that needs to a river

River says that everything is forgiven

.

Human mind in other means to immanence 'for' tomorrow

cannot misbehave enough to become an angel

.

.

.

*

 

SWEAT SHOP

.

.

Impoverished, I go home to the work I never leave

even for a quarter of eternity however short it could manage to be

.

Let us be a non-federated union of loose persons of typical carbon manufacture

Let us be anonymous while we can

.

I've never left my home-town, although my life left my body once

Such asymmetrical discrepancy is in the nature of unjustness

And this is why the beautiful has to be offensive to be even more beautiful

.

.

.

*

 

WE ARE THIS POEM

.

.

Do we play chess? - one tin of geraniums asks another.

Reflex pointless do I have no single time or direction to compete

Black pawn and white bishop, will they ever meet?

.

in light rain from grey skies

silly questions are the only ones that make sense

.

Which colors are not also the names of minerals, animals, plants or fish?

Whom do you love more, little girl, a mummy or an effigy?

.

.

.

*

OTHER, OR SOMETHING [Part IV]

[Collaborative Poetic Project Between Gali-Dana Singer and Stephen Ellis. Poems written in alternating lines composed by SE and GDS] 

FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE

Intelligence struts to ridicule all

But no one can beat an Indian starling

Or a Greek adorned with a harsh yet beautiful syntax

Pansies shine in the corner looking quite sensible

Like dark lipstick, bright fingernail polish and a single silver earring

On Wednesdays pay attention to small details

PINOCCHIO

As wooden puppets move their heavy jaws

We wonder if they smoke dragon candles on their days off

Trying to overcome bashfulness that eats them up like a teredo

And makes the hole between human lips that blow the air that propels the sound of words

'Don't forget the essentials, my heart: earth, water, air and freedom to bring fire

'And never forget to caress forever the beautiful blush that tints the face of love.'

LOVE LETTER

Love letters are the preserve of living art objects

Strawberry preserves are as old-fashioned as snow of summers past

Starlight in full sail provides the candle-power flowing through your hair

Yet no one can tell where is it going and why

The secret of growth principles is that they are forever a secret

So no one can be bothered to ask: 'What's the point?'

BEHIND THE GLASS DOOR

Sinking fingers deep into the impalpable black

The indeterminate ear hears whole the pleasure, peril and task

Of being just that: ear, fingers and nothing more

One on one, one in one, one with one, plus one 'and' one

That's easy, there can be no mistake

Where all is in error, everything has to be right.

TRUE TO THE CORE

An alphabet glitters, laughing like a star-field in the dark

Does it matter what alphabet it is?

The alphabet of a language you do not understand

Or the one you try hard to forget

In other words, the one that comes to you most naturally

Will never offer you anything you didn't ask for.

CAN WE HAVE OUR COMPASS BACK?

'Whites start and win' announces the pawnshop sign

To contest in words whether men invented gods, or if gods made us

And the truth as always hides somewhere in between keeping mum

We stay silent about what we know, but speak without end of what we know not

Gods and men are one, while women

Know better than to take either seriously, possessed always of their own true fullness.

HOME AGAIN

With all the years in this body lived

The knowledge of the hedgehogs and of squirrels

As like the quickness of all small mammals on which I would stake my soul

To feel in their brittle bones the nearness of flight

And walk modestly barefoot through the grass when sky is blue

For 'nowhere' is the only direction the compass needle shows for those who seek.

YES?

Who knows what mock orange scorns more than anything in the world

'For example,' oranges know that they are orange, in honor of the sun

Examples mock those who think they are exemplary

Do fruits believe in God, or is their sweet juice just 'creatio ex nihilo'?

Is there a contradiction, by the way?

Only by way of confirming that the center and its circumference are the same.

THE WORD, THE WORLDING

The place of the soil where the soul grows

Unscored on celestial maps of the Netherworld

Shines with slivers of shattered quartz, or stars half-buried in the ground

Be careful when you gather them in the palm of your hand

For they are as sharp as the eyes of a hawk

Watching the movement that doesn't make sense in a sentence.

THE GIFT

What kind of being is being on time, asked earthworm

The ones that hold out against oxidation, said a voice upon the air

Are different from those who thrive on the emotions of despair, but

Wishing to rust is the surrender of trust!  Certainly, we can

Prevent late chrysanthemums from losing the ground

Let them swallow the air as the earth gives them birth.

IS THIS HOW HEGEL THOUGHT WE SHOULD LIVE?

Who was it throwing words on the wind like a scarecrow talking to sparrows

It was ravens screeching at the moon from desire, my love

'Never ask a question that you don't know the answer to’

The answer that there has never always been a question for

Told the wind to the dry bough

Because although pine cones probably, you rarely find doughnuts in the forest.

NEVER ASK WHAT IT IS

Yes.  *  [this is not the first line.  Although it 'could' be.]

Actually, it was. In the beginning there was 'Yes'

I want you to do me a small favor: When I know what it is, I'll ask.

[So it 'is' the first line?  Can be, quite naturally.  Let's make it so.]

The poem is writing itself like the world does.

Yes.  The favor I didn't know the details of, has already been completed.

A PEARL IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

I feel like I'm going to faint every day in the past right now

Told white chrysanthemum to the cloudy water in a glass.

A cloudy wall in the grass is something to talk to when it gives me notice

This is the only thing to do when there is nothing to do.

Except 'when always with nothing to do' went and watched Melvin Wills shuck oysters

And that is just the thing to which I do not know how to relate.

MOSTLY IN ALEXANDRIA

Like a swarm  of toy terriers in the clover

No one knows what will come next

And the cleverest of all don't even bother to look forward

They just knock at the nearest door

To ask for direction to the Temple of Misunderstanding

Where the note on the table says 'Have a seat: You're already here.'

LOVE

What effort does it take for grasses to grow?

For the umpteenth time the air questioned the earth

Water stood by and laughed, as rain, while the sun waited for clouds to clear

The grasses sang something tuneful all along, they didn't care

In the meantime, photography was invented

It sealed my fate.

NOW FOR THE TRUE PART

A rose by any name won't be a rose

Nor necessarily even a flower [the name will be a word]

in the absence of attention or any other irreversibilities

Flowers make seeds that grow plants that make buds that always burst into flower

Sea is a constant reminder of the simple truth

We are just here, put together by constant motion, and remaining so.

THE BENEFITS OF HIBISCUS FLOWERS

In the easiness of touch, what do I expect?

Some kind of obstacle, I guess

I expect nothing but feel perpetual enchantment

That goes unnoticed in the superior nature of the eternal obstacle

Naturally, love will be complicated even when there are no people involved

And even more so in that case.

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND IS GOING TO ANSWER THAT PERENNIAL QUESTION

The shadow of lavender sprig on a canna leaf produces the crisscross of illusionary life and of

Having gone crazy eventually, in the strain of holding hands under the sea

Otherwise known just as dry air without boundaries or restrictions

Can we call it 'breathing'?  We're 'under quarantine, after all, those of us who 'don't vote'

Why not if there is nothing better? Words are like that in their overbearing irreplaceability

No end of temperance to legacy: 'Hey man, why'd you cut the engine?’

IS LOVE MEANT ONLY TO SEEK ONE'S OWN GOOD IN THE BELOVED OBJECT?

My star is a hibiscus flower.  Let’s see how this works out.

Sawing the wrist with a blunt razor blade could I imagine the aftermath?

We often see red when the sky is blue but not a flower

The mathematics of the human eye are closed for a winter season

Glass was once just an idea that no one had thought of yet.

And transparency was not supposed to be discovered

HOLDING POWER [21-30]

21.
NECROMANCY
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
The human ear is in shape
of a question mark, and cannot
turn against us as long as we
.
continue hearing natural
sounds with answer enclosed,
as so we live in accordance
.
with also the dictation that
comes with the 'aural signals'
from Madame Blavatsky, who
.
lives within [what, something]
that can do us no harm, just as
not following instructions will
.
get us to the pinnacle down deep
to the point at the 'bottom' [or
maybe it's the top, or off to one
.
side'] of the conch shell that is
found along the deserted beach
littered with quartz on the way
.
to Eden which is in north while
walking south around the tip [of]
what is more than a spit of sand
.
on the other side of, is the ferry
dock and its flag loyalties, but
no money for the fare except to
.
know that lightning across horizon
lines indicates that Cary Grant with
Grace Kelly are having an elegant
.
lunch including twelve raw oysters
in aftermath of sherry and expresso
just up and over my shoulder in
.
Stone Harbor.  It has always been
good to agree with what Hermes
discloses, that those appearing to
.
be my mother and father, are actually on 
vacation from nowhere, and that these 
adults are the parents of someone else.
.
.
.
*

22.
EARLY OCTOBER EVE
[Gali-Dana Singer]

Groping for the way out 
from that labyrinthine ear
that stays seemingly not listening
yet hears every single breath
be it ever so light or so heavy
that no one can bear it whatever 

^

the case may be, keep in mind 
that the nacreous twilight 
faithfully promises something 
no mother-of-pearl is able to fulfil, 
so the seasickness of dusk 
will lull you into a true sense of security.

^

Follow it thoroughly if you wish 
to take of in earnest or forget it
going on your own and yet ruled 
by this tremulous dimness,
just don’t take the way through
for a sought-after road. 

.
.
.
*

23.
ATHOMING OF SCORED PHENOMENA CAN NEVER BE BROKEN
[Stephen Ellis]
.

.
No paradoxical, contradictive,
di-polar, contrasting, circular,
complementary means of thought
.
can get you to the mode that is
not a temple, but a means to get
you where you hear the first sound
.
realized in one's being forever to be
trained to hear always voices upon
the air that will not follow or supply
.
with the means of hearing them, not
in manner of interpretation, but clear
sound of what all fear: Immanence,
.
incipience regarding what is just around
every corner. The stream is the sound
of itself as a single flow that cannot
.
turn back on itself in an intellectual 
board game. You cannot take back 
what can be heard only as a steady 
.
stream of overt actuality, for metaphors
too, are the things they are that ought
not be made too much of. To find one's
.
way lost in a deep wood is simple: Follow
the stream that can never qualify as 
'a literary device,' of which are none, but
.
as merely useful to some 'end.' Forget
what a 'thing' is, yet somehow make
always words the same 'thing' as things.

.
.
.
*

24.
TRAVELLING LIGHT
[Gali-Dana Singer]

As things are words, so words are mostly things,
but not the same, the sameness being wrong
as any concept is, yet in the throng

^

of fellow beings, we can feel that way

misguidedly, of course, but under sway
of verbal forces can you see what swings

^

the human thinking will at random take
from one mistake and to the oneness of mistake

^

while listening to unobtrusive inner hum
with trust complete as that of drunkards of Hafiz
his cordial companions at the feast

^

whose agitated minds can’t stay for god’s sake numb, 
if only for an instant? As it is
an answer to a question never asked

^

let’s follow the weather forecast
[La Bocca della Verità keeps mum]

^

let us continue wandering unmasqued
through crystal ball or into smoky quartz
through depots, terminals and lifeless airports

^

in constant search for that unheard of voice
which will not leave us choice but to rejoice
that no one demands our passports. 



25.
JUST NOW PERFECT
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
In the lens that is all
the air that is, is of
perception that has 
.
no seam-guide except
for mistakenly that 
language is good for
.
mostly close-ups
and the random pattern
of crowd movements.
.
Everyone wants the same
thing, or everyone at
least wants the same
.
things to be true, as
a start to learning how
to be true, not to 
.
the language that 
suggests by analogy
what this ought to be,
.
this way, that way, all
ways, no way.  Imported
foods keep us to politesse
.
and prim behaviour in
more primal circumstance.
'People are starving' is
.
in this class of observance.
I watched myself lose
23 kg in six months,
.
following cumulous clouds
billow out in opposition
and winter depart as
.
the last snowflake melts
on the black tongue of
an unusually slender 
.
deer.  These things 
cannot be used to 
confess about how 
.
words in their relationship
to the things we are 
and have no other way 
.
to refer to is what, lacking
body heat, with few
clothes and even less
.
money is how one
manages to open mail
addressed to them 
.
and 'do' read it.  To
attend a fashion show
on foreign shores is
.
the only solution: humble
and haughty, as Hafiz, yeah, 
'audibly awake.'  Surgery will be
.
necessary.  I paperclip
my passport to the outside
of my shirt pocket,
.
and in determined
tenderness, go always
as, I want, where you go.

.
.
.
*

26.
A LESSON IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIRDS
[Gali-Dana Singer]

Learning Polish for ‘these things’ 
and ‘those things’, notice 
that the word for ‘things’ 
is basically the same 
as the Russian one 
for ‘words’ or ‘speech’

^

while fondly remembering all the time:
in Hebrew they are identical twins.
Are we rebuilding broken chains of lost wisdom,
restoring safety net of future freedom
(suffix ‘-dom’ falsely stating the fact of being)
or just holding time and tenderness 

^

close together as in brewing a cup 
of loose-leaf tea for a random evening
which will strain its countless sore eyes 
into colourless dimness wishing 
for nacreous light to glimmer forever
so it’ll reach at last the impaired vision? 




 27.
THE GLORY OF LOVE'S ENTRAILS
[Stephen Ellis]

.

.
And then the pursuit of, 
well something is what is 

.
'happening' over in how
staying clear of all but how
rime fits itself is what does

.

well.  Maybe it's better not to 
give word of noticing anything

.

much so not to be part of
overall ruin.  Are there trees
in Poland?  I only know

.
that birds can see stars through
their eyelids: We are and am in

time.  And time is all the same
just as words as things and
the things that they refer to

are the same as not knowing 
the difference.  The equator is

.

determined by the accents of
the local and neighboring species 

.
of what comes next: Always and most
usually a lesson of some kind.

.
.
.
*

28.
NEITHER DAY NOR NIGHT
[Gali-Dana Singer]

Hugin and Munin fly each day
over the spacious earth.
I fear for Hugin, that he come not back,
yet more anxious am I for Munin.
(Grímnismál, translated by Benjamin Thorpe)

^

Thinking and Remembering, 
two ravens 
covering the domain
in pursuit of data

^

may not return
and this prospect
makes their flight 
all the more unforgettable

^

circling the world
with precision and care
round and round 
the tree of knowledge

^

can they just leave
for the sake of blackness
turning their backs
on their nervous master?

^

What will they find
in a free cosmos?
Futureless life
or useless justice?

^

Less than one forever
will wait for them hiding
in the leafless crown
of the rootless kingdom.

^

Precious be the persistent hope
for the instant unending, 
when all that is known 
will fly out of orbit.



29.
INEVITABILITY
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
No wonder our nerves
are stretched and thin,
good fortune abounds
. 
in exhaustion through
which every nuance is
a light wind that removes
.
a few leaves from the tree
of knowledge so fresh 
green from the tree of
.
life can be revealed
and disclose the true
color of love. What is
.
circling but a neurotic
obsession which must
be revealed under what
.
at best can be but
simulation of the life
that is sought. To feel
.
alive, one must light
in the full chaos in 
the middle of it. Pursuit
.
of order is hindrance,
when all we need is 
'pause' - the tree of life
.
must be embraced INSIDE
the tree of knowledge,
the necessity of which 
.
will never give up hope
of having a love that
knowledge makes impossible.
.
The tree of knowledge
is made of images
and images are made of
.
referent words [images].
the whole of life in love
as poet through poetry
.
to the substance of 
expression has to do
in poetics with words
.
as themselves among
things - some of which
are named by what are
.
called words [words being
substantial things] - has
to do with ceasing circling
.
simulacrum, and turning
our imaginations into the real
wood of living wood, or
.
to be unusually simple about 
these matters is, that innocence 
must always be experienced.

.
.
.
*

30.
TIRED LIGHT RULES THE WORLD
[Gali-Dana Singer]

‘Make this one as translatable as it can possibly be’,
came the thought out of nowhere.
‘Make this one as’ I repeat again and again.
‘Make’... but can it be made? 
The answer is ‘no’, however, the thought 
would not take ‘no’ for an answer. 

^

Thoughts come out of no place, 
then they do not expect to be 
found out as commonplaces
by stealth, scheming and cunning.
Nothing is made of nothing 
as nowhere is made of wariness

^

and complacency of evergreen platitudes
will bring us nowhere as a matter of course.
‘Can taking transatlantic flight to the right words
in the right order be the correct choice
of expression when you don’t know
what to say?’, asks another fleeting visitor

^

of the stuffy inner space in my head.
‘Never mind what you say
when you know how to say it’,
mutters the third one. Not being able 
to agree less I keep silent
closing this poem with a dot.

HOLDING POWER [11-20]

11.
BETWEEN 'REAL' AND 'APPARENT'
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
The main hope in
the literary arts is not
to turn up at any
.
time in the pages of
the history of it: Poetry
should remain unfinished
.
because of death in
feeling the finger of
your non-existent brother
.
reaching the incendiary
state of sheer appreciation
on reaching the summit
.
that is too high for
birds to be heard, and all
you have left is the mother-
.
of-pearl interior smoothness
of the inside of a snail -
where the vocables are
.
kept from the public except
when singing alone - along
with the interior colonoscopic
.
images Doctor Jeffrey Potter
made in attempting to determine
whether I have cancer. Original
.
occurances happen every day
in which love is a perpetual
form of uncompromising
.
Marxism trying to ally itself
with 'Oriental' authentricity
to guard against a particular
.
form of metaphysics of which
each individual is already
the center point. Bolshevism
.
simply missed the picture.
Originality within the supreme
accidentalism of daily
.
occurance has only to do with
knowing the altitude where
you and 'truth' conspire.
.
.
.
*

12.
‘The Flowering Flame of Flourishing’
[Gali-Dana Singer]
‘Just to think that the only way to temporal salvation
is not to let yourself to think,’
thought the Cockscomb flower,
using the loose analogy between
the cerebral convolutions and its own
peripheral routes of cognizance.
^
‘Problem solving can be that problematic, as you,
probably, know’, quickly added Celosia crestata
burning with secret desire to disclose
the origin of the genetic data stolen
long before the ancient Greeks
used to say κήλεος
^
Nothing is there when you look for it.
Stop looking and nothing will stop being there.
So close your eyes and wait for a kiss
coming for each three of them.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Nothing. Got it?


13.
ALL PERVASIVE
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
'Deduced but not perceived'
but do they not work together.
always? A name is deduced
.
from the quality of a thing
that may yet have no existence
but a given name, how can
.
that be? Nature is a loose
adaptation of itself, as love
to a kiss and the reverse.
.
There are rivers that can flow
two ways at the same time.
From where I come from, we
.
call metaphor 'exact change.'
['projection cylindrique'] or
that it will happen again, many
.
times, as eternal flame felt
for as life, the pride of
a rooster's crown, or simply
.
feel it for what it is, in another
language, κήλεος, or Carthage
could be seen burning from
.
the mainland, just as 'Celosia
crestata's flames can be easily
seen on the other side of a
.
garden path. Always make
yourself obvious by hiding from
what is with no doubt inevitable.
.
An expedition requires no baggage
that you have to carry. It will
accumulate its own. Problem solved.
.
.
.
*
14.
MUCH OF A MUCHNESS
[Gali-Dana Singer]

Make yourself oblivious of the time
you are living through, living in the end times
is a too often reoccurring incident
to be much thought of. ‘You should
no more think of going to a dinner
without the knowledge of this art,
^
than you should think of going
without your shoes,’ state ‘The Laws
of Etiquette: Or, Short Rules and Reflections
for Conduct in Society’ (By Gentleman).
While the author, not given to displays
of emotion, yet giving too much thought
^
to a process of thinking, enters and leaves
a scene of unceasing action, bordering
unto the slapstick chaos, without as much
as a stime of a courteous smile or a gleam
of a gracious tear, like an unruly river,
flowing two ways concurrently
^
or even entering itself twice, time after time,
on the pretence of never being the same.
And so is love, gentle reader. Don’t call it
a metaphor, wait, don’t call it, it will come
uncalled and as inevitable as an internal rhyme
only can be in a free verse written by me.


15.
INTIMATE WORKS WITHIN WHICH TO DREAM.
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
The claim of unceasing
coincidence is a coin that is
on either and/or both
.
sides, without value. The 'end
times' keep ending without
notice, aside from the usual
.
apocalyptic presumptions,
which etiquette says we should
never leave home without.
.
Time never ends, or there is
always time enough to fool
yourself into believing that
.
you have some control over
the energies that bring love
into being as a being that is
.
buoyed by its own beauty
with which it is anyway impossible
to interfere. George Gurdjieff.
.
once tried to triple-con me
for a five dollar cab ride in
Cairo, but the hotel manager
.
finally shoo'd him away. Magic,
like poetry, is best left for
those to whom it is disclosed
.
without help in reading the menu
we each are in the process of
writing. I feel no guilt for having
.
caused a scene in the lobby of
the Azjerbaijani Embassy. The only
method to have love disclosed
.
to you is in the language that runs
through your marrow like a river
that runs in all directions into you.
.
and becomes a wet marsh in which
wilds swans slowly wander, as if to say,
of love, only you will continue to be you.


16.
OLD HEBREW SIBYL 
EXHAUSTED BY THE MIGHTY SPIRIT OF THE LORD
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Wouldn't I like to tell myself a story?
But who will listen? I won’t.
Anyway the tale of the one-sided coin
was already told. The story
of the three-sided mirror
was filmed in the year 1927.
^
Then there is a romance of the Un-
sidedness, in which ‘an infinitely-sided 
polygon, for example, is no longer 
polygon at all – at the limit, 
it has attained coincidence 
or identity with a circle. 
^
It embraces the whole series 
of n-sided polygons precisely 
by being a non-sided polygon, 
a circle.’ That one still may be 
repeated with a certain flair
while each surcle of honeysuckle
^
forwards anew its sour sweet fragrance
and the crumbs of non-existence
fall unnoticed through its yellowed 
fingertips into the early greying air 
of the late September.
But why should I speak all?
 


17
A CYCLICAL VISITATION
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
There is no 'was' in the measure,
for there is/was in or of no need
for any, but that had already grown
.
in place without need for template.
It is as simple as understanding of
'fire sticks' and about a 'central axis'
.
[about which I have some doubt]
although there is the issue of
the spinal column in its nobleness
.
and arete, that I suppose makes no
difference by way of being of the life
of a creature, as giving to gender its
.
status 'in the poetic' which holds on for
'dear life' by remaining in a lifetime
in an almost 'incestuous' position
.
in relationship with all that seems
more-ot-less colloquial and common
in its similar ecstasies. The part about
.
the liver is Promethean, and related
fire sticks are of little matter but to
build confidence that the 'skamba'
.
knows what it's doing as much as
natural growth cannot 'know' digressively
what it will be when 'ripe.' I'll let things
.
go obscure for a moment, not that he
wanted to be Jane Austen in particular,
but was thought by another to wish he
.
was 'the Mistress of Girton' or by his own
admission, or what the other guy said,
was, a lesbian and/or a schoolmarm,
.
just as the first blurted out in the open
air, that he would rather be a plant.
One probably gets a better education at
.
a girl's school, depending on what you
wish to be taught. The Skamba needs only
two lines from axial pole to pole, but
.
as the umbrella effect, the earth is seen
to billow out more fully with many. 'Agni'
is a flame with many petals, like love has.
.
There is no need to measure any growth in
any way but in the way it fulfills its own
terms, which are not for us to know, for
.
we ought not think in terms of the measure
of which the French Finance Minister said in
2008, that what can be measured can be
.
accomplished, after the fruit has already
been picked by the strange disposition
favoring 'aftermath.' Two plus two equals
.
'forget it.' A tangerine, peeled, reveals its own
ley lines, and its skamba or axis is opened as
you break the sections of it along its own
.
ley lines and simply consume the sweetness
as of love, whose juice runs always like
murmuring, out the sides of one's mouth.

18.
EMBARASSING QUESTIONS
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Is there a split somewhere, let us say,
between the phenomenon and the idea
in the fabric of dreams where the light 
can squeeze in in an undignified manner 
to enter solemnly the room of being 
behind the musty plush curtain of corporeality?
^
– Or was it positioned before? Like a spacious chamber 
placing itself with every possible comfort 
in front of the French fire screen
where two foam-white embroidered Pegasi 
romp on the shores of Perseus blue silk? 
Does it really matter? – Doesn’t 
^
the multitudinous dance of dust specks 
starts for a chance spectator only when it happens 
to be pierced by a lonely sun ray without 
so much as ‘May I come in?’ or ‘By your leave’?
When I will exit the scene, must it be changed?
Whose perceptions will determine that? Not mine.  
^
Then the wild guess: should not departure 
be the happiest not for those who’ll go willingly 
without a farewell glance, as I used to believe, 
but for those who’ll look back lovingly, 
deserting everything as faultlessly beautiful
as it was when they first become part of it?



 
19.
WHAT DOES A QUESTION ANSWER TO?
Stephen Ellis
.
Like a slip of the tongue
['belief' in the nature, of
understanding the question
.
as if on another 'archetypal
journey'], the fire chief dies
in the arms of the man who
.
owns the house he was watching
burn to the ground, for which
in steady answer to, is only
.
the unstable leap of the last flames
that finish the structure off. Fault
can never return to original habit,
.
just as 'cause' must always be
invented until another form of
trust arrives to take one to the next
.
'true thing,' as such, such as a real
apprehension of how loss steals
a new life, not from anything left
.
over, but from being left out
and refusing but to mourn but happily
with nothing but to what is no
.
longer present in the lie of having
no reason to live for exactly that.
No one needs to be obedient 
.
to trust: It can't be helped, loss
in life goes on forever, and isn't
that the point? One may in fact
.
grow weary in feeling this is
exactly what one doesn't want to
look at, yet being left feeling empty
.
is the exactitude through which 
corporeal love finds the dream
that is always waiting in bed for it.


20.
NO TITLE, BUT THE CRY OF SEAGULLS BEHIND YOUR WINDOW
[Gali-Dana Singer]
I remember everything
I do not remember anything
yet I remember this ‘nothing’
more precisely than snowflakes of wild garlic
more precisely than cherry earrings
more precisely than the letters ‘shin’ of their stalks
^
more precisely than not telling anyone about it
more precisely than soapy waves wash away
double names of two girls forgetting
in the white sand 
the hearts of three 
and all the words
^
Clam memories infer patterns
on slowly growing shells.
Lightning flashbacks repeat off-the-shelf samples
on rapidly growing shells.
Precisely as how the human brain projects
images of its own past into the future,
^
the mantle, sensing the history of mollusk’s thoughts,
extrapolates them to each new layer,
constituting the ornamental relief 
of the silently glowing shells.
As long as I refuse to close mollusk’s thoughts 
with inverted commas, 
^
my own recollections lock themselves out 
of their own case into the ocean of air, 
losing the keys somewhere 
in the approaching kindness of forgiving dark.
Whatever it was you wanted to ask me
may it be answered fully in its own time.
^
Whatever it was I wanted to ask you
may the answer come as a rescue
for a confused mind from a confused mind
or contrariwise.
Using the question mark inadvertently
may it never be turned against us.