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.