[ Collaborative Poetic Project Between Gali-Dana Singer and Stephen Ellis ]
AIMLESSLY SPENDING TIME ON A RANDOM ‘FIND A GRAVE’ PAGE
[Gali-Dana Singer]
I
NEUTERS FOR ALL THREE OF THEM
she should become it
when translated
but let us leave her feminine like that.
no one to carry
her through life
and yet she carries on
and she and she carry on
like blown away
pieces of tin from the roofs
like tin leaves of a cemetery wreath
gone with the wind.
.
II
FOREVER IS ALWAYS YELLOW
On her forty seventh death anniversary
someone calling himself timetraveller
added virtual bunch of field flowers in a caerulean vase
and left a note on her memorial page:
God bless your soul and all your family. I hope to see you in heaven.
I'll pray for you. Please pray for me to.
Red poppies, blue bluebells, blue bluebottle, dandelion,
yellow as always at first and something pink, clover, perhaps.
One O less, was it a typo? pray for me too
Or pray for me to whom it may concern,
pray for me to see you soon?
.
III
THE SAMENESS OF LIGHT AND NIGHT
If you compare two photographs
taken fifty years apart
or, possibly, more
you will see how the same arrowy pupils
that turned heads
and still pierce hearts of accidental site visitors
turned other way behind her heavy eyelids
and pierce her head
looking backwards
on whatever there was to lose
on whatever will be lost in heaven.
.
AVAILABILITY
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
Lustrous illusions of each of us
thoughtlessly alive to feeling
.
the presence of all invisible things!
[At the same time always both
.
'real' and not or neither but what
is perceived and expression in
.
which imagination is served!]
Feeling can be neither quantified
.
nor explained in the mysteries
that we mourn by continuing to live
.
inseparable from our own omission.
.
.
.
*
RULES OF THE ROAD
[Gali-Dana
Singer]
Don't gaze into mirrors in a dream
there are better ways to lose yourself.
Once lost, always lost, as the saying goes
but what of those
who were lost from the start?
whose eyes are glazed
by many-layered vision
of another
fumbling in a haze
startled by the dizziness of glass
groping your way to the other side?
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A 'HOUSE NEXT DOOR' TO THE ONE IN WHICH YOU DREAM THAT IS DETERMINED NOT TO LET YOU DISMEMBER IT
[Stephen Ellis]
.
'You don't think I raised my son to grow up unaffected by the powers of
darkness blossoming at large in every place, do you? I always called his name,
but never got an answer.' - my Mother
.
.
I would never have been able
to stay as lost as I was when born
.
without doing everything I accomplished
the wrong way [including telling myself
.
that there is no 'right' way]. Mother taught
me that there are 'multiple skies,' some blue,
.
some gleaming on the mother-of-pearl inside of
a divided oyster shell, some 'disappeared' to
.
where I lived and learned the words for 'it'
from living in 'a dissociated place' where 'permission'
.
didn't exist:' Now I can say anything I want!
.
.
*
PRAY FOR US, THE TOTAL WHITE OF ALL THIS
[Gali-Dana Singer]
no one to produce actions
required by evanescent light
at a specific moment in time
chosen to represent the breach of continuity
between remembrance and reminiscence.
.
no one to make a move
in awkward circumstances
in cramped surroundings.
.
provisional and conditional gestures
of shadows in the wind.
.
white wall is only considered white.
VOLATILE ALIGNMENTS
[Stephen
Ellis]
.
.
The lost is found, as always, for it
being the rediscovery of feeling
.
the loss that is nothing but finding
what was never lost in the first place,
.
the emotion of clear combination of
mourning and celebration being pulled
.
back into the life of knowing once
again, that 'nothing is missing' [neither
.
being lost nor 'knowing' loss, also] led back
through the shadow cast each morning
.
across the floor on which you stand.
.
.
.
*
TURNING FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER IN SEARCH OF HELP
[Gali-Dana Singer]
preprepredefined
doesn't know the unprecedented
doesn't recognise the unparalleled
ignores the unmatched.
in the room
full of other rooms
no one to pronounce
no one to pronounce
no one to hear:
'g o o d b y g o n e'
'isnotus'
.
^
^^^
no one to draw an invisible line
between oneself and the extreme caution.
stumble and here it is: inseparable.
and this is the essence of the former:
impossible.
turning divider compasses in the air describe
stridulation of crickets
cicadas’ lek
cicadas’ wing flick
cicadas’ clicking of tymbals
not everyone distinguishes.
WHO CAN TELL?
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
As we turn to other languages in order
to combine them into an entirely new
.
'world-view,' we would have the 'non-language'
spoken at Babel, a world-wide conundrum
.
in which [like now] no one can comprehend
another even when expressed in the same
.
whirring 'sound art' of identical reference
the wings of cicadas make in which the primal
.
understanding within the same species is that
there can be no understanding, but reduction
.
to a contest about who has the reddest legs.
.
.
.
*
DISPOSED TO WINGED INTUITION
[Stephen
Ellis]
.
.
Post-preconceived expression parallels
the predictive 'reasoning' that matches
.
only what has already been dismissed
by 'directional thinking' [one way street]
.
pronounced by way of the rhetoric that is
prepared only for 'dialectic' [separation]
.
as cause for war, rather than 'expression'
meant to create in loose unity the 'healing'
.
[as free voices of tree leaves themselves]
rather than arguing through the dismantled
.
frequencies of how we try to interpret them.
.
.
.
*
WHERE DID I LAST PUT THIS KEY? (OR ‘TO UNDERSTAND THIS YOU NEED TO READ ANDERSEN’)
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Defying order in order to comprehend
turning blind eye to the aim while aiming to encompass
differing understandings.
Resisting mental grasping reflex when intending to grasp together
last nettles to knit a shirt for the youngest brother.
in the end there is never enough green gathered for a sleeve
so he stays white-winged forever
one-winged to be precise.
And not to forget: a key to your freedom
lies in a prison cell.
Keeping silent within.
IVORY
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
But remain aware that it is the lost at hand that are
saved at their work that returns to human form
.
the swans released from an evil spell that rescue
her and a sign given also, for the key is not imprisoned
.
but in truth is exactly where it belongs that need not open
more than already is, as understandings always differ
.
to comprehend defiance in needing to cooperate
and incorporate in a shirt-sleeve the beauty of being
.
different yet indifferent through the incomplete rescue
of a swan's wing and the necessity of youth's need to
.
mature as Orestes humming softly to himself alone.
.
.
.
.
[Footnote:
.
Nor can nature ever grow and restore itself swiftly
enough to satisfy a novel and necessary human
need for reason we know not, exactly where the key
is set to a place that guarantees that incompleteness
be a form of all that must remain so, for this lack is
the only element that can remain complete, in
understanding of a 'crime' gone never committed but
believed to be so and deserve its own blessing of work
and acceptance of failure that is the tragic effort
of working against all that is said to belong to
one's self, which can not recognize its own existence.]
.
.
.
*
A MEMENTO ON YOUR WAY TO A NEW LIFE
[Gali-Dana Singer]
To
Stephen Ellis
On the threshold of an empty flat
a child still clasps a key on an elastic band
hanging from her neck
hesitating for a sec to decide which is which:
which is the most frightening of all?
a mother or a witch or a mirror on the wall?
which way to turn and which way to run
the way inside or the other one?
Don’t do this and don’t do that
stay on the threshold of an empty flat
full of radio voices.
HAWA, HUBB, ISHQ, WUDD [AS THE FOURTH IS BLAKE'S 'EDEN']: ALL FOUR ARE ALWAYS 'IN REHEARSAL'
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
1
.
What is a 'sign of love'? When in
1979, Khomeini ordered all women
.
to wear a 'chador,' many gathered in
the courtyard of Tehran University
.
to protest, the police were called in,
and only a 'magic circle' of Hezbollah
.
members surrounding them to provide
protection saved them from a violent
.
retaliation, just as in Tahrir Square
Christians risked their lives to protect
.
Muslim prayer during violence from
.
.
2
.
supporters of Mubarak, forming a similar
.
ring or 'human chain' around them, perfect
image of courage, discipline and human
.
unity against oppression, just as 1,000
MuslimS formed a human shield around
.
Oslo's synagogue 21 January 2015. Only
as we let birds sing can there be found
.
real answers to questions no one likes
to ask: These are insurrections toward
.
solidarity, that can only 'contain' love
in extraordinary circumstances, but
.
.
3
.
cannot be love itself, until extraordinary
circumstances are removed. Nor is 'charity'
.
love, as sympathizing with those in
need as well as allowing yourself to feel
.
as 'an integrated reject' as those for whom
one feels only pretentious sympathy. Real
.
love is not something that can be provoked,
but comes into being by no circumstance but
.
always among the ordinary events, objects
and persons of daily life, rehearsal that allows
.
for emergence of what is already there.
.
.
.
*
FADED CHEAP TAPESTRY ON THE WALL
[Gali-Dana Singer]
In a faraway plane of wild guesses
goes wild-goose chase after plain answers.
Hunters break their necks
taking pains to capture
the erotime of wild swans
in fear.
Every one who loved
will forever ask questions.
No one in love
will mistake it ever
for political choices.
AS STARS TWIST ENDLESSLY 'EVERYWHERE'
[Stephen Ellis]
'To the question concerning who could 'legally' eat a chicken a man had had sex
with, Khomeini answered "not the man who had intercourse with it, not any
of his family, and not even a next door neighbor, but it is okay for someone
living two doors down to eat it."'
.
.
I was earlier sitting in a cafe, having my usual
espresso, and plotting overthrow of the current
.
regime ['myself'] by way of acts of treason
and sedition. Now I am in the library trying to
.
remember what I had thought at the time, but
my mind is now as empty as Hassan Abad Square
.
after 10 PM. Anyone living in a capitalist country
who takes 'revolution' seriously needs [to be 'politically
.
correct] to have the logo of Versace tattooed on their
chest, and poems of Hafiz hidden under the bed. [Human
.
'choice' can liberate only those who are able afford it.]
.
.
.
*
YOU WILL GET WHAT YOU WANT IN THE END, THEY SAY, SO IS THIS THE END?
[Gali-Dana Singer]
You do not deserve any pets, I was told.
Amundsen and Nansen, two chickens pale and old,
met their sad fate. They always left me cold
even when each was a squeaky mimosa ball.
Yet still I feel guilty for sending them to the pole.
A guinea pig I was given, I never loved it at all.
I felt its fright right inside me like a brightly burning coal,
when asked to caress it gently. It did not want to unfurl.
I wildly screeched, and it was sent to some much nicer girl.
You do not deserve any pets, I was told.
But I only asked for a dog.
YOU CAN'T WANT WHAT YOU ALREADY ARE
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
1
.
Darkness is where just before when dawn
falls away that you can't see where you're going.
.
What is all this falling from ceiling
in evidence of some recurrent Oedipal
.
complex, Medusa upside-down George
got right after PhD in psychology just
.
to make sure he had no interest in it,
opened a practice but had no patients
.
so his work was to construct primal
'mechanism of attribution,' three-foot
.
diameter glass bowl filled with embalmed
.
.
2
.
horse penises, and solidified with liquid
.
plastic with glass top cemented over all,
inference now confined 'to an interior'
.
as to each dissociated part its own 'desire'
[Can there be 'revolution' where semiotics
.
attempts to control the 'wild dog' of animism?]
Not gone far enough, but, 'gone too far,
.
while dicing what will be for dinner with 'my
own' exhausted syllables that slice [what
.
is it your are trying to cut through to?]
[To be both outsider and 'intruder']: Whose
.
.
3
.
was the most emblematic [embryonic] face of
communal revolt, Ulrike Meinhof, Uschi
.
Obermeier or some kid on the street with
a water pistol? By way of rendezvous with
.
nothing but being hit in the head with
a baseball bat whoever 'in pedigree' the 'I'
.
in all this was supposed to have been ['be']
my 'self' [Hey, man, are you 'okay'?]
.
It's nice to have 'a general theory, but
it's hell having to closely examine what
.
holds together the hysteria of its parts.
.
.
.
*
‘HERE DANGER LIES’: NO FUTURE FOR A HEART OF STONE
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Don't admire yourself in the convex mirror of his shield,
‘fair-cheeked Medusa’,
no matter what your Pindar says.
A Gorgon reflected is a Gorgon disarmed.
One mere glance
and your features are sealed for eternity by anguish and horror
by torment so acute that even vipers are writhing in pain
for the first and last time in their perpetual lives
and the very sea turns to mortar.
What have you done,
mortal sister,
what have you done.
“You have done nothing. I have
not done anything, because I am ill. Since when are you (have you been) ill?
Since yesterday. Your sisters have not been idle; they have done everything”.
From ‘A Practical Introduction to French Accidence’ by F. W.
Purscher
GETTING HOOKED IS WORSE THAN UNFORGIVABLE
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Nothing, sisters immortal.
I have not done anything.
Do not you know yourself:
victim is always at fault.
Do not you see how Word
underlines passive sentences?
Eliminate the submissive
and everything will be okay.
Never I’ll be as I was
flapper, stunner and bolter.
Throw a stone at me.
OPENING NOTES TO AN ARCHEOLOGY OF THE TRANSITIVE
[Stephen Ellis]
for Gali-Dana Singer
.
.
1
.
[Θεάο is the fundamental way the one who looks [for something] presents itself.
Θεάο - 'looking' - therefore in no way means 'seeing' in the sense of
representational looking upon and looking 'at,' by which humans turn toward
beings as 'objects' and grasps them. Θεάο is rather 'the looking' in which the
one who looks, shows himself, appears, and 'is there.']
.
I need 'an Other.' Simply another. Another being, no longer just a fragment of
one's 'whole self' held in isolation, and 'the feeling
[of] one's head exploding [ . . . ]
[of having burst open (blossomed?]
the feeling one's spinal
column presses into one's brain,
the feeling one's brain gradually
.
.
2
.
shrivels up like dried fruit [Ulrike Meinhoff]
and the simultaneous feeling of paralysis and constant motion
.
.
Why do prisoners go one hunger strikes? To bear witness to fact that there is
no longer difference between body and mind?
[Insanity is a kind of 'unity' on which to starve yourself.]
.
'The sexual exchange between human beings is most usually
nothing more than the application of the bourgeoise exchange
principle under pseudo-revolutionary auspices.' [Rudi Dutschke]
.
I do not wish to be attracted by another's 'style': I have no desire to be
seduced by a naked Usche Obermeier on the 1969 cover of 'Stern,' for example:
Let Holger Meins lead the way to liberation and hunger strikes
via the RAF!
.
I'd like to be alone with another real person
.
.
3
.
not just the broken mirror image of myselves,
but here is the difficulty: ['I would not be jealous of
their feelings for others, but I would be terribly jealous
of others' feelings for them.' - from a letter, Simone
de Beauvoir, written to Jean-Paul Sartre.]
.
'Revolutionary morality! Can such a thing actually exist?
Lenin, after all, made himself leave Inessa in favor of
gloomy asceticism and 'left-wing melancholy.'
.
[Anything is possible and everything, likely.]
.
Between love and revolution there is the connection of 'seeking independence
together.'
.
.
4
.
Love and revolution can hold hands as much as they like, but nothing will comes
of it, until they loosen their grip, give sensibility to their desire, and
begin to realize that they have been intimate with each other since before they
even met. The sky is full of the air each of our own small beings share, and
breathe. All things are everywhere. So, what are we all fighting about? Or
fighting for? Sovereignty, perhaps? Or simply to be fully acknowledged by
another, in each other's physical presence?
.
Here, the difference between writing [to close a physical distance] and
speaking, in order to open one's hearing of another, is primal, and
significant.
.
.
.
*
RE: VOLUTION (A LIST OF POSSIBILITIES)
[Gali-Dana
Singer]
1. Love and predictive deconvolution.
2. Love and involution,
meaning an entanglement, complication,
complexity or intricacy.
a. The act of involving.
b. The state of being
involved.
3. Love and circumvolution, meaning
roundabout, indirect ways
of talking or doing things, intentional ambiguity, ambages.
4. Love and extravolution. A nonce word.
It is all about u, not i. Volution, not
volition.
As ‘subjects which allowed a graceful
volution of manner’
in the last expanding volution of
perception.
THE RECOGNITION (PART III IN WHICH PHIDIAS AND MEDUSA MET)
[Gali-Dana Singer]
To Nekoda
Singer
|
“A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face darkened with some powerful
emotion, which, nevertheless, he so
instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for
calmness.” |
A static delight passed over her face incapable of motion, so much unlike her locks which slowly snaked around it not taking apart the enormity of unrest and without any sign of directness hidden in a blind spot. Yet there was nothing calm about her features brightened without the slightest of thoughts, which for that very
reason, she had trouble to control in full avolition of time without an end. |
* The quotation on the left is from 'The
Scarlet Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorn (Chapter 3 -The Recognition).
ALL YOU CAN'T ACQUIT YOURSELF OF
[Stephen
Ellis]
.
.
It went full of having to start somewhere
along the cement abutment that kept Magnolia
.
Lake in place, as walking a north/south axis
toward Canuso's garage, then across Route 9
.
over the guardrails, a breeze moving sea grass
N/S and the inland waterway for sake of emotion,
.
as everyone needs a draw bridge, down then
past the movie house cantilevered over the sea
.
and the N/S lines in sand tides have left, a physical
thing, as how long eternity extends when you
.
eliminate left and right which then goes on forever.
.
.
.
*
HALF OF TRANSLATION IS BETTER THAN NONE
[Gali-Dana Singer]
‘What's there in my name to you,
It’ll die away, like gloomy roar
Of wave that beats some far off shore,
Nocturnal sound in hidden wood!’
.
thus Pushkin wrote in Karolina
Sobańska's album in the year 1830
hinting obviously that she was merely hunting for an autograph
of a passing celebrity. Yet the envoi is imbued with longing:
‘But quietly, in time of rue
Pronounce it with a pain unquelled:
There is a memory that’s true,
There is a heart in which I dwell...’
ACQUISITIONS
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
Begin with Elijah [Hebrew] and take it to the next level I know, as Greek
'Elias' intertwined with a strain of Atreides [and there on Peloponnese is
Greek city Elis, in Arcadia on the Adriatic side where live two different
.
half-sisters - Eliados and Laskaros - [but part of a different contemporaneity,
for now] and unsure now back about Elias clan become 'religious advisors'] to
Norman kings ['temporalization of 'being' and its 'radical critiques' re:
.
'presence' will always produce dislocated subjects, endlessly deferred'],
although trace follows through to first King of Wales [circa 900 AD -
Owen I?] in whose second generation came in Elis, Elise, Ellice, Ellis,
.
etc. Heiddegger and Parmenides came along for the genealogical ride,
either as body parts, or body guards, although of this I remain unsure.
.
.
.
*
JUST ASK
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
The smallest shift in syntax, and a world
releases itself, as if it had not known how
.
to do this until just now, and now unrelenting
moved to increasingly become the 'one
.
who points at as-yet nameless things' whence
.
syllables will gather, as of love of many-petaled
wildflowers fulfilled, not by knowing or from
.
any resultant thought, but for reason only [which
cannot be explained] that is one's relation to
.
what they perceive be exultant in reciprocal
suspension, like heat inside a near-by flame.
.
.
.
*
I AM NOT NOTHING NO MORE THAN IN MYSELF
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
Deep and difficult it is from here, to continue
to turn toward and away, the assemblage of
.
signs from dream make the whole difficult to
.
discriminate [who is who, or to what purpose,
if one need be, but to turn and turn] but for
.
the runic secret of whirling, where gain is loss,
and the reverse, a decision made by the stars in
.
constant flight whose pattern does not change, [choice
once made can be altered, but not reconstituted]
.
yet uncertainties grow as sensibilities pull strong
both with, and for, and simultaneously against you.
.
.
.
*
A CONSTANT NEED TO TURN: ‘PROTINUS ALTER AMAT, FUGIT ALTERA NOMEN AMANTIS.’
[Gali-Dana Singer]
On her way back
for the first time in many years
she was suddenly caught
by the whiff of laurel in the dead calm air of the night
not the heady scent of its flowering
that isn’t hard to notice (it was not the season for flowers)
but the gentle one of dusty leaves
breathing heavily through the clogged pores
reminding her
that she just missed her last opportunity
to turn into a tree.
WHOLE CLOTH
[Stephen Ellis]
for Gali-Dana Singer
.
Through each instant of motion guided by feeling,
all movement is relevant and real, and made
harmonious through distinctions love makes as
.
its intensity increases and makes us belong more
intimately to trust, as you in my wandering
dream are everywhere, just as bliss also is,
.
as each knowledge of it as it touches us, is let go
and joins to make marvelous the unfolding tapestry
of the ways in which we together remain full woven.
.
.
.
*
LULLABY FOR THOSE WHO SLEEPLESSLY DREAM
[Gali-Dana Singer]
When the grain of truth will be grinded
the flour of pain will be sifted
the leaven of silence will bubble
the leaven of joy will work its way
the dough of words will raise
the bread of heaven will be baked
the rolling pin will turn and turn
the mealworms will see light
the snow will cover the kitchen table
the will will disown itself
and the weakness will give up
THAT SLEEP WILL COME: A LULLABYE
[Stephen
Ellis]
.
.
Moon on the rise
and sun as it descends:
.
Day is finished
let sleep begin to cleanse.
.
Wherever there is trouble
truth will always win
.
the elements of living
kept forever safe within.
.
Sun and moon conjoin
within the boundary
.
of sleep, and in silence
night will light
.
a loving dream
you always get to keep.
.
Swans swim quiet in
a vale of asphodel
.
as blue heron drift
within a reedy marsh:
.
Starry skies shine
and are reflected in
.
your open eyes
which like petals of
.
beautiful flowers close
in dream's fulfilled disguise.
.
.
.
*
FIDELITY
[Stephen Ellis]
for Gali-Dana Singer
.
.
The sky is [today] without blemish,
perfect blue, and the horizon clear
.
in all directions. Intellect is a conduit
through which the underlying animal
.
soul informs the human body that each
gesture it makes is real and true. Grammar
.
and language also play a part in this
transit, but it need not be a major role
.
[for example, 'I just like to talk to
people' is a justification for saying
.
anything you want]. Tell me about
the miniature salt roses and the tall stiff
.
grass along the dunes, to the sound
of tides drifting in. At night, in dream
.
I can hear the throb of starlight
upon the sea. One knows what they
.
feel as it is felt, nor does the soul easily
forget the smell of what, where or who
.
they are [with]. This is 'aletheia,' which is
love. I know that what I know has more
.
essentially to do with, along whatever transit
I travel, me being never without my baby.
.
.
.
*
LULLABY FOR THOSE WHO RECEIVE CONSOLATION IN A HARD WAY
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Look through ‘the everlasting eyes
That Night had opened within us’.*
Everburning, yet unseen.
Everbrown? Evergreen?
Malakh ha-maveth’s or afreet’s?
Orange night of city streets
Soon will be the thing of past.
Only endless eyes will last.
Night will be like prison yard
Blindly lit, as if hit hard
.
By a blindingly white light.
II
Night denied as love denied
Stays in never-ending eyes
That are bored through us as lies.
They will stare when we are gone
On the nightless world and on
Loveless love of empty streets,
Matter which white dwarf accretes.
Holes black and orange suns
Time as always overruns.
Hush, my sleepless, sleep and look:
these are pages of the book.
* ‘the everlasting eyes
That Night had opened within us’.
(Novalis. Hymns to the Night (translated by Dick
Higgins))
UNFLAWED PLEASURE AS WHAT LIVING MAKES FOR US
[Stephen Ellis]
for Gali-Dana Singer
.
.
There are sacred runes that point
to the double-inverted way in which
.
what we thought had been destroyed
is exactly what we always return to
.
as the life that lives in each of us
continues to be alive, all this we are
.
surrounded by, that, in embracing
we surround [it is all simply nothing
.
more than 'us']: We are never able to
exceed what we fully are, senses held
.
together in perceiving what we cannot
leave behind as we continuously arrive
.
in where we are: Love is the form through
which our constant transit moves us and from
.
which nothing can be either added or taken
away, as 'it' is as we are, grown thin and strong
.
along the journey that shows us what we
are made of, as each to each connected
.
in singular form where there is no longer need
for being 'other than [exactly what] we are.'
.
.
.
*
CONSULTATION WITH ABSURDITY
[Stephen Ellis]
.
It has to be a life sentence of
consolation to be convinced it
was decided for you to be taken
.
away from your own life lived in
a body that was kept always under
watch or lock and key to make
.
sure that you also could never do
the same 'nothing' that would deserve
a similar fate while providing plenty
.
of unoccupied 'being' to try to figure out
exactly what it was you never did.
.
.
.
*
LULLABY FOR THOSE WHO ARE HURT AND AFRAID
[Gali-Dana Singer]
‘Nun wird uns weh und bange.’*
Novalis, ‘Sehnsucht nach dem Tode’, Hymnen an die Nacht
Simple workings of the mind,
‘Deeper mysteries of pain’**
Better sleeping leave behind,
Slipping smoothly on the ground:
gilded fetters, rusty chain.
Gliding memory of wound
Leave among the hurtle of metal,
Its forgetfulness don’t feign,
Sound slumber don’t unsettle.
Let it sleep and join its sleep.
Deeper, deeper fall asleep.
* ‘We are hurt and afraid.’
** Stephen Ellis
ACCORD RESOUNDING
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
Who could want to transcend what
they already are [how can you tell
but by employing a degrees of literate
.
perception, as in where you 'stand'
[and what 'with,' if you have belief
in 'something' like earth and/or celestial
.
'location']], what we all 'know' [ambiguously,
if also 'with luck'] [undetermined remark] alive
to decisions that are most usually mistakes
revolving around simple
forgetfulness, wearing
your location like shoes that need no laces.
.
.
.
*
WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
[Stephen
Ellis]
.
.
Heaven has a black top but there is a lot
of light between it and surface of the earth
[depending on the time of day] or also
.
has to do with whether you think earth
itself is heaven. My 6 AM espresso is
.
dark but has a pale film over the top
[probably from turbulence of making it]
and sugar doesn't sink to bottom or even
.
dissolve, but this doesn't answer what is
always the question of the day [which is
.
what?] You'll need a spoon to find that out.
.
.
.
*
ANTI-LULLABY FOR FULL AND EMPTY ROOMS
[Gali-Dana Singer]
‘In other rooms the funny jiggers
lit the light’*
And marionettes of shadows ascended
And clambered up the walls and then took flight.
Of otherness was each a satellite
But their motion was forever open-ended.
Don’t dream of shadows both bold and impolite
That rose like kites, that grew like climbing rose,
That touched by lewd and universal blight
Have rocked the cradles of emptiest delight
And filled the dreams with rows upon rows
.
Of nightly terrors.
* Novalis, Hymnen an die Nacht,
automatic mistranslation of the original sentence "In andern Räumen schlug
die lustigen Gezelte das Licht auf."
LULLABY FOR THE SAKE OF SELECTIVE MISQUOTATIONS
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Down I turn to the sacred,
unspeakable Night*.
Down it turns in its turn to the secret of Dawn.
Sullenly Darkness seeks itself to ignite.
Silverly shackles of light fall through air and
dust
into dark words.
Slovenly turning the infinite
into finite,
lower, lower sinking through water and sand,
slowly, sheepishly sleepless and sleep reunite.
Higher and higher aspire
toward dark words.
Sleep be your master tonight.
* In this lullaby two inaccurate quotes from 'Hymnen an die Nacht' by Novalis
were used.
LULLABY FOR THE LITTLE GREY WOLF OF WHITE NIGHT
[Gali-Dana Singer]
‘At the rock of infinite annoyance’,
[‘on the rock of endless dismay’]*
we are asking and granting forgiveness,
if we may.
Rock-a-bye,
grey wolfing,
on the edge don’t lie.
Sleep will come engulfing
to the tune of a lullaby,
with the refrain for you:
‘Bayu-bayushki-bayu’.
CONVEYANCE ALWAYS IN AND OUT OF DREAM
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
Light is for allowing itself full
passage, absorbed, expelled, pulp
.
of the substance of dream whose
.
compression is immense, love being
of the weight in each of slightest quiver
.
dawn and dusk [would one want to
.
create by elimination of replacing
disease by a lullaby of constant
.
healing, following the love that
makes it so as unsubstantiated [by
.
'proof' on the one hand, and having
acquired trust enough that no proof
.
is necessary?] [We open, break and come
.
together] for a miracle in constant
.
discharge [the more so as we inhale
and prepare to add to the tense release
.
and relaxation into the tapestry of
'sounding out' [languageless, often enough,
.
often by scent in early morning in whose
.
gaps are filled always with all that can be heard
.
of simple birdsong, too intricate to 'comprehend'
except when left without 'translation.'
.
.
.
*
*Two different translations of the same line from 'Hymnen an die Nacht'
by Novalis
ANTI-LULLABY FOR THE SOOTHSAYER
[Gali-Dana Singer]
‘What shall we do in this world
with our love and’* faithlessness
where we have been hurled
by those who have forsaken us?
We’ll lull ourselves to sleep,
we’ll soothe one another to outdream
every tormenting dream,
we’ll count every sheep in the sky
and every pearl in the deep,
but never shall we sing this berceuse
while traversing the stream.
ALL YOU NEED
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
It was for to begin to comprehend
some 'nature of possibility' that I
.
left the organs of my body where
they functioned best anyway 'on
.
automatic pilot' to seek in stead
.
at the cosmic gaming tables from
the distant [forever near] past [the way
.
starlight continues to illuminate
.
millennia] is the idea always to spot
the places where gesture alone in
.
concert with acts to accompany
another is how always love is 'of
.
the gift of the many-winded' [yet
singular being] present as no other
.
.
for the elemental task of trading
with mountains their weight for power
.
of emotion to exclude no being having not
been made ready, refused to be kicked
.
from the place one must always occupy,
having access most to desire in the forms that
.
love makes clear in reduction for sake
of feeling one's self as being so perfectly adorned.
.
.
.
*
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