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