[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?
.
.
.
*
