[New On-Going Poetic Collaboration between Gali-Dana Singer and Stefan Ellis]
1.
HOLDING POWER
[Stephen Ellis]
.
I just sit here telling
myself all these stories
about the sun shining
.
[is the sun shining?]
I used to have a relative
or a neighbor in some
.
other place I may have
lived who told me that
the moon lived inside
.
the sun, and that the earth
lived inside the moon.
'But how can earth live
.
inside of moon - it's bigger.'
[Yes, that's why the earth
has inflationary money
.
problems, and why the moon
is so easily given to weeping.
Don't you have any 'moon money?'
.
See? Your eyes are already
filling with tears!] There are
a thousand stories in the veins
.
on the backs of my hands.
Human skins grows bluish
and translucent with age,
.
with a great luminous
golden light glowing just
underneath. Wealth =
.
Coffee. She, who I usually
call 'you' [and will shortly
again, after having a hiatus
.
like a quarter-note rest in
music] has rolled up
the moonlight, and has
.
put it in a kitchen cabinet
until dusk. We live to
see what is drawn to us,
.
and us to what. The body
is made from copiousness
of intuition. It's our duty
.
in earthly life to locate
the ['other elements'] that
go with the actual purpose
.
of the elements in our
own life thar are constituent
with the whole that is
.
kept perpetually unfinished,
in order to stabilize life's
changing condition. This
.
is what 'moon money' is for,
to deal with things directly
rather that with the assurance
.
of pretentious assurance. Nature
is the only being that can
prepare a feast by consuming it.
2.
AS DUSK DREW ON
[Gali-Dana Singer]
'By the way, what does 'neighbour' mean?'
asked the wall leaning rather heavily
on the air of an adjacent apartment.
What is all that talk about
loving thy neighbour as thyself?
Do one love oneself that sincerely?
^
The window kept silent
looking through its own transparency.
The thin layer of dust only added some depth
to the introspection it was inclined to.
The nearest neighbour (isn’t it a tautology,
by the way?) sat outside just behind its closedness
^
braving +42 C and claimed again and again
his sacred right to the money spent
on some deserving political cause
which remained a mystery to those who
were intent on not listening
as were our window and our wall
^
‘All this is deeply perpendicular to me’,
thought the window and repeated with a certain
degree of pleasure ‘deeply perpendicular’
savouring the clumsy implausibility
of a literal translation from a language it knew
to another virtually unknown.
3.
GONE MENTAL
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
Stack of plate glass
leaning against the wall
in which all that can be
.
seen is your own
reflection, and the reality
once seen before being
.
masked by what you'd
think would help you know
what's on the other side,
.
simply magnifies how
what is exactly the delusion
of what one expects to
.
see, like that transparency
has little to do with,
'the other side' - the vented
.
world of thwarted illusion
as the sole truth - [compare
vanishing points] contemporary
.
everywhere at once,
depending on where you stand
in both space, epoch
.
and psychological 'duration'
[or the story of the grammar
of what you told your mother
.
about what you did each
day when exported 'to
learn' about the delusion
.
that reality day by day was
coming to be], even as you
fall in place with what are
.
'brand new ruins' [intuition
of 'wholeness' at once, made
several weeks ago, to 'will
.
be useful' after we are
'absorbed in it' as the use
that will be manifested
.
as some other kind of
matter [glass is made from
sand, and what does
.
the word 'behold' mean when
you see your own reflection
where it is usually unexpected,
.
air also is a lens [is an individual
distinct from the present
moment?]. I lost what I
.
was about to say about madness,
['synchronicity'?], or there is
something innate throughout
.
the whole extent, [we're just too
dense] Medusa 'everywhere at once,'
encouraged to take a look at you.
4.
THE DATA AND DETRITUS OF THE PAST
[Gali-Dana Singer]
Entering closed door full blast
first thing in the morning
could not become more painful
whether it was made of glass or not
any door will suffer considerably
firmly believing it is nearing the end.
^
‘But fear not, o door, my master, nor be dismayed,
for behold, we will amalgamate like three death
sentences into an unabridged afterlife project,’
creaked one doorknob to another,
‘It merely seems to be about emotions.
How real are our emotions, anyway?’
5.
.
SHEET LIGHTING.
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
A human does not inherit
the context of her being,
which is the androgynous
.
talent of realizing she is
[or you are] of indifference
between partially correct
.
identifications of an almost
endless variety of substances.
[Yeah, you got that right], I want
.
nothing to do with 'existentialism'
unless it is the bell that ends
the school day, so you can return
.
to the clavicular octave of
the endless awakening of your
love, the animals of which
.
slip away into the weather in
which they become the substance
of constant change, yet faithful
.
to every somatic twitch which
your diet comprises, when you
consume and begin again
.
the absurd evidence of your own
neglected hunger. Poetry is 'like'
the womb from which the silk-
.
wrapped storied bones of those
who still know what to make of
words, is born. It feels impossible
.
that the golden rise of sunlight
above your neighbors' rooftops
and the somewhat local hills
.
could by late afternoon be worth
only two bucks a share. Is it proper
to broker a bet against your own
.
investing client, that will guarantee
they'll lose? But 'to lose' means nothing
beyond understanding the story.
.
It is what just this morning, Gali-Dana
told me that Pushkin said poetry was:
A composition that combines your
.
very [un]real and fully imagined gender
with elegance and grace, and gives you
pride and the embarrassment of having
.
told the truth of silliness so clearly,
that everyone is forced to laugh at your
telling a joke, impossible to be funny.
.
.
.
*
6.
KICKED OUT OF SINGING CLASS
[Gali-Dana Singer]
The blackboard was definitely brown,
but the chalk was whiter than white, so the opposition
as seen from the outside of the memory cube
could be described as nearing the absolute
regardless of the time lapsed before discovery
of misstatement or omission.
^
Still a female blackbird being the colour
of burnt umber is supposed to be called
a blackbird as if it were a blackberry yet unripe.
The lamentable lack of precision in notes
of time and place could be forgiven in case
of a new learner of the language of signs,
^
but not forgotten, though not for the want
of trying. The simple sub-song of pain
cannot be easily dismissed as 'a practice’
for not knowing any better. Trying as this can be
it is worth the effort if you do it right,
my dear, as told the dawn to the dusk
^
leaving the realms of twilight behind
the closed eyes. The winged nonsense
promises us a wholeness of flight
and keeps the promise faithfully forever,
the hardest part is to remember
to hold on and to give in to its bribery.
7.
.
CONSERVATOR OF AIMLESS EVALUATION
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
Air is of double issue, perhaps
more, in being as breath in lungs,
or free in atmosphere that moves
.
as it likes. 'Singing' has to do
with attempting to determine
which of the words you know
.
how to pronounce, and maybe
even know the meaning of, are
words that goddesses and gods
.
routinely say. The so-called Word
of God is an open question. That
is my interpretation of being spoken
.
to by a crow perched up in branches
of a decaying apple tree. I was never
thrown out of singing class for having
.
little opportunity to be in a situation
in which anyone was allowed to sing,
so I became a double issue Persephone
.
and kept my song in a quart-sized
Ball jar, like what we used to trap
fire-flies in order to reap their light
.
and begin to understand what 'death'
is when the lights go out. Fire
coagulates as it is turned into 'soul.'
.
and becomes as fluid as the tears from
which I hide under the table in order
not to have to do battle with the emotions
.
of who I could never be, safe as milk in
the world in which I let imagination wash
my feet with dew from a weeping willow.
.
.
.
*
8.
NOTHING MATTERS AND DON'T ASK ME WHY
[Gali-Dana Singer]
‘How many trees weep for our pleasure?’,
once the Earth surprised the Air with a question.
Cedar, Birch, Maple, Thuja,
Juniper, Larch, Spruce, Cypress,
Pine, Sycamore and giant Sequoia,
Chestnut, Beech, Elm, Mulberry, Rowan,
^
Fig, Pear, Apricot, Cherry,
Silver Linden and Golden Willow,
Salix babylonica, remembering Zion,
Desert False Indigo, Weeping Katsura,
Weeping White Quebracho,
are not their tears enough
^
filling rivers, lakes and small ponds
with reflections of immense skies
wilfully broken into ripples of laughter?
There was nothing questionable
about the Word of God at that time
of universal doubt and confusion,
^
so the Air just smiled upon the Earth
and kept smiling and smiling,
while the Earth continued to take selfies
as obsessively as would a mere sightseer.
Their watering eyes overflowed with tears
while the Fire consumed all fears and terrors.
9.
A LIFE OF CRIME.
[Stephen Ellis]
.
.
The marrow of my bones
is made of husks of Jersey
black beetles revealed
.
during an autopsy when
I was still alive but asleep.
They enter through the feet
.
of unregistered financial
agents while on the moon
looking for moon money to
.
invest, but are instead
capitalized as their leg
marrow is consumed in
.
the process of the beetles
dying of starvation when all of
the marrow is consumed.
.
This is the real explanation
for the world financial disasters
of 2008, for the beetles' souls are
.
transmigrated to species disorder
so that the carriers of their
corpses grow two sets of wings
.
that are hidden in the armpit
of the Gulf of Iskenderun [if you
remember the taffy pulling
.
machines behind plate glass
on the boardwalk in Atlantic
City], for the beetles died on
.
your marrow by way of setting
an ambush for the approaching
Persian fleet for which I am
.
the boy running naked through
Lebanese marijuana fields so that
as the pollen sticks to my sweat
.
I come closer to being baited
for an enterprise for which I carry
the dead alive in the bag hanging
.
in Typhon's Coycian Cave that holds
Zeus' 'neurological potentia' until
Hermes decides the coast is clear
.
and steals it back and hides it in
the totality of what the Trojans never
realized they had been hit by.
10.
WAITING FOR DREAM MASTER TO FIX THE PROBLEM
Running for dear life on the same spot forever
watching how nothing changes, not even the leopard
of the ladies’ fashion, unrefined as it seems
and yet everlasting in its own extinction, so
couldn’t be rightly claimed by vulgarity as its own,
isn’t as agonising as another nightmare
^
that one of being late meeting mother and/or grandfather
parting with whom you succeeded to execute just partly
letting them to continue the process ad infinitum
carrying it through the nights of forensics and frenzy.
Do you truly believe that you can escape the beheading?
Having nine heads did not help much the Lernaean Hydra.
(To be continued)
