Memory"s Forgotten Future

MEMORY’S FORGOTTEN FUTURE

WITHOUT THESE WORDS I AM NOTHING

I

The black river rages in the tunnel. So black that it is white. In the end both ends justify the middle. That’s when time hangs its head for the second time. This minute hesitation breaks the neck of speed and slowly the race crosses out the finish line. Trees return to their roots. The atmosphere becomes visible. Doors open their mouths and speak openly about the close finish that ties up traffic and continually closes with an argument.

Afterwards, after words, the silence takes the floor and raises hell. Nail by nail the emptiness fills the air with construction. It builds upon the absence with heaps of no things, things weightless and free from form and dimension. These nonentities take shape and obliterate it. When the crackle of obliteration is heard, the hidden answers emerge from the common ground and spring up in conversation. This is a renewal in a negative space. A sudden eruption that breaks tradition and buries the pieces in its own memory.

This is the up and coming return. The right turn followed by the next right turn on its way to becoming background in formation. Rows of half memories under the scrutiny of darkness. To the naked I the full account disappears within the boundaries of its appearance. A presence based solely on absence. The deadpan remains of consciousness. The unknown hesitation pictured by a sleeping awareness. The abstraction with a twinge of figuration. Almost not human, almost almost, almost not.

On the verge of this perhaps,  still, on the edge,  the rope shreds its dignity and gains ground as the sky grows up. Here the bones dust off their contention and their sudden attraction for dissolution and bleed more absence into the avoidance.

We wait with open arms to catch ourselves off guard.

II

I emerge from between the legs of this emptiness, pulled out of the air like magic is pulled out of the commonplace. My time had come and had taken the time to reach its big and little hand into my eternal avoidance and snatch me from my comfortable, wet abeyance, dragging me kicking and crying into this dry, tangible world filled with a lust for things of no importance. I am one of those things.

 Disappearing from the landscape, Mt. Childhood buzzed with amnesty. It was partially forgiven for being a part of the whole. When youth cropped up, the body soared and the wounds dripped onto the tracks. Tongues slipped on the excretion and the misuse of language made the conclusions all wet.

From that point on, I was stuck with the idea that nothing matters except the moment. And each moment I had to remind myself of the idea that all that precedes and exceeds expectation was vapor disguised as condensation. The idea that no one told the truth because the moment it was uttered, it was utterly false.

It became quite difficult to keep up with the idea of this type of journey so I frequently fell behind and took refuge in the shadow of the forms that used to take my breath away.

In their place, I have made sketches with two characters. Each character says the opposite of the other which, in the end, adds up to a confusion that is whole, a hole that is empty, an emptiness that is complete, a bottom that is the top of the line, a line that is darkness personified,  a darkness that is light enough to carry in my eyes and a conjunction that is in balance.    

Beneath the surface, a typical conversation might go like this:

“Melodrama and melancholy used to spark my return.”

“Now, sadly, a slow motion follows the shadows that are behind the times.”

“Presently, It has become what was and this is what I now look forward to.”

It all has come down to a ridiculous itch. It is a constant annoyance that at the same time is a reminder that life is still unfair and flowing through my vanity. My friends and enemies no longer exist. In short, they never really did. I have been alone for as long as I remember that I alone can get under my skin. There in the darkness of self consciousness, I live alone with my relative uniqueness. And it is there that I will die after uttering my last words: “I am leaving to begin God knows what!”

 III

 

Mt. Childhood, before its disappearance, was immortal. It offered timeless revelations and peaks of joy and despair. Every now and then I would climb to the top, my heart in my throat trying to emerge from the dull percussion that would inconstantly beat it down. There, in that moment, I was not only alone, I was all there was. 

I am at my best when I, alone, in the expectation of someone’s arrival, feel safe. I sit in the middle of this puddle of contradiction, contrary to my silence, and wait for my revelations to break tradition and embrace my ideas. This holds my inevitable dissipation in abeyance and comforts my snoring conscience. It ignores my earthly complaints and rises above the cloudy pressure of atmosphere. It gives this gnawing, insubstantial substance a meaning beyond definition, and for the moment, immortality exists.

These singular epiphanies mount up as does Mt. Childhood and these thick, invisible manifestations of dreams, support the very foundation of the future collapse.

Problems are not about power but duration. Magic does tip its hat but its greetings are short and virtually to the point of no return.  The itch has another foothold and rarely disappears. It tends to vibrate and glow in the heat of an argument and shows its tendency for discomfort in the blink of an eye.

There is nowhere to turn except to the return of timidity, importance and reverence. To reach back for these things the sky gets in the way and the stoop is too high to rest on. After all, bending is not always a sign of flexibility; it sometimes means you’re broken.

So, in this condition, with no name but mine, I pointedly sit on the corner of a market waiting for the training period to end. I have come to recognize that comfort hinges on closed doors. Things hidden away, self-contained, don’t threaten my vision. What I can’t see can’t scare me unless I can imagine seeing it contained in my self. This gives each moment an edge that cuts through the wholeness. It is there, not there, not all there each time it comes up in conversation.

Who breaks this rhythm when it commingles with counterpoint? Who rides the moment at the moment of inception? Who reigns in the shadows from this pool of light? I am the answer. It is my particular presence as a particle of the magic, as a witness to the multiple choice. I am, for the moment, a second point of view in the vast clock that returns favors and circles the right answer.

(On second thought) Every now and then I ride the moment up Mt. Childhood and make a conscious effort to return. Unconscious efforts then document these moments and as they collect on the window, they approximate truth. In fact, we all take returns leading the chaos back into an orderly stream of consciousness.

The real questions lie in the black river where the poetry is imbedded, tucked in and absorbed.  That’s where the narrative begins to take shape.

IV

“Enough paraphrasing,” I say to myself as I walk through a closed door. “But that is what makes my narrow point of view so expansive,” I answer myself as I continue going through the motions. “Reflection. Light jumping off shards of memory. Facets of opposition crisscrossing the boundaries of reason. Here is where I tell your story along side my own...the whole story.”

When you were born, I was born. There are no two ways about it, there are two ways about it.  We are all each other, a bouquet of inklings that blossom into massive waterways of electricity and chemistry. We are alive because of others and the dead are eaten by our food. My mother is the Mother and so is yours.  Everything that happens is incidental and beside the point. We travel next to each other and behind the times. We are historically personified and our present to each other is the future!

Breathe in, breathe out, breathless or gasping we are terminally eternal with second chances ticking off our primary concerns. The clock returns to its circumlocution without our presence and time goes by without a hitch. We are forever in debt to circumstance, that round faced youth who jumps out from each corner we paint ourselves into. Our lives run parallel to a perpendicular wall. When we hit it we fall down and crawl back home. Eventually, in retrospect, our ancestors eat our chemicals and we are suddenly back in the picture.

Of course this is poetry not narration. Knowing that my I really cannot comprehend this causes tremors in Mt. Childhood’s stature. It literally makes mountains out of molehills and volcanoes out of thin air. This collapse of discernment allows for forgone conclusions to penetrate my spiritual armor and I become frightened of all shadows including my own. You are always next to me every now and then at different times.

What kind of time frame is this? What kind of narrative talks you into hugging the present imperfect before you can even catch your breath? The answer always lies in the next moment and that’s what keeps us going....

V

When Constants leave (s) the altered nation rises up against the uncertainty. Back and forth like pummeling, the dream now buries its head in the open air. There is no chance, beside myself, for attention. It is too inconstant for focus. Love is a blur – a quick appearance that leaves its mark and scrambles for the exits. Each moment is a chip off the old eternal block.

But in the quiet of forgetfulness, in the country of pure abstraction, in the rippling nature of streams, in the facial expressions of trees, the stoned bridge leads back to the feelings of immortal awe. Peace caws at every edge. The leaves flap their blinding light and my nature weeps with nostalgia. In short, my temperament longs for nostalgia – it eats it to break the fast and slowly return to the present. This is where you come in. You enter the picture through the door that is closed and keeps me from falling out. Your otherness casts a shadow that covers mine. I need you, I loathe you, I love you and when I make a mistake, it is your fault as well as mine. There is a split accountability, a split decision, a no win situation that is impossible to lose in the shuffle.

Everything goes both ways. This way or that. Now we remember, now we forget, now we remember not to count on memories and then we forget that. God knows what we’re doing or remembering! We head toward discontinuance while continuance beckons us from the sidelines. We head toward dissolution with solutions swirling in our heads. We give in to Mr. I’s inevitability and as we search for the controls, our duality calls for at least two fences and a slew of swords each pointing in a different direction. When we bleed we tend to learn something tender. When we succeed our tenderness forgets its name. For some reason, which might be chaos, we never truly get the point.

MATHEMATIC OF TWO FIGURINES

1.

This is the middle of it, the middle of it, intricate and

dense, intricate and dense loose ends, loose ends comb the

thick follicles, the thick follicles in search of a neat

package.

In the distance, unknown factors, unknown factors lie

awake, lie awake in a blinking eye, in a blinking eye

irritated by the dust, by the dust of termination.

Two erratic figurines embrace each other, embrace each

other in this, in this torrential mathematic, this torrential

mathematic openly hostile, openly hostile to the space

between, to the space between two numbers, between two

numbers surrendering to the force, to the force of

subtraction, the force of subtraction and equality.

These two, one by one, expect logic, expect logic to

imagine, to imagine its own result.

Automatically they promise each other, they promise each

other heaven, they promise each other heaven and whisper,

and whisper through their secret, erect bodies, through

their secret bodies bending, bending through the stacks of

curvatures, the stacks of curvatures and projections.

The comma that separates their lives, their lives separate

from their future, their future in the numerals of calculus,

in the numerals of calculus the mathematic circulates and

divides, the mathematic circulates and divides their lives

into fractions, into fractions of secrets.

These two, one by one, sanction their escape into each

other, into each other with invisible fantasies, invisible

fantasies riding up the roots of fresh flowers, the roots of

fresh flowers rising into their tongues.

In their own words they speak in unison, in unison they

trap the universe in syllables, the universe in syllables

tumbling over the thick follicles like tears, the thick

follicles like tears tremble in the dark light, in the dark

light shimmering pearls flex their ivory and fall asleep, and

fall asleep on a pillow of possibilities.

2.

"Pardon me dear shadow, dear shadow where is the

substance, the substance that eclipsed infinity, that

eclipsed infinity and retained your dimensions, your

dimensions gasping for flesh and bones, flesh and bones to

hang a skin of depth, to hang a skin of depth around your

flat mirage?"

"There are no shadows in this mathematic, this mathematic

is more or less, more or less the idea of a shadow, the

idea of a shadow you can multiply, a shadow you can

multiply with ideas."

He lights a cigarette and leans back, leans back against

the opposing view.

"Then what is the source of this shadow, this shadow of

ideas, ideas which pass through my system, through my

system into your shadow, into your shadow and through the

random figures of your shape?"

She steps off the pedestal and walks toward the door, the

door that leads away, that leads away into the idea of

privacy, the idea of privacy that separates the men from

the women, the women from the shadows.

"I cannot accept this," he whispers, he whispers within a

pastel consciousness, a pastel consciousness flushed with

spurts of deep red.

Being minus one accentuates the imbalance, the imbalance

of the nature, the nature of two, one by one, one by one

this mathematic adds up, this mathematic adds up to

nothing, nothing in particular.

"I will call you in the morning, in the morning we will no

longer be divided, be divided by this long, narrow division."

She nods a bewildered acceptance, a bewildered acceptance

opens the door, the door opens and she vanishes, she

vanishes into the shadows, the shadows huddled in the

night.

3.

"Hello, this is me, this is me and the morning, the morning

that holds our future in its clock, the clock that eventually

catches up, that eventually catches up to the skeleton of

our fleeing dreams, the skeleton of our fleeing dreams

circling the backdrop of our face."

"What number do you want, do you want this number, this

number that runs the gamut of peripheries, peripheries

skirting the circumference with parenthetical remarks,

remarks about the nature of couplets, of couplets marching

up the vertical axis, up the vertical axis and into the

relativity of deep space?"

"Yes I want this number, this number that vibrates in the

electrons of your voice, the electrons of your voice that

beckon my unresolved circuits, circuits that seek further

additions, further additions that keep me awake, that keep

me awake in my dreams."

The silence at the other end makes him wonder, makes him

wonder if she can still be, if she can still be counted on,

still be counted on and be still, and be still at the same

time, at the same time that he is waking up.

"Are you still there, there in the vision of you still being

there, still being there in the silence which you speak so

well?"

The lack of answers click, answers click in, click inside his

head that aches, his head that aches with silence.

IN A NUTSHELL

        for Pierre Reverdy

the magic and the carpet

fly with a walking stick

thru the spacious corners

                        Nightingales flying thru right angles

                        like angels masquerading as trees with wings

here is the moment

right or wrong

“it does not re-present reality

it presents itself in its place”

LEAVE A FAINT MEMORY ON EARTH

an after wind of passing through

left behind

a glimpse of the after thought

         a moment

a photograph of a haiku

       what remains

after what was                        disappears into the future

I QUESTION THE DOOR OPEN ON THE WHITE WALL

an invisible holiness

painted on the inside of an eyelid

seen from two points

            of view

hardly ever understood

meant only for the mind’s

            blind eye

hidden inside the id

of a wall of solid white air

A SEQUENCE OF HILLS SURROUNDS THE HOLLOW

tall, short, in between

      the noises hills make

a town tucked like a shirt

     stuck

            under the beltway

hidden from the concrete trucks

carrying what has just dropped from heaven

delivering the door steps to the stoop

where I sit

                  watching the sun rise

to the occasion

            of nightfall

WHEN THE WALL VANISHES THE SKY WILL FALL

but

of course

when the boundary

calls it quits

           

            the ceiling drops in

and mayhem kisses

            the reason on the cheek

let’s face it

            what do we know

           

like

what is sky

what is misunderstanding

            what is it that vanishes

what is it

            that we are standing under

when we disappear

     

is it the sky

or is it

just us that goes away

            along with all that follows

       

THOSE LINES MY EYES

TRACE IN THE VAGUENESS

nothing much to see, nothing to look at

an entry blocked by no definition

plasma floating, oozing through blank pages

of future history that has already been disproved

no meaning not meaning to mean nothing

a dictionary surrounded by shady darkness

nowhere to look but nowhere

overlapping the outlines of an inner war

being fought by what is seen to be not there

a surrender to what is missing

declaring victory over this absence

by a treaty written in invisible ink

and a declaration of dependence on truth

THE VOICES THAT WERE CLOTHED IN REVERSE

Speaking backwards

we walk towards the door

as the sun sets

it’s the naked truth

so what’s this all about,

this illusion of nothing?

exoneration has no legal right

to tamper with witnesses

the broken charade

reverses this parade

as its recourse disappears

around the corner

“it’s true that its false,”

the distance

subtracts the stance

one step at a time,

we go back

to the beginning

a cognitive dissonance plays

as each deep breath surfaces

with twelve tones minus four

an octagon with two sounds 

circling the reversal of addition

presenting a future

before history decides

to become now

MR. YIN YANG

You can see me

but then again you can’t

I am enlightened

and live off the bones of shadows

I am the poet lariat, la reata,

the rope that hangs around

the neck of being alive

Wherever I am I am not here

I am very becoming and going nowhere

No one can hold me responsible for mishaps

or even, perhaps, they can….

Tears come to my eyes as the ultimate Me giggles

at this finite assemblage of two possibilities

that is possible and impossible

it’s perfect, either way

you can’t go right or wrong

AND THERE YOU ARE

because of the input the outer portions are zig-zagged

causing the structure to wobble perfectly still

and keeps the sky from meandering through the garden

so in essence (and what else is there)…all is pausing

and waiting for a correction that straightens everything out

and in this moment it pretends to be here

so every word is meant to signify nothing (in particular)

and all sounds hit the hammer and the stirrup

with a cloud of certainty and a breath of steel

in this frame the world I am in is the world I am in

and that world comes and goes like a speeding whim

making pinpoints obsolete but very friendly

if you meet them on their own terms

all the major generalities and private thoughts are the soldiers

of misfortune that trudge through the mud of clarity

to reach a speck of time that resonates with actual truth

few and far between all the intermittence

these specks travel inside time’s internal clock

bouncing off the walls like pent up energy

until a crack invites their escape into the future

and there you are

BEWILDERED ALTITUDE   (altura azorado)

                                            for Vicente Huidibro

flying under ground on  the wings of tomorrow’s despair

we are flapping through the wind’s sudden disappearance

through the tunnel of delight, soaring through the wounds

cut from the same cloth of priests and collared criminals

a haven for hellish events that dictate history’s inhuman trajectory

an arc of triumph that fails to signify the true meaning of conflict

the height of fashion that rises above an ordinary unique moment

the sudden fall of empires along with the dead spectrum of leaves

here we stand floating in bewilderment barely above the fray

looking down on the poorly drawn riches of upper class

the deep chasm between then and now and now and again

the black wholeness that absorbs the matter of facts and clarity

we are blinded by this vision of melting glaciers and dripping values

oozing the true nature of human destiny through the veins of history

we can’t help ourselves, we are above it all because we think we are

we are beneath that stupidity, less than human, yet we’ve gone too far

too far above our bloated three dimensions that lack substance and spirit

too far below our expectations of superiority and immortality

a small creature begging for forgiveness from the stern laws of nature

asking God to intervene and save our meaningless lives from definition

A HYMN

(not me)

he is the unknown in the equation that is unequaled

he is ashamed and delighted, once lit, now as dark as mourning in winter

skipping through a dream in time with a long moment that is shattered

the broken notes of a microscopic organist playing the silent music of noise

that ripples in a small pond of in sects, a popular spiritual dogma that clogs the air

with a certainty that is certain to fail, that is unsure of what success sounds like

he is quite okay with this is,  even though it is an is that is not today or tomorrow

it is still a promise that the sun makes by poking its light into the dark corners

of yesterday showing its true colors as a never ending spectrum of beginnings

this is the hymn of this unsung hero, a bird humming without wings or twigs

a prayer offered to a nest of possible feeding positions chirping for sustenance

but this him is not me and that’s all that really counts in this realm of numb mathematics

I’M KILLING MYSELF WITH LONELINESS

there is absolutely no delight

in this absolute darkness

the skeleton crew has dissolved

leaving a liquidity of fresh bones

in a puddle of flesh

I swim in visibility

unable to keep my head

above water or below the radar

I have no faith

in myself or God

or the structure

that supports my stature

or the statue that mirrors

my strong presence

I’m a penny

in a world that makes no sense

things were a lot simpler

before I was born

I AM BECOMING

I am becoming

someone else

very becoming

it turns out

my self

is not really mine

it is a child

of whim and wind

a seed

that is traveling

and unraveling

through time

yet planted

in the earth

of this moment

in a field

of accumulation

on its way

to culmination

to end up

being buried

beneath this surface

where I am

becomes

something else

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

in the dim light of beginning nowhere

the cloud transforms into glass

as clarity buckles under the pressure

and becomes a cardboard mirror

after the tears and rain evaporate

we open the eyes of our disappointment

and imagine the landscape of traffic

slowly taking strangers back to their lives

we are stuck on the curb of concretion’s rock

unable to back up or move forward

alone in our stillness the back and forth breathes

like a wind dying down to a whisper

we are waiting for the light to change

MEMORY’S FORGOTTEN FUTURE

The aggressive innocence of his childhood along with the interference of broken words spoken through the sliver of silver painted on the window, blocks the sunlight from streaming onto the river of sleepy consciousness. It is imbedded in memory’s forgotten future. He is trying hard to be a wise old man but the years are stacked against him, leaning on his swollen mirror creating a wide angle that enraptures too many done deals. The choices, themselves, are winging it. Certain flight patterns don’t exist anymore but are still offered as the echoes of the most enticing choices. The wind changes its mind and becomes a falling leaf. His whole body is so tired of not talking that it’s beginning to shut up and disappear in a pile of color. When the Time comes it makes believe there is more to come. So he comes to believe in an immortal continuum that cradles mortality in its embrace as it is dying to know if this is the end.

He misconstrues the last straw as another pathway to breathing.  He views the sunrise as a major umbilical chord that ushers in the fanfare of the afterbirth of waking up. He, alone, hears the empty sound of the yawning new beginning that is prone to rely on its back and forth. He moves through this next moment like a blind visionary hoping to bump into truth, stop for a split second, and then stumble into eternity.