Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
after Rumi
If the fruit’s russet-red in the tree
If the birds make tedium into song
If the mob of crows is an ode
If the longed-for reveals itself as it does
If the ephemeral flowers out of sorrow
If tomorrow points its chisel at the world
If all that is ours is beloved, today.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Don’t merely spin; unspool.
Replace all your bones with strong, flexible, environmentally conscious bamboo.
Forget how to walk.
You’re not trying to depart; you’re trying to arrive.
Apprentice yourself to a flat tire. Get down!
You are 60% water by weight—start acting like it.
Evaporate. Precipitate. Flow.
Apprentice yourself to a tectonic plate. Subduct!
Practice by following distant celestial bodies through a telescope without a tripod.
Whatever you’re doing, do it while holding an infant.
Dance about architecture, yes, but also about demolition.
Dance on your last legs, which have waited long enough.
Contrary to received wisdom, it actually takes three people to tango, unless you think you can do it without an accordion.
If you can’t dance, don’t worry—it’s not your revolution.
Do-si-do and promenade. Change partners.
Let your partner also change you.
Dervishes whirl because the beloved could be anywhere, anywhere!
Don’t be in such a hurry to finish.
*
Thanks to RR for a couple of the lines and much of the inspiration.
Wistful as a note, or a scent, or a thin stroke sharp as a paper cut, that leaves a ruby mark on the hand trailing idly through green. Here we are again on the brink of meeting or parting. Your hand cradles the porcelain cup as you drink. You tell me how the afternoons pass, what the hour is when the grey clouds begin to turn pink, how the veils of Spanish moss look tinged with frost. I know a story has to change, something needs to shift. Deck parasols fold down against a spate of oncoming weather: a squall, perhaps. This is simply preparation. Sometimes the unexpected never comes. Yesterday, as we drove by the river in clear-edged sunshine, a sudden gust scattered the thin ribbons of remaining ice beneath the windshield wipers. And it’s true one must be generally careful to note the uses of description as analogy, or in science. But when I point out a wading bird, a perch, the slant of vines on the shed, most times I’m really just talking to you.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Learn to love silence and the taste of water.
Let birds nest in your best suit.
Live at home.
Change your mind often to prevent wear.
When called upon to speak, let words escape you: ululate.
Weep at weddings, dance at funerals, sleep-walk in parades.
Peg your moods to the weather.
Keep careful records of the shapes of clouds.
Burrow like a star-nosed mole into the task at hand: blindly, guided by an extinguished light.
Give yourself up like a river in flood.
Whatever you accomplish, make it look as if it happened on its own.
Form a committee for the reinvention of the wheel.
If you’re boring enough, even death may forget about you.
Erase your tracks with a worn-down broom.
Even the eye can forget its tears,
the mouth its fondest lamentations.
Face pressed, attentive, to the glass,
the world’s a wheel, a shadow box,
a zoetrope with slits through which
we glimpse a strip of paper where
horses and birds are drawn. The wind
spins it around, or waves of air rising
warm from the lamp on which it rests:
cunningly, limbs leap from frame to
frame, crest obstacles, fluoresce.
But there’s no other word for this
wobbly apparatus of our discontent.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Manual: How to wait from Swoon on Vimeo
Manual: How to walk from Swoon on Vimeo
If you follow my poetry video collection Moving Poems even a little, you’ve probably watched more than one videopoem by the Belgian video-artist and soundcreator Swoon — and I haven’t even posted all his work. Not only is he prolific and (obviously) fast-moving; he’s one of the most inventive and interesting artists working in the medium. I like the music he composes as well. So I was thrilled when he asked me, this past week, if I’d mind him making some videos for my new Manual series.
He’s also kindly provided an English translation of his blog post about the videos as well as a short bio, which I have tweaked just a little with his permission:
Poetry, words and dreams form an important basis for the work of Swoon. As a stranger in our midst he recycles “virtual” internet images, shoots his own, creates soundscapes and makes dreamlike, moving paintings out of it all — a dream made real out of vague bits. Swoon’s work has been selected for several festivals around the world. He’s an autodidact.
Swoon writes:
For “Manual” I wanted to create, first of all, a track that I could later adjust with each new episode.
For images I wanted to do something with what Dave said on Facebook: “My biggest influences on the writing in this series, by the way, are the Serbian poets Vasko Popa and Novica Tadic. That’s the level of absurdism I’m trying to mine — a challenge for my somewhat too-logical mind.”
So I needed to go away from my usual way of setting up a project. I was not going to use layers; the feel of the films needed to have a slight touch of absurdism.
For “How to wait,” I wanted to film two bare feet standing/waiting. When I used a piece of bacon (lying around, waiting for lunch) to set focus and I looked at the test-footage, it struck me. This works. I love it when coincidences like this take a lead.
All I had to do was follow my trail of thoughts. Keep it simple. Film at home with what you can find in the kitchen.
For editing, I created three “storylines” of film for each text. Then I edited three different versions (backwards, …) of those three into a “nine-screen.”
*
Swoon adds that more videos will probably follow. How exciting! I think the bacon works in part because of the English expression “bring home the bacon” and related phrases such as “save one’s bacon” and “chew the fat.” According to the U.K. site The Phrase Finder, “bacon has been a slang term for one’s body, and by extension one’s livelihood or income, since the 17th century.” So to me as a viewer, the bacon in these videos seems to symbolize the generalized object of striving or attention. In any case, I think Swoon’s use of it is a good demonstration of the Zen dictum, “first thought, best thought.”
Listen to Swoon’s audio compositions on Soundcloud, watch his videos on Vimeo, follow his blog and visit his website.
Two geese arc high overhead, calling to each other.
Against the slate sky and dull rooftops slick
with recent rain and now, the beginnings of snow,
their trumpet cries are garish— Like the streak
of cadmium yellow dividing the road down the middle:
the solid line meaning do not pass and the running
stitch meaning yes it is possible to cross
from one lane to the other with care as long
as there is no oncoming traffic. And when the snow
falls and falls in sheets later in the night,
everything will look the same: white sweep of road
leading to and away from the town, the buttery
glow of lights like small beacons in windows.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Stop searching. Only pre-existing itches should be scratched.
Pull the petals from a daisy, then use tweezers to remove the yellow florets in its eye.
This is the way to perfect your own seeing.
Court sleep as if it were a lover.
When you dream of being chased, stop fleeing—let yourself be caught, killed and dismembered.
Your dreams will be so much better with a new protagonist!
Call your own phone number and say, Who’s this?
Have a notary’s signature tattooed above your genitals.
If you’re claustrophobic, team up with an agorophobic and make love from a safe distance.
(Love-making is dangerous: you can discover too many things at once.)
However quickly you’re going, go faster still.
Give each of your possessions a pet name and a safe word.
Work. Do somebody else’s bidding for 50 years.
Vacate. Watch a log burning in a fireplace on cable TV.
If you want to find God, sin flagrantly to invite divine retribution.
If you want to follow your gut, you must first acquire a gut.
Close your mind and open your mouth to every sweetness.
You are a child of the universe. Stuff yourself until you resemble a minor asteriod.
Each borborygmus is a message from the other world.
