The real, the unreal, and the neitherness

Every moment of this waking life
An undertow rumbles
Bringing my heel to meet my face
A close encounter
A tumbling weed going along the road
feeling the stretch that bars the east from the west
That encapsulates the between
Rolling in the sun
Guided by the wind
To a shore blocked by mountains
Higher than aspirations and traceable to the first cause
First cause for alarm

Round about the dream cage
An animal rumbles
Looking for daily bread
Expecting a cut
And turning circles until that very something
Becomes a something found
Something tangible and relieving
Like a pillow
Like a drugless drug
A leaving for a higher nothingness that cannot be
But is

Every day the same is altered but seems to mimic
Yesterday in a broken mirror
providing different paths
Of possibility
A reflection bent
Allowing light to find its own
Despite eyes

Does the devil dare to ask?
To want something good for himself?
Can he expect more than failure?
Can he dream while awake about the death of life or about the life of death?
Can the devil expect a change?
Can the devil repent?

The expanse has shriveled into a diamond
Perfectly cut
But not for sale
A caveat meant as a practical joke
So as to make light of
dead weight
So close in appearance
To seriousness

lately

Lately (1)


Lately the leaves are skipping out on all the green
Going straight from red to brown to red
Orange veins reflect a drowned out sun
Asking us to let her in

Lately a permanent nyctinasty
Has taken hold of every flower
They sleep indefinitely
But still skip out on dying
A sleeping beauty

Lately the tiniest rocks
Are roller balls
Taking paws out towards the sea
They hear the roar of a mother
They instinctively go to the source
In a wind driven tide directing
All lungs to water
In a tide driven wind directing
Air inside of waves

Lately the slight movement of time
Is gathering menacing speed
In drawing together shards of something soft
Back into a whole
That never knew
Until the call
Began the call






Lately (2)


Lately the impossible has shed snake skin
Turned into a night moth
Wider than an owl’s wingspan
Speckled in a vacuous brown
On top of brown dust
Reflecting the moon’s smile back onto her

Lately secrets are illusions
A mirage of whisper
Concealing a loudspeaker on a soapbox
Telling the truth without speaking
Revealing the real because the unreal is not

Lately I wear my insides out
Without an armor to bear
All mushy like oatmeal and nutrition
Malleable in your hands
Easily taken and replaced
Impervious

Lately it gets brighter earlier
The sun is restless
Wakes up in the middle of the night
Feels the hangover of insomnia
But comes out relentlessly
To see
What everyone else does

anchor to the floating

Weightlessness
Is the light
Unhinged
Floating
Both still and moving, something paradoxical
A question
That remains a question
Rhetorical from joy
From not needing the answer, or any answer at all

Happiness
is lead
weighted and connected to the floor
an anchor if
happiness
is still unsure
of its grin if
happiness
is still contemplating the future
is still thinking about all that isn’t
but could
and should
or shouldn’t
or couldn’t become

Said the person to the same person

Maybe I can convince you to convince me
We all need this convincing
A voice
Positive reinforcement
To say
What was already said
To say
What I’m already saying
Out loud, in mumbles, in half sweeping statements
That shatter marble
Crawl underneath covers
Underneath the mattress
The door
Clean through to the other side,
outside
where clarity is achieved
So that someone can convince me
That clarity
Is real
In the realm of gray

home

The center of the web
Is a little whole
Entire
Entirely transparent
The center of the web
Is a little hole
Clarity balancing the weave
Traceless
Backlit until the night
Backs off another hemisphere
Comes close again
To claim its territory
The matchless sky
Hiding complexity behind it
As the mask of maya
Asking
For silk
And death

blame numbers

Stringy sidewalk turning towards the road
asking for direction
while the whole thing spirals
saying both ways are good.

Directionless itself is the direction
all is forward while backwards is just
another attempt to anthropomorphize
the non human in the mind of a human
navigating a four cornered world
pretending to know the softness of the round
but rounds don’t gather momentum
between the pillow and the head.

Allegations of progress
reveal the materiality of time
adding up atoms until a blooming
of minutes past
emerge on the edge of a cycle.
Each lizard eye is open
focusing on two different sides
of one self
not asking which one is right
but knowing both are true
true enough to be recorded and burned away.

Blame the sun because she laughs
without flinching
Blame arrogant selflessness
for thinking there was a self to give away
Blame numbers because they suggest
order in a circle.

Synergistic capsule floating against
a rejecting oil claiming continuity
as a non-chore, as fact, as immutable
against water downed claims of the same
not being the same.
Differentiated outside withers against
the backdrop of another one born,
ten toes and all,
recorded in books bound to outlast
the materiality of feather shrouded skin
basking within telos and incapable of denying
not knowing
just the same.

Variations on a Theme: The Wars of Something and Nothing

Blooming to death
for stasis mud puddles
gathering up the edges to focus
on one deep well.

Birthing the end smell of leaves
caught beneath an angled rock
cutting deeply
embedded miles down.
Round hands pull it out forever
creating lines that extend around the Potomac
forcing the tide’s hand
asking what she can do for
a stolid nonchalance
outfitted in the immovable.

Growing outwards in all directions,
lightless for a shaded mark
of the point
that is no point at all
but the coreless sphere
constantly shape shifting the face of an
octagon times an enneagon
of substancelessness

Nano dirt of the outside
closing in while
atmospheric trouble arouses the purple
arcs that reach further
and further yet
towards a center, a teleology to hold
the reason for the single thought.

conversation. work.

I can't top that.

From: Sent: Friday, October 26, 2007 3:22 PMTo: : RE: hey ho
the last to pretend
that email
will be
meant in creative
form
was you

-wrote i

From: : Friday, October 26, 2007 2:31 PMTo: Alexis : RE: hey ho
I will,
Pretend:
That the Last
E-mail
You wrote-
was meant
to be
Create-
ive
IN fORm

Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews

October 19, 2007

By NEELA BANERJEE
LEXINGTON, Mass., Oct. 17 — On the docket for the weekly selectmen’s meeting here on Monday were the location of park benches, a liquor license for Vinny T’s restaurant and, not for the first time, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey 90 years ago.
The debate in this affluent Boston suburb, home to many Jews and Armenians, centered on a local program to increase awareness of bias. The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the Armenians’ deaths as genocide.
“If you deny one genocide,” said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the meeting, “you deny all genocides.”
The Congressional resolution has created an international furor and deeply offended the Turkish government, both a key ally of Israel’s and a crucial logistics player for the American presence in Iraq. But as events in Boston suburbs in recent months have shown, it has also put American Jews in an anguished dilemma as they try to reconcile their support of Israel with their commitment to fighting genocide. In the end, the Board of Selectmen here voted unanimously to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, as did three other Boston suburbs this week. Three other towns had already done so, with more considering the option.
For many Jews, the issue has involved much soul-searching.
“It’s hard to talk about it because there are two things or more in conflict here,” said Rabbi David Lerner of Temple Emunah in Lexington. “Israel is in a very vulnerable position in the world, and Turkey is its only friend in the Middle East. Genocide is a burning issue for us, now and in the past. It’s something of who we are.”
The House resolution condemning the killings of Armenians as genocide is nonbinding and largely symbolic, but Turkey’s reaction has been swift and furious. It has recalled its ambassador from Washington and threatened to withdraw critical logistical support for the Iraq war.
For Patrick Mehr, a Lexington resident who spoke at the meeting Monday, the overriding priority is condemning the killings, regardless of Turkey’s response.
The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor, voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “Abe Foxman, like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,” Mr. Mehr said. “Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, ‘Let’s have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.”
Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.
Several major Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee, oppose the resolution, arguing that it is not the best way to persuade the Turks to examine their past.
Mr. Foxman argues that Turkey is the only friend Israel has in the Muslim world, and it has been hospitable to Jews since giving them refuge after they were driven from Europe during the Inquisition.
“Israel’s relationship with Turkey is the second most important, after its relationship with the United States,” Mr. Foxman said. “All this in a world that isolates Israel, and all this can’t simply be waved away.”
Widespread attention to the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to the resolution came in July, when David Boyajian, an Armenian-American resident of Newton, Mass., wrote to a local newspaper saying that the town’s anti-bigotry program, known as No Place for Hate, was tarnished because of its sponsorship by the Anti-Defamation League.
He wrote that the A.D.L. “has made the Holocaust and its denial key pieces” of the program, “while at the same time hypocritically working with Turkey to oppose recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915-23.”
The news shocked most local Jews, many of whom have long been active in campaigns against killings in Bosnia, Rwanda and, most recently, Sudan. By mid-August, Watertown, Mass., had decided to end its affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League’s program. On Aug. 17, the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League passed a resolution calling for the national organization to recognize the Armenian genocide. Its regional director, Andrew Tarsy, was fired by the national group the next day.
The clampdown on the local chapter infuriated many Jews in the Boston area. Two members of the New England board resigned, although one has since returned, and many local leaders criticized Mr. Foxman. Newton, whose population is heavily Jewish, voted to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League unless it changed its position on the resolution.
Mr. Foxman quickly rehired Mr. Tarsy and issued a statement intended to heal what he said were dangerous rifts in the Boston Jewish community at a time when Jewish unity was crucial. The statement did not support the House resolution. The killings of Armenians, Mr. Foxman wrote, were “tantamount to genocide.”
He added, “If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.”
Some Jews praised Mr. Foxman, whose reappraisal, they said, was uncharacteristic. But other Jews and Armenians said he did not go far enough.
“It denies the intentionality of genocide,” said Joey Kurtzman, executive editor of the online magazine Jewcy.com. Janet Tassel, a congregant at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, said she did not like Mr. Foxman but could not understand how Jews could be fighting over the word genocide when Israeli and American interests are at stake.
“If this resolution goes through, it’s goodbye Charlie for Israel, for U.S. troops in Iraq,” Ms. Tassel said. “It will lead to more anti-Semitism. I’m conflicted about what’s right.”
Dr. Porter, the genocide scholar, said the differing views among Jews on the resolution stemmed in part from whether they saw Israel as particularly vulnerable. “I see Israel as a strong nation,” Dr. Porter said, after speaking for cutting ties to the Anti-Defamation League at the Lexington meeting. “Jews are strong. They don’t have to be intimidated by politics.”
The complex of considerations weighed heavily on Rabbi Howard L. Jaffe of Temple Isaiah, who after weeks of thought decided to back the genocide resolution. “It’s very hard for me to support a position that could be detrimental to Israel,” he said. “But for me as a Jew, I have to take seriously Jewish values, and they require us to do what is right and righteous.”
At the Lexington meeting, nearly everyone praised the No Place for Hate program, which has worked with hundreds of residents in the past seven years.
Some Jewish residents pointed out that the local Anti-Defamation League chapter took a stand for the resolution and should not be punished for the national leadership’s policy; but Vicki Blier, another member of Temple Isaiah, said in a phone interview that the Anti-Defamation League had to be held accountable for its views.
“If this were an organization that were denying the Holocaust, would they be allowed to do anything in town, even if what they are doing is the most beneficial of programs?” Ms. Blier said. “In my experience, Jews are at the forefront in the recognition of injustice. Jews have always stuck their neck out for others.”

life lived behind lids

During a typical lifespan, a human spends a total of about six years dreaming[1] (which is about 2 hours each night[2]).

...as in, yorke p2

True to Form



gas leak dream.


in the garage i pull a bike out and it knocks the gas main conection.

i tried blocking it but every time i get near i cant speak. feel i am suffocating.

panic. family is inside. call the emergency. who is calling the emergency, am i?

feel i am suffocating. i stick a pencil in. a pen. the wrong end of a garden fork.

it still comes out and i have to run out of the garageunable to speak or scream.

i run to th eneighbors but semi collapse on the lawn trying to explain but nothing comes out.

debilitated.

once ive got my breath back i go back in.



rageing egos,
paranoia and
knives in the back will not stop the rising tides,
they are in themselves a form of poison
hanging in the atmosphere.


Thom

...as in, yorke

mental note


disconnected
disjointed
accidental
sketchy
fragmentary
synthesized
impermanent
momentary


Thom

"Repetition as a kind of solipsism"

Marcel Duchamp told an interviewer in 1960, “The idea of repeating, for me, is a form of masturbation.” Whether you find his statement contemptuous or commendatory, it speaks to a particularly 20th-century idea of repetition as a kind of solipsism. As “Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces” at the Walters Art Museum underscores, Duchamp’s 19th-century compatriots had no such qualms about revisiting, or even replicating, a subject.

radiohead's image

i've been published. wahooo

i've been published in issue 79

for more info, please see:

http://www.iotapoetry.co.uk/