Daily Archives: August 21, 2003

Overtone

screaming silent slipping southward
where in words that wind their wayward whistling
i am lost in linger’s longing
catalogued with her voice each time
i heard it

almost anger aimed against it
how in hums that howl their heated hallows
i am slain in sorrow’s searching
memorized with her voice the times
i heard it

and all the things she never said
and all the hurtful hearing spoken
and all the dreaded mindful hauntings
spoken in the overtone.

wishing wasted windtorn wanderings
there in threads that tread their trembled thimbling
i am washed in wanting’s whispering
covered with her voice the night
i heard it

hardly hopeless here i hunger
now in notes that need with knowing names
i am found in fallen flying
drowned with her voice where once
i heard it

and all the songs she never sang
and all the careful cries in softness
and all the never minded hearings
spoken in the overtone.

still there is yes in this unspoken
still there lies in hope the trembling
for in all the unvoiced things
she never found the overtone.

FALL 1993

Back in the 90’s, when I was exploring the way things sounded and how that affected the meaning of a thing, I experimented quite a bit with alliteration. Here’s probably the best example from that titillating time, that explores the juxtaposition of an overtone (i.e., the pitches above or below a given pitch that resonate and add depth to a sound, that tend to reverberate for different lengths of time from the original sound), with the tone in someone’s voice when they truly and deeply feel that a situation is at an end (called, for naming’s sake, the “it’s all over tone”).

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The Width of a Circle

Each thing that starts must have an end;
for every wax there is a wend
that once begun, moves to its finish.
Every birth has bury in it.

Like the moon face cycles through,
and new leaves sprout, then leave the bough,
things initiate and finish,
come to light and then must vanish.

Thus is nature, likewise man:
we rise and fall in a life’s span
and fight against the start of dying –
constantly, ’til we die trying.

In this circle is no starting
or conclusion, loss or parting;
you find neither foot or head
but instead, peace and acceptance.

Each couplet in this poem demonstrates a different rhyme: perfect, near, eye, half, masculine, feminine, end and internal, respectively.

21 AUG 2003

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Post Apocalyptic Is An Oxymoron

My world is not so grim and stark,
my sea so wrought with foam and rage,
that I must seek my guidance from
the words of seers, self-proclaimed,
who paint the times with bitter strokes
and cry “Woe!” at the fate of man
while solving nothing of themselves,
who see plots behind all locked doors.

For those would dehumanize
just reinforce the status quo;
and just etch their initials
on the shackles we ignore.

It’s epater le bourgeoise?
That game has been long played
by far more clever hands than yours,
against far greater foes.

How simple – just reflect our flaws
and in a cockeyed Fiction, choose
the few that prove your primal cause;
for wolves use both the eye and nose
and courteously will not object
to your loud insult of their style.
They know your rebel stance, like theirs,
hides blood-stained claws and hungry smiles.

No nihilistic view survives
and dies a peaceful death;
it must at last devour itself
to keep its self-respect
and live up to its own reviews.
What’s on your plate tonight?

21 AUG 2003

aimed at Chuck Palahnuik

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This is the Way

This is the way the world is:

Drunk, strung out on the euphoric smack
Of its own illusions of history
Sucking down the bitter pills
Like tapioca pearls stuck in the bottom of bubble tea
Strained through flavored watered-down sugar
Dressed in an exquisite facade
Crumbling at the edges like an old whore at the Parthenon
Waiting for another savior to crucify
Fighting the signs of age
Its revolutions caked like rejuvenating facial cream
Or dried semen on a dried and cracking diaphragm
Pierced and tattooed with disappearing ink
The sickly sour smell of henna hanging like a green cloud
From its clogged and distended pores
Drinking from a specimen cup its nasty medicine
While saying it loves the taste, but wishing it were less filling
Relishing the savor of bile and old phlegm
Dead and gone to seed to fuel a new regime
Of diet fads and infomercials promising improved performance
Its kindling clear-cut and fed to friendly fires
Thinking it is not in free fall
Just because the cliff from which it jumped is so high
The bottom is not yet in sight
Raw and bruised, its shoulders red and swollen to the touch
From refusing to share the authority of being
Among its myriad of creations

This is the way the world is:

Mouse and trap entwined as one mass of writhing matter
Lost because it thinks it drew the map.

21 AUG 2003

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