Ghostwriter for Hire

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the significance of the extraconceptual

From An Anthology of Mysticism and Mystical Philosophy:

For Wordsworth, as Easterlin notes regarding “Tintern Abbey” especially, the essence of transcendent experience in nature lies beyond language’s ability to communicate that experience because “language is by nature approximate and human” and “inadequate to the description of the extraconceptual,” although “it is only through language that the significance of the extraconceptual can be recognized and, in some way, known.” Easterlin observes, for instance, that Wordsworth’s use of denotatively inappropriate modifiers in “Tintern Abbey,” as in “round ocean” and “living air” convey an impression of language short-circuiting under the strain of describing the infinity of God infused into finite physical nature.

I adore this short circuit language, the way that it breaks little holes through the walls of any small cell you may find yourself standing in.

You can see some examples of this in my lil “Black Cloud,” forthcoming from an anthology by Truth Serum Publishing.

republic of mercy

Radial Scent by Sharon Wang

My body tauter, poised to carry.

When I pitch forward

I tumble inside.

Each time I try,

an algal bloom

replaces language’s surface.

Ruby-red & unmoored,

waves over laminate surfaces…

Everything alive aching

for more aliveness.

I love the world,

push it away reflexively.

Make songs like

negated charges on a circuit.

Syntax arches towards

the back of

a neck. Inside emotion:

a corralling of emotion.

Love in the larval stage:

terror of surrender.

Unraveling, a path.

Words were not made for us.

They are above, we submit.

We are like the rock beneath

the water,

even if we created the water.

 

as it does under water

Surprised by Evening

There is unknown dust that is near us

Waves breaking on shores just over the hill

Trees full of birds that we have never seen

Nets drawn with dark fish.

The evening arrives; we look up and it is there

It has come through the nets of the stars

Through the tissues of the grass

Walking quietly over the asylums of the waters.

The day shall never end we think:

We have hair that seemed born for the daylight;

But at last the quiet waters of the night will rise

And our skin shall see far off as it does under water.

-Robert Bly

the heart in linguistic components, or, a flame.

 

i can’t be half gentle enough,

half tender enough

toward you, toward you

inarticulate, not half loving enough

BRIGHTen

the cor

ner

where      you      are!

 

one favorite lil portion of ole w.c.w.’s paterson.

and from charles doyle: in the yale draft, III iii is titled ‘flood.’

journals of sylvia plath

p. 245 the ghost of the unborn novel is a medusa-head. (in horror of it, frozen by it..)

p. 256 fox possession, fave dishes of magical foxes, from  possession: demoniacal and other: oesterreich p. 94  on a certain day at four o’clock there were to be placed in a temple sacred to foxes and situated twelve kilometers away two vessels…

p. 270 writing is a religious act:  it is an ordering, a reforming, a relearning and reloving of people and the world as they are and as they might be…it feels to intensify living:  you give more, probe, ask, look, learn and shape this: you get more: monsters, answers, color and form, knowledge.  you do it for itself first.  (italics mine)

p. 272 god’s luminous fingernail, a shut angel’s eyelid (of the new moon on its back)

 

 

some sonnet

From 100 Love Sonnets XVII No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego: te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma. Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores, y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra. Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de donde, te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño. From Cien Sonetos de amor XVII I don ’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams. —Translated and © Mark Eisner 2004, from City Lights’ The Essential Neruda

a stitch in time

Separation
By W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

when i get my horns in a thing

From the Desire Field by Natalie Diaz

 

I don’t call it sleep anymore.
I’ll risk losing something new instead—

like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose.

But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing—
a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined
fruit to unfasten from,

despite my trembling.

Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.
Let me call it, a garden.

Maybe this is what Lorca meant
when he said, verde que te quiero verde—

because when the shade of night comes,
I am a field of it, of any worry ready to flower in my chest.

My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused,
hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion

beneath the hip and plow of my lover,
then I am another night wandering the desire field—

bewildered in its low green glow,

belling the meadow between midnight and morning.
Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising
and many petaled,

the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.

I am struck in the witched hours of want—

I want her green life. Her inside me
in a green hour I can’t stop.
Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth

green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending.
Green moving green, moving.

Fast as that, this is how it happens—
soy una sonámbula.

And even though you said today you felt better,
and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear,
to say, I don’t feel good,
to ask you to tell me a story
about the sweet grass you planted—and tell it again
or again—

until I can smell its sweet smoke,
leave this thrashed field, and be smooth.

oh i just remembered

I have some artwork in the latest issue of New Paltz De Facto zine.  Pick one up at Inquiring Minds, Barner Books, or ll commissary! if you feel like it.  All proceeds go to their local anarchist collective.