degenerate art
unsanctioned
unbefitting
destroyed
ashen remnants
invisible work
painted along
history’s corridors
Category: Philosophy
Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library
I traverse an
infinite divide
divining an
immanent encounter
[I stop breathing]
there is stillness
stabbing pain
radiates from
my sternum
I hear the
scratching
blue pen
across paper
which is always
disembodied
from these
phantom lines
[silent wings]
images that console
today I
remember
the future
[my life is a black box]
decomposing
multiverse born
of a supermassive
black hole
I exist in a
quantum state
ever approaching
an event horizon
you observe me
fixed in the
fabric of spacetime
death mask photograph
relativity commits
its heinous crimes
thieving my life
through an illusion
of immortality
[body bag encasing stardust]
temporal dimension
limits the possible
each choice assembles
molecules of tomorrow
ghost projections of
shattered worlds
[I never know what it means]
causality slips sideways –
on alternating days I die
or write poetry
chords of enduring agony
atoms of memory disfigured
until there is nothing left
but my intimacy with oblivion
[I await the blessed kiss of an immanent being]
I may already be a cyborg
a footnote in the is/ought debate
metaethical construct inventing
in a realm of intellectual imagination
deconstructing identity
becoming ever more permeable
dissolving the boundaries
between inner and outer worlds
in this scenario self-conscious
and self-referential hold no meaning
no ’I’ but trapped here in words
where ‘I’ is a semiotic phantom
‘text is a tissue of quotations
drawn from the innumerable
centers of culture . . . it is
language that speaks, not the author’
liberated from ‘reality’
distributed across the web
fragmented, mutable, and avant garde
passé postmodern schemata
superflat dispersed identity
virtual paint scratched across the net
translucent floating images
projected onto a moving sphere
supernova mothers won’t birth
new mythologies, only observers
memory is a horse
drawing reigns
through the snow
myriad threads
of retrocausality
converging
mathematical
model predicated
on chaos
mind traces
a divergent
illusion of absence
melody haunting
blue interstices
of imagination
motion creates
waves of substance
woven in spacetime
Wikipedia Commons
In memoriam for Dave King
‘I am writing a novel
in which no one speaks . . .
every one of my characters
moves like a shadow . . .
As of now, chapters ten,
and to a lesser extent,
maybe, eleven,
seem quite unpenable.’
written by Dave King, excerpts
from WAR AND PEACEfulness
I. Alasdair MacIntyre and Isaiah Berlin will engage in a civilized debate of moral philosophy and value pluralism in the divinely lit library of the hereafter
while it seems improbable
that the two will ever
arrive at the Answer,
hidden within the firestick,
their agreeable natures
ensure a kind exchange
and mutual respect
(as ours did)
II. Postmodern experimentalism encounters a fine intellect and a dashing wit
not only did he meet the bar
he vaulted it rather spryly
III. Anything can happen
unfortunately, it often does
cancerously and suddenly
IV. Stendal, Joyce, Hypatia, Riker, and Woolf toast his life by writing an eternity of allusions
words are like magic,
scintilla, igniting the soul’s spark
Plato’s divine spark longing
to unite with ever more
transcendent forms of beauty
Hypatia approaches the door
only those who’ve transitioned
may enter, opening a gateway,
releasing the fiery cries of seraphs
(I will meet you in the liminal
threshold between your faith
and my fractured metaphysics)
her radical eye encounters his pneuma
perhaps a whisper of which
will live a little here in the poem
as an act of remembrance
V. The consummate performance artist mourns the poet
you walked alongside us
desiring a dream of arctic skies
and ice floes captured in verse
now silk enrobed traces of your artistry
float by, a music, ever passing
as your gentle voice is lost to the wind
Book with Wings by Anselm Kiefer
‘The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable
in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things
in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.’*
I exist in the abstract vector (impure) space
between the mortal and the divine
within this night of broken glass
where there are no mutually exclusive states
in a profound paradox encapsulated
by a series of spectral lines
superluminal small heavens (within)
embodying the nature of light
restless remnant of a tattered whole
(oracle) of four dimension spacetime notation
carrying a universal wound of broken stories
in my native tongue, mathematics
imaginary world of leaden transformation
an enchanted map leading me on a path
between genius and madness
antimatter colliding in a book with wings
(space & time)/(momentum & energy)
coexisting potential alchemical matrices
uncertain relations in superposition
oscillating ash of solitude and union
*Paul Dirac
let’s make a corporate baby
white collar sex crime to
become Gods of limited liability,
conceptual artist creators
launch a Kickstarter campaign
to attract early angel investors
book him his own reality show
with a recurring cast of characters
imagine a secret R&D department
Google’s gonna solve death
but who’s covering life
in 24/7 high def wish fulfillment
he’ll command the stage with all
the rights & privileges of a real boy
Enron asks us: ‘Why, asshole?’
to explore what it feels like
(from the inside) to be wealthy,
entitled, and largely immune,
reliving every boy’s wet dream:
to be the King of Versailles
join the nouveau-riche yacht club
arrive in style in a Embraer Phenom 300
he’ll be the top of his Ivy league class in a
burgeoning (oc)cult of accumulation
we’ll reenact hostile takeovers of legend
(exotic dancers will party at the mansion)
he’ll cum on fraud-laden, creative,
quarterly reports until he just can’t do it anymore
sparking corporate espionage in far-away places
off shore accounts to sink a nation
(all in the name of performance art)
super star risk takers of global proportions
The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
I speak now to the audience in your head
not the voice that reads this line
(nor the voice that speaks alongside it)
but instead to the part of you
that observes the voice,
(hush now)
watch the unfolding theater:
here is an excursion of the artist into war
from the safety of the mind’s constructs
(you will not have to take a stance)
so you, the observer,
have assurances
double indemnity
Pina choreographs the performers
writhing masterfully among the corpses
wrap flesh around their toes
to raise on point
(incongruous)
upon a beach invaded
by the long dead
(whale song)
marching to the sacred shrine
(come away)
the listening shores rebound
hand-held spotlight illuminates
an iron triangle against the
politics of a graffiti sky
jagged edges slice the dancers
(to operatic pleas)
she stands alone
undulating arms
(come away)
frenetic, kinetic shapes
haunt in liminal space
(collapsing)
consume your ideas,
bury your children
confront the psychology of obstacles
strewn across a room within a world,
a café, a memory, a drama
(inextricable motion)
painting your psyche,
(behind the fourth wall)
bid the virtues,
bid the graces
(come)
daughters of art
cry your overflowing river of dust
a rite of spring granting muddied feet
to reclaim the earth of this stage
incursions into our perspectives
wormholes to exquisite pain
(as I write to you)
of this excursion
of the artist
into war
we close the door (castaways)
seaweed tossed by the storm
mimicking the dance
emotive intensity whirls
in the roar
violent intent permeates Nature,
from whom we learn not
seeing with closed eyes
you hear my voice, your voice,
the observer draws horrific pictures
for your inner sight
you travel, exploring this interior
view of war
at a remove that fans out
like a house of mirrors
dancers mime
(terror)
(exhaustion)
(bloodlust)
death
Pina Bausch 1940-2009
she turns the emperor on his head
as the sun penetrates the forest canopy
I listen for the sounds
wild reparations offered for all the blood
scanning for (in situ) signs of life
a heartbeat pumping in searing words
brazenly on a hot pressed page
wood transmuted, only resurrected with her name
surface so smooth that everything slides
liquid nitrogen cooled tongues
slipping from cottonmouths
stained only by washes
of colorful trauma
mineral night rising, a phosphorescent outcry
burning chemical fire layer by layer
until our skin becomes as
ineffectual as the paper
she wrote the truth upon
hush imbued atmosphere descends,
a pernicious intent
poet tells me, ‘every angel is awful’
not mine, lord,
not mine
I saw her at the dawning
and in the glimmer of his oceanic love
her joy lighting candles
in the holy of holies
that day I stood in the temple
in the land of the sandsky
(where I never could have entered before)
murmuring supplications
with an apotropaic wand
against the inevitable dark
secret cinematic sounds delivered
in the tone of teenage apathy
Video Games plays in the acoustic hollow
of a phoenix’s breastbone
an echoic pleading
one skin to another
I held her in the birthing
and in the slow murder of life
in her incandescent light, her
dénouement, her breath infusing
my own, whispering paeans,
singing sighs
Notes: Every Angel is Awful is a book by the French poet, Martine Broda and Video Games is a song by Lana Del Rey.
Acrylic on paper 2005 Anna Chamberlain, poetry 2013
Chromapoetica 