Huntington Beach

Image overlays done with my Nikon D3000 

White Lines

white lines
make us nervous
white lines
unnerve us,
where do we draw the line?
we are only 25

the logic of our design
floats freely between two minds,
not within these lines
that are either black or white

darling;

would you rather be a sketch?
an undefined etch
blood without its stream
flows but what does it mean?

but let's not complicate;

a heart does not lie
and we are here until we die
that is neither wrong nor right
this is neither black nor white

if we only
learn to comprehend,
without words we cannot misunderstand
(with our eyes we can exchange)

white lines draw the end
silence is our only friend

Anaïs Nin

“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic-in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.”

—

Anaïs Nin

Perfect Death

somewhere between her foul mouth and genitalia

a life dying to take her first breath

raging impurity of oceania gives birth to a perfect death

imbued with wisdoms of the waves

waiting for a wilting love

the irony is what she craves

kills her more than life above

the dirt ground choking under her feet

diminishing sky in her lover's eyes

chasing life is as futile as the quest for truth

and the arrival of death holds no surprise

event horizon

infinitely dense content overload resulting in a near-brain implosion
thank you internets.

firefly

unexpected firefly flickering his light

tangos with the shadows and dances with the night

nocturnal creature swiftly roams looking for a mate

marks the dark as his home, such a lonely wait 

he saunters onwards on this journey

humming a single man's free will

an anomaly between the trees
in his heart so still

Love is a Parallax, by Sylvia Plath

Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.

Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
is our life's whole nemesis.

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
implacably from twelve to one.

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
who insists his playmates run.

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
should inflame the sleeping town.

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
playing his prodigal charades.

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
graves all carol in reply.

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
while footlights flare and houselights dim.

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
joins his enemies' recruits.

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
an insight like the flight of birds:

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
cycling phoenix never stops.

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
away our rationed days and weeks.

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
the simple sum of heart plus heart.

unsung

sounds will not suffice to say 

how much it is we swim

in melodies of blue and gray

dancing on a whim

silently, we know no chords

but silence knows us better

anxious for what is stored

beneath this quiet tremor 

words have failed us many times

but harmonies prevail 

in a sea of crisp white noise
electric rhymes set sail 

what is an & sir?

what is an & sir?
would you dare say
is it the way home sir?
or is it where I stay?

what is an & sir?
would you ever claim
that it brings us together sir?
or will it make us stray?

what is an & sir?
is it more-or-less?
is it a sound argument sir?
or is it truth-less?

you want an & sir?
are you looking for it here?
I'm sorry sir- I don't have the answer
I don't have it my dear.

wake up

it's so simple
as you say
even when we sleep
waves carry us away

while bringing us closer
in a spiritual way
better in dreams
is our trembling fate

saves us from tempest
earthly desires
the waves travel between us
while pushing us higher

wake up
on the crest of this ocean
we are the tides of our passion
a microcosm of heat
energy everlasting

belong

where are you purple flower?
you are a natural, lonely pose

an endless stamen
between shameless petals,
your saccharine nectarie shows

your moon peeps
from behind rocky boulders,
settles above smoky peaks
shrugging his lonely shoulders

lights up the night
the search for you is all he knows

and he never seems to wait for us,
he just goes and goes,
stealing all of our time
warping the days into nights,
flashing a guiltless glow

spinning circles around the earth,
tranquility is for the weak of heart (this he also knows)
in the dark his madness empowered
searching for his purple prose

in white

white walls
white walls
white waiting-welcome walls
we were there, do you remember?
wearing our beat-up overalls

white paint
white paint
a dripping monologue
we had a dance, do you remember?
waltzing in and out of dialogue

white words
white words
careful, special scenes
we had no tapes, do you remember?
just our fragile memories

navy blue

she rises clear above the range as
a silent moment brakes and
we focus on her flight

moving slowly, dressed in a strange

disguise of fog as

she changes in the night

your shadowed face is plain and as
predictable as her movements

shifting in and out of sight

the only color i see is navy blue,

swimming between me and you
turning quiet moments bright

sitting thigh-to-thigh

I glance your waning eyes

filled with sudden might

pressing your head against mine,

our eyes locked tight

a sweet kiss revealed

beneath her pale moonlight

copy-cat

i make things that look like things that other people make
i am an artist
i am inspired
but i am also a trembling fake
what would it look like if I was not among the rest?
would i be uninspired and irrelevant
or would i be at my very best?

Drown

Last time we went swimming
the sea stood up and hugged you
as though you were responsible
for keeping it blue

Bianca Stewart, 2011

summer thunder

beats like thunder,
words are echoed
i'm not fully aware
resounding in my mind
sometimes
sometimes
sometimes i'm here
sometimes i'm there

falling to the ground
i'm nowhere
falling without a sound
i'm nowhere

blackness
blackness
i'm happier there
gracefully by your side
you don't know it but I still care

time is convulsing
it's not me
it's not me
summer thunder is
blissful blackness
i'm still here don't you see?

Every Word You Say

Your words are branches long and limber

I leap from comfort to hang from timber

Someone once told me I was Godless and brave

I'll hang onto every word 

you say

Your words come from far and travel deep

they drift up and fall down blue hills, so steep

I'll keep a bookmark in the best parts of my life

To hang onto the words

you say

Your words tell a story, a beginning - an end

They grow from a gentle tree, around the darkest bend

I'll water them until they bloom the utmost conviction

So I can hang onto the words

you say

On making it, says Ira Glass

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” - 


Ira Glass

The Cult of Dying Adonis

beauty like Adonis, bearing
nothing but a simple frown
born from foam, he left to roam
and in her arms he drowned

searching for his Venus,
knocking down pitted castles of sand
left him nothing but the nectar's blood
from Nahr Ibrahim, to his drummer hand

Medea dips down to drag him
tosses him towards the ocean's waves
Persephone's Eleusinian mystery teaches
him naughty ways to behave

never if he followed a fresher trail of flowers
could he be more fire-and-ice
from Cythera to the Cypriot, as she danced her way about
Venus calmed his solemn cries

forgetting where he came from
the fruitful belly of the ocean's crest
he fell to Sirens calling on his lonely
crashed and burned his boat just like the rest

The Only People For Me

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

-Jack Kerouac

Wolves With Guns

I have waited for you day and night

You find a way to creep around my sight

You fill the outer edges of my retina

Is it a dark ring or is it full of light?

I can't tell between what's wrong or right

Leave me in trouble now, I will be alright

I am waiting for the wolves to yell

to take the prisoner's will with my own might,

I am waiting for the wolves to yell

To kill the queen and have a story to tell

Broken windows, just to get to you

I am running, I am hiding from the truth

You won't touch me, you won't kiss me anymore

Who is gonna love me when I'm lying dead on the floor?

I am only one of many queens

Behind every throne is a treachery

I am only one of many kinds

Of foolish lovers that will steal and taint your mind

When in the dark, there is no shame

Another hope lost with every story gained

When losing sparks, no one's to blame

Another love lost with every story gained

The others think I'm crazy, they think I'm having fun

They don't see past the fire, that I'm not the only one

I sold myself to freedom, and now I'm done

No one is gonna love me with my head stuck to my gun

i don't want to be in love, i wan't to be in sadness

i don't want to be in love
i want to be in sadness
an only space that has no place
surrounded by my madness

how will you feel when i touch?
my weary eyes that stole your badness
let me discover you, sullen boy
so that i may hide in you my crassness

not the brilliance of a thousand slivers

not the brilliance of a thousand slivers
of silver and gold
of bright things and bold,
not the last rose
in it's loneliest pose,
with its bittersweet poise,
making its covetous noise
could take my eyes off of you.  

The Discourse of Power & The Fabricated Self

(A short clip of a longer essay by Christina Issa)


Based on the ideas presented by Foucault in his book "Disciplinary Power," it can be argued that our identities are highly fabricated products of an invisible grid of power-relations, which constitutes the mechanism through which disciplinary power operates. In the greater sense, this is the basis for our inescapable arrest to which Kafka so subtly alludes in "The Trial." As our lives and identities are threaded through this lattice of power-relations, we perpetually reinforce ourselves as effects of power. We are systematically bound to a machine, which we ourselves fabricate and inadvertently attach ourselves to. We do this through, among many other things, awareness and ‘self-consciousness." Ergo, ‘The Self’ is a function of disciplinary power and we are just effects of this power. 


How do we break this? We cannot. It is impossible. For as long as the techniques of disciplinary power continue operating through our conscious and even unconscious awareness - through our struggle to assert and re-assert our identities, through our struggle to give meaning and definition to the world, through institutional operations and their assertion of power over the people pressed into the service and ‘improvement’ of the many - no one can avoid the grasp of power, and no one will ever be freed from the grasp of power. In this way ‘The Self’ will never cease being an endless subject of power perpetually being organized, examined, and observed. Moreover, as the individual reacts to these techniques of disciplinary power ‘The Self’ will never own itself and be its own justification; (To Nietzsche's disappointment...) it will only be owned, as a function of another operation. 


Among other things, this reality is why revolution is hopeless. This is why rebellion is just as absurd as the dictatorship in which it seeks to overthrow. As one attempts to reverse the dominant discourse they merely re-establishes another discourse under which he will be bound and existentially contingent. As one redefines, they merely re-subject. The most he can do is hope to have more power than others, so that he may enjoy the power of domination more and experience the effect of subjection less. 


Despite the transference of more power into the individual’s hands, we will always remain caught in the webbing of power-relations. Accordingly, our identity will always remain a figment of our imagination, evading us more and more, escaping us quicker as we tighten our grasp on it. Identity is hugely fabricated in this way, and exists as just an afterthought; in the present we remain to be effects of power.

when neurons are fleeting, Neruda never fails me.

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973)

coin-slot eyes

Coin-slot eyes steal glances in the still of dawn,
sometimes tender, sometimes bare.
We sleep with windows wide open.
Light falling on freckles and you trace my arms, my neck, my back.
Waking takes eternity, if ever we are not in dreams.
Rolling skin to skin feels brand new every time, like the baby’s first cry at the first chance.
And your baby-face profile can be drawn with charcoals of reds and blue - somehow I forget too much, to say, that I love everything about you.
Waiting for a new moment, or just the same one again. Waiting brings me alive when it’s your thoughts I’m waiting in.
Waiting for the right second to steal looks or smiles.
Saving them for when your far away, many lonely miles.

throbbing loud and hard with fervor

Throbbing loud and hard with fervor
making risky ripples inside
Do we at once, turn and walk away
or stay and take the ride?
A risky endeavor
that cannot be measured
but in leaps and bounds of selfless action
feelings are crisp
like edges of aged leaves
poking through our feet, providing traction
certainly indescribable,
for lack of better or worser words
which seeking for would be as fruitless as the sinners' tree
and as isolating as Kafka's absurd
Writing in colors without definition
in books without binding or edges
filling it with songs absent their rhymes
hanging it off hundred-story ledges
On the tide of tricky desire
burning up gems of blue and gold
bars and flakes and hearts that break
riding as brilliantly as the bejeweled we behold
Swimming steadily in our emotions
through endless lakes, we wail and swallow
loving from belly to thigh, from drunken eye to eye
inciting physical sensations, within we wallow
Grasping the electric while we are able
leaving behind the stable but useless words that restrain
rather we ride the current throbbing cable
since what we are together, is what love is to pain

truth-less reality

For his project in Chandigarh, Le Corbusier asked his head engineer “What is the truth really?” Then he drew two parallel lines, with a wavy line in between. “Truth is like a river,” he said, “it flows continuously, changing course, modifying itself, without ever touching either bank”.

Hafez on Selflessness

A Persian poet once said...

"Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
You owe Me.'

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky"

(Hafez)

soul feels older

soul feels older
while heart feels young
i crave your breath
to fill my lungs

winds push forward
loves sink west
burning in the suns set
feels like our very best

laughing is so easy
when secrets are concealed
between apologies and flattery
only in haste ever revealed

like paper through the wind
truth flows through the wicked lyre
steady paths will light the flame
and words set them on fire

backs turned to light
a hardened steel glow
still we press on with might
lingering only in shadows

big hearts or bust

Why is it that having a big heart is what always gets me into the most trouble?

So counter-intuitive.

Dionysus & Apollo

complex minds rotting with love
how they struggle to stay above
cursing while the world is burning
an eternal agon filled with yearning

deep red ocean - minds run free
in this obscurity both remain to be
driven by the dark roaming around
sometimes lost and sometimes found

and reason seems incongruous with passion
they move violently in a gallant fashion
together afflicted with so much pain
the lover loves to dream in vain

sometimes sex
sometimes fornication
undercover masters of imitation
lovers test their limitation
by somersaults of the imagination

inescapable doubles are
lovers who love to dream
in vain while every kiss
bleeds death the same

Build, Break, Bloom: Some Very Unorganized Thoughts About Architecture

(Written weeks ago)

Contingency itself is the only condition of life and all things in existence pivot around a point of contingency. I am contingent. You are contingent. Life is contingent.

Time and space are the constants under which we manipulate our reality and define things. Our physical environment sits unassumingly as the culprit of Apollonian violence. Quite literally, architecture is the pinnacle of the Apollonian-Dionysian struggle. The violence is unbearable sometimes. Existing within a vacancy of meaning while warped by a Dionysian chaos, this time-space experiment remains defined by mathematical boundaries, points and lines. Mastery of it is elusive in the sense that ‘truths’ are only as figured out as we determine them to be. It is only through formal manipulation that we build upon contingencies and thus assign definition and form.

Architecture, as a formal act of construction, is the wildest form of creative destruction, as well as the most tangible expression of the Apollonian and Dionysian struggle. As you build you are systemically assaulting nature and assigning meaning to the inherently meaningless. In the process of building you are destroying all else. Physically you destroy and create while conceptually you are deconstructing the definition of what it means to be and to dwell at one point in time and space. By virtue of its process, the language of architecture is an attempt to control chaos and grant form to the formless.

stillness

still as you were
watching for moving lights from down below
waiting
exhaling
above our heads leaves hang low
reach up to touch the sky-ceiling
but not too far off the dirt ground
in a state of limbo
incredible peace is found
cradling you like the
w i d e o p e n a i r
wrapping arms around
holding you even after you're not there
feelings still tightly bound
still as you were
i'm still as I was
still as you keep changing
be still just because

all things exist only in passing

All things exist only in passing,
nothing is truly ever-lasting
the impermanence of life
moves with dangerous quickness
always open
shifty swiftness

and as soon as we think that we can control
the thunders from above begin to roar
reminding us that freedom is a folklore
and life is just what we do while we wait for more

every object in space dives into our eyes
moving at an uncontrollable pace
aimlessly through the skies
paints for us the tragedy that we all die trying
waiting, rushing, wishing, pushing
never knowing that while we are living
we are just dying

instead of making life from flames
the fire that rages as we pour out our hearts
we douse with lies to keep it tame
so that we do not fall apart

and withholding our very own swells of breath
we slash throbbing hearts that are the soul
doing so, still burning
to find answers that will make us whole

paper into ashes
dust from coal
the fire lay weeping
at our weary core

time

move too slow
move too quick
as we fall
time will tick

closer to you
further from me
from your eyes
I can see

sometimes how you're
stuck inside
all the time how you
desperately try

still as we float
falling upwards
to pass the time I write
in frozen words

tomorrow is not far
when i can write
in scribbles of motion
waiting just to cross that ocean

The beauty that is Baba.

March 01, 1957.

The day Souhail Khalil Issa was brought into the world. My Baba. My Daddy.

I got my middle name from him. I also got a lot of my good looks from him. My hands-on attitude and wild love for exploration. Digging through the dirt, building and assembling, seeing and fixing, it's all from my Baba. My unassuming curiosity that leads me to try new things, I know it's also from him. My technical mannerisms, and my even more technical mind. In a strange way, even the creativity somehow stems from this man of practicality and simplicity.

With the good always comes some bad, and I certainly get my fair share of imperfection from him. The temper is my Baba. The feisty attitude, that is my Baba. But even those imperfections are what make the good so good. I get from him my ability to let it all go, to move the soul onwards and upwards, towards better things.

That is the beauty that is my Baba.

He's taught me to become infused with all that is meaningful, beautiful, and valuable in the world - to have the courage to know when it has all run it's course and the strength to know how to let it all go.

He is gracious and kind. A man who even if he wanted, wouldn't know how to use the word "no". He would never turn his back on the people he loves and never refuses a single friend. Even a stranger on the side of the road, he will go above and beyond to help. He always greets the world with a smile so big, no matter what he's been through. He is a man with enough heart that if captured and let out to sea, could overflow the oceans from here to India.

My father is an amazing person. A beautiful human being inside and out. He has so much love to give to the world, and like me, he also doesn't always know what to do with that love. It is in his imperfections that he is one of the most incredible people I have ever known. Not only because he is my father, and to whom I owe my life. But he has the ability to live his life with strength and courage, never letting the ups and downs of the external world change how much love he is willing to give back.

greatness of friendship

I would rather have the greatness of your friendship for as long as humanly possible, than the sweetness of a single moment of passion, which I fear would last only as long as emotionally possible.

Sadness

Can we be blessed with sadness?

Sadness, like all other things, is a state of mind. It's a place that we, ourselves, place who we are and who we think we should be, within. It's a place. It's a stage. I might be blessed with sadness only so far as it inspires me to create. Only so far as it moves me to progress as an individual who strives to master her own existence. I can manipulate that which I think is sadness, or those things that I believe to be sadness, but sadness has no inherent goodness or badness, it's just a state of mind that really, in the end, means absolutely nothing at all.

So, no. No Matthew. I am not blessed with sadness. I don't see it in that way, at least. In my own peculiar little world, sadness is the cessation of a struggle; the struggle is for a doomed-happiness, which I will never deny myself. The struggle to be real with myself and to be truthful to who I am. That is what you lose when you wallow and dwell in sadness. Like all other states of mind, sadness is just a human creation, a construct that which we bury our true selves under. Just as easily as I can create it, I can destroy it (realizing that it is slightly more difficult to destroy).

(Thanks to Matt Stangle, for inspiring me and succeeding, yet again, in distracting me from the "real" things I should be doing like studying for class and writing a paper on NAFTA...)

La Caída

Parece que acoba de nos encontramos,
algunos momentos pasado,
y a la misma tiempo
me siento que hemos conocido por mucho tiempo

te dejé atrás
salé en Cercanía

cada segundo que pasa
la distancia crece
es una sensación maduro
inexplicable

cada palabra
demasiado sentido
y a veces palabras no estan bastante

para que quiero significar,
para que quiero dignificar,
los sentimientos
es una pérdida, cuando traducimos
compensamos en exceso para llegar al destino,
usando el gesto
del mano
de la cara
del ojos
miramos
pero entendemos?

todo el tiempo en exceso para llegar a la cresta
y nos caemos como uno maremeto,
caemos en uno maremeto
uno maremeto de gestos


(July 2009, Madrid, Spain. Escribé esto poema cuando estuve en España y conocí alguien muy especial...)

coffee's bitter-sweetness

i loved
i loved
the freshness of you
cold side of my pillow
case, your hands (do tremble)
they touched me
blood pumped
feeble mind raced

illusion of you
death strong i couldn't erase
it, after you'd left
so long ago,
too much space wasted

still skin feels how when you left it, so
brand new

awakened her quiet
feels like she loved you
in seconds not hours
feels like time measured her intimate powers

she fit you, she did
into mine she devoured

your breakdown
your weakness
she's speechless
she's speechless
like
coffee's
bitter-sweetness

danger, us

never has the brimming mind
felt so dangerously inspired

elusive moments sting like wired, thoughts
grow wings atop dead-letter spires

we want to move in leaps and bounds, but
do so cautiously from here to there,
carefully not to expose our care, we satiate
our roaring appetites

andallthewhile
loving your stories,
themed childhood-places,
affirming your heroic glory
like footprints, you leave the past
behind paints and strides
doused in bitter wines
in deconstructed angry lines
hidden dirty appetite, that which
you have covered in streaks of light

going home
slender limbs graze my thigh
a blush i cannot hide,
must resist it so i try

and this will soon fade away
let's not get attached
you say
deepening curiosity is strong, but
do not let me forget
how this is wrong

Oh how I wish to sing
to you,
too much, much love could bring to you
the death of you and I (merely mortals)
into an afterlife

don't you know?
you leave many breaths behind
the moving heavy-passion kind
they cross oceans from your lips
to
my
mind

(for which you need a floating device)

wild looks I catch in your eyes
make it hard
to make-up lies

so

maybe i will trace your youth
and down it with a splash of vermouth
a simple mixed-up drink
or would it be uncouth?

stillness on the fringes instances
carries us for quiet distances
dark colors and places melt with our behaviors
pull the sky over honest smiles, it might save us

to want this with so much eagerness, stuck in
self-effacing bliss

many earnest words we spill
to overcome this will, this
box bleeds red and wheat
leave the sugar, we
don't need that which is sweet

tomorrow you'll wake up in the sky
and eat the ocean with your eyes
like the King, you'll steal the sun
in this world of disappearing fun

today i am Simone
in the shadows of wits my own,
you lived in me,
this day was never known

Language is war.

It is impossible to truly understand what another person is ever saying. Impossible to figure out another's concept or perspective born in their mind. It is impossible because no matter what we do and how we try, the only way for us as humans with cognitive activity, to learn, is through language. Through asking questions and attaching meaning to words (which will invariably be diverse and distinct in different minds), we taint the original meaning of words, of messages, of statements. The only thing that is guaranteed is that we humans will interpret things as we see fit, and in this process we will build and destroy. Language is war. Language is a problem. The question is now, how do we live with language?

Agreement in dialogue is technical. More than anything else it is technical. Agreement comes when my use of a set of terms and my chosen vocabulary reflects and triggers in your mind, the same associations by which you linked your original thought. That original thought you probably expressed using a different set of terms, different adjectives and subjects and verbs. Unique to you. Not until we have exhausted our ways of conversation, not until we find a point where I can say what I want and how I perceive what we are discussing to exist, and when that expression of my perception through careful use of language aligns with the idea in your mind, not until then, have we met agreement. Again, which can only occur when the words I have chosen to use to explain myself, happen to mean either the same or relatively the same things to you, in your mind, as you know and use them. And neither of us will ever know the true discord in existence, that lies between the shadows of our words, since we cannot feel it, since we strive for agreement, for peace. We will never really know how different our thoughts really are because we will always be striving to be in harmony. This duality is deadly but beautiful.

I recognize in this process that language and meaning is also always recycled. Social relation and communicative activity encourages the development of meaning by relying on other meaning. This is not important to me here.

It seems the only way for us humans to overcome this "problem" of language, to ever really see eye-to-eye, to ever truly see one thing from the exact same place in space and time, is to not speak. To not communicate. To not question. To not articulate. It is in translation that words will always lose their meaning, their associations, their histories. As we assign them meaning relative to ourselves, we destroy what they meant to another. As they pass from ones lips to another's ears, they morph into something new. That is why we as the carriers of the meanings of our words, are the ones to blame for the consequences.

True peace is silence. Pure peace is blackness and emptiness. Might as well be dead. If language is conflict, I don't ever want to be peaceful. Bring on the heartache.

Sedmikrásky (1966)

Joan Jonas

Brilliant.

Kahn's Exeter Short Film from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed"

Sometimes looking backwards helps us move forwards. If we perceive things as simply as we did when we were children, things may work out easier than we expect.

Click here for the book.

Poaceae

"Work in progress"
All living things grow. Like Poaceae, there are points in life where you just have to diverge from the stem and go in your own direction - but luckily you can always turn around and find your way home on the path from which you came.


Node: The point along a stem which gives rise to leaves, branches, or inflorescences.

"Because it only takes one"

Impart your knowledge unto me and I will wave with hands graciously
open to you - facing the sky,
endless
(like you)
in the air, open to receive your wisdoms,
beautifully crafted (like you)
Your empowering words - so courageous and confident (like you)
Sometimes brazen and relentless
they move mountains from right in front of me
Your words are honesty and immortality at its finest hour,
I can never be thankful enough for your words
And like you, those words will stay with me always.

-Dedicated to a great friend, Marina Terteryan

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

-Mark Strand

Homely.

There is a house built out of stone
where everyone goes to be alone
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall
No one really knows anyone, at all

A house of tiles
in the graces of weak grout
Small enough to guard thoughts
So as not to echo about

BIg enough for everyone to keep hiding-out
But small enough to hear the next person shout

There is a place in between sticks and stones
where you can sit still
but let your mind freely roam
Windows face outwards so that you don't have to face each other
Framing a view of the stars and skies
instead of your mother

Door ways open slightly, if even open at all
Darkness returns before cars do
Say hello to fall

And summer - oh summer
Goodbye to you
And your flaming concrete pavement
and all that you do

Goodbye flaming orange-blue skies
and hurtful worn-out goodbyes
and bloody summer-time wars
Somebody said we're ready to open the doors

So Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall
Leave us alone no more in the backyard of green and chrome
In the moon shadows between that place far away and home
You can find us somewhere in that house built of stone

L is for the way you look, to me.

"There is no perfect love" I heard that somewhere today.

Nothing on earth is perfect- everything is imperfect. When I create something i do so to the extent that I believe it in itself is perfect, it is the most perfect it can be. I realize imperfections do exist and to all other eyes anything that passes through my hands is flawed or can be - but to me it is the intent of putting together the piece in all of its beauty and glory and having it complete that makes it so perfect.

It can grow old, yes. It can lose color, yes. It can become modified, yes. It is vulnerable and helpless and cannot withstand even the slightest bit of an earthquake...yes.

It can even disappear, but it will never cease to exist in my imagination and that is why it is oh so perfect to me.

Who needs syntax when you've got kisses.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- e. e. cummings

Cien Sonetos de Amor: XVII

"...I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul..."

-Pablo Neruda

[06][19][09] - 2

In a place of many
only 1 remains
bring in the new
remove the stains

In a place far away
you keep yourself hidden
to give you my heart
is wholly forbidden

In a place of choices
how does one go about choosing?
when inevitably
one of us is losing

[06][19][09]

You're my source of poetry
from now on,
through my fingers you bleed

from now on,
its a city under siege

because you're my source of poetry

everywhere i glance
i see you
could it be
you see me too?
could it be
I've stolen parts of your soul
impressions like the wind
have taken a toll

impressions you left
when before my heart you tore
impressions you gave me
leaving me sore

everywhere i touch i feel you
could it be
you feel me too?

from now on,
its a blanket over the breeze
how do you inspire me with so much ease?

and how you leave me
you're such a tease

the city wont stop
it's under siege

White Nights, Dostoevsky

"For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!"

-Dostoevsky, White Nights

letterstogethermakeprettywords

i'm writing words
words of writing
words of fighting

what are these words?
sometimes alive
sometimes dying

what are these words?
words are speaking
words are leaking

loose words
tight words
wrong words
right words

what are these words?
steering left
steering right
never seem to be just right

only to you these words
mean something

only to me these words
are nothing

these are just words
just words I am writing

Dr. Seuss is a Genius

Oh, the places you'll go

Do you dare to stay out?

Do you dare to go in?

How much can you lose?

How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters?

Or, maybe, not quite?

You can get so confused that you’ll start to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

Headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place……for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go, or a bus to come, or a plane to go, or the mail to come, or the rain to go, or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow, or waiting around for a Yes or a No

Or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants,

Or a wig with curls

Or another chance...

-Dr. Seuss

sun shine

that's me reflected in your sunglasses,
hair all crazy
smiles all wavy

that's the kite flying above us both,
keeping a distance
staying a float

that's sunshine pouring out of our eyes
that's sunshine pouring down from the skies
that's the ice-cream dripping down the cone
all over my hands
that's the funny looking hat
on the funny looking man

i know your leaving but let's just say
you can call me if you ever have a rainy day
I wouldn't trade our fun in the sun
with nothin' else
nowhere
no one

pink & blue

Impulses run through deeper veins
No time for clean-up
They generously leave lover-stains

Kind of like Pollock's paintings
Splattered all pink and blue
Like the ones you often tell me "move" you

Impulses aren't strong
But neither are the weak
Often leaving a picture
Of a future so bleak

They only come to go
But they leave us much
Taking away certainty
Giving us back a dated crutch

Impulses are generous
Just like you

You see you're just an impulse
Tattered all pink and blue

You steal serenity
Always so unsure
and in return for peace-of-mind
You hand out the cure

A paragon of perfection
What a beautiful mess
They leave you lonely
They leave you distressed

They have no mercy
They leave you thin

And just like you
Impulses stand on fragile limbs

Trust me

You and your impulses are more easily broken than you know
Try to undo the damage,
and then it will show

Like everything, your impulses beat you
time and time again

If you could see the power they hold over you
You wouldn't trust them, my friend.

Let It Show

Let it show, let it grow, nobody has to know

The quicker i do it, the more it comes out right
Some things just aren't meant to be kept up-tight
The more you let me, the better it sounds
Instead of us going round and round

And round and round and round we go
The more i think, the less I know
The worse it feels, the less it shows

The longer you ponder, the longer you wander
Hello, HELLO!
You're doing it all the wronger

The less i think the more i know
The more I know, the less it slows

The less it slows, the quicker i do it,
Somethings
You gotta just get right to it

Let Go

She walks across the lawn
Into the dusk
Out of the dawn
Holds tight feathers of the past
Lets them go
Sails behind the mast

What is this paragon of perfection?
She asks staring into the sun
In it's entirety
She sees a reflection
and thinks
"This is starting to feel fun"
Looking away, she squints to re-adjust
In this new vision she begins to trust
Within this complexity
She finds herself enamored
Putting a face to the name
It feels like home, she finally won.

At last, she thinks of broken wings
And for the last time,
She remembers how it stings.
Only after she has let it all go
She finds the face to this name
and decides to let the wind blow

To Ishvara

I hear the drip
and it sounds like shit
they tried to hide it
but it slipped
from broken hearts and mangled spaces
What is this drip that makes me so sick?
it fills up all the incomplete places
and feeds the virus of worn out faces.
without a warning
the drip leaves its traces
and falls into our devastated graces

That is the drip that makes me so sick.

Abundantly

you'll never live life
abundantly
i don't think you'll ever really see
that what you think you really need
is just a ploy for a mothers good deed.

i tried to help you in your ways
and re-align the track
in your dizzier days

i tried so hard
expended all the words
that would allow you to understand
the damage you've incurred

but you called me abstract
and that
was that

you said i was a good writer.
but that was that.

i tried to show you in those days
when you were moving through a maze
that its not worth seeking someone else's dream
when they get to be the fabric
and your just the seam

i let your sorrow fill my pages
i figured that natural causes would kill it,
as it ages
blood, sweat, infinite tears
we just lost all the years

you'll never live life abundantly
and this I promise
you will see

omnipotence

i know i make it easy to love me/
i know i make it harder to love you.

i know i make it easy to trust me/
i know I make it harder to trust you.

i know i make it easy to hear me/
i know i make it harder to hear you.

i know i make it easy to want me/
i know i make it harder to want you.

i know,
i know,
i make it harder to want to.

i know i make it easy to believe me/
i know i make it harder to believe you.

i know if life was easier to push through/
it wouldn't mean a thing for me to live through.

Dear Em (Pt. 2)

Appreciate life
you're alive
you're alive

don't
don't
don't complain
that he left you
you're mad
you're confused
so you cry
so you cry
and it hurts

don't
don't
don't
complain
about pain
pain
pain that he left you
fuck him, he left you
you're lonely
you're afraid
so it hurts
so it hurts
and you cry


don't
don't
don't complain
that you're sad
you're sad
he left you
you're lost
you're afraid
so it hurts
and it hurts
and you cry

some people dont feel
they cant feel
what's real

some of those people don't care
they don't care
that they're there

some of those people
can't even cry
they cant cry

some of those people
have no choice left
so they'd rather die

some of those people give death a chance
just to feel that they're alive

On the Tip of My Brain

I'm standing on the tip of my brain/
one foot firmly planted on the ledge,
the other is dangling over the edge
in vain/
I'm balancing between the thought of knowing what I'm saying,
and on the ground I'm staying
or the fear of falling off,
the fear of not knowing how I'm playing/
i really don't know how I'm playing
this game.

Dear Em (Pt.1)

8pm.
She's a quiet desperation,
lonely, impatient.
A mess without consolation,
Running into herself,
over
and
over
the Queen of abdication.

The crown she tossed into the sea of frustration
The crown she lost to the sea of self-mutilation.

She's so full of empty,
sometimes it hurts to try resuscitation.
Sprinting for the bridges,
lest to find them in dis
association.

Insincere in determination,
insufficient heaves and throws
and bottomless blows
to capitulation.
She's dishonest;
She's afraid;
Ignores all intuition

Still,
Our little Pearl of habituation
found her throne in the chaotic
speckled,
dangerous,
whirlwind of disintegration.
And there she goes
she goes
she goes

Still,
The crown she tossed into the sea of frustration,
is the crown she lost to self-mutilation.

William Blake

"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand"
-William Blake

أنت حياتي

Let's
draw
a
line
From
your
heart
to
mine


and
if
and
when
we
break from
this
spine
at least
we'll find
our way back
over time.

Friends, and Other Things

Smile

The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.

-Shakespeare

To Play or Not To Play, Is the Question

there is nothing or no one telling you what to do, it's all up to you.

vibrato or no vibrato, you decide.

so the right answer? the most accurate decision?
it's what you make it to be,
there's no external influence, no 3rd party involved.
it's just you
the bow
and C-G-D-A.

the most beautiful move is the one that you want.
it's what you feel.
it's what you know.

that's what music is, it's what we know to be true to us, every step of the way.
it's a variable expression of who we are, ever changing and always in harmony with us.
because we picked the notes, the pitch, the arrangements.
it's our baby.

you give a song life, and just as easily,
you take that life away.

it's not arbitrary, it's completely planned out.
it's mapped out for us in our past, our histories, the places we've been, the people we've met.
the music we make, the sounds that are each individually worthless but yet together so purposeful and necessary.

it's what you want and no matter how hard you try, you can't get rid of what you want.

it always finds a way to creep back up into your life and scare the living shit out of you.

Ablaze

A Mary

things i have

i have a database in my brain
that fills up every time it rains
and when it rains
it fucking pours
won't somebody please shut the doors?

i have a hole in my left sock
that i just don't want to sew back up
i like this hole, i like it very much,
it's been there for me,
through tough times and such.

i have a pocket in my right shoe,
that is filled up with tacky glue.
when i see things that need to be fixed,
i can patch them up
no need for tricks.

i have a secret door in my room,
that takes me to a secret tomb.
where i can hide away and play,
and if you come with,
we can be there all day.

Finally!

I am writing again. And it feels oh-so-so-so good.

Half The Sphere

Half the sphere was my heart,
that spun in circles
worlds apart.
speeding up then slowing
down,
all we did was go round and round.
we found a place to come and rest,
i've put you in a treasure chest
i'll keep you golden,
locked up forever,
i'll open it sometimes, often,
probably never.
And there you'll stay with all your glory,
guarding with you all our stories.
Keep them dear child,
keep them close,
for those will provide comfort
when you need a dose
of that unconditioned love
you held in your hand,
but let slip through your fingers
like grains of sand.
now i'm writing.
now i'm learning.
now i'm preaching.
now i'm earning.
the rights to say that i was right,
and rest assured you wont sleep at night.
you'll be up sleepless moons,
peeping out,
creeping about,
clinging to stories from the treasure chest
come here and put that head
to rest.

Khalil Gibran

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

-Khalil Gibran

guh pie lee gor

the moon's beam and ground plane are not my friends tonite.
i look up only to look down, it seems.

i cant see you anymore, you're hiding behind anguish.
i cant feel you anymore, you're inching farther away every moment
i can't hear you anymore, my sadness gets louder every passing second.
i can't touch you anymore, my hands sting you too much.
i can't trust you anymore, for you say one thing and do another.
i can't want you anymore, you're not worth the rejection.
i can't yearn for you anymore, my heart's yearning for something new.
i can't try anymore, i'm losing my grip, my mind and my soul.
i can't wait for you anymore, I don't think you're ever coming.
i can't love you anymore, you don't love me like you did once before.

In Flight

my escape from reality
he has escaped my reality.
no fate nor destiny can fill me
with that vitality

my fresh breath of air
he has finally soared free
far away to the homeland
searching for a peace of mind endlessly

my vision of hope
he has left long ago
taking loads of faith with him
leaving for me only sorrow

Graphic Splatters

could I ever simplify

could i ever simplify such a natural form into a geometry,
could i impel true nature to surrender its arms
of bedazzling convolutes
and to surrender its disposition of
innocence and purity
could i turn it into a geometry,
so as to
relieve it of its convoluted shell and skin
and rid it of these inconsistencies
in favor of a quantifiable existence
to methodize and analyze
these natural tendencies.
how do we?
i still don't want to know how to
be this unaware.
dumb down the layers,
so that not so much as
one touch,
one reach,
could bemuse and excite and resonate
in the eyes and ears
and smile
of a child,
and lost is its concession
to faintly remain the most distant yet intimate
surrender humanly possible.

Architectural Woes

you can't fight for too long, eventually you'll realize that you're fighting yourself.
a mission to create something from within, although we don't yet know quite how to, we try.
and try.
a challenge to refute what is known,
what is right,
what is wrong,
and just follow when our minds want to succumb to our intuition.
not to neglect our intuition and stay true while maintaing a clear direction
and not distorting our intentions.

i cry through this object,
to you.
for you see,
all i have is merely the materials and tools in front of me
(that i can barely control)
to tell you how i feel.
to tell you what i think.
to change your mind.
to humbly make sense of a chaos
chaos that exists within an intangible and elite world of intellectual pervasiveness.

i'm telling you how i'm hurting.
i'm feeding you my depression.
i'm filling the deep void.

you have no idea what i'm talking about.

this wall is here.
this wood is bent.
i'm encompassing your body, i'm opening you up to the sky,
for that is what i am here to do.

this is my language.
this is the dialogue between me and the world.
this is my mind and soul
spewed out into bits
beautifully arranged into clouds that are merely made up of
air
and water.
and like water,
eventually it all evaporates into nothing

As We Build

a starting point. an entry into a diverse world of possibility that everyday allows for various paths of creativity. a combination of and a presentation of successes and failures. everyday a new endeavor and a new understanding.

the idea of community activity, where anyone can observe and feel a part of the moment. Spaces that wrap in and out of each other, to intersect, even if slightly.

pulling apart a box to reveal so slightly what is going on inside. the sense of pulling something apart to see its components.

proportions that are harmonious and subtle, not extreme or overpowering.

doomed for happiness

doomed for happiness.