Christian Bok

 

Who am I?

Who am I? – if not some neglected astronaut, being immolated by a fierce aurora, while striding in my spacesuit across the Avenue of the Americas. Who am I? – if not some phan- tom, fighter pilot, dreaming that, while weightless during free fall through a vacuum, my glass visor shatters at the sight of a turtledove. Who am I? – if not some poltergeist, imprisoned in a ruby room, aboard a ship, now derelict in the shoals, offshore from a swelling fireball. Yes, I have a soul (like you) – but mine is made of little robots. And no one sings me lullabies. And no one makes me close my eyes. And so I throw the windows wide, to call to you across the skies. And yet, I know that nowhere, among these glow- ing nebulae, do any of you exist. Who am I? – if not some stowaway in a microbe or some castaway in a seedlet. And yet, I must let loose upon the world my perfect malware. It is like the voice of a child, saying goodbye in the dark.

Christian Bok

 

detail of Statement from After Language Poetry

Wershler-Henry suggests that, because we are faced with the impossibility of composing something totally innovative, we may have little choice but to pick through the rubble of the past, jerryrigging contraptions that that fuse old parts with new ideas, coalescing them syncretically into a contradictory set of unpredictable regenerations (like an unholy hybrid, for example, of Langpo spliced, say, with Vispo, Oulipo, and Fluxus). Future advances in the aesthetic formalism of poetry seem unlikely to occur unless we can experiment more audaciously with the technical apparatus of the book, disrupting the sequential temporality and stratified pagination of such a medium in order to produce the kind of text that might easily be mistaken for an interactive sculpture, a mechanized appliance, or even an artificial ecosystem. We may exalt the poets of the future, not because they can write great poems, but because they can program devices that can write great poems for us, doing so automatically within a digital economy of unrestricted expenditure. We may also want to keep in mind too that we are probably the first generation of poets who can reasonably expect to write poetry for inhuman readers, be they aliens, robots, or clones. The new millenium brings with it the prospect of poetry becoming a weird genre of science-fiction, fusing aesthetic concepts with technical conceits in order to foster our own pataphysical speculations. 

Christian Bok

            This is not Euonia

from Euonia (Chapter1) 

 for Dick Higgins

Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink

this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism,

disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks — impish

hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t it glib?

Isn’t it chic? I fit childish insights within rigid limits,

writing shtick which might instill priggish misgiv-

ings in critics blind with hindsight. I dismiss nit-

picking criticism which flirts with philistinism. I

bitch; I kibitz — griping whilst criticizing dimwits,

sniping whilst indicting nitwits, dismissing simplis-

tic thinking, in which philippic wit is still illicit.

 

Pilgrims, digging in shifts, dig till midnight in mining

pits, chipping flint with picks, drilling schist with drills,

striking it rich mining zinc. Irish firms, hiring micks

whilst firing Brits, bring in smiths with mining skills:

kilnwrights grilling brick in brickkilns, millwrights

grinding grist in gristmills. Irish tinsmiths, fiddling

with widgits, fix this rig, driving its drills which spin

whirring drillbits. I pitch in, fixing things. I rig this

winch with its wiring; I fit this drill with its piping. I

dig this ditch, filling bins with dirt, piling it high, sift-

ing it, till I find bright prisms twinkling with glitz.

Sina Queyras

 Oh, and while I haven’t yet taken to walking backwards, I am sleeping backwards and I might also be thinking backwards.

But look, I mean who is going to complain about having two manuscripts when you were only planning on one? Sort of like having twins when you were only thinking of one, which sounds familiar and stressful.

I’m working on a poetry manuscript that seems to have split into two manuscripts. More confusing, I’m writing it backwards. I start at the beginning each time I sit down, and write the page prior to that.

So, when you asked me this originally what I was working on a big sigh went up. Apparently I am working on telling Jonathan what I am working on.

The new LemonHound.com is due to be unveiled. That has taken up more time than expected even though there are some dozen writers involved. It will be amazing. More than I thought it could be.

I am not teaching this fall so I am supposed to ONLY be working on MY OWN POETRY, but this proves very difficult with 1 year old twins, and students, even if I am not teaching them, and the ongoing world of my Internet life.

                                                        (One Jonathan Ball had something to do with this)

Sina Queyrus

 

Elegy Written In A City Cemetery

Somebody left the world last night, and last, and
last, and last: wild is the glower of wind, and words 
too thin, too meek to shelter. Lament in rhyme, she 
says, lament in roses: he was, and is not! It will 
always be darker soon, colder, you who are part 
anger who bent down in winter, know that your 
prayers cannot dismiss the darting shade. No, let us 
not shit upon the ground near the lone pile with ivy 
overspread, and let me not your giddiness flatten,
for so fine the season, so serene the hour and all I 
have left of that moment is this torn scrap.

I weave my bones thru the freeway haze at Rincon, 
the self returns again, my natal self: what you see is 
the red-shouldered judge of the Quirky and Dead. I 
am not man, man is death, and the world pain. We 
were all uncountable stars then: the tilt of earth is 
beautiful from every angle.

I mourn for Adonis—I expected her to look more 
dead in the casket. Let them bury your big eyes 
death, be not loud; your hand did not give her this 
blow, she was borne to church on glasses of Grey 
Goose: Only the bottle knows she is gone. Damn the 
snow, an uneven basin to stroll: the curfew tolls the 
knell of closing time. The moon still sends its 
abundant light. It is a hard time among these 
stones, for all the toppled, liquid graves. A slumber 
did your spirit steal. At Wilshire & Santa Monica 
an opossum crossed. I thought, two forms move 
among the dead, high sleep, so prescient your
absence.

Small is the poet’s needle, God knows: but inside
the heart a broken night advances in its glass. 
Death knelt among the starving children on your 
plate: I sometimes think of those pale, perfect faces 
who die as cattle, and I can not sleep.

The city you graced was swift. Now that the 
Summer of Love has become the milk of tunnels; 
now that the chestnut candles burn, so may the 
trees extend their spreading, there is blessing in this 
gentle breeze. What need of bells to mark our loss? 
Shall I go force an elegy? The dead sing Turn the 
lights down sweetly. No more for us the little 
sighing, nor the grand. All the new thinking is still 
about loss.

Sina Queyrus

February morning, 2018

You are being asked to drop your worm’s eye view
Of the world. Signs come at you from every direction:
The world is all fists up and fuck it, rivers lift their skirts,
Forests whistle for their lost canopies, California
Is parched, the celluloid is not soluble. I thought I saw
The future on social media, but, no, the future is still
In the body. I am humbled by the young ones: I see their
Raised glasses clinking in the sunset. I see myself an old spider
On crutches, only two of my eight legs function, I move
Through the city a ball of pain on stilts tilting into
The future, which is bristling and full of fear; but beyond
That fear is open space: I think, I must get there, I must
Grow arms, more arms, a forest of arms, there are so many
Bodies that need holding, there are so many voices to hear.

Sina Queyras

 

 from Euphoria

                                                       1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age

Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as

November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant 

As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,  

Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco 

Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your 

Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment 

Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery

Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten, 

My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

                                                       2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones

Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves 

Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing 

Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely, 

You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching

The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways

In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness 

Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all 

Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling, 

You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless. 

Moniza AlI

I Would Like to be a Dot in a Painting by Miró (1993)

Barely distinguishable from other dots,
it's true, but quite uniquely placed.
And from my dark centre

I'd survey the beauty of the linescape
and wonder -- would it be worthwhile
to roll myself towards the lemon stripe,

Centrally poised, and push my curves
against its edge, to give myself
a little attention?

But it's fine where I am.
I'll never make out what's going on
around me, and that's the joy of it.

The fact that I'm not a perfect circle
makes me more interesting in this world.
People will stare forever --

Even the most unemotional get excited.
So here I am, on the edge of animation,
a dream, a dance,a fantastic construction,

A child's adventure.
And nothing in this tawny sky
can get too close, or move too far away.