Forgetlings

The End

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:16:00 +1000

Here you have reached the end of the tumblr called Forgetlings.
My heartfelt thanks to you for reading along.

From time to time I will post new poems at forgetlings.net/writingandpictures
(RSS and Email feed details)

My current and future publications will be available through forgetlings.net/bookshop

As I Was

As I was at the start
so, all along, I have remained.
The way I began, so I will go on to the end.
Like the convict who, returning
to his village, goes on being silent.
Speechless he sits in front of his glass of wine.

— János Pilinszky (trans. János Csokits & Ted Hughes)

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:45:02 +1000

The Illness

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:32:26 +1000

I meet her in a square. She is dressed like a courtesan. First light, another time. Resentience, yet impoverished the same way, by illness as much as estrangement from material wealth. The illness resembles the carving of slivers from a mass. We carry a hundredweight of love. She intercepts my hand at her cheek, lays it instead around her breast. All happiness is on her lips, her waiting kiss —

I see her across a square. She is dressed like a highwayman. First light. A veil of fog for a face. She passes through the archway and I have no words to call out with, no language. All sadness is in this parting sight of her, a sliver carved from a mass —

I meet her in a square. She is dressed like a highwayman. A dangerous passion. I can hardly breathe, she says. I think: The illness… She demands: Why did you stay away so long? as prone as when I held her naked up against a wall: What are you waiting for? I press my lips to her neck, to fog —

I see her across a square. She is dressed like a courtesan. Resentience. A hundredweight of love —

Give in when outnumbered, but as prisoner speak in an ununderstandable language. — Paul Celan...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:36:02 +1000

Give in when outnumbered, but as prisoner speak in an ununderstandable language.

— Paul Celan (trans. Pierre Joris)

Weight

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:22:46 +1000

Who has put this weight in me
The weight of a rose that does not wither

The weight of an egg that doesn’t fall
The weight of a hammer that doesn’t strike

God, let me wake one morning to your
lightness, go out whistling into your light

— Agneta Pleijel (trans. Anne Born)

(High up on a brown wallAt the cancer instituteA wild fern dwellsIn drippings from steamPluming from...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 08:06:30 +1000

(High up on a brown wall
At the cancer institute
A wild fern dwells
In drippings from steam
Pluming from a rusted vent.
Under each hour
Something thrashes
And sings hoarsely.)

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 08:01:45 +1000

The aloe,the peace lilysay: To the sun! We,burned, blistered,hang back, resentient,blinking in the...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:46:32 +1100

The aloe,
the peace lily
say:

To the sun!

We,
burned, blistered,
hang back,

resentient,
blinking in the changes.

Over
death-high
we stand,

sick to the teeth,
waiting.

(Thoughts, thoughts… State-regulated obstruction of death, of euphemistic-sounding...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:37:11 +1100

(Thoughts, thoughts…

State-regulated obstruction of death, of euphemistic-sounding ‘euthanasia’, is also a symptom of capitalism’s limitless entitlement; not its lack of limit, but its holy immortal conviction that it is the moneylender to whom Christ gave his blessing:

‘You may not die until we have used up everything we can control in an effort to preserve you,’ says capitalism, and:

‘You may not die until the mass of our conviction is undone by the unspoken,’ and:

‘Now you may die, but who among you will pay the first bill?’)

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:37:52 +1100

In this room are many books, all shapes, all sizes,piles of them, colourful and welcoming,and a book...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:34:00 +1100

In this room are many books, all shapes, all sizes,
piles of them, colourful and welcoming,
and a book weight named Sally.

Currently I am reading:

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and other essays
Louise Glück, Proofs and Theories
Paul Celan (trans. Ian Fairley), Fathomsuns and Benighted
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
Stephen King, The Shining

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:41:42 +1100

(Thoughts, thoughts… And the viscera of a poem are matter, not only words and line breaks and...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:26:44 +1100

(Thoughts, thoughts…

And the viscera of a poem are matter, not only words and line breaks and metaphors and tricks of the trade, but the real matter of the unconscious. The poem wants interpretation to come to it and together they will create meaning in a different form, not to be removed by transcendent grace and assessed; why not with pencil lines or dancing or treeplanting express what a poem is made of; why should a poem be rewarded with interpretation? —

‘What does it mean?’ I asked; the poet said, ‘You can’t ask a poet that!’ and so I asked the poem, ‘What do you mean?’ but the poem meant already what it ever meant; a hippopotamus is mosquito and glacier; what makes interpretation clearer? —

‘Don’t reproach us for lack of clarity, for we profess it!’ said Pascal — it is our profession, the unconscious, a way of seeing visions come lowered, raised, anywhichwayed; hearing voices echo; seeing shadows incandescent arrive from everywhen —

and after years I came to understand the poem in its way: its purpose had become to teach me how to read a poem, then for me to to break myself against it, one piece of me to flow for all my life now in its current…)

We come to the caveOf something healing,Its arm laid outStraight on a table stone.It is also with...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:19:17 +1100

We come to the cave
Of something healing,
Its arm laid out
Straight on a table stone.
It is also with them.
They say to us:

The sun is hunting you;
Your teeth hurt because
They have termites;
Leave the road, then,
If you think you won’t
Fall to seed.

A mutineer of dreams and voices

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:38:39 +1100

With a heaving she is jolted far out of sleep, crackjointed, muscles straining, masculinity revealed in her neck and thin arms, and she becomes two:

one falls back down on the bed, her body, gasping flesh machine;

the other is a mutineer of dreams and voices who takes charge of the mind, drills shock caps into scrappery visions and sets alight a long fuse she herself did not lay, one fuse of many which have been here for her as long ago as she remembers;

while the body, thrashing on the bed, suffocating to a corpse without what might be called a soul, casts wide for new essential breath among so many universes passing through it everyway and everywhen:

so she comes again, starts here as much as anywhere, but this time with different scent, different illumination;

her story of being wanted both as woman and man, by two, four, eight, sixteen, thirtytwo, soforth lovers of her one same human cloakshell.

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 08:26:25 +1100

On Artistry and Forgettingby Michelle Jia (misscastalian) If I were to compose a prayer,...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 07:48:00 +1100

On Artistry and Forgetting
by Michelle Jia (misscastalian)

If I were to compose a prayer, today it would be a prayer of breaking. I do not want to be a function. I do not want to exhibit restorative forces, but lately people have been becoming people and I have been allowing it.

Zhuangzi, old butterfly, what is non-action? Is it a knowing that everything is necessary? Is it a letting-go, even of new and bright ideas, letting them fade, letting them grow doubtful? I sat with B outside and we talked about matter density. He meant to tell me that there was no way to escape perspective. Humanity is a garden of totems, old sage, and there is nothing that will vindicate us while we are here. The very moment we are emancipated—ah! But that’s the cruelty of freedom, that we cease to feel, to delight. Tell me: is being a higher thing than feeling?

I stepped into the lounge and D’s hands were at the piano. I stepped into view as the mad current of notes pushed past both of us; he tilted his head upwards, his eyes met mine, brushed away, tugged downwards at the keys. Old master, I know he did not see me, and I love him all the more for it. He and I are the same, the same. We know what it is to be a medium—we know the helplessness of making. Is it wrong to want only that? To become a window into some higher dynamo, the rockets meeting no resistance, the body more moving passage than statue?

I went to see Othello and they kept me at the door for some time. I had a notebook, and this is what I wrote:

Four windows before me, inner-curtained, reflecting the lake. “I expected a bit more water.” There I am, only now recognized: not an object of wonder, no such thing. I can hardly see my face for the fabric texturing. This is what I desire most of all: to be that head within the landscape, hardly noticed, utterly swept over. Faceless, unrecognizable; a roadside stone to the wider jewel of green vale. Yet necessary, in some secret, unsayable way—responsible, anonymous! A form lost in her own creation. That is what I want.

Old master, I cannot stop thinking about Bruegel’s Icarus these days, his feet making the same angle as the trees, the feathers melting into wave-lick, tousled foam, water flicker. That painting was not about death, for death is all around us. No—instead, I keep thinking of the sun dissolving into the water, the boats grown clear as vellum stretched across the deepening expanse, the teal of the sea heavy and calm. If Icarus had not fallen there, who would have stopped to capture it? We would not have known the dreadless sun, its form slipping over the edge like a child eager to know change. The thoughtful, circular careens of slim black birds, the sheep herder squinting upwards. A moment like every other, sir, and just as exquisite, symmetrical. Yet the record exists for the death of Icarus: he was the window, he was the fade.

Master, I want them to look at me and not understand where I end and the world begins. If they write of my death, I want them to forget me, think of my urn as a stone in the undergrowth. Let them come for me, but leave with flowers circled around their wrists. Let them come silenced by heavy odes, but leave singing the bursting lightness upon the river. All progress rests on a turning like this: a recognition, a forgetting. May they cease to know me when I go. All this I pray to thee. AMEN.

(misscastalian.tumblr.com)

(Under the house my hands madeWith your voice,My heartIs red-faint with desire;In my mouth,An...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:06:00 +1100

(Under the house my hands made
With your voice,
My heart
Is red-faint with desire;
In my mouth,
An areolate lick
Against the skin of a raspberry;
And this, and this:
I kiss the sweat
Between your shoulders,
And the voices of those approaching
For their given names)

(Dear diary:threw out TVinstalled newregime: one peace lilyone cactusThe Magpieand a tea cup – OK...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 07:21:19 +1100

(Dear diary:
threw out TV
installed new
regime:

one peace lily
one cactus
The Magpie
and a tea cup –

OK now:
everyone is
happy in here
right yes?

yes yes yes!
the morning light!
we’ll be good now
master)

(Thoughts: i. What is inspiration? ii. Might it be a kind of wormhole?iii. Does consciousness have...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:01:46 +1100

(Thoughts:

i. What is inspiration?

ii. Might it be a kind of wormhole?
iii. Does consciousness have folds or is it a plane, or something else?
iv. Time-less dis-solved no-thing?

v. Girls who can whistle.)