We are verbs
We are abusers
The atmospheric light, the natal blue,
burrows in the film of our skin
and gestates (disdain)
If there's anything // I am
it is ours- // and have been not
we hold concourse // (forever): potentiality
with history, // opens her fist
with future, // and I am the heartline:
with honeycombs of shadows // the terminus cloaked in inception
[nested][compacted]
I drink, and in my greed
do not distinguish, between
water and wine:
Hearts of artichokes, pigs' hearts
taste the same in the brine.
Trick of the light,
trick of the eardrum:
I kill
to sound and seem
like killing.
I confuse
only to feel the slippery thighs
wet with confusion.
Bullet, bayonet,
I give you your existence:
both mater and genitrix,
Author.
I sailed a ship, once,
beached on the peak of a wave:
the sea-monsters sunned themselves
[blowholes, the slap of fins
the isolations of eyes]all around:
(I couldn't) understand.
This is a piece that can be read in a couple different ways, both linear and non-linear. The second verse can be read as two parallel verses, but the program I use is very basic and it won't render side-by-side bodies of text, so I used caesura marks to try and denote it.
The second verse is very clever - why the decision to put them side by side? Another interesting one.
ReplyDeleteI have several pieces I've done it with; stylistically I often use parallelism as a technique to structure rather than rely on an artificial scheme. I just let the units of meaning proliferate and build themselves places in the poem, and thus the piece constructs itself spontaneously. There's a whole bunch of thought behind this, so if you'd like we could talk about it at length sometime.
ReplyDeleteThe specific idea of juxtaposing verses side-by-side to illustrate continuity and discontinuity, similarity and difference, and how much those things were only products of convention and interpretation (at least that's what I think he meant it as :P) I picked up from Nathaniel Tarn, who is one of the few people I'd be proud to say is an influence on me and my work.
God bless