ken*again
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ken*again
Five Poems
by
TRIP TANN, PH. D. AND AIODE, A STUDENT, DRINK FROM A COFFEE THERMOS, WINE: 2007 ANTINORI TIGNANELLO, TO DISGUISE THEIR ACTIVITY SINCE ALCOHOLIC DRINKS ARE BANNED IN AL LOPEZ PARK WHERE THEY DISCUSS POETICS
“A poet is a mutation
That can find the cry in the smile,
Be bewildered by the border of the void left
By caterpillars’ nibbles on the yellowing leaf.
A poet always feels he is under suspicious although
No one notices the poet deeply enough to be qualified to even surmise
A judgment on this supreme being.
A poet can hear the silent language of the mollusk,
The mussel ,rub its sensitive skin against pearly curves,
As the mussel is hermetically and esoterically
Enclosed in a dark rough textual. fibrous shell.
And the poet can translate this silent, unknown mollusk
Language into the ordinary language spoken by the tribe,
Although the tribe does not understand the language
That the tribe speaks daily, as the tribe lives
By otherworldly nihilism, as Nietzsche termed it,
And ontotheology, as Heidegger phrased it. The people,
The non-poets, have chosen to be apparitions,
Live as a “living death,” as Augustine observed,
with a fakes axiology, and have turned
Their language into a language of lies and of nihilism. The tribe
Has taken language that was supposed to be about
Something and turn into a language about nothing.
What was supposed to be meaningful has become
Meaningless when spoken by the people, the tribe
Now the poet is…………………. .”
“Right on,” she interrupted, grabbing his hand, pressing erotically.
“A poet is a mutation, a mutation, now yet recognized
By our biologists, our psychologists--not even the
Cognitive, evolutionary psychologists has recognized
This mutation and a new species, far superior
To the homo sapiens.
The Behaviorists were too stupid
To recognize any truth. Most of our current psychologists
Are not very intelligent and just ordinary quacks.
I call this new species, homo poeta.
That is the reason there is so much bad poetry written
Today. It is written by homo sapiens. Homo sapiens
Have no talent for writing poetry. All that these poetasters,
The homo sapiens, can write is junk poetry. Our
Little magazine and internet is overcrowded with junk poetry,
The trash written by homo sapiens.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell were not
Homo sapiens. They were mutations, the unrecognized
Species, homo poeta. Keats was a homo poeta.
All those beat poets of the counter culture sixties
Were homo sapiens. The Language poets are homo
Sapiens. All our poet laureates were homo sapiens
Not a one was a poet, a homo poeta.
“Aiolde, is there any more wine left in the thermos.”
“No, it’s all gone.”
“All gone?”
“Yes, the thermos is empty.
“That was my last bottle of 2007 Antinori Tignannello.
Even with the case discount and a sale it costs $90 a bottle.”
DIE TOTE STADT; MARIETTA’S LIED
For Silvia Scheibli
Room suffused with dimness, quasi-darkness. The light,
Or the lack of light was like a gray coffee cup being
Filled with creamless espresso. Then, inexplicable,
The room color became as if drops of cream, small
And few drops, dropped inside the coffee cup rim,
And a circle of lightened darkness appeared where I stood.
In Bruges, at art museum a painting of Fernand Khnopff
Appeared as an apparition. Its muted brightness
Too bright for blending with dim surroundings.
My attention excluded all except a dark gray
Circular cushion and your touch when we were
Together in Vienna. The dark gray cushion had
Lighter gray buttons, but what was circular
In conception and oblong in living perception
Gave off a glow, a glow that became in perception
A quiver of silver, as if the cushion were silver
And was shook in noon light. I heard Marietta’s Lied
As when we heard, our shoulders touching together.
This strange emanation of light had an operatic sound.
My finger sliding down the declivity of your cheek
To touch the indentation where your lips began
Was strongly felt, the feelings was stronger in this vision
That it was when it actually happened in Spring in Vienna. I felt
For a moment as if I had known the impossible, the fragility, truth.
When I went outside, the grass, due to a three
Week drought, had leaned, but while inside a downpour,
All the grass blades stood upright and bright.
THE ARTICULATIONS OF MINNOWS
Underwater, leaves imitate water, appear
Liquid. Their edges disappear into slime,
Appear as having no boundaries to establish
The self and isolation. If leaves had blood vessels,
The blood vessels must merge with the blood
Vessels of the debris tossed by people into the water,
Soon, the leaves’ blood and the blood
Of the debris would be identical and impure, pernicious.
The leaves’ brown surface that was still
And stable becomes mobile and slides,
Thus a sliding surface and a shift of opinions.
I look at the vaporous browns that seem
To have only a top and not a bottom
And are whose colors are constantly
Shaking like the hands of a Parkinson’s disease
Victims before capsules and illusions.
These leaves become canvases and hold
With a caress for a moment the arabesques
Sent down by the brushstrokes, the shadows
From the bodies above of rainbow-sided-minnows,
Who are prefigurtive, unaware of their articulations.
A SONNET, WITH TWO EXTRA LINES, FOR MONDAY
Chiaroscuro rococo extraordinary crustacean nightfall
With precipitation. A torn-up moon reflected
To earth a glossy, wobbly light to air brushed on bamboo
Silver tints that were heard as sounds like from
The gallop of abandoned carousel metal horses, a nostalgia
For closed doors and a vocalize from choirs.
The chorus’s obscurity, predicating a new,
Non-nihilistic, this worldly axiology, algebraic shapes
Turning into gourds. Fantasies that made
Real life seem imperfect took off their tuxedoes
And long evening dresses to reveal they could
Never be naked, for under the illusory clothing
There were no bodies, only the void, only nothingness.
Silvered undulations from bamboo, too darkened
To appear round, but concealed as vaporous flatness,
Sent out sermons in a language people did not invent.
MILANO
In Milano, the tranquility of our quill-calligraphed loneliness together
Was reinscribed by tumult’s bad hand writing, the commencing
Of a conversation.
She remarked on the poster in the La Scala lobby--
The wild tossed vermilion hair of a pale-faced girl
Whose lean and awkward placement of arms at acute angles suggested
She was running away from something outside her enframing by others.
I gave the advertisement of the opera “A Streetcar Named Desire”
One of those customary glances
That does not see what is it looking at.
But with her, it became an event that cause a desperation.
She said, “You have enframed me from being a being a subject
Into being an object. You are too entrenched in the subject- object dichotomy”
Secularized from body-soul, by the evil philosopher, Descartes.
No one who has assimilated the subject-object dichotomy
Can ever be lover. This is why no religious person can ever love,
Because the supposed loved one is reduced to an object. This is why
Religion that made the supreme love come from an other-worldly
Imagined force. Since the Cartesian figuration and the belief
In the separation of subject and object was been accepted
And assimilated by everyone, love was exiled from the world.”
I was puzzled. I told her that she was wrong about me.
I did not believe that subject-object separation was a reality,
But just another human lie that so many believed to be a truth.
I told her I was a follower of Martin Heidegger, who
Had completely abolished the existence of a subject and object separation.
I wanted to explain to her that both words were pernicious
And should be removed from out vocabularies.
She would not listen. She sneered, “That she never wanted
To hear any thing I had to say. She went upstairs
To the La Scala museum. I first met her there. She
Was gazing at a replica of Chopin’s hands. Since Chopin
Was my favorite composer, I imagined that we were
Kindred spirits. We were kindred spirits, for both of
Us did not believe in the separation of a subject and an object.
I knew she was upstairs in the museum gazing at Chopin’s hands.
So I went across the street and stood in the Cathedral.
I stood in the same place Shelley stood when he was there.
