Folio 2002

 

 

 

The love of new

 

Matthey sits in between cream coloured walls, his legs are shaking, a potted rose unwinds through dense air. A story about ambitions lost propogates inside the room and out, where the warm summer day is expanding, making room for travellers. His eyes glow sourced by combined reflections, long angular paths of light’s separation from a globe. It all happens instantly, it is observed for too long. Matthey thought he could capture processes, experiences, it is a belief of the past. Now he counts experiences already slipped by, and it is all for the worship of the new.

            Or so he admits, his thoughts his words are naturally shaven of what he wants now. The people are behind him in time, Matthey must discover himself now. So the walls fade, the flowers dry. The simple connections of object to object no longer pass by his eyes. All moments can be recreated, the love of art is transportable. What’s more it is concealable, and with that knowledge people respect you. His eyes again turn to receive a collage, outside every blade of  grass glints, branches curve and are still. Shadows seem huddled along the grass. Eyes grow. The mind sits. Legs continue shaking. He will go, but his now lasts and lasts.

            A doctor appears. Matthey hears his own name called. Matthey is already thinking of who should be calling his name. Gazes are swept across his unblinking face. As it is, he must move, he hasn’t yet. But the picture in his mind is separating into smaller faces inside a larger world. Gazes are returned to literature, more names are shuffled into the background, there is movement of feet, and the picture is silenced. Matthey has stood. He has felt the pressure of the exit door against his wrist, the heat of astronomical rays on his puffy cheeks. The pictures are there, he exclaims, to himself. They are sitting on bodies walking leisurely on curved footpaths on grass. The motions of his head count the innumerous possibilities. The motions of his feet close them off. The shine of fine blond hair. The tension of raised lips. No more excuses. He interupts the girl. Her head turns and she blinks. “Hello, Matthey.” Why, hadn’t he tried this before?

 

 

 

 

 

Night and Day Suggest

 

A Solo Autumn Kasen Renga

 

White skies unpredictable

the dust

has time to settle

 

Many clouds many stars

When moon is absent we count

 

Boredom of the mind

An onset of

my demystified youth

 

Toy firetruck sets tracks through grass

Boy looks up

 

Understood fog in staticness

Drifting portions of mind

Rain loses track of time

 

Walking down the street

A busy season for all the wrong reasons

 

A man’s fear of journey

cannot make the most of the present

smells in the wind

 

Someone’s warm hands, what we look for

to guide ourselves back to the present

 

The flowers now become

unfolding in the faces

where we remember sun

 

How good will it be

When old lovers reunite

 

Pages in a history book

Eyes-down

Heads together

 

For the sake of rigid concrete

Multiple couples stand mouths moving

 

Lonesome moon in heat

We operate stillness

See water as dissection

 

Icy points for heads move in

smothering darkness for advertising

 

Tendacies of the girl head

towards the future summer

not the last

 

Professor marks ideas from global seminar

Decides to start work today

 

Seven possibilities for

closing eyelids

too shy to venture a guess

 

It is the open season pictures grow

The art galleries remain closed

 

Trees reappear nights

bow down

a look for master

 

The position is set for multiple variations

But I open my back catalogue with sighs

 

 

Food in the window

preintent stands

in the doorway

 

Boy has seen tv before

knows what to watch

 

Acquaintences talk

about the end

taxies are missed

 

Calender announcement of cold season

feels like a late sunset

 

Frozen in motion

detail through a window

a painful bite

 

In summer a hole made through the screen

We have what we need and more

 

Missing afterthoughts in

paradise, with girls

a tally which starts at zero

 

Girl sits with ice cream under umbrella

wonders why the air is clean

 

In mind picture is drawn

combined glimpses

of past not present

 

Ant crawling table releases cloth over edge

oh I didn’t see you

 

 

 

Still absent from

human eyes

lunar surface touches some skin

 

In autumn the man is told

to give up everything

 

Pondering a previous beauty

or pointing at

something worse than now

 

Butterfly thinks it is impossible

Snake shakes head but can’t

 

Two rungs missing

Employee doesn’t notice

They are at the top

 

Green hill’s light stretches to distant observer

Invisible concept Spring laughs meekly at time

 

Staring you in the face

Yellow button

Density of will alone

 

Environment grows objects sprouting not simultaneously

We all know what we are going to see

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I Find You

 

I have trouble

Pausing in thought

The very moment of you

Is a product bought

 

My eyes whimper in view

Of adolescent traces

Non-particular faces

Specific spaces

 

I’m supposed to know you

My images are a market

They pay attention to choice

But my heart did not start it

 

When my brain thinks

My body out grows old links

You cannot sink

Into this mess of teasing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smoke

 

When the mind mourns the skin begins to soak,

and in myriad ways the past turns over

You want to see, you want to know, you want to smoke.

 

The problem unfolds, holes uncovered for you to poke

I say hello and confused you rush off

When the mind mourns, the skin begins to soak

 

Forty cents a piece you spend on that you spoke,

You lung runs dry and with it your tears

You want to see, you want to know, you want to smoke

 

To yesterday your thoughts travel where you hoped

You trust them now, so that today’s chance may shine again

When the mind mourns the skin begins to soak

 

You turn the process on itself, though repetion never connotes

If feeling appears and disappears in the blood you take with you

You want to see, you want to know, you want to smoke

 

Ah so it is the imbalance of straight and hazed that elopes

Cherishes the cries that I won’t not run away again,

When the mind mourns the skin begins to soak

You want to see, you want to know, you want to smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Spiny Tree

 

Does the spiny tree look at me or am I ignoring multiplied leaves

Directions it makes no haste in explaining,

after all patterns lie dormant in the nature of things

The history of complexity sheds light on past and future

But lighting the darkness in our minds the tree talks with no response

 

What additions would time present to me? I stay still

And we return to shared evolutionary past,

stuck in the mode of production, inner mind to inner stem,

we reach outwards while abandoning the world

And when we get there as it the background paints in

Is it a spell or can sections slide to the next page

 

As the leaves on the circular fringes of my vision

gradually commence a yawning spiral

Is their final acceleration beyond vision

Disappeared into the spacetime fabric of things

And where will it report next? In centre of my mind?

Have its seedlings travelled through the wind

The one last point of the old leaf?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painting Production

 

An allusion to time

The mechanics of changing burshstrokes

If all the canvas is to be announced at once

who is the one who shall stay behind,

who will think of new audiences

Ones who might invite time for tea,

Is it the wooden frame

Is that the artwork’s solemn protector

Enlisted from the scenery within the scene

To speak as an example

Time as bold and still

 

 

 

 

 

Book on Overflowing Shelf

 

A crowd of books

His spine is squeezed between authorities

The word, a virtue of his right to

be pushed and be shoved

A moment’s silence

Hang on, he thinks,

Where was I coming from?

Into the past he delves

Refreshing his supply of rhetoric

while dodging the ancient chants of

his colleagues

Are they his brothers?

One day will they fly apart

and not return?

 

 

 

 

 

Tokyo for Tea

 

You are my elusive future

Where I should choose to sleep in invisible beds

Where I should ask for the nearest conbini store and you

shake your glorified head

 

You are that I can look up to,

and so are that I can look down from

Your dynamic captures the life that springs around

Accord detail for the standing eye

 

You attract the things which the private man

pays money to ignore yet

It’s the detail in numbers which make

instances seem chosen to infinite time

 

During the day you remind me of children

During the night you remind me of myself

You invite me for walks

You hog most of the conversation

 

Your lights are a guide, but we can’t fly like moths

You are memory when I close my eyes the imprint stars

We stay up late because you’d prefer to share power

Where else would we go you know we are surrounded

 

Your sense of history makes you difficult to eat

You r preciousness is preserved through the acceleration of speech

You claim youth are good prey for energy, but you ignore where they came from

You accommodate combinations without fear

 

You give the word on where thoughts must end

But your stance on where the world is drifting is wordless

When I am in you there is no now

There is a centre that clothing and music dances around

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s Working Man

 

He’s brimming ear to ear

Full of the faith that mountains are shaped to conceal breasts

Breasts shaped to conceal funnels

Funnels shaped to conceal money

Money squeezed into an orofus

 

He's the milkman

Here to tinker not to stretch out his hand

He doesn't even explain the first metaphor

The first one is good enough

After the first all links are plain enough

Plain to stuff your thoughts into a waving clenched hand

 

He won't grab at worth

Worth is what he's there to understand

Worth is what makes a man

That is what a man knows what follows today

The history the sand you don't get enough you multiply to equate shape

 

A lone witch sits but doesn't rest like she’s above the fence

Man fits and exclaims there can be no land, for such a plan

A plan it must be

For how else to explain his counterplan muttered beneath breath,

As he stands as he wonders as he nails sarcophogases to their hands

It must be as he drapes curtains around their necks

 

A sorry child weeps beneath a tree, can't look but knows what's missing

Man opens briefcase, black pulse-dial telephone emerges on a cantilever

Dials 1950, maid for hire responds quickly

The distance between generations at once spreads its wings

Launches down in fury on angry librarians

 

There must be no ways but the one, he says,

Or maybe no ways my life is lived other than

Like the way it is living

I like the way it is living

And you are not asking when I'm telling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cured

 

Depression is such a boring way

to think about depression

It is so clear that people before me have

found it too easy to talk about

It is clear that I listened too well

And it is clear that as a student of academia

I have forgetten how it feels

Are the bone structures of faces

predisposed to emotion

Do they predict us

as those on the street surely do

Can they be pushed so far

as far as mental cries should dissipate

Into the air

Into the separated homes of those travelling

But what I saw in the mirror

brought me to a university campus

To all the selves in full colour

The dismissal of collectivity

I see their faces

I may as well be hitting keys

chattering in my online mind

The pavement is grey

In autumn the leaves sometimes fall

Today I was almost destroyed

It’s not possible that I understand

the nature of my past that sees me today

My escape from one scene

leads into astonishment at the next

From the beige brickwork surrounds I drift

into a leafy enclosure supported by cobblestone

And this is still as rich as ever

As deserving of purposeful narrative as

my child’s eye ever understood classical society to behold

and far too rich for me

and what I set out to achieve

 

Thoughts risk closure,

yet appearances resist it

I am unable to fall into

a sign of the times, to let the self

be absorbed in comptempory progress

Even when I thought it would tell me

where I am

Oh why does this place resist my will

to fall prey to the hands of history

I would be consumed I know the ones

who would find use for me

Why can I not see society

as one sweeping monument

to the edges of individuality

I place my imagination on the shelves

of libraries that use public money to

stay open to the time I die

I secure the image of what I might surround

my life with, and it is alone

And I am satisfied with-

the image?-

The means I shall employ

I bring harm to no-one

I ask for little

I receive more

And build bridges far and wide

Yet all I wish is to be able to

cross them, use them, not

look down from them

For there is nothing behind me

no-one should await me

I won’t return

My characters will not appeal

outside the page

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Condition

 

The question they generally ask me is do I know how bad things are

And I answer yes or no,

They want to know if they don’t have to tell me anything

or if I have something to tell them

It is the Modern way of saving time

 

Most of the people who pass me on the street are

Sitting still with their arms and heads leaning forward

I am like a camera two blinks of the eye is all I need

to say hello to them, and they no longer need

my space

 

Thirty people I know possess the

key to one door

It is always locked

It leverages with a heavy, sad resistance

They are my neighbours doing their best not to disturb me

 

Most of the sky that draws my attention

sits on the top of red tiled roofs

That new horizon should not be flat and yet

those roofs are stretched out further than my imagination

They aren’t pretty but

why waste time when sheltering walls which aren’t either

 

I sit at home most of the time

I think of the things I would like on my street

Sometimes they think of me,

those birds which scatter away at the hint of an approach

And my mind in a glimpse of anger is clearly insulted

 

When I go out with friends I usually

am glad to get back home

The dullest point is reaching an argument

which would require me to stay up and

construct a highly specific version of a theory

But as I’ve been saying I wake up and

am glad that there is still a home by the end of day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Voice of the Tower

 

We have been watching for some time now

Into our transmission you flow like a ticker counting the dead

We are under attack, what are you?

Oh you’ve just joined us

 

In all our years as journalists

As I’m sure our colleagues will agree

There are no words for such an enormity

With this prayer let God be my interviewee

 

You with your movie-going pastimes

What is it now you wish to see?

After the production and action and death

Oh of course to revisit again

 

Don’t bother to touch that dial

Remember where we are shooting

Your search for information will be washed out

Even on a superhighway you can’t ignore the sound of tank brigades

 

Please remember you are looking with us

We don’t go to this trouble to be looked down upon

Our market value remains unaffected

You’re simply interested in our new product

 

You can be rest assured

No it’s not curiosity

Horror, terrible, evil

Are not words for you to own

 

You think this is a big incident?

Watch the big footage of the plane close up

All events can be contained on the small screen

Through eyes we share a small world

 

That footage looked like it slipped by

What are they doing, treating us to silhouettes

out of nowhere, the hooded man

I’m still here with you

 

Our sponsors are busy at the moment

But feel free to test your loyalty

Engage with your emotions

Our class will take a minute’s silence

 

Please focus away from the building

I think the perpetrators were interested in the building

It’s gone now anyway how should we counterattack?

Oh of course, indiscriminately, please don’t think about buildings

 

Don’t go away

What are you going to say to your toddling child?

You are not ready to accept tomorrow

With more information you’ll never be unprepared

 

We know what you want to say

We know who you want to say it to

Here, their language is yours

It’s a simple prediction, you’ve listened to us

 

The many stories we are piecing together

You want to see people talk, remind you of

your brother, your sister,

the chance that this is still the world

 

How is it I know you

Strangers connected through birth

Disconnected from as yet unborn children, through death

Is it time calling? Our parents went through all this

 

I had something to say

We were all here before the incident, with lives

Yet our mouths seemed to have reached a blockade

Words can penetrate silence, but not a gusty wind

 

Seven months ago the world faced

A new breed of terrorism,

Uh, where was I

Oh yes I woke up trying to describe the world today