rual 158 / 1000

1000Books by1000Poets

2014

1B1P

6033707813129

ISBN 978-1-312-60337-090000

parts of us

miguelrual

p

mr

parts of us

parts of usMiguel rual

Poetry will be made by all!89plus and LUMA Foundation

0158 / 1000

First Printing: Upload:Time, Date Month 2014

ISBN 978-1-312-60337-0

LUMA/WestbauLöwenbräukunstLimmatstrasse 270CH-8005 Zurich

Published by LUMA Foundation as part of the 89plus exhibition Poetry will be made by all! co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Simon Castets, and Kenneth Goldsmith at LUMA/Westbau, 30 January – 30 March 2014. Cover design by Content is Relative. All rights to this work are reserved by the author.

This book edited by Mel Bentley.

Series editor: Danny Snelsonhttp://poetrywillbemadebyall.ch

We don’t do much ourselves but fuck and think FRANK O’HARA Crying when we are hungry and eating when we’re sad JORDAN CASTRO

AN ALTERNATIVE BEGINNING

I am none of your dreamt epiphanies.

I am a collage of misunderstood poems and I get easily obsessed about the pettiest things.

Truth be told, you were once one of

those insignificant things. Not anymore.

In this poem I’ve lied twice.

(from Irretrievable)

A LUTE OF HAIKUS

OKURIBITO (DEPARTURES) I shall let you go.

But do leave my love for you under my pillow.

LAST WILL

Black iris of fate. What thread will you cut this time?

Please, stab mine instead.

PARADOX I am in mourning.

For whom? You may ask. For Death: irretrievable

(from Irretrievable)

ONE DAY, I'LL BE THE TEMPEST

—Hey Lily, bring me another beer! —Of course honey, I'll stop ironing

your shirts and go get you some cold beer.

—They're losing the game. Damn!

Hey, kid, why don't you stop scratching that paper?

You're as annoying as you mother. —Do not you speak to my son like that!

(a slap; a boy runs to his room; a man gets up, drunk, red-faced; starts yelling; he's strong; a woman falls... I've already heard that story)

—I'm sorry I just... —Cut it. Can you see this bruise?

Touch it. Warm and swarming with life. —I didn't mean to hurt you...

—Can you see this blood running down my face?

ick it. It's still beating. Watch out. It has all the hatred in the world condensed in

every drop. —I... lost control.

—Can you hear this voice? Listen to it.

One day, I'll be the tempest.

(the night; a woman is wide awake; a snoring man; an empty bottle of Jack Daniel's; just one hit and it cracks; a

woman packs a small suitcase; a boy is taken out of his bed; a key turn; the

smell of an engine; a sunrise is about to be born; dawn's chill means freedom; in

the backseat, the boy sleeps...)

THE NIGHT DANCES

Garlic and sapphires in the mud T. S. ELLIOT

I’m laying restlessly over the drenched grass. The world’s breath mists the

night sky & frames its shy perfection. A star explodes

like a huge balloon & drifts around the universe

forever. The world’s spit licks the surface of the moon

to keep it spinning. Bugs hum in harmonic mayhem. The

universe imposes order inside its own matrix

without mercy. I must be a part of

this melody: my hands try to reach the sun &

the deepest ocean at the same time.

This thirst…— I could easily kill it if I scratched some

ice from the sun’s surface:

between my teeth bone & cold become sapphires.

Sanctified by the world’s spit, my

corpse lays over the drenched grass. — Flesh &

mud indistinguishable.

1.

I never meant to go back to the white city to which I belong,

a grey city with a brittle mane of ashes.

I never meant to go back and bury myself deep into the wet soil

in which I don’t recognize my body

but in that piece of swollen earth, a cry

bonds me […]

I will never go back to the city of ashes but for

my funeral.

(from alive is just another emotional state)

3.

I’m sad, I’m high, I’m ecstatic... I’m dying.

I’m dying not as a process, but as a reversible

altered state of consciousness,

a perception of the unfathomable in that narrow street that holds the

world like a kneeling Atlas. The static word weighs

more than the grey soil. a shoulder that would not

resist. a broken scapula, a crying clavicle

raping the white skin.

bones breaking with white noises, breaking the

texture of the self. take the white pill, you’ll feel alright. Kill

the lights.

death is a white dream, an insomniac

dream that bleeds night.

death as an expansion of the self, a psychological

dilution, as a rite of passage...

alive is just another emotional state

(from alive is just another emotional state)

Everything forgotten. My name, forgotten. My city, forgotten. Hopes and desires, forgotten. Poetry is the orgy of silence, and thus, forgotten. Everything forgotten. My eyes, forgotten. My tears, forgotten. My fears, forgotten. My lovers,

forgotten. when lips and skin remember all the rest, forgotten.

(from Bleeding polar flower)

THE POET SPILLS O’HARA’S LUNCH POEMS AND THEN TRIES TO STICK THE LINES BACK, UNSUCCESSFULLY

you’ll never be mentally sober there is no longer no ocean

and in the sky there were glistening rails of milk

I’m so damned empty

I can’t even find a pond small enough to drown in without being ostentatious

I just want to go on being subtle and dead like life

clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear

hands on ankles feet on wrists

naked in thought it is our tribe’s custom

to beguile

a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible disease but we don’t give her one we

don’t like terrible diseases

well now how does your conscience

feel about that

when the tears of a whole generation are assembled

they will only fill a coffee cup we are all happy and young and

toothless the only thing to do is simply continue

we threw

sand in our eyes and ran naked

down the street of our awful

progenitors and that’s the meaning of fertility

hard and moist and moaning

we don’t do much ourselves but fuck and think

and the light seems to be eternal

and joy seems to be inexorable

if you don’t eat me I’ll have to eat myself

GET CLOSER

(THE POEM WAS YOUR MOVEMENT)

I WANNA BE AN ONION

and so even when you are happy I could make you cry

WHAT YOU ALL DON’T KNOW

What you all don’t know is that I am quite [accomplished at hiding At masquerading DOROTHEA LASKY

this is how i should feel:

green and exuberant i

am a gleaming sprout can’t you taste my

happiness? even my sweat smells like happiness. cheers, cheers! i raise my glass

for the two of us, for all of us today. i am loved.

i’ve got my job and a cat too and money

to pay my rent and buy food and poetry

books. so i feel green and

exuberant bright green and dark green

this is what i will tell you:

don’t worry i’m

tired but i’m ok

i just feel kinda green

this is how i really feel:

i have

everything i could wish for so

why do i still feel like

this missing everything i’ll

never have?

my beauty is a carnivore flower

don’t be fooled

by its common look

that it is not outstanding was its own decision

my beauty

is the plain looking bait

that won’t raise any suspicions

and whose only purpose

is devouring you

does beauty

resemble sadness

or

does sadness

mimic beauty

?

He felt huge and wrong. ANNE CARSON

Sometimes I feel like I’m everywhere.

(…)

Sometimes I am everywhere

at the same time and feel nothing.

(…)

Sometimes I feel I’m nowhere and it

looks like happiness.

(…)

I’m so full

of nothing.

DETAILS IN THE DARK

your hand in a stranger’s bed

around a stranger’s body

or

my hand in a stranger’s bed

looking for my body

if I know every form

is but an abyss

I can forget beauty

with a gesture

It seems like every part of my body misses someone. GABBY BESS I do not want to be a person. I want to be unbearable. ANNE CARSON

four earnest songs

FOUR EARNEST SONGS

Alles ist lebend tot.

All is dead while it’s living. EGON SCHIELE

VIER ERNSTE

GESÄNGE

I. THE BURNT Denn es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ECCLESIASTES 3:19 To burn posthumously, like a word. ARSENY TARKOVSKY

rites

held high above the landscape

dancing ashes

danceless ashes

hyper-symmetrical rapture upon the intimacy

charcoal grey

charcoal black charcoal velvet

of the night

brasses folding motherly

over the skin seeds

men & women hanging as equals

from the fire tree side by side

to every beast

an audience of mirrors

embers & the cross of mankind collapsing

between the jaws of vanity

so what happens to the sons of men?

after the fiery & furious perception of themselves

they burn posthumously,

like words

II. THE DROWNED Ich wandte mich, und sahe an I turned around and saw ECCLESIASTES 4:1 The drops cascading down the chilly branches. No word of comfort, tears undried… ARSENY TARKOVSKY

I turned around & saw the world spilt

like mercury across the universe

cities crawling like fungus on a Petri dish

iris multiplying

like bacteria

a flood myth on the palm of every hand a voice —such electricity strangles through the liquid

—fizzles till the ears of the deafened of the purple-blue deafened drowned their throats… no word of comfort, tears undried under the surface

a field of intermittent bodies

rooted like seaweed to the seabed

the unborn floating aimlessly:

sacred shards of an unreal unity, celestial krill

a voice alone —unheard pities both the living & the dead —& fears their violence praises only the ones that will never be

if water be the seed of life, rage on

—ocean let water be the end of it again

III. THE BURIED O Tod, wie bitter bist du O Death, how bitter you are SIRACH 41:1 I had long been the earth— Arid, ochre, forlorn since birth— ARSENY TARKOVSKY —strata of children playing over empty graves laying in one raising from another already old

cycles aren't necessarily stuck in linearity very often they break then bind

again after some twist over the helix —young again raising from a different grave man contemplates himself in awe ochre soil under his nails

deathlessness should be unbearable yet take a deeper look at it and you'll

see it intertwining with death itself

—distant-red birds of fear surround him vultures or cockroaches feeding on his keen he is left alone so it is continuum which is excruciating

but that would be a contradiction wouldn't it?

—man is forced to face his terrors the end of his existence not death what is death not death but the end of his existence life runs from a previous death towards

a newly bred one it is a matter of impersonation

—he understands that thought is a sub-product of our brain activity He gets the concept of infinity but how can he think about the lack of thought

hiding around the blank gaps death soaks life's vest fingers caressing live

skin

—in redness man is one with the mud and the clay he is dead yet death still terrifies him stasis is colorless taste it and you'll see

how bitter it gets now listen the poem starts here:

—under the mustard soil souls like cut in half worms lay; bodies like trodden grapes among the rip fruit smell...

IV. THE MUTED – Symphony disguised as a song Wenn ich mit Menschen – und mit Engelszungen redete If I spoke in the language of man and in that of angels 1 CORINTIANS 13:1 You can hear the old life breathing: […] all will be repeated, all will be re-embodied ARSENY TARKOVSKY

1st movement — adagio

// The patient refers several acute episodes (5-7) of distorted perception of reality during the previous two weeks: seeing ochre bugs of "silence" flying around his body; suddenly recalling intense sad or joyful souvenirs followed by deep & dense feelings of loss; interpretation of time as a twisted web that strangles his thoughts; etc.

His mother is very anxious during the interview so I ask her to leave the room while I talk to Eleazar. Before closing the door, she urges him to tell me about the "weird books” & the "artistic photographs". He tells me she has been suffering from insomnia since she learnt from his symptoms. When asked about those "weird books" he admits that he's been reading them on purpose but refuses to give any further information. About the "artistic photographs" he only adds they were taken by "dead people". No relatives have been diagnosed with any mental disease, but he mentions a deceased uncle whose house was full of "weird books". The patient shows concern about his condition but refuses to undergo the standard treatment protocol & suffers an anxiety episode when the possibility of brain surgery is addressed. We schedule a … //

2nd movement — andante

memory is a contagious disease

it affects 79 million people worldwide

and it is more frequent among young adults

prognosis: -- chronic – progressive --

irretrievable

3rd movement — molto adagio

Infinite, infinite—that was her perception of time.

LOUISE GLÜCK

4th movement — allegro assai

memory —distorting mirror of time— is based on silence

5th movement — moderato cantabile

there is a silence starving in every gesture

& the bell jars rang when no one was

there to listen that’s how it always goes

echoes of nothing

terrifying

oxen casted in absence of sound plough the frail throats

of memory

we were once told that transcendence was

unavoidable

—black serpents biting their own tails meaning nothing—

now after-life lays bleeding

as a cut-off tongue

it still moves like a tentacle but it can’t

reach us

grey dogs salivating, that’s metempsychosis

in real life

its teeth can’t bite us

so flesh is the end we smile we

share our pulps & depart

muted

by our own existence