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rual
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ISBN 978-1-312-60337-0
90000 miguel m
2014 9 781312 603370 rual r
parts of us
parts of us
Miguel 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/Westbau
Löwenbräukunst
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-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 Snelson
http://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
