Clumps of Matter, Inter Acting

a rock in the shape of a perfect sphere

turning in my stomach

defying its fate upon the lips of water

rejected by the dirt

(its mother, the whore)

receiving the fluids of plants and animals

sky and sea

the piss and tears from our little sun

the life-blood of time and space

turning in the center of me

denying its self

other people pass by

they put their hands in me

Onto the shape inside and

feel me like a bloated baby pig

prepare me for dissection

ask me questions about myself

(their hands still deciphering my sphere)

I go home and want to bathe

away

the afterbirth of normalcy

coating my neck

sitting on the top of my hand

talking to my face, saying:

"Let me enfold you--

and all of your senses

your pain is not real

I'll show you

wake up, swallow

breathe in and out

drink liquids

vomit 

touch bodies

fall

cut off your head

pretend to understand other people

while the fog of typicality

bleeds over your virgin eyes

like the sunrise dies

sleep, and

repeat this day after day

in precisely the same manner."

The life of the living dead

is interesting to the same extent

that it is interesting how static electricity

makes the hairs upon my arm

stand and then sit down again

stand and then sit down

But, me

I am a kitten

pawing at a ball of yarn

on fire

and I prefer this

Stasis

Marcel Broodthaers' La Pluie (Projet pour un texte), Belgium, 1969

On a day

once

but not today

a lizard

wrapped its arms around the earth

with

each kiss from its lips

the cement we all sleep on craked a little

bit 

more

desert roses spouted 

from the spots where

it salivated

I saw this happen and approached it 

with a bit of wetness

in my eyes

But the lizard

crawled into the sea

I could not go there

My home was far away

I had to get home

to walk on my carpet 

with shoes

to move between walls

and create

the meaning I manufacture there

in my home

washes over me

over my whole and enticing body

while I sleep

in my bed

My appendages are made 

from industrial plastics

They smell like dead 

daisies

I bleed in technological terms

that you wouldn't understand

My body has been sterilized

and its fluids replaced 

with matter raped of motion

The things I build are aesthetic wonders

I stand

facing them as they face me

I cannot go away from them

They are my shelter 

from the stench of rain

and the diseased dirt

the viciousness of flowers

These things I make are more

massive than the ground of all

being

So as you can see

it was not possible for me

to go where the lizard went

Though I saw my reflection 

in its blue tears

as it slipped

into the ocean

and though I looked up 

from the ground and saw the sky

invite me in

I am only human

Angel Pi, Lulla By

Francis Alys' Paradox of Praxis, Mexico City, 1997

little lamb

crying

crying

on the mountain

crying

atop the sacred

and filthy mound

angel of death

floating

above her cloudy crown

like a glass wing-ed fly

like a wasp on fire

incantations

incantations

to a God who is bleeding

milk

alone

the eyelids of a strong animal

a lullaby

in sleep will come

a Garden

we have tried to sew our miseries

to the tree wings of the bumble-bee

and we once slept upon

the caterpillar's rainbow underbelly

while her peacock pupils spun a web of jubilee

and received us, disintegrating

into their illuminated womb--

we almost died poetically, coalescing

without form and within eternity

piously, grotesquely, we cry rust

as the corpse of repentence is burned

a pyramid of roses acts as a primitive casket

and floats like flame upon water

the smell, thick with power and victory

we are holding hands in satiated unity

in the glory of the fleeting sunrise

death all over us, having just gone for a swim

in the left over water of baptism

its so hard most always to melt away

out of existence, into oblivion

and to be wept out of the literal 

eyes of God--

please accept these flowers, every one

adorned in finite-ity

and sucked from the belly of the air

wet with mud and gold

Light/Open Mouths

Floating in the Air, above the ground

Joseph Beuys' I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974 at the Rene Block Gallery, NYC

Photo: Caroline Tisdall

Infinite Seed and Spilling Into It

Still clip from Daft Punk's Electroma, 2007

Go on, look through my body of glass.

Manipulate the mirrors inside your eye

so as to illude my perfection into existence.

My driftwood heart is floating in a bath tub

of dirt.

And from this mountain, I can see the red star rise

in the ecstatic sky, like a colored-in triangle.

My eye lashes are attached to the vertical tug-of-blood

drops, sluggishly seeping out from an oblivious cloud;

and, the black-night fire

is reaching down from somewhere to swallow

all

Of the wild flowers, who will stand tall

and weird?

and drip in the translucent shine of destruction?

Who will walk into darkness, eyes wide?