The Pursuit of Types

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The pursuit of types – harmonically convergent patterns – is invariably a looping process which is infinite in scope and variety.

So naming the loop at any given point is dangerous, at worst and wrong (i.e. the path toward falsity) at best.

mtk, SF, 1996

Epilogue

The pursuit of truth cannot involve types or patterns because these are statements of limitation.

Raktan

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Raktan walks down the street with his handly pocketed pants on and wanders lusting for rimshots of snapper snares

where he walks no one smells his hands or his socklessness

wrapping paper blows by

stalwart experts seem to have a grasp of the situation

reading bookish tomes of erectifying lecterned credo

Camto sees his lustfulness

and comments Raktan

has a certain “ness”ness to his carried luggage of a walking gait

snapping at the rippled waves of negrilled nighteous narcoses arising all around him

decepticons of snow-laden reams of opinion

he covers his ears and eyes and his nostrils with the fingers of both his glovenlies

whispering

to no one in particular

far goes the capital

of no

south

Rigo 95: More Marlboro Men Than Maos in China …, *surface,1995

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This was a very disappointing edit and when it appeared, I was enraged. My name was spelled wrong – and it’s the third typo on the page!

The first is in the image where the images of his work are labelled, “(Rigo)” – which isn’t his name, and shows the overactive hand of the newly minted fashion magazine’s editors –

whose next immediate typo is in the HEADLINE – an extra apostrophe where it should be “Maos”. The piece is also edited considerably from what I submitted and the editors took liberties adding and removing text that changed the meaning of full paragraphs. But anyway here is how it ran:

I began a friendship and apprenticeship with Rigo after this November interview, in the year 1996, which lasted ten years.

Memorandum

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To: William P. Martin

From: M.T. Karthik

re: poetry

I don’t need an agent so much as an organizer.

geoffrey goldman, goldberg, goldstein, goldy gold …

The poems should be organized into categories. All the love poems together. The war poems and death  poems may be trysted with the questions that tether life and death to infinity but they must remain separate from the personal reflections to friends (save elegies of course which may be included for their gravity)

Poems on the nature of fruits, plums and vegetables (not fruits) must not fall under their own category.

Poems about places which include foreign locales (places that aren’t home) should go together but ought to be subcategorized between personal home poems and foreign locale poems in order to separate identity from geography.

These too (2) should be together and all of the groupings should have titles although individual works may be left untitled. Parenthetically, only one kind of poem may stand alone (although it may serve to introduce or conclude)

cold, alone, aloof and barren of the sensation of taste

or of beauty

alone

shall stand the poems about poems

themselves

la vida es un baile

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And in the only manoeuvre known to us

the steps seem limp and lifeless

for some they are full of purpose

but for most they are darkly lit

footprints

cut from cardboard and numbered

to guide the unwilling feet

lonely in their pursuit of peace

to have the choice

to elect

to not have to lead at all

simply to have the peace of mind to

be able to follow or

even just to stand still

and quiet momentarily

and listen to the music

the beautiful music

shedding, 1995

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we are born with millions of tiny hooks

cilia

they reach out from our skin

grasping and grapnelling

to anyone and anything

for influence

learning (in order):

mimic

critic

synthetic

at last we learn to comb our skins

clean

of hooks and hairs

so we might proceed naked

each day with our job

the happy business

of dying

late on the Interstate

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late on the Interstate

leaving the Crown and Anchor behind us

and not yet in the Continental Club

between KGSR and KUT

I heard you speak beyond your words

for just half a second

It was like the voice I heard in Kenny’s kitchen

that time

the disembodied sound of love

unrealized and pains misunderstood

for just half a second I heard it

my only real evidence of phantoms yet

and I told you I heard it

but that you could take my hand and walk away

How happy I was when you pulled my hand

my arm, my whole body

up and over

and tugged me running breathlessly

through Klimten fields

of dandelion

and tall, green, flowing grass

barefoot

sweet and naked

sweet Phebe

stripped of the clothes we wore

in that car

late on the Interstate

and the lipstick you applied

outside the doors

of the Continental Club

 

 

(for Julie)

 

God Soup

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we are all swimming in God’s soup
sometimes we like to splash the others
sometimes to dunk them
even though we know the spoon is coming

Sometimes we lay on our backs in God’s soup,
floating.
(on occasion we can catch His eye)

Sometimes we flag our arms at Him
hoping to be seen
and sometimes, in so doing, we sink

Wynona

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Andy’s dog Wynona is a knockout chocolate lab with a great temperament albeit an obsession with fetching.

and she reminds me of the tiny, white hairs on the black legs of my jeans that betray your dog

who slept with me last night whiile we dreamed of being in bed with you.

What it would say if it could would be delicious. It would slip around your lips like fingers tongues and teeth and cry at its loss of identity. Longing for it and whispering just the one thing:

“Give it to me”

a mi madre

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in the future poets will spend a long time learning another language first.

They’ll study grammar and vocabulary and rules and regulations.

They’ll watch television in foreign channels.

water

will splash iodized out of their plastic cups

Then

they will write

so somebody will listen

and they’ll cry at night

weeping whimpering mewlish (crocodile?) tears

into a stuffed pillow

begging the world

(or at least publishers)

for a TRANSLATOR.

mtk1995, Quito, Ecuador

tourismo (across the americas), 1995

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first we choke

we cough and sneeze as poisonous air fills our lungs

in the streets we learn to hold our breaths as buses pass

then we suck

on lozenges and candies hoping to soothe our parched throats

we are tired of tepid, plastic water

then we spend a day with the Indians

we eat fruit

we laugh and barter

but for a few books and a few dollar bills

we see how far we are

from the earth

and soon the agua linda tastes sweet

like strawberries from the California valley

mtk, Quito, Ecuador, January 26, 1995

(untitled), January 1995

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would you be the one who holds my crundle of bastioning stoppards

when I am unable to go further into the gleamingly simple predicated suffixes

and hardened arteriole cavities of me

never

umpteen aged wrestling teacherdly cunts withered armlessly in time-tentacled illusiveates

cramming into stuffard-sized cratchets of nistik, mungley bramstoked prits

my own bringle of stolping camelized simmersoups was never englingly rude enoughage

sinjo slaythed the jargon

Tuesday Nights Charlie Hunter Trio at the Elbo

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we are not afraid to die
and we have not yet decided why to live
and that is how we come here
and drink beer

and light
cigaret after cigaret
at chiaroscuro tables
watching each other
get older

These years will wash past us
and we’ll find ourselves buying cd’s of this stuff
so we can remember

our youth and firmer flesh
as we drink special shakes and cut out salts
and go for walks

of firmer flesh:
I want to lick her tummy
the waitress I mean

Delilah
with the sweet, soft curves and the flat skin

It’d be nice
to spell my name
in honey
on her tummy
with my tongue

I must remember to ask

soon
I’ll decide why to live

and with that decision
improvisation gives over to order
spontaneity to analysis
and jazz,
jazz gives over to orchestra

with only opera to keep my heart
in the action at all

opera and sex

Notes on Psychoses and Love

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Ultimately the responsibility for psychoses lies with oneself.

They cannot be blamed on society, televison or poor parenting, because they are an evolutionary part of our existence.  We evolve in and out of psychotic behavior on a yearly, weekly and even daily basis.  This evolution is more violent and extreme among those for whom a secure foundation of love and trust is not omnipresent.

Society and television and such do not provide such omnipresent love.

The feeling of ‘aloneness’ attributable to such psychoses is a product of the constant reminders and cues around the individual without such omnipresent love, that we are all ultimately alone.

Religious treatises that extoll the virtue of universal love may therefore be considered to be reassurances that we are all at least not alone in our aloneness. That it is an equal burden shared by the living.

Societies built on such premises will thrive.  Societies built on anything else will serve to isolate the Individual further and will ultimately destroy the society from the inside-out…one individual at a time.

At any given point in the evolution of a society, its members exist at many different points on the continuum of aloneness.  Individuals in such societies that are particularly aware of aloneness may be psychotic.  Individuals who are particularly aware of the need for love of others in the face of aloneness may be successful members of such societies.  They may be considered wise, generous, loving and caring, for their ability to love.  And faith in their ability to love may become a barometer of the “joy” of the society.

It is a matter of faith versus knowledge.  Either one has faith or one has loneliness.  To rationalize faith is impossible.  Such rationalizations will collapse under the weight of their own falseness.  Faith is a function of something altogether different.  And something usually unnameable.

So far the only significant predictor of faith is the experience of pain.

Thus, love – named and unnamed  – is the greatest emotion in the world.  Its power is all-encompassing and universal.

a loveless life is the passage of time

a life without genuine love is a meaningless exercise in the passage of time.

a life lived in false love is an even more meaningless exercise in the passage of rationalizations within time.

The fear of a false love in this world is a sensitive spot in all sentient creatures.  There will always be a market for prophets who prey upon the fear that one’s own rationalizations are not genuine.  There will always be a market for preying on self-doubt.  Which is why doubt by others of self is the ultimate disrespecting stance, the push toward psychosis.  It is denial of an existence.

Love is therefore – more than physical love, or words – the promotion of ones rationale for existence.  Love is support for life.  Self-doubt is a psychosis.  How does one treat psychosis?  Through self-love.

para mi desde …

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… it’s gone
but not forgotten.

there

a souvenir
issues forth

it’s gone
and before
until
just a moment
before
or until

I will stop
and ache
to drink

you’re in

sides
slowly
tongue slips
(slip o’ the tongue)
on wet teeth.

saliva
like your
sweet juices
(come calling to my tongue)
remind me
in my thirst
that it’s gone

with my slow finger
I trace
the smooth brown
slowly
in circles now
in
sis (terly)
tent circles
(encampments)
I gently raise my finger
to order another bourbon

’cause this one’s gone.