resonance

Yo. Your bougie minimalist photo-art blog called. They want their bougie minimalist photo-art blog back.

http://cargocollective.com/danielcalfo

On Moving

The world proves itself to me by its motion. 
I know the world because it moves and is moved. 
I know hidden parts of the world by the shadows of motion these parts make.
I speak with my world in the language of movement.
I know things the world cannot tell me by learning the rules it uses to tell me what it does.
I know the weightless motion of veils.
I know the movement of what I cannot see move by learning how motion must act.
I know how motion must act, can know what moves even when I don’t see it,
all by knowing how the world could not otherwise work.  

Life is life because it moves. 
Life that does not move becomes death.
Death is just life without motion.
Death is an invention. 
Death is just another name for a life that cannot move ever again.

The motion of my mother proves to me the motion that came before my first movement;
my first motion when
my left hand’s newborn fingers moved from the cradle of
my left hand’s newborn palm to squeeze
my mother’s elegant, shaking ring finger and felt
my father’s elegant, shaking ring finger;
felt my parents’ wedding vows,
their promise to each other; 
felt my parents’ wedding vows,
their promise to me;
felt them hold me between their chests,
them,
their motion within me; 
me, my infant body learning its life because they first moved;
my small, soft limbs reaching out slowly,
soft limbs moving soft in the soft, moving world 
uncurling new in every new direction.

Everything I learn by motion must come,
finally,
to move within, and move,
me. 

Cursed, blessed, 
I am my only source of reason. 
I am my only source of insanity. 

I am, to me, my greatest safety. 
My greatest danger.

I am the only thing I have to know how love feels.
To know how loving feels. 

I am the only thing I have to know
the beauty of this motion, 
the world.  

I destroy myself, I destroy the only thing I have to know motion.
I destroy myself, I destroy the movement of the world.
I destroy the world’s movement, I invent its death. 

I destroy myself, I destroy the world with me.

Destroy myself, destroy my mother with me. 
Destroy her elegant, shaking ring finger.
Destroy myself, destroy my father with me. 
Destroy his elegant, shaking ring finger. 

Destroy my parents with me.  
Destroy their promise,

their promise,

promise,

never,

to stop moving.  

C R I T I C A L / B L A S T

lcapocalips:

Come to the Coop tomorrow to see features from these APOCALIPS poets:
Laura Houlberg
Libby Olga Howard
Daniel Calfo
Chris Leja
Erik Mueller
and Alea Shurmantine

Sybil’s Response to What The Thunder Said and Her Eventual Death by Water in the Thames River Among the Ghosts of the Waste Land

A Poem Composed Entirely of Verses, Phrases, and Select Words From T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and The Hollow Men Disposed in a New Order for an English Literature Class Called English 206 at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon

This is the Dead Land. 

The Death By Water Land.  

The Hanged Man Land. 
 

I had not thought death had undone so many. 
 

In vials of ivory and colored glass,

Under the firelight, 

Under the brush, 

White bodies naked on the low damp ground. 

Bones rattled by the rat’s foot. 

Rattle.

I hear the king my brother’s wreck.

Rattle.

I hear my father’s death.
 

April is the cruelest month.

April is breeding Lilacs out of the Dead Land. 
 

You first gave me Hyacinths a year ago. 

They called me The Hyacinth Girl. 

A year ago, at the small house in the mountains,

I feel free.

I feel free when we are 

Trembling

With tenderness; 

Lips that together kiss. 

Lips that together form prayers,

Form Life,

Form Earth.

Lips that kept us warm.

Lips, life, Earth, Prayers

Feeding life in the Dead Land,

Breeding Lilacs in the Dead Land.

They call me The Lilac Girl.

I think we are in Rats’ Alley.

There I see one I know and him,

crying, picked his bones in whispers.

Crying in whispers unshaven he says, 

Burning burning burning

O Lord pluckest me out

O Lord pluckest me out

Burning burning burning 

In demotic French,

Asked me to luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel.

The Cannon Street Hotel is burning.

In demotic French,

Asked me, 

You who were with me in the ships of Mylae!

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

Has it begun to sprout? my nerves are bad tonight.

Stay with me. yes, bad. stay with me. what is that noise.

It’s so elegant. so intelligent. mon semblable; my likeness!

Hypocrite! you!

He sat as though a heap of images broken in a flash of lightning

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall among the lowest of the dead to voices singing out of empty cisterns, 

Burning burning burning

O lord pluckest me out

Burning burning burning

Sweet Thames, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
 

Sweet Thames, no more can I, I said,  no more can I bear to look at you and think of poor Albert.
 

You ought to be ashamed, Sweet Thames, I said, to look so antique.

I want to know what you have done with the memories he gave you,

The memories you took,

The sound of horns and motors,

The prolonged candle-flames,

The pattern on the coffered ceiling,

The small house in the mountains,

The lips that together kissed,

The life,

The Earth,

The Hycinths.
 

What have you done with my Hyacinths, Sweet Thames?
 

I still remember those pearls that were his eyes.
 

Albert, speak to me. Why do you never speak.

Speak.

What are you thinking of?

I think we are in rats’ alley

Where the dead men lost their bones.

Where are your bones?

Do you see nothing?            

Do you remember nothing?

Are you alive, or not?

Alive, or not?

Alive,orNotAliveOrNotNotAliveNotAlive

Not alive.

You are nothing.

I am nothing.
 

I clutch and sink into the wet bank.
 

Death by Water.

The Dead Land.
 

Hyacinths in the Dead Land.

Lilacs in the Dead Land.
 

The Hyacinth girl in the Dead Land. Dead Hyacinths dead in the Dead Land.
 

The Lilac girl in the Dead Land. Dead Lilacs dead in the Dead Land.
 

Hurry up, please,

It’s time. It’s time.
 

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
 

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago.

They called me the hyacinth girl.

Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Yours arms full, and your hair wet,

I could not speak,

And my eyes failed,

I was neither living nor dead,

And I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
 

Goodnight, Thames.

Goodnight, Albert.

Goodnight, small house.

Goodnight, Hyacinths.

Goodnight, Lilacs.

Goodnight, April.

Goodnight, goodnight.