The New Poems 2004

Synthetic Poems and Detected Poems INTRODUCTION This project began after reading Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, and the fascination with idea of the fragmentary nature of history and the fragmentary nature of experience. I began the first series of poems, by taking fragments from many different sources and then combining them into one poem or text. From these fragments, I then sanitized a poem, using the fragments from the different sources and additionally adding my own lines. The later series of poems are more closely defined as found poems, poems found in the non- poetical text of the original without out any additions or only minor additions. I hope you enjoy my serendipitous discoveries
Excerpts: Studies in the Psychology of Sex The blush. The organic turmoil. Tremors near the waist, weakness in the limbs, pressure, trembling, warmth, weight or beating in the chest, warm wave from feet upward, quivering of heart, and pressure inside head. The blush ,vestigial Inclination towards sex, in which shame originated. An erection, blushing of the penis — an accompaniment of sexual emotion — pumped full of compliments. The concealment of the face to hide the face— in order to cloak a possible blush. "When the face of woman is covered, her heart is bared,"
ii. When we do our natural easement, or when we be doing the act of generation, determined by the excitations of coitus- We will undergo the most horrible mutilations, even decapitation, and yet resolutely continue the act of intercourse. She removes my heart; with orgasm, The slight fit of epilepsy, the nervous storm – Judging it to be an incurable disease.
iii. (iii) Sexual irritation may also be produced by the bicycle in women. Many married women, and some unmarried, experience sexual excitement when cycling. The seat is too high, the peak in contact with the organs, and a rolling movement — only effected by a bad seat or an improper attitude. The work being mainly done by the muscles of the thighs and legs — When cycling leads to sexual excitement the fault lies more with the woman than with the machine.
Excerpt: Relative Drunkenness It is right that we should have something which ought to be acknowledged. Incisions are made in various parts of the body. These are filled with manuscripts and then carefully sewed up. The skin afterwards – an envelop in a coffin, a letter containing the words of the prophet. The same by which some attempted to cure all the diseases of the mind and cast out devils, even after death. It is familiar to hear of such practices, [Undertakers are too common] and once sought, they will acknowledge all infirmities of body and mind. A Kurdish physician , acquired great celebrity from his success in embalming children – upon their flanks he would write, “Heaven is too small. “
Surface Poetics 1. My head is filled with machines and parts and weak juxtaposition. I am all surface a thin skin, a membrane a film on water, a patina, my existence is on the head of a pin. My poems have become inorganic, artificial, saccharine, a spurious flywheel grinding out words on bent spokes around a hub. My mouth wired shut, my ears welded shut. The negative my only positive! I am a battery. My charge failing me. To the ramparts! To the keys! The hammers banging against the platen. Impressions on paper a thin layer of ink. 2. I am a ghost. My bones are smoke. I am an ontological accumulation of appetites a story without plot I live in a whisper My thoughts are pulses of distraction My words are nothing more than a gathering of appliques. 3. I live in a penumbra my existence is a thin line a shoal a jejune poetics written on the opaque scales of dead fish.
X. Christ on their lips, hazarding their souls– Never any strange illusions of salvation, but accordingly I will descend to particulars. Of a melancholy that extends itself to all– I speak of small animals and of dark anatomies. There is an trepidation perceived in them all– which is especially perceived from a high hill. It is true that there is a natural antipathy between the singular and the plural. It is also true that if you put a bird in a cage it will die from choking. But who is unaware of these common horrors? I will speak of others. The poets are most subject to this malady. From the violence of melancholy, they run mad and away. I could relate many stories of poets that have died from grief, but they are common in every province and every body politic – Or is it that there are so many that they have become ‘a commonwealth of disease.’? Their particular symptoms are as follows: Uncivil, but obedient to the effect of expectation – with their tears, vows, and all their rhetoric. They are the ones who flourish in many fair built and populous cities, and are made mute by the closing of a door.