Van Stanley

The

allegory of today is the fashion of yesterday.  The
canvas’s face no longer requires a hieroglyphic.  The
poem is as useless as the precious hand-bag’s name.  The
quest for ultimate truth is held in the upstairs parlor on Tuesday nights.  The
woman tying ropes of linen by the window will ask: Can I get you something?
     & you will say: Yes, the ultimate truth.
     & they will laugh & call for the silver platter to be brought in
     & you will see the array of items & you will stall without coyness for the correct choice
     & their faces will flush full of the blood of embarrassment
     for thinking you were in on the joke.  The
truth is in a lacking of correct choice.  The
least of affordable lessons will be learned, by you, enough for generations.  The
gaminess of the words are due to that they are shots in the dark in the brush of the mind.  The
truth is: your shaken voice behind the microphone is adrenaline—
     not nerves.  The
dictionary must be read as if each numbered definition were as one.  The
epicenter of contradiction is erotic.  The
Origins of Language according to Magritte: every cloud in frame
     completely in frame
     & the pedestal on which to fantasize about them.  The
dodecophonic gall of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht is erotic,
     as the chromatic is erotic,
     as Stravinsky’s export of melody to rhythm is erotic,
     as Pressley’s shaken knee is erotic.  The
average marathon runner may hear
     Verdi’s Requiem as much as three times before the finish line.  The
pauper, salaried one dollar per second
     endures thirty-two years & emerges a billionaire.  The
proof is of something.  The
liberated self, perhaps.  The
prompt: litany.  The
stream beneath the vessel at hand: the
inner voice: the
graphemic bruises suffered by balled white sheets of paper: the
countless photographs of text: the
patient invention of the subject: the
word: “and thus so”.  The
definite article.

apraxiccranium asked: Thought you should know I'm always excited to read what you do when it comes through my feed.

You, my friend — ah! — well: Thank you.

Everything Is Relative,

     I said.  But you did not agree.
You said, There has got to be at least something out there
     that is, sure.  But, the rest? I asked.
The rest is fixed, you said.  So, what’s the thing, then,
     I said, What’s the thing that IS relative?
I think it is the truth, you said,
     or the Truth, you continued,
          or some thing.
I see, I said.
     But I did not.
Relativity has exactly to do with that which is fixed,
     I said, it is not the fixity that is the factor here,
          you are beside the point.  It is in the relation of things,
               things from their fixed positions, that we speak of the relativity
                    between every thing.  Ja, ja, Stan,
you said in your Potosino accent.  That is a cop out, Stan.
     Is it? I said. 
You mean to say that if I stand on that red ball, there, that big red ball
     made of PVC & polyester — hung from a high bough of that
           tree in this park, Menil Park — do you mean to say that there is
                no bit of sameness to occur that is not the sameness to’ve occurred
                     regardless?
     What are you talking about? I said.
Just answer the question, you said.
     No, answer MY question, I said, What are you talking about?
          Now, I said, you’d better get off of that red ball, you!
               It does not look safe.
Oh, believe me, you said.  I would agree from either your angle, or mine!
     you said, as you fell.

(Source: vanstanley)

When Etta sings

those second two notes
as the song opens
& that Sunday
Kind Of Love
settles in.

There is a piece of Debussy

on my iTunes I’ve got no title
for & it starts with two fingers
like toes dabbling a glass sheet
that’s really a pond when it
gets moving — like all of Debussy —
& if I explain it might anyone
name it for me?  It is as exotic
as the pentatonic, but not so Chinese
nor so French nor the blues
& at 0:53 on the recording
you can hear how Debussy
could have elevated the accordion
by playing it at all, in some reverse-
invocation of Yann Tiersen, then suddenly,
Aaron Copland with a HYAH! of the
old west (when the excitement was new)
then something like his Passepied to
bring it back again — oh what is it —
about music when you got
no name pin…