Tuesday 10 March 2015

The Object is not Accesible. Performance, Access, Lisette's Tenderness, Amy De'Ath.

Two of the worst performances we've done were both done in
a state of heavy intoxication, and because of that losing
the ability to read at all or to see the words on the paper or
to stop them wiggling about and to demand of an audience
that they just, you know, fuck off and die or that they kill
in a part of themselves that which is easily preventable. One
was in Cambridge and the other in the Concorde Two.

I'm not proud of moments like that; not from some moralistic viewpoint, not because it is unprofessional. Professionalism is shame. No, because they become points of no access in exactly the wrong way. Think about how poems are actually barricades of bliss stuck in alienation, capturing the pan-optic with the ability to look back, forward, inside, outside all at once. Then ruin it. That's what it feels like. The only useful thing I said was 'fuck all competition forever' which doesn't feel great in your mouth,, and saying 'fuck' something or other feels more and more tired and offensive. Offensive. Not tired. Everyday.

**********************************************************************************

Being subject
to the whims
of the others
                       with their object-i-flatten
alien
          reeling & stooped
in bad
           loops / revolting. 

           this feels
as if relayed
                     horrible; unjustly
so removing
the scud
the bee / i-bee,, this

removal, to this lucky
summer, swinging over hump
to tree
             to grass bed
feels
         as if tragic
                             t'wards
object-vee-used out
where sisterhood
                             sloped i-to
dream scrap,, & sit there
lapped & lucky, long
but shadowed
                        ochre,, rest if
needs be
bigger
            sister, travail
not not unconvinced
a shell in twist
                         receiving
sadly. 

* ********************************************************************************

Poetry for Boys


I've been re-reading Amy De'Ath's Erec & Enide (Salt) recently, especially the sequence Poetry for Boys. There's a collosal tenderness here. What do we mean by tenderness. Tenderness is a near-impossible revolutionary approach, impossible because it is very difficult to maintain. We require ourselves to constantly examine the material of subjectivity - to comprehend faithfully and to realise the total order / structure of relations at play in any interaction. When we are speaking to a 'this' we ask ourselves to disallow the language of categorisation - 'this' can no longer be our relational tendency. Poetry for Boys omits a tenderness like this. One that is troubled, romantic, pastoral, opposing and musical. Is intensity ever stable? "That the joy will soon come and make you suffer!" - an epigraph, a warning, a spell. The sequence is full of contradicting invocations 'lay low' but in language, in pastoral language, 'in the words of the wood', subtlety not naturally forming immunity. The first poem in the set is a musical anacrusis for the rest. These are poems that split your gender perfections up, drop them back into your throat. Vocalisations of worlds impossible, privileges uncatalogued: 'if I had the money to dip in being a boy / If I was Anna O., & fallen into autism or / steeped in prelingual glimpses of Lena's face, / I'd be living system: looped in my own elements. // A system closing talking only to itself.'

Seriously beautiful work isn't easy. I feel like perhaps it gets overlooked. Configuring identity is rarely simple despite beauty and fear - to ask oneself with tenderness to ones own subjectivity where your system is closing and who is it talking to - what elements does it loop in, and where do they stick to make the subject sitting here (there) now?

From Francesca Lisette:

'So, I’m interested in the genius of the space that hovers below identity, solidarity and ego. In reaching for an affective politics, I ask that we make ourselves sociologically weaker – that is, in the terms of Keston’s paper at Militant Poetics, MORE emotional, more supposedly FEMININE – and that everybody does this. I’m interested in intersubjectivity, in what we might mean or do to each other beyond our socially accrued markers, in the weirdness of being humans at this time now, in how we can be kinder to each other. I like to call this form of praxis ‘revolutionary tenderness’.'

- What I Want: A Manifesto for Revolutionary Tenderness. Francesca Lisette.

I'm still trying to work out how we make a revolutionary tenderness and even more how we maintain one. I worry about strategies. You know I do. And I think Francesca does too. I think her address of the new power structures built up by 'rightness' (in language etc) are essential. Identity politics like Anarchism and Marxism very quickly falls into this glut of assembly from disassembly. New workfares. New racisms. New social phobias. Academic. But perhaps we need to be tender towards that tendency too. As in understand it as the composition of subjects (us) desperate to struggle. Understand it and act on it in compassion and love. Work into our language structures ears as well as mouths and brains. More later. Your sister. 

x

Thursday 5 March 2015

Chant

Good morning my girl -you-are-only-a lip
Good morning "my life" you are here at the whip
O soul in the sun you are merely a bruise
Good dentist good sun say 'you, not abused'
Good graces Good plains good desert, beach, sky
Forsaken good crash go: i-am-not-i,,

Wednesday 4 March 2015

Brain Song.

A brain can be lived, that I
am sure. Over time, livedfor/destroy,

regularity; persuations -you-are-this
be hav ioral-1 cut into word

order. Now you sit & stay still
on the window sill.
Now still.

So still,, on the
     sill. Motion  ended  removed
 the language. A mind

is not born but becomes a;
body. Brother of hers just turns

four years, fast enough. The room,,
fat & traditional & my hands

atop head. Fear ripsat back

&back flails  & this has a happy
 resolve these lines and-star-back-i

look into the upper,, the lower
the brain,,,mine

here  perfects  yours  inclined
t'wards
             crossed the arms on crop

or nape. Banished Head to Wall
Banished Wall to Floor                

fear cuts gently to the back, to the back
to the corner where it lies

&shame-with-oh-it stays, the corner
where desire lights the wall

the back, the corner. Shame-i-i-call
back,, a ,, a brain is not yours,
oh backing   hard.

* * * *

& now say give me back
my brain, let it be the on
ce it was & scream insid
e it & cut back against & rifle & spinneret then
disrupt & brain & you are ( not
& scream at & break for the key.

Tuesday 3 March 2015

Notebook Drafts. Spring is not Here...

*

shut up because there is no
life i was not filled up,
rescued, detained. & Felt
Strong, that was not so

without a meaning turn
your lust into words, die
they not mean they you
10022539 every morn i grind

like when my cello  lay with me
is not good to think  f you
is not always held at breath
i took Myself reception, sweat.




*


...'re running under cliff
or pier, glass severally
sprawl through the sky
by the bed.

*

What world is ''''s
us
      da c
would suggest
us
i-as
       no-us- us-no use
there

at beck at

am i the inside the
in -i-no of
blue clot
a flower or
 brain scrap
of carton or
 please hold
still thi
s is an un
fair shril
l the perfe
ct weigh is
 to disease is to
motif is i-not
-i please us the s
mall brack
ets voice the s
now and ra

there was exit
now it is
blind by
when
i am working
in the kitchen
or cleaning the
floor and awaiting
some supervision
then i
fast
as in
there must
hitchiking is like it
i must as quickly
cut out all
just sweep it under
she is working on the floor mind to floor floor to floodlight
she is sprawled
face to floor floor to ceiling
to wall
bleach
fucking ever
seen a place
i work
as quickly
like these lines
they are not
very clean their walls
face their ceilings
the clock is fucked
there is no wall
but the ceiling is good
the floor is germs
there how i felt
to say that these
lines float stupid and
you get not out
them are stolen
some them their technique henceforth
it gets from itself is broken:

in on the blossom
fucks lumps as
 in how dog
s are lumps
get lapsi
 ng joy we as
riding out       YOU BANISH
you
THI
was  rying  o   elp me
you blessed you the
self
blessed little
worth
driving     rijhbu9et
there "is nothing out side the...
"rift in the altar
"night night sweet
"i love you, no i
"feel strongly
,moved to
T I owe you
Noth     move out
Moth it
                "shui
t him move't t' not-the-willing  O to
&scream

 the water ca
lms and roves unde
r gas it is simple
 as
 gas as abstract lack
 in the air is
 moving is i naked thi
s i-floor break
ing this
is
a the imp
erfect montage
three thousand
c e le bra
ti ons off-sanity
-capacitor off-scree
n limit irrit ati
 n  go forward reac
h with your arm
under red satin knot
 in by gas by limp this

out-light-not i-love-not the light falling on red satin this on gorgeous buoy yr

slackened
smile what are you i-shop
 out this weak lack in the
air festers as a lack in the
 sky would lack in he sky
meaning hole why come-i-
together sorry foreshadowed

 limp in useless
classic gas the
lack was there
 pushing over scram
bles the major lea
gues in heart of m
y little wave the f
uck puppet out acrostic
 my face charms
speaks to see littl
e the sanity bas
tards

the air i breathe t
he whole of its
world's the madness
not-Oh-i impose from
 these punctured wound
 removes trash dump that eno

ugh oater chest wound
 left of grimace hate the
charming decadence
 this boy dance broke
 from me boil out left
of line face
in to face left to spell as in lack in the air called not-gas-at all her to come away