Content Warning: brief mentions of suicide
Among river, the very river among rivers
Among river, the very river among rivers Asia Among rivers river rivers nomad maps: her rivers nomad map rhizomes Asia Among River river rivers rhizomes and nomads / in the river north of the future, found footage and found flesh
I dream among rivers. I dream among rivers and with rivers, and the rivers add to rivers. Rivers accumulate rivers, and the coalesced river flows in the waters of her name. I dream according to the river and rivers sway me awake the lullaby of the river. Rivers sway among dreams and visions, and the water visions reveal Christina. Christina crystallizes clean crystalline rivers of ice and she preserves Kindred in stained glass and icons. I don’t regret the Kindred and I don’t regret the difficulty and pain of the Kindred because the Kindred made me into a better person. I survive without the Kindred because of the Kindred. I persist with and beyond Kindred, the icy river of her names…
Among river, the very river among rivers Asia Among Rivers river in the rivers north of the future: future found footage and found flesh (I find flesh in rivers and I find my flesh in rivers. Flesh flows in rivers lost and found and rivers scoop dreaming landscape into fleshy waters.) Future rivers find flesh found footage: found sound picture fasteners fast room ruins Room fast ruin runner rampage bodies: ramp bodies squid ink inclined plane river future River future flesh puncture play runner texas is the reason
Among river, the very river among rivers
Among river, the very river among rivers (The dream that became a nightmare. His was a premonition of doom… The Last Wave)
Among river, the very river rivers rivers (In the north the cloud-flower blossoms – and now the lighting flashes – and now the thunder clashes – and now the rain comes down)
//
Among rivers, I recall the river Christina (Everything is quiet since you’re not around and I live in the numbers now in the background…) Among rivers, I recall Christina quiet and I sleep quiet. I do not sleep quiet but I sleep quick queer snow without Christina. I clash rivers quiet alchemical quicksilver quilts and I quilt salts effigies of Christina. Among the rivers river rivers life is short. Life is short – we must hurry. Christina we must hurry and I pursue with rivers between rivers. I hurry towards the river death which is my own death and I die before Christina dies. I desire not to experience Christina’s death – it is enough to experience the rivers of her absences. Life is short – we must hurry. I hurry towards rivers and time and the river: untimely death among waters timeless death. Christina’s absence amplifies the timeless river of death. (I select the silent language suicide I select sous vide suicide suicide soup sound specific soup boiling person to person I select suicide psalm alm ark almonds / suicide said installation stallion stalk rock). I select timeless rivers among rivers never absent.
//
Among river, the very river among rivers Asia Among Rivers reveals rivers and light rivers rivers of light (OK, reasons to survive, says Asia. Create stuff Eat good food Continue to build friendships Hear corny jokes Tell corny jokes Read poetry Look at art See cool bugs.)
Asia among Rivers reveals additional rivers and future (Hear bugs corny to to build reasons friendships) Asia reveals reveals future rivers (look cool at art food survive create continue create continue and create continue read see jokes)
Among future rivers, see cool bugs (Hercules beetles can reach 6.7 inches in length and have a distinct horn on their heads – although only male beetles have this feature) See cool bugs (The Australian Walking Stick is a large insect that can reach seven inches in length) See cool bugs (Male Creatonotos gangis have four large, grey-colored coremata behind them, which can exceed the length of the abdomen when inflated)
Among rivers, the very river among rivers Asia Among rivers nomad future rivers: river runner room unrest river rivers runs unrest riptide rhizome (Suicide said installation stalk rock rhizome Suicide shock rock pickpocket rivers pour futures) (I pickpocket river lockets and rocket towards a word witchcraft. Rivers stretch future into haxan suicides.)
Among rivers, the very river among rivers and time and the river reveals future rivers Rive ruin future rain brutalist body ben adam (I originate from the river Adam and from the river Eva and Eden. Paradise is a womb and the river out of Eden the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord divides into four channels, two arteries stretched for the breaths and two to convey the blood, and the umbilical Eden river carries the region to blood and with blood overlapping circles. The circles of blood nourish male and female, and I originate Adam from Edenic androgyny. I originate from the gates of Eden. I originate in Eva Anemone, Asia Among Rivers circulating Adam and Ben Adam). River flows future rain ben adam open
//
Among rivers, the river rivers very hurry, hurry and hurry (The plans I make still have you in them because you come swimming into view and I’m hanging on your words like I always used to do The words they use so lightly I only feel for you I only know because I carry you around in the background). Among rivers, rivers hurry Christina umbilical and Christina primordial. Christina resides in the background ben hinnom. Christina blankets background golgotha and gethsemane. I always feel Christina in the background and when the future river rivers among my death many timeless rivers, she will still be in the background.
Among rivers, the very river among rivers (OK, reasons to survive: hear corny jokes Tell corny jokes) (How do you get down from an elephant? You don’t – you get down from a goose. I love that with all my heart, says Christina. I thought you might appreciate it. Very much so! she says.) Jokes tell corny jokes tell corny jokes tell corny jokes see cool bugs (What insect is best at budgeting? An account-ant. What do you call an indecisive bee? May-bee.)
//
I always feel Christina in the background and when river among rivers river umbilical future death, she will still be in the background (Low-background steel, also known as pre-war steel, is any steel produced prior to the detonation of the first nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Typically sourced from ships – either as part of regular scrapping or shipwrecks – and other steel artifacts of this era, it is often used for modern particle detectors because modern steel is contaminated with traces of nuclear fallout) I imagine Christina as a shipwreck or I dream Christina in the background as low-background steel. She detects desert drift / she detects ben radiation drag
Among rivers, the very river among rivers
I Loop Unity Capsule
I loop light I loop light loupe inoculating loop I loop light low light please be mine share my life be my wife
I loop light I loop light lure inoculating loop I loop light low light please shut out the lights Shut lights off loops screw in spirals
I loop light and Christina a proponent of new complexity plays Unity Capsule flawlessly (Christina a proponent of new complexity loops light light lit unity capsule loops) Christina a proponent of new complexity loops unity capsule lights
New complexity Christina calculates light loops. Christina calculates inoculating lops loop light loops. Christina calculates new complexity embedded in new complexity: she calculates the timing of nested tuplets. She times loop symmetry loop: Christina share my life – be my wife. Christina times the loop too concise with the light loop lops silence, and the loops outside time strike sound disintegration. Christina calculates light tuplets stretching loop tuplets, and the tuplets sprout tent of meeting in the wilderness. Tuplets spring factory fever machines recording Andy Warhol’s assassination.
I loop lights and lights lean into the rotations and translations of texts: texts in aggregates and texts in quotation (After I almost drowned, I decided I would never again be weaker than water, so I become a lifeguard. On my first day of training, my instructor told me that there are going to be times when you’ll see someone in trouble. You’re going to want to rush in there and do whatever you can to save them but you have to stop yourself. Because there are some people you can’t save. Cause those people will thrash and struggle, and try to take you down with them. [After a long pause.] What does that have to do with me?) (I want to save Christina. I want to save Christina or at least help Christina and I wish she’d let me help her – but she also shows herself wiser than me. She knows we’d be drown if we tried.) I loop lights and lights lean into the rotations and translations of texts: texts in aggregates and texts in quotations
I loop light I loop light loupe inoculating loop I loop light low light please be mine share my life be my wife Loop light low life light: be my husband and I’ll be your wife (a lucrative light meanders in amber light does not jeopardize your credit but melon-oil lamplights night) Lamplight sight circulatory system set light
I loop lights and lights lean into the rotations and translations of texts: texts in aggregates and texts in quotations (I’ll go up in to here, it can’t possibly hurt. All they will find is my beer and my shirt. The riptide is raging and the lifeguard’s away. But the ocean doesn’t want me today) (I survive any depressive cipher and I connect slow lights and waters. I connect nets ocean and lights, each light blinking water void and void oceans. I survive any depressive cipher and I wade deep ocean and death and I never die. I never die but dive cipher ciphers walking oceans. I never die god kind of blue and the blue will swallow me up chariot Elijah and Enoch.) I loop lights and lights lean amber lights and salt light sulfur, and lights burn television texts: texts translate and rotate texts X texts assemble anew
I loop light I loop lamplight light slowing circulatory systems I loop light and see light (With her light I see the light: with light I see her. Christina calculates lights and she arranges lights in circles and corners. Christina a proponent of new complexity plays Unity Capsule and with her lights and I see the lights.) I loop light and I see her lights: I seer light and prophesy blood I prophesy light blood bare black painting bath I loop lamplight whale sight seeps seer sorcery and ben bodies book subterranean
I loop light and I condense new complexity into Christina Unity Capsule superimposed on Gin Blossom’s Hey Jealousy (You can trust me not to think and not to sleep around and if you don’t expect too much of me you might not be let down ‘cause I really want is to be with you feeling like I matter too If I hadn’t blown the whole thing years ago I might be here with you). Christina made me feel like I mattered too; without Christina, I feel I matter less. How selfish, but Christina would accept that selfishness. I miss Christina and she calculates my embarrassment nested in my embarrassment. I miss Christina and I expected too much of her: I expect her as a constant friend but I knew and she knew she couldn’t fulfill those expectations. I loop light and I condense the light into blood blossoms and black paintings scroll that project into the amber light future futures.
I seer slate lights and I prophesy blood: slate bathe lights blood black paintings hanging her light I prophesy lamplight whale sight seeps light seer sorcery and ben bodies book subterranean lightning Ben boils boil light from light and light to light and the light loops loops black paintings hang
Lights loop seer subterranean Lights lop loop see sorcery slate light
Lights loop see ben bodies / bodies nest body unity capsule
Lights loop lights and by her light I see the lights By her lights ben bodies boil elephant skulls skull Christ / coin defleshed no tail but tetragrammaton
I loop light I loop light low Christ share my life be my wife
Open Speech Form
Content Warning: discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation
Open form speech samples speech scroll open
Open form speech samples speech scroll open Open form speech flees scroll spree Open form speech screeches scroll speech feeling Open form speech screw in scroll speed speeds
Open form speech samples speech scroll open: I open strings of speech
I open strings of speech and strange strings of speech. I open stings strings of speech and the speech samples ritual. The speech samples ample ritual and abundant ritual, and the ritual opens. I obsess with a certain kind of ritual and the ritual reveals additional speech. The ritual reveals additional speech. The ritual reveals additional ritual, the aggregate or accumulation of strange speech. I speak the ritual of speech radically open, and the open overlaps open the accumulation of open opening.
Open form speech samples speech scroll open Open form speech string scroll sample Speech switch switches switch signal open steady (not a smooth steady-state universe but strange chaos and chaotic desert dynamics desert never completely smooth populated dynamic chaos and silly string sidewinders.)
Suicide, as with all actions, involves a tangle of complex motives and feelings. In my case, a vague sense of unease drove me: an intense anxiety and unease towards the future… I don’t remember why I felt suicidal when Christina wrote me that email 22 years ago. Perhaps it was because Christina told me she was engaged or some dramatic fight we had – we often fought then. I felt overly dependent on her and any perceived slight or trouble contributed to intense feelings of suicidality… I wasn’t entirely aware of this, but I tried to weaponize my depression and suicidality like Bojack Horseman to Diane (And you were clearly intoxicated and you were talking about swimming. “I’m going swimming” you said “since nothing matters anyways and nobody cares about me, I might as well go swimming, right? … Call me back if you don’t want me to go swimming. Otherwise I’m just gonna assume you don’t care.”) I try not to be emotionally abusive or manipulative anymore, and I’m sure Christina and Asia would agree that’s the case even when I still suffer from depression and suicidal ideation.
Open form speech flees scroll open Open for speech flees screeching scroll and screaming scroll open skull Open form speech sleeps open scroll open speech open (My ritual speech populates the desert smooth-chaotic. My ritual speech puzzles over desert populations and desert dynamics. Strange chaos populates dynamic desert.) Universe populated desert dives birds subterranean / birds bandy brandy bastard sprawl (Bastard bender lost boys blood sucking brady bunch) Open form fire speech fire fire open fire speech form Speech form fractal fragment studio stereo skeleton sampledelia / drone shroud sound desert
Open form speech screeches scroll speech fleeing open (I open the door and I open the door. I open the door on fire and I open the door on fire. I open the door and the door opens bright fires. I open the door delivers the door open speech as the speech spills open. I open the fiery door open.)
Open form fire speech fire open fire speech form
Open form fire speech speech form fractal fragment studio stereo skeleton sampledelia Open form fire speech speech form studio steady skeleton crew sampledelia (Stereo sampledelia drone drones shroud sound desert) Open form fire speech stereo form fragments fires
Open fire speech fire open fire speech form Open fire speech drone shroud sound desert (Desert shroud drones serpents. Desert shroud drone drones serpents. Desert shroud surrounds ben skin stone binds. Desert drones serpent revelation and drone reveals desert in desert.) Desert drones stone birds (Birds bind my body boiling Book. Birds bind my body boiling Book and Book bitches brew.)
Open form fire speech fire open fire speech
Open form: I cannot write anything but Christina. I miss Christina. I miss Christina and I listen to songs that remind me of Christina and I copy the lyrics (I have to keep writing even of its nonsense or the same lyrics over and over. I feel deprived of creative energy without Christina.) (Well, tell me, do you think it’d be all right if I could just crash here tonight? You can see I’m in no shape for driving and anyway I’ve got no place to go. And you know it might not be that bad – you were the best I ever had. If I hadn’t blown the whole thing years ago I might not be alone.) Right now, I am alone. I am alone and I write Christina nonsense which sustains itself and Christina language and languages. I blew the whole thing years ago and I felt close to Christina almost romantic or soulmate – the Kindred, but the Kindred was never romantic. The Kindred was never romantic and aromantic and asexual Christina seized the edges, but the Kindred exists as something – exists as what, I don’t know what, but something uniquely Ben and Christina (I imagine every relationship exists in the unique space – unique up to that isomorphism). I fill up the pages and it comforts me: a task to fill up time and my mind.
Open form fire speech fire open fire speech form Speech opens desert and stone birds Speech opens birds bind my body boiling boiling bodies (the ravens river black body radiation putrefactio) Open form fire squirms tenor saxophone screams / swans speech archangel albedo (peacock plays pantonal cargo tonnage phases of bright colors / pulses of bright colors collapsible cathedrals)
Open fire speech open: Christina a proponent of new complexity plays Unity Capsule flawlessly. Christina articulates the timing of nested tuplets (tuplet tent of meeting machines fever factories / Andy Warhol’s assassination)
I’m in no shape for driving and I’m in no shape for writing: usually if I write, I can figure out the writing process and prophecies, but without Christina, the prophetic spirit ceases. Christina’s absence stops up the prophecy and creative processes. The writing more and more remembers Christina, and the language circumscribes and spirals through the prophecy writing Christina does not make me miss Christina less, but I write it anyways (Without Christina and without God, I prophesy anyways). You see I’m in no shape for driving and anyway I’ve got no place to go, so I keep writing Christina and I keep prophesying Christina. I prophesy Kindred: I write and rewrite Kindred to keep Kindred alive.
These Are Embarrassing Words
content warning: discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation
Multiple alphabets alphabet autumn leaves and massacre alphabet Multiple alphabets mud dandelion alpha and omega Red roast through the cut of my body rib burner violent red violet-red bright body waterfall
Multiple alphabets and dandelion dandy orthogonal multiplicities / multiplicities alphabet multidirectional orthogonal alphabets
Multidirectional alphabets bite alphabets alphabet devour multidirectional alphabets (red runs through the cut of my body: body rib burning burning violet red and violent red) Ben body burns bright body waterfall
//
Multiple alphabets spill Christina sorcery and Christina sigils
Christina wrote this email to me August 3rd – almost 22 years ago – an antisuicide email. I suddenly realize how long I have been suffering from bouts of bipolar depression and suicidal ideation.
Ben, I hope you read this tonight. I hope you wait on the suicide thing. Just wait a year. They say everything changes when you’re in college. Just see if things turn out for the better. Plus, I’ll probably be back in P_______ by next June. Then we can see where things go. See? There’s things to hold onto still. You don’t have to die. Ben, this could be the greatest year of your life. But you have to give it a chance. And maybe it won’t be, but still, you could wait it out. You’re stronger than you let on. I know you are. Just wait on it. Please Ben, you know how I said we’re both dependent on each other too much? Well, here’s where it kicks in for me. I don’t know what I’ll do if you’re not here tomorrow. I honestly don’t know. I know that sounds selfish, and it really is. But all I can think about right now is the world without Ben and I can’t stand the thought. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what magical phrase will make you want to stay alive. I'm really bad at this (obviously). Just know that my heart’s with you. I’ll be praying for you. That’s all I know how to do. Maybe you could do the same. I don’t know. Live, Ben. OK? Please? Just live for awhile longer, anyway. Please, Ben.
Christina’s desperation and repetitious pleading embarrasses me: I feel embarrassed some past iteration of myself – still Ben and still residing within me somewhere – caused some past iteration of Christina – still Christina and still residing somewhere within Christina – so much anguish and suffering. Her utter overdependence on me also embarrasses because I was and am a person not to be admired and dependent on. Nevertheless we cleave to each other and survive beyond iterations of ourselves, despite the embarrassment… I have recurring bouts of depression and suicidal ideation and this email from Christina almost speaks to me now. I feel this depression and suicidal ideation during this prolonged absence from Christina (Almost 5 months. I suspect we will break our seventh month record of not talking from 17 years ago). I imagine present-day Christina would provide similar encouragement although we aren’t as dependent on each other anymore – if we were, both of us would be dead, and my survival provides proof my resilience without her. Sometimes I wish I were that embarrassingly dependent on her so I could have courage to die (a thought equally embarrassing).
Multiple alphabets spill Christina sorcery and Christina sigils
//
Multiple alphabets mud big mud desert dandelion Multiple alphabets burn aleph red cut straight body my body rib violent Red rib burns alphabet body violent red red-violet bright waterfall bodies (My eye rejects waterfalls in full triangles triangle fully-formed. My eye ejects waterfall triangled eyes. My eye ejects eye waterfalls full triangles. My triangular eye ejects triangular eyes. Waterfall ejects eyes and eyes emerge from ejected triangles. My eye ejects eroded triangles and triangles taste pyramid texts. The pyramid texts eject paranoid triangles and triangles charge the sigil. Triangles and pyramid texts charge paranoid eyes from the pattern of the eyes: waterfall sigils. Multiple alphabets charge patterns from my eye to my eye multiple alphabets.) Eye emits island insects / insular island deep sea gigantism My eye interrupts multiple alphabet: my eye interrupts eye dandelion wine syrup
Multiple alphabets alphabet autumn leaves and massacre alphabet Multiple alphabets mud dandelion alpha and omega
I Dream The Red Alphabet
Bodies riot bell roses Bodies riot and from here on: light created, concealed, contained in the covenant, entering the rose, emitting seed into her
Ben bodies revolt laugh light: light ben bodies ben bodies I snap light loft surfaces I snap light stellar dust ajar jetstream unstressed light From here on light and from here on lights
From here on light. Lights recurs and light embeds itself in light – recursive light surfaces. From here on the surface of the light loops into light and light leaks into scripture vibrating strings. Light strings occur with dark strings, and their vibrations complete the oppositions. From here on, oppositions. Light recurs in dark and dark recurs in light hieros gamos.
Bodies riot roses and from here on, light and lights and lights multiplicity
From here on light and from here on lights
From here on her lights hera and hydra Her lights from hiss holy serpent: lights from her hiss here serpent bodies bathed in lambent light (lambent light lambda liminal liminal lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world) Her lights from low luminosity From lights her high luminosity colored lights under a Christmas tree
From here on her lights low to my body bless cup and cross
Ben bodies revolt red lights and from here on her red lights Red lights row redder light in light a rhizome rebis Rebis lights rhizome marriage of heaven and hell hermaphrodite Hell hermaphrodite aleph adjacent autumn leaves massacre alphabet (Here, I dream in red and I remember in red, and the red residue stirs the hermaphrodite rebis. I dream the red alphabet and the aleph inscribes red and further red scripture. The red here leaves my body in remnants. I reside in red remnants dream and not a dream, and my disintegrating material reorganizes itself into red alphabets.) Red hell remembers the red dream and dream repeats red marriage of heaven and hell Hell hieros gamos slits my guts red hermaphrodite aleph (alphabet adjacent autumn leaves massacre alphabet)
Bodies riot bell roses and from here on, her lights illuminate red alphabets From here on light: the fear of the eye Fear of the eye seduces and conjures sorcery (Women need men – junkies need dope – I needed both! I Made My Bed A blazing novel of delinquency – intimately… frankly… shockingly… revealed by a teenage addict) Fear of the eye seduction and sorcery / extreme seductiveness at the boundary of horror (I almost abandon alphabet but I reabsorb alphabet and alphabets into the inner conjunctiva of my eyes. I absorb the letters into my liver and letters light body lovers fuck red. I remember red and I almost abandon this Book and alphabet but then I remember red. I remember my bloody eye eyes red and the rebis hosts hell hemoglobin. I abandon alphabets but the letter slices hell connected to hell and the hell conjures red: red body sorcery and my eye emerges from red magics.) Red revolts red my body bathes in red and I do not discard the alphabet but transform it in the red guts of my body
From here on light: the fear of the eye Fear of the eye seduces alphabet and alphabet riots Book Alphabet revolts Book sorcery / extreme seductiveness at the boundary of horror (Can this earth survive against the aliens from outer space? The Body Snatchers) Eye letters seductive insect lights from her lights insects Ben bodies fire light from cups eye blessing: eye insects body compound and complex light Compound light couples complex light coupe headlights (headlight the obsessive and lugubrious eye headlights the living eye) My eyes dazzle red daggers and red raptors
The lugubrious eye revolts against seductive eye, and the erotic eye riots against the autoerotic eye (Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but many. If the foot would say “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body”, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body...)
Bodies riot red hell light and bell roses Bodies riot and I remember red and the very red projected through my erotic eye redder
Bodies Riot Bell Roses
Bodies riot bell roses Bodies revolt beghard and beguine belligerents
Bodies riot there’s a riot going on and going riots between bodies Bodies riot ring them bells ye heathen from the city that dreams
Bodies riot bell roses and roses alarm alchemy agitprop pulse impulses pulse Alchemy alarms pulse impulse pulse play chaosmos (Bodies riot rock n’ roll chaosmos and chaos churns bodies. Bodies riot rock and stone percussion pulse chaosmos and chaos contacts divine comedy. Comic chaosmos chews comic bodies and bodies riot wild. Bodies riot rock and roll rolling and tumbling all night long.) Bodies riot bell roses red pulses redder impulses pulse red
Bodies riot bell roses Bodies revolt beghard and beguine belligerents
//
My body hosts rose heterodoxy and alchemical here heresy and the hosts crash a riot going on
A cartoon Christina crashes into karst Christina and the limestone looks towards the site towards which all eyes gaze / insect compound eyes magnify bright Christina crimson.
A cartoon Christina casts frankenstein fire flesh douglas fir. Douglas fir finds flam fire fire rose faucets (Christina a rose of sharon Christina a lily of the valleys).
I enter the spinal staircase and the staircase steps steppe rose petal aporia. I enter the spiral staircase and Christina a rose of sharon slips between rose dialectics and galactics (rose gores galatics galaga galaxian / space invaders vermilion).
A cartoon Christina churns body riots and Christian heretics
My body hosts heretics crash into Christianity dialectics and nondualism
//
Bodies riot bell roses Bodies revolt beguines and beghards Bodies revolt alchemical agitprop pulse roses impulse roses rose runner Alchemy agitates animates pulse the future flood of shadowplay and shadow-work (Red and white water pour from the rebis, the twofold aspect of the material, to form the viscose, vitreous body of the cosmic eye, the sea of time and space) Heterodox Christianities agitate alchemy and the concoctions of salts and sulfurs (My heterodoxy hosts multiple Christianities: my heresy church the chaosmos of multidirectional Christianities. I prophesy continuous multiplicity and the written-rewritten scripture always has a two-fold aspect, a kind of double articulation. Book material doubly articulates Christianity crab canons, and crucifixion invites entrance to the vitreous body – visionary body voluptuous body viscose body. I host the many-at-once, and the Book as Magician and Juggler disintegrates and reintegrates the two-fold aspect of the material and the double articulation of the Book.) Bodies riot and distill vitreous vision, a cosmic eye staring at cosmic egg staring story of the eye
//
Bodies riot multidirectional Christianities and my Christianity grieves white and red waters pouring from my pierced side named Christina
I write Ben + Christina and I revisit an email I sent her from 22 years ago.
I wrote this poem last night. I’m not sure if you will like it or not. The title of it is “San Diego is a Useless City.”
There are mermaid tales
on your fingernails,
saliva on my soda straw,
and the ice cream headache
is fading fast
By September,
dreams of San Diego
will be replaced by
bracelets, beads, moments,
and pretty things.
So don’t cry, Tinkerbell --
Eden is over the next hill,
Eden is only…
Christina’s response on the same day: Ben, I loved it. Except… I went to [the high school] today and straightened things out. I guess that e-mail was just to scare us to get us in gear. They didn’t even drop my classes. Stupid people, giving me a heart attack. Anyway… I was actually starting to like the idea of staying here, but I guess God’s got other plans for me. So I’d still love to have you as a visitor on my couch (It makes me look cool, you know). Well, I’m off… (Christina)
Christina wrote the email in all caps to emulate her handwriting but I do not emulate it here – it hurts the eyes (it strains the cosmic eye and the comic eye and the story of the eye). If I recall correctly – I rarely recall correctly – Christina applied to UC San Diego, and she got a letter from them stating there was an error and they rejected her acceptance on a weird technicality. It was a false alarm and Christina did go to UC San Diego and managed to get a four year degree despite her troubles and traumas during attendance. The poem embarrasses. I was young and not every young poet can be John Keats or Thomas Chatterson – but it embarrasses and I continue to embarrass 22 years later. I embrace my embarrassment because it is mine and because it is me, and I continue to write and grieve embarrassment in the absence of Christina. The poem embarrasses and I partially based the poem on when Christina and I went to Baskin-Robins and she drank from my straw and I acted disgusted by her, but I must have been secretly flattered – she trusted me and we kissed. I couldn’t rewrite that poem any better – I would obscure the meaning and decorate it with purple prose. I never call Christina Tinkerbell – what an odd name to call her.
Bodies riot multidirectional Christianities a rose of sharon a lily of the valleys Bodies riot bell roses tinkerbells / fairy alchemy
//
Bodies riot bell roses Bodies revolt beghards and beguines belligerents Red and white water pour from the rebis and I render red bright red bleeding fat I render red rhizome repetition / thick adipose adonai I read red rendered fat forest rebis / rebis not a root but a rhizome Rebis restless rhizome: rhizome marriage of heaven and hell
Woe To Those Who Have Seen The Son of Humanity
Sixth hour darkness over all the earth
Until ninth hour darkness
Veils the veil midst of darkness
Dark the Human Son
(Woe to those who have seen
the Son of Humanity)
Darkness over all the earth
Sun was darkness altogether in a smoke
Altogether on a smoke descended upon it in fire
Human fire smoke Child of Humanity
Altogether a smoke descended upon it in fire
Smoke ascended smoke of a furnace quakes greatly
(Blessed will you be who have
not seen the Human One or associated
with him, or spoken with him or
listened to anything from him)
Altogether on a smoke descended
Third part of the sun smitten
Third part of the moon
third part of the stars third of them in darkness
Day shone for not a third
Sixth hour over all the earth
Day shone for not a third
Ninth hour darkness veils the veil
A third of night likewise
(From now on, awake or asleep,
remember that you have seen the
Son of Humanity, and have spoken
with him and listened to him)
Third arose a smoke out of the pit
Smoke of a great furnace
Sun and air darkness smoke of the pit
Human One bottomless pit
(Woe to those who have seen
the Son of Humanity)
My Body Hosts God Horrors
Horror hosts YHVH of Hosts body horror
Horror hosts body horror brushwork Brushwork breakbeats burden of the valley of vision / shaman drum programming Drum programming brushes pyramid text and text textures material paranoia (I program paranoid natural selection erosion)
Horror hosts body horror brushwork and texts erode secret serpent earth earth triangle body human pyramid (Pyramid photograph punk piston alchemy Ben body badger badger badger absurd flash alchemy and my flesh emerges earth renewed spherical lapis)
Horror hosts YHVH of Hosts body horror Horror lights large lapis light: horror lights lager lager lapis left witches Witch my body word winter music I witch my body word life forest flash I witch and I keep the fire two magic parts of the work I keep the fire for the dissolution of two body (solve) and the hardening of the spirit (coagula)
I love numbers and I obsess numbers, and I invent my own form of numbered mysticism and sacred geometry. I cut the strings in halves and thirds and quarters, and I prophesy again the harmonic series, itself a sacred geometry. I obsess numbers and numbers and operations with numbers, and I prophesy geological proportions and geometry portions. Revelation is the revelation of universal ratios (The horror of large numbers is the horror of the body: I discover larger and larger irrational numbers inscribed onto the organs of my body).
Horror hosts YHVH of Hosts body horror I witch my body word left largest number fires and large number lapis lazuli larger I keep the large number fires fires geometries I keep my body for the dissolution of time and my hands disintegrate large numbers (a dialectic on one hand and a galaxy on the other / my hands trouble me) (my hands trouble me and my hands disturb me my hands disturb the desert devils of dinosaur fossils)
I study solid number and liquid numbers. The solid numbers resemble crystals and krystals and wide open cave mouths: the liquid numbers resemble blood residue or the shadow of salamander bodies. I heat the numbers in the alembic and the gas numbers suffocate (unnumbered catastrophe). I measure the numbers and the gas numbers paradoxically weigh more than solid numbers. Energetic numbers orbit eccentric numbers.
Horror hosts YHVH of Hosts body horror I keep the fire for the dissolution of the body (solve) and the hardening of the spirit (coagula) I dissolve my body populated desert desert through wolves (I wolf on numbered bodies and numbered deserts: I wolf on numbered word and numbered wilderness) Through wolves her tree of life upside down
Horror hosts hell half half hell (They forced her to suffer the most humiliating evil! Hell House Girls Where the intentions are wrong… very wrong!)
Horror hosts body partially impossibly numbered (You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre! Pieces It’s exactly what you think it is!)
Horror hosts hell seven sermons to the dead (Where there’s no room in hell… the dead will walk again! Dawn Of The Dead)
A horror hosts gaudy colors and fire fauvist, and my body intensified horrors
I intensify the leaves and I amplify the leaves (How do you see these trees? They are yellow, so put in yellow; these shadows rather blue, I paint it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermilion.) I intensify the leaves vermilion Christina visions Christina keeps karst vermilion catacombs and ultramarine coffins Christina keeps an arresting or attacking karst burst ben hinnom blues / ben hinnom twelve-bar blues underneath ultramarines
Horror hosts garish colors gore and fauvist flesh flash fiery yellows and reds
Five vermilion leaves layer five roses around her slumped room for all particles participating outlines I outline Christina in cadmium yellow or candy pink as her outlines loop a volcanic ouroboros I outline a carnation pink Christina chase ouroboros ostinato napalm (five serpents welcoming five gates opens into the body of the divine realm) Five serpents set five to the rock and I reveal rock as real my spear and magic helmet
Horror hosts hostile colors body brash blue bronze weapons (There is more than death waiting for you in the dark places Dark Places)
Horror hosts YHVH of Hosts body horror
I dissolve my bodies other bodies bog breakbeat bitter descent: desert mara and marie / mixolydian mary magdalene I dissolve body ben adam adam beetle solvent and solute sergeant pepper’s lonely heart clubs band I band beetle music concrete ben brutalist alchemy
Time And Structure Sample Plundered Bodies
Harmolodic bridal chamber syntax disintegrates and reintegrates time
Bridal chamber time ben adam acid western theater Acid western acid horizon haze gaze now noise / hardcore punk new noise Bridal chamber time noise horrorcore ice cone samples (Time samples time: time samples sample plunderphonics and samples steal my skin. Time lays my skin sheol and the sample’s the flesh and the beat’s the skeleton. Time samples tempered time and the Book curvature contorts and distorts the samples, a game of oral torah telephone with body plunderphonics. Time plunders and the samples socket Book holes: the hole in Bridal Chamber syntax fucking with sampled bodies.) Bridal chamber samples plunderphonic fan flesh fan death desert wolves Multiple wolves sample hard funk punk earwrench harmolodic / halo hand stab carnival
Harmolodic bridal chamber syntax disintegrates and reintegrates time (Time five letters. Time five letters lattice blood and black lace. Five letters lure blood and black lace lace Christina giallos. I hang from her giallo hallows and the ropes articulate bridal chamber syntax and syllable suspensions. Her giallos do not give salvation but proliferate serpents: serpent vowel accents. Serpent vowels accent additional Christina serpents and their scale speaks the sampled animal. I sample Christina as a serpent, as an auroch, and as a red panda.) Harmolodic bridal chamber samples syntax stack syntax chamber carnival
Harmolodic bridal chamber syntax disintegrates reintegrates time Serpentine samples carnival maximum I sample carnival maximum carnage and total carnage craft beer bumblebee body and beelzebub body Ben body time beezelbub beetle bomb ben adam bomb squad (Bomb squad samples bombastic sampledelia delicious delta. Bomb squad spirals samples disintegrating samples sample integration. Bomb squad synchronizes sample without sapphire slowly phasing overlapping synapses disjunct syntaxes. Syntax samples boombox bomb squad.)
Bridal chamber syntax sing sings serpent vowels Serpent vowels accent around ground acts of the apostles (I studied music composition in university, and Christina told me she had cancer. I thought we would both die and I worked on a composition called The Double Requiem for Voices and Orchestra. It wasn’t a good composition but I don’t know how else to mourn except through creation. I create badly but I create.)
Bridal Chamber syntax singe sing serpent syntax (I create a heretic acts of the apostles and a surreal serpent acts of the apostles) Bridal chamber syntax accent accents vowels: vowels accent adonai and ben adam with the bodies of Christina apocalypse
Harmolodic bridal chamber syntax disintegrates and integrates time Time bomb squad blast blood burst (Bridal chamber body horror: body horror bomb squad) Horror haze smog bodies saw snuff celluloid Horror cinema sequenza seeping swamp body: my body brush sludge swamp marsh throne of god horror Horror late noise snarl scratch and cut assemblage / Christian Marclay literal chopped and screwed chopped and glued
Time and structure + time and structure + time and structure Time and structure syntax method material Structure method material materializes syntax syntax body matter (Sounds with repetitions structure sounds with repetitions sampled sounds structure sampled sounds repeated) Time and structure + time and structure + time and structure Time sounds whom will comes over who to caps over / time sounds ever word ever when
Time and structure extends time and structure expands time and structure Time ever word ever when when woman weld word heads also over / woman word hints outer darkness Time outer darkness structure imaginary itinerary through ink chords magnetic iron Ink isolates iron surreptitious unsynchronizations: unsynchronized riot sound
Time and structure texture time and structure tincture time and structure
Harmolodic bridal chamber syntax disintegrates and reintegrates time (time and grief wear on my body: grief and chance create my body chaos) Bridal chamber syntax synthesis grief and body horror and the horror of the body wears chance body channels Horror body brushwork burden break beats / shaman drum programming Syntax drum programming horror paranoid texts and texts textures natural selection erosion (Ben five bodies border borderless Christina bodies and Christina bodies pray post-structuralist psalms. Five fauvist ben adam bodies outline broad reds and oranges, and I bake my orange serpent body in the brilliant sun. Time bodies burn bright orange ben adam and I aim towards Christina’s alphabet but I hit bloody body horror letters distanced. Christina alphabets select inland empire inlets but I miss the staircase spiral. I miss the staircase nautilus spirals and the sun sparks red son of man burning smaller oranges. Son of man crowns orange child of humanity five thorns and five letters orange, each a burning sun.)
Harmolodic bridal chamber syntax disintegrates suns / serpent supernovas
I Obsess With The Long Time Of The Text
I obsess with the long time of the text I obsess indeterminate text textual time aleatoric Indeterminate text tehom sap abyss Taryn / Taryn tohu wabohu improvisation
I obsess with the long time of the text This was not how to make an object but how this object exists as time: time regained and time as an image (The image of the Book is the image of my body: the image of this Book embedded in time is the image of the body of Christ. Christ as image pervades time-in-text and the time of the text prophesies Christina. Time of the text prophesies Christina and the image of Christina, and Book embodies Christina with Christina and Christina within Christina.) I obsess with the long time of the text and Clock Christina keeps impossible time and endless time
Text and Christina count odd time take five Christina counts five and five and five, each their own time and text
Five feels out a Christina ostinato. Five Christina quotes a choir full fathom five and the sea five counts choir Christina. Christina quotes Full Fathom Five, both the Shakespeare excerpt and the Jackson Pollock image.
Five insect feelers flirt with five Christina also sinister insects (left-handed insects). I select five circus insects and they fly through kryptonite moons of Christina bodies.
Christina five fauve quark flavour finnegans wake: I awake to the wake, Christina flesh flowing lines of flight to finnegans wake I flow five Christina bodies abide finnegans awake and I awake her ghost woman language: ben hinnom burniface, shiply after, shoply after, at an angle of lag let flow Erik Satie furniture
Text and Christina count odd take five Christina counts five and five and five, each their own time and text
I obsess with the long time of the text This was now how to make an object but how this object exists as time: time regained and time as image I exist time how my body exists in time – how my body moves in time and through time – trade time through bodies Time trade texts through body to body / body embedded textual process
I obsess with the long text of time and the process in text reveals the all-happening divine (every species – or ‘nature’ or ‘substance’ – is consubstantial with the divine essence) I obsess with the long process of text, and the divinity of the text exists in the all of all and the all in all (text divine happenings – text inscribing divine happenings)
Can I share an interesting quote from Meister Eckhart with you? I say to Asia. I was writing in my Book last night and I had an interesting revelation. In order to rediscover my Christianity, I must rid myself of Christianity. In order to have any communion with the divine, I must destroy God. My Christianity without Christianity and my God without God, both completely emptied of any structure or hierarchy or transcendence. It made me think of a famous quote from Meister Eckhart:
Therefore we say that a man should be so poor that he neither is nor has a place in which God could accomplish his work. If this man still holds a place within him, then he still clings to duality. I pray to God that he rids me of God: for my essential being is above God insofar as we comprehend God to be the origin of all creatures.
Eckhart goes onto say that his true being is inseparable from God, and his being gives birth to God as much as God gives birth to his beginning. It’s non duality, union with the divine. Once we think of the divine as separate from ourselves, we are lost and misunderstand what the divine is.
In another place Eckhart says “If I had a God I could understand, I would never hold him to be God.”
In other words, when we say God is this or that, or God has a certain attribute, we betray our God and don’t truly think of him as God. We only worship an image of God.
That’s why Eckhart can controversially say “God is not being” and “God doesn’t exist” because to give God those qualities for Eckhart is to assign image to something beyond image. But this beyond image resides in our very selves and flows out of our self as well.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is if I’m to have some hold of Christianity for myself, it must be radically emptied of Christianity, I say. That’s an interesting take, says Asia. I think perhaps a problem Christians have is they think the Divine is one thing and one thing only, I say. That’s what a lot of them want, says Asia. Something fixed and well defined. That shows that the world is also fixed and well defined. They don’t want change. They want everything to be the same, and that’s something I keep coming to when it comes to my family – they will not do anything to change, she says. It reminds me of that TikTok you sent me, I say. Fundamentalist Christians have created for themselves a god in the image of their greed and power. They don’t want to leave any room for mystery or wonder or awe. Mystery and wonder and awe implies something unfixed, unknowable. I want my experience of Christianity and the divine to be experience of mystery and wonder, I say.
I obsess with the long time of the text I obsess with the long text and the image of the text: image without image and the text emptied of any quality or image I obsess long time long text in order is think of think of Christianity for Eckhart goes on to duality (duality of the long text emptied the duality of the long text)
Untitled time untilted texts music of changes / ben adam imaginary landscapes Imaginary landscape languages read horizontally then vertically / language interpreted horizontally vertical horizons Harmonic time tunnel untitled untilted / harmolodic text strikes tilt empty tunnel
Text and Christina count odd time take five Christina count counts fives empty five in five
Five fauvists open fire on the canvas with bright red and oranges: shades of Christina’s hair transformed into still lifes and clandestine momento moris (I prophesy death and Christina’s death and in every possible world, I will outlive her) Five fauvists flirt with wild woman color and female shaped-canvas
Five fauve quark flavor fervor fever and I fever five: five Christinas and five ghosts host lights lasting colors (I fever five and in other true betray our very selves: we are an experience of him to be. My Christianity for my experience of Christianity, I would be an image to duality. We are an image an image of Christianity must rid myself as much as hell.) Five forces onto the page and lights nights Christina leitmotifs Five forces into page Christianity and Christianity lights five Christina hosts most lights Five fauve quark flavor confess flesh five saturated colors I count the fires five Christina and five corridors for alchemy
Text and Christiana count odd fires and fires take five Fires take five burning body Christianities (God must must rid mystery and his being and flows out of this word, when he is neither is nor has a place in ourselves and misunderstands myself)
I obsess with long time of text Harmolodic time reveals a funk Christianity: Christianity without Christianity untitled untilted I obsess untilted landscape Christianity: Christianity belly nor a must destroy has emptied say our rediscover (I rediscover experience within with the divine place)
I obsess with the long time long time tremor time thunder Harmolodic thunder time empty simultaneous syzygy / pornographic syntax (I study bridal chamber syntax. I steady myself in a steady-state bridal chamber and its syntax simmers my hand as experiments. Syntax simmers structure – serpent structure – holy spirit structure – and I obsess with the bridal chamber structure as much or more than with the bridal chamber time and bridal chamber text. I live bridal chamber syntax sinners skull structure and skull substance, and I look at my hand and my skull as transparent syntax. I look at my skull syntax – a head and hand transplant – the cauldron of the bridal chamber. Bridal chamber text untethers new direction by Miles Davis and ben adam on the corner. Corner experiments as much as this hand experiments. Christianity experiments my body beyond: empty skull beyond the image of the skull enunciates the divine syntax of the not-skull. I study a bridal chamber syntax Christianity empty Christianity and Christianity without Christianity. I strip nude and look for a more transparent and transparent bridal chamber Christianity – but my body remains.) Bridal chamber time obsesses empty time: time ben adam acid western theater
Text and Christina count odd time take five and five and five flay flesh
Five claws Christina corridors: Christina corridors which lights the lights awake. I awake in fauvist light and surreal finnegans wake work light women. Christina furthers five five foe forests and forests stress stations of the cross / Christina salvation. Christina stresses salvation a balm in gilead, a salve machine gun with the safety disengaged (safety pin pinhole camera cataract calls to cataracts kiss abyss calls to abyss). I meditate not on Christian salvation or a gnostic salvation, but a Christina salvation: Christina come save me! But not even an apparition of memory appears. I remember a cubist Christina and a fauvist Christina: Christina plays perplexing simultaneous perspectives and Christina paints with heightened grotesque gargoyle colors, a shaped canvas saturated grotesque body and body without organs. Salvation without salvation seeks a secret Christina name, her name encoded in the canvas of the Book (Christianity without Christianity boll weevils Book body without organs). Christina salivates salvation sheets of sound vowel accents: Christina secretes sheets of sound salvation, a summation of vowels of the cross. Christina’s alphabet massages apparition X apparition (I alphabetize all the letters Christina sent me and its acrostic reveals names of god.)
Five letters lattice blood and black lace: five letters lure blood and black lace late Christina giallos Christina giallos sum jellos giallos (I hang from her gallows syllable suspensions) Not salvation but sidewider serpents: serpent vowel accents syncopate no salvation and no Christianity
Text and Christina count odd time take five and five Five hangs five full giallos gore and I steal from Bay of Blood for my own slasher film
I obsess with the long time of text I obsess with the long text of time, and time without time tremors clandestine Christina
Vision and Mysticism 