On Sex
I am unhappy. Why am I unhappy? I am considering that there is some pleasure which I am not experiencing which I could be experiencing if I only ardently pursued after it. I am considering that the entire world exists outside of me and that my being extends toward it the way in a which a flame extends toward the sky -- but there is no consummation; I am not it and it is not me. Reaching too far, I dissipate into a column of smoke; I would consume everything, and miffed that I consume only the little bit I do, and considering my nature, which is to burn, and considering the extension of that nature, which is a complete holocaust, I feel impotent in those faculties which I do possess while feeling capable of those things which are impossible to any man!
I would have my life be accomplished and also enjoyable. I would take happiness as the measure of whether or not a thing is worthwhile -- if it produces pleasure, then it is a worthy activity; if it produces pain, then it is an unworthy activity. But how can this be the case when pursuing after pleasures produces pain and activities that are sometimes painful can yield pleasure in the long run?
The problem is compounded because some pleasures are only readily available and hence, it would seem, appropriate to youth, whereas other pleasures are available eternally, until the end of life. The pleasures that are associated with youth, namely beauty and sex, seem to me to be stronger than the pleasures that are eternal, such as music, serenity, literature, philosophy, art, conversation, and so forth, no matter how ardently our nature would desire the opposite to be the case.
Sex seems the brightest and most powerful, the most fiery pleasure that one can pursue. But it is so particular! Because I don't want to have sex with anybody, or just in any way, but rather I want to have sex with very particular people whom some faculty in my body, I would suppose, selects at the moment of apprehension. To have sex with them is the brightest and most pleasurable activity, that leaves the vestiges of a complete and utter satisfaction in the body, I should say in the being; whereas having sex with someone who I would not desire is the most painful and utterly demoralizing experience, that mingles traces of despair and worthlessness in the soul.
But sex extends -- the desire for pleasure is a desire for constant and regular pleasure, for a state of ecstasy that extends as far as my time. It is a pleasure that is very complicated, because it is so related to physical beauty and yet so dependent upon a certain mental connection; there is a certain social sensibility in sex -- it is the culmination of all social relationships, it would seem, the ready demarcation and symbol of not only certain individual privileges but evident superiorities: as a token in some colorfully described "savage" society, one would say, that the alpha-male has sex more often than the others.
It makes me think of how weak and pitiful my condition is, that I am obliged to want something that I have no reason to want, and that I have furthermore been told from my first birth through all subsequent observations of society to want, and yet I cannot imagine, cannot think even for a moment, of living without it, since abstinence seems more of an absurd capitulation and failure than the extravagant indulgence of merely natural desires.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
The all-seeing eye is consumed by flames –
Like a pike-shaft driving deep in the heart
A vision of poetry right from the start;
These red and green shadows lick yellow walls,
This fire consumes, sputters and stalls
Woods, burning trees, forests and falls
Where butterflies clatter their gem-spreading wings,
Where bird-calls clap, and sounds soaring things
Into the heart (the nub) of the pen, that vents and vends,
Like "un pauvre vermicellier" in icy winds,
These words, snowflakes, fluttering down
That glisten with light and utter each crowns.
Like a pike-shaft driving deep in the heart
A vision of poetry right from the start;
These red and green shadows lick yellow walls,
This fire consumes, sputters and stalls
Woods, burning trees, forests and falls
Where butterflies clatter their gem-spreading wings,
Where bird-calls clap, and sounds soaring things
Into the heart (the nub) of the pen, that vents and vends,
Like "un pauvre vermicellier" in icy winds,
These words, snowflakes, fluttering down
That glisten with light and utter each crowns.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
To Whitman
I’m sitting on Descarte’s
Rock. A few fleeting impressions strike
My being like ringing bells.
Where is this music that flows
From celestial spheres? Sometimes a burden
Is transformed into the cool ardor
Of water; streams flowing down across
The splitting paths of rock: among the trees
Nothing is lost; the green arbor
Of boughs is like a thousand limbs,
A thousand hands, each by chime extending
The little tinkle of luminous
Silver – a thousand keys are pulsing
In my soul.
I’m sitting on Descarte’s
Rock. A few fleeting impressions strike
My being like ringing bells.
Where is this music that flows
From celestial spheres? Sometimes a burden
Is transformed into the cool ardor
Of water; streams flowing down across
The splitting paths of rock: among the trees
Nothing is lost; the green arbor
Of boughs is like a thousand limbs,
A thousand hands, each by chime extending
The little tinkle of luminous
Silver – a thousand keys are pulsing
In my soul.
Monday, February 16, 2004
You are the mother of all loves, and I,
To all your joys the son; therefore have for yourself
This sparkling cry, remembering nuptial pleasures
That burn in the moon on that darkling night,
When empty embraces held my sight:
And these murmuring whispers are all that remain
Of an immanent vision, deep in the brain.
To all your joys the son; therefore have for yourself
This sparkling cry, remembering nuptial pleasures
That burn in the moon on that darkling night,
When empty embraces held my sight:
And these murmuring whispers are all that remain
Of an immanent vision, deep in the brain.
Sunday, February 15, 2004
What is this thing called love that makes me burn? Is it a burn? Like waves ebbing over the chest, or as if the cavities of the heart no longer pumped blood but some bitter and acrid sewage; static, stagnant, stinking filth. And yet how it longs – how the dikes of the heart overflow and pour raging rapids into the stomach, creeping into my entire being as easily as water runs down a gutter. Apart of the liquids in my veins, is there some part of which I can say, this is pure? For neither in my hands any the less to tingle; perhaps only the extremities of my feet, like the tips of sterile mountains stabbing at the gaping blue sky, capped with cold, remain untouched.
But even then, like lightning striking a peak, when I see others holding hands, embracing each other amorously. I cannot stand their happiness – a happiness that is always greater than my own, even when I am with the one I love, the passing object of my desire. Life, to me, that is, the life of other people, is a parade of lovers, a parade down the hallways holding hands, and has always been from the beginnings of those star-struck matches (ill-fated) in middle school, whereon I gazed but took no part, to the ends of time and pale skeletal hands, clasping each other even unto death shall you part.
Death is the thing – when the final eyes close, when the final darkness comes on, which is not a darkness of the eyes, but a darkness (we might as well think) of the ears for not seeing, of the heart for not hearing, of the fingers for not smelling – when this sensory deprivation encloses me, I shall be alone. Will a spark of love, even from the Platonic fire, encase my colding body, my soul freezing in the exhalation of collapsed lungs and escaping like some foul odor from the dirt? I will rot, I will rot, I will rot, and where will be love then? I want an embrace of sex which is death.
But even when I’m kneeling on my knees, or even when I’m kissing ripe, young lips, I can’t escape the passage of time, the passage of a transitory moment, and I only want to hold in my arms, clasp onto forever, feel the tingle running in all my body, through all the extremities, like a mountain caught in blazes, a brown and red-burning, earthly sun. And then when that is done, and liquids are being cleaned, and a weariness overtakes the body, that little death should be a death held with the other in clasping arms. Bones and sinew and muscle joining each other, the mutual admiration of beauty in reciprocal faces, almost as if we were a tesselation, a pattern stretching off into eternity, completing and extending each other indefinitely. Then there would be the intercourse of words, and then love would be called, recalled, and we would speak of it like observers of uncharted territory, comparing measurements, drawing figures, arguing, sometimes, about a position or most rational explanation, but always extending our hold, always claiming more for the Kingdom of Life, planting flags, erecting walls, establishing laws.
How glorious, for instance, traveling through Antarctica, to spend the day in frigid winds and endless cold-stretching fields of white, only upon the nights to sojourn together in a red-walled tent and to sleep in the same sleeping bag, a candle flicker for light, the embrace against the cold of one warm chest upon another, and the murmur of lips on the lover’s neck, fading and strengthening into the penetration of bodies, heightened ecstasy of confined movement, until you can feel something of the other person entering your being?
But my loves are so transitory. They walk in and out of my life like men walk into and out of a bathroom, sometimes without even pausing to wash their hands, doubtless forgetting to flush the toilet. And thus this gunk within me, this foul corruption of raw sewage, this raw air that bubbles in my boiling veins, flowing all to my extremities, even like vats of boiling laundry. And when I see others, I can see only my conception, only the perfect love that they enjoy, and only stretching white horizons. Then I envy them. How is that for every attempt on my apart, I cannot ever mount the summit? And yet there they are, gazing down from the top, happily among frosted peaks, and planting flags!
But even then, like lightning striking a peak, when I see others holding hands, embracing each other amorously. I cannot stand their happiness – a happiness that is always greater than my own, even when I am with the one I love, the passing object of my desire. Life, to me, that is, the life of other people, is a parade of lovers, a parade down the hallways holding hands, and has always been from the beginnings of those star-struck matches (ill-fated) in middle school, whereon I gazed but took no part, to the ends of time and pale skeletal hands, clasping each other even unto death shall you part.
Death is the thing – when the final eyes close, when the final darkness comes on, which is not a darkness of the eyes, but a darkness (we might as well think) of the ears for not seeing, of the heart for not hearing, of the fingers for not smelling – when this sensory deprivation encloses me, I shall be alone. Will a spark of love, even from the Platonic fire, encase my colding body, my soul freezing in the exhalation of collapsed lungs and escaping like some foul odor from the dirt? I will rot, I will rot, I will rot, and where will be love then? I want an embrace of sex which is death.
But even when I’m kneeling on my knees, or even when I’m kissing ripe, young lips, I can’t escape the passage of time, the passage of a transitory moment, and I only want to hold in my arms, clasp onto forever, feel the tingle running in all my body, through all the extremities, like a mountain caught in blazes, a brown and red-burning, earthly sun. And then when that is done, and liquids are being cleaned, and a weariness overtakes the body, that little death should be a death held with the other in clasping arms. Bones and sinew and muscle joining each other, the mutual admiration of beauty in reciprocal faces, almost as if we were a tesselation, a pattern stretching off into eternity, completing and extending each other indefinitely. Then there would be the intercourse of words, and then love would be called, recalled, and we would speak of it like observers of uncharted territory, comparing measurements, drawing figures, arguing, sometimes, about a position or most rational explanation, but always extending our hold, always claiming more for the Kingdom of Life, planting flags, erecting walls, establishing laws.
How glorious, for instance, traveling through Antarctica, to spend the day in frigid winds and endless cold-stretching fields of white, only upon the nights to sojourn together in a red-walled tent and to sleep in the same sleeping bag, a candle flicker for light, the embrace against the cold of one warm chest upon another, and the murmur of lips on the lover’s neck, fading and strengthening into the penetration of bodies, heightened ecstasy of confined movement, until you can feel something of the other person entering your being?
But my loves are so transitory. They walk in and out of my life like men walk into and out of a bathroom, sometimes without even pausing to wash their hands, doubtless forgetting to flush the toilet. And thus this gunk within me, this foul corruption of raw sewage, this raw air that bubbles in my boiling veins, flowing all to my extremities, even like vats of boiling laundry. And when I see others, I can see only my conception, only the perfect love that they enjoy, and only stretching white horizons. Then I envy them. How is that for every attempt on my apart, I cannot ever mount the summit? And yet there they are, gazing down from the top, happily among frosted peaks, and planting flags!
Friday, February 13, 2004
I am going to raise an agonized cry: who spoke to you
The first drops of silence, the slight tips
Of dew upon the grassy stubs
Of green that crowns the hill’s soft
Down-flowing streams? I want
Streams, I want golden sunset
To embrace me and violate me in a soft
Pink-red pulse. Flowing pastels, and nature
Like the whisper of a chest, and like a gripping
Push and ahh. Everything comes together
In real, and words are like violets, spreading out
Over the hill, the little pink-dabbed paint, creation
Out of me, true and incandescent expression
Of a voice very like the wind: the chill wind
That a rabbit feels, upon the burrow, and dives
Into the thick-mossed earth, the thick stumped earth, the earth lined round about
With trees, pulsing out; trees, drinking; trees cupping
The vision of a crystallized globe, a little container
Of dreams:
Criticism is vile. Criticism is black muck. Criticism
Asking all the questions why and how
That drip like tar, or oil, or black nicotine
Flowing in lethe streams; a smoky wind
Blows across the silos and the barren dirt
That arid berth cannot behold in light
Which, scattered, drifts about
Like a hazy mist, a desert mirage:
Light could pore into the ground,
Light could burrow and grow
Into violets, little plucks of pink, blue-
Gold mixed in by painter’s flecks
With dots of red like globes; or growing ripples
Hitting the lake-stormed stream, the wind
That bristles in the willow’s dripping green:
Poetry should speak and be a dream.
The first drops of silence, the slight tips
Of dew upon the grassy stubs
Of green that crowns the hill’s soft
Down-flowing streams? I want
Streams, I want golden sunset
To embrace me and violate me in a soft
Pink-red pulse. Flowing pastels, and nature
Like the whisper of a chest, and like a gripping
Push and ahh. Everything comes together
In real, and words are like violets, spreading out
Over the hill, the little pink-dabbed paint, creation
Out of me, true and incandescent expression
Of a voice very like the wind: the chill wind
That a rabbit feels, upon the burrow, and dives
Into the thick-mossed earth, the thick stumped earth, the earth lined round about
With trees, pulsing out; trees, drinking; trees cupping
The vision of a crystallized globe, a little container
Of dreams:
Criticism is vile. Criticism is black muck. Criticism
Asking all the questions why and how
That drip like tar, or oil, or black nicotine
Flowing in lethe streams; a smoky wind
Blows across the silos and the barren dirt
That arid berth cannot behold in light
Which, scattered, drifts about
Like a hazy mist, a desert mirage:
Light could pore into the ground,
Light could burrow and grow
Into violets, little plucks of pink, blue-
Gold mixed in by painter’s flecks
With dots of red like globes; or growing ripples
Hitting the lake-stormed stream, the wind
That bristles in the willow’s dripping green:
Poetry should speak and be a dream.
I stand, frozen in fear
What are these cold winds that blow about me?
The snow comes falling down like a trickle
Of water as only glass:
Only, a word that echoes through long hallways,
Long stone corridors, long stone
In the witch’s castle: “Come to me,” she whispers with crackling lips,
“Come to me” a soft hiss
Of smoke, burning charcoal. I saw him scratching
Paintings on the walls, I stopped to take his hand, and when we clasped
He vanished like a smoke – smoke hanging on the glittering icy faces
Of the frozen walls, smoke that drifted like a lazy haze throughout the halls:
“Wait,” I whispered, “Stop,” but it was the crackle of the air,
Or the emptiness of the room, or the only whispered quiet
Of a voice like chalky snow.
The witch dances round-about these halls; she raises her hand
And the moon bawls. “Why cry, my sweet,” she whispers, caressing
Her lovely neck, her swan-like body, frozen cheeks,
“For you are gliding through the waters, gliding in among the valleys,
Gliding through my heart.” In the murky dark
I despise her pinched up nose, her cracking lips, that very smooth-like guise;
‘Give back the moon,’ I think, ‘Redeem her from her suffering’
– How many times to embrace her delicate wrists,
How many times to clasp her little fist
Into my heart? I have gazed up at the darkness, stealing her away,
While the clouds engulfed her in a thick and heady fog.
A fog is clouds on earth. I walk through the dark ways, the piers, the water
Stays about the lapping shore. Angles, odd angles, and paintings
Score the music whispering through my mind: it is golden ages, Greece,
The faint sap of silver trees that I gather in my palms
Like melting snow; I rescue dripping time. My dripping tears
Murmur like the waves and freeze with my fears – a long call
Echoes back and forth across the empty place, and the street-signs
Are tattered and the neon-lights
Are going dim. The passers-by have stopped their meandering,
And the avenue is like a bed-rock stream: it was all a dream,
These little shops, this lapping dock, and beyond, from far and away,
Across the waters, a little, percolating scream.
The hiss of making tea.
At dawn.
The sterile door, chipped plaster
White and heady like
My white and heady mind;
The water boils in little macerated clops
And chops my lips; my hands hiss
Where errant flecks of steam
Scream across my skin. I add the leaves
And watch the thick spread ink-stain
Spread across the time. The line
Of purity is broken, a concoction mixed
Speaks poison to my lips, and I grip
In ready hands, conspiring
Sugar and the lime.
What are these cold winds that blow about me?
The snow comes falling down like a trickle
Of water as only glass:
Only, a word that echoes through long hallways,
Long stone corridors, long stone
In the witch’s castle: “Come to me,” she whispers with crackling lips,
“Come to me” a soft hiss
Of smoke, burning charcoal. I saw him scratching
Paintings on the walls, I stopped to take his hand, and when we clasped
He vanished like a smoke – smoke hanging on the glittering icy faces
Of the frozen walls, smoke that drifted like a lazy haze throughout the halls:
“Wait,” I whispered, “Stop,” but it was the crackle of the air,
Or the emptiness of the room, or the only whispered quiet
Of a voice like chalky snow.
The witch dances round-about these halls; she raises her hand
And the moon bawls. “Why cry, my sweet,” she whispers, caressing
Her lovely neck, her swan-like body, frozen cheeks,
“For you are gliding through the waters, gliding in among the valleys,
Gliding through my heart.” In the murky dark
I despise her pinched up nose, her cracking lips, that very smooth-like guise;
‘Give back the moon,’ I think, ‘Redeem her from her suffering’
– How many times to embrace her delicate wrists,
How many times to clasp her little fist
Into my heart? I have gazed up at the darkness, stealing her away,
While the clouds engulfed her in a thick and heady fog.
A fog is clouds on earth. I walk through the dark ways, the piers, the water
Stays about the lapping shore. Angles, odd angles, and paintings
Score the music whispering through my mind: it is golden ages, Greece,
The faint sap of silver trees that I gather in my palms
Like melting snow; I rescue dripping time. My dripping tears
Murmur like the waves and freeze with my fears – a long call
Echoes back and forth across the empty place, and the street-signs
Are tattered and the neon-lights
Are going dim. The passers-by have stopped their meandering,
And the avenue is like a bed-rock stream: it was all a dream,
These little shops, this lapping dock, and beyond, from far and away,
Across the waters, a little, percolating scream.
The hiss of making tea.
At dawn.
The sterile door, chipped plaster
White and heady like
My white and heady mind;
The water boils in little macerated clops
And chops my lips; my hands hiss
Where errant flecks of steam
Scream across my skin. I add the leaves
And watch the thick spread ink-stain
Spread across the time. The line
Of purity is broken, a concoction mixed
Speaks poison to my lips, and I grip
In ready hands, conspiring
Sugar and the lime.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Rivers, raging rivers, dams bursting
In wild symphonies of clattering foam; white spray
Decks the shores, and leaping water
Plays upon the trees, strokes the idle banks,
Seduced, reflects the tattered sky:
A gleam of sunlight streaks
Through the heavens, like an arrow
Drawn to Hades’ breast:
Lest infinite gleaming surge the deep waters and flame
The fleeting fumes of life so like a breath, the red
Begins to crawl and creep; it slides in snakes
-- Hissing, slithering, coagulating en masse, a giant mass
Of a thousand snakes.
Now a cry rings out through the air
And a solitary phantom glides upon the waters:
The master of men’s making, he dips the streams
A brush of blue and lushes blaze upon her eyes
To make men blush and dream --
The soft, white, steady face
Flames on all the bannisters of memory,
And tattered balconies, the smoking edifice of rock
Strikes shadows on the earth;
Her white white skin
Traces the curve of voluptuous pears – she bites
And glittering juice peaches down her lips, below
The turmoil fights, the turmoil
Of nature unfurling from trumpets like a symphony
And clashing in the weary dawn, while the sky
Stretches out across her face, stretches out
Like a long rash or a sore or some burst
Of ecstatic creation, wounding and ebbing, gleaming
In the rivers of dark-flowing blood, and eating
Lotus-lips of wine:
The river flows to Hades, down to ebb and end.
In wild symphonies of clattering foam; white spray
Decks the shores, and leaping water
Plays upon the trees, strokes the idle banks,
Seduced, reflects the tattered sky:
A gleam of sunlight streaks
Through the heavens, like an arrow
Drawn to Hades’ breast:
Lest infinite gleaming surge the deep waters and flame
The fleeting fumes of life so like a breath, the red
Begins to crawl and creep; it slides in snakes
-- Hissing, slithering, coagulating en masse, a giant mass
Of a thousand snakes.
Now a cry rings out through the air
And a solitary phantom glides upon the waters:
The master of men’s making, he dips the streams
A brush of blue and lushes blaze upon her eyes
To make men blush and dream --
The soft, white, steady face
Flames on all the bannisters of memory,
And tattered balconies, the smoking edifice of rock
Strikes shadows on the earth;
Her white white skin
Traces the curve of voluptuous pears – she bites
And glittering juice peaches down her lips, below
The turmoil fights, the turmoil
Of nature unfurling from trumpets like a symphony
And clashing in the weary dawn, while the sky
Stretches out across her face, stretches out
Like a long rash or a sore or some burst
Of ecstatic creation, wounding and ebbing, gleaming
In the rivers of dark-flowing blood, and eating
Lotus-lips of wine:
The river flows to Hades, down to ebb and end.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Communication.
My goals for this week are to find a job, start being more social, *sigh* go out on another date with *someone* or at least have sex (that's a goal?!) OH and start volunteering. Yes, I am going to change the world. My face will appear on minted coins. There will be general rejoicing and celebration and...champagne for all!
My goals for this week are to find a job, start being more social, *sigh* go out on another date with *someone* or at least have sex (that's a goal?!) OH and start volunteering. Yes, I am going to change the world. My face will appear on minted coins. There will be general rejoicing and celebration and...champagne for all!