periphery of justice

2018-08-192018-08-24 | gingamc

“Most of the time, I think we’re embodied because we are supposed to be. I don’t think the goal is to leave our bodies behind, despite what many major religions tell us.” — Dana Levin

Santiago Moix, *Rippling #34*, silkscreen monotype, 2012

Economists believe
things that are abundant
have less value,
example: love.
A cheap cadence
mutated and wound
around a swelling chorus.
Shut tight. Loud as bodies.
Imagine if we answered
all those blushed curious inquiries
and followed constellations
to rewrite retrogrades.
Speaking softly enough to
understand its sacred feedback.

__________

title is William Stafford’s reference to “that feeling you have when you go along accepting what occurs to you and finding your way out somewhere to the rim where you are ready to abandon that sequence and come back and start all over again” (Writing the Australian Crawl)

sounds between notes

2018-08-13 | gingamc

I don’t swim away from
the greedy snapping of breath,
but my throat…well,
terror owns each kiss.

stanza from “Here” by Amber Flora Thomas

As waves of morning light
survive extravagant centuries
I follow a thread of words
primary gravity safety
broken just enough to fit in

a 21st century dream

2018-07-222018-09-14 | gingamc

I am at war with the obvious. —William Eggleston

I get nervous when people start talking about wanting to own things:
land, houses, ideas.
This present moment feels like freedom,
a highly volatile state.
In my dream, I walked US-Highway 12.
I passed community banks flush with bartered dreams
and gas stations promising consistently low prices when paying with cash.
The ghosts all drove cars and didn’t bother me.
Lucid, I believed I was back in Berlin. I was brave.
I woke to trees taller than houses.

delayed gratification

2018-06-172018-06-18 | gingamc

“There’s always a lot to do before you get to go to heaven.”
— Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

when the sun sets pink, orange, and red
broken moving clouds spread
like velvet like compulsion
action stretches idle smooth

reading read is different from hearing read spoken
or why I adore hiding words in my throat

formerly private as guilt
what came first
sky
or water

wanting then waiting, again
thinking she couldn’t handle it

altered
like states of being with
or without you

regenerative as loops of believing in a tomorrow
or knowing patience brokers its own rewards

speculative practice

2018-05-202018-05-22 | gingamc

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

T.S. Eliot, from ‘Preludes (IV)’, The Waste Land and Other Poems

Motonaga Sadamasa (Japanese, 1922-2011), Untitled, 1965. Oil and synthetic resin paint on canvas laid down on panel, 91.6 × 116.7 cm.

concerts of effort
sounds better inside a fragment
forgive that this starts out so slow
posting at me to me with me
I’m casual to realize
to follow that, your, our vision
is to be organized into spacial moments — threads
a witness of curation
the: father son and holy spirit

faith is within your standing
some think it is earned
as for me I was taught to be innocent
later learning curiosity had its own beneficiaries
a lesson on just how few original ideas are assigned majestic
fueling dark appreciations for wild abstractions
until it is as uncommon as creating reminders to breathe
I know this all sounds strange
you can call it: new wave vengeance

glitter path

2018-05-062018-05-07 | gingamc

she was ruled by suggestion
rising to meet pre-summer light

photo capture from the Museum of Things (Berlin, Oct 2017)

he suggested we advance an aesthetic education¹ to get what we want
types of promises full and drawn from expansive inhibitions
scattering chaos beyond an endlessly deferred absent presence²

suspended in seductive panics
we are nothing but restless territories

within this gossip of change
she spins out a series of poems about mirrors

in pursuit she hunts for theoretical pleasures
positioning against as something for
glittering distorted at its apex

___________________

1. Roberto Bedoya, Oakland Cultural Affairs Manager
2. Ben Anderson in Modulating the Excess of Affect, a reference to morale as the horizon of governance

trade wars

2018-03-252018-04-03 | gingamc

“the first 50 hours of resurrection are beautiful,”
says the man holding the door

–Tongo Eisen-Martin, excerpt from remove my heart racing, and babylon is fine

we learn to trust wars: trade, sex, cold. as acceptance forms rules, we smooth out the most deprived ideas and prioritize all threats as urgent. in theatres of conflict, repetition is grandeur. this translation officially makes mob landscapes familiar.

that’s why when your hands brushed against my sharpest edges: my heart, my gaze, my inordinate sense of danger; I felt intimacy performed as spacial intervention, an interlude. your fingers interrogated and found hard answers wrapped around tender legacy. we became undone. mapping unearned dreams onto each other’s gravitational pull, an attraction, we made our own stars.

future philosophers will discover these tensions and name them holy

transference

2018-03-182018-03-19 | gingamc

and where
did that love
I gave
go?

arousal is an anchor
like empathetic inquiry
or side show hustles

echoed relationships
redirected
form finds its subject

we commit to process
over outcome, again
shift to abundance of solutions

technically we are identical
with differences called out
our unconscious a shared language

the news repeats:
rot
patterns

it is a drowning
a baptism
an act of mercy

dirty light

2018-03-112018-05-07 | gingamc

“The shutters were stuck. Then I grew absent minded.”
Des Moines Register, Iowa, July 3, 1938

stretching beyond monetary value: this is more freedom than security can buy

if I wake up open to what will unfold
I am ready to claim I had a good day
specific as memories stored in the creases of expanding curves

& still I rescue myself when hope feels violent as an open hand
where fortune’s fault line is externalized validation
nested into dreams of trying to get somewhere
my body craves stillness

I press the coffee before anything begins

remember when we took turns burning wishes into the folds of our stomachs?
it was the safest place we could think of
no one dared touch us
there

I heard you took my name
and sewed it into your eyelids
stitches fragile as trusting strangers & friends
an exquisite waltz like light shining in distant flat darkness

transfixed politics

2018-01-282018-04-01 | gingamc

Our bones are built of spirals. – Joy Harjo

our wildest prophetic imagination
has led us here: a shattering of sex
uncomfortable
deep
looking

II.

calm & concentrated
I saw two waves lock
like elk horns
then embrace

III.

truth of feelings
as charm offensives
as wet feathers

IV.

divine signs
pushing forward

V.
smoothness is both a measure and a lack of roughness

hook & claw

2017-12-102017-12-11 | gingamc

Geh in der Verwandlung aus und ein.
[Be conversant with transformation.]
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonette an Orpheus

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i believe in omens
and my own ability to shatter and reform
— Jill Khoury, excerpt from “Sixteen”

oh righteous revelry
please indulge this faithful attempt to clarify

so many modern relationships still lean feudalistic
as nobles dance to blue note promises & scheme for eternal life

it rings visionary to trust what is mine was never yours to take
a redundant mythology now inadequate as waning winter light

temporarily, we sense an emerging surrender to the hushed hues of sexual panics
on a grand scale psychic interiors were smoothed flat like apathy or political truths

there was a collective ache for a state of respite from all this revolutionary suffering
as conviction loops into endless realities it is our sacred duty to carve out revelations

we are only possible when testimonies illuminate just beyond the sharp edges of darkness

sub rosa

2017-11-052018-04-02 | gingamc

“And is is strange how experiences blend and enhance each other.” — William Stafford

It is not that what I know today is necessarily different from what I knew yesterday, or that I have replaced prior knowledge with a brand new extended spectrum of understanding. It is more subtle than a transaction, more gracefully defined as complexity. This feels like transformation. A shift.

Love fits into this equation as a multiplier. The critical variables that come next are a matter of routine, a particular and conscious genre. A ritual.

There is always more. A compilation.

front lines

2017-09-09 | gingamc

Eskimo Polycrhome Wood Maskette, Alaska, c. 1880

In the distance, cars traveling the freeway became an auditory illusion of waves successively breaking on a transitory shore. The vehicular friction of simultaneous opposing directions creates a lullaby of persistence. Out of that euphony, a collective future sways.

Scientists agree that’s why our horizon is in flux.

I am from a place where personal belief in immortality shelters empty and expansive isolation. A place where desire modestly tucks itself into sanctioned quiet spaces. Its slow release is championed as strength, a virtue. Imagine all that repression sharpened into secret symphonies. How the fantasy of that released deviance dances in mortal bodies designed to betray through lust.

We return to where we came from.

There is purpose in the orchestration of such retrograde energy. As that motivation braids itself to creative practice, my habitual search for external validation has gone missing. This translation, more joy than sorrow, is a different remedy for endurance. The harvest is ready and yielding.

a whole orange, floating

2017-07-092018-04-02 | gingamc

“you might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is knocking.” — Lucille Clifton

artist: Scott Reeder, *Real Fake*, 2013; photo by Rachel Cromidas; location: Trump Tower, Chicago 2017

the hand’s sensitive intelligence
a found erotic reference
dangerous as a nation divided
beggars and thieves and other

whispering cacophonous choruses
our fears spill into codes
a new kind of Reconstruction
stumbling into mosaic beauty

he said the issue is not opportunity
while we stay flat footed, even in heels
summer jackets hide shame
in that way, it is easy

what is beneath the surface begs
it howls
remaining grounded has a sinister side
backlash by way of prophetic referent

cultural fronts

2017-06-182018-04-02 | gingamc

Wherever I go they quote people
who talk too much, the ones who
do not care, just so they can take the center
and call the plans.
— William Stafford (excerpt from Deerslayer’s Campfire Talk)

May 2017 (detail Oranges on Fire, 1975, Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel)

sifting accents, hardwood hustles, and transitory migrations
this is a time for wild-from-abandon imagination
blame the devil or self-manipulation for this perception

like the draw of a well positioned salt lick
he spoke of competition for promised visibility
extending territory by adjusting the frame of domination

desire and loss are higher forms of inspiration
motivated by such interruptions
we take all of this seriously as reflections that have no anchor

if it’s true there is more hope in intention
let that reality bruise
endlessly

sanctimonious

2017-06-11 | gingamc

Olivié Ponce NS1, 2011, enamel on framed plexiglass

Have you noticed the ports are heavily guarded?
Sea-salted windows cast sun shadows.
Layered cloudy fog entwined itself.
Such magnificent light!

We regenerate like tides.
As often as unjust references stick
to justified historical consequences.
This is not about you. Please stand back.

Relentless as waves and immeasurable as release,
we stand on shores carved by power.
Oh yes! We do want revolution.
In these dreams, we are holy reverence.

tender data

2017-05-142018-04-02 | gingamc

It’s not about truth. It is about faith. An orientation where the future has cult status. This brand of dislocation has been exalted to attract maximum anticipation.

II.

keeper of promises
a prophetic mothering
finally overcome, the sun pushes the moon to perform

III.

Our bodies warm with use.
Your eyes close in respect.
Private consumption whetted.

IV.

This is my origin: he celebrated our birth with strangers while she bled alone. As romantic as it may sound, this is not an apology.

catharsis

2017-05-092017-08-30 | gingamc

“Pale with the secret war of feeling.” — Charlotte Brönte

If there is something you need to say
say it now. We all have a way of moving
ever so gradually to our respective corners.

Misfortune finds the deserving; a symbiotic betrayal.
Extractive in nature, asking for what you want exceeds
loyalty. Linear in scope, this practice is my liberation.

Lips seek softness.
Teeth form defense.
What are the standard deviations of love?

Light’s capacity is to fill darkness.
Protect me from what I have learned.
May all justice be transformative.

At the end of the day
desire always wins.
Tender hooks of undulation.

versuchung

2017-04-162018-01-29 | gingamc

“The deep is in riot, the coastline is quiet…” Archers of Loaf, Chumming the Ocean

Laura McPhee. *Snowmobile Headlights*, Valley Road, Custer County, Idaho, 2004

the entrance is always different
always dramatic, the clouds look bruised

chaos its own predictability
then a King of Cups tarot card was pulled

light appeared filtered as if from inside a cathedral
poetics expand silently like prayer

temptation deserves awareness
that feeling: listen

nested privileges
unwound to their most fragile state

this is ephemeral revelation

communion

2017-04-022018-04-02 | gingamc

sunsets are starting to look Pacific coast again
pink light lengthening its reach
as clouds become incarnations of stampeding horses

(apocalyptic if that is your orientation)

the crown of flowers was her own creation
made from remnants of first-date napkins
forming a graceful relationship to reciprocity

those echoes found delayed in repressed rhythms
where she returns to these kinds of questions
as murmurations as stimulations as exchanges

(our intimacies measured by exhale)

she dreamt in currency, in time
scaling up as undoing: euphoric
this consecration mine and yours

open-sourced feelings

2017-03-192018-04-02 | gingamc

I’m here in a room and I have things arranged.
I have them likened to code, so they can often be changed. — Karate, Bass Sounds

I haven’t found the perfect way to describe you
sincerely shouting victories is something else entirely

the sun rose bland and round
that space between sky and water
absorbed all this energy

such openness feels chosen
I taste frustration on your breath
advancing in spirit and stature

aggression is its own logic
he hit you for the same reasons
he hit us: for your own good

a model of volatile benevolence
in political frameworks, the body does betray

waking up becomes a compulsion
reengineering you get what you ask for
I send this postscript as an invitation

reduction

2017-03-122018-04-02 | gingamc

News cycles are dominated by Russian dramas.
No one mentions rape in context anymore.
We’ve taken solace by decoding mass rhetoric.

I can imagine you beautiful and calm.
Our wandering like scrolling.
This landscape so literal.

Receipts as evidence as expressions.
Fisted conclusions neglect.
A rote search for light in darkness.

Time stretches into manufactured units.
By heart standards, this feels eternal.
Populist hyperbole interpreted as desire feels

dangerous

Some argue identity is residual.
You know it by its attributes.
These compulsory dreams are viral transfers.

Motives unmoored as debts to consent bloom.
Layered political pontifications soothe like lullabies.
I dare you to find love in this absence.

Liberation aside, how does this make you feel?
Inductive reasoning seduces. It penetrates.
Yes, this conversation is a calculated intermission.

Wait. This is my understanding of your manipulations.
A respite of obviousness – of borders unarmed.
Let us, both, reductively fade into this capture.

shame wars

2017-03-052018-04-02 | gingamc

Is irony the binary of literal?

Marta María Pérez Bravo - Para Ayudar a un Hermano (1994) — Marta María Pérez Bravo – Para Ayudar a un Hermano (1994)

Receptivity is a form and function of power.
Tree tops soften from light’s pressure as rays break to bend.
Collusive collaborations are their own manufactured commodities.
This contemporary capital vision is a muted song from the past.

Borrowed promises, fallowed lives, and lustful rationalizations are systemic desire lines, whose paths of consequence are worn clear. Your biases are showing. Bad.

We, all of us, are reclaiming pleasure.
Things are so intimate, so personal, these days.
Tensions and conflicts splayed.
We leave literary marks as evidence.

On whose authority is the question we need to be asking.
A different way of understanding omniscience. Please validate.

My sacred spaces need me.

Russian gossip

2017-02-262018-04-02 | gingamc

We ignore the narrator by only focusing on the frame.

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, “The Promises Were So Sweet,” digital print on poly satin, 2010, Great Plains Art Museum Permanent Collection.

The city moves, bends, and swallows.
An act of congress, a coming together.
He presented himself to me. I kissed, gently,
his upper thigh. Curated outfits, a collection of pants
and blouses, roll past me. Lunches bounce inside bags.
I keep writing to feel around the noise. Reinvested
memories, commitments, and occasional flashes of violence.
Internalized scandals are my own reputation to manage.

The train was crowded. No one could complain
about unwanted touching. I imagined her hand
moving slowly, without detection, up and between
my legs. Her fingers, warm and steady, found
their destination. Leaving behind permanent
invisible notes, secrets scrawled on the inside.
Messages shared as rumors as indisputable
associations like light shining through solid objects.

please

2017-02-192018-04-02 | gingamc

Make me laugh so I can stop breathing in this sadness.

There is suspicion around all this effort. Parcel out the doses.
Not all poems are meant to be serious, or anything at all.

The ocean is self-conscious in that healthy enlightened way.
Gratitude notwithstanding how this will unfold is mine to own.

Each admittance a proxy for loving so deeply.
Frames are other’s dramatic interpretations.

Never forget water dissolves rock and values aren’t talking points.
Your subjective reputation precedes you, so does your community.

Create your own triplines. Let go of tipping points. Launch reflexive debates.
Send shock waves of radical thoughts, mythologize perversions, and make hope relentless.

Narrate yourself beyond binaries. Imagine yourself unbought.

legislate the weather

2017-01-292017-02-03 | gingamc

I want to put you in a light that will hurt your eyes – Polvo, Feather of Forgiveness

whisper

He said he was going to take a walk around the block to clear his mind. Stretch his legs. Escape. He never came back. A map of states’s preferences for corn or potato chips forever frozen on his desktop screen.

Battle for references, a retirement to the absence of —

On Wednesday, I was reminded artists should “support each other religiously.” This community-level policy is seductive, whose root is “to lead astray.” Oceans of context transfer nervous energy. Is thinking out loud unprofessional?

Partisan frames explain our borders, infilled voids.

It’s come down to semiotic analysis of utterances. This weekly cathartic release looping endlessly to create a low frequency hiss. A similar process to the way valleys take the weight, form, and shape of foggy mornings or as secure as refuge.

public feelings

2017-01-012018-03-29 | gingamc

[such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes]

— E.E. Cummings

We’ve come undone, cumulatively, in the same way that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring warns. Ruled by misunderstandings, which is to say we are ruled by no one in particular, norms are large-scale projects of self-consciousness. It’s public infrastructure.

The ocean goes nowhere except to meet itself.
A private sensation, a mix of urging and friction.

Days bleed into opinion. It is not enough to simply be.
All this pressure to perform as heaven’s rewards remain on layaway.
I want to be inside that pejorative energy. Transposed survival.

Cut. Then paste. Seasons as witness to predictions that light seeks light.

gambling spirit

2016-12-042018-03-29 | gingamc

Let’s hold each other with a tenderness we never earned.
I humbly confess I have no strategic solutions, today.
Tomorrow does not exist within our current embrace.

Messages were slow to be received.
Communications were tangled passing through enemy lines.
All arbitrary and always binding, like paper hearts.

Solicitous profit tied up with bright strings of gratitude.
This time of year pulls tension to the height of joy.
Shadows flash, sparkle even.

Conscientiously objecting is expression beyond fragility of emotion.
There’s a masculine way to do this or something more powerful.
Place bets on queerly stacked decks as panic breeds discos.

All this, and more unsaid, guides us like the promise of beginner’s luck.
Glory bound towards trust towards you towards truth.
Come back. Let’s fight.

mimesis

2016-11-272018-03-29 | gingamc

what is your habit energy?

We perform our own strategies of consumption.
My short-term memories are hidden between my thighs.

Othered desires are masks. But for whose protection?
Entertainment is currently discounted as politics.

Feeling expendability like breath like faith.
You can order custom misfortunes or xxx or standard subjectifications.

Our stories are our truths.
This is my museum-quality curated experience.

cut on the bias

2016-10-192018-03-29 | gingamc

adipocere, hand embroidery on natural linen

The earth shook itself awake this morning.
With a low-key grumble and heavy embodied motion
our unnested Russian cat dolls fell, one by one.

The unnerved mountains had no comment.

We took a collective breath as clouds lined up like teeth
and moved gently to memorialize our survival.
As witness to the sublime, we occupied time.

Santayana, the philosopher, said history is nothing but recorded dreams.
The poet Stafford said divine is more of a claim.
Those stanzas are now trending.

There is a way to be in this world and this must be it.

holon

2016-10-022018-03-29 | gingamc

Christian Furr, That My Heart Should Explode with Tenderness (from the Juissance series), 2015 Inkjet with hand painting in acrylic with diamond dust on linen — Christian Furr, *That My Heart Should Explode with Tenderness* (from the Juissance series), 2015 Inkjet with hand painting in acrylic with diamond dust on linen

experts have named our environment “rape culture”
fueled by an economy that exports & imports incertitude
funny how even the state’s gospel won’t accept no
even with a sovereign request
another way fringed borders bleed reciprocity
thick as oil as war as water

desire can transform anything
corporeal physics as vim and vigor
like soft kisses melting hard intentions
it’s why embodiment alludes enlightenment
& landscapes matter when our eyes close
horizons become their own grounding binary

pressure is a gilded warning signal
jouissance its own casual experience
how deeply our metaphors inform us
as angels, as deviants, as complicit
love is in here somewhere, or should be

buttons

2016-09-252018-03-28 | gingamc

Did you know we have started living in isolation to prepare for colonizing Mars?

There is dedicated front cover news space to our collective denial about the basics of life on this planet: water, menstruation, dignity. A particular death-wish resistance to facts because we can’t face our feelings; our responsibility as witness to 24-hour broadcasted cruelty. Gripping so tightly to distance, we can think only about scale not urgency.

The 1960 Valdivia earthquake data reads like an ultrasound of the earth’s surface. What’s at our center?

“An ellipse is richer than a circle. It possesses two centers. It’s a dialogue.” — Louise Bourgeois

Those smallest details of absence and desire go almost unnoticed, felt as impetus. A survivor’s mentality. An orientation to want (hunger) as something outside of you, something to be experienced. Unapologetic formations to desire are apocryphal stories of purpose. They hold between their lines our remaining humanities. Revelation is all around us. A range no longer than a row of buttons.

thinking off

2012-02-122018-03-28 | gingamc

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.

Fritz Perls, “Gestalt Therapy Verbatim,” 1969

____________________________________________________________

We walked for miles. We strolled through residential neighborhoods that were eerily perfect. We were trespassing on a movie set about how “the other half” lives. Cars matched their houses. We didn’t come from such a manicured upbringing. Where I’m calling from is a place that bragged about its austerity.

There have been many days, far too many, when you tell me to breathe. The calming technique of composing emails in my mind as I try to sleep isn’t working and neither is remembering to breathe. The tightness in my chest is beginning to feel good, which is really bad. Hedonism is our weekend priority. I have no way to properly repay you. The debt is that high.

The found fortune read: You will soon gain something you have always wanted. It’s within this dichotomy of want and need that I struggle. This journey feels mutually exclusive but the destination of finding a complementary way to live an authentic life is what I’ve always wanted.

Be my tug boat captain. And I will be yours.

Cache Culture

I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. — Michel Foucault

desire