sound – Cache Culture

ransom

“…those who fight against prophesy only draw it more tightly around their throats.” —Madeline Miller, Circe

First, I heard the whispers—then screams. A public audience
formed opinions. Within that poetics, an image burns beyond
what used to be memory. Like a curve seen from a highway.
Not quite perverse but ordinary as a Sunday. After the crowd left,
I heard the graves sing. I thought about sugar, fire, and energy
taking the shape of a ransom. Formulas of demand and release.
Nervous echoes continue to fill the gaps. To receive, I take.

pigeonhole (gossip)

“The absurd does not liberate; it binds.” —Albert Camus

I catch a rainbow in my hand.
You remind me that even in stillness
light breaks sound. I take that fracture
and bury it deep inside myself.
I want my darkness to mean something.
You stand desperate. The concept of “self”
broadens into a flattened “we”. Self-appointed,
I anoint you and under faith’s observation
we begin to believe we matter.

counting light

Can’t quite get to the sound…
— See You at The Movies, J Mascis

Untitled, Holland, MI 2015, Victoria Crayhon

Between us and god—
open mouth, open paw—
we count the seconds
inside a clap of thunder
and crack of lightening.
Someone spills a prayer—
blushes of winter sun—
troubled by the quiet break
in diminishing sound.
That switch to without—
pause, absence—
eclipses the gathering light.

happy ending as chaser

To strangers I must seem
alive.

—Jane Kenyon, a line from “Now Where?“

I THINK IM DUMB / MAYBE IM JUST HAPPY (creator: unknown)

Based on rumors of math, scientists believe if they move Jupiter’s orbit the Earth will be “more habitable”. I have the same foolish desire when capturing moving light by using future perfect verbs and modified nouns.

What might be translated from the way light sounds after saturating iridescent city pigeon feathers? I think light and time become sacred geometry. Ordinary as questions ruptured clever and bright.

Your majesty is now gender neutral. Please comply. Receptivity remains bearded as you wait for affirmation. That you found lack of detail a form of stillness means I can trust you to keep secrets. Plumb that male gaze.

manic melancholia

Everything is just enough to be the same—
delusional observation—everything except
for the unwelcome return of an orangered sun.
The sky is no longer a place to look up to.

GOD IS MY VACCINE, Frank Stoltze, LAist (August 2021)

Wednesday news: 34 wildfires
have started in the last 24 hours.
Have started is an example
of present perfect tense.
As in, trees of all types and ages
have started screaming.

So many remain illiterate
about events they claim
have never happened—to them.
Blind to the sound of yellow. Deaf
to exploding blues and facile ghosts.
Forgive me, you wanted this memory to be precise.

talking, for some, is filling time

self-portrait in *Mother’s Day Daises* (Dorothea Lange, 1934), Oakland Museum of California, 2018

confirmation is a need
during Steinbeck summers
lifting up prayers
by day and profitable hour
just one way to count time
while Siberia and Los Angeles burn

a poet said truth is a promise
is conspiracy
is part of the weather
is a chain of events
an affect of algorithms
our unconscious

this wanting desire to influence
counterfeit double consciousness
divergent as sonic traces
bending poetics of disaster
to experience thinking out loud
together on a mesoscale