want – Cache Culture

strictly personal

The Consciousness Raisers

they meet on Fridays when
the women home from the factories & the offices
& on Sunday afternoons

At night they lie in bed
& hold hands
counting the stars

—John James from the collection Kinderlieder (1992)

I.
I saw a dream catcher hung inside a USPS truck.

II.
There is a shadow side of salvation, of rescue, of deliverance
from a foreclosed future. I want you to imagine the energy needed
to be in a constant state of arrival.

III.
I dream. The Pacific Ocean waves are frozen solid; locked, raw and stilled. No sound.

IV.
The news circles like a drain. The production of meaning taking
the path of least resistance. I write about the weather to keep track of time.

V.
I dreamt the Washington Monument was draped in Christmas lights in July.

VI.
I take in the beg and prompt of morning.
Familiar neighborhood sounds rise in courage
and with stamina. My waking memory, still a hinge,
holding onto yesterday.

scrawl

I’m begging you. Please don’t use this time wisely.
I want you to waste every swollen second
as your breath catches inside your abandoned throat.

I’m sure you’ve felt this ineffable pleasure before?
Being unwanted, unseen, silenced: useless reputations.
What these words leave inside you matter to me.

the saturation capacity of a week in December

That moment when the word incarnates, finds its skin: yes.
— Lia Purpura, from the essay “Sugar Eggs: A Reverie”

photographer: Leon Levinstein, New York, 1981

I’m gnawing off my own survival
and feeling full at the end of another year.

That any private emotion can still be felt
feels victorious. Sure, sensationalism

feels good, but only for so long.
Invisible patterns, an intentional result,

form this temporality, which may be also be
averse pacification. It’s not even midwinter

and yet we want—phantom abundance.
The way marginalia signals scarcity.

That kind of resourceful:
our aggregate bodies immersed in attention.

Pasteurized sameness. But wait—
there’s still anticipation—

a specific kind of waiting.
What clouds teach us.

edgeplay

“No matter what disintegrating influences I was experiencing, the writing was the act of wholeness.” —Anaïs Nin, In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays

OWING TO LACK OF INTEREST, TOMORROW HAS BEEN CANCELLED, artist unknown

A local politician sells
subtext. Mixing patterns
of outbreaks, denial, aggressive
neglect, profit, waste. Time
monetized into relativity of spectacle.
Subterranean realities. July descends into August.
Clouds sail by dry as bones. Crowns above spread
shade. Our vernacular noisy wagons, isolated
oak savannas, quarantined in translation.
Wanting to do what we see; evidence.
Let’s take these metastasized days
and ride them into darkness. Be silhouettes,
featureless. Are you aware of all the consequences
when accepting the advertised risks?

electric hum

How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.

—last two lines of Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s “July”

“Whose Values?”, Barbara Kruger exhibit, Getty Museum, July 2015

Trust your gut. I don’t want you to get lost in the details. This is a map,
a blueprint, a ledger of interactions, process or form or whatever
you’ve been taught to see.

Guests of former selves clamor. There are fires and no water. Heat domes and variants. Return-to-work and shelter-in-place. Critical race theory and Big Lies™. Long division and 4th of July car sales. Blueberries are rotting
on the bush and border theatre sells out. The routine of keeping it together. Line by line, word by word, click by click. 21st century prefabrications.

How can I hurl myself deeper
into this life

—Ellen Bass, “The Long Recovery”

I’m a maximalist by virtue. I want more than an average understanding.
I’m the oldest daughter of an amateur bull rider. Surface-level commonality is temporary as an ocean wave. I want to be like the tides, consistently influential to the point of unforgettable. Inverting the fates,
nothing unimportant.

this is the best time of year to be a futurist

Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out.
Let it all pass. Let it go.
— May Sarton, from Volume One: Journal of a Solitude (Norton, 1977)

As evening’s frantic pink light slips into a lavender twilight hour,
gravity continues to hold us in place like constellations.
We string and loop lights around the apartment to project
hope’s fractal reflections everywhere. Yes, we really do
have to keep going and salvage tomorrow’s fragile glittering promises.
Predictions of our survival will be found in the how of our doing.
When oranges begin to ripe on the West Coast, that’s the signal
to gather for the next new beginning. Heed tradition’s clairvoyance
and pull on the shiniest threads to prepare for a better future. Pop! Fizz!
Incite! Even in the expanding darkness, prophetic renewals
of mutual liberation trend as lack rages on. Hope brings so much to want,
manufactured and genuine, next year no longer waits.

crowns & canopies

“Without touch, God is a monologue.” — Andre Dubus from Broken Vessels: Essays

“‘Tax the rich’ talk gaining steam” headline from East Bay Times, 14 August 2020

edge of collapse

absence entrance,

a trance

“FASTER, CHEAPER MAY BE THE WAY TO GO” headline from East Bay Times, 10 August 2020

I’m craving land
spread wide
open.

“Judge” partial headline from San Francisco Chronicle, 11 August 2020

orange primary sun
a macabre atmosphere

the news scrolls
trolls concern for structures

malefic energy
to make decisions

humans are hardwired
to scan for threats

there’s a moment
after the emergency

I feel stupid
like I overreacted

I survived
but didn’t stay calm

making everything sacred
takes so much

in my dreams,
I asked for time

end of the 3rd quarter | 2019

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.“ —Saskatchewan farmer saying

Masao Komura, ‘OPTICAL EFFECT OF INEQUALITY’, computer graphic based on an algorithm using and displaying the greater-than sign, 1968

a quietness calls
stars still groggy
from shining all night
our tongues found light
in caves of darkness
bound by touch
we hold tight
such ritual informs
produces distills
grand obscene thoughts
bent knees
rabid digits
intake release
revelations replicate
unseen feedback a risk
strung across suffering
that has no reflection

apologia

Joni Mitchell, skating on Lake Mendota, Madison, WI, Joel Bernstein, 1976, gelatin silver print

I’ve realized I have seen more Passion Plays than I knew. I come back, here, again. Today is another dispossessed day. News forms around emotions. I stopped believing in Saviors a long time ago. The ending is predictable. From above and from below, inside and out, this internalized desire for external validation starts feeling like an intentional defense. In 1971, James Baldwin said something will rest something will remain. Retraction survives in all this chatter. Context protecting accusers are familiar to me. I learned that language at home and in school. Resale is always at a premium. Redo. Undo. Redo again. Coffee and tiger’s eye stone, water, land and sky meet angled. This, now, is the everything I’ve ever wanted.

music from the balcony

new wave vengeance frames this reflection. we are now, again.
2018: masses react and subjectively perform aggression.
yes, I do think differently. epistemic relevance matters.

THE MUSIC FROM THE BALCONIES NEARBY WAS OVERLAID BY THE NOISE OF SPORADIC ACTS OF VIOLENCE, Edward Ruscha, oil paint on canvas, 1984.

What a savage year. Calendar time and actual time disassociated. Let go or be dragged. I got dragged and then I let go. In this protracted state, I mended critical boundaries and broke open new patterns. I made the days useful to me. I wrote about cowboys while breathing in fire. I listened and was seduced. I transmuted silence, my way. Drowning in manufactured violence and drama, we held each other longer and tighter. I saw urgency extract exquisite ideas and leave behind ghosts still in motion. Recognizing that glitch, I give myself infinite permission to fail, to risk, to revive. I still believe revolutions are frenetic desires and armor myself contextually. Curiosity is my ideal pace. I follow cats and poets. I came into this world greedy. I need reminders when my body grips fear: be awake for soft pink sunrises and orange suns floating into fading darkness. It is my responsibility to source these personal validations and ritualize inspiration. Reflex grace. Find balance in distractions and create sacred ceremonies with your hands on my hips.

rejoice

“Know that you are prior to the first day you witnessed.” —Nisargadatta Maharaj

Audre Lorde was light years ahead when she said our visions begin with our desires. These fragments glitter. I integrate language queerly. This seriousness is earned as the contemporary moves at the speed of drones.

Some still apply ancient alien theories to the present.

I want off this boring ride.

cache culture is a collection of intimacy and a consecration of infinite justifications. My Sunday best. I source symbolic actions because they structure the silences I see between each chosen word. I am in active witness.

Finding the shape of darkness, I rejoice. That means light is at the edges.

wish list

maybe I do want you to feel intimidated by me

Rochester, New York, Nathan Lyons, 1978, gelatin silver print

I want a revolution as reckless as cowboys with broken backs.
Throwing restraint to the western winds, a favorable direction,
& towards that edge where darkness is shaped into possibility,
I wait familiar in shy quiet impatient.

I want a revolution as prolific as chants for collective safety.
Born from burn scars so large you can see it from a distant
universe, a reminder we will never be in control so long as
money motivates our hustle for pretentious liberation.

I want a revolution as tender as loving in present tense.
An immediacy that respects our inherited kinetic energies.
Until then, I’ll gather productive & discover curious tensions
sensual as thunder replying to lightening’s transfiguring danger.

In protest and in wealth, I want a revolution that gives as much as it takes.

august is a glitch

my jaw has been clenched shut for three days
in a trance, I wait

Nathaniel Evans, 2015, *A Message* [oil on canvas]

sounds of skateboards grinding concrete float
common as the sun rising above distant freeways
this is a scene framed by palm tree ascensions

bus stops concentrate waiting strangers
wanting lives that respond versus react
a wish more violent than fading starlight

fear-riddled dreams are an intuitive compass
the future is bigger than we can ever pretend
metaphors swell as waves of silent witnesses scroll

in transit, temporary, I thrash

we live promised lives

And then will come my turn toward considering the poem as a set of strategies.
— William Stafford, You Must Revise Your Life

My aesthetic genealogy is borrowed from a working poetics. A magpie practice of creative slanted interruptions. One of my favorite writing habits is to post on Sundays. Years ago I discovered this practice as a way to reclaim time lost to benign neglect. It was a way to take back a day formerly dedicated to church services that framed ideal bodies as those willing to give up their souls.

Forgive this brief editorializing break. I’ve wandered to the edge of today’s subject.

It is safe to assume the forensics of great writers are investments in process.

For the last twelve and a half years, I traced the shapes of memory — collective and personal — in this wide open space. I anchored active examination into subtitled weekly posts. I curated evidence of expansion through parallel interpretations and felt for traction inside line breaks weighted by punctuation’s invitation to pause. I am aligned when tone reflects visual structure.

This time last year I was organizing myself to study Audre Lorde’s time in Berlin. Today I want to capture my emerging intention to study William Stafford this fall. The boundaries of this poetics inquiry are a promise to continue to carve out curious time. It is an extension of how conscious practice cleaves to the promise of honoring spirit. I aim to explore and investigate Stafford’s pacifist approaches — specifically conscientious objector — to writing poetry, his teaching methods of writing poetry, and his graceful rejection of competition.

Our days are urgent as parents wait for children to find them. Climate and change are conjoined into violent denials. Stafford practiced creative resistance strategies during WWII and the Vietnam War.

What might we borrow to alter our endangered lives?

repeat after me

a prompt significance of scale
all days pull forward, if you are lucky
connecting fascination to scarcity

generic worries an organic undoing
we burn fuel to buy: eggs, cheese, & bread
overwhelmed, we fear waste

what does it mean to be loved more when you are gone
absent swallowing
light years from your guilt, shame replicating comfort

a feeling like deserve
repeat after me: there is so much to hope for
& even more to remember to want

speculative practice

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 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