Friday, April 25, 2014

Asuncion, c’est fluide

Jesse S. Mitchell

So wonder at the eyes so monstrous that wander dead aimless over golden words so luminous without that brief divinity or ponderous pause and blameless.
And chill to believe we are thinking beasts of sounds and movable joints and bones of imagination, stories so bold and overflowing
And trusting things so close to ease and beautiful that uncoiling lets slack the soul and drifting
Makes incredible speed over all the surface of all the everythings.
But hail, hail, hindsight, that we do not expire escaping, without letting free one breath from our lips without knowing its destination.
The predetermined tribe, the fate, the fated, the living life,
The demonic by any other name
But the angels by desire.
the
Fierce.
The joy, the burning, the consuming in the fire.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

2.


 All you dear dear amoralist wanderers (upon the tops of waves) through the mazes 
Of dispossession,
I offer you a chimera,
To shine a light
Behind the screen 
On something of an old fashioned Naga queen.
A human heart unfettered to a human mind,
Unopposed to contradiction
Unafraid of contraction
In thrall of only warm warm wisdom
And little known passion
And without placid or pleasant hope of place
Or situation.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Sea Snakes (Hydrophiinae)

Jesse S. Mitchell

Sea Snakes

recently released, a collection of plays : Sea Snakes (Hydrophiinae)
check it out here: Sea Snakes (Hydrophiinae)
or here: Sea Snakes (Hydrophiinae)

Friday, April 18, 2014

Cartagena

Jesse S. Mitchell

And rainy streets that stumble down and sudden downpours that drench your feet and back alleyway-drifts that spring up in hectic fits
Fits
 and corners stuffed with this independent business,
Tempting-changeling like bower birds, trying to make a go of it. Carnival barkers and newsprint shills, broken off words and movie deals.
And what heaven acquires…
Overcome and drowsy down, hazy trace and spirit bound.
Hell loses…
And tastes like blood-spit
The sort of thing that happens with busted lip.
And what Hell loses…
All sensation
And all gone.
Earth regrets…
And looks blurred green sky
The kind of distance that comes
With hard-crossed eyes.
And what Earth regrets…
Or with falling down and smacking face
Knocks you brutal all over the place.
Dazed
Saved.
Man forgets.
From careful tedium, strolling soaked
Through tepid wet Cartagena
Broke.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Double Blind Paramaribo Revision 1

Jesse S. Mitchell

I have this post colonialist/neo-colonialist bug in my ear.  Everything I hear kind of comes in though that buzz.  Excuse me. 

 It’s the isotope Megiddo, a little burr in our cell walls, makes us the apocalyptic sort
Also gives us eyesight
usually confused for spiritual insight.
But you look up and you get a little glint in your eyes, everything is so gold and so bright.
And things get so easily blurred,  all sorts of lights and halos of light, ringlets.
And you look up
And you look up into the sky and it is like an eagle is the sun,
A big ole bird filled with avian light,
Two big wings, one for morning
And one for night.
And we mistake the dark under shadow of its passing flight
 for something other than a collections of stars and nonwaking hours
So everything is dream, nothing but dust gathered in the seams.
but
Everything is sleep.

I lived my life, one dumb animal amongst a hundred million other dumb animals. They never noticed me.

“First of all I detest all of this poetry shit, so don’t try to come at me with that. Listen, I can’t even stand to read that Byron and Shelley drivel or anything Modern either, it’s no better, a bunch of gibberish noise with a handful of filthy words, don’t ever add up to anything.  I wanted to be Dalton Trumbo.  I wanted to be Dashiell Hammett.”

But
I am regimental with my habits, every little tick, every little crumb.
But
I’m no better
No better
Better
Better
I’m no better at all.

but

I’m not that at all.  I’m a blank white sheet of paper all overgrown with ink marks and fingerprint smudges, pin lines running up the sides like creeping vines and Strangler Figs.  We’d both collapse…
I’m no better.


…forget