Poets and Writers and the Mysteries of Digital Serendipity

When Poets and Writers publishes one of your film poems (which you didn't submit to them and have no idea how they found, but would have gladly submitted had you known they published film poems in the first place) it would be awesome if they told you about it.  But I guess that would deprive you of the very pleasant surprise of discovering it three years after the fact while researching new places to submit new work online.

I am Not [ ] Enough (Erasure #5)

In common.  An entity
explicit or sublunary
what is does follow
the pair, that third thing
arises, perfectly safe
it will will this premise
a first step precisely
here
        conclusions
become particular, implicit
form god, the pair
wishing wishing to be
the maker.


(source material:  lit-digital.com)

For my father Bernard "Moon" Mullins.

Poem Explaining the Purpose of the Moon

I have a theory born in grief

though tempered by hope:

When night shrouds this Earth

after someone we love dies

the moon becomes a hole in the sky

is no longer the moon shining

the sun’s reflection down on us

but a portal, a window, letting in

a glimpse of limitless light

from a place we can’t usually see

It’s that portal each loved one

we lose steps through as they leave

us behind, only to emerge blinking

I imagine, smiling, a hand shielding

their eyes, in a place beyond

our lives.  A place somehow familiar

yet new.  A place they’ve felt before

but never known until now

And in that place they wait for us

though our seeing into where they are

through this moon, this hole in the sky

can only last so long, perhaps only as

long as our grief is fresh or as long

as our minds are capable of pulling

us back and forth between life and death

until this death becomes something

we can, we must, live with, because

somehow, the moon always seems

to become simply the moon again.

Except for those of us who know

otherwise.

Mull (An Absence)

I recently discovered Alan Bigelow's amazing digital literature website webyarns.  One of the many excellent pieces on that site is called Moby Dick, which drew my attention because of my friend John Minichillo's excellent novel The Snow Whale.  So I dove in.  First, this piece presents you with a number of "classic" literary novels which are summarized in four sentences.  Then it allows you to write your own.  The parameters: four sentences, 800 characters.  The gauntlet had been thrown down.  I went for it.  Here's the result:

Mull (An Absence)

Mull liked to mull so he mulled

day in, day out 

answer in the bottom of an empty glass: mull 

fly on the screen: mull.

Mull met an unexpected girl

fell out of mull and into love 

what he didn't know: the girl

loved to mull, not Mull.

Mull lost the girl to a man who mulled

and when he asked her to think it over

she said, "What's to think about?"

Now Mull had to mull so he mulled

day in, day out.

Three Ways of the Saw

I've been focusing on the recent publication of my first collection of short stories, Three Ways of the Saw. So not much has been going on here lately. If you're new to this blog, sniff around, there's some fun stuff. If you've been here before you've likely seen it all. So head on over to the Three Ways of the Saw blog, which is where I've been spending my time lately.

Read on!

Matt

Seven Stones

That tragedies can destroy what happiness there is in an instant.

That countless are dying and being killed right now.

That considering this is doing nothing to solve the problem.

As the whore packs his junk into a codpiece.

As a president signs lives away with her pen.

As I realize, again, how much less I am here without you.

Who I’ll never know.

What So Proudly We Hail (This is the Space Age)

Oh, say can. Oh, say can. Oh, say can.
You see the stars bleed their red troubles
across the junked night sky. You hear
the white light of the universe grinding
on an axis bold as love. You know
the blue purpose of our future. This is
the space age. And we are here to go.

Beatnik Sermon

You see that leaf, man?
That dog, that tennis ball
that piece of asphalt?
All the same yet all different!
That's holy! Holy is the curb
and my tennis shoe. Holy is every
eyelash and every flake of skin. Holy
is the sick wan light of the supermarket
and that old woman thumping
the melons two for one. Holy is
the surprise in the crackerjack box. Holy
is that baseball and the thrum of the sea.
Holy the shark's tooth and the wound.
Holy the black hole and the supernova.
Holy the infinite banged out
expansion of our universe which will
someday recollect into the cosmic
cannonball of each and every thing
only to explode again. Holy is
the ten million-named God-Matter
which is us and not us and everything
else simultaneously. Amen.

One Every 24 #48

A Means to an End

An endless suburb of concentration camps

Eviscerating ghost limb souls thrown to

The snap-jawed dog meat slaves crouched beneath

An electric chair assembly line powering more than

Enough atom bombs to vaporize the baby flesh from

The painted geisha faces of our misapprehension.

By this I mean I am here in my yard frozen

Over the bowl of sunflower seeds I'm setting out

For a squirrel who's somehow lost a leg while I see

Our screed of rationales drool from a severed head held

Aloft by the hair. When this film slaps free of its reel

An idea, picked vulture clean, remains: too much

Of what we’ve wrought begins with our wanting

Some living thing dead because someone believes

A given end justifies any means.

Addiction

A remix film about obsession and connection in the age of social media. More experimental films can be found here.

One Every 24 #47

Anecdote Hinting at a Recurring Fear

When he told B. B. it was terminal

The doctor likened the disease’s spread

To weeds taking over a lawn.

It’s impossible to get them all, he concluded.

What bullshit, B.B. thought at the whole idea of being

Shut off at the height of twenty-six

That a lawn survives with care in spite of weeds

And a goddamn doctor can’t even kill me

With an accurate analogy.

Radial Possibilities of Luminous Foreground Layered upon Incomplete Negative Space

This is not a Metaphor for the Relationship between Divine Intervention and Mass Comsumption

One Every 24 #46

Divination (Hepatoscopy)

You were not the lucky one
hopping through days
beneath the hunter's lazy eye
drawn askance, aimless.

Unfanged, your off head, delicate
ears, liver gnawed in the shade
as the cat read its own meaning
in your unwound guts splayed over

blood spotted stones. One future
do I see told in these remains:
we will battle with charmed feet
licked clean of their saving grace.

One Every 24 #45

Silent Movie with a Final Scene Inside Your Car

Luminous, exploding into the instant
We fall upon each other across the seats
Throw pancake looks against the levered
Light piling through the A.M. streets
Stunned by this quality production
Torn by yet another fried egg sunrise
And the shock of our disdain, such a mute
Imposition upon our fiery vomiting
The washed-out black and white grace
Inside our argued embrace rising as we rise
Through the lie of our being and the truth
We need to become each of us throwing
The other aside even as we're thrown
Aside by the other. And wan, so wan
Our pressed-glass daguerreotype pause
Beneath our precipice grip now dangling
Us at the very brink of us, as we are wanting
Rescue clinging to the lip of the zebra
Striped clapper, that toothless alligator
Mouth singing the live organ soundtrack
Wanting only gravity, closure, action
Between our fading in and fading out.

One Every 24 #44

Attention Beneficary (sic) Outing You Who are Not You #3

This is to intimate you
of a very important information
which will be of a great help to redeem
you from all the difficulties you have been
experiencing in getting your long overdue
payment due to excessive demand for money
from you by both corrupt officials
and Courier Companies after which your fund
remain unpaid to you. I am Mr. Joefrery Cole
the Financial Counselor and Director Monetary
and Capital Markets Department.
I'm a highly placed official
of International Monetary Fund. (IMF)

It may interest you to know that reports
have reached our office by so many
correspondence on the uneasy way
which people like you are treated
by Various Banks and Courier Companies
across Europe to Africa and Asia
and we have decided to put a stop to that
and that is why i was appointed to handle
your transaction here in Nigeria. All


Governmental and Non-Governmental parasites
NGOs, Finance Companies, Banks, Security
Companies and Courier companies which have
been in contact with you of late have been
instructed to back up from your transaction
and you have been advised NOT to respond
to them anymore since the IMF is now
directly in charge of your payment.
You are hereby advised NOT to remit
further payment to any institutions
with respect to your transaction
as your fund will be transferred to you
directly from our source.

I hope this is clear. Any action contrary
to this instructions is at your own risk.
Respond with immediate effect and we shall
give you further details on how your fund
will be released. Also call me as soon
as you send the e-mail (joefreycole@att.net)
so that you will be given an immediate response:

Direct Hotline: +234-813-669-4069
DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR
Mr. Joefrery Cole
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)
FINANCIAL MONITORY DEPARTMENT/UNIT

One Every 24 #43

Us Kids in Left Field

Snuck through windows after dark to pinch
Marlboros between thumbs and index fingers

Arced the glow of those half-smoked hot-boxed
Cigarettes over the chain link home run fence

Sprawled on trimmed grass passing a bottle
Between the boys we were and the men

We imagined ourselves to be. Once
Named Royal, Angel, Tiger, Twin

We made a point of tripping over the chalked
Foul line as we struck out for home at dawn.

One Every 24 #42

broken manifesto

fistula asks aneurysm
what of it, (the how of our mind's eye
watching over the body's desire
to not go terribly wrong all at once
how we're cut loose by our oblivious
obvious: our collected matter's
impossible chance to make history
or thank you for a blessing given
at the snag of a sneeze, to know
and forget the constant rivers
of our blood, the work done by liver
heart and lung, the muscle's torque and each
thing given by the continual electrical
hum of brains, the toddler's laugh
the unavoidable act of your thinking
these words you read, the simply impossible
coagulations of physics proven by our being
and that mute purity lost and found
within) our need for beliefs born
through with the ruin of creeds?

One Every 24 #41

Slough

Sick sinking deeper into the mud
Hollow on the inside, black
Water taint to the lust for this
Bottled between stagnant thighs

Your wound, our sore, my inflammation
Says the mass of dead tissues
Separating us from the living. Cast

Off, we’re shedding our reptile minds
Rising up from below the surface
Our smoother skin beyond the lace
Left behind, a fragile split revealing

Our newer selves as we writhe
Toward the shine.

One Every 24 #40

You Have Pakage (sic) Outing You Who You Are Not #2

Greetings.



I am Mr David White , i have been
waiting for you since to contact me
for your Confirm able Bank Draft
of $50.000.00 United States Dollars,
but I did not hear from you since that time.



Then I went and deposited the Draft
with FEDEX COURIER SERVICE, West

Africa, I Traveled out of the country
for a 3 Months Course and I will

not come back till end of November.

What you have to do now is to contact

the FEDEX COURIER SERVICE
as soon as possible to know when
they will deliver your package to you
because of the expiring date.

For your information,The money
you will send to the FEDEX COURIER

SERVICE to deliver your Draft direct
to your postal Address in your country

is($210.00US) Dollars only being Security

Keeping Fee of the Courier Company so far.

Again, don't be deceived by anybody to pay
any other money except $210.00US Dollars.
I would have paid that but they said no
because they don't know when you will contact them

and in case of Dumorrage.You have to 

contact the FEDEX COURIER SERVICE now
for the delivery of your Draft
with
 this information bellow;

Contact Person:Mr. Mike Aderson


EMAIL: fedexcourier1@ufo.tc

Telephone: +2348074009126

Finally, make sure that you reconfirm
your Names,Postal address() and Direct 
tell
number to them again to avoid any mistake.



Yours Faithfully,

Mr David White