Art

HALLUCINATION SPIRALS: REALITY SNAPS – D.C. Wojciech

a conversation with former & future selves

 

“There is no doubt that our known universe is divided into two clear tendencies: that which tends to harden and that which tends to soften. This is the present situation.” 

– Remedios Varo

 

i.

 

contemplating the fate of the butterfly wheat-based diets the power of the mind the mind power 

of cranial grapefruit chewing at the wind like you’ve never been hungry in yr life

twisted paths forests of denial crater lakes mythic floods

topographies of thought once enamored by the spectacle but that was before my first conditions were met, tell everybody at the clinic the doctor specializes in prolonging death, yeah

prod the deceiver for answers salute the ones who fought and lost tell yourself you’ll get to it later

the bees over the horizon are growing impatient but they’ll never bury me in honey

i remember when the myth was first born on my tongue

you had to kiss me to believe anything i said

and even then the only way out of this place hasn’t been written yet

the last time i spoke to a poet all i could think of was Lorca & the firing squad

the guns the bills the monuments the destruction of our hope i won’t let them take yr last words 

don’t ever close yr eyes at sun down unless you’re looking for Tamalpais within you

on this table top we watched the sun rise over a city who hadn’t yet made us 

what we needed from each other

right place wrong time as it goes with holding hands in gravel pits

still when i see mountains i think of you with yr energy yr walk yr warm eyes yr cigarettes 

& the women the nights lip gloss & books

or maybe i was standing too close to my shadow when we both discovered how to wake the dead on Water Ave

some days 2008 feels like it was yesterday

some days it feels like it was last year and it is or it was and it’s gone now 

some days it feels like one of those dreams you don’t remember but feel you’re walking with a new ghost

at 4:30 a.m. when the eyes open on their own & breath breathes on its own & blood flows on its own 

& maybe the hidden history of carpentry & stone cutting is much simpler than previously expected

either way let the silence of caterpillar prevail i will raise my voice to be kind & ornery towards its teachers

 

ii.

 

the last time i heard gun shots i saw both of us running through the plate glass window

but that is only when past selves refuse to raise their voices and remind present selves of dandelions, men on the moon, doors to the cosmos in the ear drum, etc.

and i don’t have enough cigarettes left to tell if this is a robbery or if i’m losing my mind, etc.

still you may hear a voice from 1997 clutching a rosary under the desk 

or a child baring yr resemblance

dialing a stranger’s number at the pay phone to ask if their refrigerator is running

because there’s no explaining the missing guitars at the pawn shop every time the wind cries Mary 

whoever that is doing yr thinking for you should be fired, like last week

don’t ever let an invisible enemy tell you what it is & what it isn’t

love yr neighbor and treat the traveler among you with a smile

what else can explain bottled water for $1 or annual cost of living increase reports

but a lack of love for self and other

but the feeling of being fucked with, deceived, taken to task 

if this comes to you late, or not at all just know i was busy saving myself from myself

in the cornea’s reaction to light in menageries of assumption upon stair cases of wind & rain 

did you sit

contemplating the facts of mesquite the blood of the oak the stories written on strange faces

the voices in the branches in confiscated dreams in door frames of shaking foundations 

in the heart 

our voices strangle the same clock

 

iii.

 

you who survived their schooling you who sought solace 

you who tasted life and never looked back

when they realize they cannot eat money it will already be too late for the dead to begin singing

i too have seen something in the way of things

i’ve seen it crawling back to its hole when diplomats loosen their ties for the night

& in between the lines of teleprompters when speakers refuse to see themselves nakedly 

trembling in the hands of prayer when you realize you’re talking to yourself

or in the eyes of a man with a grudge when you can’t watch his hands

whatever you do, do not pollute yr own body of water with theories of other men

Kant wasn’t with you when yr neighbor’s house got shot up Nietzsche wasn’t with you

when yr sister’s house got shot up nobody was there when you first felt adrenaline

running through a chain link fence with an innocence lost on yr shoulders

there is a strange opening where i left these words now that i am nothing

i pray for the others who no longer have faces or names

still refusing to walk backwards through these hallways of broken mirrors

and the countless masses who would prefer to see this world burn than to smother the flames

you can’t blame them for not knowing what you know now

“convictions are more dangerous foes of the truth than lies”

 

 

Source Materials:

Something in the Way of Things (In Town) by Amiri Baraka (Youtube)

Julian Silverman: Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia (AnthroSource)

There is Life After Death (ARTOKLASIA)

Anterior Wattage by Will Alexander (Entropy)