HALLUCINATION SPIRALS: REALITY SNAPS – D.C. Wojciech
February 18, 2020
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)