~~

~~~~

~~~

WORD-YUM

~~~~~~

somapoetics

64-69

~~~

~~~

The more we know, the wider it comes.
Herbert Guenther

~~~

for Susan

~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~

STOP!

~~~

Before you go a step further answer this

~~~

SOMA QUIZ

~~~

Your virtual well being within these pages or, if you prefer,
ventriloquogrammic passageways, may teeter on the verge
of a certain term, whose relation to you, and all you may or
may not come to know by it, is constant and indestructible.

The Quiz is naturally Multiple Choice (i.e., Amphibolous):

~~~

WORD-YUM =

1~~ The taste of saying

2~~ The Mother of Us All (and Everything)

3 ~~Knowing the Female Word carnally

4 ~~muy-drow (literally “very seed-grow,” Islander parlance for “inseminate” [reflexive], esoterically
~~~~the verbal dimension of mirrors: why it happens backwards)

5 ~~Utterance in the Middle Voice, the Base Tone of which Uncle GIG names: irrepressible inner laughter

6 ~~The Black Widow Rose, secret term in the Vajra Art of Gardening, where the plant strangles itself
~~~~at the Calyx to renounce itself in flowering, then collapse into seed

7 ~~The principle of Non-Hausdorff Verbality whereby no two words are necessarily separable

8 ~~A license plate married to the N.Y. tag: 343-YAB:  Father as number

9 ~~The Figure of Lognosis as the Great Self-Intercoursing Body (Soma) of the Knowable Multiverse

10 ~`Poetic Catastrophe, a snap in the self-recognition system, a quill between the eyes, deep scattering
~~~~~of the verbal impulse striking the brain and subsequent declassification in the Mind-field

11 ~~Swirling claybodies self-catastrophizing on Susan’s Wheel, translates as a Hexagram of poems [64-69]

12 ~~In the Tallahassee philosopher Douglas Taylor’s phrase: The Science of the Invenereal

13 ~~Password to the City of Interface where Self-imaging self-bodies forth in time, and shelters its Kind between

14 ~~The wag of the Mighty Urword

[Answer: #………………]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~

~~~

WORD-YUM SOMALOGUE

~~~

~~~

A WISH WILL BE GRANTED AFTER A LANG DELAY~

~~

And what does it mean that your fortune

embodies a misspelling?

That good fortune is ever

a languorous affair?

That the tongue must labor for its lasting Yes

under the spell of langue d’oc?

That the cookie is poison

and your pleasures will drag you under?

That wishes are to the shifting shape of the Way

as botched graphemes to the hidden wholeness

of the Word in the flesh?

And where does the hole in rightwriting lead?

Is it the secret No in noetics

or the secret Po (Splitting Apart) in poetics?

And where is he running the Gnu

of our longing, gnoemicly speaking?

Crooked Imamence …

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~but I meant to write

Immanence—what gets into me?

Is it devil or dogma that twists this alphabeta

waving vine, can plants talk?

And can man live by questions alone,

virtual viralities—has it got me

in the length of my body, the bug

of self-perversion, am I destined

to be a patient of Dr. Lang [sic],

schizophrenic savant

mauling words into their

Weird perfections—

or is it root-madness, split

parole, radicophrenia, breaking

the soil of the predictive gesture

at lang last—

langsam, lente lente

currite noctis verbi

Time runs, we ride home in our errors

or Error immigrates in our fortunes

or the cookie is yana

and its sweetness is only simple

in its apparent grammaticality—

but I still recall that lifelong message

in Ho’s Szechwan Restaurant in Altadena:

~~~

WISELY AND SLOWLY THEY STUMBLE

WHO RUN EAST

~~~

langsam und

~~~~~~~~~~~~~gnoetically they

fall on their faces

or in their syntax

(visage of our withholdings)

who would saunter with Thoreau

as East as we can get

without deserting the half-spelt wife, America,

the bitter

word, the broken and

spoken

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The long in coming

~~~~~~

~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~

somapoetics 64

Back Home

~~~

(for Bob Quasha and John Magner)

Waving our favorite number
with the sound of yab yab yab
yab, Fourth, we are home again
you and I, whoever we are
we were this much, as far
as we can get away
is how far there is to go
and as lost as is possible.
We get faced around.

“““““““““““““`There is a break
in every thought, wherein
we get faced around
each time differently.
So now we are on the downswing
winding along the Concord, and into
the Everglades, back home,
down the throat of our bitter land
into the stomach:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~““we are the ache
in the stoma of the subtle body
and we return, along the sensation,
by way of disease. This is my first pastoral.
I offer you a mood I am in need of knowing
to fill a hole as deep as
“““““““““““““we is many
in one lifetime. As many me’s as time will hold to.

Waving in our number we jab and ex-
claiming joy we clamor to the deepest depression
of our lives, and sleep through this part of the movie.
Today I signed the Library Register and wrote the e’s
of my name backwards. They stared the g’s of my self
in their cortical face. The old question intrudes:
Will saying it make it any better?
And at this instant, as I look down at the Register
perplexed, I hear
~~~~~~~~~~~~~Arvie calling my name,
Mother, 1912 N.W. 24th Ave., early ’50s, I am hiding
from John, seeking a way to return home unnoticed
thus stranding him in the desire to find me. We are
only human, I say to myself, but it doesn’t work: de-
­pressed in my hole I hear my name:

““““““““““““““““`Geo-
“““““““edge—the cleft
in the center of the word as I hear it, coming back
across the page, from e to g, the hole
in the present, greater than the absence
of its parts. What has been lost is everything.

This is my first pastoral elegy. I have slipped
thru the gap again, back to where all and everything appears
backwards.

A wavicle within my number, so reduced, contracted
in voice, I want to wave my fist in protest, one
against many, but the hero lags, jabs himself, re­-
cognizes the sound:
“““““““““It’s only Arvie’s voice
calling me in the mother tongue, that takes me
to the brink of myself, earth-edge
as far as I go. As far as back.
Dangles in the hairy jungle of physical memory,
a loss for every cell, extracting history.
That’s the way she said the name, the double
syllable Geo-wedge of the South, embodies
the knowledge that
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ends failing to meet
cease to be ends, and become shards
of your name.
~~~~~~~~~~~So they do. Now they are,
now they aren’t. To observe them
is to see their failure, and grant them
magical success, twisting the past
for its juice. Hello Mother, at last we can
meet, sharing as we do this horde of blood, I write
from this far away. We weep together, Bob, and ride
our syllables from hole to hole, unfaithful at last
to our contractions, lifework of the inner midget,
this puny cell of the creator, Miami of any map,
as we slip our weary limpets over the cortex of the planet
hoping to catch some shuteye for a lifetime or two.
“““““““““““““““““““““““Hello
again. It’s all a matter of fruit and eyes, interrupts
the female voice that slits the night:
““““““““““““““““`If you meet Soma,
cut his head off.
“““““““`For once we obey. I mean
we keep listening, no rest
for weary travelers, perplexity
in our every word.
“““““““““Her gown,

Moon over Biscayne Bay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~

somapoetics 65

Vajrapoetic Noaxis

~~~

(for Aimée Seyfort & D. Seyfort Ruegg)

Consider the end of Jerusalem, how it begins
in fact, ancient Albion enters the Primal Torsion
still wearing his Lilith, dark side of the word,
and together they constitute the juncture
of color and space, time and form, the inside
of someone’s intimate relations at peak of pleasure
and the disrupted spiral of your ear,
unclosable like the eye, uncrossable like fruity center.
“Like”?—The connective tissue tells all and nothing.
And reaching the amphibolous node, time-warp in noespheric
virtual space, the cast of the fisherman’s net
out:

in sleep you touch the other end
of waking, and the submarine flower of gold
opens backwards,

“““““““““““says our Catch.
I doze at the thought of sleep,
or the threat of ends, still unwilling
to go in for dinner and so
terminate the game of the day,
and I ask, calling up the need through the cleft in my name:
Why are we here?
““““““““`Why indeed, says the Gap, and I break
into knowing: We are thrown here,
we blow out the middle of the S-curve of Soma
as any self-structuring organism self­-
catastrophizing on a daily basis.

““““““““““““`Anything
becomes its name.
“““““““““Say Lotus and It mentions
Itself, to anyone who listens.
“““““““““““““`Sit with me
on this potter’s wheel,
““““““““““`and follow the golden flaw.

No sooner are these words out when a vast Spirit
out of Imago Mundi troubles my sight, hawk-head
having a spiral force. HAYRAH! cries the sufic clash
of pen and paper. Perplexity in the discourse.

Meanwhile relax, waving your cloud-hands around this
barbed tongue. You don’t know what to call me, teacher
or the elastic unteachable. But I am neither, or either,
swivel of mind. So let us embrace this
axial nullity. The art is living
beforethought. Now reciprocate
“““““““““““““““Like
roses and rhodochrosite.

~~~

Basho’s Pond, aye!
Padmasambhava leaps in:
No plash

~~~

~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~

~~~

somapoetics 66

Semsation

(for Sonia Kovitz)

Last night I admitted for the first time…
But the recognition is strangely past us now
beforethought
~~~~~~~~~~~—or reading a letter from an old lover upside-
down, you get the message for the first time, makes sense,
admit the sensation, let its name germinate
the recognition but a shell of itself now—Long since
and gone now, or across from us, other-shored, thrown
into a dying fall.
“““““““~~~~~~~~`The narrative is catastrophic.

I hear the cold
or it has reached me about the ears

Through the clear eye the bright signs
Of wholesome uses
Here at the stoma of the Hours
Purpura-robed, fresh
Spring issues these
Nectar-breathing Plants

sang the Odes to the mind of Pindar.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~So richness is choice.
But just then we were moving along in forgetfulness
of whatever led to this, last night or the
century before, Nerval hanging in an alley,
Jarry dying for days, and dead, no one noticed,
virtual history is collapsible in the mind
faithful to the hand whose touch is a thought
shared with the green stem of any black rose.
The feet plant themselves when they speak the mind there.
Thru the clear eye the bright signs
its germinal name, wherever.

Schiller kept rotten apples in the drawer of his desk
such was his bold intention to lure the Creative Spirit
beforethought. Meanwhile Goethe engaged in meditatio
dialogically disposed in discourse with his apples
and in particular their seeds. As for the yet unmentioned
WORM who slimmered in their fruit, we have him here today,
he says with his green tongue

Pay Attention
Her dues

Argonauts in our garden, gnawing below head-level,
omphagic sensations, and there is a Mediterranean breeze
reaching us today across the Hudson. Conversation
with Herakleitos is not out of the question,
and there is the ‘Pataphysician dying irrevalently
in the next room, and last night is still waiting
to account for itself in virtual narrative
catastrophically, the one way it says itself
in our time. Time-warps in every utterance, she says
to the machine, and Hello, to me, a whistling radiator
coded to Christopher Street, are we just dillydallying?

Plants talk in planting, she says through my sub navel worm,
responsiveness:
~~~~~~~~~~~~SEMS is the sound SEMS says the stem
of the twisting mind in Tibetan, Gnosemic Insemination
or the way old Facebehind carries you across the river
of Person, other-shored with these nectar-breathing words.

Hard to follow this, I say, watching her random appearance
as Lily, Blackeyed Susan, Lotuspod, and the Sacred Artichoke.
Say Cheese, she says through the camera in the mantric tone,
and you say your name. Insemsation is an earplug. Why
don’t you listen? The rot you fear is but your calling,
so drink this Old Slavic Kvasu, quashed weed-beer, sour
is your heritage. Now SEMSATE! if I may jussively sub-
­junct you to gearplay along the middle way, here
come the 7th, 8th and 9th neosymphonic senses.

The mind dovetails here, I mean Lady, I is lost
in the memory of memory … yet
gradually the mention of my family name takes
root in the attention, and suddenly I hear
Old Man Morris (as Arvie called my Jewish grandfather)
slurping his kvas and humming

Put another nickel in
In the nickelodeon
All I want to hear is music, music,

somatic music of the gears, working
for a plug nickel, for the price of a daimon
to converse with, long nights along the Hudson,
says the word at root,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~turning into itself, if
~~~~~~~~~we drink the line clear
back to the beginning.

`

`

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

`

somapoetics 67

~

~~~~~~~

(for Franz Kamin)

The morning has gold in its mouth

says the Szechwan fortune cookie, no mis­-
spellings. No spells missed. The line begins
where it begins, left
of center, passing through the middle now, into
the right, to capture its condition
of being where it is. And remain so. Thus it is
also where it is not, deep within the history
of this need to change:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Morning
~~~~~~~~~~~becomes electric chair

for whatever would sit beyond the newness of the juice.

The heating of the medium / Is what causes expansion,
says Quad Grotus, our rude friend, who likes to stick his
3¢ in our train of pensées, POUS! POUS! he would kick
our collective noetic ass, or insert strange information
interstomachicly, deep within our personal Stoma the
propensity to blab what we gnow best, kvas-slurps, tongue-
slips in Greechie Space, a footless verbal step beyond
Non-Hausdorff Space, rushing throat-long into pointlessness
and no Where to stop for a drink, nor Why, nor Blue Sky
to scry on, we st-st-st-hammer away at the Flaw until we
crack, state outright, flow through, in our sleep, heard by none:

Respect this voice from your auOral cavity,
let the voice warm up to you, inside
your Medusan primordially coiling brain, other-
wise you will scare off the extraordinary, despite its ardent
longing to mate with the ordinary. Dream us back between,
write us across. You need to learn to read this space.

Next I found myself walking aimlessly across an open
field, thinking, VAJRA is diamondbolt and the direction
Through,
~~~~~~~~~~and there appeared a man with a sign:

~~~~

I asked why such display, and he:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\

~~~~~~To study the meanings of
God flashing in the reflexive eyes of passersby.

Asked what he knew of God, or God of him, or the meaning of
either to either: I love the G in the divine Name, NO
more. News crazes me like the Muse loose in savannahs
to graze.
~~~~~~~~~And we do sometimes cross these green plains
~~~~~~~~~~~ass backwards,
~~~~~~for the Pleasure it introduces,
so to speak, from behind.

`

`

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

`

somapoetics 68

Word-Yum

(for Steven Goodman & Sheila Regan)

Our silences have grown opaque,
and this appearance troubles me, as nothing
would appear to be opaque
when viewed from the inside.

And these are the hours
when I belong to no one.

I turn in my sleep, or to my dream,
flip through the pages, eye
the red-eyed one who
the less he knows the better he likes it,
grab him by his interminable hair
and wring his neck—
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I scream
and wake suddenly in the first house on the block,
famished.

The mouth is everywhere.
Dream opens it to suck a green thumb,
mudra of breakfast, Tara in the salad.

As for red, this pimento, this radish,
this rose, it is the other
half of my mind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I flip through her hair,
whatever the hour we dine together.

~~~

Next I see three pins
that instantly pass through the pupils of my eyes
(the third through the forehead, like a quill)
and puncture the myth of inner
and the myth of outer. I eat her
to enter her belly, the sound
is that of a vaginal windpipe
swa swa the sound of between
is how the door opens
and it opens twice
for us:
~~~~~~~~~once
when we were first exhaled, and once
when we will be again
inhaled…
~~~~~~~~~~swa

and here we go again.
The actions are one, the sum
of the body’s panic, two times
the swing of fear
from emptiness to over-
­fullness.
~~~~~~~~~We overflow.

~~~

So here we are, stranded
in the middle of this middle way
testing the talents of the middle ear.
How to walk on a curve
without removing the quill from the page.
We glance at the surroundings,
notice we are seated atop these giant palms
and all around us Persian clouds
and somewhere under these clouds is Earth
and Earth is a woman with whitecapped mountains,

and beyond this, and beyond the beyond of this,
is all that we decide to call our lives.
The question is simple:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Can we make it
down, up, over, and out?

She is our Himalayas
and the part facing us now is Down.
And so we sway in the wind, switching trees
as necessary, waving hands in these
twisting clouds
until the right one comes along
and then the right time comes, we slide
all the way
down.
~~~~~~~~Familiar feeling, isn’t it,
says an inner voice, the fearsomeness
of the valley dark and tangle thick

~~~

We stop in the middle,
halfway home, the like
and the likeable: stranded
as we are in the prepubital
tingle of return,
it is only the beginning ~~~ swa
swa ~~~ this is between
us, tell no one
and listen hard ~~~ swa
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~we are being ushered in in a wave.

And here is how we hear it
or it is heard here as over-hearing
the wave around us, it breaks
all connections between us
but we ride it together, peak
after peak ~~~ swa swa ~~~ lord of speech
ends the calculation of particular meanings
for a split second.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~And then we’re back in it again
and can see nothing
but with these unparticular holes
in the head. With is against
the current of time.

~~~

And so the mind comes to rest
on this luscious tangled bank
and finds its way through to its story.

The story is lost, but it tells itself
wherever the mouth opens to receive
her voice, green eyes in the throat,
and this is where
she takes up the sword
swa word
severs the connection
to sentence itself,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~we’re alone here
between words, her swords
swa–hordes, bore sheep aboard her,
yum of the lord of speech
and we are his verge here
in the twist of her tongue.

~~~

Her story finds its way through to us
through us. It says, perhaps, The god
that made us makes us so that we can make
him. I am his nothing, I fill
him up with
space, against time

and in the twist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~New
he runs to meet us, we occur, he
unzips his fly in the modern world
shows you what you most fear
and that is me:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~veins of Kali
throbbing with wine, heady
with red, red
of a Texan mushroom moving forward
to part your lips
that you may speak
in reverse.
~~~~~~~~~~~~In re-
verse the message reads
what you know best, how
Father did not enter
to beget us
but to enter
and enter again

SWA

Aspirate H plus swa in Her
is my sound in
your ear of Hum.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Hear me. Time
is our vision of fountain.

Now is the open mouth

~~Word-Yum

I come fast to you
through you,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~do you doubt it?
that all and everything can be
so changed? Seed
is always hot
on the tail of the tongue.

Thus History,
~~~~the wag of the verge.

`

`

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

somapoetics 69

The Somatachism

(for Robert Kelly)

Second Chapter: For My Birthday (July 14, 1973)

1.`“`What part of the body carries the attention home
when, for the 4043rd time, the transmission jams
and the mind slips out of gear?

A. “`The hand, or what grips, or whatever
can (where engine or
genius is modal) hold true
could we but wave to the self
in passing
out of the need for a
self that can greet us.
Ableness is awkward
conditioned by a lifetime
and I can only answer you in passing.
That is why I am passing out these leaflets
written in amber.

2. “`Amber? Why amber?

A. “`I can hold it in my left hand
to release the seminal static charge
back into the aging mind.
Electronic wave-light is here
to be seen. Come,
let’s to worship
in this Faraday Cage.
It is 1:32 A.M. and
come dawn I’ll hand you this chunk of sunshine.

3. “` And just what is written in your
homespun religious leaflets?

A. “`A sunspun writ of habeas corpus
says with resinous clarity, Show us
the soma, and tells us the tale
of the stoma, how
electrapoesis is a bio-
­graphical telekinesis—it
lights a fire in the seat of Earth
and gets the ass moving.

4. ~~~But there is no STORY
or what do you CALL this tale of a tub
you protect or protest as the body?

A. ~~~All that can be said
of, with, or through the word
or any related degree of projected thought,
as follows:
~~~~~~~~I drink through my eyelip
the juice of the setting sun.
This amber jello is thrown
like a pot from the fist of waves.
Pine trunks weep it into my open palm.
Curious lynxes piss it in my manskin pouch.
From the Baltic Coast to the
Schliemannish graves of Mycenae
I pick lyncurious from the magical nose of history
and wear it to banish the dark
from my woman’s flesh.

5. ~~~ That’s all well and good, but if this is a story
then where is our hero?

A. “`Don’t ask me, I’m just a
31 year old,
sittin’ ’round makin’ up a lifetime,
thinkin’ up words like
Astrohistory, tropopoesis,
somagraphy, UFM
(mandalas with short-wave radio),
ethero-metanoiac mushroom,
plasmagrammic poetic prose,
nucleic torque, und so weiter.
And why do I bother?
Forgive me for posing a question
and so disturbing the form of our rite
but you have asked for a hero
and I intend to find him.
Mr. Lovecraft offers us Cthulhu consciousness
and the grim and fearsome American night,
and Mr. Shaver presents the evil Deros
roaming through this our hollow Earth.
I too have sniffed the self-moistening ground
and followed the electric sound into the woods of Old Field,
but for the moment I take the privilege of my scant years
and reject these lightless (if lively) persuasions.
Nous nous ignorons.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Or:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~so far as I can
say, I have been holding this piece of amber
in my left hand in Annandale
while grasping the fact of a self,
on the one hand, that called itself into
being (using the middle voice)
some three decades previous to now,
and, on the other hand, that knows
the history of itself, gathered up
like ripe corn from data available
both in and out of that which we call
time, and,
on a third hand, gnos or other­-
wise interjects itself in
verberations, i.e., tongues
speaking verbs im-
­personate a hero
as any joe blow holding a piece of amber
in whatever twisted tale that shows wherein
the body is a tub of water
with a particular nucleic torque.—
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“The game’s afoot, Watson,”
cries Holmes, raising our hair.
But no man’s mind is easy to follow,
I mean no easier to pursue than a
naked Indoeuropean blond
fleeing through the Black Forest.
She hums the theme of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
and whispers your name to the turpentine light.
She opens the path and it
closes behind her.
She is wholly indifferent
to the needs of my body
this Bastille Day.
She does not come to my call.
Yet, though I make no claim on her,
I discover myself willing to be her hero.
Such are my thoughts
this birthday, connecting
with the amber I am fingering
in my left hand, counter-
balancing the Pelikan Pen
in my writing hand.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~So:
Imagine these two hands in motion—
the Left flashing like electrons and
the Right scribbling its caduceus—
and visualize Between them a moving line.
At the Center may be seen a
single luminous node
describing a specific hand
possessed of a particular
mercurial torque.
The blond in the story
or the mudra in the Black Forest
goes about her business.

6. ~~~Yeah sure, and assuming we accept your
horny hero, in what tone of voice
IS he addressing us?

A. ~~~ A longing for science.
Embracing the planet
as recognition of birthright.
Eating the purpura pomegranate.
Following M. Descartes into Bohemia.
Interrogating Mr. Newton about how the apple
got up the tree.
Subjuncting Mr. Bacon to supply further details
about his New Atlantis, or is it the Ninth?
Conjuncting Mr. Blake’s con-
torsions of the sentence
mapping the paths of Jerusalem.
Instrumenting the Third Voice
according to the laws of the Middle Hand.
Trying to sing with the cock on the tongue
or the abalone cunnus
opening in the mind.
Shades of voices, tones
of lapis, laying on
of hands, the ways
she takes hold of my body
to extract my pleasures
in answer to her questions.

7. ~~~So what’s the name of this game anyway?

A. ~~~It names it up as it makes.
Forgive the jumble,
but she trips me when I grab for her ankles.
No way to catch a dolphin by the tail.
She lifts a stick
and I dance home to hang it on the wall,
a stone, and I study a handcraft
to learn the art
of attaching it to my flesh.
Today she threw me a piece of amber.
ELECTRA!

8. “`What does it mean that we have held out
till the number 8? Or “how is it far
if you think of it”?

A. “`Far as it goes
there is a story inside
a story, telling itself
to itself. We
are the children before
the fireplace, the fire
inside the fire
may be read in our eyes
as it flickers in our colored bodies,
from chromo-
somic ribbons to iris
membrane, twist or whirl
of the crystal, aperiodic
or prismatic
We go as far as we do.
We are two heroes
“in one breast”
a you and an eye
a flesh and a somaplasmic
transfer of mind
to mind, take some,
leave some behind,
add one woman
between us
equals or infuses the
twisting 3 of the tongue.
Makes no sense? Wake up
the inner woman
makes 4. New kind
of hero. Mutant. A cross.
Now double it, and 8 is
OUGHT—with a twist.
It bicycles along the möbiusness
of fleshly thought
and invokes the great
Tongue-Twister in the Sky.
Helical doubles, two eyes that cross
to blink the one in the middle
and crossbreed.
A tongue for a tongue
is the law. This is time.
As far as we go.
I say what I say to hear
what is said: It takes two
somas and a year of seeing
Mercury
to get two serpents
to twine around one
human spine. Two
ears to hear her,
two eyes to be led,
two holding hands, one
instrument of linkage, and a tongue
to tell it all
belongs to any
and adds up to 8.

9. “`I fairly tremble to ask, but
what about nine?

A. “`New enough.
The moon is full in Capricorn
and busy numbering our days.
The seventh month calls out
to the first,
past and future joining
their 3 and 4, any
time
new enough to be
born in is
9 enough to
stir us up
and set the body of ether to dreaming
in hands, tongues or
stones—
~~~~~~~~~~It shifts
~~~~~the voice to
slip it into gear.

`

`

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LOGNOSTIC GLOSS

Virtual Definitions for Douglas Taylor

al-Hayrah: Ibn ‘Arabi’s term for processual perplexity on a Principle of Discursive Torsion, involving a “permutation of opposed and complementary terms… a constant circular movement around a mentally unseizable point… leaving no respite to the reader’s mind.”

Astrohistory: A specialization of Virtual History, the study of holes in the historical, as Virtual Poetics begins by studying time-warps in the syntactical.

Electrapoesis is bio/graphical telekinesis: The feminine pole is by nature shocking and we write out our Bios in her wavy rhythms, close at hand and far afield.

Ethero-metanoiac mushroom: Vehicle for virtual travel, via the Fourth State of Matter and beyond, and beyond beyond.

Faraday Cage: The wire shield offering respite from external electrical fields, maybe the best meditation room on the market.

Gnoemics: The study of metamorphic patterning of knowing-in-verbal-process. On the highest level of abstraction, a Gnoeme is a minimal unit of discourse establishing a transformative relationship between word and consciousness; viz., a single syllable (as in bija or mantric seed-syllable), a short sequence of syllables (as in a mantram, e.g., OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM), or any quantity of Poem.

Gnosemic Insemination: The seeding process of Dharma Transmission, wherein Lognosemic Insemination is the highest stage of Metapoeia.

Greechie Space: A footless step bevond Non-Hausdorff Space (in which no two points are necessarily separable) rushing tongue-long into pointlessness; i.e., a space in which no points obtain. (Named by Dr. D. Finkelstein, for work of Dr. R. Greechie, defining what Mr. F. Kamin calls a “psychotopological space.”)

Invenereal: A word invented by Douglas Taylor and used much at Jackson High, Mexico City College, and Ohio State (late 50s, early 60s), covertly signifying either the opposite of anything just said, or a state of willing suspension of countersemination, as in the phrase, “It’s invenereal to me.”

Meaning: The point tangent to all possible interpretations of any Gnoeme.

Noaxis: (1) The axial nullity we twine around. (2) The swivel of mind. (3) The action of verbal Ark-building—hand-hewn with Noah’s axe.

Nucleic torque: The twist of information, or, better, the torsional track of unfolding that is the Bios in the act of catastrophizing itself into further information.

poetic prose: Writing home with flair, or the molding of the Mother Tongue such that we may speak to blood relatives as though theywere real people. (“Welcome to the Mobile Castle, Bob.”)

Schliemannish graves of Mycenae: The inside of history is auto-anthropology, as Perseus named a city for mycos, mushroom, which quenched his thirst with Higher Pleasures.

Self-catastrophy: The system throwing itself out; when midair, it becomes its own net—amphibologia or speaking all ways at once to catch the multeity of self-reinformation.

Somagraphy: What says Itself through a graphic orifice.

Somalevitagmatics: A syntactics of bodies that refuse to fall.

Somalevitalognemics: The study of saying so that lifts it so, knowing so.

Stoma: Direct line from stomach to mouth (Oracle, the two-lipped myth). Urword (or Urwort): On the model of Goethe’s Urorganismus (archetypal organism), Urphänomen, and Urpflanz, the primal verbal potential of which any specific poetic use is an “activation into being” and to which the initiatic process of “reading back” (ta’wil) directs itself.

Vajrapoetics: (1) The art of living Beforethought. (2) Channeling the Diamond-bolt in the direction Through. (3) Traveling in Virtual History, flying aboard, say, the Woman-winged Songtsen Gampo 648, carrying only the power of words, traveling light; or the Redtop Tisong Detsen 747, loaded with luminous stones. The ordinary is fuel.

Word-Yum: Any or none of the 14 possibilities listed in the Soma Quiz, or: The sex life of words, what gives the sentence Hayrah; how in talking we intertwine, linked only by the synaptics of Mind playing with Itself. [Fr. Tibetan yab-yum, “father-mother,” figure of Deity and Consort in copulation.

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Copyright © 1975 by George Quasha