1. |
No Demands
04:42
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NO DEMANDS
Out there, you are too far away,
Too gone, for me to touch you.
But here, lost again in the dark,
With these tears, I can feel you.
Aloud, you never say a word
To relieve a broken mind.
But alone, holding you this way,
holding still, I can hear you.
I'LL GRANT YOU, MAKE YOU NO DEMANDS
AND YOU WILL DO THE SAME, FOR IN THIS,
OUR PARADISE OF SILENCE
WHERE THE DISTANCE TENDERS NO HAND
AND OUR EARS AND TONGUES DESERT US
OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?
WE RECITE NO CREED OF ANSWERS
THERE ARE NO QUESTIONS TO WITHSTAND
SO WE TUG EACH OTHER DEAFLY
AND REACHING, MUTELY UNDERSTAND
Somewhere—way beyond—in some “there,”
Unmapped, and so unnamed,
That’s a blank to all our instruments,
We’ve a place to coexist.
As presence, as absence—to me,
You’re as real as you ever were,
Precious ghost of no dimension,
Dearest friend I never knew.
I'LL GRANT YOU, MAKE YOU NO DEMANDS
AND YOU WILL DO THE SAME, FOR IN THIS,
OUR PARADISE OF SILENCE
WHERE THE DISTANCE TENDERS NO HAND
AND OUR EARS AND TONGUES DESERT US
OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?
WE RECITE NO CREED OF ANSWERS
THERE ARE NO QUESTIONS TO WITHSTAND
SO WE TUG EACH OTHER DEAFLY
AND REACHING, MUTELY UNDERSTAND
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2. |
Too Slow For Now
02:36
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TOO SLOW FOR NOW
We are standing on an orb,
Which means
The past is not behind us,
But beneath,
And the future’s not before us,
But above.
Cleaving rocks and riding fire,
We dig for history
And fly for time.
As onion skins,
Our eras and unknowns
accumulate.
YEARS ARE ONLY DISTANCES
LIGHTENING AT SPEED
A PYROTECHNICS WE WOULD JOIN
IF ONLY WE COULD CATCH IT
IN FEVERED TRAVEL WE ESCAPE
UNDERMINE AND OVERLOOK
THE PRESENT TENSE
AND THINKING FASTER
BURNING BRIGHTER
BLAZE BY EVERY MOMENT
WE SHOULD MARK
Fretted stars
Sparkle through the ages
Their nows, our would be-s,
Our current, their past.
Yet we shine as they do.
Our waves of thought,
Though weak,
Twitter all the same.
In Godot’s
Relative perspective,
All, not nothing,
Happens twice,
But still, we miss it —twice.
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3. |
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THE SHAPE OF ALL FOREVERS
We boast inventions,
That are really no such thing.
All those leaps of human genius,
That once dazzled as unique,
End as imitation.
Discovery turns out instead
To be reused,
Derived again from models
That obtain throughout,
In atoms, galaxies, and us.
OUR GREEDY EGOS EVER SPIN
(ON THE AXES OF OURSELVES)
AND JUST AS SURELY AS WE TWIRL
(LIKE ALL PLANETARY FORMS)
WE ORBIT TOO
SPIRALING THROUGH SEASONS
(THE PASSIONS OF OUR LIVES)
ALWAYS COMING BACK TO THE FAMILIAR
(WHICH SOMEHOW YET AGAIN)
SEEMS STRANGE
The widest realms we conceive,
Infinity, eternity,
Space and time without end,
Even they are closed,
For there is nothing,
Nothing outside them.
The shape of all forevers
Must be curved,
Double back, repeat.
Cycles of return preside,
The only mode and means
Of everlasting.
OUR GREEDY EGOS EVER SPIN
(ON THE AXES OF OURSELVES)
AND JUST AS SURELY AS WE TWIRL
(LIKE ALL PLANETARY FORMS)
WE ORBIT TOO
SPIRALING THROUGH SEASONS
(THE PASSIONS OF OUR LIVES)
ALWAYS COMING BACK TO THE FAMILIAR
(WHICH SOMEHOW YET AGAIN)
SEEMS STRANGE
The dead feed the living
As surely as they fed
The cancers and the vermin
That consumed them.
We die, and then we rot,
Turn back into the minerals
We’re made of.
Nutrifying plants
Engorge the guts
Of masticating animals,
Emerge again
To fertilize in turn
More generations.
OUR GREEDY EGOS EVER SPIN
(ON THE AXES OF OURSELVES)
AND JUST AS SURELY AS WE TWIRL
(LIKE ALL PLANETARY FORMS)
WE ORBIT TOO
SPIRALING THROUGH SEASONS
(THE PASSIONS OF OUR LIVES)
ALWAYS COMING BACK TO THE FAMILIAR
(WHICH SOMEHOW YET AGAIN)
SEEMS STRANGE
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4. |
In A Manner of Speaking
03:05
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IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING
God is only God
In a manner of speaking;
An exclamation,
Nothing more.
As newborns wail
Protesting that first breath of fire,
We howl because we can’t help it.
To hold the vacant place,
Of all we can’t articulate
When there are no words.
FORCES UNDETECTABLE
PENETRATE NONETHELESS
AND WE BEAR THEM MUDDLED
WITNESS IN AWE
THERE IS NO GOD
BUT THERE IS GOD
A CURRENT UNDENIABLE
AND FATHOMLESS AS LOVE
We moan this name God! during sex,
At vistas and mass graves;
When something’s too good,
Or bad to accept
Like Fabulous! Fantastic!
Both of which mean “lie,”
God rouses opposites,
Belief from disbelief.
Words are only sounds
Assigned a meaning.
God might as well’ve been “Wow!”
Or “Man!”—
As we mutter in disgust.
FORCES UNDETECTABLE
PENETRATE NONETHELESS
AND WE BEAR THEM MUDDLED
WITNESS IN AWE
THERE IS NO GOD
BUT THERE IS GOD
A CURRENT UNDENIABLE
AND FATHOMLESS AS LOVE
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5. |
Shadowbox
04:45
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SHADOWBOX
These mementos of you are mine,
Glassed sightly in a box.
Photographs, those famous lines
That load but never lock.
In all these senses of the word,
You are boxed inside my brain,
And spar with me in shadows stirred,
The comfort I find in pain.
Your weeping heart was always there,
Hiding in plain sight.
Did you dress like a teddy bear
To ward off the woes of night?
You couldn’t hide the kindness
In those piercing, ice-blue eyes,
Or bury in your winking jests,
The sorrow in your smiles.
YOUR THEATER, ABSURD, SO CALLED
WAS ANYTHING BUT THAT
IF NOTHINGNESS WAS REALLY ALL
THEN WHAT WERE YOU SHOUTING AT?
By your dying father’s cries
You fought until the end
Against the cold, despairing lies
Of lives we can’t defend.
Those still and silent signs of life
That slipped through your fingertips
Showed us by enduring strife,
Waiting is also worship.
YOUR THEATER, ABSURD, SO CALLED
WAS ANYTHING BUT THAT
IF NOTHINGNESS WAS REALLY ALL
THEN WHAT WERE YOU SHOUTING AT?
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6. |
Collide-A-Scope
04:29
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COLLIDE-A-SCOPE
Irish Intro Lyrics:
(Carrie Erving - vocal)
Is é an bhrí ann mar aon ní amháin,
I ngach fuaim , radharc , agus mothú,
Ach fiú nuair thuiscint dúinn é ar feadh nóiméad,
éadóchas orainn arís a fháil,
Ní féidir é a shábháil chugainn ó féin.
English translation:
The meaning is there as one
In every sound, sight and feeling,
But even when we grasp it for a moment,
We despair again to find,
It cannot save us from itself
COLLIDE-A -SCOPE
All your senses came alive,
in the spectrum of a song,
the blues rang
orange, yellow, red,
the letters of each word
arrayed themselves the same
Shining past their black and white
The colors of the rainbow
Never change,
no matter how you view them;
whether slashed across the floor
through a rent in the door;
Or humming
in the lights
along your spine,
And glowing in the grasses of the field,
the green that smells of home.
IT'S SIMULTANEOUSLY THERE AS ONE
IN EACH SOUND AND SIGHT AND PATTERN
THE MEANING THAT WE CRAVE AND SEEK
BUT OFTEN LOSE
YET EVEN WHEN WE GRASP IT
FOR A MOMENT DIMLY KNOWN
WE FIND IT CANNOT SAVE US FROM ITSELF
We gave our God hands and a face,
The invention of our need,
A being who would love us back,
When no one human could.
We shaped him in our image,
From an inscrutable sky,
To bear the awful truth of our creation
This juggernaut of being,
Does not notice, feel, or care,
Its bright miracle goes on
(without us)
Senseless to our pain
IT'S SIMULTANEOUSLY THERE AS ONE
IN EACH SOUND AND SIGHT AND PATTERN
THE MEANING THAT WE CRAVE AND SEEK
BUT OFTEN LOSE
YET EVEN WHEN WE GRASP IT
FOR A MOMENT DIMLY KNOWN
WE FIND IT CANNOT SAVE US FROM ITSELF
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7. |
Bardo State
03:18
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BARDO STATE
You steered those crossing echoes,
The vestiges and inklings
Of causes and effects that clutter up
The threshold of these lives.
You gave us cinema’s complete description:
Of what exists— Recorded frame by frame—
As well as how it goes—
The action picture’s pictures moving.
MATTER AND MOMENTUM ARE CONSERVED
AS SOULS EXPRESS THE ENERGY
THE HEAT, THE LIGHT
OF FRICTION WE EXPEND
LIKE THE TRICK OF MAGIC THINKING
OR EVERY BROADCAST EVER MADE
OUR RESIDUE REMAINS
RICHOCHETING THROUGH MIRAGES, HOLOGRAPHS
THE OLD TRANSMISSIONS THAT IT MEETS.
The engine of it all, you claimed,
Is that censored stuff we’re full of.
Every twisting turn
The whole canal,
From mouth to mouth.
The waste we make each day,
Converting nourishment to charge,
To power body functions we ignore.
The beating heart, the breathing,
This avalanching avalanche of thought.
MATTER AND MOMENTUM ARE CONSERVED
AS SOULS EXPRESS THE ENERGY
THE HEAT, THE LIGHT
OF FRICTION WE EXPEND
LIKE THE TRICK OF MAGIC THINKING
OR EVERY BROADCAST EVER MADE
OUR RESIDUE REMAINS
RICHOCHETING THROUGH MIRAGES, HOLOGRAPHS
THE OLD TRANSMISSIONS THAT IT MEETS.
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8. |
All the Difference
03:48
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ALL THE DIFFERENCE
The moon and tides
Don’t think the thoughts
Of gravity or breaking.
They are those thoughts.
They are those thoughts.
These mindless things
We count on,
But refuse to count,
Exist complete
To their surroundings,
Inextricable.
We are just
Oblivious machines,
Rolling over,
Racing through
The scenery.
THIS VEXING SEPARATION
OF ESSENCES FROM ACTS
PLAGUES AND TORTURES
MAKES US ALL TOO HUMAN
TRAPPED INSIDE OUR
PRISONS OF PERCEPTION
CONSCIOUSNESS FOR US
IS ALWAYS—ONLY—
CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF
We are actors
Inconsiderate of acts,
Micromanaging the role
Of the persona,
Not the person,
We’re pretending.
The cure is in
Relinquishment,
In throwing off
These habits of disguise.
Becoming more akin
To the inanimate
Makes all the difference.
We are just
Oblivious machines,
Rolling over,
Racing through
The scenery.
THIS VEXING SEPARATION
OF ESSENCES FROM ACTS
PLAGUES AND TORTURES
MAKES US ALL TOO HUMAN
TRAPPED INSIDE OUR
PRISONS OF PERCEPTION
CONSCIOUSNESS FOR US
IS ALWAYS—ONLY—
CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF
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9. |
Woman-Kind?
04:17
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WOMAN-KIND?
Evolution doesn’t play dice
Or leave a task
As dire as propagation
To chance.
Feminine mystiques beguile,
But the weaker sex gives birth
In pained and bloody sport.
Girls are nature’s
Genotype of choice.
And the Y in boys, they say,
is a defective X.
Seed, unlike a fetus,
Is dispensable
As men themselves,
Custom’s casualties of war.
PRETTY—
SMOOTHED AND DECORATED FACES
NOTWITHSTANDING,
FEMALE FITNESS IS ASSURED,
BY TRIALED AND TESTED
UGLINESS HARD WON.
THE FATAL HALF,
AND FIERCER OF OUR KIND BY FAR,
WOMEN BEAR THEIR LABEL
“BITCHES” WITH GOOD REASON,
SLURRING NO ONE BUT THE DOG.
She lingers on the
Back sides of your tongue,
Like the slicking of your sleep
Before you had a name.
Woken rudely in a wash
To the chokehold of a groin,
And you—a bag of
Jam-smeared bones
Squeezing through a fistula,
Out—into the cold
The blinding
Whiteness of this place.
Savored adoration
In your mouth
Is in your memory
The aftertaste of birth.
PRETTY—
SMOOTHED AND DECORATED FACES
NOTWITHSTANDING,
FEMALE FITNESS IS ASSURED,
BY TRIALED AND TESTED
UGLINESS HARD WON.
THE FATAL HALF,
AND FIERCER OF OUR KIND BY FAR,
WOMEN BEAR THEIR LABEL
“BITCHES” WITH GOOD REASON,
SLURRING NO ONE BUT THE DOG.
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10. |
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A VERY SWEET KIND OF DYING
Scriptures, myths of all descriptions,
Say much the same
Of this condition that we’re in.
The doer will be done to.
Call it karma or comeuppance,
What goes will also come.
Ouroboros,
Like Eden's worm
Defiles,
But ringed
And ever turning on his tail,
Also defiles himself.
IF OXYGEN IS LIFE
AND AGE IS OXIDATION
IF EVERY BREATH OF MY SURVIVAL
IS KILLING ME
THEN THIS INVOLUTED CONTRADICTION
WE CALL BEING
IS A VERY SWEET KIND OF DYING
We can make no sense of the music
We hear spinning in these spheres.
Their poles that seem apart
Are tied together.
Modern science verifies
What mystics always knew:
We merely filter an illusion.
And the Bard’s pronouncement
“All the world’s a stage”
Was not a metaphor.
IF OXYGEN IS LIFE
AND AGE IS OXIDATION
IF EVERY BREATH OF MY SURVIVAL
IS KILLING ME
THEN THIS INVOLUTED CONTRADICTION
WE CALL BEING
IS A VERY SWEET KIND OF DYING
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11. |
The Sam I Am
05:20
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THE SAM I AM
Your name in Sanskrit
Means “joined,”
As in the carts of old Tibet
That yoked two yaks together—
as they should be—
And as this team of two,
Became
A driving force of one.
And so
Each mindful step along
The noble path
Of meditation
Begins on meeted terms,
With samyak or samyag—
Correct, perfected, right.
EXISTENCE IS
AND MANIFESTS ENTIRE
IN PARTS OF SPEECH
THE YOGI'S RITE
HAS UNITY BUILT INTO IT
ARISTOTLE'S HAPPINESS
ROOTS IN GOODNESS OF THE SOUL
AND "YES" IS AN OLD ENGLISH
VERSION OF "TO BE"
PHILOSOPHIES CONTAIN,
DISPLAY THEIR TERMS
AND THEIR DEFINITIONS HOLD
THE SIGNIFICANCE WE'RE SEEKING
Samu El in Hebrew
Means “Name of God,”
Your Bible’s namesake,
And the prophet
That you also were,
Served his calling God
Saying: “Here I am.”
The very words
That Moses heard on Sinai
When this God
And guiding voice
Of the Commandments
At last pronounced His name.
“I am that I am,”
The answer came
“I am.”
EXISTENCE IS
AND MANIFESTS ENTIRE
IN PARTS OF SPEECH
THE YOGI'S RITE
HAS UNITY BUILT INTO IT
ARISTOTLE'S HAPPINESS
ROOTS IN GOODNESS OF THE SOUL
AND "YES" IS AN OLD ENGLISH
VERSION OF "TO BE"
PHILOSOPHIES CONTAIN,
DISPLAY THEIR TERMS
AND THEIR DEFINITIONS HOLD
THE SIGNIFICANCE WE'RE SEEKING
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12. |
Octavate
05:04
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OCTAVATE
The Eastern integers
Of one through eight,
Migration spread in faiths
Bound up in languages.
In Occitan,
The tongue of troubadours,
Both “nine” and “new” are nòu.
In German nein is “no,”
In French, Neuf also means “new.”
Dante counted Beatrice
As the Trinity times three,
And his Vita Nuova
Enlivened her nine anew.
NINE AND ZERO
THE FINISH TO START
THE JOURNEY MADE AGAIN
FROM ONE TO EIGHT
PROCREATION INTEGRATES IN DEATH
THE CIRCLE’S TWAINS ARE TIED
IN SHAPES OF SPERM AND EGG
MALE AND FEMALE FOLD TOGETHER
VANISH INTO LIFE
MOTHER, FATHER, CHILD
THIS BRAIDING CHAIN OF BEING
PASSES GENES IN EVERY BIRTH
TO GHOSTS IN NEW MACHINES
Zero
Greek god of the west wind,
Is the Arab cipher’s
Sounding air
Whistling through O-mega.
The Taoist chi’s
Resonating o(h)ms
Spin the dharma wheel
Whose empty center breathes.
The spirit wind of Jahweh
That once inspired
Unmoving molds of clay
Is standing still in spires
Whose topping stilts of
Skyward breath
Uplift the stones of church.
NINE AND ZERO
THE FINISH TO START
THE JOURNEY MADE AGAIN
FROM ONE TO EIGHT
PROCREATION INTEGRATES IN DEATH
THE CIRCLE’S TWAINS ARE TIED
IN SHAPES OF SPERM AND EGG
MALE AND FEMALE FOLD TOGETHER
VANISH INTO LIFE
MOTHER, FATHER, CHILD
THIS BRAIDING CHAIN OF BEING
PASSES GENES IN EVERY BIRTH
TO GHOSTS IN NEW MACHINES
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13. |
Passerbye
06:55
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PASSERBYE
Lying there,
Looking through
The lens of your end
To meet it square
With a straight face.
Your eyes had strayed
To the ceiling
And bounced across it now,
Between the corners of the room,
As if taking final measure
Of this place that you were leaving.
This sky, this ground,
These stultifying walls
Of consciousness,
From whose confines
You’d earned your release.
GO ON—BUT INCLUDE ME IF YOU CAN
AND SAY GOODBYE WITHOUT A WORD
BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE THAT CAN SAY
ALL THAT WE THINK WE MEAN
STILL WORDS ARE WHAT WE HAVE
INSTEAD OF INTUITION
AND THEY ARE HOW WE GO ON
SAYING ALL, AND KNOWING NOTHING
Your eyes had the look
Of understanding,
Which we’d all known
As children in school.
The filament glows
In the pupil’s eye
When the concept
Registers at last.
At last, you’d understood—
Purely, truly understood.
Revelation had arrived.
But it came, as it must,
At the end
And it came too late.
GO ON—BUT INCLUDE ME IF YOU CAN
AND SAY GOODBYE WITHOUT A WORD
BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE THAT CAN SAY
ALL THAT WE THINK WE MEAN
STILL WORDS ARE WHAT WE HAVE
INSTEAD OF INTUITION
AND THEY ARE HOW WE GO ON
SAYING ALL, AND KNOWING NOTHING
You’d waited
Your whole life long for this.
It was all you’d been able to do.
To wait, For purpose,
For meaning, For God
For God
Who is no thing, no being,
Not a noun at all.
But this spark of recognition
That comes after
So much expectation.
Enlightening, extinguishing at once
The time, the waiting,
And the one who waits.
GO ON—BUT INCLUDE ME IF YOU CAN
AND SAY GOODBYE WITHOUT A WORD
BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE THAT CAN SAY
ALL THAT WE THINK WE MEAN
STILL WORDS ARE WHAT WE HAVE
INSTEAD OF INTUITION
AND THEY ARE HOW WE GO ON
SAYING ALL, AND KNOWING NOTHING
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Norah Vincent & Vern Woodhead New York, New York
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