SIGNS OF SOME-THING ELSE / IV
THE BODY (REVELATION)
I.
The body knows
What it cannot tell,
It lacks the words,
It sees what
It cannot see,
It tastes and touches
What it sees ...
And what is Art?,
But the body’s Truth,
Transfiguration,
Transubstantiation;
New body, and
New sight,
New sensibility,
And paradox:
New and old laws
Made new
Into One
Singular thing ...
Body of work,
Of law, of words,
Bundled into
Light, and curve
Of flesh
And flash of
Eye and turn
Of phrase ...
II.
The body touches
What it cannot own,
Or have, for all
That meets its gaze
Is not what it
Is looking for;
And silken
Voice that speaks
In flames, is
Not its own,
Nor will it tell
Its secrets when
The hands fall
From the clock,
And time commits
Its crime ...
And yet, the body
Knows what it knows,
And even without
Words it sings
Dolorous hours
Into being --
Liquid times
Against time, deferring all
That cannot be found
To another ‘time’,
Another dream ...
III.
The body cannot posit itself,
It only comes
To be in the
Negation of negation,
The double-blind
Bind and wheel
That crushes
Empires, erases
Kingdoms, turns
Masters into slaves,
Annihilating
What was made
Through graves ...
Not-body posits
Body, and not-I
Posits I, and
Dialectics turns
The wheel that
Turns the sky,
That wheels the
Sun into place
And burns all traces
Of passing things --
Ashes and dust,
Smoke and mirror,
Time and agency,
Birth and death ...
IV.
The body is borne
On airs that arrive
From mountains,
Or drifts into place
On currents that may
Or may not be electric ...
And it knows the
Splendid secrets it keeps,
The buried earth
Within Earth,
The catastrophic
Visions and landslides
That bury villages,
The great calamities
Of time turned
Into Space-Time --
Or what falls
Lightning-fast
To Earth, striking
Where it may,
Or strife and mayhem,
Beast and horror,
Apocalypse,
Redemption, and
The endless incarnation,
The blood-rite
Of being born,
The passage and flight ...
V.
The body turns to
Itself, and moulds
Its form and erases
Fiction, transposed
Etherized, led to
Other pastures --
Shepherd to Itself,
Virgil for Itself,
Magus and poet
Of its dreams ...
This body is not
At all of earth,
Nor mud, nor ash,
But still it is
What makes its form,
Its language of atoms,
Its aesthetic will,
Its logic of being,
Its formal desire,
Attired entirely,
And suitably,
In Freudienne slip
And sandaled thought,
Venus and Mercury,
Or what Cumaen sybils
Sing into presence --
One saves one’s
Own soul these days ...
VI.
The body of Art
Is a flaming sword
(There is no other way) ...
And this war is
The war that ends
The war within --
That brings all ships
Into harbor,
All sails set,
All sets nullified ...
The logic of bodies
Is to bring all words
Into line with things
Once and for all;
To buy time,
But to bide time
In buying time,
And coin of realm
Being thus,
The incessant dithyramb
Calls -- the buying
Time turned to secret crimes
Against time ill-spent,
To finding what is
Buried in the anterooms,
Archive and tomb ...
VII.
Heaven knows
What the body knows,
The ancient curse
And promise
All at once,
The living path
To what explodes
Upon touching ...
There are signs
And there are
Wonders on this road,
This cindered route,
This bleeding rose
That merely seems
A world --
That route through
Things and paths
Past ruins, and
Monumental folly
Upon folly, sets
Mind at ease
And heart astir ...
For what is found,
Or what the body
Does is steer
Between star and reef;
And what it knows
It knows without knowing ...
GK (DRAFT 08/15/07)
Image (above, center), Asia Argento ... See Ipseity, You Say? ... / Image (below, left), Winged Victory ...
Merciless (Soma) ...
The So-Called Trouble With Nietzsche (Anti-Journal) ...
The (Ir)Real Thing (Looking Awry) ...
