(May 2022. Aidan and Luca. In LA I got to hang with Luca at our friend Cameron’s house. We hadn’t seen each other since Tahoe, and the Reno parking lot where we first wrote Heaven is Above the Bowl (https://beatinpaths.com/2022/01/13/heaven-is-above-the-bowl/). Since I had written that first collaborative poem with him, I had been exploring the idea a lot for months and been working on launching daopoetry, and it was super fun to get a chance to write another poem with him after we’d been growing separately. I’d give $20 to anyone who could figure out first try who wrote what. It’s especially tough, cause we each did a little editing along the way. I find this poem really interesting as a bit of a meta-exploration of the medium, or something like that.)
instatiation on the surface of depth
what was i saying?
something is a fractal phenomenon
crazy stanzas riding across
the meta structural kingdom
old jalopies callopping
i am glad you are here
along this ride with me
the text is a lazer—
nyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
oooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmm
kakaboom!
-whispered the generator-
and
fallen lay
the elegance
one man’s hand in poetry
one man’s hand on an apple
passing back and forth the feast
and the voice of this poem
is in the mouths of two authors
sweet,
the aftertaste on my tongue
is exploding fruitily in your mouth
rightnow you moaning pleasure
the taste of texture the texture of tasting
i must stop writing—
i want to taste the world.
thank you for offering to save me a bite
we live in an age of universally available apples –
oh man. oh man oh man oh man
is the sigh through my neck
by a swallow of the gulping ribs.
we say God is the same as the imagination
or the hooves are held at arm’s length
grasp by the tender master –
like not knowing, somehow
and what of this thought is child
and what is adulthood?
the experience of my innocence:
the innocence of my experience:
and above all binaries,
the point of the triangle?
the point of the triangle is forward—
:to intern at the point
in which the pliant mouth rests
:the death
yes, the death:
of all that was born prematurely.
i love the long train
and we’re in the same boat;
just like a semicolon
i keep asking the question what is language
and your answers grow better
i keep smashing the lecture from in
transit
and your fangs glow wetter –
it’s not a plastic hot tub –
it’s built into the
environment, and
hangs off the
edge of a fallow
field
-/ the way most hot springs feel
(before tentacles)
our words echo above the water
twice as high the walls
and the deepening of our whispers
bounces around into balls
of air sunk down into dips:
volume equal to water –
and the bubbles come on as if they know;
cold creeps
everywhere
whispering down
into bliss:
rip the bow
and thimble down
to whisper into the glare
you took the corners out of my lines
and edited rectangular prisms for balls—
you say we’re ahead of the curve on the balls thing
the girl you’ve been sleeping with
animating trolls three
innovating water as balls;
you say it looks more real,
that soon we will all see water as balls.
i think i’m down for that.
the tiring creeps like covid up my spine
and there is less fire to burn
these lines into matter
it is time for this shared voice,
singular body,
alive here and now
to die
it is time for bed,
and i want you to have the last line.
there’s clouds above us, clouds in LA.
Beatin' Paths ~~~ The journey to the Great American Novel 