hypnosis at high noon I Specimens of Immorality Walking the 50 lovers that live in my body On TV after Dinner on the farce of my life Gazing into the Distance One Autumn Day A Dream of One Fine Day
I'm alive
I am part of the human race, and
I am myself (to the point of obsession) –
like a glimpse in the mirror
I am a blueprint passed on in secret
a spell of fate locked inside the strongbox of the soul
but I can never find the combination to open it
(you are getting sleepy)
and so I wake up
at the high noon of consciousness
lighting up the ignorance and vulnerability
of the entire universe
the hunger and desire suddenly formed in this instant
I actively replicate DNA just to water down
my terror of dying
class-character and domination are obvious
without study
I examine the folds in a gorilla's cerebrum
to gain control of the dreams of all primates
while suspecting that I too am under examination –
(you are getting sleepy)
and so I wake up
in the most solitary depths of consciousness
doing repeated research into the directives
of hypnotism and anti-hypnotism
: "And so you gave your wholesale acceptance
to this clearcut and yet bizarre existence
including the jolts and the ambiguities it contains . . ."
I live in the human way
and can do no better than to believe in it
with unshakeable conviction
(you are getting sleepy)
and so I wake up
at dawn on the outermost border of consciousness
not knowing which way to turn amidst illusions
and chimaeras
everything flows into the raging flood of the dim awareness
of the universe
including the nothingness carried by clouds . . .
and so I fall asleep dreaming of reality
reality: the hypnotist’s highest directive
and in the same way noon sunlight evaporates
every single shadow
heat steams off my brain
dreamscapes subside – no one was asleep
and no one woke
after all
1996
me, I borrowed his body
and that segment of the flow of time
my coming into this world was like
a surrealist painting
and from that moment – awesome –
there was grief/joy
desire, and ambition – these I understand
although I’m only borrowing
but suddenly I clean forgot the full story
including the fact that I too was originally
once a universe
and because of this, I have
elaborated games
with that being and the whole of this
egg-shaped life
turning day and night into one another’s
dreamworlds
when I wake in another dream
I find that I’ve
unwittingly inscribed a poem
entitled “I”
1997
ii. carnal crossword
you write me down in the squares just above centre
this is a concrete reflection of the geometric position
I occupy in your heart
at the same time you think about various other bodies
and how to join me up with them
1 across:
the gender ratio of absolute masculinity (or femininity)
in the spirit world
2 across:
the first question that needs to be addressed
in the reformation of morality
3 across:
the entropy of pleasure
4 across:
the metaphysical meanings of the soul
corresponding to various parts of the body
5 across:
the reason why a certain position makes you
feel like throwing up
6 across:
listen
1 down:
the son born to an idiot-girl raped by her
idiot-father
2 down:
familiar term for an angel’s genitalia
3 down:
a womb capable of ambulation
4 down:
a synonym for “death” used in physics
5 down:
the blank necessary to your entire life
6 down:
is the corporeal body the first and last faith
1995
once we moved in an age of ideas and signs
debate’s lexicon gouging at truth
we then entered a world of instruments and logic
trudging through wastes beyond hypotheses
and equations
before soaring into a universe of introspection and dream
unfocussed consciousness like the 3000 layers of an onion
of worlds-within-worlds
these days, we walk in an age of replication and chatter
this limited life forging away specially for the sake of futility
new dilemmas hatch from outdated language
as fertile as ant nests
“love is universal but we are universally unable to love”
light goes in straight lines but it also curves
time is delusion, space illusion
no birth no death no filth no purity no increase no decline
must we go on walking whereverwards or will
wherever come walking towards us next?
the 50 lovers that live in my body
the 50 lovers that live inside my body go out nightly in search of another 50 lovers just like 50 windows each one concealed behind 50 pairs of eyes 50 different outcomes each representing owners of 50 different colours 50 love-letters carried by 50 pigeons permutated in the plazas of 50 modern city buildings the wind disappears from my 50 dreams leaving 50 nights, while my 50 passions are asking: why can there only be 50? 1997
on TV I watch a young father who has taken out a mortgage on a house on a slope on some distant hills mornings he wakes up smiling on lightly ruffled sheets, a dream of serenity satisfaction in his eyes I watch him exercising in the sunlight on that gently rippling lawn his shoulder muscles supple, untensed; his breathing relaxed he has just the right amount of epidermal fat on him. Welcome, he says. Come and join us his invitation is sincere he flashes a set of sparkling white teeth I watch another young father drive off in his car to another far-off hillside he has a very Chinese face, a very Taiwanese accent a very Japanese work ethic and very American consumer habits he says: Let me give you a word of good advice This is the perfect choice for you – although there aren’t any houses on the hillside yet on TV I see the smiling wife he has chosen and his altogether too beautiful son the three of them sit down to the recommended daily allowance of calories and balanced electrolytes: I’ll let you in on a little secret the secret of true love I lean forward in my seat he tells me to wash with a certain brand of soap and to use a new improved toilet paper now on special on TV I see a young father who looks a little like me his hair is trimmed neatly at the back he radiates confidence Your shirt is a little creased, he warns me, and the style is out of fashion You’re a little hunched over, and your mood is negative. There are flecks of white in your hair, and you have quite a bit of dandruff. on TV I see the me I should be, a lover of tidiness smiling happily and standing in front of a house I own You don’t still believe in those old ideals, do you? the man on TV asks me in the forest of trees on the safety island an occasional thin mercury streetlight shines few cars travel the purplish asphalt road: City, city. Soon you’ll have spread all the way up here . . . he puffs on his cigarette nervously, a worried look in his eyes unable to see the distance on TV after dinner I see (and finally remember) what the hillside used to look like the long silvergrass and the patches of cinquefoil in which a skinny brown kid from the neighbourhood used to hide leading his buffalo this way he said: Poverty killed off many of the finer qualities I once had. . . . yet prosperity has added such glorious miseries on the TV, I am convinced at this moment that he has found true happiness – this citizen of a subtropical island who is also keen on physical fitness, public welfare, and culture I feel a deep loathing and admiration for him like I would for a brother who had grabbed all the family advantages for himself on the TV after dinner from block after block of towering high-rise downtown apartments a succession of young fathers hurries off to dispose of the day’s accumulated information and emotion before tonight’s garbage collection inviolable, this city rhythm – Good evening. Would you like to own your own home too? inviolate, this adult destiny. every night before the garbage trucks show up, all the young fathers rush out to dispose of themselves 1986
the life so studiously acted out by every individual proves eventually to be a farce in this farce, tears are bona fide eye-drops shed for a self that doesn't exist in dreams we watch the hidden stage of a studious planet waiting for the entrance of meaning but the plot gives no clues symbols and sublimation the farce taking time such a limited span of time . . . "as for me . . ." everyone leaving their seats is as baffled as when they came in . . . 1997
Gazing into the Distance One Autumn Day
my imaginary lover has already left in a hurry
windows stand open like eyelashes in this
autumn room
an overbearing man suns his body
out on the balcony
rippled repeatedly by a lukewarm breeze
like a plaza of crowding trees
that autocrat, King Desire
has prepared a magnificent celebration
for Himself
the vast silences infect one another
and in the midst of all this he sees, far off
in the distance,
the first tree set itself on fire . . .
1997
a day eclipsed by cloud
several times you struggle out of bed
to check the thermometer held hostage
out on the balcony
before sleeping your way back into dream’s nest
reality turns into an enormous bird and flaps away
leaving consciousness behind
a solitary consciousness
absorbed in the one-man show you act and direct
on your pillow
while at the same time, you are your audience
amazed at the life you rearrange and reorganize
saying: I alone am still myself . . .
yes, and when you stand at last out on your
balcony
the cold of the whole North Pole attacks your gut
and you are like a probe measuring loneliness
planted askew in this shivering planet
but still you insist on possessing intact a fine
winter’s day
although this
is, in fact, nothing more than the hatching
of your first winter’s dream . . .
1997