Zen Swing (in three voices)

In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops...

                                (William Carlos Williams after Meng Hao-jan)

1. 
Distance is steps. 
Interval is time between. 
Space is where unfolding.



2.
Touch stone or water or sky. 
That is active voice. 
Stand skin against the wind. 
That is passive. 
Put index finger to nose tip. 
That is middle. 



 3.
Three voices speak in different tongues. 
At times all agree. 
At times they don't. 
At times one or another or all are quiet. 



1. 
There are different ways to cover
longer distance in equal intervals: 
Speed up pace. 
Lengthen stride. 
Speed up pace and lengthen stride. 
The last defines simultaneity.



2.
Look at the reflection in the mirror. 
The reflection is not you.
Left and right seem reversed. 
If you move, the reflection moves. 
If the reflection moves, have you
or is it the mirror?


3. 
Walking is a procession of  falls. 
A foot lifts off the surface,
another lowers down upon it. 
Walking is the rise and fall
of left and right.


1. 
A one legged man
who hops progresses. 
He coils and spings.
He pounces and bounces.
He does not walk.


2.
Crutch or cane serves as leg,
so unveils the triangle,
so unveils the fall,
so unveils the swing.


 3. 
Effort is expenditure.
Effort is stretching.
Effort is reaching.
Effortless walking
is swing.


1.
Gait is Scots for gate.
Walking is opening
and closing a gate. 


2.
Body is joints.
Body is pivot.
Body in movement
is three voices.

1.
2.
3.
Body is swing.

E. A. Costa  23 January 2014

Oeillade Noire (The Fishwife's Rhetoric)

              
     Gat-toothèd was she, soothly for to say....

1.

Between worlds

is a flight of stairs

departing hourly

and arriving earlier.

A million ironically christened years

learn a new tongue:

how it curls and folds

how it tastes

how it forms sound

springing from inner darkness

how it licks and mocks

how it flicks and kisses and diddles.

Do you deny you are so old?

Who do you suppose you are

becoming you?

2.

Asterisms pivot on point of view.

The department of poetics monitoring the planet

is nigh as the nighest cabaret:

You are eating too fast and too much

and drinking without quality or taste.

Dentition is flawed in upper and lower case.

The prescription is joints as agile as tongue

and lips and much less middle.

3.

Water world is one of the triter ideas

of sly midnight dreaming dry.

Is there is anything more tragicomic

than mentula and cunnus doing time

in the prism of an endless present tense?

4.

Poet-economists are mildly interested

in monkey monoculture

as anteaters lust for termites.

Behold three samples

from the Bureau of Poetic Leisure:

What went on soft feet

rides in exoskeletons

spreading traffic jam.

Juice is chemical.

All interest is abstract.

Sperm counts diminish.

You once lubricated

gaily in night forest.

Nowadays all crawl....

5.

Indifferent poeticrats report:

the species is close to all measure,

thus exiting into illusory and hellish recess.

Eggs never address everything.

If consistent, they are not complete.

If complete, they are not consistent.

Goedel is caviar

seeded in some far future

in another species' past.

That is why he is always cold.

It requires blameless saintly waitress

with a heart of gold and sterling broth

to warm his digits and feed him slow food.

Even Einstein at the speed of light

does not formulate the missing diastema.

6.

Would you like to play chess, planet to planet?

Hold out three hands.

Pick a color.

Reality is technology.

Gravity sends this message.

Levity is the only reply.

7.

There are no shaggy dogs.

All are short, smooth and hairless.

Don't be careless.

Be brief.

Be quick.

And don't be late.

8.

It is always twilight

due to the black and white light

of so many suns.

Day wears spectacles that block black light.

Night wears ones that block white.

In the interval--myriad naked eyes:

she walking white in moonlight

she walking black and shining at noon

she walking on the shore in middle light honeyed

and blue.

Glassine is an aspect of protein and anatomy.

To see roses use rose.

9.

Any time is plural.

Every time is singular.

Time itself is dual.

The present moment lives

about three seconds

of any order of magnitude

and in any direction.

Sages sleep underground like cicadas

for tens of millennia.

Wake them rudely

& assemble a delegation to ask:

What color is dawn in the womb? What crude color sunset?

They will move their lips soundlessly.

Their tongues will flop like rude fish

in amniotic fluid.

Then they will go back to sleep.

10.

Sex is beyond understanding

as terror metaphysicalizes

and pleasure becomes error.

The planet is green and transparent like a net.

During eclipse eight hidden moons form an octagon

becoming luminous.

The salt sea swells and foams into orbit.

Literate couple, triple, quadruple or quintuple.

Unlettered rut prepubescently,

are replete with the raw flesh of summer,

inseminate at harvest,

and give birth to Spring.

Night winter rain cools with music, dance, and drink.

Minstrels stroll and sing.

It is the speakeasy between unnumbered blasphemies.

11.

Do numbers have quantity? Do numbers dance?

How many numbers collide by chance on the head of any pin?

Does not Aquinas labor like Hercules through Aristotle

for the pure sin of grand & unthrottled sonoluminescence?

(E. A. Costa  29 December 2013 Granada, Nicaragua)

Subsets of the Spectacle (The Life & Times Of Don Pancho Villa)

                             "De ninguna manera volveré a México.

                              No soporto estar en un país más surrealista

                              que mis pinturas."

                                                               (Salvador Dalí)

(1)

Sentences spread slowly

like ink in water

birthing tentacles

that touch and test.

Body reaches out

in colorless cloud

melting moonlight.

It is second sight

moist with flowers

blooming one night

husbanding nothing

evening the world

drinking and being drunk...

(2)

The dogs of zero hill

disappear into murmur:

one month

one moment

one eye....

All facts are past.

Goal is nothing.

Hunger is nothing.

Venus is last and only time.

(4)

Dearest seer see, dearest hearer hear:

Do you demand common use and conventional conversation?

Plain language and prosaic rose?

Are you looking for explanations?

To you there is really very little to say except:

Nietzsche knows

(his feet walking piano conciertos in the mountains):

the nose knows

Jimmy Durante knows

unmown and antic hay knows

Antarctic knows

Atlantic knows

Pancho Villa knows....

Muchas gracias Francisco.

Muchas gracias José Doroteo.

Muchas gracias, Don Pancho.

No hay falla....

(5)

On one level it is a climax of fragments

melding into a solar system of black suns.

On a another level it is the negation of figments

as if the ladder were a scale.

On the level of levels it is an ascent of time

like Vallejo rising from the center of the earth

under miner's hardhat:

replete with bread and butter

replete with French

free of blows

with a nose

that smells the conqueror

and inquires

(as daintily as an ancient Persian unfolding the last folio):

Cay coritacho micunqui? Is this the gold you chevaliers eat?

(6)

Her body reaches out

in colorless blood

melting moonlight.

It is second sight

moist with flowers

blooming in the night

husbanding nothing

evening the world

inhaling and being inhaled

inhaling self.

Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem...

This is the lost terrible middle

unlost in the steppe

unlost in village dance

unlost in night song

unlost in gallop.

This is one of the many lives and wives and mounts of Pancho Villa.

(7)

Pancho Villa is the first surrealist film-maker:

he films revolution filming revolution live.

Villa films for money.

Villa moneys for arms.

Villa arms as Mexicans laugh

cackling and cursing and rolling double R's.

Villa chairs.

Villa centaurs.

Zapata wants a still life

wants RR's be sealed

with a miniature of satraps'  kiss

under raised cup drunk and sober.

Don Pancho stiffens over the stirrups of his invisible mount

and complies.

!Viva truth! !Viva lies! !Viva Mexico!

(8)

The dogs of zero hill

disappear into stillness

one moment...one eye...one flash of powder:

Cay coritacho micunqui? Is this the gold by which chevaliers live and die?

[E. A. Costa 20 October 2013]

Schopenhauers Mutter

"Mother, you are an ignoramus...."

Arthur Schopenhauer

Doing Things Right

                                       ...un excelente disgusto, creo

                                       (Carlos Martínez Rivas)

To cut costs
wars should be fought
in cemeteries.

To cut costs
as a prelude soldiers and civilians
should dig their own graves.

To cut costs
the whole world should be
privatized (every inch) as a burial ground.

Here is the shovel.
Get digging and to cut costs
throw yourselves in.

(E. A. Costa  25 September 2013) 

Ad Tam Grande Secretum....

There are several different ways
to contrive more space in the same time.

Lengthen stride.

Accelerate pace.

Lengthen stride and accelerate pace

The last is one possible definition
of simultaneity.

[from "The Book of Walking", E. A. Costa 8 September 2013]

Chorogonia

In the first place
there is no first place.

In the second place
is third place.

In last place
holding forth algebraically
is a scalpel hanging from the sky
incising water

on which floats first turtle

inside first carapace

echoing....

[E. A. Costa 22 August 2013]