Not Telling, Poems 09-10, edited 2013

7/30/2019 Not Telling, Poems 09-10, edited 2013

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not tellingpoems 2009 – 2010

edited 2013

manuel arturo abreu



introduction

1 // winter

influorescence

elephant

a shawl

dray

the privilege of idleness

aporia

how

the merism

apocalipstick

the analogy

blue dove

dream cow

the cricket

2 // springemerald

the glade

another infinity ladder

the darker glance

the queen says nothing

joining

blanched

apple chapel

inside blue hill

backward lemons

the architect of mornings

at fish bridge

redaction

abstraction



introductionpdx ~ aug 27 2013 ~ 130am

i had a lot of poems from freshman year of college sitting around.

i never did anything with them b/c i thought they were bad poems:

lots of abstract imagery, vague foreboding, emotionally bankrupt stuff

that stemmed from being in an unrequited love situation with someone.

the images 'meant' something to me, but only to me, and for that reason

the poems were embarrassingly personal in a way that was coded,

a way that was afraid of being honest and, like, 'poetically ethical.'

so i decided to revisit the poems are if they were raw material.

i used whatever phrases i thought sounded good, changed things at liberty.

it was a massacre, i loved it. i originally was going to release them as they were,

in some sort of gesture toward transparency of writerly process, but decided

it's not worth anyone's time. i'm a much better writer now, the original poems

needed the scalpel like i need to be murdered by a refugee.

the idea was that if i couldn't bear to be honest when i originally wrote the poems,

i could edit them without worrying at all about the 'emotional honesty'of the final result re the unrequited love sitch. meaning i was free to do

whatever i wanted, and construct entirely new poetic ontologies

think of this in light of a 'consistent process of primitive accumulation'

not sure if that means anything to anyone, i'll explain that later maybe.

anyway while most of the results drastically differ from the source poems

(which share names with their respective revised versions)

a few remained mostly the same, simply because of my nostalgia.

i'm weak like that. the result of this editing process (one sitting, ~7hrs),

is, i feel, a more honest framing of my relationship to the original poems

than showing the original poems would have been. except i kept the dates...

i have little to no connection to the feelings that 'produced' the original poems

it's funny how sometimes you can be more honest about something

by not including it. am i pulling this off?



1 // winter



influorescence

A nose could hop

right off a face

like a crow bumbling

as cars buck and snort

as buses huff by— but I suppose too

some noses are doves, borne in a terminal.

Commas claim modesty,

we imitate Nature's machinery

to sprawl lyric selves on drunk light

in a gaggle

all soaked through with questions

Beauty is evidence.

Phantoms don't handle marks

for them simples come out different,

seeking internalized flame, antic cover from brittle wind.

Holy may have to mean

asemic. Skip seven.

December 25, 2009

Bronx, NY



elephant

How many of the minutes have been sullen?

It is gently missing your voice.

It is the strange essential, calm infinite transferral.

Listen again to the Quieter voice.

Again internal battles resolve themselves as whatevers.

It is a dream where you always win at friendships.

Look at me here not defying,

lifting empty airs and ordained aeons

thinking of the blind touching elephants.

It should look like it just happened.

It should be giving experiences their syntax

as winter trees in ague are not bounded by center or an ecstasy of hatred.

our minutes transforming to something.

January 1, 2010

Bronx, NY



a shawl

signs keep breeding

not always and not completely.

Looking and Looking

If a head is inscribed

in an idea's deference no one

should want to know their limits

the sky is old shirts when it rains

& when it rains it rains haughty commas

clouds/rash/air/skin

I see kids with blue lips from from cheap lollipops

you may be invisible

but what about yr shadow?

flowers have shells and move slowly now

a bird alights or a shuffling deck

these are my moccasins of doubt

empty space is sculpted from ends of sentences

that sprout like cigarette butts

in vignettes of hesitation.

January 3, 2010

Bronx, NY



dray

What makes engines decide their problems

in a neutral and articulate way

is the same thing that gives me frequent attacks of smiling

as crow cries fractalize across trees

missing you is my temporary autonomous zone

nothing others do is cause of me

January 9, 2010

Bronx, NY



the privilege of idleness

light leaves fuzzy

upside down pillars

in a frozen pondbehind a big rock

tongues of color

I am not eager

I am fixed in swarm

deeply and in a house

I shall surge

old and beginning

let it cling and confusing

let there be no verbs

January 17, 2010

Bronx, NY



aporia

the dream of an octopus

reminds the Network

of the dovetails it forgot

in the folds of all human fabrics

these are all the dreams in scrawl

January 22, 2010

Portland, OR

how

Where an accent is a pebble in dirt

and everybody doesn't know anything

When we are just bored together,

sandals in mud, toes refuse answer

Why, answering with blue, and trees also

have toes, how can we wait for the trees?

February 2, 2010

Portland, OR



the merism

Beach will somersault

rain is taut

trees in moss tuxedos

the tide is haute

it wants to build a wrinkle

to wink

and let away the arrow, which has ways.

February 12, 2010

Portland, OR

apocalipstick I am raining

in blank monastic fury

shrinking my syntax for now

for now all of these people are pathologically pretty

I think 'the heart gets drawled'

then that it would be good to be lazy forever

grief for the unhappened

February 25, 2010

Portland, OR



the analogy

Imagine if around your wrist was a cloud scrunchie

I actually dreamed that.

And it could not be the hills only

that dreamed this, or the folly of the poached clouds

Imagine I'm in the waiting room of God's pocket

There are veins somewhere the clouds pass thru

I know because I see them from a waiting room window

shocked to rove and sucking light from the center

God's pocket is an organic system

what seems to be a wound inside a balloonis a plant that doesn't need chlorophyll

Instead of a hymen it has a broken eyeball

February 16, 2010

Portland, OR



blue dove

Give away the stone you found

at the foot of a pink tree past the highways

which looked like stacked ribs

a homeless man was holding

a sign saying "Even pennies help."

Ransom says "My toes are talking to each other."

We find caramel rocks in a root bowl,

paler ones the sun resonates in.

This hill's burly, my breath comes

open as a gadfly sleeping on a veil.

First a key-shaped leaf flits and lays flat

and everything is like a locked piano

Then early moon crosses a span of dusk

—this rock uncovered of dust is a round tooth,

hollow, with a blue dove trapped inside.

March 3, 2010

Portland, OR



dream cow

cold blue dawn light sprung like a thorax

ignorant of distrust, internalized,

propelled by dust → flower of fingernails

we stayed up all the queasy night

Now we're watching dawn fog

you say your bones rattle, I feel it

like dice coughing inside their eggs

all full of yesterday.

You are blithe like an amaranth

that wears only its breath

your eye becomes a mouth, lashes prehensile teeth

clinking and preening landscapes

swiftly grinning like a skinny bent tree

Me: 'we can be invisible and still take up too much space'

You: 'better to be infinitely small than nothing at all'

Me: 'Better to be air in boxes.'

take me to the valley of ashtrays

to where the dream cow begs in dull red

their eyes like jealous groves who speak to the sky by bleeding...

I hold out the footsteps of a flower to you, all in the box and sweetly.

We will meet, you will not know me at all

surely I must be some fool, the same that felled the sky,

that lives in a cavern of blurs.

I was always an auxiliary. You should forget me.

March 16, 2010

Portland, OR



the cricket

Being both angry and hungry,

speaking itself an exoskeleton,

the cricket devours the rat lily.

There's a shout of wings, an eagle

finagles, glides along a bird of wind,

sight's gone from me like bird from tree.

Past a moon of speech morning is drained

of all sound. God, you have taken back

your blessings. They were not for me.

There is nothing above the moving tree,

not a loudly gleaming rag of cricket nor

a machine taking flight in the legs of the sky.

March 17, 2010

Portland, OR



2 // spring



emerald

A phone with wings for a cord

monkeys coax others with the language of napes

at the altar of infinite boredom

because forever there must be napes

You are still a departing clove

among birds that look like priests of dust

You put rampart between our sighs,

broke bones of light. We got in the ark

to never let me cross the full falling of your rain.

March 30, 2010

Portland, OR

the glade That star has eight mouths each bright in vigil

knowing tonight is not a night for glory naps

The 1st mouth is a chest of drawers containing pairs of legs

the 2nd is like a mouth going blind

the 3rd has sleep falling like teeth.

I forget the rest, I am watching a glade get sewn shut.

April 1, 2010

Portland, OR



another infinity ladder

My ears

are flies

I wander,

I overeat sensory input

imagine if we all returned to false homelands

As far as my ear stretches I wander you

escaping as I illuminate

moving through dark and its shapeless fruits

brash families of dewwith starkly different systems of governance from us

hang from the hollers of trees.

The berries revolt against mystery, they want

to die on a sunny day.

April 2, 2010

Portland, OR



the darker glance

In the mercy of the more hollow sister the atomic Quasimoto is patient

her tongue comes out of her mouth three times

her favorite word is 'apothecary'

the bliss in me is like the interior of a melting fear

as she moves time with an even glance

there's the boorish anvil of a darker water as she leads me into a gully

in the hollow sister's carny lungs

she teaches me to hear in silence as hearts do

April 5, 2010

Portland, OR



the queen says nothing

I

the scowl of a chalk owl is daft and vast

its weapons are wings and a fast-empty sky

worlds below it are but jealous playthings.

II

halfway through the day I'm slumbery

everywhere possible beds are blooming—

trembling grass, curbs, a bouquet of empty rooms...

III

The prince of distances splits his lands and blots; his army

of roses scrapes forth in diseased lust on an island of infinite thunder.

Cheeks volleyed from the last word you said, following it

into silence. And what is a cheek of silence? Another possible bed? A string clock?

I died, return as a grazing god, graze among

all I had forgot as man. And the ridiculous prince

enters the garden of forgetting, packing his children

into castrated mud— they die, return as trees,

their bark is letters, their leaves are months. Under

one of them I am pierced by an arrow of mirrors.

The roses swarm and mourn.

April 7, 2010

Portland, OR



joining

Simple & bold

the storm dances

gobbling & brash

against the dots.

I was not the first to reach

the memory at the top of this flight.

Who put it there?

First you came as dirt,

intending me to privilege you

& be forgotten as you go,

but the seeds only produced effigies of plants.

I can encompass you, and you will crumple.

April 26, 2010

Portland, OR



blanched

A clear sweet voice never yields

its strange and secret rooms.

It has no adjectives.

It has eyes, in them

I see the tiny old man that

feasts upon a mountain of cigarettes,

leaves nothing behind, hangs things on string

while the butts become burning imps.

April 28, 2010

Portland, OR

apple chapel

Our eyes click together

I look hard

trying to reach

the bottom of myself

forever I've been dreaming

on a tongue

to awaken in a maze of angelshardened in infinite geometries.

Don't make universes out of nothing.

May 3, 2010

Portland, OR



inside blue hill

After our hesitant escape

Waters wept and slumbered, rose to

fathom and remove more light.

Crippled clouds dove into seabeds

they no longer wanted bodies

This is why dad beat me

following the seasons of disturbed throbbing water

This is the seabed of eternal morning,

its fish escape all nets in soil,

all mysterious roads of little dishes.

Everything is a rainbow in the body of light

You want to cling but it is too shallow,at the distended coast a city fevers:

it is a sea of leaves and not shadows,

clouds below and above are mud and bronze.

May 4, 2010

Portland, OR



backward lemons

Beancounters in a cloud need

an axe of dust, a steel May.

Today they live forever—

an ark of suns will take them,

each iron dream will become red breath against rain

Beancounters can make black suns

to give grumbling mud foxes,

and it feels like yesterday

for Wonders as they breathe leaves.

Beancounters make a headless Eden

the Wonders storm in

they dance they breathe rains

that fall into flat rivers

making roads for a black sun.

Beancounters know backs of hands,

have been parallel to pleasure

having through stars opened zones

they hadn't meant to open.

The river sprouts moons and grass:

drink water and nothing else,

do nothing but drink water.

May 9, 2010

Portland, OR



the architect of mornings

deny me as a harbor would

remaining indifferent to any cares of the living

open fields remain dazzled

and a handle, like rain, controls

their gratitude.

They want to be fields of soap.

Sometimes I can see exclamations

in your eyes. You shall allow

harsh angels to touch their light

to you, remain dazzled as a field

does in a blizzard, turn onto

an awkward comma for a run-on

I lay on a vexed mattress

today loosened like an architect's jowls

I am many whirlwinds away from you.

May 19, 2010

Portland, OR



at fish bridge

Clouds: flowers tangled in a bush.

The sky is in a stove! Go wash a ditch!

If it is the case that I was ever here, then,

hurrying to myself, I have no paths, only feet:

I am one of few who can touch ghosts, for

now— those latex ghosts with pansy eyes

who hoard paper memories, goading a latex sky

The world is simple, and does not answer back.

May 24, 2010

Bronx, NY



redaction

The mountain speaks:

"You, the idiot with brains of ash!"

A string of wind is silent, for I have heard it.

Days are corners chewing at the sun.

Wind splashesagainst me

clouds can be microscopes

I walk along my notebook.

I never mistake a heart

for a shrub // not telling

To hold hurricanes

in spider's nest,

to find the windows

into the different body,

or the mouth with which to speak of another's pain:

take my awe from me and I will have no weapons.

June 9, 2010

Bronx, NY



abstraction

I've shot myself in the foot

my tongue is in my cheek

my foot is in my mouth

I put a sock in it.

June 9, 2010

Bronx, NY



thank you for reading

manuel arturo abreu2013

natrices.tumblr

twigtech.tumblr

@Deezius



nice... you reached the secret bonus poem >;3

this poem from 2010 uses the same technique, with poetry from

2006, that this whole collection, in 2013, does with poetry from

2010. woahhh meta

fermented poem culled from lines from 2006

My hands are mashed upon my face like

demons asking— Who let sky from its inkpot?

Words can bend more than fingers can point

& they can swallow all tears in a glimmer

coming from bitter bricks of moonlight.

Now we need to crawl to get anywhere at all.

Let me smell your eyes, they are sunkilns,

your fingertips lightbulbs kissing like mannikin

goldfish. I eat finger paintings. In a burning

nose of a hallway we are drunk balloons, I am

laced to your drowning tongue of painted flowers,

a wounded bird in a lighthouse. Long have

I been a pin of light at your eyelash as you

look up to the rainbow halo of the moon.

If you try again to become invisible likebreathing I will be the revealing winter.

June 11, 2010

Bronx, NY

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Not Telling, Poems 09-10, edited 2013