blogger | J.J. Smith's "Numbers"

CLI.

December 28, 2012 § Leave a Comment

sapped, winter set in me halfway

[sit for five or ten minutes, silent, as I do before typing each successive line]

engine of myself, why slow cold? perhaps, my brain’s lack of engagement with paper cools the cogs

no action

instruments took place of narrative; lyrics, thoughts subscribed to listeners

but none listen

- -

Today I learned I am not an actor (after having walked out of a talent agency appointment, a nervous wreck) because, since quitting high school theatre eight years back, I am best at being myself

Tonight, that Self is paralyzed

- -

hands urge heart: dial ten digits (but the friend is away, voice mail full—who am I to confess to but the unresponsive, faceless, interconnected community?)

- -

sapped

when are atoms coalesced to form my Self ready to create again—

will inspiration come as branches blossom or as computers inherit code?

CL.

December 23, 2012 § Leave a Comment

returning to what? inflection substitutes for what my linguistic preferences were at a time

returning for whom? no person replays what I meticulously labor on, be it a synthesized keyboard, organ, or an arpeggiator; no amount of virtual stringed instruments or mixed, spoken vocal tracks will attract the common ear as it will my own;

returning for whom? each note chosen, each key touched by my own hand, tweaked by my own ear

words, in their own right, chosen with care

octaves are no different

rhythms, too

commas, periods. dashes / colons: cuts

what is begged of me is internal, the audience within

A measured year has almost passed

spirits wane—

may restraint illuminate! may a certain self-temperance allow my instinctual self to recoup,

the narrative-structured prose to recall

Returning: LXX.

December 17, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Just that awful, violent roar of a machine, the one I am steering over a carpet sewn by hands sewn with sperm and egg, a union which laid down these bricks which stack all around me, squeezed between a space, the same properties that bend this vacuum toward my will, myself, bent in this sucking, awful roar of the vacuum, the killer suns, and all that I will never steer — it drives me, relentless in its own way, never my own, never me.

- -

Always me, always everyone; in its own way it makes itself in the only way it ever could, as no way other than the way it formed could have occurred; it is perfect in its disorderly manner, in fact, by means of its perfection it is not disorderly but, rather, it is in order — all is in order; that is “us” (you, me) and all outside of “us” is also “us”; it is never within something in the same way that everything is inside of it; all is outside of it (think of it as being within and out of itself) and my feelings to its pull, its bending, are subjective and weighty with misunderstandings — I was mistaken in my seeing of the energy, just that awful, violent roar of a machine…

Returning: CXI.

December 15, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I must practice writing as Earth practiced itself

until I emerged

now words surface

to stars and to black [crushing] voids

[press lead / press diamond]

I / You

I / We

……… / ( )

Returning: CXXXV.

November 29, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Watching films of stars receding and stars expiring

planets consumed

elements exhausted

matter compacted, clouds buzzing

It’s okay. Holding you, it’s okay.

CXLVII.

November 21, 2012 § Leave a Comment

If I could stare long enough at a single point . . . say, I was standing in a room and staring—not into a corner or at a blank wall, but if I could stare long enough, holding my friend’s hand while I did so (because her presence provides such strength), I could see into that spot, into this empty air, this vacuum, this invisible little nothingness between the ceiling and the floor and the walls, the part we walk through daily without feeling it pass through us—

if I could stare into the nonspecific space long enough I might see the atoms buzzing.

There is a law in quantum mechanics stating the specific placement of an atom cannot be exacted. A definite number cannot place its presence. The measurements are given in scientific notation so as to account for error. This is because the atoms are never not moving. Everything buzzes always. Without movement, nothing survives. Without the moon’s gravity and the tidal push, organic matter does not shift, life does not emerge on land. Stagnant lakes harbor death and bacteria. With only movement does life and light exist. With collision, new life is birthed. With a dying star, elements are hurled out into the nothingness; here, the debris collects and compacts. Planets are made. They move. The atoms they are made of move.

The laws of physics we are submitted to are specific to us and our size. Our atoms do not follow the same laws. They follow their own. How is it that the very essence of which we are made of does not follow the same rules?

The meteors and the red giants and the colliding galaxies are rushing ever-always, looming overhead. We are stuck between the quantum-sized fabric of matter and the ominous threats, the larger, unfeeling, relentless beasts. We are the Middle, a harmonizing of the unseen and the incomprehensible, all coalescing into brawn and sensuality and intellect and humor.

Vibrations of the atoms affect each erogenous pocket of matter—

screaming, we enter

pleading, we exit—

how magnificent, how frightening—

this begs interpretation but the truth remains evasive (“truth?” is the wrong question to ask here but I am left lying here, fighting off sleep and these poisonous thoughts that often plague a young man in his twenties.)

Another quantum law states how no prediction can be reached on what will happen in any given circumstance.

CXLV.

November 19, 2012 § Leave a Comment

a man broken

absent of brawn

aged, bent

Not me

branchless, I spring

bathing, rising

rooted to rock

origin reaches origin

Youth nourishes ambition

Forever young, I rise

not like you

a man broken

CXLIV.

November 19, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Encircled by an arrangement of barns and sheds and other farm houses now converted to art galleries, cafes, and gift shops

my eyes focus on the tops of trees far off. In Nashville, landscapes feel swept aside, the acreage owned by freeways or rich estates. The remainder is in the hills; there, the trees gather, bronze-cinnamon heads peeping up from thickets of deadened redcedars, locusts, hemlocks…The heads, their color clinging to life through the cold…almost a rusted copper-brass like the buttons you see on dark jeans. Longer I look, I see green tinges.

On the tourist-hangout-outskirts, the ground hops and chirrups with dark olive-gold warblers. Their miniature, pointed beaks nip at gravel and things squirming in the soil, things tinier than them.

I can hear the hidden wildlife scavenging through scraps of a fire pit and flipping through tree limbs. I hear the many workings of Nature, my own workings with pen on paper on the picnic table with the heat of the relentless Sun down upon us all (and what is Sol but merely a labor of the elements? Are we any more than such?)

CXLIII.

November 18, 2012 § Leave a Comment

During the flight, Simon & Schuster’s World of Physics brought consolation; Weaver and Feynman affirmed my own life-mulling in the way that Fichte and Kant had this year previous–thank the Germans! Today, Blaise Pascal–thank the French! But these are only names, only heritages. Their words transcend them in the way that my own notes scribbled on airport receipts belong no more to me than anything else (do I “produce” these notes or, rather, discover them? And what is it I discover? That which lies dormant, breathing and waiting in nature.)

On the receipt acting as a page placeholder,

unlike the Greeks, I must form a concept of the nature of physical laws in the way that I have sought a relationship between the forces and structures of nature

no structure can exist without forces

the laws of nature which apply to a human apply to any celestial bodies as well

observation, reason, experiment

methods of understanding: control/isolate, deduction, approximation

CXLII.

November 17, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Confined, knees pinned against backseats stuffed with pamphlets:

emergency evacuation, vacation hotspots, celebrities — commercial fodder– high contrasts, candy colors

My forehead presses to the window; out, is a runway. The beast lifts, my belly lurches — in me is a collection of elements assembled by the terrestrial life shrinking beneath me

The beast wavers; I flutter

Up, rise, ascend — all great words, each unsuitable

–

Caught between the head of a stratus cloud and an overhang of wispy cirrus tendrils

we move smooth, a ship on fog water

Higher

we move unheeded, our mighty craft traversing white dunes

sand, water, air

does it matter? The blue much higher darkens black

bruised, the planet squirming in its womb

CXXXIV.

November 2, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Nothing to see here!

ashamed, so ashamed

but swallow that down

(maybe no one will notice)

every entry bears its own responsibility

Remove me

It is not me–

nothing to see here!

CXXXIII.

November 2, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I know a musician without a Facebook fan page. He writes no blog but he recites his poetry after writing in that head of his for days or weeks. Nothing he creates is formatted, designed, and presented to please others.

In his head, his love remains. He wanted death once, he told me. We now never speak.

I know of the urges inside of this old friend. The world knows nothing of them. Why am I so eager to stake my claim in this space

to secure my own place inside of this vacuum

to make fragments of my Self digestible

for whom? I now ask. When there were mornings, aged ten or eleven, the clicking of my grandparents’ typewriter was enough

when scrawling in a blank journal was enough

when words sat on shelves or when singing to myself was enough

And when will these new fragments cease to be enough? The new Number is there, the fresh interpretation of the same moment. It is a repeat.

You read a repeat and nothing more. It is what suits me for the moment I inhabit

while I yell, my voice no more amplified than the millions of others registered under some personalized domain name

voice no more coherent than the other twenty-something man

voice no wiser

voice no less impermanent or further from expiration

Returning: XCII. & XXVIII.

October 31, 2012 § Leave a Comment

XCII.

Soon as I dictate my thoughts to my limbs

to my fingertips

the keys

the thought vanishes with the magic of its inception

- -

soon as I etch mentalities into a yellow legal pad

I become less of who I was

I become much less

enhanced by refinement

bereft of any chance of purity

- -

am I More now or Less now than prior to This?

XXVIII.

No matter how I try, can’t trace my pen-hand. Its shadow attached, trapped existing; out of light, extinguished, is its only rest.

Move a thumb. It moves. It interprets. It soothes. It means. It mars. It takes.

CXXXI.

October 31, 2012 § Leave a Comment

It nags, pulls here; it is not the impulse to write but

you sleep; I write

is this not true? Or am I deceived?

Skin of my bones, my muscle, my egg-carton of organs (cook, crack, split them; they expire, they spoil; all it takes is time)

all it takes is time and these nights fade

you sleep; I write

there was a life here, was there not? Out here floating off is a boy

a balloon missing its weighted-piece –

not “decorum” because my inflated form does not belong up here

not “decorum” because the wind whipped it about, scuffed the plastic, wore-down the edges

faded; all fades as these nights are closing

in, around — I am deceived

you sleep

I write

CXXIV.

October 13, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I am typing from an unreachable space. Here, you are sealed off from the immediacy of the emotions coursing through my nerves, exacted by (oh, as I have referred to them as before) these interpreters made of bone and flesh and all that is invisible to me unless I were to peel these layers back until an emptiness revealed itself, until the void creeping into my thoughts as of late is revealed–

you should feel alienated by my words now. Good. It is best this way. The relationship we are forming is too knowable…You read; I live, I write; you read…How are you living? Well? Not-so-well?

If you are not familiar with this manner-speak, please, humble me by allowing yourself entry and entreat your mind to wander; do me this courtesy and I shall offer a heavily contemplated experience. I offer you honesty.

Here, you are sealed off from knowing me. You know the words. That is all I have anymore, really (do not mistaken this for pitiful remarks of Self.) It is true. The words say what my laughter and my new pair of shoes and my haircut and the artifacts on my shelves cannot.

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