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

CLXXVIII.

April 24, 2013 § Leave a Comment

The apartment flooded

belongings crowd my back

monitor light assaulting glass lenses

behind,

treated-mahogany bass drum, keyboard, laptop, suitcases, leather shoes,

dry-clean shirts—

slacks, ties

water-logged artifacts towered, crushing air

around our Room-less roommate

unobtrusive, he huddles in the couch, comforters, whatever dry

All behind,

behind me

Wet towers suffocate

novel sentences unfit,

Cannot fit—

noun, adjective, joiners wedged

No room

no money

no money, in this

no money, for lights

Oh, Monitor, how harsh upon these eyes

how late,

I must quit

CLXX.

March 7, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Taken from John Roderick’s “Punk Rock is Bullshit”:

“What has punk rock done for us? Did it defeat Reaganism and Thatcherism and end the Cold War? Has it brought us social justice? Did it smash the state, prevent in any way the 12 years of the Imperial Bush dynasty, galvanize youth, subvert the dominant paradigm, or for one minute prevent the total commercialization of culture and the chemical digitalization of music that happened under its watch?”

petty shifts,

words make

ears distort

Hive-mind: “for a cause!”

its successor scrambles, a blind infant seeking unheard sounds,

more shifts, such petty shifts

What has anything I created done for anyone?

brash, misguided inquiry

CLX.

January 13, 2013 § Leave a Comment

force

my Unconscious laps waking thoughts

Force

words underlie my tongue

sworn silent, burdened

pathos, pathos

Force

submerged, art defies me,

betrays

I, subdued

I, removed

Force so vain

CLII.

January 5, 2013 § Leave a Comment

–

six

eight weeks

rabbit, marked prey

child: powerless, naive

numerous ways describing a book

twenty-three years in the making

new year, new pains, new page

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

CXLIX.

December 21, 2012 § Leave a Comment

tracking stats and “likes”

twice, LXX is ignored

just that awful, violent roar of a machine

the [vacuum] I am steering over a carpet sewn by

hands sewn with sperm and egg

this man-made object is being steered by a man-made man

a union [of women and men]

which laid down these bricks [the building I am standing in]

…me, squeezed between a space, the same properties that bend this vacuum toward my will

the properties of physics and of chemistry

myself, bent in this sucking, awful roar of the [universe]

the killer suns, and all that I will never steer

I seek to steer a vacuum, bent within a vacuum

it drives me, relentless in its own way, never my own, never me

here, there is doubt. Nature is a complex, varied organism. See: atoms. Zoom out, see: a human. Zoom out, see: a planet. Zoom out: you see a thing, not the many things trapped, bent within its awful, violent roar—

—the atoms bent in the noise of war, intercourse, ingenuity, musical vibrations

—the people bent in the starlight, oceans crashing, land shifting

—the planet bent in its orbit, its turn, its satellites

—what steers?

tracking stats and “likes”

CXI is enjoyed

I must practice writing as Earth practiced itself

the universe practiced

as did its parts, its galaxies

water planets—our solar system—Earth survived

multicellular beings practiced

until I emerged

my mind, my eyes, my hand–they practiced

now words surface

- -

often, I fear my words are read

the meaning, lost

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.

CXLVI.

November 20, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Took bus 34 downtown; walked eastward over the Nashville bridge. To my left, the hills rise far off. The river running north underneath is wide; if only I could leap up and see this expanse (I see it in my mind’s eye)

if only, might I know it better? Putting greater distance between myself and this planet –

when? we return to the sky, to the currents that silver bird rides, to the spot on this spinning rock I call “home”

there is a friend there waiting

–

night fell

halfway out the bottom of a hedge grown against a chain-link fence

a cat lay twisted

clawing at soil for good now

eyes dark and open

it is not moving anymore

–

bus 34 routes a half-circle eastward and north

men talk

lights pass

the hair on the back of my neck is wet from a day’s walk

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?)

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!

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