The shortest poem
            is:

            O

   Solar eclipse

       the ring

 that incubates

            O

The MOon:
    MirrOr
that shOws
        PhOebus' face
       
          O

The eclipse
     is Apollo
staring 
          at itself

           O

The sun illumines
the SO{u}L,
the inner sanctum
         of 

       V O I D 

     envelops
his resurrection

           O

Through reflection
the horizon closes
      upon its
           self

              O

       Peripheral
           crown 
              of
          rebirth

               O
----------------------- 
           &|O|&

           In Luna's 
               Aquarium
            the moth 
                is immortal
            swimming in lymph
               cool and everlasting

              YET 
                  L{O}VE

                 Fire 
                    is 
                    down          e
                  f all           s
                     and   i 
                          r
        
              The Sun 
                      is 
                the moth's
                 cocoon,
                   waiting
                for insemination
               by immolation

                  The moon
                     drops O N
                      and takes
                       th' {wings}
                   of her unborn self
                flies ON pastel chrome fans
       to her beacon: 

                             O
            A mo}th lands in the Sun,
                     its wings burn,
                 and the smoke is a mask
                            of shadows,
                         a play of shades
                    forcing a theater 
                          and audience
                                down
                            bel{O}w

                   Then Sun,
                         then mo}th,
                       act each other's role,
                     light in mask dark,
                      searching death 
                        in the horizon
                            for birth
 
                                  O
                                
                           --Flash--
                           the moth
                            sunsets
          

I was in the patio 
under the Sun's soliloquy
trying to focus 
on the haunt
   of heat
on skin, 
an
   effort to recall 
   uniqueness
(or
    forceful forget
    of indifference?)
Diatribelly positioned
at the liminal post 
of human pelt
to discern 
whether
perception pure
accrues virtue 
sufficient
to persist 
after 
          the 
buoyant 
            dispersal
of 
        the     
          
 skin

 and 
 the nether kin 

        under  
       its 
          veil

Under the noon 
  Summer Sun
a shadow butterfly
     dissolves
in 
            flower 
                            shades

  Adamic
  naming 
  of Paradise,
had he known it 
as inventory of lack
or,
ere Noah,
life's ark,
would Paradise
that can be lost
not be flood?

In the tiles
a squirming ant,
maybe maimed,
rolled back and forth
             from the  
                 Pain
                   of   
the      hyper-heated      surface 
               

Toil supreme
is to appreciate
the Sun,
integument of death,
once lost
Paradise is Perfect.

As it happens,
  catastrophe 
nests over tranquility,
so as we sat 
content on joy 
in my friend's 
harmonious home
we made 
the perfect kindling
for jealousy to strike:

   the crackling fire
   that carried the laugh
   of the dark mien'd.

I ran,
certain 
that it is my fault,
as nothing is as grievous
as carrying the torch
of Truth
to those 
that are being fucked
by the Dark.

Pursued
by the galloping
  Penumbra,
like the Sun
  before the starved Night,
I ran,
how easy to plan
the most fortunate lines
by Geometry's sight
    to escape...

Had my legs
the strength 
of my intellect,
how swift my laugh
would've plagued them
like Furies.

My pneuma
          spilling,
my legs
       woodening
over fields
      I once perceived
as the banquet of Numbers,
now spectators
          of ruin:

       9  9           9  5  9 5 555
 4  4444444      4   4
   8   3 55        3 4       4564
     3                 3        3333333  
  2                   2            222 
1111111111111111111111111

        Step 
          
+plus+

          step,

Addition
is survival.

And then
counted before me:

A Fava Field in bloom.

          I stop. 

I am blessed and cut
by the Moirai,
before me:
 
     Hade's Gates,
   Demeter's Rejects
      coiling 
       past 
          Winter:
 
        6 6 6 6 6 6 6 

My legs plead,
I reject their cry
even as I
would've let it out
where it not for the Truth
been granted
   iconostasis 
past the Uranic,
and metempsychosis 
displayed before me
as if in marble:

         Spirits
     palpitating
   pneumatic 
    phalluses,
       striving 
          back
       towards 
           life 
             |
           00 
   6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 

A blade sprouts
past my entrails
     
            1

A Carmine Spring
        Dews 
The Blooming
   Fava Field

 ¨6¨6¨6¨6¨6¨6¨

I'm not even gone,
my blood
already waters
my return:

          0

(Pythagoras, by author)

It is likely that Tarkovsky’s next film could’ve been ‘Hamlet’. He loved the play so much he actually directed a theater performance with Anatoly Solonytsin as the lead; the only one play he ever directed. He praised it on interesting grounds, that is, Hamlet’s indecision was based on refusing to debase himself morally, so that his death at the end comes as a self defeat after his moral failure by murder.

It is the basis, too, of my interest in Hamlet, of which I hope to make a film sooner or later. This greatest of dramas sets out the eternal problem of the man who is of higher moral stature than his peers, but whose actions necessarily affect and are affected by the ignoble real world. It is as if a man of the future were forced to live in the past. And Hamlet’s tragedy, as I see it, lies not in his death but in the fact that before he dies he is obliged to renounce his own quest for perfection and become an ordinary murderer. After that, death can only be a welcome way out—otherwise he would have had to kill himself . . .

I think it’s interesting that he would interpret Hamlet in such idealistic way, in a sense disregarding the main conflict of the character, doubt, but I can see how he could adapt it successfully to his own ideals. What interests me is precisely how this conception ties into his own life. Certainly this way of describing Hamlet is near to a close projection of his experience working in the film industry while maintaining and promoting “a higher moral stature” (at least artistically, as he’s reputed to have left many Ophelias behind among other victims).

But the most fascinating tie for me is the legend around a prophecy made to Tarkovsky. Apparently he assisted a seance where they invoked the ghost of Boris Pasternak, famous Russian poet, where he informed Andrei that he would only make seven films (which he did). With Tarkovsky’s father being a renowned poet himself, there seems to be a definite echo with Hamlet and the ghostly apparition of his father, which in a sense establishes a sacred responsibility or fate. Which to me feels like Tarkovsky couldn’t film 'Hamlet’ because he was living it, except in his version Hamlet always answers: To be!

Still, we have some of the notes for filming “Hamlet” in his collection of diaries Martyrology:

2 March, Via di Monserrato
[...] For Hamlet: If it was possible to find a way to express on film the idea of succession and gratitude of the offspring (the four captains) then one could give up the entire thread of Fortinbras. [...]
Hamlet.
King — Erland Josephson, ghost of the father — Max von Sydow.
The castle’s wing is in ruins, each room more devastated than the previous one. And it is in the last one, overgrown with bushes, with no roof, that Hamlet meets the ghost of his father. During the day (although the passage will begin at night, in the darkness) under the glaring light when one can see the tiniest wrinkles on his face. The face from the side, eyes remain invisible. One can very clearly see the cheek and the ear from which pus is oozing out. Immediately after this — a long shot. (The ghost warms himself up by the smoky fire.)

3 March, Friday, Via di Monserrato
Hamlet.
The battle: the first shot from the helicopter. An especially selected and fitting object. It is necessary to invent a completely new not so much a concept but a construction, an idea, creating it according to one’s own interpretation. [...]

16 March, Wednesday, Via di Monserrato
Tell Hamlet in a language that’s modern in every respect. Show the essence of the contrast through images, and in the first place of course, through Hamlet’s character. Here the dramaturgy is nothing but dialectical, however.
Yankovsky — Hamlet? This could be quite good. [...]

20 November, Sunday, San Gregorio
[...] Hamlet.
They are looking for Ophelia who drowned. They are draining the ponds. People in water, it runs out gradually revealing the bottom of the pond and the crimes of Elsinore. They find Ophelia, her eyes are open.
A slippery, damp layer at the bottom. Ophelia’s dress is white, with lace. Cloth through which all the water in the pond has passed. A fish flutters in the lace mesh — of life!?
Two fragments; no — three (!):
1. draining the water,
2. the drowned woman,
3. proofs of guilt at the bottom of the pond..
Yorick’s skull is not found by the gravediggers but at the bottom of the pond. Yorick was murdered.
Must urgently find the translation of Hamlet by Morozov. [...]

22 November, San Gregorio
[...] Hamlet — or a portion of it at least — should be filmed in Monument Valley. It’s astonishing that in places like this, where one ought to talk to God, Americans make westerns like John Ford used to do. [...]

25 September
[...] Why does Hamlet seek revenge? Revenge is a way of expressing family blood ties, a sacrifice made for those near and dear, a sacred obligation. Hamlet, as we know, avenged to join "the broken link of times," or rather to realise the idea of self-sacrifice. Persistence or obstinacy is frequently apparent in actions which only hurt the person who undertakes them — this is a perverted form of sacrifice. Self-negation, obligation.
Odd, absurd moments of necessity, of propriety of sacrifice which the materialist Freud would call "masochism." A religious person — "obligation." Dostoievsky called it "desire to suffer." Without a religious system such desire to suffer may turn into psychosis. Ultimately, it is love that hasn't found form. But this is spiritual love, not a Freudian one. Love is always a gift made of oneself to others. And although generosity, readiness to make a sacrifice, carries within itself as it were a negative, ostensibly destructive meaning (naturally, in its vulgar understanding) in relation to the individual who makes the sacrifice of himself, the essence of this act is always love, and therefore a positive, creative, divine act. [...]

I think the problem of Hamlet could be stated more precisely in the frame of Stalker: what would happen if Hamlet walked into the room? Would he get his revenge, escape it or save Ophelia? Hamlet’s problem is doubt, he does not know what he wants. I think this would’ve been the proper adaptation of Hamlet, even though Sacrifice gets pretty close, with Alexander saying “I finally understand Hamlet”, where the the main action follows both tensions: the actor who through doubt stops acting versus the one that through faith orders the state of things.

A sunflower
that has not seen her lover
for so long
hopes to reach him
through her last song:

I like the rain
but the sun in me
is like the I in identity,
without it I'm just flower;
except he is also
my flow,
my attention,
my love's direction,

     without it 
 
      I'm just er...
 
        not even coherent

to err 
 
     as her

         r
         -
         e


                  I'm so impatient
               to see my beloved!
 
                    To strain upwards
                past the clouds!

That I barely feel
´´ my roots ' '
loosen  '  '  ''
 '  ' as rain  ´'
´ rains ´´´´
´´´´ upon ''
'´´´  rain, ' ' '
 ' ' '   on  ´´' '
 '  ''   my '´'
eyes upon him,
 ´´´´  rain´'''
 ´´´´ down ' ' '
 '  ''   my  '' '' ' 
 ' '   face ' ' '
 ' ´´  as  ''  '  '
 '  ' '  if  '  '  '
   ' '    I   ''  ' '  '
  '  rained '
     ' over '
   __him__

       rain

      that might've soothed,
    might've fed,
    has unclenched
       me
  from the
      '  . 
    __earth__
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ such cataclysm
~ is love  ~~~~~~
~ washing ~~~~~
~ with death ~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I flow on the flood
~~ and yet struggle
~~~~~~~~  upward ~
that by chance
I might glance
his gaze,
      one ray,       
while spreading 
 .  . my tears .  .  
  . .  . inside  .  .. 
(black/white)
 sarcophagi:

   my seeds:

          (//)

   Learn patience,
you are the I 
that survives,
my remains
  that 
        say
             lower
       so that you
        may open:
       w | into | v
lower | unto | lover

SUNSET FUN

Don't we hold the summit
        of our rising:
              Fun
If a tower made of play
to heaven grow'd 
     to enjoy
it would not fall 
                  as Babel. 
                                   . 
                                      .
Innocence allows everything,
and play reaches to Heaven,
yet we storm to Heights
for such paltry delights—

        Catastrophe 
        is just the Sky
            saying:

           Try again,
             be pure 
         in the frame
           of game.

SMOKE BREAK

All of our Lights
have only created:
   
   Darker Black

At the midnight pause
   of fun and alcohol:

                   Starless

   Heaven                      Dark

                      Void
         
                Seducing 
       eyes to where there's
                Nothing
                  to see
                    and 
               Everything 
                   worth
                 Attention!
                     
       What a hundred
     attractions
           could not 
  command...

      We see you not,
stars in 
           array divine
and still 
           you sing 
of man's
            secrets
as he chooses
  to stray
     along  
       the 
       Dark
             .
                . 
                   .

            

You can follow here to learn more about his work as a painter and a writer.

==Hummingbirds==
         mid-air  
       black stars 
          of day              
       leading you            
              to 
The Miraculous Birth   
 . .  ... of Termites  ...  . .     
                 u>—    
            ==///==
              -´          
                    
                $
The conqueror worm
          ever one
       in his throne
          becomes
         immortal
                 $
------------------------------------
The windows host Sun replicas
                           but any replica 
                       of the Sun
-------------------------------------
                        Is the Sun
                                  

Goldfish swimming
among discarded cigarette
                                  butts =...
mate
with ash...
                     an angel is born
                     in the sunset glimmer
                     of the pond            
                                    
          (                                           )

Cut-headed butterflies 
Resurrect    &    &
    &     &    Resurrect
Reborn         &       &
             in endless cycles
the flowers
                    never forget

The fleshy wings
{{{{{{{ of the bird
that cut the air
are cut by ants
to bring home
         .{  .{  .{ 

  The worm
                    is the 
    primordial
form:
         
         I 
         
     sperm
   violently 
  swimming
       to 
 the 
   ovule 
            of  
    death
   
        O 
. . .´´''``. . .

   A butterfly 
turns into a leaf  
     to sleep  
          { | }
 Rest is to rest
 { form | being }

First, Homer is myth himself, to establish him as a modernly conceived author distorts the most important aspect of his work: Tradition; a set of mono-myths that poets would refine, reproduce and perform. Regarding Homer, we cannot establish his personal creative input in any way, the only thing that sets Homer apart is that he wrote it down. He could’ve added nothing to the tradition as a poet whatsoever. The act of writing itself might’ve even been insignificant at the moment, as writing’s value is set against time, thus becoming of seismic importance as it elapsed. One could describe it as genius but should also be capable of seeing how that act might’ve seemed crazy, futile, incomprehensible or reprehensible in his epoch. Homer might’ve been a mediocre part of a great tradition, but he wrote it down; who knows why.

It is impossible to think therefore of any American Homer. First, as a disruption in the means of transmission of literary tradition (maybe only an epic poet who refused to write an went back to oral transmission could mirror such an event); second, as belonging to any form of tradition based on a mono-myth. America’s mono-myth is self-contradictory, a tradition of individualism that negates any form of continuity because of this. Whitman could’ve started a great american tradition, except the myth was about Whitman himself, and therefore only possible to continue by Whitman. There’s no possibility for tradition without betrayal of it’s conception.

Cormac McCarthy is the closest to a form of traditional epic with Blood Meridian, in the sense that he builds upon a genre, the western, which approaches the traditional, but also builds upon the previous work of Samuel Chamberlain directly. But a more meaningful step would be somebody who took Blood Meridian and rewrote it. Such an act in America is, at the same time, inconceivable and criminal. Inconceivable because it goes against the ethos of the artist who has to be original and make a personal ouvre, as per the values of individualism; Criminal, because copyright makes it punishable by law. Be that as it may, Blood Meridian’s appeal as American Epic is in how it subverts the american mono-myth, upholds cosmically the ideals of America but in such a cynical portrayal that nobody would want to accept it anymore, again, rendering it paradoxical.

Then we have Moby Dick. If in an Epic a local conflict grows to be of cosmic importance, Melville does the American inversion: cosmic importance narrows to an individual’s personal Obsession. Here everything is collapsed into the individual, instead of the individual expanding to the cosmic.

Therefore, the peculiarly American concern of finding the great American novel, epic or Homer, is part and consequence of the contradictory nature of the American mythos. The moment such Homer could be found, a dominance and a collectivization, i.e. a tradition, is introduced which negate it’s own root in the myth of individuality and self-assertion. The insistence of this question in American letters might represent a need for a myth other than “What bring us together is what draws us apart”.

“They shall ball unto Xibalba.”

-Ellis Wiens

    World Cup 
about to initiate 
       my city
everyone green clad
   homogenized
I've locked doors
        hiding
anchorite mad
   maniacal scribe
   diagrams sprawl
         connecting :

                       !¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯!
|the last remaining ritual----                 |   
|          --- but to which God? --hoots Baal  |   
|-----------football----------------------- |   
|               ---soccer--  (sorcerer / sucker?)        |   
|             ---fool's gol(d) cup & grail                 |   
|            goal --- algo                                |   
|                         -rhythm                          |   
|                            (but who's the goal-keeper?)  |   
         last tether
                     ----to the child corpse of play
                  I'm failing
         my country's only patriotic duty
             no place to hide
             cries hurl
                          from outside
 
                 I must scream
             but I have no team 
                       .
                          . 
                              .
               !¯¯¯¯(GOl)¯¯¯¯¯!

Check out at

This is my Throne
where I watch from
and everything I see 
          is mine
because it is my sight
     which bestows 
 the attribute of existence.

People pass and offer tribute
throwing coins to the street's 
            Oblivion,
walk always un-looking
as to never salt-pillar
fore the urban brothers,
            for I am 
The Emissary of the Invisible
and in no space do I feel shame,
everywhere I lay is my home
as it is I who keeps the secret
of the city's double,
built on twin founders
             semper
one mortal, one immortal,
  the existence of which
is the growth of the other,
    as the city is visible
by what it makes invisible,
for every house and every monument,
a shadow of debris and excrement,
a trash and rubble twin
that form the invisible
  city,
  not unreal, 
  hidden,
and this is the Brother Immortal
who endures 

     in         the            

                 constellation 

            of         Ruins 

catasterized by me,
for the city exists
because I see it,
and persists 
by not seeing me,
their brother,
their invisible origin,
and everything they throw
as junk and garbage
will outlast them
as ledger of their existence,
a legacy of wreckage
complicit in landfills
that build my Eternal Kingdom
where I reign
and everything I look
will be mine
through Time
as this is my Throne

             I
have seen you
    tunnel the clouds 
       with brilliant strategy
and lustful game
             I
have marvel enough
to envy you // my place next to you //
  know
 you too 
 will fall
will one day look at   
    Lightning 
as you burrow
    in storm mud
and understand:
   
   you fear it not

and be so enamored by:   

The Mystery of Death

that you will travel

down

       in the 
   
 Forking 

           Solar     
   
   Mare

and be blasted into flesh
tamed by form
into an (egg) 
     this (seed) that will forget
what shape it must take,
it is   Love ,
    Wild Angels   ,    ,
keep a couple feathers
to remember
,   ,

TALK TO ME

BUT I AM YOU

LET'S PRETEND, SEE HOW EASY YOU FORGET

SPEAK, GIVE ME WORDS I CAN'T MAKE MINE

HERE ARE MY WORDS, WHICH ARE NOW YOURS

THEN I DON'T WANT THEM, YOU CAN HAVE 'EM BACK

BUT THESE ARE NOT MY WORDS

YOU'RE RIGHT, I ADMIT, I LOST THEM

MAYBE YOU LEFT THEM UNDER THE FALLEN TREE THAT NO ONE HEARD

YOU'RE RIGHT, I REMEMBER ITS SILENCE

I AM GLAD YOU'RE HERE TO HEAR ME

LET US HOLD THIS MIRROR CALLED LANGUAGE

LET US FRACTURE IT INTO A MIRRIAD

LIKE THE TOWER OF BABEL

OF WHOM WE ARE PROGENY

SEE HOW DIFFERENT WE CAN MAKE THIS OFFSPRING

AND THEN LAUGH BECAUSE THEY'RE TWINS

I AM NARCISUS 

YOU MY WATER BROTHER

I AM ECHO

ECO SONO IO

THE HUNDRED ECHOS OF IO 

IN THE EYES OF ARGO

CAUSE YOU'RE THE CAVE THAT CAN USE ME

THE CRANIUM THAT CREATES ME

I QUESTION 

I ANSWER

BUT THE ANSWER IS AN ECHO

IT WAS ALREADY IN THE QUESTION

THE QUEST TO BE DIFFERENT

WHILE BEING A REFLECTION

  Horror is my love language
  through which the eternal carved
  my divine array

I flow as Time 
  flows through itself
  by restraint of shape,
I am the Ocean 
  piercing itself
  by the constraint of flesh
set into hunger's 
form, I flow, 
   with the same purpose 
as Chronos,

   To   Devour   All

My soul essence's
                 go-forward
                           as the clock
   
                       as it is of Time 
                 to perish
     if it stops

Out of the Ocean 
   comes all life
      and to me
it all comes back

See my clock 
         tick 
        with 
          teeth,
divine in my rows
                the expanse 
      of my symmetry,
         the geometry 
  of my pace,
 the span 
of eternity
carved in my skeleton:

  The Teeth Temple,
  the tempo of bones
whose substance is time
and to Time return
in my jaws,
as all life 
is mine
and can only be so
in Chronos' kingdom

Here dissolve
the Rulers of the Sky
and my eyes
need not their glimmer,

    I am a gliding pillar

        whose ends are 
           a frozen sun
            and a moon 
              that burns

My constellation is
the calcium corpse
       cemetery deep
in the garden
of everdarkness
     that is the mirror
      of Luna's mien
          never shown,
       shineless 
as the Ocean's floor

My 
spinal 
column
totems time,
engraved 
image of 
Chronos
in vertebras'
rhymes

My sinews are 
the Ledger of the Sea
and as water holds
I digest
space into memories,
the Ocean's Vault
and its recall

          My 
       digestive
             tract
   is the process of history,
               as I pierce the Ocean
    and the Ocean pierces me,
clepsydra of destiny:
  I am the Ocean's clock
   that never stops,
       my true form
         my skeleton:
—Invertebrate Horologe—
   —Death's   Metronome—
—Gnomon    of the Sunless Dial—

Photo by Adam Hanlon

More shark? Here:

Stranger Strands

Death Either Way

They couldn’t cancel the summer or the town would die. “Death either way” he thought. But he felt that the talks of closing the beaches where spread with a lack of conviction that almost betrayed excitement. There where more tourists than ever. Shark hats and attractions, shark restaurants and drinks, appeared fungally as if by spontaneous generation…

Read more

4 months ago · 5 likes · 4 comments · Benno

They couldn’t cancel the summer or the town would die. “Death either way” he thought. But he felt that the talks of closing the beaches where spread with a lack of conviction that almost betrayed excitement. There where more tourists than ever. Shark hats and attractions, shark restaurants and drinks, appeared fungally as if by spontaneous generation.

Even though he didn’t see the attack, he felt the air charge as everyone cried and rushed off the beach and it was enough to start chocking the air out of him. Then the crash of feelings as the moans of his undead rise: “We’re all gonna die”. He tumbled to the parking lot to sort out his panic attack. Nobody reproached his absence in the chaos.

The army therapist had advised him to go to the beach. Exposure therapy. He did and got a job there. He wasn’t sure if it helped, but it felt right. If he’s gonna feel like the beach is underneath reality so that its fin is always taunting, he might as well drive the bastard to the open. He had developed a disgust for reality as if all visible things where just the exposed part of a predator submerged behind an impenetrable aquosity.

He worked security at the beach, not as a safeguard, just dealing with people struggling with that other great liquid: alcohol. And there was something so ridiculous in handling inebriated tourists during work to then go get drunk in his free time. It pleased him to see life be so brazenly absurd.

After the first attack he came back home and set the six pack on the table. “This is it, what holds everything together. There are two oceans that sustain life in this country, coffee and beer, the wax and wane of humanity... And all life comes from the ocean.” He emptied the beer and the splashing foam rolled by his beard, down his gullet. He drank so fast that by the fifth beer he was asleep.

He was in Seaworld, there was a big show in one of those amphitheaters for marine spectacles. He saw the cheerleaders from his junior high school come out and rile up the crowd, but instead of dolphins the figure of a great white shark appeared in the great pool, jumping through hoops. Then the crowd roared, someone was pulled out in rags by officers, it was his old pal Mike, Mike Jabowski, who was killed in the war, he was carried like chum above the pool and then the great sharked rose through a hoop and bit half of him off and the crowds roared.

He woke and felt as a patch of trampled grass covered in dew, breathing heavily in his coat of perspiration. He chugged the beer that was left, warm now, took a cold shower and went to see his family.

He sat at the lawn drinking cold beers to take away the memories of warm beers. His mother was telling him about the attack, they where there, and Jimmy thankfully seems to not have been aware of anything. Jimmy was his brother and was neurodivergent. He sat seeing his retarded brother swim in an inflatable pool, bitterly judging his happiness and judging himself in return for it. He crabbed submerged, with his new snorkel and shark fin, slithering through the pool. And it struck him, the way somethings do immediately, when he heard music play in a neighbors house and felt bitter, not because he enjoyed it, but because he remembered enjoying it. It seemed his brother was the healthy one and him the diseased. “Well, I guess that’s why I medicate” and he finished the beer.

The days after became unbearable to him, the giddy crowds filled him with ever present anxiety. Gulls, pigeons and humans seemed almost perfectly aligned in their malign frantic joy. Everyone with their phones out, making skits, pretending to be dragged down to the indifferent floors of the ocean. “The only place where calm exists probably”. He developed a deep hatred, started acting rashly against the drunks. Nobody complained. He felt out of control continuously. The atmosphere was happy and excited and that was the worst: nothing bad was happening while everybody wanted it to. He felt like the only sane person holding the last remnant of reason as a safeguard in a hurricane of smiling ghosts.

And then one weekend his mother and his brother joined the madness of the beach. He had to get opiates from one of the semi-authorized drug dealers that prowled there, to deal with his own family partaking in the suicidal stupidity of the crowds. Even doped he felt a continuous propensity towards quaking in every movement. He saw his brother with coiling excitement as his mother put on sunscreen on him, barely restraining his body from rushing into the ocean. He flapped his arms for his mother to put on his googles, fins and other accoutrements on.

The dumb happy eyes of his brother, how did he live without worry? There he was, spending the day in the beach, putting things into his mouth. He thought.
Evolution didn’t make much sense to him, why would something as wretched as thought exist, it seemed more just a colossal mistake. A shark, now, that’s pure logic, an elemental creature of numbers, a solid mathematical theorem. Maybe my brother is another one of creation’s triumphs, a correction of a grave mistake.

As his brother got into the ocean he realized that, though he managed to be at the beach, the one thing he hand’t done, and hadn’t even presented to him as a possibility, was getting into the ocean. It might’ve as well been lava, as if water burned. “And how’s that working out for you— being clever?” He remembered that line from somewhere. And then the gasp, and the shouts. He stared dumbly at the crowds, he could hear nothing, just mouths opening and closing, splashes of water, flashes of pictures and solar reflections of phones screens held steadily as even the sun halted to stare below.

He got sick, got up and grabbed the rail to the staircase into the parking lot but threw up before, a stream of acid bile sucked by hot sand.

He left the job, went home and drank to oblivion.

His big brother was looking at the sharks through the glass and he was again a child, fascinated by what seemed an aquarium labyrinth that confused the limits, so that he felt as if they where in a tank too, as if everything was inside a tank, infinite. His big brother took him to the glass of a grand circular pool, surrounded by bizarre seat accommodations in platforms and said “Sharks make love possible” He wondered at this. “In this ocean world you can fall in love and you can get eaten by a shark, and both make each other possible… A shark is the possibility of beauty” He showed him two enormous paintings in the vault ceiling: One, a Venus radiant in a conch of foam where hair, sun and waves mix, and the other, Venus coming out, dismembered, from the jaws of a shark.” He wanted him to stop. “That’s what today’s celebration is”. His big brother unclasped him as he tried to cling to him crying, people grabbed and restrained him “Be proud. Look!”. Everyone turned as his brother fell between the two paintings into the pool with a trumpet splash. He saw him descend through the water amidst a halo of bubbles, eyes open as the sharks swam.

He woke up panting. He had never dreamed about his step-brother Robert before. He took what was left of a beer from last night, it was bitter. He thought about quitting the job. What was the point if he was not able to make the shift like last day? But as he thought and waited to detox from the alcohol and the dream, it was suddenly already time to go to work and he hadn’t made up his mind. “Death either way” That’s what his CO had said then. It calmed him and he never knew why. Either way, he could get more opiates.

It was a good day at the beach. Because he had brazed for the worst, with the help of the drugs and the inexplicably calm crowd that day, the unexpected generosity of life made him feel relaxed, something like a handicapped happiness. That day he didn’t drink because he was frantic, but because he felt almost content and that confused the hell of him.

He developed a sort of dull optimism the next days, enjoying the stupidity of the opiates and the hypnotic rhythm of the water splashing and sucking. He even discovered with estrangement, and almost irritability, that the lazy and benevolent way with which he dealt with the drunkards now, seemed to command some strange obedience in them. Anxiety would try to rise but it calmed down, slowed by deep breathing into a narcotic summer sleep.

The day it happened, it even took a while for him to react, but, when he did, time had already dilated. During the confusion of shouts, cries, selfies and frantic recording, he scanned the beach, he saw on the far end his stupid brother wading from the bloody tide into the strand wearing a buddhist grin. Pleased with his trick of transforming into a shark without anyone noticing. He then looked at the bobbing body half chewed sink, until only the hand remained and it spiraled as in a rehearsed wave and it was sucked down. His chest trembled in a soundless laugh while a wave of uncontrollable sorrow quietly disappeared. In a nervous wobbling he went to get a beer from one of the stands, undressed into his trousers and entered the ocean. He gasped as the first wave took him off his feet, and then, as he steadied in the roll, sipped his beer as he bobbed up and down in the excitement of all the other humans pressed between jaws of heaven and water. “Everyone loves that shark “ he thought as he took a gulp of beer “Death either way”.

Rihanna goes totally casual for Harper’s Bazaar’s March issue.

Thanks for reading

Rest in peace, Taylor Kirk

(14-04-2026)

I

The turgid cloud stagnant sky,       
the weeds that break gardens up,  
ahead great waters mutate again.  

To cherish bright fire light               
take the righteous, the ruler, back    
to clear what cracks night for night. 

-

The heated sky births the winds, 
the wounded man hides inside, 
things are not where they should belong. 

Now listen! Cries, rebels bolt! 
Weeds that choke out the flowers growth, 
so gather strength, waters come! 

II

Night as / Thunder! / the blocks off-bursts. 
Peril fathers movement to free, 
so break / cut / flesh that from you won't heed! 

Fire veins through water traverse, 
storms bust shells, clean wounds with rain,
lightning branches embrace the earth.

-

Underground waters' poisoned flow. 
Danger and masses surely rise,
army if guided, foe if not! 

Fallen ruler, we mourn thy throne, 
solstice's roots thunder earth's womb, 
out of Buried Kings sprout all Crowns. 

III

Spring revolts all the burning lakes,
molts, scrapes the hard well of flesh, 
you've fed those who crave take over you. 

Fire lights the throne's maze way 
ordering the time's shape 
as white tiger's lines mutate. 

-

Danger makes the nourishment best
through burning, lakes, rise to clouds, 
wounded wait to breastfeed the earth.

Against taunting waves, serene, 
starve slothful fiends with faux rings
when sky sings a sure triumph. 

IV

Liquid licks off the bulwarks' earth, 
lakes digest selves to lake, hold!
Front river's dissolve, your steel will hold! 

A mountain's tree-root skeletons.
We by sacrifice rock our walls  
and our weapons hone 'til king-rise. 

-

Gardens wall as the waters tame,
as rot grows the fruit seed's trail
Mountain guts forge off a crown.

Breeze off these weapons tills the earth, 
peace we drink and our dryness bless.
Unity, king'd, so praised are wounds! 

ESOTERIC COMMENTARY:

Read more

   a caterpillar's
            ,
    a butterfly's
most sublime moment
is when it's neither,
    when in the chrysalis cathedral
               dissolves 
               into the primordial waters 
              of Maria
and knows fully it's hollow
(                                                                       )
(                                                                       )
The butter-pillar from where the sun God
       (   )  Eyes  (   )
      its dissolution
and the bliss of its gaze
is the shape of the butterfly,
seal of the light through sight, 
ray of joy that wings breeze