Frank Sherlock's Love Letter November 15

Wonderful to receive this poem from Frank Sherlock last night. In response to the raid of Zuccotti Park.


Books

gone

Shelter

gone

I've been

screaming

out of key

all day

for you to

cover

the promise

hole

in the wall w/

a horizontal

picture or

something

that looks

like joy

I've been waiting

Ah this

sunrise

again on

a failed

paradigm

this stare

too far

into space

for too long

to remember

the name of

this city

Here is

a hammer

Here is

a bulb

A number

of things can

happen like

building in

light

killing in

darkness

or touching

each other

during

our magic

hour

I trade

news links

through

militarized

playspace

to keep

witnessing

fresh

to stay out

of the back

catalogue

while

looking to

not be

abandoned

Take a sip

of war

commodity

from my

bottle when

you get here

I know you

get thirsty

You might

taste traces

of blood but

this is what

I have

to offer

The sound

you might

hear is

quiet running

counter to

anticipations

seizing on

conservation

as if shorter

showers matter

Pardon

my reach

to be

respirited

filching a cup

of memory

as memory

Are you there

This company's

the worst

The trapdoor

spiders' prey

lines up

in the web

in perfect

single file

I hate them

& I'm not

talking about

the spiders

Feed on

a symbol if

it's helpful

This phone

has hit

the wall

It still

works as

a transmitter

Call me

Where does

the exile

end & the

life begin

Your now is

three hours

before my

now & your

now is six

hours after

my now &

where in

this hell is

our future

but so far

ahead it'll be

unrecognizable

upon arrival

Not to

get all

necrocentric

but there's no

contradiction

between

the love of

flowers &

hatred of

floral

wallpaper

This was

real this is

real since

nothing

can be

destroyed

even when

pushed

into fire

I take

the cremains

to the Risk &

Disaster

Studies

section to

Poetry

(of course)

to the bridge

between

the smart

side of

the river &

mine to

the cafe for

conversation

Part funeral

Part miracle

The miracle

can no longer

be buried

There is

a difference

between death

by despot &

natural death

but neither's

truly painless

Pretending

there is no

loss foretells

more loss

than I could

ever shoulder

I've waited so long

Living through

catastrophe due

to no fault

of our own we

feel around

in this blackout

for everything

unseen

Yes we're

engaged

No we never

dated I

swear it's

really not

that weird

Before I woke

I banged

piano out

in a field

the floodrotten

shed in

the distance

I composed

for you w/

ham & wire

It sounded

good at

the time so

what if it

came out

sloppy it was

Peace Be

With You

sang so far

away from

church

That was nice

but we are

awake now

captured

while viewers

haven't

discovered

that craters

seen from

a distance

render these

wounds less

than their

actual size

I despise

missionaries

& their boring

positions

I'm tired of

lying on my

back just so I

can be taken

This interest

rate this

jobless stat

this market

demographic

has gotten

up to stay

human

I have almost

died again

to prove I

am a person

The library

starts over

You are

what I've

waited for

& finally

we're here

Two paragraphs on "intense autobiography"

From the talk I gave at Regina Rex gallery last wkend:

Basically, I want to use intense autobiography to describe self-life-writing practices (the literal translation of auto-bio-graphy) that stray from the genre of autobiography, in which one provides the facts of their life, from birth until present, usually late in life. While intense autobiography exists in relation to these forms of self- or person- writing, it is different. And where it differs largely are in two respects: 1. That writing is not a transparent, narrative means of making self or person appear retroactively, but the very means through which the person/self comes into being in relation to a social milieu; 2. Through intense autobiography the “body”–that container demarcating human personhood and rights—becomes a site of experience and experimentation where the limits of the self are related, if not often contested, in relation to a public, community, and/or socius.

Intense autobiography can also refer to a series of practices upon the body, much as Foucault spoke of disciplinary practices in terms of a “technology” or “care” of the self. The body-self is a site where subjecthood is negotiated and contracted; where disciplinary boundaries and biological essences are tested; where the body as a territory is both mapped and deterritorialized, as in the many famous cases outlined by Deleuze and Guattari. What I want to talk about when I talk about intense autobiography is how self-life-writing demarcates social, biopolitical, and geocultural thresholds. Through forms, and not simply a received narrative writing which blandly insists on a continuous definition of self as a contained or enclosed interior, I believe writing and aesthetic forms may present the movement and passage of person/self/subject through a duration (where intensity refers to movements in time, and extension may relate movement in space). This writing is about becoming; it is about movement and undergoing; it is also about undertaking a radical empathy by which “self” and “other” and milieu and environment inform one another, as much of the most remarkable poetry and art of the 20th century has ventured. Form is necessary to the prospect of a radical autobiographical writing practice, because it is through the discovery and invention of forms that the subject becomes observable as a series a thresholds relating inter-subjective, psychosocial, and biopolitical exigency—the very urgencies that autobiography, as a genre, normally excludes.

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been available to anyone else.

Until time and justice are one
Or we are forgiven
Movement heals our wounds while
It opens a million more

While you opened, while
Your mouth opened, I heard
The throat do its thing.
I heard the song express

A million things about
What we are here for,
Thinking about the generations
We turn around them

While they turn around us,
To assemble those burdens
The dance called out,
Into the heat of air

That leavens, leaves us burned.