The Processor

The Process of Poetry

The Processor

Christopher Kelly

 

This process, this is life driven by a will
Opposed to it, because it finds death
Inside. This friction, benevolent resistance
Aimed toward staying in the background

Of one infinity. This heavy inertia
Weighing toward a cozy genesis filled with
Stale blood. This propensity to falling
On a sure bed - a safe and sated bottom.

This process is the dying not yet traversed
By anyone on the road; through which a reverse
Rememberance of the dead does not shine.

This process, believe me, is real in time
By which the heroism will mature in my chest
To allow me to rightfully nurse at your breast.

 

Residents of the Other homeland
Across a rosebush are watching Time

Not yet knowing that like a slave
For them performs a dirty labor

Time like pain is of female gender
As the word Death is still unfamiliar

But I bear the guilt of their existence
Purposely giving up their name to the wind

I ought to give them a chance at nonexistence
Independent directly of me

And I enchanted Time in the clockwork of female body
So that lovemakers will feel the pain

Of Death so hard - that still ignorant
Of dying - will vomit out their lungs

Their buttocks are sad
and the store
of their heart is meager. Daughters
of winter
and want

Yet still is growing
my sincere head
on the plate
of their hunger

But you, why is your sex
blind? Black slave of
light ... pretend!

Pretend, o precious,
so the reward
be tripled by good death.

My face looks at me from the clouds
Having come out from my body and eyes
This is blood - straining past the horizon

My breath is blood, and a dry wind
That vertically ascends from the anchor
Of my lungs as a stalk of circling bird

But since earth is just now turning in reverse
The lungs turn in me 'til they rip out
Through mouth, through ribcage - like a cloth

Still there is sky, and my face is vast
As blood is dawning over the horizon's rim
The bird still knows his elevation

Yet unknowing, he's slowly seeping
From the large to my tight sky
Of closed eyelids - heavy as shroud.

Who gives the dark ones a white woman of day
Will have to restart and begin as I say

Who of holy harmony will dream
Death invent he must and entrust in him

Lose fear of the knife where its point
Near the fifth rib marks the joint

And do not fear or mock the truth
That the knife is faith's serious tool

And don't let it wait for the years
Will crush it and wither its veneers

But with religious hand one must grasp
And with immense strength and joy one must thrust

To begin the fight with self one takes up
Who - fluent in script of doom - doom will have for naught

 

My wide-footed brain wandered abroad
And hundreds of miles afar is now a moon

My blue-eyed sight over shortness
Followed and married him to stars

And my religious hunger, now invents God
To make them a frame, to fill the void.

Then my silly pious sense of harmony
Loudly rejoices in orderly actuality

But already, my fierce rebellion, the best poet
Calmly sharpens a knife on the stone of my heart.

 

My vocabulary so small! Hope's term Tomorrow
Is only conjugated in Your person
While Love's word evades my tongue and fails
To compose itself from Hunger's letters

By despair emboldened, I'm leaving Your dream
Gripping my own with teeth in desperate hope.
Tell me: is there anything else to do
When even Death can't verbalize its works?

 

I speak to the heart, but into your hand
I put a separate word like a breast
Or buttock, so that you piously
Attune it to your lust.

I speak to the people, but to the head-priest
I carry the voice, in contraband,
Of a certain woman, who set up the place,
Where he should meet her.

How close am I already to the divine regions
As through me speaks
The expanse whose name is God.

But truly, in order to be liked
By Death, I still must falsify
The words of this immense announcement.

 

I speak softly to you as if shining
Like stars that bloom on the meadow of blood
While my eyes gaze at the star of your blood
I speak softly - till my shadow is white

I'm a cool island for your flesh
That falls into night, a hot droplet,
I speak to you so softly as if in a dream
Your sweat is aflame on my skin

I speak to you as softly as a bird
In the morning slips sun into your eyes
I speak to you as softly
As the tear which wrinkles a face

I speak to you so softly
As you speak to me

 

　

　

Who is that turning in my mirror,
Neither a woman nor a person of fog,
But so cruelly himself
That the place in the almanac is still empty?

Who is that with my glass
Drinking but not a drunkard, though
When the police haul him out of the mud
He is taken for a member of our fellowship?

Who is that writing my poems
With my pen
And taking my wife in my bed?
Who is that who has just left?

　

　

　

　

Cross

I am horizontal
You are vertical
You are the mountain
I am the valley
I am the Earth
You are the Sun
I am the shield
You are the sword
I am the wound
You are the pain
I am the night
You are God
You are the fire
I am the water
I am naked
You are in me
I am horizontal
But not every time
You are vertical
But for the time being
I am vertical
The mountain of orgasm
You are horizontal
Near me

Kafka

Heart has overgrown me
I'm all inside
root

White grasses
grow from my
lips

Julia daughter of a eunuch
with lips by her farther
trained
tills my illness

　

* * *

I live not seeing stars
I speak not understanding words
I wait not counting days

till somebody breaks through this wall

　

　

How many drawers death has! - In the first
She collects my poems
By which I curry her favor.

Certainly in the second drawer
She preserves the lock of hair
From the days when I was five.

In the third in turn - the sheet
With my first night stain
And the final examination report.

Whereas in the forth she keeps bills
Admonitions and maxims
"In the name of the Republic".

In the fifth - reviews, opinions
Which she reads for fun
When she is melancholic.

She must have a deeply hidden one,
Where the most sacred thing lies:
The certificate of my birth.

And the lowest and the biggest
- she can hardly pull it open -
Will be a coffin just right for me.

　

　

Give me a broom and I shall sweep a public square
Or a woman and I shall love and impregnate her
Give me a fatherland and I shall extol
The landscape or insult the regime or laud
the government
Present me a man and I shell see his greatness
Or misery and describe it in interesting words
Show me lovers and I shall be moved
Send me to a hospital To a communal cemetery
Arrange for me theater circuses
A war a harvest in the country a festival in the city
Or teach me to drive a car or to typewrite
Force me to learn languages and read papers
And finally give me vodka and I shal drink
And then puke since the poets should be used

　

　

Song About a Poet

For he is always beaten like a child
A poet, knowing nothing about the art,
Clenches a fist of his poem and beats.

He beats a woman since she washes herself,
Squeezes blackheads and makes up.
He beats his wife for she is a woman.

And for the same he beats his mother.
And he beats his father for he is with her.
He spits at the authorities with quick metaphors.

With rhyme he breaks windows, and with a kick of
Stress he injures the head of an embryo in
The womb, so the mother will not recognize her son

By the idiotism with which he will be born.
The poet also does other things,
But then he is not a poet.

Certain Situation

Evidently my hands are cut off
I write
With a little stick tied to my right stump
I dip the said little stick in brown ink
I also have no head
Features of my sex
Someone subtle washed and hid my legs
Yes I am
I dawdle in a bath
In the warm blood of my animals

　

Five Sentences About Hair

1.
Hair is sad: the brain haunted by
Proud madness doesn't care for it anymore

2.
Hair is silent when the brain is cosmically
Sawed by the long fiddlebow of spheres

3.
Hair falling out: though proud
When hungry the brain eats its roots

4.
Lonely hair: the brain isn't here
Neither in the sky nor on the Earth

5.
Triumphant hair: it has guessed that
There is no brain because - rats have eaten it!

Off Season

I didn't come on time
The season hasn't opened yet
and the locals keep saying
nothing will happen here

Yesterday
I saw the professor was carried out
in a dustbin - so small was he
Right - people shrink here
savings on food
and coffin planks

The professor
The Professor was the whole epoch
He was dragging his leg
It was a sign
of the professor's latest mistress
her name was Andrew
Right - nothing will happen here.

Right - I didn't come on time!
Whoever lives
is dying fast in
one vacant room,

or living slow in small vacuum?

Who said that?

Not I! says I

 

In the sacred number 419
In the scared name Shaddai-El-Chia

forever and ever, world

without end, amen and amen.

July, NY　

　

　

　

　

　　

　

　

Reviews

[Martz]

hi my dear Chris. I liked this poem. your writing is so beautiful.