Forthcoming in Vestiges_02: Ennui
“Our science is from the watching of shadows.”
—Ezra Pound
To sink entirely into this dark lung, is all.
As land before footfall, earth rests in silence, un-anticipating and significant.
Endless interiours, expanding one into the next – contains an entire history of emptiness. All the world a magnet.
Heavy rock –
plates dense with metal and hardened liquid formation – a constriction – wrapping
over tendering surface announces a secret collection of matter pierces the surface of
land from within some deep centre – a coming to
that urges darkened grains to the surface uncluttered with the shatterings of bone,
before the soil warmed
with trace of blood and marrow,
planet as it was before it knew meat.
the shadow does not move unnecessarily
out of own – by self is
a stillness that no matter generates
stasis does not give of its own momentum – not by the strange laws unless suggestion from the future quickens out of a quietude – but for the vagrant particles that come – unexplained shapes [des mains] envoi of days, holding the shape of a tomorrow – holding the hand of a sun – that wandering gardener who rakes the earth who grates against the hairlines of thoughtless order, a stream of germ – finding ground in unintentional design
– the sun that forgot to set one day, left the sky brushed low and near to dim
a view that collapsed out of a canopy
the land stretched into rock a clenching jaw a pillar into plant body that is made for reaching – [and forgetting root]
SOL seeped into dunes that know only submission,
folding to the hot air spread across the flatbeds of pressed sand that bakes and cracks in its sleep
a mesmer shell cupping the horizon that sheds itself
drawing new lines thin an order for a world a grey-black sheet
– shadow before the eye divides a darkening that falls, indistinguishable still
movement is sign of necessity that is an othering environment to seek difference
to prove existence as spilling out of matter shell and give reason
ici est là – here is here is made here
a first idea for living. to let all sensation become breath, thoughtless rivulets
that erupt in quiet pattern, because there could only be
one another following – a flow
the suggestion for a rupture – that exists on assumed completion of next breath – an in between being, as if this is enough – before waking between knowing, without a knowing – assume a cloud, assume a nebulae –
so, be endless was formless was an intuition pushed out of divide of other non-life into a moment of [what-must-have-been-life] excavating the depths of form, must have happened on a composition
[arrive at necessity – dis accident – into a shape]
a small material is an orphan
[is the unity – the open system – all cause]
origin, one point fold into the first form [proven-to-be-life]
How life explodes from these strange unforms –
what must have been that burned out of mute rock skeleton sphere – what sentience must have been awoken suddenly for the earth to brim out of its silence and thought possessed the inanimate giant to burst against conception –
a sacred rupture that was so immense it could not be contained within itself. beyond the atomic, beyond the material particle,
force that encompassed form and energy
a promise of water, the softness of priori un-cogito
Ocean contains lakes beneath the waters.
Brine lakes, settled from tectonic shifts.
Water beneath the crust that coats the planet, the black basalt floor.
This must be the oldest water, untouched by bodies,
save these unchangeable creatures that know
an alchemy of sulphur was given chemical to balance
sanity into body – poison into a rightmind – gave
chemicals that couldn’t pronounce –
most didn’t know at all – sent rivers
into blood red turning world outside into fish – that it would bring calm,
that it would still storm that had come all at once though screamed for the storm to not to end to not – water that drowns when once we were contaminants
we breathe old air that hums with electricity and is tense with fear escaping oceans that are [taught] with matter – that we could be like the worms drinking poison, bitter tincture before oxygen, before freedom
could exist because there was no word before
a window could give a world out of lightless ocean
before could be known by a light rising thought
word give a body to a thought become prison
light that reaches the ocean floor –
the smallest particles have mass light falls,
drawing towards a landing, making necessary
—
Lital Khaikin is a writer, editor, curator, and a contributing editor and writer for continent. journal. Her poetry has been published in Berfrois, PLINTH, gobbet, Deluge, e·ratio, and elsewhere. Her first book, Outplace, is forthcoming from Solar▲Luxuriance.