Peer Smits, Asemics

 

Adeena Karasick, sections from Flux Me Fast and Slow

Flux Me Fast and Slow, p.1

 Flux Me Fast and Slow, p.2

 Flux Me Fast and Slow, p.3

 Flux Me Fast and Slow, p.8

 Flux Me Fast and Slow, p.9

These images are from “Flux Me Fast and Slow.” Inspired by James Joyce’s, 1906 amorous letters to Nora Barnacle, the text is an ironically playful, permissive, philo – political – socio – gendered – lingua – erotic celebratory intervention of love, laughter, comedy and cunning. S’creaming within a liminal space between langue, longing, translation, citation, sophistry and desire; it enacts how love, like translation itself, (which both cancels and preserves), vibrates through the fecund limits of visceral polysemia, and explodes in a redux flux of radical excess, nullifying the alterity of the other in its wild embrace. Mirroring the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet it’s 22 sections also speaks to the semio/erogenous connection between physical bodies and the bodies of the letters, the holy union of  Tifereth and Shekinah, (the revealed and the concealed), upper and lower worlds -- fusing the eros of meaning-making with the continual re-creation of the world.

—Adeena Karasick

Michael Mc Aloran, excerpts from ‘the elsewhere none’

 

‘untitled painting no.3’/ 2023/ acrylic on paper
Michael Mc Aloran

excerpts from ‘the elsewhere none’
 
 
1.
of the locked fist/ of the bloodied shards
toothen to the
extinction of an exposed trace
of cardiac sense disheveled
a churn/
                 (-ing)
a knock till breakage of scar weight a distance of light
in eye exposed to a throat-grip dark
a tuning fork excursion turn of in a coil of extent
breakage what colours
nothing as of which till rot of the ongoing of as if to close
the woundage of discolour/
                                                (-ed)/
sung aloft as the secretion of night skins the surface to the
bereft of
echo-taint of the what once was
till close of bone hours a dressage
a breathless long spoken of
silence/
             (-d)
all the while/
 
 
2.
 
till turn of grafted meat to the exclusion of subtle butchery
        scar upon scar’s redundant shimmer
breakage bone bloodless
                    in the marrow of light cast
upon the scattered blood-soaked rags trace of little distance
through winds that do not follow
        it-burn
the shit in the clogged none bled
burnt of the which in specious colours
               a kaleidoscopic
emptily
stone wind whiten
(-ed)
                        a recollect/
 
 
3.
 
burns as if what nothing of the exit-sign unto where neither close
                    (burn till laughter of extol)
turns of the blood-light wreckage
a compressed burnt shadow-it-lapse-absenteeism
 
nothing of the once
      as obsolete
an extension of nothing left
          (to be)/
 
 
4.
 
the seed of it till sharded light to the edge of pulse
    a drapery of absent meat
a flayed excursion where to of in the rip of sacred piss-reek an abort
 
cascade of
    (all what lapse)
taken as before to the edge of tidal echoing into from
        the out of reach
 
eye that stagnant of in the reek
      beyond which no in the given of
neither of the commence
 
strip the meat of it
the next to follow onward
breathe till of it it were murmured
 
colours of
            the dawn
a nothing
an avaricious abdicate/
 
 
5.
 
dead of eye in the spec/i/al knowledge of lack
coloured collision a
 
breakage of light into from out of
     given
 
nothing known no further stretch of which beyond to reach for effigy
the barren burning alleyways
 
          scattered skins a-dream
all what known that cannot in the realm of the pissoir dreaming
 
one turn till turn what obsolete
walls neither of
 
cylindrical excessive
a skull a distance hearth in which the garotted flesh still spit light
 
in colours long-breathless eye
spits like blood
 
                    (cold terse…)
 
 
6.
 
echo-taint of a skyline pock-marked with incisor traces
surface peel of dissent till
                                   rip of blood
cold as barren lightscape
    a reek of heavenly smoke & the furnace of desire
 
 
kiln of absent laughter
body burn weight
burns away the film of eye to the edge of
percept/
      dimension tone
 
 
7.
 
all what sound of the weight of null a turn of closure neither of the cold dark weight
(sickly unto reclaim)
      night long nothing as the traces furtive to expel
 
 
rot of emblem
discarded light
un-
    shadowed
 
 
8.
 
turn exposure of the realm till drift of eye into
            of the fathom null
                            coil lapse of exertion
split of stone the exposed eye coiled in a rip of scream
 
fingers that dissipate unto
cold weight
 
amber
      distances
 
 
—Michael Mc Aloran

Rose Knapp, Paradice Paradoxa, et al.

 

Paradice Paradoxa
image by Daniel Y. Harris 

Paradice Paradoxa 

—Dadaisurrealisfuturiscubisfluxusbeats—
—Asymmetrikalirollingparadisiacalyxdice—
—Parapronoiaparanoiaparadoxarapture—
 

Dadacalla Lillilies 
 
Dadalalalandeusexmachinapalm
Cocoxoxoxocacalilileleeeeeessss
Misseeeeeenabymemissenscène
 

Assemblage Fragments 
 
Fickleness 
                   Ticklishness 
 
 
Papalpulp
                  Politicodaco
 
 
Artdecoco
                   Dragonadja
 

Hieroglyphs 
 
They appear gradually at first, pyramidal 
& then they encompass all cubic Cubist
 
Blurring boundaries whirring witchcraft 
Dansing sunburst zigzagging mandalas
 
Perfect pristine geometrical patterns 
Upon patterns passages to unknown

Juniper Juno Juniper 

Jagged free jazz staccatos clove cigarettes 
Alpha Omega omens Apollonian apples
 
Dionysian false dichotomies diodes 
Metastasis metempsychosis 
 

Shadow Blossoms 

 
Au chateaux shadows blooming 
Perfection perennial Petrine Pentecost 
Marble mauve flora wicked blossoms bliss
 

Shimmering Shadows 
 
Glimmering glittering glancing evil eyesight
Retinas bloodshot restrict Gnosis aglowing
Cheshire Cat tabs tabernacle MKUltraviolet
 
 
—Rose Knapp

Jaap Blonk, Asemics

Eavesdrops Nr 27

Five Encrypted Proposals

Omens & Harbingers Nr 13

Pleiades Nr 4

Stampscapes II, Nr 110

Two Abstruse Questions, Nr 1

Wiretaps Nr 427

Joel Chace, toe

toe

image by toe

toe

 

               Not knowing how to begin,

               so penciling lines up, up

               the long page.  Cut off

               your toe!  When you are

               Queen, you will no longer

 

               have to go on foot!

               Two phalanges in the big

               one; the others, three each  --

               base, shaft, head.  But why

               this nature, with these laws?

 

               Not the loneliness, but the

               winter, the room.  Not knowing,

               so turning the pencil point

               on its side and smearing

               one line after another, up

 

               the long page.  But what

               would that final equation mean?

               Abductor hallucis, flexor hallucis brevor,

               abductor hallucis.  Stopped in mid-flight

               by an atrocious pain in

 

                                the big toe;

    the feet  independently lead an ignoble life. 

 

*****

 

               I’ll explain when we get

               to the funeral parlor.  This

               line, this, another, sweeping up,

               up the long page.  Repeating

               cycles of the stance phase

 

               and the swing phase.  She’s

               no longer in our world.

               Gravitational.  Electromagnetic.  Strong.  Weak.  Rook

               di goo, rook di goo!

               There’s blood in the shoe!

 

               The shoe is too tight;

               this bride is not right!

               However, in his account, hardly

               anything happens: the struggle isn’t

               between good and evil, but

 

           really between boredom and faith.

 

*****

               If I know what I’m

               doing, there’s no reason why

               I should do it: if

               you know, there’s even less.

              This funeral parlor is quite

 

               like a diner turned into

               an apartment.  In our world,

               she’s no longer.  Their committee

               promotes the construction of a

               monument to entropy.  Melanoma eventually

 

               metastasized to his liver, lungs,

               all the way to the

               brain.  Doubts.  Dirt.  Daydreams.  Not

               the roundness, but the moon.

               Lumbricals, quadratus plantae, flexor digitorum

 

               brevis, dorsal and plantar interossei.

               The wind is on the

               other side of the world.

               And as the boy sat

               there in gaping, silent shock,

               the driver gathered the five

               bloody, muddy toes.  Picturing a

               solid stress ball encircled by

               its event horizon.  Good and

               evil lie one over the

 

      other; like oil and water, never mixing.  She thinks

      about thinking without language, without thinking.

 

*****

 

               Why can’t gravity-big and gravity-tiny

               get themselves together?  The big

               toe, ceasing to grasp branches,

               is applied to the ground

               on the same plane as

 

               the four others.  That angelus

               bell, hardly audible through thick

               fog.  Daydreams.  Dirt.  Doubts.  Grace,

               to dig down so far,

               to God.  She occasionally wonders

 

               if anyone has found her

               opal ring setting that bounced,

               once, off the perfectly flat

               marble museum floor.  Apart from

               the big one, the others

 

     are broken and curled under the foot, which is

     then brought level with the leg, and the arch broken.

 

*****

 

               Up, up the long page,

               thick graphite lines, which  --  if

               even longer  --  would converge.  The

               fact that the physical world

               is comprehensible is a miracle.

 

               She and a museum guard

               spend a good half-hour hunting

               for her opal, searching until

               she begins to imagine what

               his life must be like,

 

               after work.  Went to market

               means what, exactly?  Stayed home

               means, precisely, what?  Under his

               toenail, a dark lesion, wrongly

               diagnosed as a soccer injury.

 

           Might as well go sermonize to fish.

 

*****

 

               Picking up the phone, then

               remembering that the other end

               is dead.  One is seduced

               in a base manner, and

               to the point of screaming,

 

               opening eyes wide:  wide, before

               a big toe.  These tiny

               vibrating strings might produce gravitons

              behaving under the laws of

              quantum mechanics, while carrying gravitational

 

               force  --  oh, and there’d be

               at least ten dimensions.  No,

               she’s in our longer world.

               The child took the toe

               into the house, and he

 

       and his barbaric family, ate it for dinner.

 

*****

 

               Kepler believed in it literally,

               that the universe is singing,

               reverberating with music inaudible to

               human ears, but as real

               as gravity.  He died ridiculed

 

               for this conviction.  What do

               those golden leaves look like

               on the lake’s bottom?  Eyes

               closed, she beholds fire spitting

               through a soul, five swords

 

               slicing another.  Bandages wrapped around

               the feet, pressing broken toes

               tightly against the sole, ends

               of bandages sewn so that

               they cannot be undone  --  all

 

       with no anesthetic, with no painkillers.  Eyes, ears closed,

       she simply cannot see or hear spirit hymning to God.

 

*****

 

               Up and up, among the

               vault’s corner shadows, movement of

               slow wings.  The fellow is

               made entirely of oxygen; when

               you’re near him, you get

 

               burned.  Abductor digiti minimi, flexor

               digiti minimi, opponens digiti minimi.

               No judgment, no sinners, no

               just men, no great and

               no small; there is no

 

               punishment and no reward.  They

               claim that under every building,

               beneath each lowest foundation, lies

               a leathery, fetal corpse.  And

              so we arrive at the

 

     final, incredible page, the closest we have ever come

     to experiencing the act of dying, of giving it all up.

 

*****

 

               Gravitational framing for galaxies, something

               unseeable.  In our longer world,

               she’s no.  At four and

               a half weeks, rudimentary foot,

               followed by toes.  Slow wings,

 

               invisible descent, until it finds

               one of the lonely ones.

               I am sweet as honey,

               and I am called Gabriel’s

               Bell.  One’s self  --  shadow blocking

 

               all of God but a

               thin crescent.  Half a millennium

               after his death, radio telescopes

               have detected the product of

               supermassive black holes colliding in

 

                the early universe:  each merging

               pair produces a different low

               note, all sounding together into

               this great cosmic hum, the

               universe singing.  The majority of

               those physicists are certain that

               their goal will be reached

               within several decades.  Cage of

               thick, black wire, as long

               as she is tall:  it’s

 

               mine, and it’s for me;

               it’s where I’ll live  --  her

               words continue, an aria that

               doesn’t fade, even after the

               accompaniment ends.  Disgorging of sin  --

 

               noisome, huge.  Naturally, indulgence is

               given to one who says

               the Angelus.  The slowness of

               that last page is terrifying:

               adaggissimo; then langsam, ersterbend, zögernd,

 

                                    and äussert at the very end.

 

*****

               A human, who has a

               light head, raised to the

               heavens and heavenly things, sees

               his foot as spit, on

               the pretext that this foot

 

               is in the mud.  It

               might all come down to

               a fish.  Funny old fish  --

               old, green  --  sickly green  --  jade

               bled through milk  --  old, sick,

 

               barely moving, teeth trailing seagrass

               in two strands, one up,

               one down.  Anybody can choose;

               St. Francis, St. Anthony might

               have chosen; anybody can  --  one

 

               strand, the other, neither, both  --

               it might matter.  It is

               terrifying and paralyzing as the

               strands of sound disintegrate.  One

               by one, these spidery strands

 

               melt away.  We lose it

               all.  But in letting go,

               we have gained everything.  Then

               it slips in, behind those

               lonely eyes  --  there in a

 

rear pew  --  and it becomes those eyes as well as

all at which they gaze.  This entering can be called

        grace.  Everywhere.  Everywhere.

 

—Joel Chace