Nearer to Never: Poems 1438458940, 9781438458946

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R. S. Mason

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NEARER TO NEVER

Ce

excelsior editions AN IMPRINT

OF STATE UNIVERSITY

OF NEW

YORK

PRESS

NEARER to

2TIRALNOS

poems

R.S. MASON

cover: Paul Klee, Paukenspieler, 1940, 270 (Kettledrummer, 1940, 270) colored paste on paper on cardboard; 34.6 x 21.2 cm

Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern lyric excerpt: Heaven; words and music by David Byrne and Jerry Harrison © 1979 WB Music Corp. (ASCAP) and Index Music, Inc. (ASCAP) All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All Rights Reserved

PUBLISHED BY STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, ALBANY © 2015 R. S. Mason

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. EXCELSIOR EDITIONS IS AN IMPRINT OF STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

For information, contact State University of

New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu Production and book design, Laurie D. Searl Marketing, Fran Keneston LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION

DATA

Mason, R. S., 1954—

[Poems. Selections] Nearer to never : poems / R. S. Mason.

pages cm. — (Excelsior editions) ISBN 978-1-4384-5894-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) —ISBN 978-1-4384-5896-0 (e-book)

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Dedication

Wheel

What is encouraging is that there is no pure and absolutely unexpressed life in the human: the unreflected comes into existence for us only through reflection. —MAuRIcE MERLEAU-PONTY,

The Primacy ofPerception and its Philosophical Consequences

Fundamentally, the spiritual domain is that of the impossible. —GEORGE BATAILLE, The Unfinished System ofNon-Knowledge

Imagination requires absence. —JEAN-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence

Who could imagine That nothing at all Could be so exciting— Could be this much fun? —from Heaven

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Contents ®>TIVRALNOE

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Preface

Though I Try So Hard Entering White Proper Acts of Vision Each Time Flicker Carousel Hopper Reconsidered Deluxe Ready? Emily Figueroa Field Work Obsolete Systems Construction

Foreign Planet Sketch Book

21

On Mercury!

22

Hero with One Wing

23

Aesthetik |

24

Bees

25

Romantique

26

Icarus Ignored

27

How It All Goes Down

28

It

30

Nearer to Never

31

Ode to the Material

32

Hard Luck

33

Odd Hats

34

Without You God Is Weak

35

Beautiful Room

36

Sorrows of an Ant

37

Poof!

38

Exteriors

39

From the Car

40

The Unveiling

4]

Love between Phantoms

42

Cogito

43

Let

44

Open Heart Surgery

45

An Incomplete Account

46

The Head of aDog

X= X

47

Experience

48

In the Gallery of Objects

49

Graven Images

50

My Name Is Jack

51

Invalids

52

Lost My Shit

53

Crow Geist

54

Tea Time

55

Wirklich (Real)

56

Harmonicum Nova

57

Grocery Store Spectacle

58

Zip

59

Necessary Violations

60

Mrs. Kravitz

61

Hospital

62

Inter-world

63

Blur

64

In the Eyes of —X

65

Storm

67

Robot Theater

68

Magnitudo

69

Small Apartments

70

Unified

71

Samadhi at Pep Boys

72

Eternal Return of the Same

xi

xil

73

Love Poem

74

Funeral for a Dot

75

To the Future

16

Edwin the Maker

77

Postulate F-5

78

The Super Thing

79

Shipwreck

80

Was That You?

81

Art of the Impossible

82

Let’s Volunteer!

83

Local Conditions

84

Kettle Drummer

85

A Note

87

Afterword by David Appelbaum

Preface

It has taken me quite a bit of time to understand that, ultimately, what’s staunchly ideological in poetry has worn itself out. What is high, what is absolute, what is less than high; conversely what is low, fragmented, based on chance, etc.—all has become commodified, absorbed or, at worst, enervated and can no longer express my existential condition; my very life. So too the merely observational, the confessional or cathartic, pathways to fulfillment or any stylized terminus or incoherence, have become inadequate. In short, I agree with Theodor Adorno who offers that whatever purports to escape the situational diminishes our phenomenal existence, our genuine play with the world. As a human, I’ve always found myself on the side of the other. It’s with the other (otherness) that origination, that which is original, truly arises. When I drop transcendent prescriptions or forced obfuscations, the need to make things artificially “new,” I permit the particulars of my mundane life to manifest as a recollection of what I know, but rarely bare. And so a simple poem, without ideology as its preordained claim, may permit the kindling of a type of inter-subjectivity between my mental/physical environment and, at times, other humans. This technique

attempts to break the reification of ego (in the absolute guise of for-theother, or for-the-self) that’s dominated poetry for over a half century. Fostering perception to hold what’s estranged—the concrete, the odd thought, the spiritualized, the nominal—allows what is collectively

xiii

or individually censured to become, at the least, recognized. This exercise of consciousness is ultimately objective in that it permits the enactment of a form of reason born of radical doubt (through the Western gate) or beginner’s mind (through the East) that permits logic its deeper sway. The subject itself can be as varied as stones on the beach, so too what can be subjectivized by the subject (the “I”). Collecting and comparing, reifying, opaque language, mimetic functions, trumpeting what’s nihilistic or incoherent, the well-worn trope—all has become rote, almost nonparticipatory. We would do better to become aliens and appear on the scene for the very first time. I attempt in this text to aesthetically draw evidence from the phenomenal relationship. At times this means a paradoxical leap toward the impossible which, according to George Bataille, may be the only realm that evinces native faith. I’m in agreement. The poems therefore, on the whole, explore the limit, the situational, to attest to what’s other in repeated forays to define some type of connection. Whether the poems succeed in these efforts is somewhat missing

the point. The critical action is to step beyond worn dichotomies, the barrier of language or static ideology. For after all, nothing is really attained. For me, only being’s action and search for what is comprehended

through essentially aesthetic operations remains. This is the flag I bear; my iterative, futile advance. R. S. MASON Upstate New York

January 18, 2015

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Though | Try So Hard

Though I try so hard to be modern—

(My wife has a cell phone; I use the internet) There’s still something ancient in now

Like this instance, when having coffee While staring at the vegetable world How the kaleidoscopic bloom Of some emergent gesture clicks— (Imperial display of what’s not In the face of all that is) Say, neighbors leaving their homes

To form a crowd without any Shared declaration— Only the ethos ofpossibility— (An alarm, or the coming of love, The alarm of knowing at its edge) May permit such sudden transfers Like most any inauguration

Before its dissolution Most anything you can surmise Before its certain collapse

Entering White

It was marvelous! Fantastic!

How the neighborhood so rallied When they heard of this Great Attempt. And it was you. You adrenalized Who boldly one day stepped forward To say—that you were entering white. Could it be possible? Or was it insane?

“But who'd ever want to go there!” One woman exclaimed.

What carnival as stage and band were set.

White banners spelling C-o-m-p-l-e-t-i-o-n Hung from every village tree. —And what courage was shown as You took to the stage to address The extolling crowd.—Children dressed As regal birds to show their unity. Entering White/—“Please remember your thoughts” The crowd implored. “If it’s heaven We’llfollow.—If it’s hell we’ll not!” “Farewell!” you hailed, “Goodbye, I’m gone!”

Turning to enter the white. Ecstatic as you Stood there knowing nothing lay beyond.

Proper Acts of Vision

I took a cripple outside today & wheeled us into the world— Not to feign some noble pathos— Nor to heal by sudden lightning

But just the two of us wanting to go Beyond our normal motor-notions

“Look,” I said, “a yellow finch!” “A bird!” my friend exclaimed & so we continued all the day No more needed to climax and join

Each Time

Each time, I swear, a call emits Whenever I’m unmoored Unbearable witness to the Red banner unfurling Or each time: incompleteness

A subject without predicate Black on white: vivid and sharp

Like viewing the newly dead (So fresh. So cold) Each time, a bee-like verb Just behind the dimwit’s eye Each time: the mundane Each time: Vajra clear

And failures, and failure’s Intimate laughter—

Bequeathed with joy—No, With the crown of gravities! Each time: Rocket Power Each time: poverty Can you believe it? Each time

Flicker

to Elle

What instant animation as I turn my gaze to you—

A motion-sensor carnival And you, the essential color Gorgeous pretense with Geode green eyes My rendezvous with a blink (—Lips of copulate red) Your laughter brings such joy To the architectural flowers!

Me, a furtive witness to your Perfectly placed hand— You, my never queen,

With whom I’d share All loss

Carousel

It’s an ecstatic pain the horses Seem to mirror: a rondo Drenched by enameled rain Sweeping the edge of time Blow, bluet angels— Your tin trumpets herald The blast and boom Of the presiding Nowhere Kings! We to spin innocent captives Of this mechanical carousel— Our pneumatic cavalry

Plunging toward cessation Random and sealed

Hopper Reconsidered

A woman’s body Is firmly established Within a room The governor of the sun Forming trapezoidal light She and the objects mostly Yellow or blue—a still-life Without sympathies

But who’s to say the woman Is not a willing collaborator? Preparing to release a Gesture—endowed With private meaning

Deluxe

I display my golden Being Asa statue in my foyer Essence made plastic— (Stasis made divine) And the sign around the neck Inscribes: ~ Allis Sublime ~

Above, tied to a string To add to the dream a

Polystyrene dove— Glass-eyed, with wings Made of cartons and things In the act of coming home

10

Ready?

It could be, it already is, that we (They, you, I—the imaginary public) Decide to—have already decided To lean upon nothing—but air Go for it. Drop wingless past The flat world’s gate—Limbs

Akimbo flailing beyond Whatever net awaits It’s the necessary enactment Of some sheer asphyxiation The way a lunatic enters A storm hoping to be hit— Your very own

Apocrypha Being written

As you

Fall

itl

Emily Figueroa

Emily Figueroa is someone I named She may be like me, but I’m not so sure (You could seek her on the internet I suppose) She stands at a kitchen sink

Her thoughts arise from the first person singular She randomly transcends Exterior powers will batter her She will navigate the world

i

Field Work

Across the tracks, at the station, I counted thirty-two or so people milling about, waiting to go north. The engine pulled up and, once it left, everyone was gone. So too earlier, on the plane—the experiment entailed shared privacy: A furtive glance at Passenger 34-C (window seat) next to me revealed an older woman with eyes tightly shut. Her head an amalgam of gravities endured. We lifted: the shuttering lights about her head forbidding any conclusions

13

Obsolete Systems

What I know of Oneness is similar To what?— A vast compass

Without edge— Hygienic modeling By elected inductees

And what I know of Particulars is similar Tomvhats—= Infinite conveyances Ona

finite string—

Endless hieroglyphics of The ten thousand things

14

Construction

Please turn me into a line drawing And wash me with bright colors Please, I ask you to do this My frozen contours captured By a thousand colored fractals

(The cat can be vermilion; What’s sublime as pink) Green gesso to wash the Window’s light to a weird And hallowed glow Please

Do this for me?

(Make my costume a jubilee)

I would do it for you

15

Foreign Planet

Transmission:

Today marks the 16,829th day Here on the foreign planet That equates to over 47 years

Since I regained consciousness I yet struggle to self-nourish Habituations continue to be

Caffeine, cigarettes, and repeated Attempts to form monads Which, of course, always fail For over 22 years I’ve worked For an institution—and yet

Like others, I forget why On Tuesday a woman engaged me In conversation—She told of her Fear and compulsions and I said “Yes, I have them too.” And now, as I pause to think About this entry, I see a crow On the street below Staring into the wind

16

And two blocks down I see Children running in circles Breathlessly running and Running in circles Reply

L7,

Sketch Book

ile

The blue man has etherized A sky of flawless hue.

Aerated, his every thought Absorbed by what is new. The Blue Man

Dy I propel by the words I say. Their utterance rings wide

Like some gong’s clear song. A stranger’s embrace in motion

I once hesitated to dream. Profusion

63: The dirge breaks down a mangled machine A stopped clock’s pure embarrassment. Imagine the mirthless gargoyle’s hiss As I leave the dead-house behind. Enactment

4.

The enameled-throated lily Unfolds a concentric silence Alerting objects of lethargy That my heart’s about to burst. White Frequencies

18

5s

Generative architect Automatic god Discharge your vision— Infatuate the child. Logos 6.

Deity of the objects— Pure contemporaneity! May your structures

Endure the epochs Wherein phantoms Go slowly by. Homage to Factuality

Ve

Stupid gray brain— Now the canvas is ruined! Benevolent golden giants Cry in colors as they brood. Forsaken

8. Oh tiny timorous engines and White-slashed sparrows sleep. Only fearful insomniacs Would murder what intrudes. Negative Saviors

19

ve Any mirror holds the drain Of our three-dimensional beating: What we are perpetually leaving— What we were always receding.— The Funhouse

20

On Mercury!

The florist had warned: “This spray of flowers—

This tangle of beauty will Die soon if not delivered.” And though I rapped and knocked And announced myself— No one ever answered the door The next week it was An imperfect bouquet of

Mostly ragged dreams The note on the door Read “At the store” so

I left them on the stoop Then I delivered bright Flowers of fire—(which Took the upmost care) The note this time scratched “I’m at therapy—Please try Not to burn down the house.”

21

Hero with One Wing

It happens here—at the public fountain As children play tag with their shadows—

That again I transform, hero with one wing Older man in a helmet, enjoying the noon And as hero I pledge: no longer to sacrifice Light for my own words Vow no longer to Negate you or spare you, unwittingly,

From a world that rarely yields Such acceptance permits my wing to span

My belly to shake with laughter— As, just then, the children wince in delight Take to the fountain—and plunge

22

Aesthetik 1

Long ago, when I was a child My father shot a fox It lay on the porch railing— Blank eye beading the sun

I stood there, an eight year old, Stroking its gleaming flank Its beauty was ideal—

My dad gathered the kids

For photographs with the fox We stuck our tongues out To mimic what was emptied

I still have the picture

23

Bees

When I opened the door The screen was alive With bees—

Orange-striped bees With black-plated eyes Moving as one in alarm Bees, wanting through Wanting in, wanting beyond

Making endless forays against The impregnable tin barrier Forward, and always forward

Until mangled or fatigued

24

Romantique

The shouting mayhem of the armies—

Impaled youth, dying commandeers Surround my sofa like frenzied music Bright and instantaneous I smoke cigarettes in amazement Of their synapse-driven desire—

Certain of their struggle As they rant and die around me “Destroy the enemy” I cry—

“On to the Gates of Light!” Beyond ashtrays and recurring days— Past any destination!

25

Icarus Ignored

Damn—

Here’s another dusk Another window Framing winter

A horizon freaked With color stoking

Dying bands of light But tonight I’m a system Of vestigial wings Without the urge

For flight— Calm within the unbearable— [In space/a room/singular] Just a man in a chair With a head of a moth Folding my need To fly

26

How It All Goes Down

You understand, yes? It’s when The ghost you coaxed to materialize Decides two can only be—two

Then, to your sadness, your partner Becomes a respiring sack on a stick (But this is better left unsaid) Playing cool to the near catastrophic Your very own blank page

Pay

I couldn’t seem to find it Once I thought I found it— But I was incorrect

Fact: in one lifetime A person may wait Over 153 seasons Without a glint of Its emergence

Why, artists have made A living proclaiming It does/ does not exist! Asa child I thought It would herald itself Like translucent gods On fire—That I’d fall

To the ground when I found it—to weep Or ecstatically writhe But that was then

Now just breathing Is enough to believe I may just be awake These recurring days

Not wasted—Proof enough Of—what?

29

Nearer to Never

From out the white reality Appear certain, reliable Indicators such as: You're idle at the desk when You think yourselfa fetus

Or here, at a Chinese restaurant Where an indescribable Coming comes: (Oh, for the imagination Arising from rooms Of absence) Let yourself believe it: The next table over is a Dead-zone for apparitions After you dine You stand in line To pay the Asian cashier

Knowing the hunger The art

30

Ode to the Material

I’m ashamed to be so lyrical

About something as base As the Material

But whatever I do— (To take a peak or Die on the street) I just can’t quite do it Without you

ot

Hard Luck

I was prospecting for the immanent

When it all suddenly came together: An object car in object space Slammed into another object!

Causing morphogenic currents to Buckle structures of steel As people stumbled from open doors Like injured astronauts—

Others grimacing terribly, Making loud and forlorn sounds

52

Odd Hats

Bob awoke today and thought: __a. I will initiate today’s procession __b. Eggs have protein __c.

[ll lie here in revelry

Around 2 p.m. Bob thought: __a.

The mail is late despite my want

__b.

I’mata

__c.

Ihave untapped powers

loss for words

At 6:43 p.m. it came to Bob that: __a.

All expression is approximate

__b.

Maybe he didn’t receive any mail

__c.

He’d like to touch his neighbor

Bob prepared for bed and mused: __a.

lexist ina mobile finitude!

__b.

I wish everyone wore odd hats

Cs

33

Without You God Is Weak

If we were exchangeable I’d appear as you at The kitchen table, Staring at the particular A white plate with an orange The apprehension of time

Waiting upon our reply

And if you were me— You’d no longer seek The sanctum of the ideal Cloisters are for the dead: For what’s been removed From the actual world

Like those stone-worn, Green-teared Angels Whose eyes never Really perceived

34

Beautiful Room

I won’t tell you how these windows Reveal what may be other—

That the lumpy sofa looks Weary, as if facing some Endless inevitable Certainly not how the curtains Attenuate the light—nouns Like fangs upon my chest Demanding some Perfect verb— But that, simply, this Is the room in which I sit at night

(So infinitely finite) So completely incomplete

35

Sorrows of an Ant

A day-wind moans

Tossing the grass Where I lie Observing an ant

At first the display seems Madcap: all six legs flailing Like some comic akimbo

Seeking and darting And lashing about As it scrambles Just to maintain— Sharp mandibles at

The ready to spear What’s in its way

36

Poof!

With a royal bearing he lands On stage, awake, with open arms His incantations made Supra- while the crowd Attempts to resist

With the stroke of his wand Before him appears most Any formation surmised:

“Here’s a chicken, a rabbit, a cur And now a cat ina red silk hat!—

“Here’s a hole, an emotion, a bucket of nails A stranger and things like that! “Petition, a hope, ascent and claim A loss, an abject Fear—Now shame Some gold, some dead marigolds— Abandoned atmospheres!” For hours the magician catenates As the audience whales its craze

“Now a heart, a disease, an empty Trapeze, a useless leap!” he stutters Until the magician, fatigued, Drops dead on stage with Nothing left to utter

SY

Exteriors

I must be my exterior —Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Finally—some evidence As to why for years I’ve searched the face Of strangers Why, philosophers alone Promote the need that we

Appear to one another

(pp. 61-62, ibid.) So this helps to explain My furtive way of

Staring into the eyes Of others To date, maybe 271 people Have truly looked back— A few I swear were Diabolus— The others, mostly annoyed This makes it all the more strange We should meander through space Agreeing to be our exteriors! Thinking each to the other As we pass on the street-—

“Odd that you’re not here.”

38

From the Car

I see the cow and I saw the cow And I see the lady and I saw the lady And I see the railing and I see it stop:

And I see the railing and I see structure and I Rumble over structure And I think myself childlike

As I do most everyday

39

The Unveiling

Whatever’s beneath the cloth

Holds our rapt attention: Like a room ready to manifest By whoever enters next

Underneath, a frozen gesture— A Plasticine head to the sky?

It could be the halo of darkness— Something infected or partial or shredded A great symbol of fear’s pretension Underneath: I say diodes Admitting a colorful impasse— A cube on a stick Some resurrected trick

Always [slightly] exhausted Never truly mutable

40

Love between Phantoms

The first throws a wiggle While the second sets a trap They stand in opposite corners And blowtorch one another

When alone, they reminisce And think the other “fun”— Each, while in revelry, dreams The other has just jumped Dormancy is a requisite—

(Insects encased in amber) All of this is true This comes from my heart to you

41

Cogito

The apples blush with laughter in the bright merle bowl...

And yet I dismiss them— The linear life propelling me Beyond the apples’ beckoning

My mouth denied its oval want To tongue their agate fugue

42

Let X=X

It is Thanksgiving and I am alone Could take to the phone with whom Could construct a subject of What

For everywhere I imagine there’s laughter Discussion about dead relatives— Stories stoking warmth—words Against the wind

I too could contact another to be sure That I exist, saying —“Hello, this is me.” “Yes,” they’d say. “You are you.—No doubt.” But the entire sky is obscured tonight No chance at all to abstract the light From some far-off laughing moon

And so, momentarily, I'll be absorbed Sit in ghostly acceptance— For evidence, this scrawl How it’s sad and leads to nothing

43

Open Heart Surgery

The extraction was a success Dreadful in its specificity—

Your heart, here on the table Lub-dubbing for all to see

So anonymous yet reliable Across productions of time— Every answer to your life In the parsec of a beat While either ascending

In the elevator or softly Crying in your car—

Or quite suddenly from The crush of some Heretofore inaccessible

“Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub” [Fighting off invariants] “Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub” Beautiful unshared monad Bravely being for-your-self

“Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub”

oe

An Incomplete Account

Once the vegetable world Shutters a forgone black Ora

mirror forgives an image

(A sudden saint—with eyes!) This moment, the surest oath Ofa pure and certain forgetting

The love you’ll never have—

[Of which you daily dream] Unanswered ring-tones or

Any neurotic alarm— Or, conversely, what just left Or any sudden apex

45

The Head of a Dog

How drab are the obvious Pictures from some past Linguistically rendered?

Why, the imagined head

Of a disembodied dog Is alone much more Complete The head of a dog (and only the head)

Panting, blinking Upon a backdrop Of pure black Can’t you just imagine The sheer corona Of the head? The head of a dog so Magnificently rendered! Before any conscious ellipsis Before the need to tell

46

Experience

I walked through space And am no longer young

I remember getting drunk With black people in Jersey

Held my dog’s face As they administered

The drug There were birds

And yellow birds Pansies freaked with jet There remains silliness

I lived in, and among And was transported By objects— Psychological death

There was time

47

In the Gallery of Objects

By sharing these words We may just bridge Some isolated history

As if agreeing to meet Utter strangers within a Pure-white gallery

Antipodes stepping About the cube Viewing art made Out of air So what if you eat Abstractions while I’m

Compelled to make Green objects— At least we help illuminate Each other’s private theater

What’s anonymous traced

Rather beautifully Before we randomly Leave the room—

Just further confirmation of The transcendental field

48

Graven Images

And I looked at my lunch and said, sandwich While eating, I looked outside and imagined What I saw: two people walking in the snow Afterward, my neighbor spied me staring out My window, and so I waved, and he waved I thought: J should write about this —

49

My Name Is Jack

And I’m a composite Pp You see me at work Ascending or descending

I’m small, compared to buildings I desire certain certainties And don’t want to die

In meeting a stranger I want To run/embrace/stare Laugh/rub/become air There’s really no alternative—

My name is Jack And I’m a composite

50

Invalids

to Jean-Luc Nancy

It’s been noted that paralytics emit Expressions when approached They strain to show apprehension When someone stares at them It’s similar to what poets do when They feel the constriction of silence They talk about a lover’s shirt Whip-up noise from the epiglottis As if intrinsic worth may be claimed Only when verbal conditions are named Id rather be like the paralytic Whose mouth is full of wind Expressing what’s deep inside Expressing what she knows

oul

Lost My Shit

Trying to act spiritual:

Reading instructions Toward a better Tomorrow. . . I’d rather be a mask With sapphire eyes

Destroying some Near forever— Colossal identities zapped— Cults of heart-felt knowing

My gift to us would Certainly be Dismantled Constellations—

Bright new animals With infrared eyes Who return our stare In the dark

52

Crow Geist

While parked, I see a coal-black crow Jutting across the parking lot And I think to myself: I’m also This body and that winged body A brutish crow now perfectly still As it sits behind the steering wheel .

Six-two and obsidian-feathered, Waiting for error’s flash— And so reduced of all doubts

(By authority of the Center) I cock my head and wait Upon the world’s one mistake Watch as perceptibles near Decide when to strike

53

Tea Time

If Ionly knew I was a pot of tea I could say that pot of tea was me Though I act as proper as a chair or tree I could never quite say that they were me Dropping all metaphor or similes

Has made me happy, exact and free No more to obtain, confirm or believe— Just like my beautiful pot of tea!

54

Wirklich (Real)

I believe you may have had This self-same trance:

Awaking in your body In your very own bed, The morning itself cool Or warm—dim Or bright. . . And you arise slowly And walk about thinking: “This is surely the day...”

Of Of Of Of

my most subtle joy some gigantic relief my second destruction— my imminent becoming

As you either wash yourself Or eat some food or Stare out the window Watching dull birds—perched

Or darting—Singing Or not

55

Harmonicum Nova

Wellfleet, Massachusetts

What’s audible withdraws Like some final expiration— The crying white conduits From the gull’s throat cut In vacuo—the copulating Atlantic’s heave and slip Savage children drenched Displaying parabolic joys By entering true optics we

Attempt to forestall the air—

Our faith, the panic ensuing That resists our need to plea

56

Grocery Store Spectacle

The snow of the morning is slush By evening as I slip about the lot—

The tedium from a day of work made Pantomime with every step

It’s here, by the entrance, I come upon One frozen stiff red glove And I say to myself: “We all know absence— It’s one lost glove in the brainless snow; The reason a relative no longer calls After years of staying in touch” And so I enter the store and push my cart Among things I need to consume

It’s then I think“ How heroic We all must surely be just to Navigate the mundane!” So I offer a smile to all I meet who too bravely Stroll the aisles— A few smile back But most are etched in weariness And would rather not respond

57

Zip

I will not ascend on an engine

A bobble scope, a space-kit Nor breathe pure oxygen As I rumble through the finite “What's indestructible

Is fragile”

1 would utter

In my voice-box!

Rambling through The depth and breadth Without ever Blasting off

58

Necessary Violations

We know it’s all we have— This instance offered by silence Like our likeness in a mirror If observed for much too long Until the transmissions say: “You — are completely — alone” or “Increase — the fields — ofperception” Nontheistic instructions Dismantled before They transfix— I say admit them. Proclaim them! Such necessary violations Permit our overcoming

New idioms to emerge If only we come through

59

Mrs. Kravitz

I’m on the porch at home In the suburbs at dusk At my side lies Tucker with

His jowls on his paws Observing the passing world

My attention is immersed In a treatise I’m reading

It’s exhorting me to absorb

The fact that all beings share But one world—that of Brute perception—

And I stop, pet my dog and smile At the thought that we share One primary view— Just then out of nowhere Mrs. Kravitz drives by oblivious To all that surrounds her

And I perceive her as a dog—

But a dog with a wig A dog that happens to drive

60

Hospital

As I sit here in the waiting area I’m starting to think that my Alienation is self-imposed

After all, there are people But can anyone else relate With the fact that the chairs Are askew and abandoned?

Isn’t anyone bothered by Hospital art that’s drained Of all color and blush?

Periodically, atonal bells Warn of some nearby dire— Where pure white sheets Absorb fox-red blood

Enacted so exactly Efforts to prolong duration What is dull and mean & precious

61

Inter-world

I finished reviewing my notebooks And the term “inter-world”

Keeps reoccurring As I write this, I am alone The date is September 18th It’s 9:53 in the evening Most all of the windows In my house are lit

62

Blur

Some hours feel mostly stalled A place between would and was Like invalids stuck in constant rain Waiting for a savior to move Here’s hoping for better weather: A scene one could really inhabit!

Like lemon light and blue-egg skies— White stones (with perfect shadows) But that’s not quite true either Possibly all’s a blur—Of people

And places that disappear, then Possibly reappear then Disappear forever? Or thoughts like these that bloom Then blast—or echoes of the same? Of place and time and memory— And some nameless purpose arising And its rupture?

63

In the Eyes of —X

You must remain who you are:

A stranger dwelling in space— A brave prehender in a 3-D box Who accepts they’ll never prevail! In the eyes of —X, an emerald mask Some laughing-drinking fatality— Your futile efforts, endless A smiling, terminal god

64

Storm

Yesterday we had a February storm— That could be labeled as fact And today, afterward, there’s The clash of sun and shadow Permitting the same encounter— Silver, juniper, tin-spark and flakes ~ All struck about by wind (Air can take away air) But why am I still so excited about snow? I’m 59 years old, my god— Is it the sudden recall of what Can never quite be named? Requisite for some transport By which we’re battered By bright pixels?

Who should care, or record This anyway—Why build A private language let alone Some doctrine of light?

65

After all, long shadows Across the snow portend Much more than form

Such haunting views And proximal clues Exceeding what’s dark Or what’s light

66

Robot Theater

See the mechanical woman Lift her eyes to the one

Bright singular light What was once endured Harmonize; consoled, The tin-plated heart— And yet the artifice of the illusion Requires intricate animation:

Each eyeball must be rotated At the same rate of lift Each valve to her tears Pre-pressurized so to cry In synchronized time Beautiful dumb-head Enacted to awe— [Every artist’s dream]

67

Magnitudo

Oh of course it’s the sea Even after the ecclesiastic Weakens and ruptures— Even after the last god Is drowned—

Imagine the scope of it: Diving into the interstice To really comprehend—

Waves whose rhythms foretell Of some eyeless pretense imagined Like birds before the storm— Wheet-whorl, wheet-whorl!

Suddenly you self-identify

As some delirious holy ranger [The very technique of reason] How phenomenal waves

Rise violently into walls of Terrible beauty Crashing forever! Mounting forever!

68

Small Apartments

Are always geometrical: Square leading to rectangle A slightly smaller rectangle Just beyond that Sometimes they’re occupied Sometimes they are not—

In my mind I imagine Blue flowers displayed In the kitchenette: Cobalt blue machinery Catalyzing oxygen Somehow intimating There’s no longer A need to strive Informing any beholder That they are home—

That it’s OK to weep

69

Unified

If coordinates are needed

I can tell you this— It’s February and coffin cold Here in Upstate New York As I leave the post office And walk toward the car I find I’m impaled by light

Indefinite urgencies rendered By 50 trillion vectors— Spearing me until I morph

A corpuscular being of waves And I turn a synaptic ghost Euphoric for losing its way Error reduced to comedy as I stumble beneath the sun “And we are natal gods” I blurt— “Worn by finite time!”

Stepping, striding through Fractals of light— Toward what, I’ll never know

70

Samadhi at Pep Boys

While waiting for an oil change

I pass the time reading The Diamond Sutra

And despite the void, I just can’t help but think That somehow I exist

I admit it: I’m tied Irrevocably to a system Of things among bodies That move and sleep (Those around me too Are in natural states— Listless, unkempt, bored) And I think to myself: So what if we’re simply happening?

So what if we’re faltering beings Half sovereign—half slave? Just then a mechanic With one glass eye yips “Your car is done, sir.” With a smile And from my reverie I awake to say—“Thanks. Thanks so much.”

Ths

Eternal Return of the Same

Certainly it’s today, with the coming Light crowning the tops of trees It’s certainly this sentence, used To refer to the previous tableau It’s in states of mind, like “capture” Or “release” or their embodiments

Of course, annihilation—the pattern Of knowing you'll one day disappear

Or the thought just completed Ora

happier one previous to that

Say joy, or subtle exhaustion Or verge or its becoming Or the self— It’s mostly open fiction

72

Love Poem

for MN.

Once more it’s clear we’ve

Broken through rock to find— We’re dependent on air

Here again, for the very first time The quick dispersion of instants

And you, not-me, to coalesce Foreground to any field Strong dreamer, weak hero Primarily living in hope

(You to whom I stretch My hand so we both may

Stagger from elsewhere) Through any 3-D absence I can always record Your trace—

You and I, near points on the grid— Completely for ourselves no longer

73

Funeral for a Dot

It’s no use to make believe:

Everything that endures Must shed its fascination I first thought to explain A funeral for a dot in 1978

Sad dot, laid out in state

Its field of vitality zapped Never to come back Like self-help books Or Plymouth Rock

Starry Night or genocides Everything in time must Shed its fascination Like a lover or this text

Like any ideology Just before the next

74

To the Future

Maybe you'll recall these words After they seize and fade Or at the end of your journey— With only memories for brains

Farther out, the end of nature Farther still, the end of rhythms Toward the end of oxygen— The end of the Age of Stars

Oh, I am with you Pioneers! (I am not ashamed)

75

Edwin the Maker

It was obvious Edwin needed To do what he would do— He fashioned a black rectangle Out of old mahogany

Drove up to Essex County

And placed it in a field—

Then Edwin created a structure

And called it “Utopic Power!” He planned to show it to whoever Was at Delanson’s Luncheonette But he left it in his car trunk

Edwin painted 694 white squares

Then read somewhere that they Had become historically obsolete

He once drew “Happy Land”— But he, himself, remained baffled

76

Postulate F-5

Here’s the experiment: as you stare At the moon or bud on the bloom Attempt to avoid pat ecstasy After all: to be rocketed where To unfold to what? Knowing Your certain re-entry—

Let’s theorize a life horizontal—

At best, a life in fugue Where one voice follows Once the other is launched Soaring syncopations across

Some barren Unicity (Are you with me?)

This is after all our game A calculus never ending

The big beginning And the short In between— The thrill of all our joy

77

The Super Thing

Pound was right—I cannot make it cohere

Orbits of the seasons, a sparrow dead The anonymous flux or singular view

Of tedious days or rapture No words will ever equal our lives

It’s some kind of dire metaphysical So let’s be brave and admit it: Dots on a screen weak stratagem At best—an Inferior science And yet I say—So what?

There’s nothing left to do or say But to do the Super Thing— Inhabit silence, practice your death And speak in tongues when alone

After all, what’s beyond is here So stay strange. Use color like a child. Treat yourself to the forbidden— Awake with resolve to engage the absurd And do the Super Thing

78

Shipwreck

They were to drown by the actual! Brave sailors at once voiceless Staggered by wind-lashed seas

No longer charting from What has-been on the way To some have-passed

Through No longer floating Between earth and sky With an eye toward Brighter horizons

Sailors, awake as never before As time and space smithereens!

To gather, innately, at the bow In salute as they all go down

79

Was That You?

Was that you, or was it me who

Closed the curtains so carefully? Who felt the fatigue of being human While in some bathroom stall? Who entered the indeterminate With only a paper crown— Was that me? Or was that you?

80

Art of the Impossible

You may just live Asa daily camera Near a star that abates Some plutonian cold Where images such as furniture Await your very meaning

As atrocities are happening Right in your neighborhood

(You affirm that you live As a daily camera) As you seek that Perfect snapshot Which may replicate Your theory Be brave— There’s no such analogue

81

Let’s Volunteer!

Let’s volunteer to

Silently be the Other’s stunning Genius—

And though I’ll never Speak a word To you—

Though you’ll never (quite) Spy me among so many

Indolent stares... At least let’s claim we’ve Both beheld the undulant Breath of the lily— Between us can verify the

Entropic end of the bloom

82

Local Conditions

Whomever you’re currently with In whatever room you may share

Claim now beyond mere bodies In silent space this pact: That nothing is really just given That we’re more than lifelike Figurines in some nightly diorama Placed about the room like so Many dimensional things

At the least, we miraculously Haunt the air and blink At one another— Proto-winged devotion Spanning what’s between At least we miraculously Heave and breathe And love—And are lost

Lost—and yet saved Saved and lost by turns

83

Kettle Drummer

Before the word before the beat The Kettle Drummer moves his feet Vectors shooting from the eye Anterior drive that just won’t die—

And though all days must fold to bone And we finally pipe we have no home The Kettle Drummer’s march remains—

Singular, striking—forever ordained

84

A Note

Dear Fellow Existent, I had a wonderful time with you today. How we edged each other on to joy and laughter. How we confirmed that we’re both a bit better when we look beyond permanent claims.—Remember, I was a cartoon! And you were a beating heart. It was fresh. Let’s do it again sometime. With affection, R. S. Mason

85

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Afterword

For Wallace Stevens, “poetic truth means fact.” But what fact? Is it the fact of existence, of the world, as Wittgenstein asserts, that is the totality of facts, not things? The fact is a hard particular, difficult because of a slippery nature, its recalcitrance to be caught by the net of intelligence that we call language. Yet the striving after truth is a salient feature of R. S. Mason’s work. It is at once against the grain of the everyday—it “holds our rapt attention”—as well as the easiest thing, since in “Proper Acts of Vision” Mason tells us, “No more needed to climax and join.” This strife for him takes an unexpected turn. Whereas Stevens (like Plato, Descartes, and Kant) argues that truth belongs to the philosophers and not the poets, who seek something else, Mason looks to philosophy in support of his poetic vision. It is the phenomenologists with their slogan “To the things themselves,” their collaborators and critics who give warrant to Nearer to Never.

While the title is redolent of Rilke’s thought “Nowhere without a not,” the collection goes an opposite direction, jettisoning all transcendental illusions. This worldly everyday Umvelt, when subject to the poet’s particular sight, is the proper field of investigation. How? “Watch as perceptibles near,” Mason advises. The caution is for a vigilance, it is true, because a special seeing is needed, one of a high tonality or intensity. But also, far more than a vigil, it is a care not to import the ordinary dodges, avoidances, and diversions that distort the facts. It means to “no

longer seek/The sanctum of the ideal.” Singularity is hard to take in,

87

it is barely digestible and needs to be spiced by the condiments of delusion, which are universal. Strangely, as the reader advances on these and other lines, she finds herself, not in greater isolation, but part of a

great communal exercise which is the disclosing of facts. To participate in the movement is to surrender a thing we deem most precious, our own words. Can this be done? Mason leaves the matter with a question one

can suppose rhetorical: “—-Why build/A private language let alone/ Some doctrine of light?”

There is ease and dignity, walking the path of factuality, in the craft these poems bring to the hope of attainment. The language is sen-

sitive and triumphal. And it is alert to the curve that truth throws. As the sign slung around the neck of some statuary tells, “All is Sublime.” Although not strictly subjective or imaginary, the words that speak are in

the habit of naming a reality not accessible to speech. Beside themselves (which is to say, ecstatic), they stretch into the beyond. “What’s audible withdraws/Like some final expiration,” Mason writes, in light of how

meaning is always double-edged. It names the familiar thing even as it responds to the nameless thing thus named. The poem itself signs the breaks and smudges of the symbolic order. It points to where the breath gives out, which could be death or God or a simple act that, as he tells in “Emily Figueroa,”

29

66

“randomly transcends.” This suggests that when the

poet suspends reality in a march for truth, reality ruptures to display its

very own blank page. The assurance that truth seemed to offer reveals an abyssal underside. The marks that a moment ago appeared decipherable

suddenly are hieroglyphs endlessly awaiting their Rosetta stone. They mystify the reader.

Nearer to Never opens the fact-finding of poetry to its dual nature. Its truth is fact but its truth is also untruth, as Heidegger sees. While its language is necessarily of the possible—the encounter with the “flesh of the world” in the words of Merleau-Ponty (one of Mason’s epigramists)—it is an impossible language. Its rupture and transcendence (really, a transdescendence) step beyond the light of day and peer attentively into the shapeless, massless fray for inspiration. Then the poet

88

must “lean upon nothing . . . The way a lunatic enters/A storm hoping to be hit.” This is a poetry that, while tendering a claim to be in charge, in actuality works by way of surrender. The trust is not blind but informed since each of us possesses a godlike portion (“A smiling, terminal god”). But if trust, that is near to truth and fact, then so risk, high stakes, and menacing failure—all demand to be admitted. The success of Mason’s mighty struggle is clearly marked in this book of the unmanifest. By dint of an unwavering wherewithal, the poems walk the line between here

and elsewhere, obliterating it as they go. The reader too will be inspired ~ to keep step with their company.

—Davip APPELBAUM

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POETRY

As the title suggests, the poems in R. S. Mason’s Nearer to Never paradoxically comprise a book of the unmanifest,

a poetic examination

of

“Ti p”

what’s waiting just beneath everyday experience.

| will not ascend on an engine

addresses the innately sacred, melding philosophy, —

Recalling Blake, Baudelaire, and Eliot, Mason A bobble scope, a space-kit

—

aesthetics, and Buddhist precepts into a lyrical —

work that is truly modern and avant-garde. Nor breathe pure oxygen

Rendered in a straightforward lyrical style, the ©

As | rumble through the finite

poems are oddly comprehensible, at times darkly

‘What’s indestructible Is fragile’ | would utter

humorous. The language is fresh, elemental, and

In my voice-box!

Some poems wrestle with the conclusion that

ludic; the writing is clean, direct, and empowered.

life reduces itself to some mere, otherworldly — Rambling through

absence; while others reveal the false prison

The depth and breadth

of the ideal, either humanistically or religiously constructed.

Without ever

The poems invite a reader’s most intimate

Blasting off

aesthetic engagement, through the technique of radical doubt or, in the Buddhist tradition, “peginner’s

mind” —whereby each poem unlocks.

In his debut, Mason drives poetry beyond the wellworn schisms established in the previous century, successfully showing that the irreconcilable can cohere, and the inexpressible can, at the most,

be sketched. R. S. Mason lives in upstate New York.

ISBN: 978-1-4384-5894-6

excelsior editions AN

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OF STATE

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