poetry is the straightest way to starvation

 "poetry is the straightest way to starvation." - a. e. housman

"dvs n'ati citit kafka. nu pot sa cred,

credeam ca de la un nivel incolo

e in programa!"   -- comment from Romanian friend
who is incredulous that her friend never read Kafka
-- referring, I assume, to "the hunger artist" 

 

  

poetry is probably not the straightest way to starvation
in fact one can "take up" various eating disorders
and get there quicker. poetry perhaps
literally does thin one out,
when poetic concentration 
is full on, full time,
at the rate of the poem's pulse,
 or you drop yr stone when 
you suffer deprivations,
 if you didn't finish the degree,
failing entry into the temenos 
or templon of academic life.

poetry is not for the lazy, 
as bohemian myths (whitman's
loafing's charades) seem to
suggest, but rather bound with
the chase, a kind of hunt almost,
trying to get language caught up
with the speed of mind, consciousness,
the actual metabolism of change
which can also include slowing
down, zen-speed, zero latency,
the poetry of geological time

so poetry is not the dritta via to death

 & maybe eating less
cleanses the spirit, tones
the mind, addresses truth
without excess, allows
you to run with Artemis,
get in jogging step with
Charles Olson's "instanter"--
following perception
with perception-- 
the energy of the experience
transmitted with original impetus
( his essay called "projective verse"
--you can google that--
  http://writing.upenn.edu/~taransky/Projective_Verse.pdf
:))

did you ever wonder why you don't die
every time you miss a meal?
when you fast, for example,
you put your thoughts upon
the sacred reasons for the abstention
or you are consumed with the objective

(for Dante, when it's lent, he's in a Xtian cosmos
& in purgatory, the souls develop,
  they don't all die, not yet,

they got their myth-maths, their
meal is being prepared)

  & yet starvation is nowhere near 
as stupefying as fame or success
  & nothing kills the poetry quicker
other than death itself, because success
or fame usually means people
start to bug you with questions
like "what's the key to your success?"

 bodily death is sudden, unpredictable, 
even comes as a surprise for the suicide, often.

but starvation is another order of experience, 
ascetic life, beyond the living 
riding on the meal-tickets, 
or the salaries.

survival is the order of poetry. 
it's quite the contrary to willful destruction.

the signal is tapped out a desperare,

-- in the blindness of hope, it throws the seeds...

the seeds are not fit nor unfit

they just fit the situation or not

Christ knew

it was a toss up

the bird sings
with it's fingers
 says the radio in Cocteau's Orpheus

faith nodular to gamble

some seeds love sand

even need them

poetry has to get out of the house, man
alpha slash omega, man.

death by poetry, in any case, doesn't seem to be an option
and the few reported cases always put the blame
on secondary causes. the case of  kafka's
 hunger artist being fundamentally different 
in that starvation itself
is the art form being presented --
and the buck stops not there.
kafka's hunger artist gives his cage
to rilke's panther, who stalks the eyes of the spectators
and her voracious hunger, admired
& her feasting their not so secret joy 

Palm hands drawing in the Leang-Leang Cave, Maros Regency, South Sulawesi.

 

in the beginning perhaps
there was nothing to call poetry
in the beginning maybe
there was nothing
called poetry at all
so the speak of
and this theme
to return to
for the nameless being practiced
conjuring names