Asides :: Joseph Robertson

now come the beneficent oblique
pinetones of winter
famed untiring seductress
the sensory crescendo
building soaring toward holiday geography
slipping deftly into the hope
of patterns variant careening
from anterior time
spending the stitches
that hold rivers together
to obtain a breathless glimpse
of the mystery

one & only...

ii.

to make a sure secure home
of tasting the suppler side of novelty
the ongoing genius of discovery

to be profferred as explorer
as sudden spur to profundity
a devotion to the enabling

of a poetry that breathes...

iii.

the work of a life
how nuanced
how frail a trace how much
forbidden imprecisely
out of suffering

the glinting angles of desire
impervious to light
to shadow
to crashing thunder
the want that makes the world

lush billows of shade & form
perching
invisible
within the launch of tangles
never-before-evinced...

iv.

i used to be better at talking
i sought communion

now i seek the long artful strand
of grammars commingled

& the moment of ecstasy in which
talk becomes an afterthought

is it better to require listening
or better to require none?

the answer is in the manner
& the moment

both talk & listening must
best be wielded as gift

dark harmonious wind
that carries poets
into poets' paths

conjoining worlds
in the weight
of a candleflame

vi.

everything passes
nothing passes
from view

we are resolute
from our envisioning
of what is irresolute

infinitely-equally
approachable
& inapproachable

deltic delphic mincing
of musics turning
at sharp edges of shadow

causing new worlds
to emerge precisely
among us

vii.

long bleak urban hours of waiting
the afternoon fades
all circuits are populous now
with the yellow halting pregnant rush
of returning home
seeking nourishment or recalling
vague but important dreams
a drink of misapprehension
the displacement of desires
seeking self-renewal through confusion
transcendence by re-imagining

awake weight-laden city
to an incandescence of bells
that makes a miracle of scenery
as out of nowhere
Nothing
nothing & the tart encumberance
of refinement
of the warmth of light
not-easily-paid-for
of bifurcating root-structures
equally principled & unprincipled
making mischief in the midst
of generosity

these long bleak urban hours
of waiting for a true turn
of frailty into strength
an incandescence of bells
or the velveted cello-milled
silt of discovery these hours
are the milk of an intimacy

touched...

fulfilled...

viii.

the muddy broth
From which all pure & variegated
patterns of light
once emerged
in seminal insurrection

what is known
what forgotten
the failed republic
hopes beyond sorcery
knowledge accumulated (for)
sustaining life

addicted to the rare manifestation
of ritual & waning

waning between occurrences

ix.

an angel that dwells within
a flower that is pressed
between the pages of a book
that resides among culinary devices
kept as sacred in boxes
surrounded by spices & ribbons
caught in the wind & carried
to the edge of the beginning
of the story in which
an angel becomes a traveler
in a pressed flower (shedding
torrents of light across paper)
amid the delicate murmurs

of pens unknown

i dreamt that fear was universal
that everything was about to fulfill its promise
at every moment
that the highest of human pursuits
was to see what is hidden
to hear what makes no sound
& to channel little madnesses into guidance
i dreamt that a chosen instant
within the flow of the day's light
contained a view of the sea
buffeted by answers & implications
of a time without time's perils

xi.

what cannot be guessed by any means has its reason as the rhythm of the heart has its reason as the distance of the moon & the gravitational flux & magnetic lightshows have their reason...

WRITING & NAMING: the medicine of acquiring knowledge
Joseph Robertson

Language is that point of contact in the abstract, that plane where the intellectual life within us is enabled to assert itself as part of the overall experience of living. Language is that plane where the individual self is allowed repeated attempts at manifestation. What takes place in the process of writing, in the spilling of ink or the posting of digital characters, the slip toward defining a landscape, however brief, is the sanctification of an individual, and by extension of the human condition as such...

Not every person is a writer, by trade, nor should they be, but there is something about the act of writing that serves the writing individual as if it were a medicine for selfhood, a healing venture into clean waters. Especially so when its intent is to be expressive of secret regions of the mind or to lay out new experimental vessels for such expression. [Keep reading...]