“Grok”
I.
What is the soul?
The soul is to hijack
a train so as to
shake the police.
And things unfathomable,
in both possible senses;
the Yin and the Yang
and the tango of
objects as instruments
of torture and rapture,
and those unfathomable things
in-between.
It is to turn around and see you,
right there,
right in front of you.
It is to write of
the cicadas in the dew
and somewhere having
the same written about you.
We are, Lord, nothing
but God, nothing
but God in the way
of itself.
Amen.
II.
In the long ago
I have had my times
(time and time
again)
like the dulling nub of a pencil,
colour green.
What matters to me
is the Now
and not what happened at
the peak of a mountain
over Idyllwild
more than a year ago.
I always add someone else’s
words to my poems.
Call it my contribution
to society.
I call it
“There Ain’t No End
to the Desert I’ll
Cross.”
III.
Certain things have been
told to me
in regard to
“so as to”
and
“for to”
and
“listen to sounds
more subtle”
or
“the light that
shines on our
fortress”
and the place
where he lay his head
on her neck
And I went to
Bel Air
and then I forget.
IV.
(with L. Renz Hubbard)
There’s a certain code
in the way the sun
radiates
Melt on this chair,
heartbroke and
inchoate
Echos of higher dimensions
form around us when
it’s
getting late
The highway is like a
time line
You follow the roads
for to wait
In the end,
in the long ago,
seamless ends
of the interstate
Drive in the way of the sun
o’clock: half past eight
On both sides of us
the light of this runs
and only the soul will
celebrate
Drink, but never thirst
so only the soul itself inflates
Objects so as to resound
and instruments that determine fate
V.
(with L. Renz Hubbard)
Feeling high on
High Avenue
Driving by,
doing
“what [we] gotta do.”
Come back here soon
we really miss
yer mistakes
You must live in “Spoon”
and you cook out the
stars
and you light up the sky
and you drink the remains
Dodging traffic
points collected
for the Alien race
so as to be respected
And you come face to face
with that darkness and
desolation
we ARE for to be retraced
And to remember God
and that soul inflation
“There Ain’t No End
to the Desert
I’ll Cross”
is ecstasy of the
rebuilt mountain.
Climb to the top or
build it yourself,
there’s no end to the grok
or the valleys in
the cracks in-between
Do not look down.
Become upward not
Northward and
curiously grip onto
perhaps unstable cracks.
Give me music for musician
with infinite arms.
Then listen for falling stones
against other stones.
Hear the echo when they melt
into one.
and then breathe in
the thin air.
Your nose will bleed and
then you might have to do it again.
VI.
What am I trying
to say?
I’m trying to say that
I’ll never be happier then
I am right now in
this moment of secretion
or excretion or
physical manifestation
of catharsis, in
this perfect moment
that stretches
parallel to
the Long Ago.
VII.
I’ve valued succinctness
over the ecstasy
of Flower Consciousness
bloom.
“And when it hurts,
then baby I become you.”
Thus spoken in whispers,
black murmurs of truth,
bitter truths about women
and glimpses of the Moon
I’ve dialed
and tuned
into things
that are untrue
and then I became a man
that will never be confused
VIII.
And now I see
glimpses
of vermouth
and Vermeer
IX.
Keep it real,
motherfucker.
The moon vibrates,
and I love her.
We are nothing
but one another
and the Sun
and the Mother
of all things seen
and discovered
when we look between
and look under
the stars
and in cupboards
filled with salt
and with hummous
and with things
that gaze upward
and within
the veil’s cover.
When the veil drops
around me,
melts away like fresh
butter
I pluck at those stars
like the heartstrings
of lovers.
X.
(by L. Renz Hubbard)
Bones and the bones and the
dust and the dust that suffocates the
memory of what we must and
still always “gotta do.” Yet
us and us may asphyxiate
our selves or self, the “how”
asks how “us” mediates.
So as soon as we ask, we
answer the “how” and the “must”
through the dust and the dust
so as to become the bones and
the bones, which is still always
what “we” gotta do.
Sincerely,
L.R.H. Balapagos
XI.
A defining of “grok”…
for that, there is no need:
for if you have experienced,
then by God,
you have seen
the soul in its Fullness
and its mysteries
and its poisons and prisons
and its ecstasies
XII.
(by L. Renz Hubbard)
“Grok” is the “souls,”
that which happens,
as these are its
continuously looping roles.
best regards,
L.R.H. Ballpeen
XIII.
“Stolen and Contaminated
but Returned to Entropic
Form of Unity”
You may not be able to tell,
just by looking at me, but
I don’t care who you are,
motherfucker, or
what you think I did.
And, yes,
“and I [did] lover her”
but
you are me
and she is me
and we did this to each other.
Amen.
XIV.
“Hello,
I’ve always known
that I’d be talking
to you,”
she said to me
as she decoded
me with her eyes.
She’d met me before
when I was playing
the game of being
her nephew
her son
her, singularly, for all I know.
I said,
“I just got out of prison
and I need a job.”
and she stared at me
thru the holes in her heart.
And in the Perfection of Instance
I was reminded of rules and
that images govern
the past
of the Ang Ngayon game.
XV.
we must admit
that there are
ghosts on these grounds
and two chairs beside a
window:
in which will you
sit down?
XVI:
Consider it done.
That’s what I think of my life,
of value,
succinctness,
and inviolate light.
When purple turns to blue
and the violet dries
on the faces of bruised
and succinct archetypes
and two chairs in a room:
pick the one on the right.
And we live in the future
and in violent times.
XVII.
AND ONLY THE SOUL
BY ITSELF CAN ASSUAGE
THE TIP OF THE TONGUE
AND THE END OF THE PAGE
XVIII.
5:00 AM Long Dark Blues
over my shoulder and
all alveoli before the sun
rises and the mist
and 140 dollars.
Keep yer eyes open,
cross the road, Molina,
and the godawful lawlessness
and I write a poym to
pass the time and a half
these words ain’t even mine
and the sun it will rise
and know someday I’ll die
and scratch that,
countless times,
and the histamine.
Grok that.
And the blood from the nose
and usually just a t-shirt.
XIX.
I awaken this morning and
fall asleep yesterday, and
this time it’s REAL.
XX.
09/17: Falling asleep for the last time. Keep
yer eyes on the road, Molina.
Keep ‘em open.
XXI:
I see you there but
I don’t say anything,
so as to keep promises
regarding the flesh of
the organs of animals and
anamnesis and the plea
of temporary insanity, still
pending as “I see you, right
there, right in front of
you,” quoth Metsoulth, and
you look downward and
I never look up.
Crisis averted.
Amen.
XXII:
My charm
only extends as far as
the minds of high-school
girls and middle-aged
women. There it ends.
There is is caramelized and
there I live, coated in
sugar and the warmth
of synaptic activity
Keep it real, Metsoulth,
this is only day three.
You should really draw
something later or play
yer guitar or die daily
or let the petals in yer
cerebrum move from each
other for to reach golden
ratio.
XXIII:
09/19 blues.
XXIV:
I speak to you
only for you
to look at me
I speak to you
only for to
FEEL YOU
looking
RIGHT THRU.
Los espejos de azul
returning me to the womb
and you push me up
against a wall and
feed me thru a tube
And then you turn away
And then everything
falls back into place.
And then I chase dragons
and similar shades
of blue.
XXV.
All I hear are my thoughts
and I can see only color
and I have an obsession
for to be seen, these days,
its seems or rather
to be
SEEN THRU
if you know what I mean
and it’s these
beguiling looks,
NEVER GLANCES,
never anything but
constant grok
when our eyes lock
and I look away
and I’m at a loss
for words.
XXVI.
It always feels better
when it’s unofficial
but when
making it REAL
is such a goddamn
“grok block”
it doesn’t feel at all.
XXVII.
It’s hard to describe confusion,
to state what is heir apparent to the
obvious. And there is always the question,
“What will I think of this tomorrow?”
What about the short answer, which
is 48 hours? At least I’m writing
something, providing food and shelter
for retrospect. Just do it, Metsoulth.
“I’m the doer!” you say. I am
doing it. Don’t you feel the love
of contact; with the club
to the ball, with the pen to the page,
with yer hand to her hair? It’s
never as soft as it looks.
XXVIII.
And then the grok cycles
again,
“grok block” illusion
dispelled.
And Ang Ngayon is, it is so,
it is said, is
reborn from the ashes
and odds and ends.
the the
Amen.
XXIX.
I was running ahead of them.
And I’ve realized that
some battles are unspoken
and sometimes all that is
needed are flashes of light
and the sound of the town.
Soon we will be together once
again:
You and I and the two colors
in my head and off in the
distance the sound of organ and
drum machines.
Flashes of light and you
look up at the stars
and
everything in its right place.
XXX.
Goddamn it, Sisyphus,
you’re being such a grok
block today. Can’t you
see that I am busy
trying to die daily?
Can’t you see that there is
no place I have not visited
before, in the In-Between, and
“I have been to these places and
I shall go there once again”
and there are two people here
and everyone?
I can not tell you again.
You must dissolve
for to pass into Everything
and homogenize it
a little more.
Then we will be buried side
by side in the dirt of Us and
we shall be reborn as
“the sound of the
cicadas in the dew”
XXXI.
“I can not draw anything more from
this unless things are written much
more quickly,” is the lie you were told,
Ang Ngayon.
XXXII.
And you light up the sky
and you keep it alight.
The cold fire that dissipates
from the sun
and pits the face of
the moon that changes
Everything thru the shadows
of its phases.
And puts things into sync;
in certain times and certain places.
AND EVERYTHING’S
BEEN IN ITS RIGHT
PLACE NOW FOR AGES.
XXXIII.
The snorted heroin glow
if impermanence in the
things I create. La
formule pour le grok
est fausse. Vous devez
improviser, Metsoulth.
Toutes choses dans
leur propre place.
La grammaire française
et l’éxtase de tout comprendre
en mots anglais.
Me frotter les yeux
and open sores under
my eyelids and
certain words that
defy language or the
prison of ink that trickles
into the plains, spotted with
animals and trees sprouting
in clusters on the inside of
the back of your skull.
All books are written in tandem
and in my sleep I hear the
sound of pens scratching and
the shriek of fingernails tapping
on typewriter keys and
“the sound of the town”
and the way certain things
are arranged.
XXXIV.
Nothing, though thru
a substitute,
“La Fe en
el Olvido,”
or usually just the ceasement
of certain sounds
with “the books written
in tandem”
or falling asleep
in the hay in the
barn with the perfect
manifestation of the real
goddamn thing;
who am I beneath the
flannel of Metsoulth?
Bring out the fleeing animal from
inside, Metsoulth.
FORGET BOTH LANGUAGES YOU KNOW,
METSOULTH and
then you will be able to die daily.
Weakness is just a state of mind,
Metsoulth: this is just a reminder
to die daily.
XXXV.
What will be thought of this
in the short answer?
The fractions will then be simplified
and only two choices
will remain for you
to decide: WHO ARE YOU?
and
WHO AND WHY?
And who will choose who lives and dies?
The answer’s in the number two
repeated to you countless times
and
communication thru the eyes.
Do what thou wilt
if it is right.
XXXVI.
Your affliction:
NARROWNESS OF GROK
and throw away the
language and yer name.
You are no longer
Ang Ngayon. You are no
longer grok. Thou art
no longer God.
You are now the look in
the eyes and
the innumerable rooms
in yer own own domicile.
I am right about everything.
XXXVII.
I will write the words
for never to be read
and at the start, the
page is full and I
will slowly erase the
language and the odds
and the ends until
there is only ONE WORD
or there are TWO WORDS
and then I will start again.
XXXVIII.
The repetition of sounds
comes as naturally as
the split on the tip
of a pen.
XXXIX.
LISTEN:
You must get out of
this place. You will
catch a sickness and
it will kill you
Do not be fooled by
brighter shades and
KEEP ALL COLOR
GREEN AND
EVERYTHING AT
THE TIP OF
YOUR FINGERS
I understand: you are
feeling “under the weather”
and such a thing can
be a toxin to concentration
and prayer or to
certain other things that
govern the ability to die
daily.
XL.
A virus of Blue Light
over and under certain
layers of the mycelium,
FUNGI COMMINGLING
in “the dirt of us” among
the tunnels dug by worms
or the sons of God
or the membranes and
mucous textures that
whorl in spirals
in the atmosphere.
And you have bad days.
And you have fainting spells.
You find the light from inside
that surpasses bioluminescense
And then you die
and start it all over again.
XLI.
I try to remain buoyant and airy
so as to float in sentient
“Erleichda!” memories from which
I am separate, from which
I solidify and shed certain skins
of Blue Light and “under
the weather” travels thru
time to the conception of
A Metsoulth Prototype, scaled
down for to quicker dissolve back
into White Light when testing
is complete.
My craft is the mnemonic repetition
of “What We Have Known” revised
to ebonic languages of the 23rd
century and shamanistic practice
of Gnostic concepts such as
“Keep it Real” and
“We Gotta Watch Our Own Backs”;
essentially I re-arrange “What We
Have Known” into garbled gibberish,
into Cosmic Gobbledegook.
I scramble and smear until
pages reach inertia (or entropy,
from my perspective) and
the grok is taken away from me
by You.
XLII.
Days spent in the tunnelling
aisles for to find the right ink.
And then you punch me straight
in the nose as I begin to stand up and
I shift my grip on the neck of the
bottle and decide against
swinging at your head and
dancing around as little cubes of
glass (MICROCOSMIC HYPER-
CUBES OF SOME FORMER
AND FUTURE REALITIES)
tickle my bare feet or
the ashes from which I
am born daily.
I decide against swinging
at your head because then
I will wake up, will stand up
after days of wandering the
aisles, with a headache.
I don’t want to go to work
with a headache.
XLIII.
I keep the “mack” alive,
for it provides
solace and repose to
the organs implied in
“The Greater Distance” which,
I would reckon, reached 1.5
times farther thru
El Olvido than
“The Greatest Distance”
and tonite I shall drink
molten fire of the sun so
as to reach a stasis
inside the optimum levels
of Vitamin D (allowing it
to commingle with the iron
in my Type O)
and I will write a song
about that distance of
distances, “always on the
edges” or something or other
about deserts, says Borges.
XLIV.
“Infinite but Not Upward
Applied to the Prism of
the Longest Distance”
XLV.
And I’ve reached another tier
with still fewer things to say.
I still wait to be shown
things from In-Between, to be
drawn by the nape,
Infinite but not Upward,
away from the whorl of worlds
and things to be touched or seen
or just to take the Fried Eagle
Mind trout fishing
in lake or stream
or two blue lights or
underneath
the sphere of sky above
you and me.
XLVI.
I now have the correct set
of tools
for to
(into)
and with a few ideas of
Sometimes and
Tongue-Tied and
Wrong-Right
and maybe a Reply to Desire.
XLVII.
How am I supposed to fill
this page again?
Listen: I am always willing
to clean yer room or be
reborn from the dust on the
carpet beneath all my clothes
and how ever more difficult
can this get?
I have bigger fish to fry,
like DYING FIRST
and TRUE DESIRE
and ENDLESS THIRST and
who am I to
say these words and
time’s a line and not a curve.
All actions are indelible but
travel thru time or
maybe lying could
erase the magnetic imminence
or everything toward entropy.
XLVIII.
Today, I found something
that I wrote
that I really liked.
It was called,
“Two Girls Kissing”
and it is about
everything
I’ve been trying to
communicate w/ this book.
I don’t remember writing
a single word.
I must travel the other
way thru time
so as to set the motion of
the keys in muscle memory
like a broken bone like
Hunter S. transcribing
Fitzgerald in a room filled w/
monkeys, in a room filled w/
perpetuity or perhaps I
only have to fast one day a
week and see Scout play
next Tuesday.
XLIX.
I live for to feel things
and all motions
arrange themselves into the
certain weight, into a kind
of living entropy; for to experience
EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE
withing dragons I chase or moments
I wish to live eternally like
the junkie’s IV or a pair of
HOT WHITE LIGHT-colored sunglasses
that shield my histamine-doped digestive
eyes from “the bug-filled darkness”
and all words can be revised, if you
can provide the right tools (time machine,
third eye) or else everything is
just Wrong-Right or Desire.
L.
Now:
How far do I go with my
Reply to Desire?
Asceticism does not become
you, Metsoulth, and it
does not become me, either.
Be sure to talk to Ian
again before you leave lest
you are unable to find that Room
again and be sure to bring
along a kitchen knife as
you roam the halls and
search.
Aumngnmen.
LI.
(with L. Renz Hubbard)
“And now that the cycle repeats,
though this time infected with
living information,
what am I supposed to write about?”
“ONLY WRITE ABOUT WHAT
YOU KNOW, METSOULTH.”
“Okay, I’ll put my pen away, then.”
“But do you see, METSOULTH?
That you ‘know’ exactly what
you are supposed to. That what
you know is what you create?”
“The greatest leap is from 0 to 1,
not from the head to the heart.
There is nothing and there is
FULLNESS. Knowledge is nothing
and wisdom is fullness. Aumngnmen.”
LII.
I have passed thru the
room once again.
I must return, but
the hallways taken
in the past are
NOW NOT ENOUGH,
they
“[do] not suffice”
for I have left
the room again
(passed thru
left thru
become thru)
because of certain
mysteries and
must now hack thru
the tendrils of
Hot White Light and
A Daily Fight
that dangle from the ceiling
and brush the periphery of my
short hair like a woman
testing the waters
for to open doors
and lock and
unlock
until I find the room again.
LIII.
This is a routine realization:
there is no room.
It vanishes and disappears
the moment it is created.
And I have created it
and you have created it
and I ignore your tendency
to disagree.
I am home but there are
still things unseen.
And I shall soon return
with teeth sharpened
by dreams
LIV.
(by James Lake)
E, F, No… Nevermind. Bulge of
flow, heave. Spin, twist. Squigg
Squigg. Black. EEEEYYAAAAH. Squigg
Black. flush, flush, Black. Life. Click.
Breathe. Exhale.
LV.
AND THIS IS HOW
I DAI-LY DAILY,
DAILY DIE
LVI.
Strip down layers vibrant
Strip me ‘till I’m naked
Yeah you can coerce, baby, you can tempt
but Lucifer’s my best friend
LVII.
Things progress.
Everything aches.
(I will light up yer eyes
in you promise to
love my mistakes.)
Echoes form at the
base of my head,
sounds like
“out of the tamed
and sterile West”
and they swirl
and they spiral
and they commingle and
“you dabbed the hem
of yer dress in yer own
blood and excrement”
It’s been a while since I’ve
written, since I’ve seen the
page
I can see, but not learn
because you’re underage.
LVIII.
(Incomplete)
They say wine gets better with age.
I disagree, for drunkness is delusion
born of hermetic fermentation,
begotten of things unbegotten,
of unborn children,
things forgotten;
conjures sadness, lust and rage.
Thru breathing exercises I
uncork myself and become vinegar
and am regarded with distaste.
Our minds bloom when grapes are
rotten,
sink into cribs, labelled and bottled
and some may say that I taste
awful
but I at least surprise
the sommelier.
And like everyone, I’ll be
forgotten
in a cellar, tucked away,
but goddamn I BREATHE
and hear the song
of the wind guiding my decay
AND while the fingerprints of god
resound and sing and make
vibrate
and moan and yearn and long
on the rim of my glass of chardonnay
wounds (vinegar)
moon
rays
complain
TBC
LIX.
(Incomplete)
When you look at me, there’s
swelling in my bones
like my-y-driasis
of the marrow
The will to power,
the will to control
is just the mind
…making itself known
and my eyelids are
painted black as coal
on the inside
on the outside
and my eyelids are
painted bright as gold
so as to see
and feel and hear and know
LX.
certain things
(illuminated)
and frustrations
(satiated)
i can now
sleep in the cold
(refrigerated)
and write in
the dark
(on glowing pages)
LXI.
Fragmented
chronicling
because I yearn
to REMEMBER
rather
than
EXPERIENCE
and to be TWO
instead of ONE
and DESIRE in-
stead of NEED
and HOMME
instead of OM
