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ISBN 978-1-312-60337-0
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parts of us
parts of us
Miguel rual

Poetry will be made by all!

89plus and LUMA Foundation
0158 / 1000

First Printing: Upload:Time, Date Month 2014

ISBN 978-1-312-60337-0

LUMA/Westbau
Löwenbräukunst
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zurich

Published by LUMA Foundation as part of the 89plus

exhibition Poetry will be made by all! co-curated by
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Simon Castets, and Kenneth
Goldsmith at LUMA/Westbau, 30 January – 30 March
2014. Cover design by Content is Relative. All rights to
this work are reserved by the author.

This book edited by Mel Bentley.

Series editor: Danny Snelson

http://poetrywillbemadebyall.ch
We don’t do much ourselves
but fuck and think
FRANK O’HARA

Crying when we are hungry

and eating when we’re sad
JORDAN CASTRO
AN ALTERNATIVE BEGINNING

I am none of your dreamt epiphanies.

I am a collage of misunderstood poems

and I get easily obsessed
about the pettiest things.

Truth be told, you were once one of

those
insignificant things. Not anymore.

In this poem I’ve lied twice.

(from Irretrievable)
A LUTE OF HAIKUS

OKURIBITO (DEPARTURES)
I shall let you go.
But do leave my love for you
under my pillow.

LAST WILL
Black iris of fate.
What thread will you cut this time?
Please, stab mine instead.

PARADOX
I am in mourning.
For whom? You may ask.
For Death: irretrievable

(from Irretrievable)
ONE DAY, I'LL BE THE TEMPEST

—Hey Lily, bring me another beer!

—Of course honey, I'll stop ironing
your shirts and go get you
some cold beer.

—They're losing the game. Damn!

Hey, kid, why don't you stop
scratching that paper?
You're as annoying as you mother.
—Do not you speak to my son like that!

(a slap; a boy runs to his room; a man

gets up, drunk, red-faced; starts yelling;
he's strong; a woman falls... I've
already heard that story)
 —I'm sorry I just...
—Cut it. Can you see this bruise?
Touch it. Warm and swarming with life.
—I didn't mean to hurt you...
—Can you see this blood running down
my face?
ick it. It's still beating. Watch out. It has
all the hatred in the world condensed in
every drop.
—I... lost control.
—Can you hear this voice?
Listen to it.
One day, I'll be the tempest.

(the night; a woman is wide awake; a

snoring man; an empty bottle of Jack
Daniel's; just one hit and it cracks; a
woman packs a small suitcase; a boy is
taken out of his bed; a key turn; the
smell of an engine; a sunrise is about to
be born; dawn's chill means freedom; in
the backseat, the boy sleeps...)
THE NIGHT DANCES

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

T. S. ELLIOT

I’m laying restlessly over the drenched

grass. The world’s breath mists the
night sky & frames
its shy perfection. A star explodes
like a huge balloon & drifts around the
universe
forever. The world’s spit licks
the surface of the moon
to keep it spinning.
Bugs hum in harmonic mayhem. The
universe
imposes order inside its own matrix
without mercy.
I must be a part of
this melody: my hands try to reach the
sun &
the deepest ocean at the same time.

This thirst…—
I could easily kill it if I scratched some
ice
from the sun’s surface:
between my teeth
bone & cold become sapphires.

Sanctified by the world’s spit, my

corpse lays
over the drenched grass. — Flesh &
mud
indistinguishable.
1.

I never meant to go back

to the white city to which I belong,
a grey city with a brittle mane of ashes.

I never meant to go back

and bury myself deep into the wet soil
in which I don’t recognize my body

but in that piece of swollen earth,

a cry
bonds me […]

I will never go back to the city of ashes

but for
my funeral.

(from alive is just another emotional

state)
3.

I’m sad, I’m high, I’m ecstatic...

I’m dying.
I’m dying not as a process, but as a
reversible
altered state of
consciousness,
a perception of the unfathomable
in that narrow street that holds the
world like a
kneeling Atlas. The static word weighs
more than the grey soil.
a shoulder that would not
resist.
a broken scapula, a crying clavicle
raping the
white skin.
bones breaking with white noises,
breaking the
 texture of the self.
take the white pill, you’ll feel alright. Kill
the
lights.

death is a white dream, an insomniac

dream that
bleeds night.
death as an expansion of the self, a
psychological
dilution, as a rite of
passage...

alive is just another emotional state

(from alive is just another emotional

state)
Everything forgotten.

My name,
forgotten.
My city,
forgotten.
Hopes and desires,
forgotten.
Poetry is the orgy of silence,
and thus,
forgotten.

Everything forgotten.

My eyes,
forgotten.
My tears,
forgotten.
My fears,
forgotten.
My lovers,
 forgotten.

when lips and skin remember

all the rest,

forgotten.

(from Bleeding polar flower)

THE POET SPILLS O’HARA’S
LUNCH POEMS AND THEN TRIES
TO STICK THE LINES BACK,
UNSUCCESSFULLY

you’ll never be mentally sober

there is no longer no ocean
and in the sky there were glistening
rails of milk

I’m so damned empty

I can’t even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious
I just want to go on being subtle and
dead like life
clasp me in your handkerchief like a
tear

hands on ankles feet on wrists

naked in thought
it is our tribe’s custom
to beguile

a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible

disease but we don’t give her one we
don’t like terrible diseases
 well now how does your conscience
feel about that

when the tears of a whole generation

are assembled
they will only fill a coffee cup
we are all happy and young and
toothless
the only thing to do is simply continue

we threw
sand in our eyes
and ran naked
down the
street of our awful
progenitors
and that’s the meaning of fertility
hard and moist and moaning

we don’t do much ourselves

but fuck and think

and the light seems to be eternal

and joy seems to be inexorable

if you don’t eat me I’ll have to eat

myself
 GET
CLOSER

(THE POEM
WAS YOUR MOVEMENT)
I WANNA BE AN ONION

and so even when you are happy

I could make you cry
WHAT YOU ALL DON’T KNOW

What you all don’t know is that I am

quite [accomplished at hiding
At masquerading
DOROTHEA LASKY

this is how i should feel:

green and exuberant i

am a gleaming sprout
can’t you taste my
happiness? even my sweat smells
like happiness.
cheers, cheers! i raise my glass
for the two of us, for
all of us today. i am loved.
i’ve got my job and a
cat too and money
to pay my rent and
buy food and poetry
books. so
i feel green and
exuberant bright green and dark green
this is what i will tell you:

don’t worry i’m

tired but
i’m ok
i just feel
kinda green

this is how i really feel:

i have
everything i could
wish for so
why
do i still feel like
this
missing everything i’ll
never have?
 my beauty
is a carnivore flower

don’t be fooled
by its common look

that it is not outstanding

was its own decision

my beauty
is the plain looking bait

that won’t raise

any suspicions

and whose only purpose

is devouring you
 does beauty
resemble
sadness

or

does sadness
mimic
beauty

?
He felt huge and wrong.
ANNE CARSON

Sometimes I feel like I’m everywhere.

(…)

Sometimes I am everywhere
at the same time
and feel nothing.

(…)

Sometimes I feel I’m nowhere and it

looks
like happiness.

(…)

I’m so full
of nothing.
DETAILS IN THE DARK

your hand
in a stranger’s bed
around a stranger’s body

or

my hand
in a stranger’s bed
looking for my body
 if I know
every form
is but an abyss

I can forget
beauty
with a gesture
It seems like every part of my body
misses someone.
GABBY BESS

I do not want to be a person.

I want to be
unbearable.
ANNE CARSON
four earnest songs
FOUR
EARNEST
SONGS

Alles ist lebend tot.

All is dead while it’s living.
EGON SCHIELE

VIER
ERNSTE
GESÄNGE
I. THE BURNT

Denn es gehet dem Menschen wie dem

Vieh
For that which befalleth the sons of men
befalleth beasts
ECCLESIASTES 3:19

To burn posthumously, like a word.

ARSENY TARKOVSKY

rites
held high
above the landscape

dancing ashes
danceless ashes

hyper-symmetrical rapture
upon the intimacy

charcoal grey
charcoal black
charcoal velvet
of the night

brasses folding motherly

 over the skin seeds

men & women hanging

as equals
from the fire tree
side by side
to every beast

an audience of mirrors

embers
& the cross of mankind collapsing
between the jaws of vanity

so what happens to the sons of men?

after the fiery & furious perception

of themselves

they burn posthumously,

like words
II. THE DROWNED

Ich wandte mich, und sahe an

I turned around and saw
ECCLESIASTES 4:1

The drops cascading down the chilly

branches.

No word of comfort, tears undried…

ARSENY TARKOVSKY

I turned around & saw

the world spilt
like mercury across the universe

cities crawling like fungus

on a Petri dish

iris multiplying
like bacteria

a flood myth on the palm of every hand

a voice
—such electricity
strangles through the liquid
 —fizzles
till the ears of the deafened
of the purple-blue deafened drowned

their throats…

no word of comfort, tears undried

under the surface

a field of intermittent bodies

rooted like seaweed
to the seabed

the unborn floating aimlessly:

sacred shards of an unreal unity,
celestial krill

a voice alone
—unheard
pities both the living
& the dead
—& fears their
violence
praises only
the ones that
will never be

if water be the seed of life, rage on

 —ocean
let water be the end of it again
III. THE BURIED

O Tod, wie bitter bist du

O Death, how bitter you are
SIRACH 41:1

I had long been the earth—

Arid, ochre, forlorn since birth—
ARSENY TARKOVSKY

—strata of children playing over empty

graves laying in one raising from
another already old

cycles aren't necessarily stuck in

linearity very often they break then bind
again after some twist over the helix

—young again raising from a different

grave man contemplates himself in awe
ochre soil under his nails

deathlessness should be unbearable

yet take a deeper look at it and you'll
see it intertwining with death itself
—distant-red birds of fear surround him
vultures or cockroaches feeding on his
keen he is left alone

so it is continuum which is excruciating

but that would be a contradiction
wouldn't it?

—man is forced to face his terrors the

end of his existence not death what is
death not death but the end of his
existence

life runs from a previous death towards

a newly bred one it is a matter of
impersonation

—he understands that thought is a sub-

product of our brain activity He gets the
concept of infinity but how can he think
about the lack of thought

hiding around the blank gaps death

soaks life's vest fingers caressing live
skin
—in redness man is one with the mud
and the clay he is dead yet death still
terrifies him

stasis is colorless taste it and you'll see

how bitter it gets now listen the poem
starts here:

—under the mustard soil souls

like cut in half worms lay;
bodies like trodden grapes
among the rip fruit smell...
IV. THE MUTED –
Symphony disguised as a song

Wenn ich mit Menschen –

und mit Engelszungen redete
If I spoke in the language of man and in
that of angels
1 CORINTIANS 13:1

You can hear the old life breathing:

[…]
all will be repeated, all will be re-
embodied
ARSENY TARKOVSKY

1st movement — adagio

// The patient refers several acute

episodes (5-7) of distorted perception of
reality during the previous two weeks:
seeing ochre bugs of "silence" flying
around his body; suddenly recalling
intense sad or joyful souvenirs followed
by deep & dense feelings of loss;
interpretation of time as a twisted web
that strangles his thoughts; etc.
His mother is very anxious during the
interview so I ask her to leave the room
while I talk to Eleazar. Before closing
the door, she urges him to tell me about
the "weird books” & the "artistic
photographs".

He tells me she has been suffering from

insomnia since she learnt from his
symptoms. When asked about those
"weird books" he admits that he's been
reading them on purpose but refuses to
give any further information. About the
"artistic photographs" he only adds they
were taken by "dead people".

No relatives have been diagnosed with

any mental disease, but he mentions a
deceased uncle whose house was full
of "weird books".

The patient shows concern about his

condition but refuses to undergo the
standard treatment protocol & suffers
an anxiety episode when the possibility
of brain surgery is addressed. We
schedule a … //
 2nd movement — andante

memory is a contagious disease

it affects 79 million people worldwide

and it is more frequent
among young adults

prognosis: -- chronic – progressive --

irretrievable

3rd movement — molto adagio

Infinite, infinite—that
was her perception of time.
LOUISE GLÜCK

4th movement — allegro assai

memory —distorting mirror of time—

is based on silence

5th movement — moderato cantabile

 there is a silence starving
in every gesture

& the bell jars rang when no one was

there to listen
that’s how it always goes

echoes of nothing
terrifying

oxen casted in absence of sound

plough the frail throats
of memory

we were once told that transcendence

was
unavoidable

—black serpents biting their own tails

meaning nothing—

now after-life lays bleeding

as a cut-off tongue

it still moves
like a tentacle but it can’t
reach us
 grey dogs salivating, that’s
metempsychosis
in real life

its teeth can’t bite us

so flesh is the end

we smile we
share our pulps &
depart

muted
by our own existence