blog of poet, leah umansky

Imagine us all copper-headed and in a grid of the present interactions of the day.

                                                                        The technological word is reverberating.

There wouldn’t be altercations or inter-textualizations, just pure derailment from the day. (it isn’t all derailments – technology chugs us into the world)

Climb the social ladder of being electronic. Stop putzing and futzing  around on there and we can eagerly elevate ourselves to a national symbol of Present as in:

                                                                                    “I am present in this inter-space.”

Sexism still exists – check the internets. Culture wars; gender wars; there are still cliques – electronic greasers; electronic socs.  

                                                            (watch out Ponyboy –– technology advances)

Children are learning how to talk electronically through trial and error or CTRL + V.  They cut and paste their ways into the world. They are making themselves modern with every clickity-click.

                                    Modern is as Modern does.

It is electric-education. The edification of our electronic nuances. The industrialization of technological-talk. All to be alpha-smart.   The head honcho. The big brother himself.

We are walking blocks of HTML.  We follow and we like; we tag and we comment. We upload and overload ourselves with feeds. We are socially overanalyzing the visual.

It is redefining us.   As we say, “this is my experience in this world.” It is a wonderland; or wondershop (some might say the “wrong shop”), but we are producing new communications. New connections. New mementos.  New trades and trails. New footprints.

                        Don’t you want to get a bite               (or bit?)

 My feelings might change, but my history; my history is permanent.                                                                    

This, too, is permanent.

©Umansky 2011

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That’s why you marked it with your pencil. Made an asterisk. Boxed-it in.  Put a “!” in the margin. Framed the page in sentences.

                                                                        Fleshlings.                  

                                                                                                My real question is why.

It’s nervy acknowledging the meaning; acknowledging what meant what to whom.

             I feel the sacrifices.                           The sacrifice of pen on paper.

It has merits – the linear sense – as does the non-linear.   It’s in those pauses.

What happens to them after?

Conceiving forever with a sense of nothing in the actual.  Actualizing or conceiving.  Forevering the actuality of conceiving a story inside you.                         (Is nothing in the real.?)

Ask:      When she bleeds; do we? 

Ask:      When he breaks down? 

Ask:      And when the great mill floods?  

Whatever tangent takes you to this page or that, takes you further along the trail.  Exploring the page.  Each crumbed finger; each dusted tip all carry the breath into the crux of it. The spine. We are pioneering the book:  you and me.  (Yes, the you of the book)

I can remember the earliest accident. It was in my hand. It was in my heart.  It was here, and here.       And, even there.                                                 The early accident of fascination.

We are forced to see ourselves in fragments:           chapter titles; small quips; asides.

Refashioning life to find the stealth.  To find the not-words between the words.

 We are to start again.                       Here.               Inside the page.

Behind the ink.                                               

                                                                        Behind the not-electric.         

                                    The not-wired.

In this page,

                         Or that.

Here, on this edge –I feel a pulse.

I can feel that.

© Umansky 2011
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After Abandoning

the machine, the teacher knows she’s feeding an industry. The teacher knows the private speech. The teacher knows she has intoxicated the reader. After the abandoning, the teacher knows it is a quarter-after-eight in the morn and it is time.                                     It is time-for.

Experimenting with the automatic; the teacher is deliberate. The doing is abandoned. In the automatic; the teacher must exist not in a special protection or fudged result; but in chance.  In un-chance. In what she cannot distinguish. Like flowers from weeds.                                      Equally beautied.

The classroom is a disheveled laboratory; a kitchen; a hothouse; a sanitarium; a warrior-base. There are appetites. There are starlings. They must feed.  They must.                 Feed, they must.           They must bind their muscles to flush out all. They must twine their tales round their spines.   They must be lyrical; they must be versed; authenticated; because what a teacher knows; what a teacher feels; what a teacher has the ability to teach is that:  life is painful. Life is pained. Life is pain; save for stories –those balms to the wounds with which life burns.

© Umansky 2011

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We are Our Greatest Villains

Could be haunted or part bathed in the cathedral-ed. There’s little left to say about it. Just the memorial: It is inhospitable; forbidden; barren and bare in the dark.  Life is dark. Sure, it’s been darker. It’s been hotter. It’s been desperate.

No one talks about the miracle. The miracle lies in the light.

Incrementally, over time, there were blank spaces, but in a world of definitions and labels; satisfaction is required.

I started high, then descended. A positive image, I crooked myself to face the dark and faced the extraordinary and faced,                                 well,          you.

In this mythology;  but, it doesn’t take religion; It doesn’t take the secular or the sacred.                                                                                                It’s all heart.

The appeal of life is in the primal.

       [Happiness is not.]

You gathered; I hunted.

There’s little left to say about it.  There’s little left to say. There’s little left. The bed-frame in the street; the strewn garbage bags; the savage.

I snicker now, for there’s little left     

to say

            with words.

© Umansky 2011  Follow @lady_bronte             

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How We Make Ourselves

Our inner life     becomes us

Our inner life     intercepts us

Our inner life     begins again and again.

Stepping into it

Putting it back together

Rebuilding and responding

                All to make this: bearable.

I want to ‘top’ this story.

It always begins this way

It’s in the beginnings of the new that we become who we want.

                The beginnings

I’ve always been thankful. For this. For you.

For the not-this that came before.

The days of interrogation are past,

                and passed.

This sense of nothing is inconceivable.

History always repeats itself, but the heart,

The heart uplifts; uproots. The heart

                replants.

I have done my gardening.

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© Umansky 2011

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*

It is all just a function of time; of heart-light.            Here, this is what melds things; what glues and sticks.  Look past the steel still frame. Past the beamed-heart.  Past what is passed.

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© Umansky 2011

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It Started Like a Red Herring or a Poisson Rouge

Much like a grand dragoon took me; it was a curious sentence: a place; a heart-thump; a gasp. A kind of heroism; a game of sorts; the way glares are thrown; feet, tippy-toed; ears perched open. There were no mechanics; no informatives; reformatives;                                 (even superlatives)                         but there was this on the surface.                                          The surface of things. It contained what we cannot say. A matter-of-factness; an isness.      How is this happening? If you want to be technical, then yes, it was with words and music.                                                     The body has music; and the voice:

I love your voice.

[too early to say love?]

It does something. Not sentimentally; not emotionally, but logistically. I don’t want analogies for this – goodbye connectors – just face the lyricism. We were moving together only knowing names, transactions, but then the lights went off:

drifting in       …          and out,            of acoustics;

clefs and trembles; trembles and clefs, and then I was my own creature.       I carved something there on Bleecker; then Macdougal. We left a spark burning on the backbeat, and I felt the reverb; felt the hum all with a lifting of hoods in the cold winter air; then came that heat on the corner                                 and when I say it felt good;                                                                      it felt good.

© Umansky 2011

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