Beyond this black forest
I stoke this fire of my soul
flickering with the breathing of the cities
and the blackbirds of fear.
With bare hands I kill these flames
that climb the air into my brain
and shiver in my name.
My heart drifts as a cloud
over the rooftops
along the rivers,
until I return, a later rain
deep in the fall.
—Thomas Bernhard, In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon (p. 103)
Posted by sean on July 17, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/17/thomas-bernhard-poem/
i.
the sky in the glodes between masses of cloud was irenic blue—j. gardner, ‘the warden’
ii.
in the dream, people called it a giraffe but it wasn’t a giraffe—it was orange, maybe shaped more like a zebra—someone was leading it for a time, and then it was running along the river with the migrating birds. we all saw it.
iii.
when i ceased to be alone, solitude became intense, infinite—m. blanchot, the one who was standing apart from me
iv.
to be alone in public is true freedom. to be alone in a private residence holds a spell of constriction, resulting from the receding of the outward-facing gaze into an inward-facing position. as self-consciousness fades so too does presence of mind, of the rooting of the self in its role, be it outsider or not, within society.
[post-transcriptional annotation]
1. outward-facing: infinite possibilities; heightened awareness from surging external energies
2. inward-facing: finite possibilities; shrinking awareness from negative self-generated energies
(my talk show starts tomorrow. during a series of six silent sessions, i will expound upon the nonsense listed in part iv. tune your magic dial to eleventy-six-oh at quarter past the slowest hour of the day or if you don’t have a cardboard box with day-glo dials painted on it, tune your peepers to the suspicious-looking cloud formations in the western sky, which i have arranged in advance to spell out the answers to all of your questions. that’s all.)
Posted by sean on July 8, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/08/moleskine-miscellany-annotated/
The extreme is only extreme when seen through another pair of eyes.
If there’s a problem someone has studied it, but likely not solved it.
If you were to invite disaster to dinner, what would you serve it.
If everybody hurts, why do they keep inflicting more pain.
Are certain things actually bad for us or are we just bad at handling certain things…
Removal from one’s environment alters perception.
(But for how long. For. How. Long.)
Places feel a certain way and it’s hard not to notice.
Somewhere else slows time’s passing (is this why some people love to travel).
A wall is a wall until one climbs on top and then it is a perch.
The familiar done in new ways is better than the new done in familiar ways.
If you run in circles you always finish what you start.
The end of the world no longer frightens me.
Posted by sean on July 2, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/02/severed-rat-head-portends-something/
see how the living tend the dead
on a wedge of grass sewn between
the quarry and the chemical plant.
the quarry detonates explosives
once per day, a violent event
often not unlike an earthquake.
the plant contains enough
toxic materials (296,000 lbs)
that it must tell the feds
how many people an explosion
would affect. is it just me or…
as if they know, vultures gather
though of course there is nothing
here for them at this dull moment.
the dead are buried and the living
yet tend them. while in the grass
crouch downy killdeer young
whose alarms sound at my approach.
busy with its own survival
a great crested flycatcher
hawks insects on the edge
of this green death field.
and the gravel path yields
a skittering cicada as it
unwinds the last coils
of its own brief life.
Posted by sean on June 27, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/06/27/fragment-21/
small things changed, tiny even,
we marvel at how they alter us.
while enormous things ever looming
leave us to cower in a corner.
tuning the orchestra of change
is a task designed for certain
of us who thrive on constant flux.
is flux necessary for vitality…
i do not know the answer to this.
one change i like is seasonal change
but nature makes that change itself
i. am. not. involved. at. all.
it is change swirling around me
dipping inside me to the dark river
along which we all share a shoreline.
protracted change is excruciating.
please just get it over with!
don’t drag us over these hot coals
any longer than is needed.
but perhaps the worst is craving
change but feeling unable or unwilling
to rise above the fear to effect it.
this change paralysis grips us tight
as we suffer for want of its release.
(sometimes i stare forlorn
at a thing i want changed
for days, weeks, months.
change, change, change, do it!
please don’t make me be the one.)
and i wonder how it would feel
to suddenly change everything
all at once, an eruption of change!
exploding habits, shattering routines,
would we all just crack down the middle
or would everything suddenly become clear.
Posted by sean on June 4, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/06/04/fragment-19/
Printing in progress!
After a five-year hiatus, I made a new zine. This manuscript was first conceived for a chapbook contest that I did not win. Rather than continue to run hither and thither for possibly years on end with Rain Crow clenched in my clackity-clack claws, prostrating myself before the micro-press literati, I decided to publish it myself, just like I have always done. Regarding the content, it has all appeared here in this space in one form or another. So, it’s possible regular readers may not be interested. However, in its defense, it does feature illustrations and a handmade cover. Reading words in print has also been proven to cause less eye strain than reading them on screen, according to an unscientific study conducted by a known “damned bastard of a cloud-monger” (Baudelaire’s words, not mine).
Orders can be placed through PayPal (from this page) or by old-fashioned cash through the post (if anyone does that anymore). I am also open to TRADES. While I hope to recoup at least some of my printing and postage costs, I am definitely interested if you have something to barter in exchange. This can be artwork, writing, music, or any other kind of creative eruption. It does not have to be a zine. It can be some hand-scrawled poems you wrote while waiting for the bus. In fact, that might even be better than a zine.
If you want to send a trade (or cash), send me a message so we can trade addresses.
Order by PayPal here. If you have a color preference from the photo above, please make note of it in the order form. All colors are limited and others are yet to be printed, so there are no guarantees, but I’ll do my best.
SOLD OUT! Maybe check Quimby’s.
Posted by sean on May 31, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/31/rain-crow-has-landed/
confabulate as a way to genuflect,
the past only what it may have been,
a shimmer in dry corners of our eyes.
or remember as a way to draw maps
the passed only what just went by
a glimmer of our truths, not lies.
(in between i can’t help thinking
what if i were smaller, or larger
what if i were colossus of rhodes
looming over a very narrow spot.)
but don’t bother trying to explain
these things that don’t make sense.
read them quiet to yourself and laugh,
like the entire world missed the joke.
besides, there is relief in knowing
most everything except your own story
has been shouted out into the world
and now it is the how you tell it
that can light up the night skies.
(and if i could write this backwards
i would. and if i could write myself
to the top of an oak tree i would.
but there are some days when i can
barely write myself out the door.)
robert walser wrote “you have a future
only when you have no present,
and when you have a present,
you forget to even think about the future.”
(his preference: the latter)
reminded of walser’s words today,
i wondered what we eagerly expect
from all this panicky planning
shoved down our throats as the present
folds under into fodder for futures
perhaps better left forgotten,
dissolved in a day’s dreamy details.
Posted by sean on May 30, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/30/fragment-18/
What did you see today, other, asked the one.
I saw a tiny warbler bathing in the bird bath.
Oh! And how was that.
It pleased me in a way that I don’t often feel.
How, how did it please you, other.
Hmm. I don’t know if I can articulate it. It filled me with wonder.
That sounds good.
Yes, it was good, one.
Tell me, other, why are you not often filled with wonder.
I’m not sure. Lack of the right stimulation, I guess.
What is the right stimulation, other. Is it like how so many of our dreams go to childhood, where everything was a wonder, and our minds were not yet full of life-junk or maybe they were but it had not yet come crashing in on us.
Yes! It is like that. I think of roads, roads I traveled on as a kid, staring out from the backseat, and I looked off the road to what was beyond and I imagined myself there so many, many times that it was as if I really had been there, in the beyond, even if I never really had. And those are the roads I travel in my dreams, over and over.
The roads of wonder.
Yes.
Other, do you think there are still roads of wonder out there, for us to travel on, now…
I hope so, one. I really do. It is that hope that keeps us going, right.
Yes, that and the absurd, other…do not forget the absurd!
O right. Yes, we do take much delight in the absurd, don’t we, one.
It’s all around us. Were we not to take delight in it, it would surely drown us, other.
Plasticity of the mind. We must focus on the still-plastic parts of our minds, one!
Anteaters.
Yes, indeed. How long have you been saving that one up.
At least since this morning. Goodnight, other.
Goodnight, one.
Posted by sean on May 16, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/16/the-one-and-the-other-discuss-wonder/
the woman on the radio said this other woman could be disarming in her silence and i can’t stop thinking about it. the idea of silence being disarming and what that means. i don’t think i have ever heard a person’s silence being described this way. of course, i am familiar with the “disarming smile,” a not uncommon phrase. but never silence, at least not that i have heard. silence from another person is often interpreted in a negative way, as a discomforting or even menacing response. or silence implies apathy, or it only raises more questions in the other person’s mind. the 3rd edition of the american heritage dictionary offers this definition of disarming: “tending to allay suspicion or hostility; winning favor or confidence.” the one comes to the other bearing arms, full of rage, and the other responds with silence, which then disarms the one, strips them of their rage, perhaps even draws them in close as a new ally. but why. what is the mechanism at work. that is what i want to know. is this somehow related to the idea of “a quiet confidence.” perhaps we all need to learn to disarm with silence. the world might then be a much more pleasant place.
Posted by sean on May 13, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/13/to-disarm-with-silence/
s. d. stewart 