disordered chronology of movement

Failed recollections to begin with. Slow-creeping toward habit. A giant round metal head. Sudden velocity. Sudden inertia. Pavement merges with gravel. The emergence of a tentative consciousness, neither hard nor pebbly. Vexation of unidentified raptors. Vultures soar over open sore in ground. A blast. Winged assassins. New commonness of thrashers in the street. Feet to pedals. The river like a swollen artery choked with plaque. Ungroundedness. Slow mounting keen of a train not far off. Dream rivulets running off a dry and calloused cerebellum. The importance of a second floor. Eye contact with strangers. Avoid building awareness of a presence. A body imagined close, a body far off yet close, a body buried in dry soil, a body husking a soul. A dipping line, looming and drawing back, tangled in the hanging moss of a halting lifetime.

II.

The exultant dismissal of everything. A hitching-up of trouser legs above this rising level of foreign liquidity. A spreading out tempered by a wish to gather in. Weathering. Rusty rooftop with greenery. The futile accomplishment of deletion. Southern hospitality. Sensory overload. Sensory deprivation. Every atom split to populate a neverending shell game run by con artists connotating the building blocks of life. It’s so casual is what it feels like. An unseemly seeming accidental existence. And yet people fly planes. Against near-white skies. This is a reason not to listen to all the best songs in a row. This is the reason time means nothing. Look out, the fuse is lit. See how it sputters, this heat seen and heard, racing on its journey to a black-powder shattered shack. Every early morning blink of a first-opened eye, this fuse is lit. And wetted fingertips flutter to pinch it out quick.

III.

Bird on a wire, sing your song, lift your wing to the world. Swoop down and over this set of fleet footprints filled in long ago. Expectations of nothing can never be unfulfilled. It’s a something-nothing to believe in, at least. An anti-ideal to carry stuck beneath an idealist’s forever-sweating armpit. Relish the freedom of solitude in public places. Deny detours diverting detritus. Pick it up, handle it, determine meaning and value, discard when done. Don’t look back but for inspiration. Forward motion fuels freedom. Reminders come free.

2 Comments

by sean on June 19, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in aether, anonymuncule flies into the sun, birds, breathing rights, cycling, dreams, elaborating on the never happening, escape, everything is in everything, friends, giant things, i feel vagulous don't you, i'm glowing don't touch me, in-between, isolation, it's always the smallest things that catch in your throat and fill you with a bit of light, it's the end of the song play it again, lassitude, learning to fold the map of my avoidance techniques, let's all synchronize our watches to 00:00, let's pretend everything is new again, memory, nothing, other things, parts of the whole, philosophastering, real-time dilution of a previously useful system of categorization, restlessness, rivers, rootlessness, south carolina, stream of whateverness, summer, swirly patterns, the antidote is also the poison, travel, wednesdays are weird, where are all the decoder rings

Posted by sean on June 19, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/06/19/disordered-chronology-of-movement/

fragment 19

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.

rain crow has landed

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.

5 Comments

by sean on May 31, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in black-billed cuckoo, rain crow, writing, zines

Posted by sean on May 31, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/31/rain-crow-has-landed/

fragment 18

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.

4 Comments

by sean on May 30, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in fragments

Posted by sean on May 30, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/30/fragment-18/

the one and the other discuss wonder

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.

4 Comments

by sean on May 16, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in absurdity, anteaters, dreams, fiction, imagined conversations, non sequiturs, plasticity of the mind, the one and the other, wonder

Posted by sean on May 16, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/16/the-one-and-the-other-discuss-wonder/

to disarm with silence

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.

2 Comments

by sean on May 13, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in neuro-nonsense, philosophastering, quiet people, silence can be loud or quiet

Posted by sean on May 13, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/13/to-disarm-with-silence/

shotgun stories [film review]

[First in a series of ekphrastic responses to the films of Jeff Nichols. Second.]

Acoustic melancholy drenches a rural Southern town. Fishing in a flat green world, water spread out everywhere. Open skies. A slow train passes through downtown. What it’s like to be trapped in a town for life. Yellow light and dogs and decaying industry.

A dead father. A funeral (“I said some things”). Redeemed but not by those left behind.

A walked-out wife. A pair of brothers. Acoustic melancholy. Clouded sky over water. Shirtless males netting fish. The feeling you get inside your chest, like a strangling but in an almost good way. Does beauty go unignored.

“What you doing…”

They set up the window unit on the picnic table to test it out. Run the extension cord out from the house. It works, and they sit there, feeling the cool air on their faces.

“It’s not the gambling. She just wants me to stop screwing around.”

One brother living in a van down by the river.

A young son. A blood feud. Two families, one father. Brother to brother.

“Are we all right?” “Yeah.”

“A lifetime is a long time, just for two people.”

“Your brother’s dead.”

Sorrow will always bring us together. She climbs in bed with him. Is it so often how we try to erase our pain, with new pain…

The pavement is hot. And yet I sit on it and I wait for you. I throw away my cards for you.

“I didn’t know they were there.”

“You raised us to hate those boys. And now it’s come to this.”

Silence.

A tent is something more than a tent after the unchangeable happens.

“Why is this happening?”

Cotton fields, cotton fields. They’re gonna crucify you, in those old cotton fields back home.

“Son’s all I have now. I just want to protect my brother.”

“I’m gonna put an end to it.”

[ominous strings fade to the upward lilt of the guitar]

acoustic melancholy

and the light falls across the porch. and the light falls over what’s left.

there are songs to tell us every way we feel…

7 Comments

by sean on May 4, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in ekphrasis, film, jeff nichols, movies, shotgun stories

Posted by sean on May 4, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/04/shotgun-stories-film-review/

scatterings

i like to see chaos subsumed into order. long grass growing tangled then trimmed. but only in certain places, like next to sidewalks, not in parks where i am walking. no, not there. not when i am sitting facing a field and the man comes on his mower, chasing me away, following me through the park, more and more mower men, an onslaught of men joined in mechanised noise and motion. that is what i don’t like. i like to see spread-out papers form themselves into a neat pile or disappear into the recycle bin. bare surfaces. something emptied and discarded. this is not a manifesto, by the way. this is just a monday morning [note: it’s actually now wednesday—ed.]. a morning i rode in rain. traffic altered my route and i passed the central police station, a thriving death star hive, battered tie fighters buzzing in and out from the flight deck, looking to crush, to destroy, to subjugate the populace, meting out their brutal mutilated form of “justice” with truncheons and guns.

last friday was a special day for i heard my first wood thrush of the year. o, how i love the ethereal songs of the thrushes! there is no sweeter music in the forest for me. i used to wake to their flute music every spring and early summer morning, but no more, no more. now, if lucky, it is the much lesser song of another thrush, the ubiquitous robin. not to disparage the robin, but his song is nowhere near as transcendent as the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, the swainson’s thrush…

yesterday i went to a class that was like jungian personality types but with colors and a few more bells and whistles. i am blue-green and my conflict sequence moves from green to blue to red. there are all these diagrams that look like someone made them with a spirograph. they are quite pretty but i don’t know how i feel about being plotted on a triangular graph. there i am…a black dot straddling the line between two types, far off from my fellows (in the group report, i am a clear outlier, there are no other dots near me). there i am…moving across the color scheme as conflict escalates, crossing axes with impunity. look at me go…

8 Comments

by sean on May 1, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in bike commuting, birds, breathing rights, human behavior, human nature, mondays, neuro-nonsense, paper management, parts of the whole, pointless, police, proceedings of the society for the eradication of mower men, rain, strength deployment inventory, this is the explanation of a tuesday, tuesdays are generally neutral, wednesdays are weird, wood thrush, work

Posted by sean on May 1, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/01/scatterings/

the smallness of saving

there are, of course, those early spring moments, late in the day, after a cold front has passed through and left the air clean and clear, and the yellow light bursts through the young lower leaves of the cottonwood tree as they sway in the cool breeze, and it looks like a crowd of people waving with kindness, pure of truth and dazzled with light, while above, the horizontal rooftops bisect the sky, and the crabapple tree looks its best, wearing the white finery of full bloom, and the birds hurry from all around to perch in its boughs as the yellow light falls across them, making them look so proud. and the feeling this brings may last just a few seconds, a minute or two at most, but it is saving, a saving feeling rippling through a body.

4 Comments

by sean on April 23, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in birds, cottonwood, crabapple, hope, light, saving, spring, trees, truth and light

Posted by sean on April 23, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/04/23/the-smallness-of-saving/

metagrobolised

The air swelled with moisture. It was as if there was no room left for anything else in the air, and so it hung like a boundless and invisible damp rag over this world. The people were consumed with each other, like small fires at the point where the chunks of wood begin to no longer hold their shape, instead surrendering their physical form to the raging heat. Their borders crackle into fuel for an expanding future. Can you smell the smoke.

Somewhere a mallard quacked its indifference and from the shrubbery an itinerant towhee weighed in on the issue, which by this point was beyond anyone’s comprehension. Other voices in other languages chimed in as the wind rose to whip us all into submission.

All of this is noticed, all of this is free, things we see but cannot touch, the feeling of watching something out of reach, a sound unheard but by a few.

4 Comments

by sean on April 18, 2013 • Permalink