Digital Poetics 3.25 Two Poems by Ed Luker
Image by Ed Luker
Mictlān
“The boundless impatience, the immeasurable longing”
I
Mictlān
is the Mesoamerican
underworld,
like Dante’s
it has nine circles
that the dying pass
through
and when they reach the ninth
well,
then they are truly dead.
The living enter
the first
by crawling through
underground caves
by bending
their bodies
to rock
by going
down
into the earth
and finding there a realm to
embrace the dead.
In the cave,
Armando shows me
a prayer circle
made from a hole bored
through many layers of rock,
a sundial
decorated with flower petals
and sunflower seeds.
I find them,
the ones
I have lost
and the parts of myself
that I grew fearful of
for I had been beaten
out of myself, by the cruelty
of good intentions.
Say more? No.
In disbelief,
he shows me his
spirit
among the shadows.
Electric blue light,
shimmering around his
body. He kisses his
fingers, and prays.
I have nothing
to say. Only breath
to expel.
What does it
mean
to be dragged
under
and stay there,
what remains beneath the
light
the quiet drowning
when one remains under,
like Jesus wrestling Quetzalcoatl?
When under
you
risk
not coming back.
But back
what
does one come
back
as,
two?
Or,
half anew.
Split, doubled, spat out,
or at all.
When the time of the dark
extinguishes the time of the light
one must fight to survive.
II
In Roma Norte there are no plumed serpents
everyone wears white linen
and carries a chihuahua in their handbag.
Under the Volcano is a bookshop off a leafy square
in an old American legion building.
Not wanting to spend 250 pesos on an old copy of
Women in Love
I snoop around.
I find nothing
but empty rooms
one with a large framed photograph
of Marilyn Monroe.
Leaving, I hear a table of USAmericans in the saloon
debating their country’s greatest military failures.
I wish we didn’t have to care.
That eve
Kit & Paco
tell me about the shop
run by a deranged American
who scours border towns
for used books
in his pick up
no one likes him
but everyone finds him
entertaining
which is better than the other way round.
Into the night we dance,
and drink the way
that poets do.
After several shots of pulque —
at El Nuclear,
the alcoholic kind,
salsa in our legs,
the band chiming out
as hearts and stomachs
bust a gut for
love’s
possibility
in finding new limbs.
Before we breach
the every day break,
and dream to breathe
again.
In the morning
the earth quakes
my skull, ridden
of my gold,
and a knife
at my neck.
III
At Teotihuacan
Armando draws
cosmic structures
with a single
stone
in the dust.
He is what
Samuel Delany
would call
a pure storyteller,
his method defined by
expression, clarity, repetition.
The rule of three:
the heavens
the damned earth
and Mictlān.
Armando tells me
there are three pyramids.
One remains
out of sight
buried
by the desert.
Their positions
the stone explains
align
with
the three stars
across the belt
of
Orion
and three pyramids in Egypt —
the names of which
I can’t recall.
Armando believes
this no accident.
I
don’t
know what
to believe.
Numerology
is a haphazard
reason for happiness,
as haphazard as
any other reason for happiness.
I’d be stupid
to think it
pure accident,
stupid poetry,
stupid numbers,
stupid either way.
Cosmology
names
the forces of nature
in societies where
humanity
has yet to dominate it
like we have,
captured it
bottled it
up
and piped it
three times round
this sphere
and over.
But we know it
will it
to explode
leak / burst / bleed
in will to garner
the worst revenge,
in destruction
the names for stars
soon enough
revisited in flesh.
Image by Ed Luker
El Camino
Rode naked,
across El Camino.
No memory.
Of what? Abandon?
Retraced my steps,
Left no track unpummelled,
and no rodeo un-fucked-with —
beat every interior charge,
took every bull by the horns,
every corner the scratch of
fresh ink to splash,
on every surface I spat,
get it out,
and: fuck,
pounded my piss
into the dust,
saw the stars in every circle,
every black halo of possibility,
the radiancy of near madness.
Smashed every empty
and forgotten idol of the mind.
Exhausted, done in,
knackered, so stopped.
Smoked a dozen cigarettes
by the side of the lagoon,
listening to the hummingbirds,
slicing the air in half,
while getting sunburn,
tampering with this ocarina
hand grenade,
setting obsidian and jade
in my incisors —
thinking of harder substances.
Got strapped,
lost my horse,
found a larger one,
slapped mosquitos from its bare haunches,
Rode past trees scorched to blackened ash,
turned a canter into a cant,
threw out some real smooth slingers,
under crisp lavender — pissing kidney gorse
(the most beautiful songs from pain, they say).
Kicked every mouthy gutter rat in the face
and livid, breathed through new lungs,
got better equipment,
as late darkness got later and darker,
SANG nuevo for enchantment, again, cant:
got a better song, so this then.
No time for self-improvement like
a real damn shame of a crisis,
whistling my tunes in
the real damned same of the desert.
Listen: gleam motherfucker
from my tongue again
write it down
and tell the next town
I’m coming up,
to burn
the surface and spill,
dip and twist,
the next dance of words is mine.
Adios to failure.
Fire to this world
and all its tiresome priests.
No one does it like me.
Truly. Born into a world stubborn
and cold.
Shoot for the stars, draw smoke
down from heaven.
In blunt times,
SING sharpen the equipment,
and come out swinging;
I left the shards twitching
for the grasshoppers
and snakes,
mirrors
for the goats to bleat at,
the mind warped and shrunk
back to itself again.
Nothing else for it.
Arrived in Nowhere Town,
capital of Fuck All Else,
watch out for Sheriff Dickhead.
“Look at his wrists,”
stigma is a real bitch.
Stared the hapless neurosis
of cowardly death in the face
and said kiss it.
Fear eats the solid ground
of looking someone straight in the eyes,
and finding blood in the dust.
Be gone.
Flesh is truth and lies,
the voices say,
turn the outside in
and hate yourself for it.
Much the same.
It’s the badge of self-disgust that nails
pride
to the most familiar wall.
Hang up your axe,
after chopping your tongue out,
weave it into a basket with the
tongues of other sinners,
burned black,
let it down.
Might as well wrestle song from the aspic
and dust all the way
I had learned the best metre
to do
never and not,
in a language broken and sharp.
But what for it?
Tradition is the limit of a river
seen but never crossed,
stick the fingers
of your song
in the socket,
slacken your belt,
and find out.
SING cant.
Rode for miles more,
taking poetry out
for a spin, SANG
your mum
(Por que no — chingado).
Saw lizards eating cockroaches
with forked tongues
and trees stab at the sky.
Spitting up at the saloon skyscrapers
and watched pity poetry
fall
all the way
down
the windscreen—
no more automation rhymes
no more algorithmic feelings
for the souls
that don’t want them.
No more cheap gas for the wounded
get in pelado,
we are bringing the lyric back,
in all its monstrous stupidity,
abolishing the shadow self and
stuffing IT with peachy amoral detritus.
SING the big bin bag of fake dicks
and fake tits of the ego,
the glossy substance of reality,
drop it in the skip,
and kiss it.
Kick your boots off in the desert
and dechasten those heels again,
pressing stone into skin,
walk it off,
make the stone stonier,
or whatever.
What hurts, small person?
You can live again if you want.
A bucket to piss in.
A few strips of pine.
A little light in the afternoon.
A few drops of water at a dusty mirage.
Con permiso.
Fuck it,
take your time,
get a little lost along the way.
Let stupidity shine bright.
Drive all night to El Nuevo Malden,
más rico, with a dozen guys called Gary —
a few garys for the guys.
Get lost in the desert,
Be insufficient,
poeticise pointlessly,
adrift in El Camino;
throw a lasso around
the stars of your feelings
and gift them to the aural cavities
of the nearest braindead attendant.
Dear God;
everyone is
drunk and high
in the dust of symbols,
again searching
for the singular swamp of solo juste,
sucking the bon-bon mote
of song
again.
Remember the world
that was big
enough
to swivel
on a giant middle finger,
and offer you a life
to breathe
through a polythene piss bag
and swell your eyes
until they explode.
Nestling vistas under arches
of unbearable love land light
and plunder
sugared ratchets
in the clamoured-out
hollows
of palm trees.
Now eat the ethical nugget,
and shut up.
It’s gone, you fuck.
The talking monkey is dead.
Processing. You’ll be pleased to hear.
I’ve been doing a lot.
Yeah yeah yeah the results are in,
and the answer is
the bad people win,
everything
including first dibs on you,
go fuck it
go
your
self,
and find happiness
there there,
poetatito.
The honey
of the good, the sweetness —
that barf
of virtue.
This song; on lock,
not to be tasted
until the bitter block
tar traps throated,
until choked, spike-splay
and dog breath again,
hungering,
swarm for air and
huff the stench
under a canopy of believers
sweat for mistakes.
No stars
return their prayers.
Walk the way.
Glue your
lids to the horizon
and hope
for the fucking best,
my friend.
*
Ed Luker is the author of Heavy Waters (The87 Press, 2019) and Other Life (2021, Broken Sleep Books). Based in London, he is currently working on a novel, a play, and a third book of poems. His website is edluker.co.uk
*
The moral right of the author has been asserted. However, the Hythe is an open-access journal and we welcome the use of all materials on it for educational and creative workshop purposes.
