bachtiwords

[bachtiwords]

Flow of time

didn't you know the flow of time is flawed when you spilt that glass and your mother hit you the glass was already on the floor

all along

this is how we suffer

#flow of time #time #suffer #memories #linear #mother #poem

[bachtiwords]

(In Lithuanian)

Lietuje nebaisu

būti, kai tik

medvilnė ant

tavęs

Kai tik oda

ir plaukai

Kai stebiu

tave, nepažįstamą

žvejojantį

parke

O kur daugiau, kur

daugiau

Pajusti laisvę

tokiems paprastiems

Atvežtiems

Atkeliaujantiems

Ir pagautiems

Tik prakaito lašai

Ne tas pats kaip

lietus

tarp betono plokščių

#Poetry #Illegal migrants #Workers #Builders #Rain #Sweat #Lithuanian

[bachtiwords]

Neighbours: Music

She danced in her balcony to a music called reggaeton. The rhythm was bouncing off her into their living room from where her screaming husband waltzed in. He grabbed her in his arms, but before he could count to 3, she escaped by beating her chest to his head (for he was much shorter than her) and brushing past his behind to completely avoid him. He was now counting to 6, but he couldn't stop screaming. 'They play this music in prisons', to which she smiled and pushed him inside with her well rounded twerking buttocks. She turned off the music and he suddenly fell silent and still, like a shut down robot. She continued. With music beating inside her heart, the whole apartment trembled and he shook, too.

#prose #creative #writing #ema #chile #reggaeton #dance #freedom #love #waltz

[bachtiwords]

Neighbours: the balcony

Jay and Rosa are talking in their balcony. I say 'their', because their heavy being has enveloped the balcony so deeply, it now lives and moves with their. Their discuss their ownership of the flat their don't have, but one day, in their dreams, their would like to, if the economy is alright and their parents can contribute. It would be their wedding present! Says Jay. What a great idea! Says Rosa. It is their idea. It is, in fact, their life. And it will be a happy life, until their death. Then their will be nothing. The balcony will stand still, deprived of their being. 

#prose #absurd #relationship #quarantine #writing #creative #balcony #life #chopin

[bachtiwords]

....when some of the best and funniest poetry and prose I’ve read this year was created in 1984 by a computer...(link to full book above)

‘Bill sings to Sarah. Sarah sings to Bill. Perhaps they will do other dangerous things together.  They  may eat lamb or  stroke each other. They  may chant of their difficulties and their happiness. They have  love but they also have typewriters. That is interesting.‘

#racter #poetry #computer #machine #ai #funny #absurd #technology art #machine learning

[bachtiwords]

I've been trying

I've been trying to learn how to pray

Using this language on and off my knees humbled by experience or harnessing the rage

As soon as I stopped it came to me

All I needed was to open my eyes and not pretend I know what's darkness

#poetry #meditation #inner self #discover #pray #poem

[bachtiwords]

Series of images

Here are the images I think about too much

You kneeling and humbly watching whilst I stroke your cheek with both sides of my hand and again

a Man stumbling over a kid and cutting his neck with an ice skate cold and clean and again

Me rolling down over your heads in the balcony of the smallest golden theatre in London just once

You opening the car door as we drive and both of us screaming before the impact and again

a Woman smelling my skin before she bites and then takes a whip and barks at my friends and again

Me falling off Eiffel tower I lost my sister's photo that's all i can think about just once

#poetry #repetition #obsession #guilt #death #fear #isolation #virus poetry

[bachtiwords]

Nyepi

My words fall heavy on this day of undisturbed peace

i hide them under a rock but i feel ashamed against the silent trees

have these 30 years taught me anything about life, love and death

have i turned to you my aching feet begging not to forget

has the laughter been saved on my way up to the mountain

so sacred have i wondered enough it’s my way

perhaps it’s the day i fall down and go under

and finally the sun reaches out to the root

(Nyepi is a day of observing silence. it’s a day of reflection, contemplation and looking inwards. During Nyepi people stay at home. It’s a day of compulsory quietness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyepi)  

#nyepi #poem #silence #mediation #life #meaning #root #virus #quarantine

[bachtiwords]

Visos Neapolio žuvys

[in Lithuanian]

Visos Neapolio žuvys atplaukė čia Galbūt mūsų sena draugystė atvedė jas tokį kelią Bet greičiausiai tai vis kažkoks paradoksas Kol kiti stebėjosi, žuvys lyg ir parplaukė namo Nepasakyčiau, kad šito tikėjausi bet jūra nusekė paskum

#poezija #lithuanian #poetry #naples #fish #short

[bachtiwords]

Happy

Lounge about in my naked being Under a breath of fresh air mixed with cat fur on my leafy pillow

It’s tropical out here I say to myself Because the cat won't listen and my book just stares expecting to be opened

My selfish being refuses to think over scenarios disasters what if but mainly its past

I roam without a purpose the point is to refuse the point is to be naked to be happy and amused

.

There's always a secret I keep to myself without any shame as it changes nothing Or maybe because I don't want it to change you

(P.S I found out that Paul Kingsnorth agrees https://emergencemagazine.org/story/finnegas/)

#poetry #happiness #happylounging #quarantine #viruspoetry #secrets #refusal #shallow #virus #nothing #end of the world as we know it

[bachtiwords]

Untitled

On a slow journey on a train a girl sitting by the window seat closed her eyes for a bit and the weirdest dreams came through so big she couldn’t help but smile remembering when she was little her dreams were so big she couldn’t help but smile as she knew they were true. On a slow journey on a train the sun was shining through. so bright the girl closed her eyes for a bit and it hurt because the rays were getting through.

#poetry #dreams #women #train #sun #ray

[bachtiwords]

Stay At Home

As the storm fills in My heart feels joy For there is no better reason to stay at home

to watch your cat sleeping under the glass table so fragile yet so safe

to close all the windows and then later on to check once more they're doubly closed

i would not want uninvited rain at least that's what i'm told because

but i still contain my peace it’s easy when lighting strikes the other side

after all i have a cat and a glass table on which i choose to solemnly write

until i hear a stray outside they howl the rain and weep and hide

for my heart is unsafe until i close or until i venture out because

#poetry #virus #unequality #privilege #luxury #quarantine #cats #stray #act #division

[bachtiwords]

“All men now live through too much, and think through too little.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow

[bachtiwords]

This is my practice

i listen more

i am more i do less as i am told as i read from the poets of the deserts

the cat laughs and i still am

at the moment i flow i think

-or wait

-this is not right

the rule is to breathe

-or wait

one more and then i shut up

one more and i blink

one more and the world is still here

one more please

i can't pretend i can get enough

so i practice one more

#poetry #remaincalm #virus #meditation #to be

[bachtiwords]

Richard Maxfield lives (after Diane Wakoski)

If I cough right now someone might record it but it won't be Richard Maxfield For these times are the future And these times are different

If I cough right now I might as well jump out of the window Sabotage myself Or stay at home, they say

Which is why I'm writing this in an empty park which I broke into which someone else has broken into before me Richard Maxfield would approve

And he likes our coughs And I miss someone who likes my coughs And I miss the trees the emptiness in this mythology

And, I tell you, animals are stunned A lizard in my path an ant on my leg staring suspensively Not sure if they missed me

I remain unmoved because who knows when Richard Maxfield will blow his head off until it all falls apart 'Better stock up for the future'

Hey

Hey

It was not music It was your cough "If you cough very hard do you think you fall apart?"

It was not music But I heard the missing note Richard you poor old bugger These times are different In these times You live on

After:

Diane Wakoski

The Story of Richard Maxfield

He jumped out of a window. Or did he shoot himself? Was there a gun or was it pills? Did anyone see blood? Was he holding water in his lungs? Or was he right about the CIA conspiracy and killed by one of them because he knew their plan?

Richard was an electronic composer. He wrote a piece called ‘Cough Music’ made up of the coughs of hundreds of people at concerts. He was brilliant and well organized. And then he fell apart. He was homosexual and took drugs. He was brilliant and well organized. I loved ‘Cough Music’ and could not see how such a fine composer could fall apart as Richard fell apart.

This is the story of Richard Maxfield. He died in California. It does not make me as sad that he died as that he fell apart. We all die. We do not all fall apart. ‘Cough music’ was a beautiful piece of music.

                                               I went to a concert tonight and heard many people coughing, especially during the encore, which was a piano piece by Debussy, delicate and sparse, like a dress you can see through, and everyone seemed to have to cough during the piece.

If you cough very hard, do you think you fall apart? I once had a bad cough and now realise that for two weeks I coughed during every poetry reading and concert I went to. I wonder if anyone recorded my cough? I wonder how many readers and performers not only did not feel sympathetic towards my bad lungs and the symptomatic cough but also wanted to shoot me for coughing? A fortuneteller once said I would die of TB. I wonder if that’s why I like ‘Cough Music’?                                                                Perhaps I should have my lawyer write into my will                      “I would like to have ‘Cough Music’ played at my funeral. Someone would think that in bad taste. No one likes to think that after you die you still have bad taste, Even if you had it in life.

What bothered me about Richard Maxfield was that he had the bad taste to fall apart; dying after you fall apart is actually a rectification of bad taste. Richard was so brilliant and well organized I could not imagine how he fell apart. And ‘Cough Music’ is just one of his very beautiful concrete tapes. They say the men he loved destroyed him. But he was brilliant and well organized and I find it hard to believe some not-brilliant and poorly organized man could destroy him.

You see, the story of Richard Maxfield is one I do not understand. But I have always loved ‘Cough Music’ and when I heard the beautiful Debussy tonight and thought of a man I love who for many reasons I cannot see or be with and I heard the audience coughing, flashing every once in a while like light catching a strip of aluminium which blows on a fruit tree,

I understood that I would never fall apart, though I did not know why, and for a moment I thought of the involuntary action of coughing, and I understood perhaps why he jumped out of a window though I knew that just as I would never fall apart, I would also never jump out of a window, and I also refrained from coughing, though just at the end of the Debussy,              I wanted to/ maybe just to join the whole crowd.

There are many ways to die, but none of them is subtle.                                Why do people cough so much at concerts? I cannot touch the piano. I cannot touch you. If the King of Spain gave a concert no one woud cough. The story of Richard Maxfield is one I do not understand, but I thought of it tonight, listening to people cough their way through Debussy,

It was not music.

Only Richard Maxfield made music out of coughing, and he is dead. Richard Maxfield is dead.

#virus poetry #poetry #wakoski #richard maxfield

[bachtiwords]

Plevėsa

(in Lithuanian)

Pirštai panirę Juoda mėlyna Nekontroliuojamas aitvaras Nekontroliuojamos rankos Aš esu šalyje kurios nepažįstu bet juokas ima kai vaikai šoka per bangas kai šunės laksto vienas paskui kitą ir mirktėli žmogus iš to smagumo kai sustoji nes eiti jau nebegali ir puola padėti visi iš to nuostabumo kai skruzdės blaškosi ir moteris pratipena tykiai o vyras nesupranta kodėl kai vienas vienas visut vienutėlis

.

Ir saulė visgi apvali ir kojos nešvarios kad ir kur bebūčiau

#poetry #poezija #lietuviska #plevesa #travel poetry

[bachtiwords]

The Zone (after Tarkovsky)

Define anything you want

Unity and reason

Define me

In the zone

And I‘ll push you

To the dunes

Of miracle

So you see again

#poetry #tarkovsky #zone #miracle #dunes #knowledge