1: Lust

Written on June 6, 2017. “Lust” is the first part in a series of eight. All images in the sequence originally captured at Yosemite National Park.

The project is perpetually rethinking
the project / the project is doubt
– Stephen Collis, “First Sketch of a Poem I Will Not Have Written” (above/ground, 2017)

throbbing into time, into me throbbing, into quirk of night or day, the chasm the sexual conditioning
language choral retribution casting toward iron to crackly pots abused, to the many with strained hands
pulled apart the scenes roared, torn, taut too the elation reborn of a fury of melting and of sizzling

wanderlust is as wandering as it is lustful in the heart of this Rainier Valley, and its torturous, decayed
we’re done for in this third space, this occupation, open wound, pause between blink, capture of image
mass of land, gray toward chromatic end, beyond and yet before moldy mind ablaze with whirring wail

flames hissing to ask could it be we’ve all been touched, flits for blessings, noticing consequential doom?
what is real amidst the sand and not amidst the heart (relying upon a deviance and a ravishing)?
what is the reality behind desire? what of the urge to expound one’s dirtiest foregoing, wormlike?

(pause: to take extremes of two men across the globe, startlingly indifferent in their eviscerated states
polarized sad slosh of Edvard Munch’s self-portraits illumined, fluorescence, in a San Francisco museum
then an impeccable, creeping avoidance: The Myth of Sisyphus: I see it everywhere now, trend like ego)

eruption of twinges and tweaks and the learning now and the disavowal now of everyday movements
to stare at flesh and cloth and flower as if the landscape was alive with lubrication smeared and smarmy
and meanwhile the malt and the muck hold us open like glue blue faces of despair a green codification

through the crackle is the demise, wrecking bowl overturned to flatten mood, ravage an alt’s landscape
memory of the hairs on arms plucked, memories like memoirs, to distract, to bend, little intrusions
as blood sends pings to furtive elsewhere, sun tickling across like an estranged, forgotten explosive

Pacific this world is a rush that comes and goes, the old throbbing the old blend from scene to scene
utter through impressed indifference death seers and their moves: adjunct vigilance shows the way out
every moment an out as we seek, seek, and so the cure so unopposed; rationale to kill time quietly

in this cycle is riptide and retribution: to not know what it is for because we’re in a mirage of middles
to call to arms soiled or studded or staged or stolen but still solemnly waiting to avoid opening entirely
this such then to dream past wonder, eyes pressed never released in some strange tense shadow bile

could it be done and could it be done so rightly, could there be an impending anything other than this?
the moment as captured and repositioned, redirected, a yellowing lassoing forward to a pit of docility
(thinking of those streets, halls, stalls, dirty darkness in that town’s lot, brightness over water, Munch)

utterly utter and without fail, the visions cease or too a rise to death through excising repression
dream a perpendicular aeration abled to be smothered able to be sent careening to a wall to explode
flare we disappear and are left hobbling covered in rags across an unknown, observably-wasted terrain

think of the last remaining light of a city holding its last remaining tones of emerald gloss popping out
what is kept, brought to this moldy result, dusted with skins of a colonized past, grueling and left
rapacious elements suck me out and push me forward, holistically obscene as is one more memory