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Jake Syersak



from Songs of Innocence, of Kapital, of Experience, and of Incohereocence


(1)


               Swanwicked,
I watch the sun descend the Puget Sound into a seismicity of its own
                                                                                                    choosing;

                                                                                                                      is the heart,
                                                           then, such obliterate-glitter as this—
                                                 a where-the-sun-meets-
                                                                        the-sea—that which has never, or may never learn
to slow its explosions
                                                           into space;

                                                              tell me
                                  whether there is wingspan at all

                                                                                                                   to what I think,

                                                                   or else why “I think” should remain so weightlessly so


*


Like
an oil fire tornadoing the ocean I gaze out I think out
like

a cigarette burn in shag carpet

over the waters of Puget Sound
as a lone swan

wicks into the
obliterateglitter of sun-
on-

sea on all sides sometimes this unwicking world seems

so unwinnable seeing as Capital is dead labor which

vampire-like

lives only by sucking living labor and lives
the more
the more labor it sucks and lucky you you carry this dynamo within you
always
like the noisy spiritual
noeisis of mechanized Live Laugh Love signs only smoke

and mirrors can
suckle from unfuck my mind

cherry blossoms unfuck my mind weeping blue willow unfuck my mind
oolong tea

from the dry deadness inside
I
write the bloodred tooth in hopes of unbecoming

these gums all too
clearly
I coalesce all too

well with
all

the shards of the world like all the tombs of the world
all too
well they chew
the world into glass

like grass
asked what do you believe
and answering

only in tsunami after tsunami of green
in gravity
its grave


(2)


                                                                                                                   Thought is to be
appeased, eased,
                             or easeled;

                                                              if only those colors
                                                                                              sweeping up
the edges
of
    the evergreens

                                                             could ascend forever
                                                                             their after-whorls, one would scintillate

in what afterworlds
                          we see;

            like the pistil that through the chrysanthemum screams
its corona,

                                                                                                          I
like my mind best
                                when out of it


*


Of after-whorls and afterworlds I was

eased
into someone else’s thought onto someone
else’s easel someone else’s world
when they say you were not longed for this world

you and I know
it was a world not longed for

to begin with

from cradle to the grave the gavel is not ours I

may as well
be
living out the life of a hyphen a howl
among howls living in

mid-
air

how via negativa a mind I have the mind
of man wearing as a halo

a radio
I am not sorry for my
circuitousness The traditions of all dead
generations weigh

like a nightmare on the brains

of the living the only labor of
any lightness anymore lay on the tongues of lovers
wherever lovers’ tongues

intertwine

to vibrate or vine like the persimmony air
around a persimmon

those fathoms from afar

we believe
only through others’ to be ours

and not the hours’ the dreams that through cocoons worm their

wings

there are
so many softnesses in the world
with edges
you would not believe they would have you believe

the open mouths
of flowers and factories do not scream in solidarity

I want

like a wrench
only to wreck like a garden


(3)


Dreamreeking and languageless as an old saloon,
                                                                                                                                                 I set my butterfly-
                                                                                                                                                 flavored
                                                                                                                                                               thoughts
                                                                                                                                       adrift;

                     listen—in my garden is a starflower, whose blue-
cucumbery scent,

I aspire to;

                                                         it is with the utmost regret I cannot say,
                                                                                                            “of these
                                                                    evergreens my eyes swim,
I am”;


                       but up there, between tree and treeesque,

is a statelessness

   for which I will find me
an I-will-find-me-

an-I-will,
                                                     because I am not sorry for my circuitousness


*


Languageless as a blenderful of butterfly wings the capitalist incorporates
labor

as a living ferment with
the lifeless

constituents of the product decrying I have an empire
on my lips
and no one to kiss me goodnight (do you

ever get the same feeling
I do like sometimes you just want to vomit

your skeleton

and live at last among the lacewings)

through these existless gardens I will walk you
to a wilderness
the “I” never exits

whose exquisiteness is but the daydream
of kings and queens twisting the heavens around the Earth

like draperies
Lynchian in their own right our dreams say

you will not
repeat after me you will not

belong us
like legs of wine down globes of glass
whose runway
is the lesion of glass jaws The product of this labor-process belongs

therefore

to him
as much as does the wine which is the product
of the process of fermentation

completed in his cellar nothing belongs us
but our dreams
some dreams serve some dreams ferment some dreams hang but no dream

hangs

that will not fang


––––  

Jake Syersak is the author of the poetry books Mantic Compost and Yield Architecture. He is also the translator of several books by Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine and Tahar Ben Jelloun. His work has received funding from the PEN/Heim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. He currently lives in Olympia, WA.

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