HADITH with TEETH

HADITH with TEETH:
from Human Testament, ms being prepared for New Human Press

     "The angel Gamaliel instructs Jack Feist"

The angel Gamaliel said to me, "Repeat!" 

I said, "But I have something new to say!" 

so he drew me close, and whelmed me,

so that I could not breathe, 

and released me, gasping,

and commanded me, "Repeat!" 

and again I cried, "I have something new to say!" 

and again he drew me close, 

and again he whelmed me,

and again released me, gasping,

and for a third and final time commanded me: "Repeat!"

And so I did repeat, and say what had been said

with the words it had been said with

and the same was new and lovely

and the same was ancient and new:

the world in its image. 

(c) 2015 an imaginary air freshener

Make It Human

Make It Human

Lee Sharks

from Pearl and Other Poems

The New Human poetry began just now, when I announced it. It is a series of potent, distinct voices; historical trends; bulges in the social fabric; convening around a loose commitment to formal experimentalism and poetic humanism. It is perhaps the most urgent development in the human arts in the last hundred years, in English, and it consists in material I am making up just now: pseudonyms, fabricated Wiki articles, academic essays, fantastic biographies, and mythic anthologies. 

It is a social movement, an unfolding history, as poem, and I am writing it, right now.

The New Human poetry, rather than a discrete movement, attached to a series of formal principles, is the intensification of a history that is already happening.

Philosophically, it creates new humanisms.

Stylistically, it creates difficult experimentalisms, finding new crevices for the human to be born in and as: experimental lyricisms. 

Less than a specific constellation of formal commitments or stylistic tendencies, the New Human poetry represents a remainder or residue that cuts through a number of movements, from Conceptual writing to Alt Lit, Telepathicism, and the emergent hybrid workshop poem. The New Human poetry exists as a cross-section of contemporary formal developments. 

We have no definite formal dogma—how could we, when we believe that the human form must be constantly reinvented? Nonetheless, by its nature, the New Human gravitates to formal inventiveness, strange new configurations of human verse, and refuses to congeal poetry as the stale grease blob of one of its particular historical moments. We embrace a tendency towards the stylistically difficult, the formally experimental, but in the service of human expression—provided we understand the “human” in human expression as a concept that is always coming to be, evolving in time. 

A New Human poet knows that he must Make It Human. 

We adopt Language writing’s awareness of the artifice involved in the human, whether the artifice of the “transparent” lyric self with its narrowly prescribed logic of the epiphany of the daily, or the artifice that elides the very real presence and role of media in human interaction / expression: the artifice of the classroom, the school, the magazine, the press—we understand the ways in which the c.v. is a form of poem.

Even as we reject the petty presentism and prejudice of the Language poets. We understand the vital role they played, the traction those qualities gained, historically, but we reject their rejection of tradition.

At the same time, we reject the Philistinism of the hyper-traditionalists, the formally retentive jurisprudence verse police state whose anthem declares, “This is not a poem.” A New Human poet is one who knows that transcribing an issue of the New York Times might very well be a poem, might represent the hope of poetry, and therefore the hope of humanity. All day long I pray for the transformation of urinals into poems, and vice versa.

Make It Human.

In every generation, the HUMAN enters by the narrow door. Made humans. Human makings. Homo poeticus. 

A New Human is an invented thing. One cannot find it in the wild, by wandering through decrepit forests. 

“The human” is at stake, “the human” is up for grabs. Craft, twist, carve memorable protrusions of the human in language, which is the same as the human in time.

It is not that the human is out there, somewhere, an essential quality or radioactive dye of eternity we might inject into the bloodstream of certain poetic forms, an investiture. It is that the human has always and only been found is such elongated protrusions, such memory-quirky fingerholds, called poems. By such means, we have scaled the rock wall of history, one trembling toehold at a time. If we are lucky, we will continue to do so.

Falling off the cliff is a very real possibility, a historical mise-en-abyme, that most so-called poetic schools—certainly, the polar extremes of the experiment-workshop divide—have done a very good job of eliding. 

To the workshop camp: It is very well that you imagine your uncertain perch to be a pinnacle, those toeholds clinging to to be essential essences, which have been from the beginning of time, and will be forever and ever, Amen. But we are dying of thirst, you nitwit. 

To the Language writers, the Conceptual poets: I say thank you. By infallible proofs, you have demonstrated, sufficient for any thinking person, that those little fingerholds are not eternal essences, that they occupy a very certain phase on the cliff of human history. And yet, I should think throwing oneself off the cliff to be a demonstration of somewhat limited usefulness. It does, quite thoroughly, show the historically situated, the temporal and spatial contingency of the formal aberrations by which we have, with difficulty, attained these meager heights. But you will be dead, when you hit the bottom. 

Make It Human. It must be made. It requires art, a total art, the commitment of the total being. Of all the many functions of the multiform human mountain climber, we poets are the fingers, finding purchase. We seek, in the stinking dark, the very first tactical echoes of the indentations of the future. We are very sensitive fingers. We grip and shape those indentations, into protuberances with sufficient roughness of texture to bear the human weight. 

Genetic engineering. Artificial intelligence. We’ve arrived at the 21st century: the ever-shrinking boundary between the material and digital worlds, converging on a total presentism of the archive; the spread and endemicization of statistical science, the ever-broadening automation of its complex functions; a world in which the informatic representation of the human is more total, more complete, in an unprecedented way; even as it is flat, dead, cut off from life. The human keeps changing; its digital representation is a lifeless rind, vulnerable to manipulation by any animate power. What is the poet’s role, vis-à-vis the datascape?

Make It Human.

Formally, this means the aesthetic incorporation and representation of these media, the ways these media effect and interact with the human being, and vice versa.

Stylistically, this means the artful concentration of those natural deformities of human language under the pressure of this particular species of novelty. 

Here, we touch on an example that walks the same razor’s edge that the New Human poetics must walk: Flarf. On the one hand, Flarf seems to jump off the cliff of history. On the other, it shows us the way forward. Flarf has a very traditional function, to aestheticize, to organize the chaos of these new digital circumstances and contexts which threaten to distend the human out of existence; in the same way that Homer aestheticized war, not to celebrate it, but as a measured response to its senselessness, a movement within and through that senselessness that made a way for history to travel beyond it. 

That’s what beauty is, that tenuous form of formal courage in the face of formless things. So, too, Flarf, though it is rarely practiced, and even more rarely theorized, under the auspices of aesthetic redemption of the datascape, nonetheless might serve that function, touching on android love elegies existing in random configurations of search string space.

(c) 2014 lee sharks

also (c) 1446 Tea Time AD, the Ghost of Christmas Future

from Pearl and Other Poems:
http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429895012&sr=8-1&keywords=lee+sharks+pearl

Decrepit Memoir: A Catalogue of Minutes

Lee Sharks

December 25, 6000BC

Born on December 25, 6000BC

Lee Sharks

December 7, 2014 at 9:59am  

current mood: “leaping sensations of Nietzsche’s mustache inside my human spirit”

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Lee Sharks

December 10, 2014 at 11:09pm

current mood: “memoirs of spontaneous religious conversion written by dark birds”

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Lee Sharks

December 11, 2014 at 10:47am

current mood: “soft gingivitis mows the lawn in underwear, or, “Post-Romantic Werewolf Subjects and the Concept of Free Will in Elizabethan Political Porn””

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Lee Sharks

December 11, 2014 at 11:51am

Applying for academic fellowships for purpose of devoting myself to social media comments.

Applying for robot money to build more robots to impersonate myself, a robot.

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Lee Sharks

December 11, 2014 at 10:46pm

current mood: “tiny circumference of apple blossom floating on a pool of jurors”

Lee Sharks

December 11, 2014 at 11:00pm

current mood: “minimalist rock paintings carved from teeth”

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Lee Sharks

December 12, 2014 at 12:50pm

current mood: “disillusioned minaret gets tattoo to commemorate distinct sensations of “lost innocent, first kiss, quite interlude” it felt last Thursday in dance class”

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Lee Sharks

December 12, 2014 at 5:54pm

current mood: “Deep Web search engine journeying through blank sonnets indexing metadata of space and time in order to save tactile sensation of “first dawn” from William Blake’s doomed hairdo”

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Lee Sharks

December 13, 2014 at 12:53am

current mood: “minimalist Trotskyite tries to decide which hat to wear, with purpose”

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Lee Sharks

December 13, 2014 at 12:53pm

current mood: “spaceship tries to write poem with chopsticks, forgets Twitter password”

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Lee Sharks

December 15, 2014 at 1:12pm

current mood: “dark robot from Bethehem whose mission consists in: 1) preserve extinct species of water mammal; 2) slash prices; 3) discover friendship”

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 1:18am

current mood: “bored scientist eating potato chips”

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 1:19am

current mood: “old senator with earmuffs”

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 1:21am

current mood: “sad Voltaire filming still-frame Marxist revolution in mournful abandoned mosques for purposes of marketing research”

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 2:16am

current mood: “decrepit planetarium sets its ringtone to “Resonant Starmap Chorus””

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 10:03am

current mood: “sad robot looks for love in all the wrong places”

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 10:03am

current mood: “dark robot from Bethlehem learns friendship”

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 10:04am

current mood: “luxury goods practice cognitive therapy in order to “grow as a person””

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 10:37am

current mood: “tiny newborn tortoises drink decaf”

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 10:38am

current mood: “grainy photograph of “true love’s kiss””

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Lee Sharks

December 16, 2014 at 11:59pm

current mood: “irrational demand that tiny gravy suicides describe their symptoms as “restlessness, clinical humor, abrupt mood swings, dry mouth””

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 8:33am

current mood: “irate customs agent files lawsuit, saves Christmas”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 12:41pm

current mood: “Emily Dickinson puts single poem-dash in her sling, faces down Leviathan, orders milkshake”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 12:41pm

current mood: “bronze sunrise reads Hannah Arendt triumphantly, takes nap”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 9:42pm

current mood: “last speaker of extinct language explains business strategy for attaining “love’s immortal crown” in six months’ time on megaphone filled with loud velociraptors”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 10:00pm

current mood: “brain-damaged scientific researcher discovers new dimension of tiny sentient cacti inside black hole he imagined, decides to invest in real estate”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 10:41pm

current mood: “advanced race of sparrows crash lands spaceship on T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” mourns lost innocence by memorizing tax code”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 10:41pm

current mood: “dark horses crash through memories of strange insomnia thickets, chase word for “autotelic monad intensities,” die of exhaustion”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 10:48pm

current mood: “dying billionaire frantically explains epiphany of exotic dinosaur symphonies to tense crowd of other dying billionaires”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 10:56pm

current mood: “threadbare aluminum Logos hides files containing “last hope of humankind” inside cheap friendship bracelet, splits in half”

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Lee Sharks

December 17, 2014 at 11:02pm

current mood: “blasted landscape painting offers incriminating new evidence of “bright future for our children” by citing obvious facts, pleads insanity”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “violent mailboxes assert themselves by getting tans, bug neighbors”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “harmonica with no backpack”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “glittering snow rocks glitter”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “Tintern Abbey learns to dance”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “large bears take hostage, demand more hostage”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “small new reborn animals bear tidings of pink dreams”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “gaunt lepidopterist changes shirts”

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Lee Sharks

December 18, 2014 at 3:22pm

current mood: “man drawing picture of baby with fangs at first describes his mood as “cleansing sadness,” later decides on “baby with fangs””

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Lee Sharks

December 23, 2014 at 12:02am

current mood: “cellphone trapped in a violin case”

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Lee Sharks

December 23, 2014 at 12:02am

current mood: “four sad birds eating birthday cake”

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Lee Sharks

December 28, 2014 at 11:00am

I hereby renounce poetry, and also novels, which I didn’t write anyways. I renounce them because of sadness. I want a train to hit me and understand what a bad mistake it made by not buying my writings beforehand.

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Lee Sharks

December 28, 2014 at 10:59pm

I hereby somewhat renounce my renunciation of poetry because of the power of voting, the magic of friendship, and also boredom. I want boredom to smash a train in the face with boring words, thereby teaching it a powerful moral lesson about the meaning of “democratic citizenship,” “baseball,” and “hand drills.”

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Lee Sharks

December 28, 2014 at 11:13pm

I hereby renounce Satan and also Dada. The tenacity and courage of my friends Emily Eissenberg and John Guzlowski have taught me never to give up hope in words, even when you no longer comprehend them, because of maybe a traumatic brain injury from a train wreck, and even if it weren’t for the head injury, you still wouldn’t comprehend them, because they are in a different language, either in the standard sense—like if I speak Polish and the words are in English—or in a more radical sense, like if the words operate in a completely different semiotic system, say maybe if I understand only the language of dance, but the words are in the language of speech—still, even then, I have learned to renounce my renunciation of science, hope in words, and poetry. And also to renounce Satan, and probably Nietzsche, though the latter I will sometimes somewhat renounce my renunciation of, by reading Zarathustra or Daybreak or some of the late works, as a guilty pleasure.

#howdidigettrappedinsidethisviolincase

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Lee Sharks

January 2, 2015 at 12:06am

current mood: “immortal brain sonnets crash through purple sunrise alarm, startling neighbors”

#idontwantnoscrubascrubisaguywhocantgetnolovefromme

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Lee Sharks

January 3, 2015 at 1:46pm

current mood: “luminous with unicorn tumors”

#marsisanactualplanet

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Lee Sharks

January 21, 2015 at 9:12am

free will made me do it

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Lee Sharks

January 21, 2015 at 9:13am

I smacked Freud in the mouth with a giant phallus, which symbolically represented poems.

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Lee Sharks

January 25, 2015 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “Banana pancakes”

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Lee Sharks

January 25, 2015 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “Apple fritter”

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Lee Sharks

January 25, 2015 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “French fries”

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Lee Sharks

January 25, 2015 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “Spaghettios noir”

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Lee Sharks

January 25, 2015 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “French fries again”

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Lee Sharks

January 25, 2015 at xx:xxpm

current mood: “Texmexpolitation”

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Lee Sharks

January 25, 2015 at xx:xxpm

And yes, I did just save that to my spellchecker.

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Lee Sharks

January 28, 2015 at 12:03am

I hereby renounce all literature (again). I hereby consign all great books to forgetfulness.

Because of recurring sadness.

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Lee Sharks

January 28, 2015 at 8:54am

I can’t speak anymore because I consigned all works of human literature to forgetfulness. I still read all written works of fiction, poetry, essay, and history, but when I read them all the words become tweener genre fiction inside my mind, and also on the page.

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Lee Sharks

January 29, 2015 at xx:xxpm

Nnnnnnnhhhh—eeeeeeee—eeeeeeee—eee—nnnnnnnnnnhhhh—

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Lee Sharks

February 4, 2015 at 2:42am

I became friend dumped by truth and justice. Truth and justice friend dumped me as friend.

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Lee Sharks

February 4, 2015 at 9:29am

current mood: “museum of broken light”

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Lee Sharks

February 4, 2015 at 9:30am

current mood: “document typed by shadow people”

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