These words are about divinity, mortality, and the tickle we feel on the back of our heads.

Written between 2020 and 2022 during the global interregnum between the pandemic and the rise of the automated world, to testify the lambent pieces of humanity slowly disappearing from the blue planet.

S. Németh

I.

Death dresses themselves with the purposeful flowers of heat daze;

Outside, in the transmission towers, in the pylons pregnant with high tension,

Above, in the red-hot cables that carry our words and deeds to the next machine,

In the trains and cablecars moving people about, sometimes swallowing them whole,

In the hours of sleep and in the hours of wake,

In dream and in the undream,

In real and in the unreal,

In the spores of livelihoods that twist along to survive this and other centuries.

 

Death awaits themselves for nobody, and nobody wishes them well;

Death be like a mistress looking to wed the missus’ blood,

Death be like a fountain where rivers of red turn a-times gold,

But Death is a Jesus still cross, whose faith never fell.

 

Death comes alike the blanket for children,

Death knows every song that turns a heart around,

They own a mellifluous house of linden,

And not one who ventures there is again found.

 

II.

Is all that’s lost forever lost, or is it lost merely for a time?

Is that which falls, crumbles and fade

Incapable of polishing its shade,

Is it impossible to piece it back for good?

Is that which was fated to be misunderstood?

 

Is death just time or time itself death?

What does eternal life even mean?

 

And what if I wasn’t the pen nor the gun—

What if I didn’t write the words that made my mum lonely

And my sister ashamed of sharing my blood

That made my wife curse me and my friends wish

To be free from my friendship—

But it was not the pen or the gun in me.

I did shoot dead the Bosniak girl in the woods,

And the young man in search of she.

 

Is all that’s lost forever lost?

Is all that holds a shade

Unfit to trial the way, bereft to endure the moss,

Is all that’s lost, locked forever away?

Or are we cursed to hold loss?

 

How long did Bruno carry his weight,

Above that blue mountain, into the minefield,

Without legs and without pain,

How well did Nguyen swim across the morass,

Without skin and without remorse,

And Linney charred by the palms, and Rodney,

But all the watch-kings have turned idle now,

And the firelighters like me are paling too.

 

The war was waged or staged for love,

Because it suited you to collect deaden things,

Keepsakes from half-remembered dreams—

So you could dance and play at night,

Deluding yourself you can bear sway,

And swear to them No, no, never was I afraid.

 

III.

I’d like to tell you how I died.

 

First of all, it wasn’t easy. And there was pain.

The lapse of reason clings to a tiny flame,

Until the moment you realize the next breath

Will be your last.

 

Then the shutdown starts. Like a program,

Something snaps and clogs the infrastructure.

There’s a moment you realize you are blind,

And there’s one you realize you’ll be gone.

There’s also one when you think about

What you’ve become and what you leave behind.

 

And I wish I could tell you there’s a grand light.

Hell, even a big darkness would do. I wish I could

Tell you there’s infinite fire or unending blue.

 

But there isn’t. Just in case you’re still wondering:

There isn’t.

 

Once I asked my dad what is death,

And he told me death was the absence of memory.

That as long as there was a tiny streak of memory,

There was immortality.

 

I remember I thought that we were living

In a world so full of memory; certainly,

Death was completely absent from our world.

I can put the phono on and there’s Johnny singing!

That way I made sure nobody ever died.

 

But that’s a trick only for a time.

The longer the years and days,

The longer the stretch

I need to play

Memory. And when I stopped seeing

My father’s face in my mind,

The outline in the photographs

I couldn’t connect.

 

Then I knew life is a shining tapestry and

What comes at its end it’s just a simple mess

That undoes its thread.

 

IV.

I live a moment with the song and the woman

Falling asleep by the night lights beside me

And I wish all a moment as good as this moment is

With the saxophono heart beating by the drum

In yet-undiscovered tongues and sudden strums

And eyes that seek around the infinite space

Across distances, bedsheets, and parsecs

So is our conjoined spirit at the unison time

Brittle and jocose as things start yearning to rhyme

This is the feeling and this is the dance

Drinking the water, knowing the word

The language of God and the knowledge of Death

The end of consciousness,

Brought forwards, going backward

Our occurrence

Here in good company of Cain, the farmer

And the mind-born river children of Manu

And the wintry flowers of May

May I take your coat, Darling?

Love is thy only victory if love is thy doing

Love is thy only save against the kipple

But mind the gap between thy vision and thy art

For all must part from thee is not the finish

But the beginning of thy love

Love is thy only victory if love is thy doing

Love is thy only save against the kipple

Then you must go widely in this lively mess

And place a daily measure of tenderness

Maybe then! Maybe

The water will little by little spit back

Each and every drop, maybe

We will meet again by the shadow of the red rock

Until that day, take care and well

And remember to sit still

It’s time, Greg. Ta-da. It’s time. Have a lovely night

You too, Tev. Did you forget

Them keys, again? Put the pen down.

And next time something sweeter, no?

You could try a lullaby, another simple tune.

Bring me my glass, let’s toast this for last

We are out already! Give a hug to Ni for us—

Rehearse. Rehearse. Jason and his ship.

 

Why do I always remember winter songs

In this hateful heat of summer?

 

V.

Come pick the flowers, young girl,

Come pick the flowers.

Seize their beauty before it folds,

Crush their breath between your fingers,

Lay them upon burials to bide the time,

Come pick the flowers, young girl,

Come pick the flowers.

 

Or perhaps gems you much prefer,

To dwell in subterranean style,

Should you not wish a hefty cell,

And riches beyond your heart’s desire?

 

After all, to catch stars is pointless play,

You cannot burn as long as they—

Don’t waste yourself under the sun,

But swallow all under your thumb,

Come pick the flowers, young girl,

Come pick the flowers. 

(From Triptych)

I.

By Tushara’s well-spring

Came sage Dai-chien,

At the third, fourth throw of Yi Jing.

Law had decreed for him a path

To observe and crack such eldritch math,

Sunk behind twelve centuries of sand.

 

When first moved step in this ancient land

Which hid a great and subterranean kingdom,

The man, who dropped half-dead,

Was taken to a house of pleasuredom.

Within this state of spectral wake

And wood with wanton choice,

He spoke: dreadful yet afar,

Where fumes of opium lift his voice.

How from this convalescence he stood

Alive again, out of death’s dominion,

Then chased his spirit, bereft of mood

Down a staircase with no door—

’Twas here, in the temple’s belly

That his breath found passageways unseen,

Wedging between slabs of collapsed stone

And emerging unto halls unknown.

 

For forty weeks in a straight line all

Endeavored to clean the rubbled place,

Until they mapped forgotten zones

Removed from time and space—

And under a divine roof cast above

The mountain, all fell and awed

Once discovered, heaped in the dark

The ageless and arcane knowledge of God.

 

II.

My language speaks for no people;

There is no lifeworld in it contained.

And of the divine everyday, I hold no key,

Nor can I sing the light or the shade.

 

I become outside reason, outside might.

 

I do not belong with the Earth or other stars,

And while you can sense my eyes and limbs

As not unlike yours, I am already turning.

 

The colours of your flags, the symbols you utter,

The colossi you are all dying to become,

I have overcome already.

 

I am again, so I rise before.

After my ink there shall be silence.

Go now, and tell the seated people,

Then reach the people that never stay—

Tell all that such eternal garden,

This promised land, is here:

Shying in the winter of May.

 

III.

Permanence and transience are perhaps basic both,

What we hold in the open palm of a hand at morn,

(Be it an eternity, be it a whisper), is maybe torn

While always whole, between two shadows.

 

He sought for her once emerged from the cave;

They met in the ristobar on the Qinhuai stream,

And took tea and talked for an hour. ‘In dream,

I saw your infinite sight speak to me thrice.

 

And each uttering the same potency as the first.

Changing — always. But ever staying the same.’

She betrayed a half-proud smile and kissed him

Long enough to hurt him; Her voice: ‘I speak—

For truly you have met me many times already.

 

I am the one with many names and many forces,

My work is not principle but practice. You wish

To work knowing the way but the way bifurcates.

I have as many ways as my becomings. You miss

My calling because you are restless to hear it.’

 

That said, they both resigned from the Earth

And enjoyed a swim along the starry shore.

And it dawned in him, on that milky-white stream:

The copy is the original, the first and the last are same.

 

The dust that swept the first brush of the paint,

Is present again even if paint and brush change.

So he endeavoured to copy Her work fully,

Until His work and Her work were wily alike.

 

And by the thousands that came and awed,

Pointing at riveting patches of unknown color,

He simply swore: that His work had no name,

Other than the name of work, which was Her name.

 

IV.

‘Now begins the fight’, said He,

On the first and last stroke of midnight.

‘Watch out!’, the birds cried—

But unheard it went, and three

In black poppy-clothed dress, sighed

And onward took to the watchtower.

 

Yet they could not see nor hear much,

And passed their time recounting stories,

And going Dutch on fags like lovers tokens.

Above and beyond them, the earth and sky

Had already taken leave. Nothing there but

Wry and shallow air to breathe.

 

‘Bring the light!’, said the first,

‘Keep the dark’, urged the second,

The third dared not speak. And so along,

Until even the furthest star had vanished.

Between that merry and unforgiving bleakness,

The poppies sewed on their chest withered.

 

And when Nothing came, as it is use among them,

The first screamed God! and kneeled;

The second howled Monster! and readied the blade;

While the third chose to believe Nothing had truly came.

They spent like this an eternity or two—

Before you, because you know my name.

 

And when I come for you, because I will,

Know that I weigh neither glory nor shame.

 

V.

It looks for me, the undying: it wishes to be part of me.

It speaks, and it sings, and it paints, and it plays,

It craves me to be in.

 

Its pain and its love crave me to be the pain and the love.

It craves me to be the daylight and the starry night.

 

My time is its story, my space its music.

 

It desires not to live forever, it desires not to early die.

It only wishes to be in me, thoroughly, if only.

It craves me to be in.

 

Like one of these ancient Özgurian songs strung on lute,

It strucks and strides, plucked and drawn to my accord.

 

It waits not in vain; I, too, shall rise soon. 

(From Triptych)

I.

Things are not things, but occurrences; what
Happened there and then never was meant.
The furnace of the real is forever spent. We
Have drank it all. The water. The water.

And childhood is certainly greater than reality,
For it tests us in numberless ways,
And meaninglessly.

And memory, that deep-blue abyss,
With its alleyways, its dilapidated gallerias,
Its scent of reheated soup.

We are in this desert bloated by consumption,
We haven’t seen each other in a lifetime, and so
We pass the hours trading grains of sand, happy and
Fatalistic like two old lost lovers.

Above and below us there are many flowers
Whose name we’ll never know, and we both
Have eyes and ligaments without name.

We don’t talk much but prefer to breathe beside.
Our wish is to rejoin a childhood in the first world,
But that stench of salt from our bowels…

O world o
Grand revolting branch of sob and suckle

Stay a while till I have learned to sing,
Stay while I sing

This coarse, bridled tongue, with its pronouns
And its symbols and its systems, with its whimsical
Verbs and its genocidal reproduction of thought;

Stay a while till I have sung this tongue,
Stay while I sing.

II.

Twice in the same river. Thrice in total.
Once with me. Once together. The third
The river into itself. Us, and the river.
One, two times. Two, three times.
Seven parts of null, seventeens of nine.
Seven teens the age of nine, vitalistic,
Frantic and timeless, also apt and urgent,
Gloating and conquering all down London,
The great London with the big tits, and
The impervious silhouettes, London
Blistering with pride and black plagues;
All seven of them, the age of nine, down London
Seven parts of null, seventeens of nine,
Down in the nurturing Thames, underwater.
Gloating and conquering, spitting and fiddling
Down in the Thames underwater. And we
Have drank it all. The water.
Seven of the age of nine underwater.
Twice in the same water. Thrice in total.
Once with me, once together. The third

(Stay while I sing. Stay a while
Till I have learned to sing. Underwater)

With their eyes chewed about and their mouths
Ripped whole, and trying to sing.

What is the voiceless sound? Here, hear. Hear
Here, here, here, now. What is the aim of sing?
What is its convey? 

O world o
Sing while I stay a while, sing!

Jason saw it first. Did he set sail and land
With the same ship? All that mindless tar,
The wooden planks massacred by sea-termites,
The rotten oars. Until the day when the mighty
Argo returned; not a single piece had returned.
All new pieces, the same tar, the same oars
With the same inscriptions, the same wooden planks.
Not a single had returned. The same ship.

And Jason died and his eyes with him,
Undership. Longing for water.

And Jason saw them sing, deep in the black bay
With their language and their words of water
Which sang: things are not things, but occurrences.

Of all the riches and the gold, of all the scathing
Passages, of all the lands and peoples, of all the
Incantations, of all the wounds and triumphs,
It is the song he chose to carry across. 

 

III.

Desire stretches that far: till Death, and unto it.
And also before, in living on Earth and under
That sun shade, awhile in the light of day,

During a cold winter morn in Kus Tba.
We were walking beside each other,
Counting our breaths, in the frozen unmade road

Sliding upon the icy body of water.
I was searching for your hand, catching
Your words in mid-air, and at the fiftieth breath

You stepped and sighed— leaning in on the glacial ground
To seize a stone which then you threw vigorously
Towards the plane. But it broke

Upon impact with the ice, and shattered.
And I was thinking of how a ring would hug your finger,
How I longed to extend this sense to your mind,

To reify this warmth and kindle it through time.
You were a validation that World and Life are one,
And my self a trail of bread crumbs

With which to feed my wits
In stale droplets of reason monolithic.
Of where we ended up, I recollect nothing

Nor the places nor the attempts
At minuting each breath logged into moment.
Yet behind this four-letter-pretence at wordplay,

After death, life, and the gentle sting of a sun ray,
I knew the first thought would be to see you
So I could inhabit each breath within your chest. 

 

IV.

Why cannot we be like we used to be? And why
Cannot we become what we are as of now? True,
What we are cannot be known, and what we were
Cannot be located, while what will become of us
Exists already, takes hold already, ramifies.
Time tomorrow is waging a war against time today,
And winning every centimetre of this battlefield,
Our bodies. Out there where time yesterday is still looped,
Where that old song (of which we remember only
pieces) plays
Stands a solitary, sunless day.

Within this day, which has no hour nor clock
To beat the time, which houses no orphan
Of events and facts,

Within this day, time probable and time possible
Idly pass, back and forth, a token of love
That withered on a morning that once was.

And of the could have been, and of the should have
In a drowsy litany of intent and bland passivity,
(A waning breath’s vapour on a wintry street,
Threatening to crawl within the fixtures)
Nothing remains but the cosmic relic radiation.

Indeed most of what becomes is wasted—
And it is from this acknowledgment
That a mind’s conscience sets sail.

If our awareness is the acceptance of this entropy,
This impossibility for every thing to become thing,
All begins and ends nowhere,

And the song that we remember, the rhythm buried
In its face, is not to mark the time or space,
But to recoil the appetite
of its nature.

What to make then of the metallurgy of interplay?
Forces weld and bodies wed in terrible congress,
These are not things, but occurrences, and yet

What is real is real again, in eternal recurrence.
There is no greater answer. Things are not things,
But occurrences. And desire stirs both ways:
The time invited to join, and the space
created to welcome it.

I sing because the song needs be remembered,
Needs be affixed to every sunless day. It is this
May be that stings me to music: I hear it clear
at times, some times
I hear it asound.

 

V.

That the end of language coincides with
The end of the world, and that at world’s end
No word is there to speak or record;

That at word’s death only a game of words
Can bring about meaning; and that
The word World can only be true
As long as the world of Word is tied to it.

I’d rather follow the Worldword unward
From this image of thought onto the next,
With a whirlwind path affixed to me. 

(From Triptych)

because of how much i love i am

bound to be a stranger because of

how much i love you i am bound to

be a stranger to you because of

how much i love this world i am

bound to be a stranger in this

world because of how much i love

because my mind and heart are as

one because my body and soul are

joint together because my life and

death do matter because my time

and space are left undone because

of how much i love because i am a

stranger to my body and soul

because my life and death are left

undone because of how much i love

you can find me in every bleeding

core in every swollen vertebra of

the unreal city you can hear my

face you can see my voice you can

touch my trace you can sense my

perfect body afire in the unreal city

for i burn with the breath of

untold cosmic materials and my

spire reaches beyond the bony

marrow of the earth

for i adorn the lambent skin of my

anima with earthy lamentations

and tellurian apogees

and i question each vision each

dream because of how much i love 

and the water answered: ‘yes—

the crack and the polish

on the vault of heaven

are the same thing

indeed’ 

because of how much i love i am

bound to be a stranger to both

essence and existence love virtually

superimposes me onto what i was

before you and what i will be after

you and all i read is the

juxtaposition of difference and

repetition

because of how much i love i am

bound to be a stranger surely those

who look at me will say:

‘he has a blank

in his eyes as if

he’s always

leaving’

without seeing that it was all a

returning 

(From Fervor Modernus)

look at the laughing heart of time

for i have served many storms

before this one and i have survived

even a dire whirlwind of butterflies

but i fear the pull and the crush

that will see me and my sisters and

brothers smiting each other for a

raindrop

these drier wings that helped us

please the roof of the sky have left

us naked to the sun and now

we do not know how to hide

ourselves

(From Fervor Modernus)

memory tapes/:

dataset/experience/restricted

access/attraction/affection/

attachment grid

screenshot her eyelids/shining

shining under her eyelids/eternal

recurrence

nothing different/nothing new

nothing save the same/nothing

backwards/ nothing forward

nothing save the same

lightweight/heavyweight/on

replay/always/eternally/forever/

under her eyelids/shining/

screenshot her eyelids/shining/

eternal recurrence

all in a day/the smell of burning

paper/the chill on our kneecaps/

the taste of the riverbed/the sight

of you/all in a day/on replay

onward-inward pain/myself—

if only/if only/if only/on replay/

myself

:/memory tapes 

(From Fervor Modernus)

free thought-free will, unconsumed

a mind determined by engaged

spirit and situational reason

not confined to or defined by

pattern or perception but by

entrustment and consignment and

with sensibility as compass for

action

if thats what makes us human

walking the many paths and the

very limits of our conscious

behaviour wandering the streets of

this endless everlit city towering

over the skin and the meanders of

alternative futures and possible

pasts

boundless city raining voices on us

fearful creatures bound in matter

and time yawning city of billion

unspoken tongues unreal city black

ash shower in the cold sleepless

night shining with arrays of evolutionary habits —

immeasurable city

if thats what makes us human

hours days and years of scrutiny

what came to pass before this

mortal sun tossed aside with

remarkable punctuality

if thats what makes us human

lying on the heapless earth tied to

our backs the hope and promise of

maybe better utopias to come

free thought- free will, undepleted

amassed one on top of the other

geological eras of unsung heroisms

by spiders web with a white string

into invisibility

masterless city sprawling not out of

wish but out of need beyond the

eye of vision careless city where

hordes of alike-me ponder and

persist unreal city white hot oceans

rising to greet tomorrow’s accursed

children— abnormal city

o if i wanted to o if i wanted to

sing this ramification of aims and

pulses these aleatory entities

computed by the fingertips of

complex knowledge i’d have to sing

a state of being removed from

existence

the condition of artificial virginity

and my time away from your

wavelengths bioengineered storm

of desire make my body yours in

the unreal city along the lines of

code of what is and what is not

o if i wanted to o if i wanted to

sing the cry and shame of

unanswered voiceless millions

without care nor hope for

preservation only fate ascribed that

of extinction and blood is always

on my hands even if i try to make

it visible to others

the blame and rage of lashed livid

yet dynamic bodies filled with

dance and dream whose peace and

labour can solely be described as

defiance for betterment

i am the mistress of a potent

undiscovered masculinity which

can and will be dissolved in a

handful of touch

i am a deaf-mute king in the land

of the always and now an opulent

show milked and saved under the

banner ‘much and more for all’

immutable city crunching

numberless bytes of history into a

little tiny frame immovable city

breathing with dead arteries the

vessels of the living unreal city

farming brains under the sinister

blanket of the forthcoming—

immeasurable city

if thats what makes us human

having outgrown the veil and

vestige of superstition and obtusity

if thats what makes us human once

crossed the chasm of old morality

our weight buried in physical memory

(From Fervor Modernus) 

in the new homes where true

presence is missing where true

presence is lacking

in the new homes furnished and

loved like airports or motorways or

shopping centres

in the new homes made out

of remains of tactile lust and worn

out by endless disconnection

who’s talking with these deep

silences who’s crying with these

virulent noises too many voices the

tunnel is restless slow violence high

pleasure technology jolt pain and

learning means adapting to

discomfort

which figures which temporalities

lie outside of the rightful range of

dwellings which silhouettes which

faces persevere outside in the

corners in obtuse curves out in the

marginal fields

by novel intelligences by simulacra

replaced in or pushed out of

workforces by skiltronics by

skinjobs by pluralities of

dispossessed and disposables

civilisation itself is the

aestheticisation of animate and

inanimate waste

civilisation itself is where sentience

is only means to an en end

ampere divinities soaring in

gravitation my pray for modernity

is the rediscovery of absurd

compassion

ampere divinities surging in

seismicity my pray is that this

bottomless thirst advertised for

salvation might give way to a

kinder creation

quiet and vast is the solitude of the

self expanding within this living

network system

quiet and vast and multifold in

identity in reconnaissance in

virtuality and in destiny

(From Fervor Modernus)

when the fire spoke when the fire

rounded up the usual parasites out of

their homes and proclaimed their

homes open land for any to rape and

level and claimed this was retort for

their alleged envy of homes

resplendent in fire-worship

when the fire spoke when the fire

moulded and grew a tree seed from

darkness face of the deep and when

water was released from the dam and

the sun from its cave and all of this in just

about seven days many would

grow tired ofsuch endeavour but fire

unsatiable and unperishable fire that

is cannot labour in creation

when the fire spoke when the fire

opened fire on the eyes of three

hundred deserts drenched in molten

gold the usual parasites couldn’t

surrender their minds to the thought

of an illusory caritas rather it was

clear that fire saw reality much like a

chessboard and humans much like

chess pieces

so they asked fire to present them

with the proof of a burnt bush the

body of which they would use to

touch fire and see for themselves if

fire was indeed fire and not rather a

game of lights and shadows yet fire

outsmarted them by bringing them

the gift of a dead tree whose corpse

had grown for a million decades after

creation and such tree harboured

within itself the knowledge of

whether fire burns indeed the skin of

nature

and once they had eaten from the

fruit of the dead tree they proclaimed

fire does indeed burn and needs

henceforth be venerated all without

knowing that what burns away is not

nature’s skin but fire’s plastic film laid

alike a blanket to keep waterkin in

perpetual states of daydream

when the fire spoke when the fire

washed adrift the remnants of many

who wished to recollect air and

scatter it through spheres available to

all dreamers

when the fire spoke when the fire

creeped through the ocean floor and

the gargantuan roof of the sky when

fire found its way from the earth’s

core to the core of the sky when fire

found its way home to the heart of

the sun which is beyond any ethical

dilemma and is bent to preserve its

flame until the very day that flame

consumes everything it has given

birth to before

and now they go though still they are

in waiting for a new line of command

recited to them like the line of a

mind-bending poem

still they are vague and undecided

whether to bring with themselves that

same dna call of fire-worship onward

to the next red star as they were

bringing forth a judgement to them

given premature

when the fire spoke when the fire

said: gather round me o children

even universes of un-beings stood silent

and as fire waved time and space

together as a cobbled thread and then

undid them to show how order and

chaos answered its way and its way

only

wrinkled against the soft curvy matter

of the reasonable quivered our

atomness 

(From Fervor Modernus)