These words are about experience, memory, and identity.

Written between 2017 and 2018 as the culmination of a long, tedious contemplation into the wreck and might of contemporaneity. And the promises of the rediscovery of futures past.

S. Németh

the ages of man compressed into a

single sheet of paper are the voice

of the world

and the ages of plants compressed

into fossil fuels are the weight of

the world

the systematic enterprise to build

and organise knowledge into

rational and falsifiable predictions

is the world’s heartbeat

and the designation of behaviour

and practice to please higher being

is the world’s scream

the world is a near-perfect sphere

with a tilted axis rotating round

three dots: a blue planet then its

grey satellite and its young yellow

star

the world is a vision that wishes to

expand beyond its blue planet its

grey satellite and its young yellow

star

the world is heavier than the sum

of its parts for consciousness hope

and will are not easily quantifiable

the world is configured as the

spatial and temporal iterator of life

and the translation of complex

organisms towards a non-yet-given

state

tell me the fragments of this story

tell me those coordinates tell me

the temperature and the distance

between memory and reality say

what comes before or after the eye

what lurks within or outside the eye 

(From Fervor Modernus)

If the form of the bread is not the form of the bread,

then it is the form.

If the body of the sheep is not the body of the sheep,

then it is the body.

If the taste of wild berries is not the taste of wild berries,

then it is the taste.

I speak to the earth sometimes and she replies; in silence, she replies always.

I do not know her language, but sometimes I listen.

If the touch of a woman is not the touch of a woman,

then it is the touch.

If the embrace of a child is not the embrace of a child,

then it is the embrace.

If the light that shines at day is not the light that shines at day,

then it is the light.

Dreaming a dream within a dream under a half-formed sleep

and in this dream I hold the scent of every cosmos, stroking

tenderly each living, dying thing—because I mind.

If the blood that stains the land is not the blood that stains the land,

then it is the blood.

If the voice speaking from the fire is not the voice speaking from the fire,

then it is the voice.

If the dance that moves the sky is not the dance that moves the sky,

then it is the dance.

Our hills have fallen over a mountain of un-memory.

Every now and then I see the sun of understanding, but

soon my sense will fade behind clouds of impermeability.

If the song of childhood is not the song of childhood,

then it is the song.

If the rain falling in the fall is not the rain falling in the fall,

then it is the rain.

If the smile you wear at times is not the smile you wear at times,

then it is the smile.

Sweating work without hope for appreciation:

some still deem such a life admirable,

yet we are bred and wielded as cattle for troth.

If the heavy wake is not the heavy wake,

then it is the wake.

If the vagrant king is not the vagrant king,

then he is the king.

If the milk once drunk is not the milk once drunk,

then it is the milk.

Wild ruminations of old plague my hours;

now not a day is left to be seized fully.

I breathe in moment, and I breathe out time.

If the word in the book is not the word in the book,

then it is the word.

If the trail paved by the grass is not the trail paved by the grass,

then it is the trail.

If the music we hear asleep is not the music we hear asleep,

then it is the music.

Waiting for the first kingdom to arise out of the bare nails of the land—

will flesh and fear also capsize when the ground is up and the air is sand?

If in the beginning was, then how, I ask, did the void speak

to the Lord, begging to be rinsed apart?

If in my end I won’t be, then how, I ask, could I ever pray

for betterment, if betterment has been my whole task?

(From Poems. 2016-2018)

I travelled far into the modern land: charade,

charade of pride; fifty billion places, lights, and faces,

each with their own gleam and their own glide.

All this writhing mass comes together fast

and yet ruinously shatters back into crumbs—

no science and no faith steer their urges.

Even order and chaos in here do not fight.

Out of this boredom, one manifold atom swelled

which, unlike art or craft, served nothing but itself:

I share no thirst, I have no drive, I am without hunger,

and within my body no bodies strive.

This open world had given birth to something adamantine.

My thought does wander, and my thought does drift

to words once whispered by the sand-sunk Sphinx:

What is ever whole and yet divides

when the day is done and the night is nigh?

Mortal life rushes to answer, yet the truth has no reply.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)

Among things most prized by men is breath;

and breath is a strange fellow, ever prisoner

of pressure and sky.

It is by breath that men carry on living, mating, violating, and depleting

all until their last breath is spent in breathing backwards.

Some men love (and are loved by) women up until their very last breath.

Still, some women take less time to forgive.

It is almost noon; she is readying herself for him.

Ten sweet, long moments. She has left her doors open:

he can step inside, or they can leave together.

He whispers in her ear words already whispered, yet this time feels all too different.

The candle light is spent. Then why does that same smell of burning flame linger?

Among things most prized by women is the threshold:

the space between the breath, when

lungs are not filled nor void of air.

Unlike man-y, which mostly seek what truly is there or

to make happen what is not, woman-y often favour

standing on the doorstep, questioning

the mere and misty essence.

Both are singling out each time, each memory,

as if harvesting honey from a labyrinth

of noise and edge.

And now they quiver happily, applying this ointment of tenderness

to their creased and long-weary limbs.

Is it in their seed, or is it in their faces?

Long ago that same skin shook with hatred,

and now it shakes as if love is the only song

fit to stir its sacred chords.

So is it coded in their seed, or was it written in their faces?

Long ago each flower sprung from a holy and pleasant stream

So why should this body consign its own key?

Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?

The threshold and the breath—which one came first?

The letting out, the taking in, or the static space and time between?

Reverie of a morning when you came in sunlight;

time is a chaos we recount to ourselves in order

to subdue the hours standing between our bodies in touch.

Still, when our arms and legs finally tangled up,

every pretence of mindfulness somehow got lost.

We crawled back into ourselves late enough to find

the before and the after of breath crushed to a hay bale,

and the space and time between was like a flare of a footprint,

and the trail was following the footprint;

passage of time always leaves terrible footprints.

Yet after that morning trail, as our bodies bid farewell,

my eyes fixed down a well and yours fixed to upper air,

like the sour end of some two-pounds-cheap folktale.

I closed myself in wondering, making peace

with the brief window of time that is my life,

and in that window, I saw your window, out of our window,

I saw the egg, and it came to me that the egg

is not the egg—

I was looking at the rain which is the window

which is the egg which is the rain.

Because I was looking at time from the outside of breath,

and saw lungs both filled with air and empty of it,

time was not time: it was time.

Point. Not doorstep:

Memory is the mode of living under this mortal sun

where I cannot be you if I am not with you

and I, and we, though I am without end

though we are without end, see you apart

see each other apart

in a long hallway of mirrors.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)

I have known nights, never-ending, spent far from the lines of her waist.

I have known loneliness, like a blade clenched between lungs gasping for air

when the usual flair of endurance has waned from life’s positive reign—

yes, I have known pain. But from this pain, by will and worth, I chose to stay

and chose not to blame this transitory sense or that immutable aim.

I chose to seize that light of power so that I might see again

those abiding glimpses that anchor me to the one undying nature.

And because I wish to see again past the tiring mists of moods and time,

sometimes I choose to sail away; I sit by the lampshade and spin a toy globe

which then I stop at some random spot, fingers stretched and eyes closed.

And of that random spot, because I wish to see again, I seem to know

each unknown name, its weight and source of light.

It’s in this bright, because I wish to see again, that the outline

of her hand crosses once more with the hand mine.

There, a new and very special kind of melancholy beacons within

my open palm, spreading its proud and golden wings toward

yet another insignificant everywhere, already too significant for me.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)

Body. I worship your body like I am to worship a cataclysm—

with such awe, fear, and zeal that is of everything I truly hold

dear.

And I worship a body of mine too; and I worship the body which is

our body: entwined, absurd, mighty and radiant.

Eyes with which to touch and ears with which to feel, nostrils with which

to hear your plea, and hands with which to see and make you kneel

before the breeding heart that pumps lifeblood across and about

the human branches. Such body I do worship, and I expect

my fellow men and women to worship such endeavours as well:

the honey-dripping sheath of love and the milk that’s fit to spring

and swell. Your riverbed, dried in the morning, seeks the mainmast,

urging my ship to sail upstream—

heavens of cum I shall pour within and over your skin. I shall fetch

crystalline nights in which to hide and come together.

Under a blanket of smooth leather where my hardwood sleep

wakes to reach, my skin and your skin colluding with ashen bosom

in an ample ashen kiss—

those dimples behind your smiling lips, your feral teeth dashing

for a taste, my coarse and bulging ribcage, the locking of our brains

releasing sound waves to eclipse our once distorted vision, first

grasping, then delivering with the utmost precision a pathway

that bids us into better and vibrant sways.

Such body I worship; my children and your children,

I expect them to worship such body as well;

cruel, unyielding, obscene, crushing, impenetrable,

cleaved, pollinating, boiling, glacial,

in bloom.

Then at once my friend, extend your limbs to meet gladly

the body waiting for your vigour. Women who open their

chests and their maternal cradles to the robust flair of your sex

and men who are neither faint nor flaccid but desirous

and frank down their navel.

I hold dear the one who gives herself to me as if she were giving

away the richest fruit from her highest tree: her body is to be bitten,

tasted, immersed in, made to quiver, clenched, and then released

until all creation can mirror and feast on this jolted unison.

And I shall give my fruit and my seed to her as well: wide-smiled,

I am the one worthy of her, for I shall not falter before the archway

of our junction.

Even though it creeps in and even though it strikes, untimely and

unruly, foraging hopes and hunting desires, coveting blood and

trailing each sense out of the dense skin of the forest—

needles and seedlings lumping our throats, muscles spasming,

ferns and dead foliage binding our branches, roots quaking.

It’s in our nature; it runs us deep and grips us in.

My love, do you fear the day our embrace becomes water?

Because I fear the burning other, the barren and dried trade

like a dull and unconcerned handshake, a whiff of perfume

on a shade,

or simply to look into the glass and exclaim, as soon as the deed is over:

nothing more I wanted, and don’t you look upon me with eyes of a lover.

And if this be the case, I shall perfectly steer free from it

On the contrary, I shall welcome the terror and pain to be sipped

from each other’s moist lips, for I fear no change nor desire the chain

of distance; for my seas are tempestuous and boiling, and my kingdom

cannot be known by name; it is a kingdom where two bodies, her body

and the body mine, can dance and surge without fear or shame.

Then let the untamed beasts say: “This human lot has finally claimed

their own pleasure as such.” The body itself, whole, perfect, imperfect

hollow, stuffed, kissing, defecating, masterful!

This enlightened ruler, ruling of its own accord and devoid of anguish,

angst, and defilement. Such body I wish to witness. And I shall indeed

act and behave so that comes the day when even grace be depraved.

A deliverance of souls, the moment bodies awake to their power and

their misery! A deliverance of hearts, the moment bodies sleep until

the very end of their rhythmicity! And myself and the one I hold

dearest, closer, nearest, we shall be ready,

ready to scatter joy and fulfillment from our orifices, water falling

on the prickly, thick-headed zealots of decency.

On that day, you shall witness no more lonely parts from her or from me,

but a gathering of trust such that my fronds and hers shall mingle well together.

To crush; and to be crushed by; the body you hold dearest—

and to labor so that this body shall know all pleasures and the sanctity it has inscribed;

to collect and wreathe its lonelinesses with the most luminous binding;

I anxiously wait for such majesties. I, patient, I join my limbs with limbs I love

and detach and rejoin once more! Save me from faces and arms littered

with restraint and frigidity, but grant me a mind that cherishes his or her

body and its deliciousness—

that is to me the only validity.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)

Is love merely a meeting between two?

Is love merely a making?

Is love merely a making tercets out of two?

The temple was built with the clay of many

spirits and pains and stands to this very day.

Brno, the 5th of May. Heavy rain pouring.

Men and women take shelter in bars,

two birds take shelter under the cathedral;

we built these stones to shelter us from the sky.

What are we rambling !about under those

bars under those cathedrals

while my love is sleeping near me?— I can hear

her heartbeat through the walls; the sun

creeps in at times but I don’t mind.

The whole light of the day rests on

her palm, open to my direction.

Is love merely a meeting between two?

Is love merely a making?

Is love merely a making tercets out of two?

Light was always hidden by the sun

until you showed me how to hold it,

until you showed me how to mould it;

behind these structures raised to safe,

I was a stranger until I found my home in you.

Before, I would lull myself to sleep with such dark visions:

In me there is something upon which not even wraiths

would feed. Yet how could I keep silent about this dancing body

now that I see joy on the outline of a palm tree,

on the half-smile of some careless child,

in the deep hiss of oceanic memory, where

a moment of bliss waves upon the shore?

The temple was built with the clay of many

long and weary days, hours of sunlight, and of rain.

We watched the sunrise paint the night

in four bright shades of grey, a single and firm

glimpse into a larger and undying nature.

Then the birds whirring and the sea chirping became

such a droning and convoluted matter that we surrendered

our interest and turned to each other. And felt shy of shame

for we built these stones to rise up to the sky.

There’s no such thing that always shines but love’s

what taught me to thrive, dwell, and foster in light.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)

It is the midnight hour, and there is no right or wrong;

nor is there sense, nor apathy.

At the midnight hour, only the Law is and merely the Law.

Any hour that came to pass before or that is meant to follow

has been exiled from the world by Law’s order.

And under the Law’s order, this world, which came

and went in riddle, did find a feather to present

to the ruler of the underworld’s kingdom.

So, when the heart of the world was placed

to weigh against the weight of such a feather,

the scales themselves denied any burden of choice,

threw up both heart and feather, and the beast ate the mess

as if there were no difference between eternal life and death

and no actual recompense.

But was it a miscarriage? Or was it a mistrial?

Does judgment truly matter?

At the midnight hour, there is no right or wrong;

at the midnight hour, only the Law is and merely the Law.

But was it a miscarriage? Or was it a mistrial?

Does it matter who did pass or how came to pass judgment?

And the Law does not listen to the cry of the heart

or to the fluttering of a feather, for the only justice

the Law knows and serves is measurement.

With many respects to the creatures and things

that live and toil upon the hours of the Earth

and strive so that only notice matters.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)

We are drunk on a code of unchecked desire.

We are the unchecked, coded in desire;

and we have given up love, for it lacked desire;

and we believe desire rightful only when fulfilled.

And to attain pleasure we have abandoned the nature of touch;

we see the flesh only when it is ripe for grip.

All other passions and dispositions, such as virtue and respect,

are to be done away with, for they cannot be easily seized,

nor do they aid in the reach of piercing pleasure.

In fact, they are the enemy of piercing pleasure,

for they widen and scatter longing, and longing,

true longing that is, we have nailed to a cross—

agonising, the blood of the body of longing

gathered by tiny tubes and channeled in flasks

of easy, unchecked desire. What a pliant industrious machine,

you who give us brothers and sisters the cure at arm’s length,

glued to every sex, to every vertebrae.

There are bones of aggression we have inherited from the chimps.

It’s understood in the swelling of our cities’ artery lines;

it’s understood as such;

it’s understood in the fragrant eras of the market,

in the bends of today’s psychopathologies, under the bedsheets of the night;

it’s understood: this low-lying itch, deep-staining both matter and mind.

We are drunk on a code of unchecked desire.

We, the unchecked, are coded in desire,

and while we writhe, in relish of our numbness

(no single thought spent on surgery of the self),

all our tiny cells go bent in a straight line

from our head to our heels—as an arrow

fired by the unyielding stretch of sexual stimulation

whose simulation of bare bliss ends with a whiff of oxytocin.

And what of the woman who let her hair grow dirty

while they played with themselves? Did she fare well?

I was one of those looking; I have grown sleepless ever since.

By what industry of contact were we ever made to comply

to such coil and pleasure? To such bones of rigidity?

Maybe by reason of such piercing pleasure,

we do at times escape our immovable skeleton;

maybe we do indeed bend and stretch at once;

yet this conclusion is no conclusion at all,

as love and longing are at times not simultaneous at all;

but these words indeed do please and hurt at once

or not at all; it’s understood:

we are drunk on a code of unchecked desire.

We, coded in desire, are and shall remain unchecked,

and we do muse whether our kind is truly meant for betterment.

But alas, no time and no blood is left

(no thought spent on surgery of the self);

we cannot simply unwire our sex, our vertebrae.

The strongest sting: we have always achieved through debasing.

And it is from bones that we carved the necessary tools

to build such keeps and cages, to endure such ages.

Bodies and their weak links were meant to simply withstand.

These desolate hearts have taken us farther than.

I walk by the pool made out of my dried desert

and no water, no conductor can send

anything from me to the other.

This fat teat has made our mouths rot, and now

we do not know how to stop chewing.

From “Poems. 2016-2018”