word is gold

i knew i wouldn't be able to sleep, so i went on a long walk around bloomfield from the hollow to the playground swings behind Ritter's, scheming up the next piece of 'anamnesia' and a counterpoint to last night's ramblings on language. then when i might have passed out i got my nose stuck in the anthology of surrealist poetry i picked up last week and ended up with this whimsical little ditty about four in the morning (the excessive ellipses are only in leu of indentation, and not morse code):

I am beginning to see whatever I say becomes real.
Birds
. . . . . fly fluttering feathers from lips,
cakes and carousals
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . turn round the tongue
and every secret is illumined with
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . .starlight.
I will never thirst again, sleep when I whisper
can tell the helicopters to finally
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . be quiet
and always have the most exquisite
. . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .beautiful day.
Immediately I called for a parade:
. . . . ... . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. ... . .elephants
acrobats,
. .. . . .. . . brassband banners
. . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . .. .. . billowing out,
huge crowds promenading down the boulevards.
Called for
. . . . . . . . . insane ecstasy
. . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . .. .. . . nonstop laughter,
what the gods felt when they spoke the world.
I began to experiment,
. . . . . .. . .. ... ... . . . ... porcelain cacophony
rained tea cups and toilet seats for weeks
and no one could keep their hands off
the insatiable piano
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .or the velvet sunrise,
even if it burned a little on the edges.
I quickly learned to not say words like
pain or police or palpitate
. . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . . .. . for fear
of the red jagged beating and woe
if I ever uttered
. . . . . . . . . .. . . a final Armageddon;
loose, these lips really could sink ships.
But this is no big thing, we do it every day,
most of us never noticing how with a word
we bring the heavens down on our heads.
So I kept at it, crying for
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . peace
possibility,
. . . . . . . . . . full bellies
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..and free speech,
and all the war machines sprouted flowers
prison bars bent into ornamental gates
groceries exploded across the streets
and everyone said exactly what was on their minds.
It was sheer chaos and reveling and many asked
me to say
. . . . . . . . .normalcy
. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. .or at least
. . . . . . . ... .. . . . . . ... . . . . .. .. .silence,
but I only smiled, and said
. . . .. . . . . . . . .... . . . . . .. everything.

when language spills over...as opposed to that purity and fullness of language in which every word becomes real, which harks back to the work Ezra Pound and others did in showing how ideogramatic (Chinese) poetry relied purely on images working out their own fate, words also have a tendency to fill up with so much meaning that they overflow, and produce all manner of absurd juxtapositions. This is pointed at in Hakim Bey's article on the taoist philosopher Chaung-Tzu's idea of spillover language, refers to the process by which images fill up with so much meaning, or minds with so many images, that they spill over like a full gourd and create new unprecedented ways of looking at the world. This idea found its peak as a body of technique in the surrealists with their automatic writing and exquisite corpses, that while sometimes being just ridiculous (like the meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table, the line that sparked their movement) also have a way of recreating the way one looks at the world in every moment. in relation to the pure expression of language, this sense of bizarre juxtaposition can both mask the image being presented and express more facets of it, for example saying "oceanic swiss" both masks the reference to the moon, and highlights its cratered landmass and gravitational pull on water, and has the added benefit of positing a fleet of scuba-diving mice upon the moons surface, if your brain takes you there. of course, not all these images really carry such a surplus of meaning, and we haven't yet accounted for where these divulgent images come from...