The myth you were writing right now
is fine, though the plot needs a little work.
fix it. i dare you. nothing
but bursting tedium
out of the sky
could view life as an ongoing experiment
within the limitations of the flock itself
it offers several variations
upon a theme that can be directly
and intimately examined
because you are one of them living.
but could the world suddenly find a self
actively involved both mentally and physically
(wings are a shrinking structure) a language
singing of the immediate surroundings of soft air
instead of a viewed force
impossible to separate the drifting from the
poke and prod, prod and poke
that which uses hands (wings) and thinks
these things aren’t attached to mind
Revolutionary Hymn (for the flocking birds)
life is not boring
life is not tedious
if we woke up this morning we’re probably alive
and all the sad fuckers
out there in the universe
they don’t even know how we died
We
Don’t
Care
sitting twenty feet away watching me through the open window. Two rest in the dead oak behind the garage, two sit on telephone wires that lead to our house. If a sound or a sudden movement occurs in the atmosphere they burst apart, and I watch these quiet explosions knowing somehow those involved will always meet again. And they do. Sometimes they meet closer to me, then further away. Together, each of their weightless heads flit quickly, seemingly at the same instant, but then one shits upon the laundry Hazel hung out on the line to remind me they are only four small beings, each one living inside a little head, singing so alone, quietly beneath the soft breeze of their feathers. At the moment they have vanished, but they don’t seem too far off; they never do. The sky gets so huge sometimes, and we the birds are so alone within it. The four again explode to what remains of the light, and I watch the feeder I hung last fall sway empty, and all of us remain outside, remembering this small unscheduled visit.
Strange unpronounceable red outside
of the birds (Erik Satie was of
the birds, knew the plenitude of
clouds) wakes with a mysterious roar
the sun shoots out rays of red, orange,
blue and gold, and we are told our size,
somewhat larger than a squirrel
far less interesting than our own train
of thought speaks directly out of (time)
gathering a language no one tried to
learn (Erik Satie knew the lurch and
stretch of time) makes us so very small
just to wake us, just to make us small, ‘we
lay at the bottom of a strange ocean, in bed
where the trees were pure sexual beings, swaying
in our heads and your breath was the smell
and Satie was the sound of the sky, slow
moving, promising whatever came to mind’
The Blue Sky Was Made To Float Against
Listen to me, the birds are here too, they have short, intense
lives, sparks of whyng-drift, a light shudder
AGAINST the light, and not in it. They will flyrt from
the innermost regions of any space or time into a
quantified moment of being alive, full of song (NOTHIN’) a
language working in oppositions, present even when the body is not
(Present). Definitely the least threatening of all beings,
any species you like, Rose Breasted Grosbeak, AmErican
Redstart, the Killdeer, take your pick. It is
entirely worthwhile to pay attention, for if you only listen,
nothing but recognition of something invisible could be learned.
Listen to me, the feather was formed of light some time ago
in order that light might be carried thru the void. The Earth as
host for the migratory patterns of light. The bird, which is light,
comes from the egg, which is gravity. In turn, the egg comes from the
bird. As it is, things seem destined to move against their origin and
with it simultaneously. Such it is with the bird, and since we are
creations of imagination and continue to use it to destroy
itself, we should notice them, the birds, yes, we should, but
not because they are beautiful (and they ARE! THEY ARE so BEAUTIFUL!)
But because thru them we might see to defy ourselves, yes, and the
intensity of that is a firm press upon the head, heart, hands, or genitals,
a soft tuft shyning, mixing consciousness, the full capacity of awareness
first thing in the morning and happy to be
that way uplighting whatever yr made of.
Sing where you come from and what you are in the space below.
‘A single specimen of the eastern tiger salamander
reported for Point Pelee in 1915 has not been seen since that time’
–Darryl Stewart (1977)
As you drive deeper into the album there is the distinct feeling
that something is coming apart, divided down the middle by the sound of it.
All that screaming only makes you want to drive faster, until the trees
are a blur of electricity. The effect is enough.
There is a gas station in a small town along the way, a beautiful girl
with black hair and fingernails who flies in
on a bicycle and fills your car with gas, the silence overwhelming, as
the wind and the universe
continue to collapse every second
you settle back into your dream of destination.
A casual disembowelment.
Headaches expand the soft skull to fill the driver’s seat.
Aneurysm on the road. Annul that screaming.
The slight panic to keep them all awake.
There is no one in this place who will slit your wrists for you, so you drive
deeper into it awash in the white
blue sky.
Dream: (Destination
Where is it you want to go and will this recording take you there?
Where lyrics are sung by birds heard and not seen ever screaming
Screaming
Screaming Their Little Heads Off.
And the wind records each tiny extinction as the doorway opening upon the
nature
of their tired thoughts
Nature the casual song
Mind the disruptive element
(In the dream you slowly begin to realize you have gone missing
as the parkland begins to unfold around you
the major life zones display their distinct lines, tired landmarks,
tired bones the size and shape of trees
merely convenient labels which blend smoothly into the recording.
Even at this point the sound of waves are invisible and you remember
that if the nature of song is to control, then this is where the album severs into
melodic
undercurrents of sweetness and noise and the flora and fauna cannot exist
anywhere else
where you yourself cannot bother to pretend
3) THE BIRTH OF LANGUAGE
The History of Language does not exist. However, it shall
continue to be unborn at the exact moment that any member of the
species comes into existence. How could you ever hope to study
something you are? In the House of Language there are many who
hope to speak with such purity and will talk into their graves.
Fly away now if your wings must be so heavy.
l) HOLOGRAMMATIC LANGUAGE
Language is holographic by nature. The written word is in fact the spoken word presented in a three-dimensional, spatial, format. Thus the wavelength of each letter used to make up a given word in its entirety is also the smallest ‘slice’ of that word necessary to recreate the hologrammatic image. The ‘meaning’ (stored memory, or learned information) appears to be stored ubiquitously throughout the cerebral matrix of language rather than in the interrelationship between the separate letters/notes. Language is the birth of hallucination. Flashcards to improve your writing. A clock in the shape of a dolphin. You should see the birds.
As ‘serotonin’ enters your mind, it travels down the spinal chord, and enters the many wings of the body, at which time
comes to mind and hovers before thee, hoping to open the twenty-six windows of perception in a seemingly random order. This is where a single spirit can rest on the larger, resulting windowsill of the mind, looking in two directions at once. Written to improve your flashcards. This dolphin should tell you the hours. You could be the birds.
4) EVOLUTIONARY LANGUAGE
mutation golare. (as it poens in th hoystri of th spiceis it connat be pecfert, thus it stum nad deos loces in th furtue [persnet, if sene form the pats] so much differently), who era th brids? flacshards era wrettin to tell th time, th livse of th dilphons are eras in nimd.
Fleye
8) TELEPATHIC LANGUAGE (INFINITE LANGUAGE)
7) ROMANTIC LANGUAGE
Because Language is the bridge between bodies, (a light swoop upon the air) that hoop which houses the mind, it is a bird house, whose sexual wings are perched upon those branches. It should be made clear that this language cares nothing for orientation, gender, age, species, or race. It is exactly what it is like to be with another person. If you call the right notes, someone is there who can answer
0) DEAD LANGUAGE1
In many archaic languages, the words for ‘to not exist’ are best
translated into present day English as ‘without the word’ or
(see TELEPATHIC LANGUAGE)
6) FUTURE LANGUAGE
Time is the most difficult medium through which to communicate.
This makes any attempt to predict their songs
Birds can be far more interesting than people sometimes.
Today, in fact, as I pore over the lists of confirmed sightings
I made years ago in the backwoods near Tilbury Ontario,
birds seem less capable of an outright violent attack in any
language, One simply remembers a shape among the leaves,
and it is never the bird in its entirety, a thing in itself, but a
suggestion, an attitude that leans toward the whole. Their
unusual forms of communication always correspond directly
to individual shapes, a series of objects open to interpretation
instead of a defining mechanism through which facts are stated.
They are a war with no violence, a peaceful tribe who carry out their
discussions for the benefit of all without any attempt to triumph
over their delicate presents. It is certainly a natural enough position,
for the voice of a carnivore becomes as important as the voice of
the small berry eaters. Thus no one is afraid to speak. It is
comforting that each species can exist in order that it might be
heard alongside all the others rather than against them, and
similarly, that each song or cry made by any one creates a wildly
varied universe in which everyone gathers in bunches separately
causing an overall effect similar to that of a community of writers.
what mournful singing
in the happiness of change: they
beat their drums across the cloud-lit skies;
by calling out our names
they are assured of an answer in their wingspan
a note quite high, (not sounded at all within that realm)
something you can hear uttered just in front
of the beak, to layer existence before the sound
itself appears, a priori, but so what:
their benign overwhelming attention
can only be explained by
Mind, not by the songs they sing.
After the rain the stink of the lake resides of the lake.
The good clean stink in the the back of my throat.
After the rain one can until anything can happen.
And stare at the wetback surface sit perfectly still.
When the glass of water becomes the glass of water.
The only think left to think:
After the rain nothing can ever sit quite through it.
When a bird goes so still as the sky.
‘Gull sit on lake fine.
And it’s after rain.’
After the rain no one’s still day. Quite
so nowhere. It’s a mind ever goes.
Even the rain felt straight down to strike the surface.
Ninety degrees of the lake.
here
love them because
here they are
not here
every being faces
many directions
with a face
to the sky
her head
the top of it
points up to
them hello
miles and miles
away
east night first
then western crackle (&
the greens become several shades
of blue, music obviously)
layered in the orange
orchid tufts going
to sleep
almost present
a sliver to speak
as it shares stars
with shapes and
shifters
the quiet
songs
cloudsex:
soft lightning
stroking the wet
gas light
feel them
moving in the
trees
when they aren’t around it’s you
who aren’t so asleep or breathe in
the open eye WAKE UP
the feather ere
ates connexion
turbulence, a
worl(d) wind
the mind read
ily accepts
collage/com
pression in
time
you say yours can do anything, mine
mine breathe
if there are none look to the horizon
to see something of them, time held
on a refractory note until they gather
for you are inside the chest not the
head but in the chest where you are alive
look deep into their soft barricades
swimming at dusk, the water
feels like air, tho it cups the
balls more gently, holds them where
the careless gravity of the lake seems
to halt, and can float quietly, a
point of departure to wake up
those orange wisps and ochre folds
of cloud strings from across the water
that hang before the red sun wash and
that silence the lake is fumbling for
turns them into the circular motions
we make, both above and below the horizon
sound to hold our dark hovering limbs
August contemplation of days, remember to
slow down days again. October… days,
they are, after all, only days: a surface
clouds at three in the afternoon
and a branch that suspends it (thought)
shrink each single motions grows until it
vanish into the perfectly capable blue
(sea monster) (heaven) (wing gust)
but it was the cool rain came down that
time of year, nice, we thought, to close
down the morning, the evening, and of now.
(the end) to be the darkened skies of
hold the holes of our dreams, all the
excitement, all the lust, now is cool and
heavy (closed) way down here in the
just imagine what behind the clouds
all our little veils falling from the trees
come about their way to catch our little
our thoughts, we are all angels, all
shy birds who watch each of us
clouds out the front room window in
the afternoon, from the inside out
when we remember how we were absolute
(happy) our dreams when they were our
selves, shadows of branches at dawn.
nothin’s what it seems
lies, illusions, pure empty beings
together in nothing we are
in love with not being
here
too
non-being slips over
into another wing
that’s floatin’ up the street eh?
away from the lake
into the what? a
fortress called forest
Leave Me Alone:
1 sound retreats forever into the wash
2 we have everything at every moment
3 the sound of the call is so pure
Birds Land on the Roof of This Room
and I am sad. They are so small and
I can hear the sound of their wings
folding as though there were no windows,
no wood, or air, between myself and them.
One roof over they squawk and shit
they hop about from feet to feet with
something great in mind, a terrific plan
to which I have not yet been introduced.
I listen to them surely discussing
the weather, what to eat, where to get laid,
etcetera. Then they fly off. I sip my coffee and
I am sad. Being human thinks so hard some
times of all the things we could have had.
ONE) everyone please breathe to begin; for it is the air that holds us.
TWO) defined by a freedom to choose your voice, not to find it; to choose the chorus, not to discover any of them.
THREE) I still believe and will continue to believe we have much to learn from the flocking birds, those who move together and sing to each other. Unconcerned. Suspicious. Migratory and Feared.
FOR no real community could ever be fully understood as a community by anyone, even those who belong to it. FOR there should be such flexibility within the ranks. FOR the mystery of play we have gathered. FOR the presence of any ghosts you desire.
FIVE thru NINE) if involved in a community, however diversified or small, one tends not to feel a faceless stick in a group of empty sticks, as one does sitting on the subway during morning rush hour, then coming up the steps of St Andrew Station at say 8:28 in the morning, a herd of cattle oppressed to the extent of blindness and disregard. Where no muse could possibly bother to penetrate our sense of hopelessness, the death of the imagination first thing upon waking, but lives do exist in the sense that one finally feels free to exist as they may, in a complete and utter anarchy amongst the ranks, free breath for everyone! (breathe dammit) an intoxication in and about the premises that allows for this cast of invisible ballots that has real meaning.
TEN) it is the role of those already established to exploit all those interested in becoming a part of their community, despite how evil this may seem at first, it is for the benefit of the whole, since the older members will forever be comfortable in their declining years. Such ‘exploitation’, as it has been originally considered, will eventually wear away to something equivalent to mere initiation. Watch to see who shall fall far from the nest through our notes.
ELEVEN thru THIRTEEN) It might be said (indeed it shall) that I never really understood any sense of community until I met my inlaws, who are in fact humans of the divine order, an expansive family in many ways, limited in others, but for all intensive purposes are a flock of large birds, Canadian Geese or Whooping Cranes, travelling among each other across a sky no one else will ever see. I would naturally come to understand them first, for they have been doing what all other communities I encountered set out to do without saying a thing. And while strife may occur among them, it is because they actually feel that way about some other person, and not because of some theoretical fakery caused by their own sense of failure, or because they are unable to accept the fact that things could easily be otherwise. A GREAT BLUE HERON FLIES OVER THE 401. What could be more beautiful?
FOURTEEN) history is the vehicle of the community, tradition the forgetting thereof, and the intensity of any layer will resonate against the intensity of all others at any given moment until the high note of the underworld commune breaks through. Watch us shift together to flock across your sky.
FIFTEEN) a community of losers such as sparrows, pigeons, or european starlings, all of them surviving on the crumbs of the establishment, are outsiders within the wings, they tend to be more open minded, more diverse and revolutionary; they have more will to sacrifice. It has been said it is wrong to bite the hand that feeds you but there are only so many ways to survive, and what if those hands have never offered anything let alone a meal? Flesh is food too, as is the mind. Consider the pigeons. Bite away! Will you never be cared for by those who have agreed that culture should be raped and pillaged for their own security? When will thanks be given for what has been given? The Real Planet lives in an atmosphere of doubt. At least someone can think about how the real planet is dying. At least some think about it differently.
Bravery must be Stupidity, but hopefully it will survive.
1 Such as it is, ORIGIN is a tricky phenomenon to negotiate, let alone come to terms with. It is your gift to be present precisely where you are not.
Alex Cayce lives in Windsor Ontario, where he is a member of The South Western Coalition for the Birds. His wife Alice is an artist, specializing in water colour and sketch. Her work often accompanies each of these texts. She has had exhibitions at the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary and at the Point Pelee National Park Recreation Centre.
