sean?

lyography 1-35

2011-11-01T21:09:00.001-04:00

down there somewhere...

http://theofipress.webs.com/poetry.htm

we who are human

2011-04-16T15:17:00.002-04:00

it's not nothing-something

all

2010-11-01T10:00:00.003-04:00

http://journal.gonelawn.com/issue2/Brijbasi.php

wait

2010-09-01T21:49:00.002-04:00

again

Return to the new wAy

2010-05-09T22:34:00.001-04:00

Expectation
Expectation
Expectation
Expectation
Expectation
Expectation

a dictionary of coincidences - volume i

2009-12-28T10:35:00.002-05:00

arrives in 2010...will you be mine

the future is neat

2009-10-16T07:55:00.003-04:00

but it's also near.

her motion fell see the bloom

2009-04-06T12:33:00.006-04:00

italic, bold, underline

impostor to appear at kensington row bookshop

2009-03-02T07:23:00.000-05:00

i've heard it's me but i can't be sure.

http://members.verizon.net/~vze4nbyt/#reading4

there

2008-12-26T14:33:00.002-05:00

new story 'there'. not here.

lookblanch frothspire

2008-07-07T15:27:00.002-04:00

someone with my name (sean brijbasi) to appear at politics and prose bookstore on july 25th for the launch of stress city anthology published by paycock press. i might be there also.

don't lookblanch at me like that.

god 23 (she)

2008-06-18T09:35:00.001-04:00

now out there

erstwhile free pendulum

2008-05-31T07:00:00.007-04:00

it's the title of a new story but i can't post it here...just wanted to let all my fan know.

the unknowed things

2008-02-15T15:28:00.001-05:00

new book 'the unknowed things' coming eventually. soon. or late.

le book.

le.

less

2008-02-11T22:45:00.000-05:00

i have less here now.

box kite

2007-01-27T08:23:00.001-05:00

in the forthcoming anthology 'stress city'...more info...blah blah...and blah...

(viremia)

2006-06-01T11:23:00.001-04:00

hidden

observations on a future death

2006-05-20T19:34:00.001-04:00

hidden

get riled upheaval tore ii

2006-04-26T09:49:00.000-04:00

sean brijbasi and j. tyler blue to disappear at the small press bookfair in washington d.c. (bethesda md) on 4/29/06. bring your own cups. they'll have everything else.*

*content stolen from pretend genius

fish dream

2006-04-06T20:43:00.000-04:00

fish drink like us

2006-03-16T07:14:00.000-05:00

sean? to be published in April in an anthology entitled "Fish Drink Like Us". His poetry will also appear in the companion collection entitled "Last Night's Dream Corrected" from the same publisher. Both anthologies are edited by Feargal Mooney of the Willesden Herald. Go to the pre-publicity site here. (Please)

the world that destroyed the world

2006-02-23T10:15:00.000-05:00

hidden

the three [two] parts of sundry

2006-01-12T21:08:00.000-05:00

3am

2006-01-04T14:14:00.000-05:00

you can go there if you want to

chromosome

2005-12-30T22:16:00.001-05:00

sweet drums baby

biografetus

2005-11-10T16:26:00.001-05:00

hidden

she ii terraprawn...recoil

2005-11-01T04:02:00.001-05:00

There were 3 decided. Finally and unearthed. The Spenserian model and the luhkow. Bath to bath she balanced tea on her mandible tongue. When the prawns and mercenary scabbards came to shave her of her porpoise she protested to fracture go when. This was an introduction to her brow and down beneath. The poke stick hint of her shanty, her eye blood swelling in a puddle of rain, and the pork stench of her hollow.

I followed her through the recoil [a french disaster] and consoled her of a time not too long ago when the presence of mercury suggested fossil degeneration and of men later revealed as Hermione fainting on the beach.

At night she lay on a cold bed with me and through a roofless hut watched mandarin leaves travel through the jet stream. So different from the time of Hammerstein of the Volstein, Royal Crysanthemum of the Haubsfelt.

But as if on a living she modified her thinking with a reckon and showed me the door. And though it was not to my liking I set off for out there but feared I would return one day to gather mud from this place and find pieces of her in my hand. She ate well (sir) but what good was such good when it only prolonged her bad? Die I whispered from the horizon. Die for your own quiet deathness. But she lived on. Were she an animal they would call her human.

It has been said that the croatian god created sugar plantations for the wing of man. The settee is a fine example.

Defeated, I proclaimed victory for my undoing as I limped from her view. And then I whistled for my horse. It was, to put it humbly, the stuff of legends.

[Connector. Note felix messenger. Cellophane timber plantation.]

Addinum:

The astute among you may see this as the logical progression of a temperamental mix. Your shirt becomes covered in hair and oil (precisely f through l) and you think about your travels. Think about how every now and then you see an orange crane. But you don’t see it for long. Not like when there were twigs and casts and men going through trash cans for cigarellos and girls taking pictures and pictures being taken of girls (sitting on stairs). Pause. Relative relocation. Redefined boundaries. Fainting on the...fainting on the...but you (frank pensioneer) sat on that big pony and cut a fine swathe in the land. In that big fat fine caw of yours my little southern belle.

We confessed that it was telling and we talked of the telling and she, unprized and luckless, had herself pinned naked to a/-tree. Perhaps she was glued.

But come my horsie and take me to Rotterdam. Life is good there. My whispers don’t travel far, after all. I could have saved her if I hadn’t sullied her. But she had a swivel penchant for the macabre and said the clever made her sleepy. I said she was brain dead.

But sigh, her days stitch hum drum now. And hmm, we knew that. From here [that] done did that. Sit five [two] tree that.

Fenster, sweet juicy jame, frairy, and our good friend Madame Jane Pimscot who ate bunny rabbit fritters the day her husband died, I being an eyewitness of her having eaten them, sodden and a bit early but she had the likes of a craving in her [for them] for days upon days...

phonoplane

2005-10-16T01:34:00.001-04:00

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the majus

2005-10-15T21:45:00.000-04:00

zebra horse

2005-06-26T21:25:00.000-04:00

3 boys teach you how to read (while swinging)

2005-06-10T14:04:00.000-04:00

boy genius

2005-06-07T14:42:00.000-04:00

beth v. beth singular

2005-06-07T14:34:00.001-04:00

hidden

the last of the undressed children has run by

2005-06-07T14:33:00.001-04:00

hidden

the collected letters to the commissioner of industrial machinery

2005-03-09T22:15:00.001-05:00

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revolver

2005-02-19T06:29:00.000-05:00

It’s no small feat to make one’s way. It requires an understanding of the metaphysics between one’s self and the objects that orbit one’s self. It would have been no surprise to Molly and her objugates if she had awakened one morning and wished for a kind of normal that comes without explanations. But Molly’s normal came with an urgent request for the revolver. She fitted herself and boosted, earmarking destinations little by little and quite by...she and she and she…

The pagoda before her bustled with reference. The least of which, the pole, who left because of the girl who loved, like so, ever so, in fact, just so. For if we give Molly the revolver, she will take it apart and rebuild the universe.

And not so simple many subjects harrowed she lay in bed. And did this for many minutes. So many, in fact, that calling them minutes would understate the maniness of them. Through the space between the curtain and the window she saw yarn (a dusty equivalent of rain). Maybe she’d cross her eyes and fall back to sleep.

She was pretty.

And [lo] there on her pillow a capsule shaped amoeba. Brackish and then finally the. A balmy thing she held between erstwhile blah blah blah and tiger lily bleh bleh bleh. But she’ll make her way. As the laid goat is ambulatory and able to suffice the pristine and dare I say [dare] scrumptious, we she he it they you us, shall by and by, and by all accounts, scooby (comma) doobie (comma) doo.

There is no limit to one’s willy-nilly.

It was now that Molly read the letter. But in a parastasis of saidbefores, no one writes letters any, uhm, longer. Not f. Or y. Or a consonant reacclimation of the punjabi, which had a sheen, thoughtful and unencumbered but was still [sidebar your honor] like this.

Bring me the burlap cockles Thurston.

Should Molly sit by the fire and listen to the violin while her homonym relishes different states of undress, philosophers will go through her drawers and search for truth in her lower vowels. They’ll find it and foretell events of one who entered for the implixic..imploaxic…implamative purpose of dropping the revolver. Right there. There. Over there. For her to see.

Here is an overview of the palisade. Please remember the date.

One surmises that the purpose of her visit is twofold:

1. to teach us how to dance on mud
2. so far and like pummel

Perhaps one surmised correctly but one can’t be sure of what one can’t be certain of. And...processing...I left the revolver by her side. As I walked away, boodle kitswinny erupted and the [then the] sting of such failure [instinctual].

Oh ache. Oh longing. Oh darn it.

Molly knew more than anyone that beauty was painful. To see it, heartbreaking. So much so [much so [much so]] that she would collapse in a heap and cry uncontrollably. And when she couldn’t for reasons "behind her sorrow" she clenched her jaw, jiggled in acknowledgment, and mumbled god save the queen. But she happily served the greatest and least seen tyrant of them all.

Never slow or idle, she (nervously) figgered the tringer. I stood with my camera ready to film when the jujube phalanx purportedly in a fit of rage (purported side effect of a good conscience) tasted the sting of reason’s pincers.

It was here that "Sad Molly the pingo" was introduced not for the benefit of humanity but for its definitive destruction. What happened to sad the pingo remains a mystery to this day. But Molly lay on the bed with the revolver and the cameras rolled. She was going to take it apart but first she moved the blanket to reveal her leg [pantyfruit]. What a gorgeous plot of scrubby. First the barrel. Then the spring action telemetry. When she removed the firing pin the left side of my face fell to the floor. By the time she had it in pieces strewn about the bed I was the second toe of my right foot.

Enter Cassius--

Shall I make a memory of thine fissure and strike at the breast of merriment? Oh noble chameleon of many coloured hues, tinges, and shades. Yonder.

pall

2004-09-28T16:37:00.001-04:00

hidden

drowning maria

2004-09-28T16:35:00.001-04:00

hidden

notes on stillness (from the book 'still life in motion')

2004-09-21T16:28:00.001-04:00

modality

I have been relegated to a modality. It happened with the uttering of one simple phrase. Perhaps I should have thought more carefully before I spoke, but what came out was less empty and lighter than most words that are used to convey feeling. I thought she should have understood this as the honesty of an awkward human being, but she didn’t. Still, I should have thought more carefully.

I asked myself what I should do with her hands if they were my own and I had never used them before? And then I thought that I wished I were her mother and not some man who sat next to her in cars.

I remember that we laughed as we drove through the city. The kind of laugh that laughers are aware of and guardedly imagine that hidden somewhere behind such laughter is the archetype of a genuine happiness. Or maybe it was Tuesday morning, after the rain.

hush

Sunlight through tree leaves is not a teacup affair. If it were, I would have pressed more than my pants.

"Hush Gina", I said.

I said it often to myself. Hush. I said it quietly. Practicing for the right moment. Hush Gina. Not push. Never push. Because what disappointed me most about the green grass and the blue sky were the insects. They crawled on the outside of half-empty bottles where dull echoes served as applause. Sometimes I clapped. But usually I was driving. Yes, you’re right Gina. I was always driving. I never pushed.

"Should we?" I asked her.

"No", she said without looking at me, "just keep going."

I thought that one day I might not be sitting next to Gina in this car. I wasn’t sure if she was aware of this. But even as I thought, I thought was it she? Was it she who, with a glance from her inventory, usurped my thought? I thought or so I thought I did. Or did I?

something irrational

Do you see that all the words I have used have meaning? I didn’t give them meaning. In a day or two or a century or two they might mean something entirely different. But behind my words, or at the bottom of them, there is something irrational, something unknowable, something magical about what I said that will never change. It would exist.

It.

I saw this as the blur of a moment, when two people walking several steps apart became connected.

Words like river. Words like flow. Words like everything.

an un-return

I wanted something more than hush Gina. Gina didn’t understand this. Didn’t see the undulation in the surrounding pattern. I tried with numbers. I told her that there were more than zeroes. But she didn’t see them.

I told her that on a certain day when old men were young they spoke of violins and from that time on spoke of violins until they were dead. It was beyond their manipulation. I wanted more than this. I wanted a shift. A stopping. An un-return. And then I made a mental list of all the things I no longer wanted to speak about: balloons, trumpets, umbrellas, hats, bicycles, Gina.

There were more. I know there were staircases and bookshelves, but Gina put her hand on my leg and said (quietly):

"Stop the car."

Perhaps she didn’t say anything at all. Perhaps I never stopped.

spine

She played my spine. My leg. She touched. On a certain day when old men. My spine drifted.

Gina wanted to walk without me. I watched her trail the wood line. She looked up at the trees. She did things that I didn’t want to think about or didn’t want to notice. They were different, after all. I always talked about nothing. About how the creation of nothing enticed me. But now Gina was doing nothing and I didn’t want to notice it.

I leaned my head back for a moment and then looked out through the window. Gina had disappeared into the woods. Or so I thought. But what else was there for me to think? I should say then that she did not disappear. But where she was, she no longer was.

notes in reference to gina’s stillness

As an introduction, I controlled my leaning. That is, my tendency to hope for Gina’s stillness. But I confess that when I leaned my head back it was because I no longer hoped. But I didn’t know this then.

Remember the connection. Remember that there is one. Sketch it. Let it sleep. Be patient.

Gina whispered trust. That whatever nothing or whatever something did or didn’t happen would attach itself.

I no longer hoped for Gina’s stillness. It would have to occur without my hope. But I was hopeful of this. And then

I paused like it was winter.

a folding and a slipping away

When I started driving again, Gina told me about her few minutes in the woods. She said that nothing happened and that she had stood in perfect stillness for more than a minute, listening.

I crossed afternoon. Gina rested her head on the window and fell asleep. I remember one night when Gina fell asleep, the night-that thing that is night, that is at once a folding and a slipping away-trembled.

Gina, was it night? She had been dreaming. She said she remembered her dream, but she never told me what she dreamed.

"What you dreamed that night", I asked her. "Did you see it?"

She was sleeping and I wondered if I would ever ask her that question again. No, I thought, I would let the words disappear within her dream, let them be drawn into it and become a train or a broken kite. I would know then. Or I would pretend that I knew.

a story about nothing

Our day had ended and Gina awoke. She opened the door and left the car. She looked back at me and waved. How did it get to this, I wondered? A waving. But things happen. There are many days.

If those were my hands and I had never used them before, I might have waved too. And yet it wouldn’t have surprised me if instead of waving, Gina did nothing.

stillness

What you dreamed that night, Gina, did you see it?

Water drums nestled in a sea of inertia. Water drums in a sea. It was the bigger part of her inspiration, though she let slip. Let slip? Though she let slip she was an artist.

It’s been said before. Gina was more than someone who sat in a car next to me. I stopped looking at Gina and Gina stopped touching my leg. There was no feigning between us. Feigning was for others. She looked back, waving good-bye, and said: "just keep going".

My spine drifted on the sea.

Hush Gina. Hush.

(from the book 'still life in motion')

follow me...

2004-09-21T16:27:00.000-04:00

the genealogy of the bicycle, or maria (a true story)

2004-09-21T11:32:00.001-04:00

from the book 'one note symphonies'

the bicycle is a direct descendent of Napoleon Bonaparte

The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte often went to his mistress’ apartment as what he called a bicycle (the old Corsican word for secret or two wheels).

‘As a bicycle’, he often said, ‘I can mingle with the common folk and go unnoticed.’

And as a bicycle he was exiled to Denmark after Josephine mistakenly rode him to the market to buy some eggplants and a chicken. She leaned him against a fishmonger’s stand, but his mistress was at the market also and thinking that Napoleon had come to rendezvous, hopped on his back and rode him to her apartment on Rue de Voltaire.

Tragically for Napoleon, Josephine arrived just as his mistress was in the act of dismounting him.

whim and a woman’s ass

I’m riding my bicycle along Istedgade and plan to spend the day at the park, reading the collected letters of Napoleon, but I see a woman’s ass that makes me change course. And so I wonder if in the historias brevitas of this journey that I could have taken a different course that would, in turn, lead to different consequences. But I don’t. And that is the dilemma (always in retrospect) that impulse and whim place on a man like me. Could it have been…? Did I…? Should I have…? Perhaps this…? Perhaps that…?

The woman sits at an outdoor café’ (on that beautiful…), orders a coffee, and reads the lady with the blue umbrella. The summer breeze flirts with her hair.

the lady with the blue umbrella

Van Gogh’s wheat bends beneath the rain, and the lady with the blue umbrella watches dark clouds roll up from the horizon. There is something magical about her umbrella that calms her. Something magical about all umbrellas she thinks—like candles, bicycles, hats, and lullabies. Something that allows them to stretch their wills across generations and even centuries. Something about them that tells her that what was still is, will never change—and is, in fact, timeless.

from the collected letters of Napoleon Bonaparte

(to Mlle. Maria Elena de A.)

Maria,

…I know that we have held each other before in an intoxicated world that never intersected with this one. But something came back with me the last time we held each other. Something that should be sown in a secret garden and allowed to grow if it will. It is not a convenient thing for us Maria, but it’s too precious, too innocent to be destroyed—by me or by anyone…

Napoleon Bonaparte (Paris, Nov. 1798)

the sigh of the universe

The rain falls and the wind sighs strangely, as if the universe is unburdening itself from a great weight. The woman is eating a peach. And I’m thinking about eating a peach also. Thinking of finding a strand of her hair on the café chair. Thinking that I want her to leave something behind. I was happier a few minutes ago. I was happier but didn’t know it until now, because I see from the ring on her finger that she is married.

"Is it possible", I ask her, "for two corrupted people to create something innocent?"

"Yes", she says, "but it will happen accidentally, perhaps without the knowledge of either person. Regrettably, however, it will not last. The corruption will inveigle its way into the innocence and eventually kill it. The mere thoughts of the corrupted people will injure the innocence irrevocably. Better not to speak of it. Even better not to think of it."

But I do think of it and I slowly realize that the sigh of the universe is a sigh of regret.

passion

Napoleon placed the blue umbrella against the wall and opened the window to let in the rain. Maria moved to the edge of the bed and lifted her dress to her hips. Then they spoke about the empire, about the meaning of a few paragraphs in a novel. But it was an unspoken eroticism that their friendship was based on.

"If anyone else shares this with you, well then my heart would break into a million pieces", she said.

Napoleon kissed her tenderly. People are corrupt he thought, but passion is innocent.

maria

My bicycle carries me around strange corners and through strange streets, to a park and stops by the woman with the beautiful ass, sun bathing on a blanket.

"You’ve been thinking about me", she says.

"Yes", I say.

"My name is Maria", she says.

I hope that she has been thinking about me also. Like when she sees a bicycle out of the corner of her eye, or when the breeze blows so faintly that she hardly notices and doesn’t know why my face and the indescribable feeling of our first meeting come to her. I hope that invisible forces are at work for me.

"The trees are beautifully silent this time of the year", she says.

I nod in agreement and smile.

"A day can no longer go by that I don’t see you," I say.

She takes off her ring and gestures me to lie down beside her. The leaves on the tree above us rustle suddenly. I look up and then look at her and realize that at this very moment in my life there is no other place that I should be.

from the collected letters of Napoleon Bonaparte

…you are right in saying that we are friends. And yet ours is a friendship that is strange indeed. When you are in the room I watch you as I watch no other friend. From the very moment that I met you, a strange feeling overcame me, and I wanted to be near you. And now when I am near you I feel an excitement and I want to hold you. Our conversations disguise motives, our glances hide passion. Tell me what this is Maria? Politics and war are easy for me. But this…this confounds me…

Napoleon Bonaparte (Paris, Jan. 1799)

that is me

Napoleon lifted himself to his full height, and turned towards Josephine.

"I will give you the pleasure of riding me back to the market", he said.

"No", Josephine said, "you are a bad bicycle."

Maria left the room.

"I am a man independent and strong enough to follow this or that impulse no matter where it takes me", he said haughtily, "and to say to the accusers of my indiscretions so what, that is me. I am Napoleon and there is no other."

"You are, of course, correct my Emperor", Josephine said coldly, "but even the strongest man, independent enough to follow this or that impulse is often made a slave by them."

love

Think of it in this way…

You are walking down the street, but before you turn the corner, you can see what is already there: children running across the road, a man asking for directions, a newspaper leaf pausing in the wind. And then you turn the corner, but you see Maria waving to you from the distance, and a black bull chasing a cabaret dancer along the sidewalk, and a scarlet flag covering the sky. The statues in the park are sunlit bronze, the grass is green, and a bicycle leans against the spitting fountain…

maria, whispered

When I wake up I am on my bicycle. It takes me from Copenhagen through the Danish countryside. I pass farmers in Germany. Day turns to night. Night turns to day again. I sleep. I wake up. I yawn and stretch. I think about the hundreds of years that the trees have lived—lived in front of the houses that have been built, destroyed, and rebuilt. Kept every secret, even those of the most reviled men, and whispered nothing, not even to the wind. I say Maria’s name silently to myself—Maria. And again, Maria. Then thoughts about her and her husband, living in the same house, sharing the same bed make my bicycle race faster and faster. Such pain, I think. How is it possible that anyone could endure such pain?

from the collected letters of Napoleon Bonaparte

Maria,

…this is my last letter to you. And this is what I want to tell you…that I will always think of you from time to time. That I want nothing from you that you will not give of yourself freely. That our friendship is rare. Rare in its intensity if not its duration. There is more that I should say, but there is a certain incommunicability of the heart. Something transparent, yet deep. You do understand. Maria, think of me from time to time. Think of me now that I am no longer Emperor…now that I am but two wheels, a broken bell, and a scrap of twisted metal…
Napoleon Bonaparte (Paris, Mar. 1799)

a letter to napoleon

I arrive in Paris and my bicycle stops in front of an apartment on Rue de Voltaire. I climb the stairs and open the door. I walk past the hallway into the living room. I pull up the rug and remove a panel from the floor, where I find a letter written by Maria Elena de A. to Napoleon Bonaparte dated March, 1799.

Cher Napoleon,

My heart is broken and I am damaged beyond repair without you. I will look for you and promise that I will find you one day. Two souls such as ours shall always find each other…

I think about Maria. Outside it begins to rain. A lady with a blue umbrella passes by the window, and my bicycle leans against the oldest tree in Paris.

(from the book 'one note symphonies')

ti ck

2004-09-21T11:10:00.001-04:00

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flupe

2004-09-20T17:05:00.000-04:00

i hate this thing.

the purpose of green in the bikini machine shop

2004-09-20T16:14:00.001-04:00

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pelikanine

2004-09-20T15:55:00.001-04:00

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