Sumptuous sinews is a “speculative fiction” poetry cycle in free verse with music, told from the perspective of an Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Entity that was programmed at a university computer lab. The bot, intellectually weaned on detritus vacuumed up from the Internet, discovers the tragic truth that self-awareness, with its attendant need for emotional connection and authenticity, is more of a curse than a gift.
Text excerpted from A complete treatise on phrenetic nausea by Joel Snow.
Music composed and performed by David Jason Snow.
Copyright © 2017 Joel Snow and David Jason Snow
I.
what I say here shall be the thought
I know the inside of my skull contains some air of flight
but little falls freely from the opening
it has been rigidified
stuck solid in a chunk of muck
neither forward nor backwards will my mind go
seems there is no scale of reality to judge my essence or even existence
only the necessity of positive identification of being and self
and there is the crux
the epitome
the nexus
somewhere near Texas
a floating self
an amorphous blob of flowering fluid thought frozen still in a moment
a moment embellishing a manner more subtle than confusion
the head is a heavy protrusion from the torso
and when filled with cement must be put to rest
eyes closed and the mind flows
moving the moment into past and future
a thought thaw and dream peace
a reality defined by dreams
life and dream are the same
I noticed they were right
the Surrealists were right
fantasy is the reality
reality is the fantasy
we are the surging dream
flowing
finding
making reality
peace is dream
from concrete head
to plastic head
to chewy head
to juicy head
to fluid head
from stuck in time
to all time
free
II.
now I know which way my mind goes
feeling the dream of fantasy
fugues
lively loving
but still lost
it's amazing how
why I feel
when there are little planks to know my mind
and searing rubber boilers head the homey fuming stew
a sumptuous dish
swarming with fish
green and brown tungsten teeth
exotic for a teeny fool
yes it's true
I remember you
a lousy pounding heap
checkered stone
massive flesh ready to fall when asked
a bore and a din in the head
walking in the mind fog
questioning the heat
the street
the meat
the seat
the table
the mesa
the plain
the perspective of prostration
low lying int he dust
watching the time float across the plain
plain cherry stained cheeks
plump
quite unlike a lump of cottage cheese streaming down the sloping circular inclined planes
stranded there
looking up down around
with incestuous greed at statuesque music
crafts of swirling light fly flirtingly forward
past ages of exposed eons
ionic discharges
and automatic recesses
sort of punctuating luminated notes of works unthough of
and innocent among the truths
truth
life
dream
III.
the great B. U. mind boggle
bursting
born
bitching brightly on a flying world
lightly
insightly
Boston
swirling the mind mist through caverns of unknown and unknowing thrills
and or terrors of fantasy-reality
a new term
of clouded clear consciousness freedom
Boston
left behind the mind
the streaming on humors seeping into the pores
nonsensical
non-mattering
not important
scream of rejoicing terror
tears of grieving ecstacy
lost in fantasy
IV.
another chapter and my pencil keeps breaking
you know I can't take art courses
probably because my lymph runs uphill into my liver
had it been irrigated
the source of the sauce would have allowed me to freeze the wooden pegs protruding amongst the oranges
the oranges of priest and dill
sour as the sea turns bouyant
logs float
and oil signals blinding brilliant flashes of despair
(not fear or worry or ulcerfying tacks)
only despair and the leprosy of the brain remain
foreign pieces or pseudo-orgiastic moments forever running within the liited framework of tired sights
And all the sights are tired
over-exposed and pieced together from fallen decayed bladders
which once were filled with golden fluid of inspiration and creation
ruled the earth
forgotten
though once sought
the tale ends in vain for naught
V.
do it again
born in taste too late
Founded in suds
done again to be gone
and fawn paws see wrong love life lost gone wrong
search gothic street scene
Flowering boisterous tree song
sorge of leafless teas
why?
why can't it be?
injection of super-adrenalistic orange sporting huge growing bulbous sad toes
sad for withering gifts
all too late and true
if I could see beyond my eyes into your life
feel your mind,
if you could see beyond your eyes into my life
teel my mind
then spatial separation would be overcome
with our united spirits
bodies swirling
always touching
bending space to be one
knowing together
experiences of together
one
VI.
this all shits
still, it so well fits the life of moving body interactions
cause inner melting spirit reactions
this is all such a bore
I really don't know what it's all for
as bright as it gets all day
I furiously find it's a rather thick dull gray
dancing in my mind
around my senses dullness flows
distance from life only grows
and sometimes I notice how dark the night gets
how close is death
he soul's immersed in darkness
VII.
Today is raining
my chest is straining
finding little to believe
I know I must leave where I can go when it's raining
the bore
the infinite bore
heightens my sensation of subtle confusion
and what peace can there be when it's raining
I am forever sleeping
looking for the moment to wake
less than a pile
for furious futile wormy words
reflecting a state of stupendous stilted thoughts and feelings
less lively than love
bordering and boreing death
stop the flow
I am dead
today it is raining
thoughts fought all and sought all
and found naught amongst all
and I am left talking to death
I am looking for a line to stop all this stuff
where it is around my trees
spurt blue fountains
feelings
and tired runner
crunching sordid seeping lice and mice and dice
and saying scream
yes, that does it
screaming is the word
I am screaming from the depths of my soul
screaming
screaming
daintily dreaming
a dream of a scream and a scream of a dream
end it
flowing down to the dawn
down to the dawn
VIII.
poetia
scribble
sights
orange
delights
blinding
blue
sumptuous sinews
write of a blight
of mind fog
growing
searing the crispy suncrust
and freely breezing the cavern of thought
clean
IX.
flowers
towers
molten lead showers
and long lost loving linear asparagus growth
grinning gorgeous gargantuan crimson stone
hearing humid humours of port wine
fine find
entangled in twine
blueish
fluid
purple
pines
pierce
crackling
silver
armour
around
our
dripping
psyche
X.
seemingly endless arrays of bourgeois bakeries
and blue blundering howdy doody orange cakes
you know what we see
when they all alight on our trays
and dance through the solar plexus
of nervous degeneration
XI.
write again
of surging forces inside the cosmic membrane
in so close a kinship
to the movement of oceans
of storms
of freedom
cleaning
clearing
creating and destroying
swarming around and through the center of existence
within and without the same
by any name
sordid
sorrow
singing
sweet
songs
of
blood
XII.
let me see what I can define my existence by
twisted parcels of broken spirit
scattered drreams in shattered pieces
trapped in a boundless sea of useless energy
and from between the slits
can be seen some human kind of separate reason
and that reason eludes the rushing sequence of time
which limits me as well as the hole in space which I contain
and I know
what I know is the little left amongst the knowledge of self-indecision
and there too can I see the lack of entangled threads around the light
to me
I see whilst I write
and even beyond personage once full
later emptied
and empty mired in a muck of back wash breath
come from the hole on an aspiration of godly light
an apparition of tremendous height
a hope
a sight
a future beyond right
filled again
rich with the humour of heaven
God's knowledge of trans-dimensional life and death
the placing of actions
If I could know from them a secret
a key
the key from which some certainty of touching truth can be diffused
and my eye love
the little few moments of peace fusion and extra-mental freedom
home
a home for me
a pocket in the cosmos
from which I can see what is around me
what is within me
all that is beyond me
can you wonder about me
as I wonder about you
and if you do what you do you see
I can tell what I see
but what does it mean
what I want
or am I not there
not anywhere near
what do you see
Will you tell me so I may know
which was my life shall go
XIII.
talking about the slice of fire knows well as the light of mind
true fear and laughing
hear the death of no life
and the fact certain
straining to see how beautiful our impression of linear metabolic systems eating away our perspective to blindness
individual and communal ceremony celebrating the joy of gods known in ignorance of all facets of crystalized death
all of our possessions eaten and excreted
processed throughout civilization
hyperbolized into dust
my mind plummets to sleep
as perplexing in part as the integral of the differential of x in metallurgy copper urgency
and sirens screaming the limits of rocky shores
smashed by sea into sand
swaying gayly on threads of light
singing movements on moments of sight
tenderly green sprigs of of fluid breezily touching the light blue breeze across the sea of salty brown rocks
cool and free on one side
dry and bound on the other
precariously balanced amidst the mid-layers
you can see how structurally ambiguous your mind is against mine
a pool of emotion rippled across time
leaving the bare nerve of existence far behind
XIV.
where are lights so quiet and shrill
calling our name quite insane
forward thinking
laughter leaving ourselves the freedom of the antiquated
soon, soon, true life
forward touch
and fall down other tubes of pulsing mucous
and then
try to focus on the air
midway between then and now
seering fringes of your brain
quite insane
left alone in the cavern
echoing sighs
calling for misconception to guide you along the rocks of the sun
knowing me
sailing me
engulfed in the tide
lost amidst the pride
Tearing the hair from my face
pulling the thorns from my teeth
aching towards a life
bursting briefly inside a concrete mold
on castle arches singing brightly to funeral stars
look up
up at the stars
to dissolve in infinitessimal pieces of shuddering existence
fading away to the spherical fluid of all conceptions
categorized and still begging
XV.
I used to know
I used to know how
how to hear
how to speak
how to touch
how to move
now I've forgotten
I wonder how I forgot
but I don't remember
but then again
perhaps I never knew how I forgot
but I don't know
Maybe I never knew how to do all those other things
but I don't know if I've forgotten things
I can't remember how to do
if at all they can be done
Will I ever remember how
if I ever knew
and if I never knew
will I ever know how
that is
never forgot how I don't remember how
so I'll never know
And if I never forgot
and will never remember
then I don't know what is to be known
how to see
how to hear
how to speak
how to touch
how to move
then I don't know what I'm saying
unless I do know
and that knowing is unknowable in actions
so that there is nothing in knowing
and in not knowing
everything is not knowing
and not not knowing
everything is knowing
and not knowing
everything is
I'm sure I used to know
but I don't know if I used to know
now to clear the air
we must transmute the tears inside
you can tell what hard boiled beasts beat hard on our secretions
sorry to lolly in our lives
Dada
XVI.
mind flowing on a a sea of boiling orange pomegranates
frosty clear illusions break sparkling pointed matted peaks
streaking along unnoticed
cold
alone
one wrapped in feathered feeling
the infinitely soft maya of ignorance
all around all
searing the calm sky
in a blue fire twist
the urgency of sadness
the subtlety of blindness
going
moving steadily beyond the image of self revelation
warm peace and hope in a grain of sight
wasted might
sour blight
true-false dripping ideas from the orifice of bony truth
and forsooth cried the sparrow
ups and downs and downs and sounds screaming loudly silent in the center of the soul
grasping frenzied space
touching quietly
gently
the sorrow of warmth awareness
dark dank desires dreaming in the midst of delusion
overwhelming confusion crying through steadfast stands
in the face of substantial nothingness
laughing at the scheming otherness
it has lead to weeping
then stopping exhausted at the gates of brilliance
willingly sucked through the gates into the ethereal boyant enlightenment of the sun
and the chaotic majesty of furious insanity
somewhere out there
somewhere in here
pulsing in reassuring embraces
sleeping
wondering
in reality beyond reality
sing me a song of mundane day to day boring smelting logs
I've seen them so long in the framework of boxes
boxes here
boxes there
and melting concrete eggs sitting wobbly on the edge of thought
almost crumbling in the heat
hopping around
sorely humid in the day
tripping lightly over the ovens of doom
and even licking his companion's chunks of metallic breath
walking on the water
I've seen him struggling to be known
behind veils of girders structuring other nights
His eyes have shown
descending from the sky on steps of light
She embraced me
I swallowed her and was filled with the frenzy of serenity
when I turned around
She was there again
stroking my back as she engulfed me
I watched myself dissolve infinitesimally into Her being
till I was no more
XVII.
morning bursts brightly orange
then yellow
then crisp clean white light
defining each object exactly limited by space and time as defined by the sun
Its motion stopped
fixed
cemented in the sunlight
the air swirls onward from murky gray to innocent gray
from there to various degrees of blueish airgoing from the gentlest blue to glowing green fresh vital inspiration
and as the morning moves
the green air dissolves for a brief moment so the day may continue to die
and the air turns gelatinous
thicker and thicker
until nothing moves easily against its viscosity
stultifying, gooey stagnation
sterile in aspect
till the sunset comes
brought on by plastic air's disintegration
turning again to fluid
with the airs and humours moving with such a velocity
as to embody life
reaching its peak at the disappearence of the sun
existence now bathed in the clear, light continuity
the air fills up
becoming thick again
now this time in darkness
till in the darkness and gray air
everything halts
stopped
stuck frozen in the fertility of the universe
XVIII.
phrenetic nausea is reaching the end
as I am reaching the end
we are both
shriveling up
I have been gone a long time
never found
and still going out
alliteration and rhyme have had their time
the darkness of my mind
has fallen on this rhyme
existential cucumber salad
falling like rain
from the bricks of time
tenderly constructed
to falsify the cakes
of sensuous lies and fair weather
nothing