NO GIMMICK NO DISAPPOINTMENT NO STRINGS ATTACHED NOTHING TO LOSE FIND LOVE PURE PROFITS LOVE FOR PROFIT OIL FOR MONEY!!
My dear!!
I sit beside a brindled cow.
How are you!
I’m in dire straits.
A perithalasson is the point in the track closest to the sea, and I’m in dire straits because every day my kingdom accrues.
I’m a prince, and I’m in dire straits because every day I accrue.
Dear, I do not want to be lonely in my kingdom.
I no longer want a kingdom. And I do not want to be like this fly here, in this train compartment, dying next to this exorbitant orange, and so I ask you. Please rescue me. Please rescue me and my orange.
Now the train is above a gully and I can feel the sea beyond the strung cities, beyond the immovable Nation-State.
An epithalasson is the point in the track farthest from the sea.
The compartment behind me is filled
with unsecured dulcimers (I am stowed
away on a freight train, I flee my kingdom,
I sit beside a bridled cow).
When the train jerks I hear these notes:
Then I imagine I hear each’s array of oversounds,
and I think: the soul, too, is an argosy—
an argosy of—
Could it be?! Ah, the world! Oh, the world! Yes, yes! It is a junco I hear in the next compartment, among all the dulcimers! It is the bird pecking the dulcimer’s radicles!! I pet the cow, I watch the sea. I listen to the bird, the radio, the song on the radio, I am inspired, I write a sonnet, I stop, I think “But why write a sonnet?”, I think “But why make things say Why? Why? Why? Why?”, I shall write a sonnet, I write a sonnet.
O, baby, baby enkindler of my furnace
Heart, dark the world has become!
The self once bathed in the sea’s plangent dun
Has turned deaf: all harmony, now wrongness.
Viscous, sour, it’s regret that floods my tongue,
Which, stunned in its set orbit, can’t digress:
“I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have let him go,
He was, was here, here; now he’s out of sight…”— O,
I am slave to tongue—tongue slave to mind who
Prays to No-God that it still believes, still believes.
Loneliness kills. Worlds pass me—I’m a sieve
That holds only you, your kind—but all’s your kind—
My flame, my wind, my wick, my match, fan me, reeve,
Entwine in me my light, my flint, strike me one more time!
The shadow of the moving bird has its home somewhere indoors. The moving bird inside a box itself moving. But, tell me, are the dulcimers moving, and in relation to who to what to when to where to why? “By which I mean,” (as the poets say)
§A Check only one of the following three boxes. Is the soul (the soul here being equivalent to the referent of any of the following as found in Form D-959 (a) (iv): beinghood, being, selfhood, self, mind, brain, inscape, ego, atman, brahma, psyche, deferent, eccentric, punctum equans, kokoro, The Here and Now, character, ethic, habit, time, intellect, perception, consciousness. Append the corresponding proof and/or evidence to form D-959 (A) (I) (iv) and submit along with the entirety of Form D-959),
(a) □« The train?
(b) »□ The dulcimer?
(c) □« ?
§B Check only one of the following five boxes only if (a) or (b) was selected in §A and no proof and/or evidence was submitted. Is the soul (the soul here being equivalent to the referent of any of the following as found in Form D-959 (a) (iv): beinghood, being, selfhood, self, mind, brain, inscape, ego, atman, brahma, psyche, deferent, eccentric, punctum equans, kokoro, The Here and Now, character, ethic, habit, time, intellect, perception, consciousness. Append the corresponding proof and/or evidence to form D-959 (A) (I) (iv) and submit along with the entirety of Form D-959),
(d) □« The silent dulcimer?
(e) »□ The bird-touched dulcimer?
(f) □« The palsied dulcimer?
(g) »□ The muted dulcimer?
(h) □« The raining dulcimer?
(i) » □ The strings of the dulcimer?
(j) □« The hammers of the dulcimer?
(k) »□ The sounds (but not music) from the dulcimer?
(l) □« The music (but not sounds) from the dulcimer?
(m)»□ The sounds (including music) from the dulcimer?
(n) □« The oversounds of the sounds (including music) from the dulcimer?
(o) »□ The sounds (including music) and oversounds from the dulcimer taken together?
(p) □« ?
§C Check only one of the following three boxes only if (c) was selected in §A and (p) was selected in §B. Is the soul (the soul here being equivalent to the referent of any of the following as found in Form D-959 (a) (iv): beinghood, being, selfhood, self, mind, brain, inscape, ego, atman, brahma, psyche, deferent, eccentric, punctum equans, kokoro, The Here and Now, character, ethic, habit, time, intellect, perception, consciousness. Append the corresponding proof and/or evidence to form D-959 (A) (I) (iv) and submit along with the entirety of Form D-959),
(q) □« All of the above
(r) »□ In you, reader—must it be to be read by you?
If and only if (r) is checked, check all that apply, and append the corresponding proof and/or evidence to form D-959 (A) (I) (iv) and submit along with the entirety of Form D-959. What is being read by you?
(i) □« Beinghood
(ii) »□ Being
(iii) □« Selfhood
(iv) »□ Self
(v) □« Mind
(vi) »□ Brain
(vii) □« Inscape
(viii) »□ Ego
(ix) □« Atman
(x) »□ Brahma
(xi) □« Psyche
(xii) »□ Deferent
(xiii) □« Eccentric
(xiv) »□ Punctum equans
(xv) □« Kokoro
(xvi) »□ The Here and Now
(xvii) □« Character
(xviii) »□ Ethic
(xix) □« Habit
(xx) »□ Time
(xxi) □« Intellect
(xxii) »□ Perception
(xxiii) □« Consciousness
(s) □« ?
§D Check only one of the following two boxes only if (c) was selected in §A and (p) was selected in §B and (s) was selected in §C. Is the soul (the soul here being equivalent to the referent of any of the following as found in Form D-959 (a) (v): non-beinghood, non-being, non-selfhood, non-self, non-mind, non-brain, non-inscape, non-ego, anatman, abrahma, non-psyche, epicycle upon epicycle, the Still Center. No proof is required for §D),
(t) »□ None of the above?
Soul or not, but the killing sun on the sea’s threshing floor.
The sea and the guilt blooms ever larger around the insect
beginning to drown in the irradicable ecstasy of things.
The sea, the sun-striated stridulating sea, the samsara sea, the chirping parrot sea perched on our cage.
Cage? Yes, our cage! The cage, the cage, my love, the cage!
The cage is the irradicable ecstasy of things,
things spooked to stillness amidst their irradicable ecstasy:
that Ohio Honey-Hunter, for example (whose life
was chronicled recently by one of my close friends).
Or the Americans, signing petitions condemning the government to mail to the government;
the smoke-drunk Americans whispering “so…so…so…so…” to their bloodshot government.
To flies in the moving train one mile is a few, some several lightyears.
The obstinate millionaires splendid in oils, in oils, building palaces in high places, shouting, “VOTE! VOTE! VOTE, and forgive yourself!” Ballots and bluster, ballots and bluster!! The array of all the long-armed Gutenbergs echo: “VOTE! VOTE! VOTE and you get to keep what you have but only if you vote for what you have! How wonderful to have! It is never an option to not have, don’t even think about it, Mister!!”
“Forgive us! Forgive us! Forgive us for being joyous! Forgive us!” sing the poets joyously. “Yes, exactly! Exactly! Forgive us, one shouldn’t be joyous,” sing the joyous, obstinate smokedrunk masses to the obstinately rising sea, “we want to be forgiven: hence, we are kind, we are good! Won’t you, won’t someone forgive us?”
Perithalasses!!!!! To love and to be dying, O, O, O, the farrago of the soul! To love and to be drowning O, the irradiated farrago of the world!
The irradicable ecstasy of things.
The irradicable ecstasy of things, the irradicable obstinacy of things.
Yet the obstinate soul does indeed move (§A) provided you let it move provided you clear room for it to move in. Yes yes the soul is not a room not a point the soul doesn’t assume a point but maybe the soul points.
Yes, the soul does indeed flow to be.
I flee my kingdom.
You flee your kingdom.
He or she or they flee his or her or their kingdom.
We all flee our kingdoms.
Let’s give ourselves ourselves.
Datta, Dayadhvam, Damvata,
Shantih, Shantih, Shantih, O
let’s let the sea make anarchists of us all (“Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote,” scream those filthy lords in the land, those filthy soil-storers lining their pockets with soil, already planning the next state, “Vote! Vote! Vote! O my children vote, vote and forgive yourself, but more importantly, be forgiven by us, yes, you are worthy!”).
Dare we eat the peach?
Yes.
The day will come when a single original orange shall be pregnant with revolution.
Let us turn and overturn. Let us listen to this argosy of blue dulcimers. Let us give ourselves ourselves. Let us give ourselves ourselves. Let us be free, let us be lonely, let us look for our kingdoms in the fleeing, the freedom, for each of our kingdoms flees and drowns day by day. Let us choose our tethers.
To flies in the drowning train one mile is a few some several lightyears.
Shantih, shantih, shantih, oh my dear!!!!! And so I write to you, my dauphin, my peace, my tether, from the train, the freedom, the kingdom.
It is EXTREMELY TIME-SENSITIVE, to be opened IMMEDIATELY: let’s give ourselves ourselves, nothing but, that fruit each one of us has tasted with ecstasies of stealth.
I love within the place of rising waters
because of the irradicable obstinacy of things,
see, see, see, love is on me.
I am loving you and I
will love you over
and over, and over
and over I shall easter
you with time and polyphony.
I eat the streaked leaf and bloom you.
Datta, dayadhvam, damvata, hold out both of your fanned hands, my pharaoh:
Here! My tears.
Here! My orange.
I am yours.
Best,
The Prince of Neerkavitha
Varun Ravindran
Varun Ravindran was born and lives.