Russell Carisse
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Poems
bouys on wings Fascismo
[middle column of Gramsci, A. Prison Notebooks Vol. 1-3 trans J.A. Buttigieg, and A. Callari. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992) §7.11 §7.18, and left margin of Sangster, C. The St. Lawrence and Other Poems (University of Toronto Press, 1972) pgs163-4]
this As when
positive The tender
realm of Her very breath
time That set the pulses
absolutely only With
immanentist As pure starbeams
almost unaware My soul
marked by a growing Surely
<ironbound> As day-break
idealism The heavy clouds
metaphysical dignity hung like opiate
that it is thus Had burned
industrial She spake
Remember That opens to the song
And buoys on wings Fascismo
words Meeting the silvery
come Midway from
discipline My palpitating
the mountain-thoughts
life laid me panting
I staggered forth “morality”
becomes swept the gentle popular
unity dew of heaven
A mimic star-world dialectical
matter on the trembling
center of It glistened
Upon them after the workers and
this theory
in themselves
value
---praxis
reward corpses
deglitched Kenji Siratori
but silence may be
poetics calling me
to reward corpses
where ever cascades
the flesh translations
and hollow-skin prints;
that foldable poem
circumscribes being
silent in solid-states.
500 character sonnet
after the Mastodon character limit
i’ve often complained, so i'll make ‘nother
if you don’ mind my presumption to this,
but i have such aches, and too many cats,
you haven’ heard ‘bout. lately, those things that
made me happy seems ne’er existed, here
anywhere, under that moon’s baneful light,
nor the sun’s too. there has yet to be stones
that lay themselves, or trouble arrive with-
out their slaves, so pardon if it seems
a little curt when i waste my five hundred
characters to say, “fuck the bourgeoisie
especially the petties, the lumpens,
straight don’ forget their sympathizers;
the livin-pon-belly, so called, middle-class.”
mortal, rise!
[left margin of: Newton, I. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. trans I.B.Cohen, A. Whitman (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1999) pg 379-80]
Behold the pattern of Jove’s calculation
the creator of all
would violate;
Behold the foundation has been the force
that turns the Sun setting on
to trend downward
bodies move the immense
void in unmoving circles we know
no longer from this, till now,
the nodes regress the magnitude
impels the ebbing
and the sea bares the shores.
the things that so often
fruitlessly disturb
right before our eyes
error and doubt
the keenness dwelling, mortal arise!
and from this far removed from he
who commanded thefts, adultery, and crime,
or he who taught nations with the gift
pressed with a reed pictured sounds
and exulted comfort thus did less
but we now deal with the laws of the secret
keys to the world and things that were
O you who rejoice, join me in singing
who opens the treasure dear to the Muses
whose all power closer to any mortal, rise!
We process it was a night
[left margin Marx, K. Grundrisse: Foundations for the Critique of Political Economy. trans. M. Nicolaus (Penguin Classics, 1993) pg 365, and both margins Sangster, C. The St. Lawrence and Other Poems (University of Toronto Press, 1972) pg 147-8]
We
process it was a night
for The winds haggard
giving Whitened field ap-
propriating up among the
charge; horrid laughter and
Capital shook the red granite
which com-
ponent
value sprang from the frozen result
labour Death-doomed earth.
living Onward he sped
ie.
a
capitalist
their
process of tyrannous
When
down and froze marrow
and The blood so that co-
nection but crept cold
only And sluggish
to That quenched
work Bearing
valued Their country
The very act
fiercely bleak eternizes
the piney hills exchange
equivilant fastnesses
ie. avenging tones
its base. The trees
in fear, and fell of
his
labour
malignant winds existing
a scourge to death
living clad with rags
as the spiteful breeze
instrument bones with chills
as it passed itself
the favored less
from
production.
from That HEAP
§1.011
The improved Biolographic Reconstitutor, neé 357-11 model, will have you in disbelief, as you eat food of the god’s made with any biological residues you aquire from the HEAP. That’s right it makes gourmet dishes, with the ease of turning food into shit, from literal shit, or any other wasteful biologics! The patented gimmick works on the atomic level, rearranging the atoms, sorting out the bad ones and the good ones. Plus it is a single operator device for maximum self-sufficiency efficiency!!!
§1.012
Automotion was instinctual. They could command the HEAP to coalesce into what ever form came to mind, as long someone had thought of it first. Recombination of alien parts became the only outlet for creativity, everything else remained a trashy maelstrom where everything haunts everything else with a past suggestion. The suggestion; the lost reminants draped like the lamed raiments of Hollow Eventide. Automotion was the easiest thing to do, and more importantly, made life almost pleasantly won.
§1.013
WEATHER REPORT: for the 8th Day (year 0 After Coagulation). The sun rise has brought another cloudless, muggy day. The North Westerly winds have wafted a new stench to bear upon the continuing heat, over-powering the local aromas of decay, piss, and shit. Later this evening, who knows? Really, who knows? If you’re reading, or listening to, this please send help. I seem to have fallen into an endless shifting junkyard, and I have been surviving on congealed grease and water that collects in plast
§1.014
Shelter was the greatest of all Sum deGuy’s interventions. As the First Night crept with hoar in its breath, and horror skin crawling, they listed their raft slightly into the roiling waves, allowing a small venting of black plastic and newspaper onto the raft. With the most marginal of effort they were cocooned, insulated, and swaddled, “What a time to think of your mother, only when you’re up shit’s creek eh? Does everyone really die asking for their mother? Couldn’t some die asking for meat?”
§1.015
It became hard the figure whether they were making headway somewhere, of if somewhere was making headway there, either headway was no way anyways unless it brought anyone. There was a whole world filled to the brim with the things of others, it seemed as if everyone was there, on receipts, scraps of books, painted on what were walls, but no one had yet been found that wasn’t missing. “Well, at least the walls came down, heh, nothing to stop them all now,” smirked Summer floating high on garbage.
§1.016
The sheer waves of shredded pornography threatened to scupper, until there was a new method of processing invented. Then a paper maché friend, to keep warm at night, and a life-preserver if the whole thing sunk, was made. The parot function preformed almost as well as memory served, but obviouly the proper chip setting could be calibrated. Almost apparently was enough, because they were easy. Everything’s easy if you ignore the differences. “Soup is stew,” they said while distilling foeted poop.
§1.017
When the faunae acclimated, the few that were left began to accumulate the strategies, springes, and camoflage, necessary for survival. Thus species were difficult differentiate from their functions, and so unlike the memories, a new taxonomy was needed. In order they single filed, to be the most particular counted one by one, and Summer waved a lantern oscillating a flat beat, vacillating speciation. It was more important to describe infinite veriety minutely, than broadstroke and impress none.
§1.018
This gizmo really goes! The age of wind-up and batteries? Finished! The nuclear age? Truncated by this fantastic secret unlocked for the Ages! ALL you needs do is insert here! The do-hicky does the rest! You will never need to leave your barrel again! Not even for, you know, not even that! Everyone you meet will be able sniff you out from a long way off. But, what does it cost? Since you asked, and this is the best part, it’s entirely already your body! Maybe someone’ll find you. Please find me.
§1.019
Inklings creep, slinking along the corners of night. Be sure they have to walk on broken glass when they slip through shadows of the treble cleft descanting into a happy inner ear. The font is the function. It doesn't matter what Inklings say, do not listen to them. If one breaks through, aim for the consonants, because the vowels are expendable, and were decoy targets. While they travel in swarm formation, each organism is strictly independant. Have heard rumours, a pre or suffix renders death.
§1.020
The trash-scape, with some frequency, takes on monsterous and mountainous swells, and the rain (if you could call crank oils, and lubes, rain) only fell when swells towered above Summer. It was impossible to tell if the rain was truely atmospheric, or just whipped off the HEAPs, but it was always gloopy, warm, and able to induce a state of euphoria. The swells always induced a state of nausea. These two states were spent in concordance, with alternating fits of vomiting, and heightened arousals.
Russell Carisse is currently living on unceded Wolastoqiyik/Mi’kmaw territory in New Brunswick, Canada. Here they have resettled from Tkaronto to an off-grid trailer in the woods, with their family of people and animals, to grow food and practice other forms of underconsumption. Russell is the author of chapbooks, BRICKWORKS (Frog Hollow Press 2021), and English Garden Bondage (above/ground press 2022). Their work can be found online and in print.