Poems & Colorpuntals

So I've created this new form in my manuscript “Ideas of Improvisation” that I call a "Colorpuntal" (which is a portmanteau neologism of the words “color” and “contrapuntal”) where I use a different color text (maroon) for certain words in a poem to create an entirely new and different poem (ghost poem) inside of the existing host poem. It's like an Erasure poem—but with the original text still present—so it becomes a contrapuntal poem. All of the text forms the host poem, the maroon text forms the ghost poem. You can think of the whole thing as a dialectic—thesis + antithesis = synthesis. Most of these ghost poems are haiku, senryu or epigrams that use the principles of Japanese short form poetry, although a few of them are just short poems. Ghost poems make up about one third of the poems in my book. I particularly like the way a ghost poem can trouble, complicate, or even contradict the host poem. To me the idea of poems with multiple dimensions or voices is a natural artifact of my aesthetic philosophy which is expressed in part by the section header text. The section headers at the start of each of the books three section actually form a poem titled—

“AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS THE I IN KALEIDOSCOPE” 

the first part of which reads—

i

i  is the imaginary unit. 

Although there is nothing real 

with this property, 

i can be used to extend the real 

to what is called complex.

Without getting too deep in the weeds the idea is to borrow the Imaginary Unit ( i ) from math and employ it as a metaphor for the Self. Just as the Imaginary Unit (the square root of -1) is a useful fiction in math (originally invented to help solve quadratic equations), my philosophy is grounded on the scientific fact that our sense of self is a similar construct—a useful fiction for operating a human brain. The square root of 16 is 4 and -4 and the square root of -1 is i and -i. So the self modeled by I has two parts. The colorpuntal is a way of allowing both of these parts to have a voice. One can think of the ghost poem as being in the voice of the Speaker's alt self or alternatively one can think of the ghost poem as being in the voice of Apophenia—the Goddess of Improvisation—who is a character that appears in many of my poems, including at least ten poems in the book. To me participation in the process of improvisation is a type of spiritual seeking, a type of prayer. I consider myself a mystic seeker, a poet in the tradition of the Sufis, just not Muslim. I understand “spirituality” as a valid human emotional experience, but one that is an artifact of a bicameral brain and thus not necessarily connected to any deity or superpower except in our imagination. Since the actual process of apophenia involves finding (creating) patterns in randomness it is a form of improvisation that all human brains engage in all the time. A vital part of mystic seeking is reunion with the Beloved and of course the Beloved (normally understood as our Divine Creator) can also be understood as the other half of our selves—the -i—or the intuitive half of our brains. 

Thus the Beloved in all of my love poems can be read as being the Sufi Beloved and in my poem “The Coltrane in You” the sixth stanza reads—

Meaning what if

the “good news”

only concludes

the Beloved’s Christian name

is Apophenia?

I don’t know

if sufis such as

Rumi & Trane

knew all twelve ways

to kneel and kiss the ground,

but surely their

chromatic Ohs

could mean ensō

in modulation.

and argues that Apophenia is possibly also the Beloved and that this is the true “good news” that is to say the true Gospel (Evangelion)  preached by all mystics including John Coltrane & Rumi. The wordplay in the poem involves excavating the words “angel” and “lion” from the word “Evangelion” and these could easily be seen as avatars of i & -i also. Thus the colorpuntal gives voice to multiple facets of the Self. Whether the second voice is the Speaker’s other half or is Apophenia or if both are true is up to each reader on a poem by poem basis. Below are a few examples of colorpuntal poems from my book "Ideas Of Improvisation." The first example is also the first poem in the book—

WHITMAN’S SAMPLER
a DJ Reneg8d remix

To begin with, take warning, I am . . .

far different from what you suppose;
I do not ask any . . . delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
Then the eyes close . . . and . . . speed forth to the darkness,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Entering but for a minute . . . see a sight beyond 

all the pictures and poems ever made,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, 

love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
O I think it is not for life I am chanting . . . my chant of lovers
         . . . it must be for death . . .
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, 

and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn; which too long 

I was offering to feed my soul.
And what I assume you shall assume;  

Stop this day and night with me, and
you shall possess the origin of . . . 

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end,

held by this electric self out of the pride 

of which I utter poems,

I too but signify at the utmost 

a little wash’d-up drift, 

A few sands and dead leaves to gather, 

gather, and merge myself as part 

of this mystery—

and here we stand

in the mystical moist night-air

and from time to time, 

here, take this gift . . .

The ghost poem here reads—

“a different sea

the darkness and swelling

of green leaves”

This haiku which to me is about a cup of tea, is in the voice of Apophenia but any reader may decide otherwise. Here is another example.

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITHIN THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE 

(a free jazz of ashes buried or scattered by a dead? cat in a different key)

These are perhaps 

some points 

on the musical taste of

The Black Raspberries,

although we thought 

the shrubs might be 

mostly petals and

it was quite a pinch 

when a light note later

the purpose of the thorns 

entered us 

for the first time

like a Pointillist painting 

of a pond that Cecil

tailored in the moment 

by pleating with 

some fate

we couldn’t 

fathom back then,

yet felt again 

and again beyond

the petaling of 

those phrases, 

in the syntax 

that arranged them,   

not ours 

to diagram, 

like a garden, 

but to enter in, 

and sometimes   

to venture out, 

before the feeling

seemed to

nearly inspire 

some type of 

blade-dancing

raised up to 

the point of 

a sound science.

The ghost poem here is:

"Perhaps the light 

of a pond 

beyond the diagram 

but feeling nearly 

the point of it."

This poem can be read as explicating Ashbery’s aesthetics where his poems arc towards some asymptotic limit never to be reached or as an explication of my own colorpuntal form as well. Another poem from the book is—

FATHER, SON AND THE WHOLLY GHOST

We pray mainly

in the alleys of memory.

There, shards of smiles glitter 

on the ground,

but here we wear the same name

—almost—identical scars,

though you can’t or won’t

remember what date I was born.

Something trickles

down the side

of my face.

In some versions this may be all

you have taught me:

needles are hollow lies

and collapse as many families

as veins.

Now a prisoner in death's camp,

you wither each day

until we may count your T-cells

with one hand.

When the phone beckons

and Mama’s voice begs

Please buy a dark suit to wear

I may be wrong—

but I say

don’t some of us

wear black 

all day

everyday

anyway?

The ghost poem:

"We pray there 

but here you can't

 In some versions 

a prisoner 

we may phone 

but don't"

And finally this last example.

THE COLTRANE IN YOU

(por il miglior fabbro)

probably begins

before the first Oh!

of any emotion 

to möbius like the circle 

at the center of God.

Meaning inky-haired & lightheaded,

you start to dream of tracing—

in tree frog hues—

a sonic essay

that Alice or Stevie

(in Wonderland)

arranged over doubts

the black of our mouths

splay open.

And since the tint

is half the sound

your belief,

(in the feeling of faith

rather than gothic of god)

becomes more than 

mere ode or elegy

borne in a mouthpiece.

Isn’t that why

at the wheel of the warship 

of worship you vie 

for the harmony

of suspended chords 

in righteous unravel

or strive to maroon

at the bluest end 

of Duende?

Perhaps this means

certain starred charts

—once incomplete—

have now become

your guide

in a bitter suite

as incensed ropes of smoke 

muscle music from hunger. 

Splay, how “What if?”

preys to probe

the pouty mouth

of imagination—

cartographer

of our interior—

to query if

it’s the lion or angel

in “Evangelion”

that extends 

the swing of most triads

or swells our

Hammond organs?

And since all great musicians 

know there are only

twelve ways to kneel

and kiss the ground,

surely the second O

of said emotion frays

to mean all things 

in modulation,

how therefore to be drawn

around a circle of fifths 

ruled by ratios—

even irrationally—

as you Picasso keys

into a piano’s grand motif.

A quasi Cubist riff—

perhaps brayed into a bridge—

to re-choir

something like

the Acknowledgement

of our father.

Maybe a relative minor

to absolve some resolve 

towards Resolution

or flip the full-hipped logic

as you Bearden the burden

of our double basis

until battered sticks shatter

and every Zildjan shivers

with symbols unseen

of the quest inside

your questions.

Because a talent

may also be a weight,

your gift gives pause—

purpling in turbulent

Pursuance of relief

—wind from a box—

spilling like

certain bottled spirits

—e pluribus unum—

until God is an American 

Sonnet Wanda worked

into the Psalms 

of our unanthemed hands.

Since prayer is a petition

people sign with their lips

your ongoing gaze flips 

inward to cast bated phrases

that nearly sync 

in their artful craft

bobbing about

a more Lydian theory 

of the Lyric

on modal lines 

which appear

to conflate 

or conflict

until they’re well nigh

wholly writ.

The 3 ghost poems are:

"The first dream 

arranged doubts 

our mouths half sound"

"Circle of fifths 

Picasso riff 

a logic of shivers" 

"Wind spilling 

bottled spirits 

into prayer"

The last two of these of course are Senryu. 

These should be enough examples to allow any reader to competently navigate the whole of each poem. The idea of poems being multidimensional is of course part of my HyperQbist aesthetic which is sketched out elsewhere on my blog. There are also many more references to my complete spiritual/philosophical system in the other poems in the book, beginning with the Walt Whitman cento at the beginning. The notes to that poem point out that said poem 

“is a cento of lines from Walt Whitman poems. The symbol “i” is used in engineering contexts to denote an electrical current and is also used in mathematical contexts to denote the square root of negative one or the Imaginary Unit of Complex Numbers (a type of multitude.) Thus the symbol i can be understood in this poem to both sing the body electric and signify that it contains multitudes.” Happy reading!