Click to read Ray’s previous installments.

Human Value

It is the right to crystallize
people you find lacking worth.
You gum your faculties. I am
not as sharp as a diamond and
will not let you shape me

     or carve some eternal chant
     into my soul. My soul is a piece
     of bone, rubbed in sand and dirt.
     Do not use me for entertainment,
     stealing and penetrating my land.

          I am too much for you to exclude.
          I am not from the living light. Yet,
          you wish my presence; you use it
          for non-purpose. I am not human
          to you, a plastic rhinestone discovery

               which you promptly throw away.
               I am not allowed my false death.
               Let you not keep me & let me take
               what you wanted to steal from me,
               that which you never wanted except

                    to erase, me. The minerals are plush
                    with value, treason against whatever
                    luxury you find satisfying, in flouncing
                    my sadness. I skirt your dominion and
                    weighted leverage in act of myself,

                         committal non-commitment to flesh
                         and in Victorian reason. Treasonous.
                         Let my physiology defy choice, is not
                         hyperbolic biology of worlds that end.
                         It is ending. The unknown is not a lie.

                              Resuscitation of mysticism from
                              the simile of self-abnegation. Repeat
                              to me the refrain refracting myself
                              from being anything like your soul-
                              wounded diatribe. I am no diamond.

Material Conclusions

What remains of anatomy
is its disposition to hurt.
I suppose some of us only
talk about what they do not
know. I suppose some of us

     speak in rallying force
     against what they do not know.
     I am clouted with other’s
     memories of the system as
     it was during the war.

          What remains of anatomy
          is its disposition to hurt.
          My body carries the history
          of a system wanting me
          to be non-material. Except

               all scars are material, all
               memory is material, all war
               is material, and Trump is
               material. I decide to make
               my protests material and

                    daub limelight on the fact
                    that all anatomy has the
                    potential to hurt and to
                    hurt is material. Abstractly
                    you can call what can’t be

                         articulated the soul, though
                         eventually you will fill
                         the soul with words, siphon
                         meaning from the words,
                         until you must find another.

Postlapsarian Conclusions

These are my postlapsarian
conclusions: an alcoholic’s
confessional. I wouldn’t be
if I weren’t. But I am, so it
goes. Please flip to page 43.

     If you are still here I warn
     that you will find this trite
     and will probably want to end
     the system at hand. I guess
     that is the point. Don’t pity

          me and my final conclusions
          about society: something worth
          escaping. After my harsh fall
          there was nothing left but to
          choose between an abusive

               relationship, a traitor’s life,
               and spiritual death. It isn’t
               as if I even believe in spirit
               or soul. Perhaps that is now
               something I’ve lost, something

                    God deemed fit to take from
                    me. Do not pity me. You are
                    worth more than that; and so,
                    after my best friend committed
                    suicide, I, too, took a vow

                         of abstinence. Not unlike my
                         vow of celibacy from the year
                         before. There is no rapist
                         involved, this time; but then,
                         are you to say he took from me

                              so as to bring me to the light?
                              Goddamn him and his weak
                              pity. It is him I set myself to
                              break, a spirit so fallen it can
                              only write a diary of negation.

Tritanomalous Conclusions

I don’t see shades of yellow. No
metaphor. My cornea crisp, sunflakes,
made dull from ochreday. It’s late.
I remember being five-years-old.
The blonde girls would correctly

     name the Crayola coloring wax,
     crayons. Sunflower, icterine, ochre,
     saffron, dandelion, naming them
     Loyola, the saints beside themselves
     in scruples, marching from plurality.

          All these silly littles, these sallied ones.
          I shall be yellow carnation, then, said
          one, I shall be gold resin, then, in set
          doublebloom, tang of twin stars slain
          unseeable by my eye. All the same.

               I lack the wit to tell the creatures
               how the wax will melt, how it will
               smell. It is tangy, blooms in mustard
               of the inevitable celestial hamburger.
               The clay, they are all the same.

                    Do I deny that yellow stars exist?
                    I do. Ah! Too bold. Let me again.
                    You’d never know from looking
                    at me that I count myself as them.
                    What is the greatest horror known

                          to humankind? It is the laughter of
                          some ruffled dress, faking, laughing
                          in her own singled-out duress, set.
                          I lost myself in harmony, dance, hues
                         and yellow hues that scrape the eyes.

Ray Osborn [a Creative Writing MFA at Syracuse University] is sick of writing these autobiographies of the soul stuck in hell, for lack of a better word. In general, Ray is interested in not talking about one’s self and, if you must know, Ray’s work focuses on ekphrasis, elegy, and visibility.

The post Final Conclusions: #MeToo Poetry appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

Nativity

William Carlos Williams
tried to write an accurate
history of the Americas.
It began with acclimation
of Christ but soon lagged

     from the inured inhabitants.
     The beginning is always
     hard to discuss precluded
     by the fact that beginnings
     are very nearly always

          irrelevant to the gross wine
          that invests itself throughout
          the story. My story resides
          in the writing of untenable
          tracks of land laid unnamed,

               then fenced and source
               claimed. In my homelands
               there is The Great Lake,
               not few. Scenes of victimed
               land espouse the right

                    to remembering. I can’t
                    remember when Christ
                    was conceived within me
                    but since then it has been
                    the writhing unwriting

                         of a beginning in which I
                         was drunk on the idea of
                         becoming myself. It is
                         not for me to say. It is not
                         for me to say. But who?

Praised Conclusions II

These are my tiny receipts for
the soft devotionals lettered up,
let loose, invocation framed
against a world that is made
not entirely by hand but also

     by the unspeaking inhabitants.
     It is the sift in jutting cosmics
     poured out after the holy prayer
     makes a meek-faced appearance
     and, reeled in clear assurance,

          says what a world might mean.
          This is not such a simple thing
          unless it be in the matter of all
          minds working against violence.
          We enter the mosque in order

               to divine the truth with those
               under the weight of thought
               in deviating gasp of branches.
               It is to make the world neat
               in hopes that it will unfold

                    from a compendium which
                    flourishes rich with voices
                    arching towards a sky filled
                    with reminders of holiness.
                    To touch a withering husk

                         and make it fit for the world,
                         I would lay out chalked palms
                         in genuflection, turning this
                         dirt as though the earth sat
                         neatly in little calcifications.

White Conclusions

The white mask placed
over God leers without
hesitation. They compile
a false visage, not the face
but a shape forming lines

     from the sheering of soft
     fabric. The image of souls
     are misapprehensions of
     holiness. The sentimental blot
     He deems righteousness, is

          clean, driving into being
          our beings, to be himself,
          masks want to be immaculate,
          tell me I am an imitation.
          Tell me I am a simplicity.

               Clouds trimmed in white
               gouache do not imply rain.
               The moisture made print
               of health on the earth is
               not made from whiteness.

                    God is not white, not man.
                    Do you not feel a tearing
                    of deception when the sky
                    leaks, is lightening and
                    thunder. It is vanishment.

                         It is the clang of echolalia.
                         I would rather exclude the
                         lie that is white and barren,
                         not in echolalia, until I can
                         find the image to save myself.

Gloaming

I thought there was something
special about every gloaming.
When I thought I would go back
to prison it was gloaming, a calm,
I repeated to me. I did it no justice

     and believed that I couldn’t
     deserve imprisonment. Fate
     seemed to align my freedom
     with my ritualistic viewing
     of gloaming. It was my white-

          ness. I was not lucky and
          if I called it God I would be
          denying humanity. To a vast
          fray of people, experience, this
          is the experience of whiteness.

               A friend, after my release,
               jokingly told me I was woke.
               But gloaming is not white.
               It is that eye-burning-blue
               rimmed by the welfare of fade

                    where I am kept, myself, safe
                    in sky. Think of the fate of fake
                    sin. I turned myself into the cops
                    and wasn’t beaten or murdered
                    in cold blood. But what stopped

                         my devotionals of false dusk
                         was a woman, 8-months along,
                         violated by the stone bench
                         she was resting on. She spoke
                         to me in a bitter-sad-taught

                              humour, was resolved to say
                              the fact that will always win
                              custody of self in jail. Hymn.
                              “Imagine a universe in which
                              everything they tell you is a lie.”

The post Conclusions #3 appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

Miss last week’s post? Catch up at this link.

Fascist Conclusions

At the beginning of the war
there were waves that dipped
below the surface of my body
and trapped panic in scores
of gilt fish. The illuminated

     manuscript of my body
     was rapt to those watching
     in delayed fascination, hoping
     for more of this sensational
     distraction. We were, all of

          us, distracted from seeing how
          money could transpose desire
          into reality. My desire is not
          worth more than the seaweed
          that obscures the dubious

               features of something without
               a face. It watches me from
               eyes without a face. This
               might have been a 1960’s
               French horror film, though

                    I am not sure if the end will
                    grip us silent in our desire
                    for the hopeful dovetail to
                    ascend. A dove is the total
                    of all its features and this

                         face does little more than
                         impress its glint onto bodies,
                         looking for more bodies,
                         sanctioning bodies who desire
                         delivery. At the beginning of

                              the war I doubted whether
                              there were still such fatal
                              creatures determined to rise,
                              waiting to devise the future,
                              the surface already concluded.

Censored Conclusions

The censorship you speak
to my body divides me
with doubt. You devise
living renditions of human
forms from incarceration.

     You quiet my humming
     mantras of coded respect
     for those who are quieted.
     You say you know what
     is best for me, body, soul

          and mind all divided. I am
          thinking of you now, how you
          are wrapped up with fear
          for the harmonics of kinship,
          its multi-vocal drawl. Fearless.

               Before the war there was
               solace hiding a tumult of
               discontent and malintent.
               Now that my enemy speaks
               loudly without restraint

                    I know they have made
                    their closed conclusions
                    about me, are already so
                    sickly to the idea of my
                    existence. I will it louder.

Politic Stimuli

Its system is to remain intact
and consistent within itself.
Then there must be our rule
& order, our order. It makes
itself and continues itself. It

     wills itself into another system.
     It wades you in modes, chains,
     logic, and coherency that bind
     in money, reasonable enterprise.
     But the cogs and wheels are full

          of rust and soon found patinated
          from lack of treaty with rueful sky
          whose eventual abrasion leaks.
          Your progression of human use,
          man-made lust of keeping things

               the same, unchanged, and sessile
               inspires my admonition, chaotic lick.
               You say paradise for all is in our toil,
               is for the good of the system’s stride.
               The system runs on human energy.

                    In all honesty, and beyond doubt,
                    the stimuli for this system are
                    wholly and utterly motivated by
                    the dictums of the system itself.
                    The body being just metaphor.

Threnody

This is a threnody for
myself. I am not to be
reborn and have yet
to be buried, though
am, still alive. It is

     not an original thought
     nor is it one I wish
     for you to feel sympathy.
     This is my only address
     to the reader, and as

          such let us make it
          a short one. There are
          visitations and proofs
          of a beyond in the adret
          minds of those wrapped

              in the insulating dogma
               of power displayed.
               Let us think. If the
               world is indeed perfect,
               as the Lord created it,

                   with all the creatures
                    made from holy plans,
                    then why not live as
                    though this life is worth
                    living? Nietzschean

                        formalism aside, let us
                         revel in the good work
                         of religion as a system
                         for peace, though with
                         reserve. The threnody

                             states that I will be
                              remembered. Let this
                              be no threnody then.
                              It is the system’s weak
                              attempt at my destruction.

Fear

It tussles in coils of vines around
throats in wild vertigo. It warns
of vivisections, making waning bits
of human soul now left. The system
bites through itself, ouroboric

    and ready to repeal good faith
     into paranoia as a last resort.
     The fear has gripped me now
     in growth like dueled aeonium
     whose devilish tendrils rise

         in infernal orations of the sun
          -chirping carnal black canaries
          with cherried chest outspread-
          Maybe not ouroboric, no, not
          held so close to the infinite yet

              is it me to undress these weighty
               systems, all taxidermy of living
               technology? It must be, I do
               my work out of fear that nothing
               will arrive from lament of history.

                   And you do your work in fear
                    of the unknown, plastered in it,
                    the fear of your own subtropical
                    climate, that it might one day
                    draw the histrionics of the jungle.

Presidential Conclusions

No death for you yet. You cannot
have you, and I will not let you.
I will take from you the dawning
bloom, call it my blood, a lasting
dying, yet, yet never alive. You,

    your red bloom, I put it inside me.
     You, deep in my sauce, maudlin,
     total bill of madness made to rile
     into the violence that is brick, red,
     bricked. You secretly put the rusty

         bloom of inevitable death in me,
          permanent, brick, unnatural and
          red, blood red. My eyes bleed
          your blood. The bloom is perfect
          and blends, bled, blooming like

              Dr. Jekyll’s crepuscular sore, raw.
               I steal from him and from you,
               Mr. Hyde, unable to escape self
               or beauty of self, if only, if only.
               If only bravery of self could carve

                   the ribald color from you. But
                    that is not bravery. You exalt
                    in a register fit to carry history
                    but the jungle in me is riling,
                    is no Tropics. I will burn you

                        until remains are only the burnt
                         nothing, if only. Me to burn more.

Ray Osborn [a Creative Writing MFA at Syracuse University] is sick of writing these autobiographies of the soul stuck in hell, for lack of a better word. In general, Ray is interested in not talking about one’s self and, if you must know, Ray’s work focuses on ekphrasis, elegy, and visibility.

The post Conclusions #2: #MeToo Poetry appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

The following poems concern themselves with themes and topics of sexual assault, sexual harassment, abuse, and sexism. Please continue reading with this in mind.

Editor’s Introduction:

For the past two weeks, survivors of sexual assault have been under siege by coverage and discussions surrounding the Supreme Court appointment hearings for Brett Kavanaugh. These events, broadcasted loudly and relentlessly across media outlets and social networks, act as a daily reminder of the violence that these survivors endured. Processing this trauma proves difficult even at the best of times and under the most helpful circumstances. In the face of the vitriolic, dehumanizing hate directed at survivors in the wake of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh, the process becomes nearly impossible. This week, Ray Osborn asks us to consider the thoughts and practices that allow for this sort of abuse to exist. Although only one of the poems, “Nacreous Conclusions”, is about rape, the other three poems are about the kinds of attitudes that allow for the continued acceptance of sexual assault as an excusable norm by our government and society. These poems explore perspectives on being a survivor, the experience of objectification, and what it’s like to be thought of as “less than” or “not even” human. Osborn has written both a testimony and an indictment.

To survivors, from our October contributor, Ray Osborn, and the Broadly Textual Editing Staff, We Believe You!

St. Augustine’s Conclusions

This is the lie that he told:
the soul is the haven of
memory, home for thought.
In the beginning, she liked
to talk about world politics.
 
     Now she will only speak
     when her lover desires her
     to speak. She once spoke
     about the problems of racism,
     environmentalism, fascism,
 
          orientalism, religion, and
          poverty. They were all the
          result of human needs not
          being met. The simplicity
          of it made her forget about
 
               her own situation, how
               sexism takes the soul and
               finds it a home, foster child.
               He brought her opal and
               pearl but she did not quickly
 
                    forget who she had been.
                    Her body foraged a land,
                    subterranean and hidden,
                    in the past anecdotes of
                    what she once was, lithe
 
                         building made from sand
                         where her soma waited
                         to run dry into the water
                         and disperse secretly
                         beyond where he was able
 
                              to touch her. He lied to her,
                              tells her he owns her body,
                              demands her making. He told
                              her she was like a fine system
                              made from gracious thought.  

Uncertain Conclusions

The mysteries that hold
her are tacit, are bridal
exasperations. Any
conclusion made must
be an uncertain one.
 
     It is eerie feminine
     unfulfillment driven
     by the light of this
     thin, careful buzz. I am
     uncertain. If you were
 
          to hold me close so
          that I forgot who you
          are, she would whisper
          frail warnings against
          the noise that comes
 
               from love. She might
               be right to ignore you.
               I cannot bear to leave
               the tangent of your sighs.
               Of her refusal to show
 
                    anything on a clear grid,
                    you are lit to wonder at her
                    certain mechanical ukase
                    to leave. It is how I could
                    be wrong about myself,
 
                         you say, as though my
                         inner disposition to make
                         truth regarding myself
                         is merely patination,
                         accumulation of particles
 
                              shed from mechanics of
                              my softer parts’ action.
                              These are reactions to
                              inner inconsistencies,
                              you say, as if with soul.

Nacreous Conclusions

You don’t cull your words
carefully, and touch my hip
with the ease of someone
unable to scrutinize space.
It would be permissible,
 
     the way you touch me with
     the impunity of your male
     body, if I had time to think.
     I am a shell, an oceanic rind,
     examined and used by senses,
 
          a hint to your animalian eyes.
          This is a warning sign to your
          handsy phallic knowledge,
          careful certainty, thoughtful
          considerations of the fact
 
               of me. You lower yourself
               into my orifices without
               knowing that I refuse to let
               you out, no exit for the gaze
               that breaks under my words.
 
                    I explain myself to myself,
                    transpose woman through you.
                    It is my nacreous shell-shock
                    in the making of beauty which
                    you do not understand, try to
 
                         gather me. I slip from your
                         eyes in iridescence, deny you
                         entrance to my play in mirth.
                         I am pushing you away, you,
                         in midst of being found out.

Hope

When I fracture myself
into bits of wreckage
I call out the sun. I must
say to myself a thing
slung low and pious in
 
     the sky. I must always
     fight against tessellating it
     with my bits as something
     to behold. The sun is a
     meagre lover and can’t
 
          hold my body as I can.
          Once I thought my body
          was beautiful and could
          jar the sun. Only now I
          look and I see sunlight
 
               collecting me, putting me
               neatly away. I wonder
               who I fractured myself
               for. These glimmers, they
               were me once. I call out
 
                    an aubade but there is
                    no arrival until the
                    plains latch dry with
                    self-doubt. Am I just a
                    system? Tell me I am alive.

Ray Osborn [a Creative Writing MFA at Syracuse University] is sick of writing these autobiographies of the soul stuck in hell, for lack of a better word. In general, Ray is interested in not talking about one’s self and, if you must know, Ray’s work focuses on ekphrasis, elegy, and visibility.

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