- Jeremy Hight
Six GIF poems // Jeremy Hight
From Jeremy, a note on the process:
I post on Facebook asking for gifs and people post for about a day.
I then look at the wild range of gifs for a while till a theme emerges in my head and write in sequence
a poem that is interpreting all the gifs in the order posted.
I write the poems fast like the memory walk poems
I used to write (holding an old memory and writing of its details and incompletion). Usually 5 to 10 min tops to make it flow freeform from the gifs not from me overthinking. It has been a fun experiment.
Death and life in a day
That sun grins warm fire above
and mortality is a couple holding hands (one of chaos and possible ends and one of sea calm)
the great unifier is that skeleton beneath almost to at once wave in greeting and disappear
in the skin of smiles and the skin of photos and that veneer that is now and moments end to end
life at once feels infinite like the unskin of open space and gas and stars
and the finite ends of burrito with so much unseen inside
the fates and chance and the calculus of others and things is a cat sitting in wait
the end of it all will see those bones melt under soil or to ash like candle
goodbye a fog in the air and that residue shimmering on the edges and surfaces of memory
a million things may go wrong and seem to fall from that robin blue sky
or rip open as though the very ground is suddenly wound and its weeping
as though time and space are both the cigarette intentionally lit to burn to nothing
and the freak fire that sometimes seem born in the unflesh of instants and the air itself
and yet seconds and inches and steps is both and ever forward tumbling
and a nimble cat of balance in it all
again there is that sun above
that embrace as though the shared floodplains of the palms of lovers holding hands
of falling and standing
of the ever forward
and the illusory standing still of such things as present and a singular moment
as though cut from that very dermis of everywhere and everything
Frankensteinian is the sense of pause as though it is one new body
Not the parts of so much before
The hours arrive as though blank empty plate
Filled in with the facile brief sensory shimmers
Like so much fried chicken
Like eggs laid geometric as some house of things to consume away
That sometime dessert of a temporal sense of balance
Atoms gnat storm ionize to either the beating on the head of sensation and vampiric memory
Or anointed present as though that award ..that singular island…
And it is all both the hiker ever moving
And the water ever in wait
The symbiosis co-dependent of shooting out into a trillion stars
And standing as though even the grass and birds and air is too at rest..near asleep
Death is the thumbs down of bloom and the unbloomed
It is the sad faced blank
The death in office metal and clock
The death in the dull suit pressed daily to wear
The death in stasis and the dull immaculate
Life is that errant laser
The absurd as much as that window teethed with light and things beyond
The stomach pain that is a reminder that one is alive
As much as the torment of the chaos in living
It is the glasses held down face of shock and disappointment
And of wonder
The slapping hand as though of sentient tree full of shiny red apples
Temptation and failing
This is the duality of playing with a fork while wracked with hunger
The dichotomy of rabbit run and wolf’s teeth at each turn
The raging bear and snapping bird of both fear and risk and that inner honey sweet inertia
It all spins endlessly like a chicken in a disco
Regretting nothing
Waiting to move
Lights erupting spans of color in all direction
As the very floor for a moment feels sure cement and ashen
And to move may end with the sunset calm serene day’s end as warm embrace
Or the unblooming anti- flowers of a world twitching forever somewhere somehow
Toward undoings
Toward erasures
Toward war
But all this will wait…for now all the fates and chaos
The rage of dissolution
And the quiet of things in some sort of balance
The shadow and fog creep of death and the grave
And the firework blossoms of as yet unwritten joy
Hold hands
Quiet
In wait
In sun
Self
It is as opaque and absurd as a dancing mime pumpkin in a graveyard
It is the layered architecture of a taco floating in open sky
And a tumbling
Ever tumbling seeming backwards infinite
Cthulu holding tentacled a book of everything and nothing
The deep well to hollow eyed gaze
Of a chicken seeing ground where once was crowd
Dirt where once was kin
Soil where perhaps was the fleshy mirror
Of another
To reinforce maybe
Confirm
Elucidate
That gravity within despite storms and float and that ever fall
And absence is the crowd
And one is but a trillion sad atoms
A dust storm of matter and nothing between
It is the fall of bits of paper before
A celebratory hunchback
In that instance
Confluence
When things seem to actually move together
In the right places
For once
One’s hand hitting the other in a near miss
Yet clap ripping the air as sound
And that awkwardness just maybe has some balance
The winged skeleton within relaxing for a time
On that goofy cloud that is skin and face and presence
Wednesday (itself but skin over bones moving as they do)
And the waves chaotic will break skeletal to foam and shore
But the seeing
The eye to cerebral cortex to brain meat in skull
Perception
May ride that wave for an instant
And identity may be triumphant for a bit
Whole
Amongst the chaos
Of remembering
And forgetting
And becoming
And sustaining some name or names
And the eventual dying
And the child once owner of these eyes
Shimmering in the hall of memory
Shot across these aging arms and taught skin
He once cried
He once laughed
He for moments was just that tricycle and its turn
As much as that fear that squalled near surely infinite
And that crowd of self rises in indecision like inner tides and wave
That age fearless for a moment was all
As was that terror and loss sure to eat the world
And existing at all
That persistence
Is death and some kind of creation and magic all at once
While the primordial ancient wide mouthed great toothed
Beast of all else rages on
A T Rex hungry mouth
Of minutes and hours
Of doubt and that sure confidence
The trillion little deaths and births that make up a day
A week
A year
A life
Yet still somehow we are here
boats against storm
flesh and bone against minutia and giants
Gnat to Hurricane
and even the air cool or warm at this moment touching its very edge
Against your skin ceases and calms along its shore
Seasons/Fall
It begins like a car full of youth and possibility and that bit of chaos of the un
Written and unborn moments and the possible open raw from the usual familiar
Or math or measure
Like a blood red leaf anew amongst the summer oxygen and sun
As though cartoon dog days of summer must begin
Their evaporation away
And yet it all spins on
Like orbits and planets and sun angle and numbers jagged elbowed
And the cold steel of measure
And yet something arises with the mystery of night dark leather
And the sinew of guitar string bends to loud sound of things new
And sudden of the shade and cool and heat of fall
As music breaks into the air to hang for an instant
Astronautic before caressing the ear
And the snows of winter and the arctic polar vortex
Are for now but a white cat struggling partially exposed
Into the box of these transitional and transititory days in time
And the spin of planet’s orb
And that sweater or coat from summer’s heat and simple clothes
May scream dork in that other atmosphere within
The storms of mind and skull and the chill of past
And scream scream scream the awkward like the itch of fabric on dermis
The itch of chill onto once heat wave open sky
And the day is into cool evening drunk with atmosphere
The sun like a cigarette in its holder on the finger of day to night
And there is a dark elegance to breeze and leaves turning
Noir lips to skin of October
A dark shimmering beauty as stars unfurl in the vault of night
Now cooler as though breathed slow to one’s skin
Shimmer to a physical kiss of air along the face and body
Celestial
Cool
Perhaps a forever for a moment
And yet there still is that whisp of summer like a curious cat
Lost and looking but bright and of the warmed endlessness not of chill and stars
But afternoons and water and all those embers now of summer cooling
Away
But almost
Touch
And it is as though sky is of quieted gods and heroes of lightning and rain
Summer’s now silencing and departing
Winter’s as yet unborn to this earth
And like sweet baby elephant’s ears
The air lifts
And falls
Still a bit warm
Still a bit cool
And the silence of midnight between the cars and sirens
Between the airplanes and transient music
Between the dawn fire
And the sun resting cold into western horizon
It is now
Here
The immeasurable beyond the inches and degrees
Of things and air
But the breath of the pause
In land and sky between
A new day
It dawns near invincible
Sure as new year’s resolutions and muscle memory
Morning be it adorned in fog or early sun rides horizon to sky to all
Like a sassy Mona Lisa….assuredness and mystery at once in minutes and atmosphere
As the corpse bride moon lies pale and dew melts away
And seconds blink ok ok ok dutiful as the lids and lashes of a blinking eye
And something primordial and molten and unformed is to be soon
The shape of a day as yet just melted cheese lava pour
And shudder and shake and stutter and stall is the early hours
That sky and that grass and that number and name on a calendar
But a hungry mouth await milk and cereal
To consume and taste with all senses
To enjoy or to drown
As the late morning races near yet out of focus and context
A shaggy dog hug beast on a perpetual shore
Of becoming
And being
And the fates and the quantum algorithmic butterfly effect soup of elements
Is a dancing Halloween monster ever looming before pale background
At once warming and alarming
With details washed clean beyond the most immediate
And the face of a day is to be a cartoon morphing loop
Smashing each instant to the grains and dust of past once in clear view
And that face of early morning fades and hides away
To past and past perception like a cartoon
Face blanking out into that molten cheese lava of what was once becoming
And afternoon rides in stunned and a chaos of bright detail
Like a child’s birthday party glowing red bright detail like hats and surprise and the hurricane
Of too many details to experience at once in the glow
And the hours and sky ride cooler into evening like penguin surging a frozen wave
Never cresting
never breaking fully away
and day shape shifts to beauty or beast
the cooling colors and temperatures of the range from discovery
to some unseen monstrous betrayal
and yet that cool morning in recall glides on now in memory
like a gentle cow riding udders
and day beats its drums against the skeleton crowd of night sky
at sunset
dying embers to the charcoal night with stars soon to fall
as night was long believed to great weight
and vapors to again fall
onto this earth
and the day is done
it fades to that horizon to glint on last wine colored shard of cloud
gelatinous in memory and against the cascade of night
till the far off light of perhaps another dawn
THE HYPER DETAIL AND UNMOORING TO INCOMPLETION/ “ AH YES I REMEMBER”
Memory is that bear once spotted in a forest so clear to each single hair and element of light
In now cartoon sky and a mouth full of impossibility and forgetting..teeth like piano keys now
And that field that summer that honey warm sun and forever
Now broken in places to holes and the sweet squirrel on that tree now with a ten foot tongue
As that forever unmoors to break to past
Memory is digestive
It is acids like stomach
And that sky with that first kiss so sure and fine in detail
But sketch of charcoal and ash now
Before dancing cats where once was childhood breaking away lip to lip toward adulthood
And present to future is that black open great celestial nothing before things
As yet unborn
And present twitches and spasms on
Time ever the cigarette glow mini sun flame to ash and away
And illness comes on the carousel of days infecting some random Saturday
The moths of time already eating those dull soup drinking hours to nothing
And the farewells are not just funerals and ships and planes off to adventure
one must mourn or cheer the very minute..the oatmeal dull measure
Of hour as it dies tired into the very next and on and on
May a thousand hands in some warm sea sunset wave farewell to the episodes
Of a day
May that piece of bacon that morning decades past sear into memory with all the other
Billion small forgettings as though with a face a conversation and name
Erasure into the open maw of past is legion
While memory is but synaptic smoke
From a cigar made to trash once lit alight and aflame in a moment bright and so present
And past is smiling pigs in suits and cartoons bursting impossible musculatures underwater
It is the amber insect shard remnant and it is the filmic shreds bereft increasingly
Of context of that forever…of those names once surely almost of the same body now forgotten
And there is the typing dog in a bed against these tides at least
The desire to remember and that shared name in written or verbal conversation
A held hornet in words
And thankfully there is the grinning joyous hallucinatory frog of perception in this dullard fog of detail present
The eyes great mouths hungry
To devour
Savor
This now as it has already begun to slip to memory and recall to the rivers and mouths of past and future’s as yet unborn hungry mouth with perceptual teeth sharp as knife end
And these words are already mottled with the seeds of forgetting
Language
Meaning rests in letters at times cozy like a cat making a burrito of itself under covers
Other times it breaks wild like a coke binge cheetah
And now it rides semi hieroglyph in emoji and in the words implied in filmic loop gif
And metaphor when the collision of images and ideas fails is wtf…like that police song
The metaphor is the Frankenstein monster of language..the sewn collision of parts where
The bread recipe details of language cannot capture such layers and masses as love or war
Yet it the great shimmering beauty…the hurricane level power in a few words…concise
But mundanity and the unsaid are the true the beasts
And cliché and tedium in words hangs low and dull but in time dies into last breath out
Like dying skeleton cirrus corpse of thunderstorm but the gust births anew..always has
And block and desert of dry river before expression is eventually but a tiny robot punched
To smithereens by a once lying and still dog
And like a dancing heart or jet streams over years and wind it progresses on and books and sentences
Rise up like cloud from vapor…like rain from once blank dull sky
And in this smart phone narcotized moment it can seem language has died down to dullard text
Bored in bondage by apps and repetition like apps are opiates and the world is bereft of deeper meanings
And on the lines of streets cities crowds pass clotted..shadows and bees..grouped and alone
Yet such negatives details and constructs like “modernity” lie like ghosts and ether
Die into the rage of moment…of the burn of the necessity for words and the odd cuniform
For the odd sculpture garden in snow that are these bent black lines in this field of digital snow
And the mullet in the 80’s was just a haircut as “now” like “modernity” is only born in the as yet
Still and unformed future and the pale human desire to look backward..to prescribe and define
What was once just the visual and emotional noise and chaos of senses and space in time
Nostalgia, time and categorizing for some comfort…those are the true vampires
And all the bits flurry gnat atomed past and around and words and moments and a dermis between
Things and people and the unknown and politics and fire futures or scorpion stingers in past and memory
And desktop computers die to past..laptops fade….smart phones become wearables…
Reality becomes augmented or escaped into virtual and yet language..the ancient..the dinosaur
Before shiny present to future
Persists…remains
And text feeds image…as image feeds text…a raining and a bleeding…paper to torrent..screen to flood
And words cloak…and can conspire..can limit….can encode…but can also break free…redefine..
Break false binaries and closed simplistic assumption like the containers all words are (semiotics)
And like a cat in a robot suit words are avatars…texting is skin and bodies and things beneath deep
And this text is as ephemeral as smoke….will be lost in time..extinguished in erasure and forgetting
As all things simply race face bendingly forward as they have in the great invisible
Politics a group of raving cats of illogic to ego zit popping in actions and words
And this is but a ghost
Seen by few
Made somewhere no one else saw
To fade
Unless for a time some soul holds some piece of it for it touches in their inner fires…beyond this dermis of silences and distances…this crumb ..this archipelago to break free into another
//
Jeremy Hight writes poetry, fiction and text art experiments using different forms of social media and tech.
His short story collection about identity and social media (I am the ghost here) was published by be About it press http://beaboutitpress.tumblr.com/post/109127405164/new-short-story-collection-by-jeremy-hight-i-am . His short story collection made by watching sci-fi films and taking out all the tech ( What Remains) was published by Free Dogma press http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/jeremy-hight/what-remains-narrative-film-erasures/paperback/product-22909515.html.
His collaborative text and image new media project (Carrizo Parkfield Diaries) that worked with Psychology, Seismology and memory is in the permanent digital collection of the Whitney Museum in New York http://artport.whitney.org/gatepages/artists/nakatani/new_index.html.
He lives with his soul mate Lisa and awesome cat named Samson.