another world is possible, another world is present

Jim Leftwich
December 2017

Mask of Anubis

William Carlos Williams
from “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”
(1952 – 1954)

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Emily Dickinson
from a letter to Thomas Higginson​ ​(1870)

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?

Math of Anubis

I see a car or a golf cart with a fluffy cloud for a roof.
A dog skull laughing and swinging its front legs.
A dancing angel/alien.
A medieval seahorse on one leg swordfighting with an 18th century pirate.
The death mask of Sun Ra.
The pig-demon rising from Hell.
A ghost head floating in the infinite void.
A chicken standing on the head of an interstellar warrior, squawking at a monstrous insect invader who is dancing with his shadow-self.
A labyrinthine battlespace in a mirrored dreamscape.

The title Math of Aruba is derived homeophonically and associationally​ ​from an earlier title, Mask of Anubis. The title Mask of Anubis borrows from strata of expressionistic paganism in Dubuffet’s writings on his thought-process while making his​ ​emprientes. Dubuffet said one should make thousands of these in order​ ​to understand their complete appeal. Beginning in the late 1990s, I ​​have followed at least that much of his instructions. Over time one sees​ ​two things, among the tens of thousands of things one sees, one sees​ ​two things repeatedly, within which reside all the other things one​ ​sees: another world is possible, another world is present. These are​ ​the two visions and versions of the poetic process as ​envisioned by Andre Breton in​ ​1935:

Transform the world, said Marx, change life, said Rimbaud; these two orders are for us one in the same.

Another world is possible​ ​is the voice of Marx, teaching us to​​ attend to the socioeconomics and​ ​politics of our everyday lives. Another world is present is Rimbaud,​ ​reminding us to illuminate with our ongoing research the other worlds we​ ​encounter​ while they are hidden in plain sight.