Aphorisms on Futurism by Mina Loy (1982)

DIE in the Past
Live in the Future.

THE velocity of velocities arrives in starting.

IN pressing the material to derive its essence, matter becomes deformed.

AND form hurtling against itself is thrown beyond the synopsis of vision.

THE straight line and the circle are the parents of design, form the basis of art; there is no limit to their coherent variability.

LOVE the hideous in order to find the sublime core of it.

OPEN your arms to the dilapidated; rehabilitate them.

YOU prefer to observe the past on which your eyes are already opened.

BUT the Future is only dark from outside.
Leap into it—and it EXPLODES with Light.

FORGET that you live in houses, that you may live in yourself—

FOR the smallest people live in the greatest houses.

BUT the smallest person, potentially, is as great as the Universe.

WHAT can you know of expansion, who limit yourselves to compromise?

HITHERTO the great man has achieved greatness by keeping the people small.

BUT in the Future, by inspiring the people to expand to their fullest capacity, the great man proportionately must be tremendous—a God.

LOVE of others is the appreciation of oneself.

MAY your egotism be so gigantic that you comprise mankind in your self-sympathy.

THE Future is limitless—the past a trail of insidious reactions.

LIFE is only limited by our prejudices. Destroy them, and you cease to be at the mercy of yourself.

TIME is the dispersion of intensiveness.

THE Futurist can live a thousand years in one poem.

HE can compress every aesthetic principle in one line.

THE mind is a magician bound by assimilations; let him loose and the smallest idea conceived in freedom will suffice to negate the wisdom of all forefathers.

LOOKING on the past you arrive at “Yes,” but before you can act upon it you have already arrived at “No.”

THE Futurist must leap from affirmative to affirmative, ignoring intermittent negations—must spring from stepping-stone to stone of creative exploration; without slipping back into the turbid stream of accepted facts.

THERE are no excrescences on the absolute, to which man may pin his faith.

TODAY is the crisis in consciousness.

CONSCIOUSNESS cannot spontaneously accept or reject new forms, as offered by creative genius; it is the new form, for however great a period of time it may remain a mere irritant—that molds consciousness to the necessary amplitude for holding it.

CONSCIOUSNESS has no climax.

LET the Universe flow into your consciousness, there is no limit to its capacity, nothing that it shall not re-create.

UNSCREW your capability of absorption and grasp the elements of Life—Whole.

MISERY is in the disintegration of Joy;
Intellect, of Intuition;
Acceptance, of Inspiration.

CEASE to build up your personality with the ejections of irrelevant minds.

NOT to be a cipher in your ambient,
But to color your ambient with your preferences.

NOT to accept experience at its face value.

BUT to readjust activity to the peculiarity of your own will.

THESE are the primary tentatives towards independence.

MAN is a slave only to his own mental lethargy.

YOU cannot restrict the mind’s capacity.

THEREFORE you stand not only in abject servitude to your perceptive consciousness—

BUT also to the mechanical re-actions of the subconsciousness, that rubbish heap of race-tradition—

AND believing yourself to be free—your least conception is colored by the pigment of retrograde superstitions.

HERE are the fallow-lands of mental spatiality that Futurism will clear—

MAKING place for whatever you are brave enough, beautiful enough to draw out of the realized self.

TO your blushing we shout the obscenities, we scream the blasphemies, that you, being weak, whisper alone in the dark.

THEY are empty except of your shame.

AND so these sounds shall dissolve back to their innate senselessness.

THUS shall evolve the language of the Future.

THROUGH derision of Humanity as it appears—

TO arrive at respect for man as he shall be—

ACCEPT the tremendous truth of Futurism
Leaving all those

La Vérité sortant du puits (1896) Jean Léon Gerome

Truth Coming Out Of Her Well

my direction is my proposal

All I need coordination, cannot imagine my destination.

This week it is Sharon Olds, WS Merwin, Edna St. Vincent Villay, Gertude Stein again, Susan Howe (regrettably). 

Spilled out in half-rhymes 
Yammering about the broken earth
I couldn't stop, I knew I had to stop
Puncturing the land 
Prescription pills in the form of someone else
Glint of April days
Only the afternoon were ours
I could see the new desert rearing its head
Sons and daughters from some place tough
Bumper-crop in the corona borealis
The forms we felt while in rescue
In utero the greening of homes
Homes that poems once built
Crazy Fanni Tutti
Scrap wood cut into tiles
I think about whirling
In my cave to conjure
A revelation, the fabric
Where a body used to be 

Intimacy, joy and velocity more than ever before

CD called me a sweet thing. I read him a crown of Hacker sonnets. Told him my joke "I lifted and reworked a few lines of Marilyn Hacker. Yeah, you can call me Kathy Hacker". The joke didn't quite land but I am assured of its brilliance. And so a sweet thing,

terms only exist for their categorizations.


My obsessions are my own, haunted by an oddball past.


You called me complicated. I asked no further questions.


CD laughed when I in a mental high was referring to Stein's "Patriarchal Poetry" as a response to epics like Wasteland. If you think about it her moves are in the dark, subtle, loutish but refined. He laughed and called me a sweet thing again.


As of yesterday we both have our love poems we wrote for each other published. Mine goes live on Monday.


This week has been a hard week for object oriented ontologies. I despise being confronted with my permanence or lack their of. But this week has also bombarded me with own pleasure mechanics. There's no denying how Berlin indulged my hedonism, how it nurtured a sleeping slutty dragon.


I wanted you to go down on me on the horizontal tree, by the swamp, by the family. Ultimate tease.


This morning I signed up for LA Warman's poetry class on erotics.


Yesterday was one of the better days I have had in a while. I walked from Forsyth street to Central Park. I got a Mudd iced coffee on the way and felt myself become grand, coffee always does that to me. I've remarked on this before but being over-caffeinated feels like being in love.


Nico and I ate protein bars and 2.5 grams of mushrooms. I put their rose colored glasses over my glasses. I hugged smooth bark. I wanted to expose myself to the park goers but refrained of course. The dogs are so funny and expensive looking in Central Park. They looked like they were wearing suits that resembled dogs. We walked around the desolate East 70s, the shops all closed, it was eerie yet serene. It forced me to be hyper aware of everything else-- such as the facades of buildings. It felt very 70's in their color schemes, terracotta, washed blue, mauve. Nico smoked a joint on the street in their shirt that said "I heart Pope Francis"


We strolled back to the park. Nico tells me about me, tells me about themselves. Sometimes it's nice when people tell you about you, god, what a relief to not have to conceptualize myself for once. I am whatever you say I am. People at the park didn't seem too careful which is a bummer but who am I to speak to this. We witnessed a group of friends on the grass, they had sunglasses on and were smoking cigarettes. We both cried at the scene. It felt like the 70's again. I caught myself attempting to snide Nico, I did this by telling them that they deserve a love supreme and that I'm happy to have them in my life. We embraced hands for a moment.


After several hours I caught a yellow cab back to Forsyth street. The cabbie said "be safe sweetheart". My feet still hurt from yesterday. I produced serotonin yawns.

Things to look forward to after Quar: Lampshade store, Canal Street Plastics, head on an unmade bed in the Chelsea Hotel, margaritas, doggy stepmom of 2, seeing your complete face on the streets, any parties

Today I'm thinking about death via Susan Howe's "That This" and I'm still horny. Tomorrow is a question.

A better copy

Managing only greetings and goodbyes
Managing only thin light on a badly fed torso
My front-facing camera, my mirror, my problems
Fragile and momentary, we continue
Fearing the madness that resides in all things huge
The watchtower is unmanned
New bedroom won't be abandoned
Albeit, the future is unplanned



Watching you watch me, I watch you watch me. I'm bad at compliments both as the giver and receiver. You must know I trust everyone until proven otherwise. I told a variation of this to Heather, how people are amazing until they prove to you that they are not. She had her mouth agape as if I had said some thing of marvel. We spoke of permaculture. I got what I wanted from that interaction.

I called CD after class because I had a psychic feeling he wasn't okay. He was walking in the woods, so my premonition was correct. I don't know how to be in his life.

I texted CD some baby pictures yesterday. Which in turn made me cry for no real reason. I resent the age I was once was where love always seemed complicated. Love is still a plane of complication but only if I so choose it to be. CD said he was proud of me. Oh yeah? I snarked in defense. Proud of someone who writes little things on napkins, who never intends to know what a career is. I'm proud of that but not too proud. I could never be too proud.

If I want someone to know something about me I'll tell them. Take what's mine. Surely, this stance results in a lot of loss. Katie remarked how she resonates with this position but that not everyone is "there yet". I couldn't help but think about how I got here? I recall, especially in early childhood being so meek. Even at 23 in Germany I felt muted and meek once again.

I'm wearing lipstick inside my apartment on Forsyth street and drinking genmaicha. I don't really like genmaicha, I think it tastes like a whole ass meal but I bought it by accident. I feel like a sieve. I want to be slapped while wearing negligee. I want to be a little drunk or a little high, you know. Drug dealer has gone awol. I love all my vices. I love giving people second and third chances. I smoked a lucky in my kitchen after the movie last night. I had a Dales. I felt like a man which means I felt like I had control. The moment passed with slumber and right now I'm in a stupor that is my dumb luck. I was trying to practice my contempt but you got in the way. Everyday I fall in love.

“I am I because my little dog knows me. The figure wanders on alone.

The little dog does not appear because if it did then there would be nothing to fear.
It is not known that anybody who is anybody is not alone and if alone then how can the dog be there and if the little dog is not there is it alone.
The little dog is not alone because no little dog could be alone. If it were alone it would not be there.
So then the play has to be like this.
The person and the dog are there and the dog is there and the person is there and where oh where is their identity, is the identity there anywhere.
I say two dogs but say a dog and a dog. "

Stein, her beloved poodle Basket, Alice B. Toklas

Hi I’m Icarus, I’m falling

I won’t stay if you don’t want me to

Tuesday nights, on Tuesday night we used to have good sex

Anticipation; my empty and ample chamber

The room exists for you to fill it

If you wish to; illuminated scenes

Amid which appear, dimly first

Like dusty windows and the faces of persons

Whom you have no choice but to trust 

Impossibly far removed from you in terms of

Brilliance, cadence and poverty 

It’s left to be desired in the abstract 

Dry perspectives stay fixed

Certain possibilities best yet left

Ignored; like the failure of love

The hope of good destinations are suspended 

For now; vines pierced with sunlight

Dregs; but first please descend

Wait for your turn 

You’re almost there

I mean at the window where you can buy your ticket

If you ever escape this clamorous junction

There are people who are always not you

I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.—  Jack Gilbert, Waking At Night

finding love during a global pandemic where most of the world is under house arrest, is a very "me" move, I've decided. A love confined to state sanction regulations. Let this be a testament of this oddity, where everything went to shit but then also didn't. I'll never forget zoom, skittish around strangers, the smell of peppermint hand sanitizer, the smell of cork, standing awkwardly near friends, the desire of impulsivity, the queer dreamy state we have to be in in order to survive, in order to maintain a semblance of hope. I think I'll become a better person after this, hopefully a kinder one. Though, a relentless kindness is something that I've been nurturing for a long time coming. Anger, disdain, ill will and jealousy have never served me. It feels idiotic when idioms are true. The spectacle that inverts reality must begin on time so I suppose my time is now.

Days alone always feel like I'm waiting. Every moment a sermon. During my walk the lamplight audibly cracks and I laugh. You had bad dreams. But that's not the kind of fun we are having. I cannot wait to see emerald moss, the kind that coats for centuries. Lichen will always turn on you. We realize the impossibility of saying anything and staying unnatural. My most paranoid friends are right. They always have been and it's frankly annoying, get some imagination. Stay absolutely foolish. God, this very dumb urge to romanticism. Such a precise itch. What if I had met you at the store. What if I met you in subway air. We keep saying there's no rules so perhaps that means I can send you that Linda Pastan poem and one day see the most terrible amber imaginable. Forgo language for smizing and use the didactics of objects as verbs. Perhaps this is stupid, perhaps it'll pass like a fever dream, we would both laugh at the economies of longing. But bravery, without bravery you'll never realize the scope of your capacities.


There's a cubby in emotion for recollections.

Woman From The Well

Why expect to be more fantastic than any tree
Or the Blue of Noon

Your nobility transcends grace
And any need to do better

We are merely accepting change
Its cycles, sleep cycles

I imagined icicles on a fire escape before the world burned
And they are beautiful

II.

I can press my genesis from a priest
Holy sacrament from sordid scrotums
Everywhere young
Faces breathing crusts
Of dreams
The city is lit by the single most fire
Plume of labored disorder
Each sabbath signed our eyes
With every morning coin

I am cottered high inside you pit.

       Not this
not that
        and not this nor not
this or that
when you have poles
all I have is
           no place
outside might welcome
the night might warm me

I am nothing
Anymore at all
Than in myself
My energy is not meant for me
You can be a still center
Which has about it: pivoting
No not this
The ramifications of my strain
A marvel hidden in plain sight
The center still and in me
                               located
and in the millions of years
or more
     will change
or shift
and polaris
       a new name 

I think I'm ready for disappointment for the rest of my life

I think I'm ready for disappointment for the rest of my life. I'm ready for days that are relentless in their fall. To watch my friends fall in and out of love with each other for years. To feel romantic about stillness but know that the bitter end is movement. A zinc roof. Rapidity of light to shade. I think I'm ready for disappointment for the rest of my life. I spoke to Chris last night and he said "it almost seems like you were made for disappointment" and so it's true but also untrue in the sense that it is temporal, what exists before or after the disappointment was also worthwhile and it probably felt good. A shrub with a dense central trunk. Hey duckie hey crux, what is yours?

“I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry
as I need it.”

― John Cage

Room for the life

Bronze cowboy struggles out of walls
I cannot help men
I cannot help them
what's the difference between a municipal building
and a trojan horse?

Being with you feels like a transgression
Summer girl of 17
grounded for life

I never thought I would miss funeral homes
Do you ever wake with sick
awareness of organs

Maybe my attraction to you came from a place
of nihilism, deserving of a bad love as self flagellation
But truth be told I am not bad
Albeit, unconcerned

I've been a good enough girl
Good girl long time in this tacit agreement
Summer girl of 17

You seem unaffected by the city
I want to be a little bit like you one day
but right now I like myself enough
for you, too

I'm undone over broth
real sincerity
laughter materialized
by touch

In any case, you still have to ask yourself what is so heartbreaking, or heartbreakingly funny.

everyday: I stared at the word on the screen, everyday, every day. Are they technically two words? Somehow the spelling seemed off, or maybe the definition. It was as if I couldn't understand the word any longer. Everyday.

Should I go back to Germany for some time? Sometime. 

The Sick Bed & Dr. Donne



I call you up
You answer
Some people don't know what to make of repetition
I call you up
When is it the time for popular modernism?
It's time
The index is endless
The capacity to store new information
At least for today, is limitless
Although someday it might be
Damaged or lost

What is the answer to tomorrow confusion?
for you know it
the final victory of humanity
is sex
to be had
and the sad truth:
is that dictionaries
don't even know their own name