A.Byss, selected writing,
POEMS
・disclaimer
・Words and Days
・Breakdown breakthrough
・The Silk Pantry
・Feathers Plastered on the Wound
・Autumnal Scene
・Prehistoric Futurism
・Filth and Time
・Post Script
COLLECTIONS
LONG FORMAT
Disclaimer: Everything is fictitious especially the most personal confessions, as the author herself is Fictitious. All resemblance to any particular Reality is purely coincidental. The author reserves the right to exist in the reality of her choosing. The author reserves the right to change, revoke, rework, broadcast on television, kill, or retitle any of the pieces included in this collection. This will always be in accordance to Local, Provincial, Federal, Continental, Planetary and Galactic Law; and completely dependant on the current instinct of the author, which is always legal in her Fictions world. It may be considered that we each decide our own beliefs, and thus, may move between Fiction and Non-Fiction depending on our internal/external position and circumstance. The author assumes no responsibility for how the reader to Chooses to perceive these writings, as it is the readers responsibility to Choose how to maneuver their own minds. It is completely legal to use this collection as toilet paper should the reader discern it necessary. The author supports and encourages experimentations with the concept of Choice and the malleability of reality.
Words and Days
all this talk is tiresome
it’s too broke and too late
all these words and all these sounds
to just get one thing straight:
"who are you to think I’d cling
to any safe protective thing
you think I can’t yell for myself?
you think I’m homesick for a shelf?"
"It’s clear that you're not wired well
I’ve walked the meadows round yr hell
and I can’t stand yr electric brain
You expect everything”
words and sounds and days and years
the distillation of our fears
words and sounds and years and days
work for time and work to play
my uncle is a sailor
my auntie is a nun
all mixed up in my body
it's hard to get things done
city life busts my brain
country life clogs the drain
all alone I’d go insane
try again, try again
the Lady on the sunny hill
has got my name etched in her will
whats meant to come will come someday
work for time and work to play
I loved you once, sure I did
shut the box and lock the lid
the days are short the nights are long
nothing’s right and nothing’s wrong
Breakdown Breakthrough
prelude
My depression is Cured! The past is the past! I am not having an (X) crisis I’m having an (X) breakthrough. It is suddenly obvious: changing ones mind will change ones life. A simple equation: drugs work this way, and propaganda, technology, art, religion… It’s suddenly so simple and obvious. It’s a way to begin.
✦
Just as I say my depression is fixed
the infernal jazz players start spinning their tricks
I stain my best dress
this place is a mess
and that creature inside of me kicks
✦
Breakdown-breakthrough
as you curse your old horseshoe
the world turns to gold
just as was foretold
by the buddhas who always knew
Lady May
newborn water leaks
from high places
paws press deeply
into a dying season
this time of year licks wounds
tosses sun beneath the sink
innocence seems slightly tragic
reflecting all we've abandoned
earths typical transformation stirs
promises we'd buried in doubt
& redeems the laceration that
nurtured our embryos of Hope
when the gift arrives
the pain that summoned it
is forgotten, and when it leaves
we forget its utter mercy
its ok to be Glad: to die to live
to lay up your misery in the melt
be abandoned stranded, glad
hope finds fertility
in desolate scenery
inventing new mythology
to speak its plain prophecy
slippery epiphany
of cyclical eternity
she comes again and brings the rain
upon the tired, abstracted plain
Within all of Us
Shelters a Creature
Winged, and Deathless
Blue Erotica
The Silk Pantry
my body smells erotic
there is no lover near
I’m edible & I’m alone
in a silk brassiere
I wake up wanting to feed you
to remember I can feel
let me sweetly kindly
prepare you a sweet meal
sex warms my collarbones
hunger lurks the air
I’m edible & I’m alone
a Lady’s cross to bear
didn’t mean to hurt you — or myself
get back in the can and back on the shelf
Autumnal Scene
my pelvis is cavernous
like the swale of a snail
dragonfly clicks
cream berry drips
from blood coloured tip
feathers plastered
on the wound
Someone is pressing
my body against something
which smothers my thoughts
& delivers me from considering
nauseous realities of aging eyeballs,
betrayal, and permanent stains
curly gold head
lamb in the bed
smiling in pain
laughing & slain
Clear Glass
Black Frame
New Body
Ancient Game
Now my teeth are covered
Now my molars are soft
Now its settling in the ditches
Now its glazing the canal
Prehistoric Futurism
today: built upon the grinds of emptied shells: spirals shattered over and over: split to dust beneath our boots: the past is the future: deep down to the spiral: premonitions in plain sight: prophecy has always been in everything: the future is the spiral: the future is the past: the hard shelled dirt bugs always knew: it is taking us so long to remember: and the clues are everywhere: don't step on the centipede: the shape that can hold everything: Prehistoric Futurism.
Post Script
Every day the dream renews
this is good and exhausting news
I try to be a mountain stream
something consistent through the dream
I try to love the doors that close
trust and pray that something knows
(why)
✦
THERE IS SPACE FOR ALL OF IT WITHIN ME
THERE IS SPACE FOR ALL OF ME WITHIN IT
Filth and Time
Everything is dirty
and I can’t get it on time
I want another cigarette
and coffee in my wine
I want to be a spiral
lunatic and free
theres a snake around my thigh
he says he's got a key
but I’ve a vault of visions
I silently declare
protective psychic matter
a hopeful, desperate prayer
See me, Love me
I’ll give it all to you
I'm overwhelmed by filth and time
and homesick for the Truth
FLURRIES OF DOVES
FLURRIES OF DOVES is a love letter world that is rotting and blooming ceaselessly and all at once; a rejoicing of the wonder that lingers - giving off light and warmth- between the teeth of indifferent tragedy. An enormous, baffled love stains the pages.
Composed of fifteen poems (A.Byss) and Photography (Brin Schoellkopf) spanning from 2021-23.
The Teachings of Miraculous Fish
excerpts
vii.
in a vision I see
the centre of the earth
as a heart
pumping the tears of saints
thru underground springs
that defy odds
making it to the surface
splitting the crust of hatred
x.
maybe one day
I will laugh so hard
that I vomit up fear
and the grin in the sky
will unravel before me
and we will laugh together
May I Believe the World is Good?
excerpts
How will I survive if I forget that the world is good? I mean to tread her body collecting proof, so I’ll stay alive; like when I found a robins egg vacated in the sandy sage, I held it in my hand while I walked, and when I laid it on the earth, I laid my own body beside it and overhead an eagle circled in wide glory. Once a four year old led me by the hand to a pasture of newborn goats suckling their mother. I saw a cactus clinging to a slope slouched in a brilliant sculpture, and even as that man spoke to me of horror, a puppy slept beside me curled in a heavenly knot. The original atom, the innermost seed, had particles bouncing inside it but it was mostly empty space, 99.9% empty space. It’s gone on expanding and proliferating from the inside out creating larger forms that are also mostly empty space, and invisible birds flit through the allies of infinity between particles and most of the world is emptiness, hot with secret benevolent law which cannot be spoken. The ants scuttling in subterranean masses have a declaration painted in their empty-space brains saying “The world is Good. She has Always Been Good. We will all be fossils or worm excrement or ocean sludge soon, and the World is Good.” The ancient fish creature clumsily navigating the primordial water said “I Must Live” and the water was frigid and all it saw was pale blue and it pushed out legs and bloomed lungs and dragged itself into the shock of oxygen.
