: : : : : : :
I have swallowed the desert’s winter flower.
: : : : : : :
NOW calls as the corona of your glow.
: : : : : : :
Gone Mad for the All.—Filthiness need not be conjoined to unreadiness. Many a mad hatter has seen ecstatic glimmers of radiant suns, all while dirty crown to toe. Madness is unearthly to the extent that its unkemptness is a closeness to God. Pathways of grime are engrafted to the body, forming sigils of individuation.
: : : : : : :
Aporia of ontic minutia,
I engrave an invisible collarbone for Thee.
: : : : : : :
razing questions
locking horns
with wizards
and never
s k i pping a beat
: : : : : : :
The bag lady of Acheron.
: : : : : : :
And we ache.
: : : : : : :
My spinal cord: the Ganges River,
exploding into the head of Shiva.
: : : : : : :
The Body Has No Shape.—Against the idea of containment (of suffering, of pain), the body bursts: numinous spasms of the Outside permeate the body, revealing it as a mercurial tremor of the cosmos, a rift in the universe’s coming into being. There is something distinctive about the body that attracts its own undoing, wherein cosmic magnetism and fleshy sponginess fuse into a beautiful formlessless that is the body.
: : : : : : :
Having a knowledge without knowing.
: : : : : : :
A Now-ledge without words.
: : : : : : :
In the darkness of your with-holding body sits the tumor of your mindlessness.
: : : : : : :
Erupt at dusk.
: : : : : : :
The Taoist and the Ascetic.—Blankness is bliss. Fasting is feasting. The Taoist and the ascetic are not blood brothers, but rather empty crucibles, inverted vessels in which all that is earth must lay barren. To achieve a world not according to us, thought must sever one of two hands. To achieve a world not according to world, this severed hand must fasten itself to itself. Untying the fastened hand of Being with its only hand is like thought overcoming the difference between the Taoist and the ascetic. Simultaneously, with only one hand, the former must be let go of while the latter is held onto.
: : : : : : :
Somnambulant and awakened.
: : : : : : :
Insightly unsought non-thoughts.
: : : : : : :
Tender and the nebulousness.
: : : : : : :
Sleeping like a giant in the candelabra’s fur.
: : : : : : :
Eyes are blood melons,
sweet and staunch,
laughing, unclogged,
and floating with nymphs.
: : : : : : :
The non-scape of sound’s bolded druthers, a voice piercing the echoed, hollow grandeur of being’s shallowing waters—a whispered sentience glowing in our pupils.
: : : : : : :
The desire without object-ing to not c(r)aving under pressure.
: : : : : : :
Hyper-vibrant auto-floriography.
: : : : : : :
A fire blooming on a fig tree
starting a flower underneath you.
: : : : : : :
Stereographic predilections.
: : : : : : :
There was a beautiful light that used to cast its shadow upon the glimmering nose of an old king. Each morning, he picked cherries from his favorite tree. It is said that the king had no fear of anything in the land, and that the cherry tree told him the secrets of how to run his kingdom. For forty-two years the king picked cherries, until one day he walked outside to see the tree had been hit by lightning and all the cherries were gone. He called in three people to assess the damage: the knight, the jester, and the village idiot. The knight took his sword and offered to cut down the tree. The king stopped him and said there was no need. The jester tried to make light of the situation by offering to make a pie filled with nothing but emptiness. The king kindly dismissed the jester and did not chuckle. Finally, the village idiot walked up to the tree. He thanked the tree for what it has offered the king, serving him all those years without ever asking anything for itself. Upon hearing the idiot’s words, the king ordered the knight to take the idiot to the kitchen for a feast. He had not eaten in almost three days, for he and his family were poor. When they arrived in the kitchen, the king found four large dishes overflowing with cherries. It is said that underneath the earth lies the secret seeds of life. One only needs to bury oneself deep enough to never find them. Only then will one know the true meaning of the idiot’s revelation—that the idiot was a sage who had long eaten of the jester’s pie.
: : : : : : :
Hemlock,
and the
Asklepieion doorway.
: : : : : : :
Indivisibly invisible.
: : : : : : :
The funereal site of oneself as the living conundrum of divine fire.
: : : : : : :
Breathing—
never short of breath—
and glowing—
always glowing—
never short on breathing.
: : : : : : :
The world is the gulf that floats us away;
liquidity,
and a bulbous moon
points (at) the Way.
: : : : : : :
Rhythmic, the loss is continual.
: : : : : : :
circularity rising,
walking, musing,
eating, shining; and
the drones hoping
for lords to come
sheen shifting—
dreams were opals,
shine-shivering
through immortal
fields of pneumatica
: : : : : : :
Epi(ec)static.
: : : : : : :
The love-f(l)ur(r)y of a thousand suns auto-germinating abreast the st(a)rnum and the pollinating of the pleasures of the sol-ar plexus.
: : : : : : :
The Flower Man of the Indigo Gate.
: : : : : : :
Wearing a sky that grew taller.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brad Baumgartner is a writer and Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Penn State. His creative work has recently appeared in Coffin Bell, XRAY Literary Magazine, The Operating System, ZenoPress Magazine, Vestiges, and others. His chapbook entitled “Quantum Mechantics: Memoirs of a Quark,” is forthcoming from The Operating System in late 2019.
ABOUT THE MANUSCRIPT
The title of the book, “Stylinaut,” is essentially a portmanteau word for a modern-day astronaut turned stylite (or ascetic “pillar dwelling” saint). This figure, who is at once within and without our present moment in time, commits himself to writing while ascending (and living upon) the tiers of his desert pillar. It is an experimental collection that encodes seven separate but related sections consisting of meditative fragments, poems, and philosophical aphorisms, and focuses on the liminal movement of the stylinaut’s alternating experience of dukkhic suffering and its corollary nirvanic bliss, with the ascent culminating at seventy-seven feet above the ground.
It’s a bit of an odd book, one that ultimately asks us to get freaky (from Middle English frek “eager, zealous, bold, brave, fierce”), to speculatively open ourselves to the maximum density of life and all of the affective and ontological strangeness/sweetness it tends to encapsulate. And hey, why not? Might as well while we’re here.