Vitality of Literature
Subtending void,
vanished time,
actualizing
my absence.
Sempiternal words
created life —
please preserve
my presence.
Motion & Stillness in Rustbelt City (Buffalo, NY)
Seeking the heart of a city
may be a false quest:
is not each human heart,
each structure
in the built environment,
each shape and flow
of the natural world
suffused with
the peace and chaos of urban life
irreducible constituents of
the heart of a city,
pulsating in balance
the life and death of everything,
unable to be localized
to any one place?
How foolish the human spirit is
to seek something
which cannot be found.
How foolish I was to find myself
at the Civil War monument
beneath the gaze of the Union
and her soldiers and sailors,
seeking understanding
in the interlocutions,
the laughter,
the sparrows,
the comings and goings,
the flags and music
moving on the wind
to the play of children.
Always 15 minutes away
from wherever you need to be
as the saying goes —
pockets for pedestrians
swallowed by highways
over a motor abyss
and it is well to be so close
to a friend or work,
coffee breaks or home,
but time piles driving alone,
leading thoughts to unknowns:
Memories of passenger seat
dialogues with a friend now absent,
melancholy towards a concert,
panic attack towards the airport –
thinking of everything in nothing
in the road I travel, engine I use,
person I pass, position I keep,
my future, present, past —
much to remember and forget,
narrating existence through
selves and sounds and cities.
Antipoem
Pseudowritten antipoem,
unbosomed unpoetry,
ubique ubiety:
paradox of plague.
Depression
Contentment visits
as I extricate
myself from sleep
before memory
of being human
draws me back
to music silenced
beneath behemoths
of how we hurt each other,
our shared sought love
that casts out fear
like eager arms of children.
Connor Orrico is a student and amateur field recordist interested in global health, mental health, and how we make meaning from the stories of person and place we share with each other, themes which are explored in his words in The Collidescope, Burning House Press, and Headline Poetry & Press, as well as his sounds at Bivouac Recording.