the basement of the burning palace
one stutter step towards potential oblivion forgive my joe biden stutter, if this doesn’t read perfectly it is because my joe biden stutter toward potential oblivion i stutter like joe and fuck like hunter sliding toward potential oblivion you're insanely expensive "hunter biden" is an expression of dark energy i don’t want to love you, i want to love toward you one stutter step toward oblivion one stutter step toward loving you one crack rock toward infinite energies one white claw toward the dark american prince i am the dark american prince i dont want to love you i want one crack rock toward infinite energies you were kind of mean so i really felt it when you were sweet you were kind of mean but when you were sweet you went too far — you achieved a sort of balance i was balancing infinite energies when i found you sitting on the small balcony looking one-hundred percent plus ten parts the dark american princess what people want more than anything is to have everything and tell everyone its not enough you were the tiny yellow flower that floats between my hands with red heart
THE STORY OF POM POM SHIN
The problem with running a newsletter featuring a cast of such talented poets, is that the confused medley of architectural meditations which make up much art and literature, designed as a dam to bar the current of painful memories, is, in the work featured here, rudely swept away. The problem is that there is no defense. To spend time with these poems is to find the resulting flood of the past into the present irresistible, a melancholic rupturing on whose face swim, like discarded flotsam, bizarre trifles and torrid episodes of my own life.
It’s true that I have witnessed scenes of such wretchedness that would cripple the imagination, it’s true that in the poetry of others I have imagined further wretchedness still, to the point where there is little that is horrible that I can not picture, and little that is desirable that I have not failed to dispossess. I don’t look down on anyone for being guarded, I don’t look down on anyone, the ground is flat. But when the dead years of my life, with so many disgusts and fears move about my screen of care like electric ghosts, I can’t help but wonder clearly and aloud what I might have done differently, and where all this rushing is headed. Featuring most prominently among these MMRS are those precious vacations, times of great stress that later sparkle in my reflections on life such that it seems they were the only times I was ever truly living.
Before me, a marching procession of vacations.
A friend had mentioned a trip to Peru. The best way to get to Cusco is to spend two days acclimating in Sacred Valley. If you are a traveler with scant vacation time, who is only alive on vacation, however, you might take a drug called acetazolamide, namebrand Diamox. Diamox works by blocking activity of protein called carbonic anhydrase, which reduces build-up of certain fluids in body, particularly in the eye. You are supposed to take Diamox twenty-four hours before sudden ascent, such as a flight from Lima (505 ft) to Cusco (11,152 ft). My experience with Diamox produced a strange effect: my fingertips and toes tingled, but when I would drink something carbonated, such as an Inca Cola, it tasted flat.
This is a poetry newsletter, and, to me, this was a poetic effect, and worth repeating. A reduction of fluid in the eyes, carbonation in the extremities, stolen directly from the world, all to gain the ability to breathe deeply in some of the highest mountains.
Flat, but only to me. I was thinking about my novel on conspiracies as I stirred my golden, flat, drink and watched the coast of Lima, when I received a message on Instagram from Shin Wha Yi.
The year was 2017 and I was earnest about becoming an Instagram poet. Rupi Kaur was not my favorite, but she was not so bad as many claimed, and her work, IMO, tapped into an elegant truth: short poems of glistening pith, which I called “morsels” were well-suited for the internet age. The internet itself was becoming a mini-vacation where we are allowed to be alive and so I wanted to spend my time there. Unfortunately, my theory bore itself out less in poetry than in the absurdist memes of the 20’s… by all accounts Instagram poetry as a whole was killed off by a slight tweak of the algorithm, one that made the system less easy to game and prioritized already-established celebrities.
Every time my friend Shin posted, she would send the post directly to my inbox. I wasn’t sure if she did this for everyone, or if it was only for me, but I liked to think she sent the posts to me because she knew I would like them, as I would, almost religiously. Shin’s posts were usually a full reel of pictures from her life, her white dog Kaji, an obscured picture of her son, a yellow flower floating between hands with red heart… And beneath these poems, in the caption she would write a poem. And in the comments she would include a number of hashtags, one of which was “#instagrampoetry.” Shin was a breast cancer survivor living in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Many of her poems were about snakes.
delivering messages to God
i pushed too hard on a delicate matter
a woman handed me a flower to give to you
and demanded payment, my Spanish is getting better,
we walked away with a free rose
in Cusco there were houses built into every layer of the mountain
so that no matter where you were you could look up or down and see
little yellow lights like civilizational chicken pox
i pushed too hard on a delicate matter, but not hard enough to ruin the trip
easy enough to pretend it was nothing, days of vacation ahead of us.
love? no, roasted hamster, and strips of alpaca on pizza, abomination.
nothing cute ever moved me, it's just that vacation is a matter of life or deathI have just been informed that a woman I worked for died on vacation, due to a heart problem caused by high elevation in Bolivia. I feel very strange about the circumstances being so closely related to the ones I was writing about, I had only just written about vacation being a matter of life and death. I am looking at a letter sitting unread on her mailbox, which says “I have thought of you, but the time goes so fast… much love, see you soon.”
In Cusco I learned about the Incan holy trinity, where the condor delivers messages to God, and only eats the dead; and the snake represents the underworld, as well as the capacity for transformation; and the puma, which forms the bulk of life, is neglected. The poor puma didn’t seem to inspire the same reverence as the other two. I thought it was interesting and cool that they were each a common predator, I felt it was a wonderfully true symbolic expression of Terror Management Theory, which proposes that the psychological conflict between self-preservation and the inevitability of death produce terror, terror which is managed through escapism, cultural beliefs and rituals, and attempts to create enduring meaning… such as poetry writing. None of which can overcome the inescapable biological reality. I once saw a chart that showed the most common dreams in each country. In South America, the most common dream was being attacked by a snake. In America, it is “teeth falling out.”
Lucked out on our Machu Picchu tour guide. Guy was excited to talk about the most esoteric elements of Incan culture, the sacrifice of drugged up teenage princesses, the ritual elongation of skulls, and tales of a mysterious race of white aliens. I didn’t believe in aliens, but I knew a fair bit about them. There were theories about a species called “The Nordics,” named for their white hair and blue eyes. I thought if anything it could be them.
what people want more than anything is to have everything
and tell everyone
that it’s not enough
all we wanted was to do drugs and fall in love and we were still young enough to be good at both
-Scott Laudati
a lace of memory, as soft as foam dancer never sharpened on a flat stone, or windowed through practice, the flat disc of dream, there is no in-between, or there is only in-between
Later I was vacationing in a small room in New York, insofar as a drug is a sort of mini-vacation, and vacation is a matter of life or death. While I try to vacation as much as possible, I only ever did adderall twice, because I don’t think it’s a good drug for people to do, and I find it to be spiritually creepy (adder+all, get it?). I’m afraid, however, my two stories will make it sound very cool.
The first time I did adderall I saw a UFO or rather, my girlfriend at the time witnessed a small white orb darting about over Bushwick and said “is that a UFO,” and I turned to look and watched the orb stop and descend, behind a building not far in the distance. I said this little pearl was small but it was about the size of a bedroom.
The second time I did adderall, I, convinced that the poems in Shin Wha Yi’s Captions were the most beautiful things on Instagram, tore through every post in her gallery and compiled them into an amazing book of poetry called Pom Pom Shin, and sent it to her in an email, with a small note, and waited nervously for her response. For several days, my brain was haunted by doubts.
To my great happiness, she loved it.
Thus revealed is the conspiracy behind the Burning Palace. My hope is that one day I can use BP to publish this amazing book. So, now you are implicated.
But the journey is often the destination, as they say, or “vacation is everything to me” and the poems get better and better. These poems are amazing. Forgive me for a moment of sentimentality, but I really appreciate the outpouring of love that I get from readers and friends. And to the poets, thank you again for trusting me with your work, and IDK send me more. love ya
🛸wowwwie 👽👽👽👽👏🏻