By Carli Young
1.
I search because I am missing
and I wish I could have turned
to you in my final hour before the world
went black and told you
what I really wanted before
I feigned in placating smiles
as if likability was a virtue
adorned on plaques written by your gods
2.
conjuring resistance;
I want to resist beauty's invitation
hoping the fallen pieces
of what was hurry up and get fixed.
so I no longer have a need.
I want the past
I want the past more than
I want the future,
I want the past
more than I want the unfolding of time.
I turn my back to the horizon;
I don't want to be kissed
by the sun.
Warmth could sooner fall
from my skin
than make me turn around.
3.
I chug time back like a vagabond in a desert;
paradise is the minutes and hours of Nothing.
Nothing–the happiest place–still something–
before then, time spent worried about nothing–it
is incredible all the years spent in fear when every
moment unfolds with the slightest tug of the
fingers. Only one needs to learn how to dig empty
space, and then nothing becomes Nothing–the
truth to some, a choice to others–and I would
choose Nothing over and over again until nothing
was left.
STATEMENT ‘While I have been working away on poems, I have also begun to experiment with little pieces of abstract expressionism as a way to break out of word-containers. That is, even though poetry is used to break language, I wanted to take it further this year. I have attached some simple scans of some of the paintings. Essentially, they're on-going practices in intuitive balance. When there's a black abyss here, can there also exist softness personified by dainty, uneven lines. Can there be moments of clarity, through in colour. This is all apart of a greater whole which is to continuously explore interiority and self-revelation without direct analysis, without egoic meaning making and the like. It's a record, kept across of time of internal language looking to experiment with mediums as a way of finding clarity (as a way of finding something that feels right, that sticks, if even temporally temporarily).’