Sousveillance, or: The Springfield Sarah Jessica Parker Disaster
when money became speech
Dyads parafin the duration
non-machinable
flesh mic at jowl
non-camouflage couldn’t alter
or predict
cephalopod high-arousal
unheroic teller city with lake interior
The false antique
no and subject theory
I have failed the task of radiation
cryptographic
An air freshener with the word Capricorn printed on it
Plowing the smirk
Airlifting missionaries across watersheds
The colors not gone between winds
Handprints along the inner walls
Am one endorphin milestone and
Don’t praise the machine
What to Expect
the debris field
A crumpled spent paper napkin’s
Blank opening
under artificial light
Indoors, where no sun shows up ever
for a while not alone
Downstairs allegory
The media still in my head
Like a perfect marble rolling
Until finding escape or
Some consequence, maybe bad air
Modest diplomacy, functional
immunity-withholding as a point of pride
Towering outpost on the corner, where
Borough-thick, sandblasted old
constructions moderate
Plants alive, curtains tastefully down
& knotted
sun-kissed
It’s more of a glancing kindness
in crisis, ultra hip
No soft pill
taken while in the bunker
a permanent holiday
If you are an identical
twin you already know
the wind is shining, the sun blows
it’s a new public artifice
a sort of 98 synopsis
Cancel & Gretel
like tungsten
exclusionary
post-mortem
without legends
Dirty spatula
bell pepper gasoline can
flush what comes
from your body
Monotony
itchy scrap iron
the dream will replace the memory
but almost without fail each
witness described the same
triangular object with three circular lights
something very unusual was happening in the skies over Belgium
Medieval, French
good how many had
in odd years during
the material human
fire
love ignorant
I have with me
a file clerk for ideas
the smell of burnt hair and vineyards
horizon empty and colorless
lantern
every pulse
in the raw-
-sort- of just
The camera dies at the end
Surprising, herr-prising
lib damen
as erecting a nativity
scene on state property
proscenium gettys in the spiral
of junk-time
of the
re-presented
not so much as
no present
or constant thereof
News
spoken in sleep feels like violet
Thank you for that disturbing report.
mechanical heartland pap
—in name only
shampoo bottle holy rhythm
like hanging nazars, or eyes
up in the yellow blue minarets
stalking lookouts tall story the bulbs are hot
with vitrification on the laser-cut side
the plurality of worlds
so below as above
words hostage from my pleasure
continuous for planetary advance
to be about often
sour tongue
fractal non-linear
sound waves
seeding clouds
put into words : no light all day
a tri-figure, or becoming
nothing carbonated
scapegoating THC, same
Bloviate.
evenly chamber sinema
that’s it already beyond
which I am not
to be people
empty praise has angles, kismet
cheap-spirited I’ve been without
knowing, better than nothing not
and
true are the nightmares of a person that fears
torn petals facing the sun
for you shall grow and reap
only too high in the burning glare
get out your bricks
cat
cat
and fortune
faith must not be
for this your redeemer
not
The air is changed.
Thought is feeling.
The smell of bankrupt coffee grounds
off damp filters
duty apothegms
I am against pencil and paper
“self-same tune of words”
there might not be anymore anymore
Tenderness only always
robs it of its power
I am for nothing in it
media crush “I is not allowed”
being dragged away for holding up a
blank sheet of paper
Mini-interview with Ben Tripp
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
BT: I started taking the literal—“autobiographical” element out of my writing as much as possible … which, I would argue, is actually never really entirely possible, but it is worth the effort. It’s not possible for a musician either … or an actor … to not have one’s real life influencing what we call the work in this context at least to some degree. If it is, then why don’t we just have robots do it all? And I am not asking that question as facetiously as you might presume. Maybe a robot Renaissance would be great, and we could all just chill and be happier, more peaceful and dignified as humans: happy audience members, and the robots would be well-occupied. At any rate I chose the … let’s call it, ‘experimental’ path early on, and it led me straight to poetry, always has, much more so than to other forms of writing, or even making music. Which is not to say that my poems are written by a computer program, or like pop songs either (hah!) I also don’t write every day, too robotic for me personally. Working as a teacher sometimes has also shaped my writing, if and when while at work occasionally I can steal time to write.
HFR: What are you reading?
BT: Thief of Hearts by Maxwell Owen Clark, Dog Day Economy by Ted Rees, Palm-Lined with Potience by Basie Allen, Hollywood Babylon II by Kenneth Anger, and Samuel Beckett’s Collected Poems in English & French.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Sousveillance, or: The Springfield Sarah Jessica Parker Disaster”?
BT: It’s in the same crypto-diaristic style as is the bulk of the manuscript which I’ve had in-progress for two years now, but it’s a satellite on its own, post-dated. I’m essentially collecting words and phrases that intrigue me and the way they coalesce together is often incidental. One phrase today follows one from three days ago, and surprising coherences begin to take shape. It’s a spontaneous progression. Sometimes the jumps from one line and/or stanza to the next are startling, other times they make a lot more sense than I ever could have planned for. The title is supposed to wave hello to the audience in a way to prepare them for the opacity and lack of proper nouns after the title. I’m not going to start writing fan fiction, the title is a red herring … the whole thing is an exercise prompted by a need for exercise.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
BT: I feel I should be reading more than writing for the time being, not reading aloud my own work, I mean, but generally silently reading the work of others, old and new … while I am also still working on my own full-length poetry manuscript. That work now is not so much writing but tweaking and just floating it out into the world in whatever way gradually feels natural. I want to keep performing/presenting material from that stuff too in live settings and/or to cultivate more new stuff, probably a little of both.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
BT: I feel there’s overwhelming superficiality in poetry which I, maybe naively, never expected, and a lot of preaching to the choir/preaching to the already-converted that goes on, which maybe I did expect. A friend who doesn’t write anymore said to me recently they feel that blurbs are a crime against meaning. I feel like there’s little-to-no quality sometimes amidst so much quantity, but that’s across the larger spectrum beyond poetry or ‘writing’. And there’s fake politics cropping up everywhere too. How do I define that term? It’s a kind of politics in isolation, or let’s say, an anti-social politics, that has nothing to do with real kinds of political work like striking, boycotts, voting, union or party organizing … I would blame certain recent technologies, but that would make me a hypocrite. For various reasons I often rely on these same technologies like most everyone else. The amount of attention one can draw to oneself somehow replaces any ethical or aesthetic imperative. A narcissistic lifestyle, posting a selfie/video of everything you do & are, as if to fulfill some kind of digital manifest-destiny. Quote: “When language becomes petrified in the academies, ravaged and made barren by journalism, its true spirit takes refuge amongst children and mad poets.” —says not A.Artaud, but an artist from the same time period, different country, to say not all writing is pigshit, but a lot of it is.
Ben Tripp is a writer and performer from Vermont based in Queens, NYC. His writing can be found via Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Hyperallergic, Guernica, Full-Stop Quarterly, and Gauss PDF. He was a finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2021 and received a City Artists’ Corps grant that same year. He blogs and archives work at benjamintripp.wordpress.com.
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