today is the happen by manuel abreu

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A 45 page poetry collection including 11 photos. Published by Peanut Gallery Press.

Transcript of today is the happen by manuel abreu

today is the happen

manuel arturo abreu

2014

today is the happen

manuel arturo abreu

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Copyright © 2014 Manuel Arturo Abreu.Covert art by Štěpán Karásek, in the public domain.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.

The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

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This book is dedicated to my dear friend Heidi Whitehouse.

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contents:poetry

8 minutes 3

app for optionally undoing puberty 4

lamprey emoticon 6

my heart is a finch 7

a day spent morphing 8

from 'the tiny manifestos' 10

alternative sources 11

cartoon wrath 13

wait for glows because cars can fake smiles 15

forget us when you get cold 15

a list of 10 things i thought of 16

eyelid 17

all along 19

speak tongues and faint 20

upon being gravely summoned 21

untitled 22

curating water 23

critical theory buzzwords as coping mechanisms 24

sockshare 25

a piece from 2006 called 'dad' 26

My feelings are shaped like a body 27

fake dark 29

FORGIVE EVERYONE 31

all anyone ever wants 33

clues for the pinker shout 34

everything started happening after rehab 35

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photos

i can't have casual conversations 5

my baby 6

absent referent 9

microwaved ocean 1 12

google maps glitch town screencaps 13

untitled portrait 18

found image 21

microwaved ocean 2 30

found image (what is a right?) 36

diy hypnotherapy 38

the inscriptions are everywhere 39

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8 minutes

glass voice and animal earsglass throat clink to a halt, kneelthen sound of intangible machinescup drawn too full

falling bodies don't cut corners they form patternsscreams go up like hands of smokepigeons, unfurnished wingspans

i hear a sound and look:just the back of my head

in a dark lakei am always the opheliadry flower, bent light stigma

dilate time, dark of heartnesssquirting wax, thrummingmoves through with a different goinga darker pace and cloying

cats lie therefore they can write poemsmuscles uncoiling like flowers or windowsin 8 minutes the sun's mouth will be closed closed forever

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app for optionally undoing puberty

there are only wrong wordsSo I don't worry about it too much

every time i swallow it hurts

just enough to communicate functionally, is exhausting,being exhausted is something I am amazingly capable of

to speak in such a way that i have to repeat myselfthe words have their ears

i keep repeating 'no map without tongue'i just want more time to think of a response

having a hard time getting over our conversationarticulating the resonant frequencies of the room we're in

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lamprey emoticon

:))))))

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my heart is a finch

my external hard drive is 2 terabytesits name is fiona as in fiona applethere you go this is my big finch heartfar away from the city like a forest nurse

take me to a whooping shirebecause i don't know how to dealwhen a stomach loves a bootthe boot goes into full whallop

white dudes are scary sometimesout here i'm lit game mandy moorea big calm, metadata for the long haula joy that appears on the outside as terror

do you feel more like yourself around strangers

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a day spent morphing

i make the mistakethinking i am exactly privyto the shape of that misunderstanding

i make an embeddingthis is the essential cursory, the nodea principle of nonsense reified

feelings cannot go into airplane modeit’s the crucial facet of a conceitno dimension is obstructed by thinking

but the images present a bog to climbstepping around erasure, failure is a strategya motivated crookedizing

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from 'the tiny manifestos'

seems like asking questions should not be like shopping

seems like the best way to answer a question is to go backwards

seems bad for me to assume i have no common ground with people

seems like there should be an app for remembering the beauty of all feeling

seems like we have to decide about the dark parts of imagination like are they safe

seems like articulation of possible worlds does not increase the subject's happiness

seems like i am really into balloon metaphors these days, in my head

seems like my truth buzzes in me, randomly, like a filament

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alternative sources

Observation of the sun reveals

As far as life on earth is

the sun is, Light and heat

are not the only forms of energy

As with any other star, the

sun ; When we observe the sun in

visible light, the surface,

Another is airglow. Ablation:

the burning away of the leading

surface of an object.

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cartoon wrath

I would ride my bike into town to pick up dad's newspaperme never having learned how to ridedad never having learned how to read

to peek thru radiant logoand put screwdrivers inside, find clothes boil them until they finally fit in thimbles

As a pile of atoms I am not alivebig scar vining down my dad's right leg, like a strophemom vacuuming slowly. A bubble in honey

Mom hated when buildings sneeredlips part as tho to speak but they do not speaktheir cartoon wrath like the coin in a turmoil of fauna

trains go by slurping thunderheads out my headnervous light that smells like breadhome from the hospital dad says “my spine's like a riddle”

none of these trains are oursthe sparks on the tracks are like ratssomeone walks past, meaning is not use it is doubt

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wait for glows because cars can fake smiles

Broken trains of thought are like blowholesmemory expands without us catching upA rock can meditate on the taste of allergy pills

soon after it takes a cold shower

the structure of the pearly rainPlease try never to think of ghosts as nectarplease remember humans haunt ghostsmagical thinking is circadianthe radius of despair is a hurt nest

I swear to you that everything is inside this balloon satellite

forget us when you get cold

angle kin meat

sun l i n e w o r k poke

farce grab strobe

age never, nectar branch

balloon roared intuit

momentum sphere... mimic

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a list of 10 things i thought of

1. Strangers.

2. The combinations of wind.

3. Dark wet stones & the fat worms

under them.

4. Taking a piece of a camera’s soul

whenever a picture of me is taken.

5. Imagining the air I breathe as string.

6. My feet are hands.

7. My hands are eyes.

8. Eradicating my own voice.

9. The world resonating through me

in those moments when it’s

engorged with meaning.

10. Being able to pay attention to myself.

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eyelid

callous prancehold it longer

be the smoketiny coughing

coughing clockrounded rain

blur a nocturnedrape the street

cake the bodyhungry grin

swollen cornernappy light

[repeat for every blink]

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all along

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speak tongues and faint

my heart moves not to a clave in this pathmark

this is the duty of the unwandering

you spurn me at an ocean like black cellophane

white beach and forms thrown on the wall

your skin had the orange rind candy smell

make me want to speak tongues and faint

here now, the swallowing room that i fear

i can disguise you no longer

in my usual cold metaphor

my dark parts thrush like traffic

i walk around your city like i'm inside a throat

my heart beats to the pace of your bookmarks

going nowhere with the bliss of gone ruths

i have never met anyone named ruth

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upon being gravely summoned

pale orange roomlike a sundressas she feared it would not be

yet after a glance for lackand upon being gravely summonedshe spirits away all her pity.

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untitled

The downtrodden ewe

in a field of empty cashews

& a paranoid wind blew by:

the world in the mind of a fly.

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curating water

the face

the gentle gif blowing in the wind ~

the stark context

the face again

the broken word

the pulling finger

the way the shoe shows wear

the gentle lungless moon

like a worm breathing through its skin

the face is weaponized

return to infinite embrace

an intimate architecture

like a pinker cave

the face broke words

like pimple in song

a carving whisk (verb)

radiant utmost embrace

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critical theory buzzwords as coping mechanisms

post-post-continental anti-rationalist appropriation aesthetics,

ontologized sublimity of affect-networks, augmented spirituality,

the withdrawal of the identified-object into an abundance of the sensory (there are always more affects than objects/objects are multiply-anchored w/ affects),

anti-accelerationist object-oriented de-ontology,

dismantling of the tyranny of positive propositions,

acceptance of paradox, 'shifting away from judgment,

unlearning the shame we have of having internalized categorical thinking in order to start dismantling the categories in earnest instead of just aestheticizing/fetishizing the discourse of dismantling…. lmao

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sockshare

I am contused in the vein

of polyp sacristies

forgetting the engine

of lust/idiot compassion

that murdered us in the first night

*

You are confused in the field

thinking nature is bleak

like the torque of a cadence

remembering how I hurt you

because it is winter and I am awful

*

hate grows like crystals

histrionic in their stillness

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a piece from 2006 called 'dad'

sterling cross (not shown), glue, gel pen

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My feelings are shaped like a body

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it makes me feel too manhattan

listening to leonard cohen

plz stop telling me “the internet is literally hell”

tho bristling in my manic zen of 45 open tabs

i do wonder does the internet make us evil

and ‘Share’ on my timeline

a photo someone posted that

says “does the internet make us evil”

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Remember when desperately

we threw the airplane pillow back and forth

& i pretended to hate the airplaine pillow

u said ‘the reason I am alive is this airplane pillow’

I pretended to suffocate u for 3sec with the airplane pillow

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And we talked about that Félix González-Torres piece

Untitled (Perfect Lovers)

The clocks touch and are set in sync

during the course of the exhibition they unsync

Imagine a puzzle whose pieces

changed shape as you tried to assemble it

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On a wells fargo business card

you wrote “memory has a shape (?)”

The horse and carriage upside-down in a corner

Have you ever sometimes left a rash alone

to see how bad you let it get before you apply cold cream?

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fake dark

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FORGIVE EVERYONE

she loves FORGIVE EVERYONE's don't give a fuck attitude

a rubber band dressing up as a bruise in front of a twitching mirror

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FORGIVE EVERYONE seems like a good stop to transfer at but her phone

doesn't have enough battery to check

*

she remembers that the moment her plane landed FORGIVE EVERYONE came on on shuffle, it seemed cloying

a 'perfect accident' commercial

*

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meaning to click 'citation'she clicks FORGIVE EVERYONEit starts playing, she cries a littleshe used to listen to it with her brother

on a radio, soft volume under a pillow

her parents didn't let her wear pantsor listen to secular musiclike FORGIVE EVERYONEthey said it was satanic

her father is like a demon gel

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FORGIVE EVERYONEgives her that feelinglike she's a pew

FORGIVE EVERYONE makes her think'how fat can a chance get'makes her say 'dear dad fuck baseball'

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depart from leaf

i’m mournful fairy lightningsinging, far

& all quakingin delicateslimes.

my dreamof alwaysbeginning has

the torqueof a hand,emptying.

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clues for the pinker shout

1. The jungle is yellow.2. An humanlike head.3. A rock in the riverbottom.4. Past subsistence.

1. The river is pinker.2. The body looks like its name.3. Letters in the cereal or soup.4. The next conclusion you shirk.

1. Make a headdress out of leaves or out of what was really going on.2. Make a headdress out of limbs turned raw plastic by their hiding.3. The rocks have language like tree roots going unseen.4. The jungle is the hunting, the ocean of possible killing, not only the place it happens.

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all anyone ever wants

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everything started happening after rehab

as a fat child i couldn't do handstands

and feared being ransacked by swans

the tiny chamber ms. trunchbull from matilda

locked kids in turns someone i know on

i thought about that and i liked it

my body has always been a heavy system

but my god is too small, like an army of cucks

i love bouquets of consonants

almost as much as bouquets of empty rooms

my body is a dead battery of forgetting

do you remember the band cute is what we aim for

they had that one song newport cigarettes or something

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acknowledgements

Thanks to my reader.

Thanks to my family and friends.

I love you all.

The image on pages 6-7 is from a YouTube video of Thomas Ades – Totentanz.

The image on page 17 is from an OKCupid ad that reads “Her New Body Made Her Ex Cry. This fitness trick that's just for women is flying off the shelves. Try it for yourself.”

The image on page 36 is a from a YouTube video about ant colony architecture.

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Manuel Arturo Abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is a poet and artist based in

Portland and New York City.

Read more of their work at twigtech.tumblr.com and @Deezius

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