Bark, archive, splinter

Written and read by Jay Gao

On the question of the archival instinct on a clear day

Clearly you’ve been taking on too much

A ship erring to one side. Stowaway seeds; foreign bodies in

Accounts, adages, advertising slogans, annals, aphorisms, arborilegiums, axioms, balance sheets, barbs, blueprints, books, bulletins, catchphrases, censuses, charms, chronicles, citations, clippings, commentaries, commonplaces, copies, correspondences, counts, cuts, descriptions, details, dictums, dispatches, documentation, editions, entries, epigraphs, epistles, excerpts, flashes, flirtations, florilegiums, forecasts, formulas, glossaries, guides, headlines, impressions, indexes, ingredients, inscriptions, issues, items, jingles, journals, lectures, ledgers, legal formulas, letters, logs, marks, maxims, memos, minutes, missives, mottos, mysteries, notes, organs, passages, periodicals, platitudes, poems, political speeches, polls, postulates, prayers, predictions, proceedings, proverbs, quotes, receipts, recipes, records, references, registers, reminders, reports, reprints, reproductions, reviews, rhymes, riddles, saws, sayings, scripts, selections, sententia, sermons, showings, snippets, sound bites, statements, stubs, summaries, superstitions, tables of dreams, tables of drops, tables of grammar, tables of prices, tables of weights and measurements, tallies, texts, thorns, tickets, tones, transactions, transcripts, translations, transliterations, watchwords

Pure accretion via the names of things

Clearing water

Your pressed flowers

Bark, archive, splinter

Written and read by Jay Gao

There is marsh time. And there is the ministry of defence

———martial

The operation to choke the local critters out their sterile commons. To mistransmute the sum violence ahead, the violence which is yet to be downloaded, into just some violets

——————————mistranslate

Hazard barracks

His need to train, to scrap, to shred, to shed, then to scrape together, to stockpile, to amass, to accrue one contracting epoch. You are entering a military. Ordinance

Now, feuhold threshold dominates dander

Now, it may not be obvious right away where the squadron of young soldier-poets are. This could include ambushing, blank firing, their occupation of debrided surfaces

Or. Sudden noise, smoke, potential for illumination as a result of thunder flashes, trip flares, smoke emissions, marcescent caltrops

Suspicious woody debris smother the ground like consonants. Plus wet, explosive

————wounded

——————————————vowels

Warped casings of the second tongue’s pleasure

To contain———which is to say, to deploy the work of carving: transformations, battle prowess, a forked toad, a crested snake, circumstances of the battle of the trees, three clashes of arms, witness the trees in battle, witness creation by math, witness poetic prowess, adventures, more arms, and more paraphernalia, even more transformations, such boasting of arms

A marital horse

To narrativise travels then battle feats then three cataclysms then prowess then a prophetic gift

I was in a multitude of forms

Inviting perpetuation

A hundred hosted forces. Woodmongering

Jump to today

A cavalcade of flags soldered out of imperial taffeta

Tomorrow, you arrive at the fringe of the living archive regiment: you meet alder, you meet willow, you meet rowan, you meet knotweed, you meet blackthorn, and medlar, and rose, and raspberry, and privet, and honeysuckle, and ivy, and cherry, and birch, and goldenrod, and pine, and ash, and elm, and hazel, and knotweed, and dogwood, and beech, and holly, and whitethorn, and vine, and bracken, and broom, and gorse, and heather, and oak, and pear, and clover, and knotweed, and chestnut, and birch, and oak, and birch, and oak, and birch, and oak, and knotweed, and birch, and oak, and birch, and chestnut, and birch, and birch, and birch, and oak, and birch, and chestnut, and knotweed, and birch, and birch, and oak, and pear, and knotweed, and oak, and oak, and birch, and birch, and oak, and birch, and chestnut, and oak, and oak, and knotweed, and birch, and knotweed, and knotweed, and oak, and, birch, and oak, and birch, and oak, and birch, and oak, and birch, and oak, and birch, and oak, and oak, and oak, and, and, and, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An earlier version of this poem was first published in Bark, Archive, Splinter (Out-Spoken Press, 2024)