Issue 20: Khaled Hakim
THE WAY TO NOTHINGNESS
There are theze two extreemes (antaa) O bhikkus, wich shd be avoyded by ane who has renownsd:
i) Indulgense in referensial pleazures – this is base, vulger, worldly, ignobl & profitles
ii) Addicshion to selfmortificasion – this is paineful, ignoble, & profitless.
Now this, O bhikkus, is th Noble Truth of Sufering.
It is craving for reproducion (ponobhavika) which produses shiftless parrots (kavi), accompanid by passionat clinging. It is the craving for sensuel referens (kamatanha), craving for recognicion, & craving for a penshion (bhavatanha)
Now this, O bhikkus, is the Noble Truth of the Cessasion of Sufering.
What can be rememberd may not be forgiven.
It is the compleet separacion from, & distruction of milk pudding, its forsaking, th liberacion therfrom.
Conkering the Need for Frends
Cume away w/ us soft kumqwat,
to the new vocabularid sleep
at som point you wake up & realize y/ ar bowed in a Mecca Bingo hall
an Irish nun in burka in front of a witebord coverd in friytening hieroglyficks. Peeple sit w/ foreheds so large they must be welthy. A nest of Newtonian reacsion. Heere th brodhers proove Allah, lether th kufr.
40 yers of idealizm has not entyrely eliminatid th smell of chepe expeeriens…
her dredlocks ar exacly lik yors. Thers a feeling of claritie, a nowlege ware the subject is, realistick colur & an awarness of how th subject got ther. What is seen is a convinsing replica of fals memory, until yu look for tics.
No new matereral is ever seen & its impossibel to relate th taste of a petty bourjwah thiyhbone w/out thinking of Teecher.
Yoo & Veronica Lake aganst th world! – guntoting runaways in a Godard film bruzing th dominant langwije purple & burning the instituwsions down w/ chapbooks.
Now get Dhammapitaka his dinner.
Conkering the Need for Enemiys
Yoo too can reche extincsion at the utter margins of use, which, bhikku, is unnowing, is bhikku, unending, is bhikku, without form – to end, bhikku, spoonfed thru yr dribble in a home.
Fihte the condicioning of Romance – the poets invented love, & th poets can destroy it. Just to say the word Frangipane is to invoke a sereis of commentrys wich yoke th referent to th self
yuve red the hundred books of absens
here taste the spunk
Wat did you doo in history.
I rote the waters who despized ech other.
Beyond the Dharma
What pm is prodused by an electrick shock baton.
I used to be a loane shark or a Gnostick sex addict, but then I fund a sofhisticated aparatus for feelings of worthlesnes. This sangha ensurs yoo will never be rich famus or deal with th world exsept as a muted hysterik.
Ill give you bardic hormones – lik the acaryas of camels
O Bhikku becom the langwije of disapoyntment its filtering timidittys –
libberal pollyvalent reflexsive
apropriate nonpersun
Avoiding Signifficans
The relacion of an atom to an oringe is roufly figurd to be the relasion of that orenge to the erth. If we zoom down to pictur that oringe in the bluw earth to imagin delicate apes rubbing instanciasion;
& thoze few thusand orenges th woodpulp rag & printing inks a filigree link
Transparensie denying transparensi
everywun working at the edges of inteligibillity
& this at the edges of literelness;
the diymond miners in Namibia ar urging th concreetness of this the thusness –
the witeness reflecting room – the inkiness this this
a valuwe?
a chapbook mad of rice paper gets eeten in a famin: gather thoze words into a box of alfhabet sereals that get pored onto milk, & Brownian motion nudging them to speke, they tast of Cheerios & despaer
it translats but avoyds lyf
Beyond the Bodhicitta
For som tyme in the West, ther has been a notion that afluent damiged peple produce formal inovacion.
If you are wite middelclass & educated, wat els can yu doo except becume invizible.
As you grow older th stars will disapear
Ther is a future were artists who mak a funding applicasion wil be put on a list; ech week a Nacional Lottery cull is made from the list, & the chozen wons are guiloteened. It creats an unhinged number of hothaus Rambauds who wd otherwiz sniff glew, carve luve & hate on ther nuckles, or get into th sex industri; it alows endles mawdlin rappers to escap the guillotene try as they miht.
But it allso allows sume to attain Boddhicitta w/ brutal prematurity – a swating novise w/ a hedscarf rond his brow sits acros from som glazd eyed renunsiate & the Beloved Techer is wielding a pistol w/ ane bullet in it & showting at th competiters Maow! Maow! Slap! Ma-aow!
This is Yere Zero. And this is not Yere Zero.
Beyond the Sangha
What ptry doz represencation reprezent.
I, a set of tropes holding yr taste & larning, into wich y/ can project my fantasis of family & engajement
the distans of pibble hierarchie –
I am heere to tell yu the day of referense is cume.
Thers no more time for puja, no mor tyme for leeves w/owt direcsion,
th monks of Nalanda must flee th Musslim hords & find jobs in telesales serching for the wone mug in samsara
Filaments of linger in the intent, th trees fall in th forest & err, the sond & ayr waves riffle the fittest lefe & ripeness; & the erth turnd over, a billiun nematodes got made homless & anyhow th waves sent thru the univers etc etc
niht waters embankment beutifull, becuz we are not it
a wantless ptry
bilding its colapse heere
*
* *
* * *
Lissen, Ile escap to the footholds of sucsess & let you now all abut it
Is it posible to reed th moment of fantasizing
as I stray once agen from th path
I dremed it was spring & ther wer sparks on th twigs, it was so close to spring there was no need for th drem. Actully I think it was yesterdy. I triyd to crush myself. I did my litel best.
But my littel best was just too big.
London 1998/2018
BIBLIOGRAFY
Buddha Daly Reedings compild Swami Venkatasenanda
The Bodhicaryavatara Santideva
Ritcual and Mantras: Rules Withowt Mening Frits Staal
anonymitie, modesty, silens: ed. Nickolas Jonsun anthology of new alcoholicks & internet porn adicts
Virtuwus Gangrene retrospectif on WS Graham offers a last hurrah from th grave
12 Steps to Senyle Dementia: JH Prinne Reeder. The finest poet of ouer tyme unforgetably forgettabel.
Khaled Hakim has returned to innovative poetry after almost two decades away. In the 1990’s he published sparingly and performed semi-improvisatory routines with roots in minimalist and conceptual art. The Way to Nothingness is one of the last performative works, originally presented at a 1998 Symposium called 'Conditions for Writing' hosted by Bob Perelman. Khaled disappeared before his final publications in the anthology Foil: Defining Poetry 1985-2000 had even come out. A book ‘Letters from the Takeaway’ is due to be published and the performative work ‘The Routines: 1985-2000’ is in preparation.
