NICO VASSILAKIS
A PLACE TO GO
1
I don’t know what to write, but know something needs writing. The distance is getting louder. I think I’ll choose just the right words to alleviate this load I’m carrying. That won’t happen until I start. You might think this is starting, but it’s not, it’s a ruse. I know I’ll be getting up to have a cigarette, make some tea, survey the grounds. I will divert in expert fashion. I wonder about my friends, I actively don’t call them. Distraction is my sidekick. How we engage with our external digital selves and how we distract ourselves to avoid the germ of awareness. The unpredictable is an instigator. This might keep me writing, but I’ll need accelerants to sustain that. I’m bored already. This tiny novel is going nowhere.
2
Wait, i am trying to anchor myself. maybe i cannot. maybe i do not want to.
Teasing the Alphabet- Words to Come!
zaum zin zoooooo mow moon !!!!
All language, everywhere, from all times, all seasons, coming to a glorious messy end in the biggest, blackest full stop ever.
It’s like a neurological trick.
Letters and flowers.
The collapse of words?
Definitely something! Perhaps a very strange and particular tree in a special setting?
I think it is kicking in….
Seems these letters, primarily the g & f, are having a flamboyant interlude before gravity draws them down into word formation.
Dude, your letters are like a charcuterie.
Singing letters noising their wail into the weird wor(l)d.
My new favorite!
8 window. I see you.
A variety of single letters were used to compose this piece, as well as words like literature, sleep, letters, and phrases such as Pharmaceutical language adjustment and Trapped by decorative tendencies. Also a few punctuation marks.
Uh oh. What’s that in the middle?
The curtain, the background of letters and florescent fish with a touch of pink Venetian blinds.
Pearls fall from typewriter.
Lovely language jelly fish moving upward through the See.
Are they scattering and lifting away, or circling in, unstoppably?
Upper limit ligature.
Tottering insect vispo.
A “word wing spreader.”
And now this one is my favorite!
When there’s nothing else to do, go gold. Rococo!
Letter pores in the epidermis of words.
The type is so tight, I can’t breathe.
“Periodic table of speech”
Voila!
3
The letters defy word. They detach and leave word unstable. The letters, tired of adjusting to word, are free to roam and construe.
Yes, it’s certainly a catch. Words are dented, letters lack cohesion, intentional markings are flaccid, yet we swim on. We explore our fascinations. I bring it up as a dilemma I cannot resolve and am happy not to, but find my thoughts returning to again and again. Otherness. The waste of time is enormous, but I’m guessing is become an aspect of my identity and not so easy to discharge.
You should leave here wanting all letters liberated of their word scrum obligation.
My choices, my decisions fluctuate, but they always intend to convey a letter in flight, spinning free before it ultimately settles into a static word.
*
in a nearer future
there will be no choice
the new economy will be less
*
They have become ghost cut-outs in a pop-up house I built in quiet.
When a part of your engine falls away, it is not easily replaced. This part did the heavy lifting, was the shoulder of the operation.
Nothingness seems to be evolving further.
I offer here the Surplus Letters.
4
Where the curtains kick one another
Amazing how the music speaks to you
I love those clouds.
Are those buildings clouds?
The music is too good to enjoy.
It’s soft, soft as cotton.
So fast the eye can’t pick it up.
We’re just going to walk a little ways up here till we get to the museum of alcoholics.
He’s got a tumor on his tongue.
5
When did you arrive? When did the pain start?
What type of work did you do in your life? I was asleep.
Do you know how this machine works? Which one? The wasted years of ignorance or trying to get beyond consciousness. To restate it; the act of staring at a word will release the letters that comprise it. Some of them are on my side, some of them think I’m guilty. Letter fragments, even aleatory markings, come together to assume this new meaning. What these images say and where they are going…He was square and nothing else and you knew he was there, as were the dukes that commissioned Monteverdi. They function as an alternate method of seeing and result in unexpected ways of reading. I said, hey, there’s no green in that shirt. The eel has a very strong mouth and muscular tail. The river is the same – I discuss with you entirely. These letters are then freed to interact in unprecedented ways. Otherwise, I am left floating in a room waiting for something to catch my eye. Nothingness seems to be evolving again. Fragments are in constant collision. Uncertainty is life with no fear. This environment is not poetry. It is rambling lodged in your eye.
When did you arrive? When did the pain start?
Do you know how this machine works? Which one?
6
Associates cookies with sculpture
Cookies are small sculptures
Cookies are not just flat pictures
You have to look at their size, their top, their side, their bottom, their back
If the cookies are well sculpted they should come alive for you
My eyes don’t sleep well
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from OPEN LETTERS
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NICO VASSILAKIS
Nico Vassilakis writes and draws language. Many of his results can be found online and on his website, Staring Poetics. Nico’s work has been exhibited in visual poetry exhibits around the world. Recent books include Alphabet Noir and In the Breast Pocket of a Fine Overcast Day. He co-edited The Last Vispo Anthology (Fantagraphics Books 2012). He lives in the Bronx with his wife and works as an Occupational Therapy assistant.
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A Dozen Nothing 