MARTINE BELLEN
DNA
A national survey reports one quarter of adults
Experience off-the-Richter-scale loneliness
(Easy peasy)
As the lonely-sensitive brain archives threats,
Social relationships or intimate betrayals,
Compared to nonlonelies who seek relational integration
Our architects of loneliness blueprint structures and underlying proteins
Which translate "I knew it was coming"
as a plus (+) or minus (-) verdict
Prisoner’s dilemma
Hostage #3 pacifies her social pain
Survival depends on collective ability
Her behavior controlled by tweeters or a high frequency console
The fatal production that induces belief in mirages
And heightened microawakenings
Organized tourism buses with cybernetic prostheses
Cross state lines to "New Life"
Dead-ended by the cul de sac "Need"
The group of lonelies tours a Tastee Snack factory, psycho-physically
Exhausted, propensity toward ecstasy, pilgrimage
For heroic existance. But these petit mort yield no resolution
And day-trippers not comfortable with sunyata
Continue suffocation.
Sentiment constructs archaeological layers of consciousness,
Sentient Creatures.
Sedimentary particles of telematic energy
Or invisible tele-beings (ghost friends)
As temporary artificial surface
Imperative for the future of loneliness and its social intention.
MARTINE BELLEN is the author of nine collections of poetry, including GHOSTS! (Spuyten Duyvil), THE VULNERABILITY OF ORDER (Copper Canyon Press); TALES OF MURASAKI AND OTHER POEMS (Sun & Moon Press), which won the National Poetry Series Award, and the novella 2X(SQUARED). A bilingual collection of her poetry has been published in Germany by Verlag im Waldgut (translator, Hans Jürgen Balmes). In September 2015, THIS AMAZING CAGE OF LIGHT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS was published (Spuyten Duyvil Press). She has written the libretto for OVIDIANA, an opera based on Ovid's METAMORPHOSES (composer, Matthew Greenbaum) that has been performed in New York City and Philadelphia. She has collaborated with David Rosenboom on AH! OPERA NO-OPERA, a pioneering collective work, which has been co-composed and performed by creators from around the globe. Its world premiere was at REDCAT in L.A. In September 2015, MOON IN THE MIRROR: A MONODRAMA OPERA (text: Bellen and Zhang Er and composer: Stephen Dembski) had its world premiere in Flushing Town Hall in Queens, NY.