Hyperbolic Love

(above mural art by Julia Baba created as part of Cadence: 30 Days of Art in Long Island City, 2016)

Hyperbolic Love is an intermedia project of poetics, dance, immersive theater and a curriculum conceived of, initiated and directed by agent mT GK duBois. The project has four interconnected expressions:

1. A Four Volume Collection of poetry and stories that tracks, in magical realist form, an unfolding relationship with the inner & out muse. The full collection will be published and professionally read and recorded.
2. A Long-Play Album of thirteen tracks with Stage Act– Iggy Pop and Patti Smith meet Rumi and Phillip Glass at an initiation ceremony. Thirteen works from this collection will serve as source and lyric material for a musical album and stage show created with various musicians and producers
3. Five Dance Poems– Five works, chosen by five dancer/choreographers, will be choreographed and performed live within the stage acts and/or recorded separately as a dance poem video album.
4. The Practice of Hyperbolic Love– A curricula for the practice of hyperbolic love inspired and woven from the threads of great cultural inheritances such as Sufi poetry, the Four Immeasurables and Tonglen– taking and sending. A course to expand one’s capacities and transform circumstances. 

Status Report: Three volumes completed. GK duBois at work on Volume 4.

Here are three poems from the collection: She Found the Dirt, Leap & Ravens.

She found the dirt

She found the dirt
What else could she do?
She starts digging
with her tiny pink fingers
till they become claws
talons raking the ground
tearing through roots
slicing earthworms
a carnival of
wants and needs
a girl
transforming into
an intensity

her hands
displace water veins
she has no notion
of what might be there
tunnels subsoil substrata
no experience of
burrowing creatures
snaking concourses
of moles and mice
no hesitation
for analysis
or a geologist’s concepts

she goes on
deep in the hole
shaped like a canoe
she finds the place
of the dead children
skulls of deer and
shards of busted
pots
she finds buried scrolls
of ancient script
woven dreamcatchers
jewels of jade and
amethyst

But these mean nothing to her
Her hands are in the digging
She calls for dynamite
as she disappears from view
the first
in this fantasy of the infinite well

Leap: Sky Poem 

Those dreams of paradise
were only harbingers of the despair
that hangs about you now
your escape into the movies of your mind’s making
didn’t prepare you for this third reel
“If only I could get back to the time
when i didn’t dream”
you say as if that’s what you really wanted
Clicking and pasting, annotating and bookmarking
“I wish it wasn’t like this, like it is” you say
“I wish I had the power to change it” you say
And suddenly, there’s a booming horn
blooming beyond the windows
and more horns following
There is a massive storm of horns
engulfing the street
The buildings begin to vibrate and undulate
the windows crack and shatter
falling as shards to the street
as crystals on the floor of your room
Overcome, you leap into the gaping opening
and soar above the city, great master of the wind
You’ve crossed the threshold
You will find her this time
This time you know where to look–

only duBois is over there laughing,
why go seeking for what you’ve already found? she says.
You have just entered her womb

Ravens

And now to reveal the very deepest truths about everything
The vaccine Covid why the sky is blue am I safe is that really a Ferris wheel
burning at the edge of a cliff
will there be paradise on the other side of all of this
and if there is what would paradise be for me
And most important: Are ravens happy?
The ones cawing and gurgling and speaking in tongues
stroking the cadence that moves
with the dance of the goddess beside the banyan tree
The ones drifting like eagles but not quite as high on winds currents
Even when you remove your last mask you will still hear an echo
The drumbeat of your fingers on the back of your skull while you cup your ears
The one beaten into you
The one that reminds you in the morning
That you are here
That you are awake
That you are dreaming
I too can hear the ocean
It’s chorus and driving line
The normalcy of bioluminescence in the very deep
The yearning of cacti who still thirst when they reach bottom
The fish who have turned into helicopters
The fish who have turned into tunnel makers
The fish who have turned into cemeteries and caterpillars and libraries
I too hear the ocean
And find in my voice the hum of bees and cicada, wildflowers and wild boar
All of us Pausing sometimes for days when the tide turns