Daxia Formations

-A Collaboration by Patrick Milian and Harry Kleeman–

In this collaboration, Monologging artist, Harry Kleeman combines his performative work with that of his digital practice and beliefs to collaborate with Monologging poet, Patrick Milian. Patrick’s body and mind conscious poems convey a raw and in some cases withering existence. The anatomy of Man is on display, as well as a whirlwind complex of maturing voices.

Harry’s pictures, likewise, explore the male physique through an intricate process. “The original performance consisted of a 2 hour long photo/video shoot with collaborator, Daniel Nielson,” the artist notes. “Daniel shot digital pictures as I went into a rage of monologue and painting in order to access and mutate an uninhibited self.” Kleeman has done numerous similar performances, and they are a part of a practice that he believe yields growth through transformation and persistence. The artist then combines the digital photos of his performance with found digital images of the Daxia Formation, a surreal, psychedelic colored landscape in China…

 

 

 

Boy,

The kind of story here, the rules for doling out
tragedy, is no cushion for this femur
like a fuselage. Convention’s no diagram for
your body’s gleaming dismemberment.
Your zipper’s teeth nipped a fleck of flesh—
not yours. Now everything softens like marrow.
What you gain from carrying a dim menace
in bones curved with rage and submission
is a silence broader than snow-clad cities. Burning
bad news seldom thaws black ice knuckles,
and putting your dukes up at a bespoken narrative
won’t diminish its velocity.               Slowly,
the story goes that we learn our own fragility.
The story goes on without us if it has to.

 

 

 

 

Man,

Whatever barbed boys don’t, you and I shall assume,
unerringly understand is up to them to look up.
Your consummate cohort, male humans of history,
isn’t but birthright, butch bequest—yours, mine maybe.
Will it be Gutenberg’s inheritance that I get?
Or whoever stamped it second, lived long enough
to bind it in books? Masculinity’s mostly
my limbic library, but also an apogee
I’m cagily catastrophizing. Man, I don’t desire
half as handsome a chest. I’d rather not remember
works and words you worried and rubbed into records.
What I assume shall you assume? Or should we whip
the shroud sheets? My rewired reading list
makes nothing like knowledge, not even eminence.

 

 

 

 

Boy,

The emerald insinuation around a pigeon’s neck
knocks black out with refraction—stretches,
catches roadflares and swampgas—but no one studies
sturdy bodies. No one measures out in verse
birdy clots with matted claws. You should
shed your obsessions with the dirty dove’s green
ring—fastened delirium, pedestrian concern.
Unlearn what you’re convinced is your vision.
Shun the hypnotizing repeats, the rancid loops
spooled up and over, up and over, up and over.
Reverb is emptiness. Epiphany is just music
sickened by its own replaying. Amateurism
matches lacquers of gold to what’s ungrown.
Flown far from song, your birds don’t breathe.

 

 

 

Man,

Adumbrated destiny,              biological fate,
calculated shadow that            darkens behavior:
evolution isn’t aging,   as         far as I’m aware.
Getting hard is getting             hard. Bulged or sunken
ingenuity of the chest:                        jugulars don’t make a
ka-ching below the                 left clavicle, but split,
make a crotch                          near the heart. Where’s my
original sin? Just a                   precious lattice-work  of
quietude quickened to             rock-rigid anatomy.
Stuff this stuff,                       this avaricious and
underwhelming adulthood.      Virility is a myth,
wonderful fodder for               ex-infantrymen.
You’ve taught me two                        zero-exception policies:
1) Manhood’s for sissies.       2) Only bones get soft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boy,

Surely sight’s feeble momentum loses its
shrapnel-zone’s far-reaching perimeter
in shadow. Strange fact about pigment:
the shortened scope of vision somehow makes
shaded tones seem verily black instead
of shuttered, subdued versions of magentas,
chocolates, and scarlets. Fundamentals
in charge of sight get forgotten at midnight,
when boys are forced to seize the azures
made up in favor of such assured tones
as muddy foreheads and soured chardonnays.
Please hold votive lamps skillfully, or choose
to be foul Eros—light sparking off your chest.
Pray for scars that shine precious silver.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Man,

Get icky, Heracles; I’m your Iolaus: lover/
nephew. Get newborn; I’m your baby-self
strangling snakes. Get slithery; I’m your snake,
making your making mythic. Get grown up.
Go faceless, fortified with a dramatist’s
mask. Go heroically under the mountain, where
we used to sleep. Go youthfully to the usurious
ends of our little loves, little lores. Go away.
Give me a sip of the ceremonial wine without
cutting me. Give it classily like a proper pagan.
Or conceivably classically. Give an assignment
to the theorists following along at home. Give out.
Gather your receipts and hope for a refund.
Gather your yoke, your years, your nerve.

 

***

 

Daxia is a true example of physical growth and development. It is a literal consequence of a transformation found in our world, but appearing to be one found only in dreams or the internet. My performance is a similar metamorphosis that affects my internal landscape in a way that only performance, rather than everyday experience, can. I also believe that the Internet and the ability to access any digital image/information at any given moment is heavily connected with a shift in collective identity and a place we go to change ourselves. I chose to use found images of the Daxia dreamscape to pierce my skin and surroundings, thereby mirroring and digitally heightening the expressions I attempt to achieve in my performance: ephemeral immortality brought on by metamorphosis.”

– Harry Kleeman