S13-Words-for-the-Future-materials/responses/Hope - ZERO Ogutu).txt

By Ogutu Muraya

0 [idea; a big number zero on the first page, under his name, to bring in the visual?]

[second page:]
ZERO 

[third page:]
[i]Zero is zero but what else can it be?[i] 
Or
[i]Have you ever heard someone say, ‘My favourite number is zero?’[i]

[start poem from page 4]:

Zero is a living word, a word that is self-moving, self-replicating, progressively complicating itself

Zero is words heavy like prison doors, words stirring, words stinging, words stringing into unapproachable silences

Zero is an idea, distant, distinct, distilled, fliting, flirting, fluttering eternal energies of entanglement

Zero is a mirror of time, time unlimited, time interstellar, time intertwined, time undefined, time geological,

Zero is nothing and in that nothing something, stories before there were stories to tell, music raising above overwhelming noise

Zero is a mask that unmasks, a frame that un-frames, a tale that un-tells, a name that un-names

Zero is lamentations, ululations, riotous, primal cries suspicious of identity politics and pseudo-liberations

Zero is rounded, globular, spherical, circular, without a marked beginning or a definite end, uninterrupted continuity

Zero lacks directional properties, a compass without a fixed North, it is multi-dimensional, equally sensitive and equally intense

Zero is singleness of intention, undivided attention, watching the last flicker of life, eager fatalism

Zero wages life in a time of war, a wave of poisoned joy, intimate whispers of free at last

Zero is sonic restructuring, sounds of exorcism, echoing and evicting zones of non-being 

Zero smiles, transforms, transitions, transgressing even the iciest of hearts, subverting coldness

Zero is fiercely vibrant, improvised, dynamic rhythm, a space of creative ritual

Zero is a seeker of silences, retracts and retreats, dwelling in inner world, the under surfaces

Zero is an alienated earworm, cracked, dogged, dislocated, fractured, fragile music

Zero is palpable, pulsating, supple, simple, palm wine on a hot and humid day

Zero is mystical, enigmatic, murmur of immaterial mindfulness nursing illusions of control

Zero is a beat, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat

Zero is pure ego, inspiring uneasiness, fidgeting wind eating a dull cigarette

Zero is a longing, a yearning, a desire, a need, an itch, an urge for warm, mental, steamy, sexy, soulful, remedial, subversive self-love

Zero decomposes itself into the earth from which new life bud, sprout and grow

Zero is the look of silence, what needs to be said has been said, what is not said is said without words, and there is nothing else to say