July 21, 2005

If Ernest Hemingway
were not dead
but instead a vagrant
at Justin Herman Plaza
he’d be wearing a dirty red shirt
and filthy jeans
a fishing cap
and scowls for his bench mate
(who bears a striking resemblance to Lionel Moise
and talks like William Faulkner
about the dope boys
and city hall cops
all bought off)
and he wouldn’t even have
2 bits
from Rexroth in his pocket
for spite or spit
as he sits around the varied corners
down the streets
from City Lights and porn shops
beside financial districts
smoking
on his cheap straight pipe
and bad tobacco

but he doesn’t have a Bloody Mary
on this sunny afternoon
still undreamt from somewhere else,
unconscious

and this San Francisco
not of Cuba
is instead a hangover
writ by London and his Barleycorn
drunk
from parks and too much sitting

if he didn't have
this ample hesitation
and a risk
of growing older
this personal tragedy
tangled in his unkempt beard
if he were not
unhid from sight
and hurting like hell
forgotten
like an immoral problem
or a strangled pigeon
if he were not
rotting
a last mismanaged panacea
of terrible depression
and he sat here
caught
in the artist’s reward

his motion
might be mistaken
for action
but not defeat
broken
by the world
but not stronger

might quote Bukowski
“It takes special talent to be a drunk.
It takes endurance. Endurance is more important
than truth.”
might quote himself
“Always do sober
what you said you’d do
drunk.”

If Hemingway were not dead
he’d be here chasing pigeons
in Justin Herman Plaza
throwing his cap
with a deadly aim
and cursing with his little words

Feet in fading precision

Walls of sun-dried clay

Valleys of ruin

Unearthly hours

Under a sun-dried gaze

To admit our repetitions

This was dreariness

The unmistakable boundary

The smell of dust

The heads of dry water

The graves we dig

The front steps that sag

The bare facts

That haven’t been properly gutted

Sticking their necks out

Silently across the border

Shrouded in redundancy

& Pure shining bodies

& Pocket bones

a tedious way of living

a dreary way of living

in redundancy and thirst

In a way this is living

In a way of dying

In a very dull way of being

In a dying odor

Hands on hips

Fused into claws

For dénouement

Forced but undetectable

Eyes bleary

Even without a body

Completely decayed

Busy with dying

Beneath the dreary motions

Beneath a sun-dried sun

A sad way of living

An empty coffin

A meal of dust

A gray windblown furrow

A dirt poor measure

A complete understanding

A clear dry rivulet

Certain themes repeat themselves

a thought with dark wings

an act of love

what we take for granted

at our mothers’ knees

arthritic knees

in the early morning

with nowhere else to turn

small joys

and wave upon endless wave

of disenchantment

only deepening

these chiseled outlines

between self

and other voices

narrow-hearted, without a breath

our sheltered hoaxes

curved with dreams

I shudder to think

I shudder to think
            in the Marxian sense
of a proper grammar.

Its structure of domination.
The flood and buffering.
Of an industry.
Spoken or typed.
By which we neglect.
The conditions of conflict.

Our right to contend / with fissures of text

     for the concept
     the predictable
     means of production

(The implications ...)

Any linguist will tell you
These truths lie with their utterers
Conceived in tongues.
Like the meaning of Class.
Italicized.
Into all these periods
Of linguistic slaughter.

We adapt / evolve / conceiv'd over drinks

Contractions. For nothing.
As quick and immediate
As history itself.

     we only think
     we control words
     Assume their identities
     & bury our brackets
     in the onus of redaction

"Talk about grammar / Punctuation and explosives."

[The actual use of guns]

& Libation
Our normal drunken banter.
A shared tongue
in the gutter of meaning.

Listeners / living out a séance

on the battlefield.
of self-censored eggshells.

     Only language
     Leans upon its triumph
     Like a complete moron,
     Its format and pronunciation
     Always spelled correctly.

For example, this clause—
                   To thrust his ellipses / into her flesh ...
—is an English purist.

An operation.
Of misguided violence.

"In a small town / Where everything is known."

The villagers vote
a little disheartened
on the issue of words.

Their non-dimensional voices ...

As Syme once said to Winston
in the furtherance of silence:

                   "Our language / is almost stupid"

(but not quite.)

Caught up in things

the mind wanders

out through our eyes, a thing

amongst things / at the command

of words / blind to itself / it radiates

from a self / this world

of immanence

& ideality / its upheavals & turbulence

become ciphers

of the visible / a texture

of Being

// exhaled //

inside a space / of vision

& movement

of humans who speak

from a pre-spatial / world, intertwined

in the roots of being

this texture

between a hand / & another hand

not contained / a spectacle

of nothing

moving / but self-moving

it ignores

what is unknown / & we awaken

to an echo of bodies

the voices of light, soil

beneath our feet / shifting

& repeating

"we are the inside / of the outside / touching"

ourselvestouching

as a question

not of lines (there is no border

visible in itself) but the mind

enters these lines

as they pass / through us

& surround us / we see / but there is

no actual awakening

to hold / suspended / transformed

in a thought

this world

that demands things / of things

that are not in themselves / things

the plural x

of our operations / to substantiate

we enter into a reversibility

of dimensions

into a cultural regime / a thickness

of meaning

reduced to a set / of techniques

& data / a plane

that cannot be assigned

space

radiates onto a map

of the visible / transforms

a world / into things

where there is neither truth

nor falsehood

& no enigma

but that of the blinding

light / of visibility

forming shadows / a reflection / opened up

& so quickly closed

"the mind is an instrument that moves itself”

a metaphysics / of depth

that our eyes & hands
cannot discover

A perfect bedlam

About. About me. About something.
About the gas lamps. A cabman.

A cold gloomy. Across the road. Afterwards.
Against. A gloomy evening.

All day. All night. All over.
All soaked with rain. All the sciences.

All this month. All up. Almost menacing.
Almost suddenly. And.

And a comfortable arm-chair. And all the problems. And almost ceased.
And answered. And a sort of stream.

And began thinking. And began watching. And beginning.
And between them. And called me.

And crossing themselves. And do you know. And forget them.
And go as they will. And had been spending.

And have been going. And he had. And he too.
And how many. And I do not know it.

And if it had happened. And I have known it. And I know that.
And I let them come. And I recall them now.

And I remember. And I remember that. And it amused them.
And it had been. And it is just now.

And it was after that. And it was still. And just.
And kept crying. And lay trembling.

And loathed it. And make evident. And no doubt.
And not so much. And only.

And playing stones. And poor. And poor as I was.
And put it down. And rushed headlong.

And she. And shouted. And shuddering.
And so. And so.

And that. And there was. And there was scarcely.
And the youngest child. And two other friends.

And was followed. And went on. And what I resented.
And why. And would not.

An idea. An unmistakable. Any.
Anyone. Anything at all.

Appeared there. A retired curtain. As it was.
As I was looking. As I was thinking.

As much to them. As one could. As old as old.
A splendid revolver. As ridiculous.

A stare. As though. A table with books.
At eleven o'clock. At first I fancied.

At her. A thin little. A thought.
At me. At me.

At seeming ridiculous. At the sky. At the table.
At the table. At the table.

At the university. A whole candle. Became cooler.
Because she was shivering. Because that stare.

Before me. Between ten and eleven. Black patches.
Both she and her children. But afterwards.

But a wretched little dress. But clasping. But how much longer.
But I gave up. But I never care.

But I noticed. But not. But now.
But of the good. But one could.

But she ran. But she was. But since I grew.
But strange to say. But suddenly abandoned.

But that. But that it had only seemed. But the full realisation.
But they did not. But they laughed.

But they won't understand. But through affection. But twelve months.
But was. By a horrible.

By day. By that time. By the elbow.
By the elbow. By the hair.

Came last year. Caring about anything. Certainly be.
Colder and damper. Covered.

Crying out. Dampness. Dear to me.
Determined to do so. Did not.

Dinner that day. Disappeared. Distinctly seen.
Doing nothing. Don't even think.

Down. Drinking vodka. Each other.
Engaged in dragging. Even in.

Even physically. Even when they laugh at me. Every instant since.
Every night. Everyone always laughed.

Every year. Evidently. Existed only to prove.
Existing. Facing her.

Fathomless. Flew from me to him. For.
For a long time. For certain.

For instance. For some unknown reason. For that little girl.
For the last three days. For the last year.

For them. For the right moment. For twelve months.
From being lost. From every.

From every stone. From everything. From fright.
From the fear. From the first.

From the very beginning. Gave me a thought. Gentlemen of doubtful.
Given up thinking. Give way and confess.

Gloomier. Grew and strengthened. Had a sort of fit.
Had been falling. Had been put out.

Had been there also. Had existed in the past. Had given me.
Had passed. Had scarcely.

Half a dozen. Has been here. Has caused me.
Her hands. Her mother.

Her wet broken shoes. His behavior. How much they shout.
I am a ridiculous person. I am telling this.

I asked myself. I began to feel. I believe that.
I bored them. I bought.

I cannot tell. I could join in their laughter. I could see that.
I cut. I decided.

Identically. I did not. I did not go.
I didn't know. I do not resent it.

I don't remember. If all the street lamps. I fancy.
If at least. If I did not feel.

If it had not been. If it were not. If one looked.
I guessed that. I had.

I had almost. I had an impulse. I had firmly.
I had long had an inkling. I had solved.

I have. I have always been ridiculous. I have a room.
I have a sofa. I have of course tried.

I kept waiting. I knew. I knew I was ridiculous.
I know for a fact. I know that sound.

I learnt the truth. I made up my mind. I mounted up.
In abject terror. In a flat.

Indeed. Indifferent. Induced me to tell.
In every relation. In frightened children,

In her voice. In his cab. In me with the years.
In my armchair. In my early youth.

In old days. In one of these dark patches. In the distance.
In the end. In the future.

In their eyes as before. In the past. In there.
In the room. In the shape.

In the street. In the street. In the street I looked.
In thought. Into the lodgings.

Into them. Into the service. I only read.
I remember. I sat down.

I sat down quietly. I sat silent. I say 'unknown.'
Is burnt each night. I should go on sitting.

I should have blown out my brains. I should have shot myself. I sit up all night.
I sit up all night. I spoke without any.

I stamped my foot. I stay awake. Is that so.
I studied. I suddenly felt.

I suddenly said. It. It did not.
It did not matter. It had been going on.

It intently. It is. It lightened.
It stopped. I thought it would.

I thought that. I told her first. It to anyone.
I turned. It was. It was a child of eight.

It was myself. It was the same with life. It would have been.
I understood. I used.

I used to be miserable. I was born. I was going home.
I was seven years old. I was so proud.

I was so utterly. I went to school. Left on a visit.
Last November. Leave me.

Less cheerless. Lit the candle. Little by little I guessed.
Lived there. Lodger in the flat.

Lying in my drawer. Made a show. Made one's heart.
Mammy, Mammy. Mankind.

Mattered. Matter to me. Me.
Means despair. More deeply.

More fully. Most of all. My awful characteristic.
My friends, I said. My problems.

My room is small. Myself that night. Next to mine.
No annoyance. Nor how many.

Not exactly at myself. No they won't. Nothing mattered.
Not of reproach. Not seeming but being.

Now they call me. Now this stare. Of annoyance.
Of being. Of being angry.

Of it. Of the curtain. Of the curtain.
Of them there are. Of the partition.

Of the ridiculous figure. Oh how hard it is. Oh how I suffered.
Oh I had not settled. Old-fashioned shapes.

One man on earth. One of the gloomiest. One of them.
One of them knew. One other.

One way or the other. On her head. On it.
On like that. On the contrary.

On the third of November. Or guessed. Or that something of the sort.
Or whether there had never been. Other lodgers.

Out. Over it. Particularly.
Particularly. People in the prospect.

Perhaps from the hour. Perhaps from the time. Perhaps it was.
Possible evenings. Properly.

Pulling at me. Rain. Rain I can remember.
Really care. Regimental.

Reputation. Rousing and suddenly. Sad because they can not know.
Sadder because. Say a word.

Simply because. She called out. She had run.
She ran beside me. She suddenly pulled me.

She was in terror. She was not weeping. Shoot myself.
Shoot myself. Since they came.

Sir, Sir. Sobbing and gasping. So completely.
So far. Some passerby.

Sometimes stops. Some words. So sad as I hear them.
So that it seemed. Spasmodically.

Spite. Stoned. Studied at the university.
Suddenly. Suddenly I noticed.

Suddenly occurred. Tattered clouds. Than anybody else.
Than any other. Than the rain.

That. That curtain. That had come upon me.
That her mother. That I allowed myself.

That I came home. That I do not even hear. That I found out.
That if there were. That I might.

That I remain. That I should shoot. That is I shall.
That it should. That it was all the same.

That I was absurd. That I was ridiculous. That I was ridiculous.
That I was ridiculous. That many.

That night. That night. That note.
That nothing. That nothing in the world.

That something. That's why. That the curtain.
That theory. That there was nothing.

That there would be nothing. That they are. That very day.
That was. That was because.

That was growing. That would be. The evening.
The evening could not be. The landlady.

Them. The more I learned. The more thoroughly.
Then. The night before.

Then I left. The other side. There had been a fight.
There never had been anything. There was only.

There were. The same consciousness. The same evening.
The sky. The stares gave me.

The street. The thought I don't know. The truth.
The truth. The words I understood.

They are all dear to me now. They caught my eye. They did not know.
They got excited. They saw it.

They talked of something. They were not offended. They won't take him.
This little girl. This pride grew.

This showed itself. Though I realised. Though she did not articulate.
Through something. Through the partition.

Till daybreak. To anyone. To a policeman.
To avoid his acquaintance. To be precise.

To be seen. To be the only one. To call someone.
To confess. To drive her away.

To find something. To go. To help.
To kill myself. To knock against people.

To manhood. To me. To me.
To me. To me as I went.

To me that. To my fifth drink. To my school mates.
To notice them. Took me.

Took out the revolver. Too petrified. To them.
To the terrible misery. To think about.

To this day. Two chairs. Two lives before.
Two of them had been. Trifles.

Understand it. Up at the sky. Wall.
Wander through my mind. Wanted to complain.

Was bored. Was dying. Was empty.
Was going on. Was happening.

Was horribly. Was my own fault. Was rising.
Was sleeping. Was that.

Was the conviction. Wearing nothing. Were in mortal fear.
What had I. When I had put it down.

Whether the world existed. Where there are. Which.
Which could not utter. Which was of more consequence.

Who had been taken ill. Who knew better. Who knows the truth.
Why. Why it was.

With a garret window. With a kerchief. With all my sorrow.
With American leather. With an angle.

With complete conviction. With every year. With her.
With me. With old furniture.

With people. With science. With two little children.
Would have never. You can not care.

Filtering the light through a system

I. What it will do

We are in danger of forgetting.
Analysis of the sound.
Driven away as violently as from our bodies.
We answered that we entirely agree.
The framework of poetics.
Into the text as into the world.
As of something limitless, unbounded.
A dominant that can be defined.
To strengthen by repeating.
The magic of illusion.
Its mandatory and inalienable constant.
The equivalent of destiny, to confuse.
Facing a self-inflicted death.
Not an invisible portion.

II. On the verge of being discovered

"We cannot fall out of this world."
An indispensable device.
La nouvelle de l'ancien.
Feeling of an indissoluble bond.
The role and structure of other components.
An arid millennial ground.
More certain than this feeling.
The art of a given epoch.
To foresee the unforeseeable.
To maintain clear and sharp lines.
Viewed as a particular.
Like music, our stream of phantasms.
Subject to disturbance.
Artistically focused.

III. A passionate and precise interrogation

From the beginning.
Criteria and its composition.
Extraordinarily rich and inventive.
The analogies might be too remote.
Proclaiming self-sufficiency.
Prolonged by a production of forms.
The more general problem of preservation.
Words in and for themselves.
Each stage of rapture inscribing.
A destruction of the memory-trace.
The referential function.
So full of luminous torrents.
Dovetailed into a jumble.
The exclusively aesthetic function.

IV. These waves, these floods, these outbursts

Things that are unimaginable.
Not unchangeable.
Kept in the dark about themselves.
Historical sequence in spatial terms.
The hierarchy.
The fantastic tumult of drives.
It has only one justification.
A more infinite relationship.
Resisting death.
In pictorial terms.
Precisely toward the sign.
Enough to take the edge off.
It bows to the objection.
A question of disappearance.

V. An oblate consideration

In no sense preserved.
Subsidiary and optional.
Once the eyes have shuttered.
A city is a priori.
The most artistic of all devises.
Intact unto themselves.
The thymus gland and childhood.
Monolithic, more synthetic.
In the trembling equilibrium.
Until it has attained form.
A scrutiny of transitional regions.
Confined to the narrow room.
To represent this phenomenon.
An instability of boundaries.

VI. The territory is black

For the past to be preserved.
Letters, diaries, notebooks, and travelogues.
We might fail.
This feeling of infantile helplessness.
Atonal complex of values.
Internalized as horror.
Which constitutes the ideational content.
Continual shifts in the system.
The infamous logic.
By withdrawing from the world.
Our alleged carelessness.
We see a physiological basis.
Our lovely mouths.
Their rhythms and their styles.

VII. Regression to the primordial

Our blood flows and we extend.
The non-canonical version.
Trances and ecstasies.
Not afraid of lacking.
Reinstated, rehabilitated and recognized.
The riddles of this world.
Omitted, brushed aside at the scene.
As erroneous and shabby.
Placated by our signs of remorse.
The opposition.
A name in the realist canon.
One would like to mix among their ranks.
Confounded with the history of reason.
And condemned.

VIII. To address ourselves without meaning

The privileged alibi.
Corresponding to our requirements.
An intoxicating substance.
For there have been failures.
Our liberation has promoted.
The idea of life having a purpose.
At odds with tradition.
Contemporaneous masters.
At loggerheads with the world.
Harrowing explosions.
The prevalent sound of this epoch.
Withdrawn from contracts.
A radical mutation of things.
Temporarily suppressed.

IX. From the external word we rage

Every structure is for a moment.
Important impulses toward overcoming.
The pressure of these possibilities.
That never hung their heads.
On chronological cross sections.
A suffering which comes from elsewhere.
Indispensable ruptures and transformations.
A visible awareness.
Recommended by the various schools.
Returning to the body.
To novelty as a deviation.
Put into practice by the uncanny stranger.
A determined refusal.
And other methods.

X. Access to our native strength

Of the contraband.
Against the sufferings which may come.
Which have been kept under seal.
Repeated attempts to shift.
A happiness which can be archived.
A place reserved for the guilty.
Episodic and anecdotal gestures.
An attack against nature.
Those who must urgently learn to speak.
Without elucidation.
To be intimately bound up.
Without a body, dumb and blind.
Obscured by questions.
To influence their own retentions.

XI. Entirely lost for words

Ground, sky and language.
Achievements of the concept.
Suffering from a sharp sensation.
Governed by the phallus.
The idea of mechanical agglomeration.
Intimately bound.
Phenomenal chains are not sufficient.
Those which speak in the masculine.
The easy liberation.
An existing norm.
The margin or the margin of margins.
So highly prized as a benefit.
Isolating the former from the latter.
Never simple or linear.

XII. Interdependence of the external

Its immanent laws.
Imperceptibly touched.
The satisfaction of a controlled impulse.
To explain the tempo.
A relationship to our voices.
In the case of inhibition.
An analysis of correction.
"She writes in white ink."
Of forbidden things.
Submitted to investigation.
A metaphor, necessary and sufficient.
The displacement of libido.
Methodologically fatal.
Curtailed no more than the relation.

XIII. In giving the fantasy body

A unique solution, the question.
What touches you.
The intensity is mild.
More productive than agreeing.
It arrives, vibrantly.
Special dispositions and gifts.
Problems of the crucial chasm.
Histories and intersections.
The furnishing procedure.
Clearer today than it was tomorrow.
Simultaneity in several places.
Development of the bleak sensation.
Primarily from the official voice print.
In thought, in every practice.

XIV. To carry out

Entitled to the leading position.
The staggering alteration.
Reality as the sole enemy.
Problems in the verbal structure.
An enticement machine.
Reality is too strong.
An integral part of linguistics.
Theorized, enclosed, coded.
Like a paranoic.
Into music, ballet, graphic art.
By peripheral figures.
Classed among the mass-delusions.
Transgressing the frame.
They hesitate to admit or deny.

XV. The path on which we first encountered

Between a world and the word of concerns.
A possibility or the pertinence of distinction.
Based on the value of love.
To sing out of key with logicians.
Undoing the work of death.
Under which things are felt as beautiful.
Based on a current but erroneous interjection.
Only from the living boundaries.
This aesthetic attitude.
A close correspondence, and much closer.
In a sequence of struggle and repulsion.
Nature and the origin of beauty.
An influence from the emblem.
Of theorized castration.

XVI. Attributes of the sexual object

As its focal point.
Not enclosed in a false theater.
A problem of hermeneutics.
Has remained vital or has been reviewed.
Each object located in ‘self.’
The nature of our talents.
Experienced by the present.
Manifest and insistent.
As a last technique of living.
Not to be confused with light.
A great shadow from the scepter.
The pleasurable yield.
Concerned only with wages.
The old pattern firmly anchored.

XVII. Into a mass-delusion

A series of successive descriptions.
Their desire for reality.
Of God's inscrutable decrees.
A system of connected subcodes.
If they fall apart on discovery.
We have been given an answer.
Protean, fluctuating phenomena.
“She's beautiful and she's laughing.”
The reacquisition that adjusts.
A brilliance of imprecision.
The two lobes differ slightly.
An attitude of changed definition.
The emphatic disavowal.
To be associated.

XVII. A piece of unconquerable death

A radical experiment in reduction.
Yet to be written.
We come upon a contention.
In all the variety of its functions.
Infinite and mobile hostility.
This strange attitude.
Factors of any speech event.
It is not about possibility.
Neurotic because we cannot tolerate.
The message requires destination.
Abrupt and gradual awakenings.
A return to context.
A different function of language.
Timorous and too soon.

XVIII. It is unnecessary to enumerate

An impression of emotion.
Blindly yielding.
Is not the only precondition.
Laid bare by interjections.
We invent the impregnable.
The voice of pessimistic creation.
From the standpoint of information.
Surrounded by a vascular plexis.
It is difficult and barren.
We cannot restrict the notion.
The very idea of pronouncing.
This method of looking at things.
An angry or ironic margin.
Stops short before the word.

XIX. A victim of inquisition

Phonemic and in the emotive.
Sweeping away syntax.
Describes the whole sum.
Mere variants of one and the same.
A force unleashed.
It has no hesitation.
As the animal reaches its form.
Flying in the face of language.
All activities and every resource.
The same elliptic sentence.
A language to crawl inside of.
A gigantic force for our disposal.
All such emotive cues.
To internalize or manipulate.

XX. In the photographic chaos

Not liable to a truth test.
Hidden worlds.
We can feel at great distances.
The imperative not to be challenged.
The agents of incidence.
A voice from an absent person.
Inferred from the triadic model.
After women and birds.
He first appeared as a feeble animal.
Composed of a central mass.
Jumbling the order of space.
Embodied in his gods.
To conjoin our continued attention.
A gesture that cuts.

XXI. A kind of prosthetic God

Dialogues of a minor import.
The differentiated puncture.
In this field of civilization.
Degenerating into tiny islands.
Volcanic, as it is written.
Cultivated and planted.
Where emotion is faithfully rendered.
In order to smash everything.
To repudiate the first demand.
Acquisition of a mother tongue.
An obstinate future.
Far from exhausting these demands.
The sole function of verbal art.
A taste of free air.

XXII. We are astonished to learn

Attempts to reduce the sphere.
A movement of moral indignation.
Tissues of the fragment.
Promoting signs of the palpable sign.
Adventures into anonymity.
Laid down once and for all.
Focused on the third person.
A whole composed of parts that are wholes.
Known as fractures.
Stress is always assumed.
Changing ensembles, a mechanized cheer.
Beauty, cleanliness, and order.
A sequence inside the equation.
Our anatomy.

XXIII. Demanded of us by the structure of hygiene

Delimited boundaries.
Inscribed by these words.
Ideas of a possible perfection.
Latent manifestations of the function.
Discerning contours.
The motive force of human relation.
Raised to law.
Ephemeral and passionate sojourns.
Broken in favor of the individual.
The same figure of meaning.
Passed into infinity.
This final outcome is compulsory.
Our primary essence.
Inactive because of transmutation.

XXIV. Justice demands that no one escape

Entirely within our competence.
The flying colors, leaves, and rivers.
The simple task of observing.
Superimposed upon the other functions.
Sand, coral, seaweed, tides.
We have been careful.
Effected by sections of the sequence.
Of any same, or any other.
Synonymous with perfection.
An indispensable occurrence.
Dragged into the chain of substitutions.
Which lead to a different moment.
The number of syllables in an upbeat.
That still invisible other.

XXV. It lay in its own hands

Distributed among the successors.
An ablation, so they say.
Unrestricted.
Superimposed on the iterative pixel.
Commemorated by desire.
Great powers were cooperating.
Prepared with a high degree of profitability.
Grayish pink in hue.
Joined by connective tissue.
The inertia of the unstressed.
Living means wanting.
A recognition of love.
Gratification from the unexpected.
Still impressed by our brief commotions.

XXVI. A small unraveling

We are inclined to disambiguate.
A second zone within the margin.
Evenly suspended, steadfast.
To say that conspirators are tried.
The oldest of political farces.
Civilization loses its ambiguity.
We ourselves become metrical rules.
A virtuous debasement.
Retarding and restraining influence.
Far from an abstract scheme.
Outside the theoretical.
We are connected to difficult tasks.
The slightest infringement.
A precise link in the chain.

XXVII. The expedient distribution

Insignificant clamor.
Classified into species.
Effecting both women and men.
A system outside of language.
To make love, to invent.
To deal with sequentials.
Arriving over and over repeatedly.
Inconvenient to describe.
To unhoard.
From our intentional avoidance.
Stultifying the strange.
An intonational constant.
The history of life.
Somewhere else we hope.

Corps d'esprit

Being substantially different.
How could either domain be said
to cause changes in the other?
Now: examine the disjunction
between mind & body. The penis
swells because the male amygdala
is located in the corpus cavernosum.
The penis swells because her lips
are moist & her eyes are smiling.
The penis is not a person but we call
him Dick. Look! There's the scrambled
man from line 24. His eyes his eyes return
to form, thinking, if I touched her breast
it would be just like stepping into a pool
of skin-deep water. ("Bone up" is a phrase
we can wrap our mind around.) The word
"en-masse" was late for mass, but the diva
delivered her ass. Dipping her brain
in a flute of champagne. The body
lurking there within a dainty skull
unfurls. A thick cloud of battered spirit
fried in boiling grease might prove
as doubtless. The ailment of alimentary
fools. Governor Squirt & his ex-rat
from Mafia Corners: "Who sucked the blood
from my blood-sucking toads?" Along these
lines, tumors come to mind. Craniectomy.
(It don't mean Beijing if it ain't got that bling.)
"Mange, ceci est mon corps, mon corps
d'esprit." Soup du jour? "Primordial." Stiff
as a dick, as old as ass. Hermeneutics
of the rational omniverse. "Foreigners,
countrymen, lend me your nipples."
Wealth & vacuity, stealth & annuities.
(One thing we can always count on.)
The coins the coins reigning from the sky
of mind: a map of our neural pathways.
"She had a dead squirrel / I saw it twirl."
We reasoned with her until she came
in brilliance, crying, "cogito ergo sum!"
(Do wop do wop do wop do wop do wop etc.)
In other words, don't touch me there,
touch me "there." Inkstained multitudes.
This is your bed. "You can lead a horse
to slaughter but you can't make it blink."

A map of anything

1. Depiction of the real

a bliss
at the edge of displacement
almost touching
beside the fire or in the cupboard
closeted meanings
close-up
cramped & feinting
disposable pale irrelevant

2. Flowers & faces

impossible
in fused unison
it started with a buzz
listening to voyeurs
(not quite immoral)
pills & coughing
some random image or thought
splicing the distance
(there is no agonist)
the strain of words
unmitigated
where everything is thin
& waif-like

3. Wit & enunciation

the city
of marketing research
like a holy proposal
I don't disappoint / need / enjoy
gun-toting structures
breeding their precepts
as far as the head can spin
an ad hoc conjunction

4. Far removed from the context

A cluster of beliefs.
All order and explication is deployed.
And they allow ... flowers.

Considered by other texts.

Everyone is involved.

History does not have a goal.

In complete contrast:
Is it really impossible that its leaves quiver when there is no wind?
It rises above the rays of a black sun.
Its relation is to the world.

Ongkarn Chang Nam

(Proclamation Cursing the Water)

She has just finished drinking something.
Studying the inside of life.
Styles & movements.

"... taking off a mask finding a mask ..."

"... the land of dreams / the far side of the sky."

The circle of houses and temples.
The drawings are clearly connected.

"Their foolish eyes."

The lyric speaker and the far flung hyperbole.
The monarch described as an avatar.
The phenomenon explained by a hypothesis.

5. The author's self within the work

The standard of perfection.
To present something "as it is in itself."
To some transcendent Reality.
To substantiate the canonical mystery.
Which accords primacy.
Which has been set in advance.

6. Fluent Gibberish

First psychology
Years the intensification
And many by argument
As that wake by wake
As introduced generation only according
Others are in followed market quoting
Thus in composition intended to question

Wrote again

7. Dat gaat niet

the simplest solution
(admit defeat)

8. Noinimod

Home come and war the win to is
wants man fighting the what that know folks
show. / Merry forever, ferries of fleet a. / Remanded
sorrows the, sanded are feet clay the / one
by one. "Expressive as off come to shout
to have didn't you days those in." Beside
steps / two, over steps three hobbles surgeon dream
the / decoration by bludgeoned, harmony by / braced. Home
slaughter the of ponies / circus the -- distraction demands dominion.

9. Titles are a means of control

The fire of his own confliction,
Echoes, parentheses, hush'd whispers, fear-stalk, steel-thread, brow and sweat,
His hesitation and conception, the pounding in his temples, the parsing

              of stones and blood in his silence,
The cracking of dry bones and broken bones, and of the sky and bright-lit

              monoliths, and of coins in the coffer,
The chill of the dead lips of his voice o'erwhelmed by the commotion of smiling,
A few dry kisses, a limp embrace, a remission of sins,
The sour of his breath and rot on his words as niceties dumbly wane,
Sorrow alone or in the cold-stare of populations, or in the almighty

              shadow of glass-clad towers,
The tight fist of discomfort, the full-sun blazing, the funereal dirge of no one

              flailing or fleeing.

Decontextualized Barthes Quote

a x 4
all x 2
and x 2
are x 1
as x 1
be x 1
but x 2
by x 1
drawn x 1
field x 1
from x 1
he x 1
holds x 1
in x 3
is x 9
its x 2
lies x 1
lost x 1
made x 1
make x 1
not x 2
of x 4
on x 1
one x 1
place x 2
said x 1
space x 1
text x 2
text's x 1
that x 3
the x 9
them x 1
there x 1
this x 2
thus x 1
up x 1
was x 1
where x 1
which x 2
who x 1
yet x 1

any x 2
author x 1
being x 1
cannot x 1
cultures x 1
focused x 1
inscribed x 1
into x 1
longer x 1
many x 1
reader x 3
revealed x 1
simply x 1
single x 1
someone x 1
total x 1
traces x 1
without x 2
written x 1
writing x 2
writings x 1

dialogue x 1
entering x 1
existence x 1
history x 1
hitherto x 1
multiple x 1
mutual x 1
origin x 1
parody x 1
personal x 1
quotations x 1
relations x 1
together x 1
unity x 1

biography x 1
constituted x 1
contestation x 1
destination x 2
psychology x 1

multiplicity x 1

--Roland Barthes, "La Mort de l'auteur"

This liquid thing

this liquid thing

from adhesion to adhesion

I made for you

feels undetermined

like the way you recline

at an autopsy

distasteful but true

not much is legal

a delicate hole

a sky made from glass

almost like tomorrow

owl cores & flint chips

signs so faint

the pond freezes over

what was it I found

that crushes mountains?

if we were gods

only twice

two lines in the snow

a stark light

an oddity unworshipped

secretly in cahoots

a replacement for / sequence

no matter what anyone says

in public, like this

renamed

from giant rock piles

& I'm thinking lump sums

beneath the cushions

if there's an ocean

of theory & diagnostics &

linseed oil

my extraction

eventually someone found it

double double double

(one of us wept there)

as true as Gogol’s name

years passed

just behind his teeth

a werewolf in Moscow

drinking from an inappropriate

silver tankard, no doubt

on account of the weather

it has to do with the sea

these rumors

the troubles to come

I've seen things

if you're in the mood

the sky is getting heavier

with burlap & feathers

the jiggling proletariat

filleted & full of questions

since then I got better

like the reason behind the circumstances

a delicate aroma

wearing a towel

under the couch cushion

the movements / of our feet

the rest of us in the same boat

playing dead

a still life

for which we apologized

& flattered your long, slender legs

standing there on the back step

a laced nostalgia

with no scars or sackcloth

no poems or assets

for speaking lies to power

what does it mean?

not where but how & later

lazy, dripping

wrapped in fly paper

so careless about returning

a bumper crop

too heavy for grief

even though there was no policy

the ocean the ocean

why are you lingering in a churchyard

leaving cities

to your friends fed to fishes

somewhere

in the middle

uprooted, in haste

fuels of unhappiness

lit up

in the mouth

& brain

a yellow moon

a few pieces of pumpkin

the scent of smoke

narrowed eyes

it was no big secret

shirt tails tucked out

on a trail marked with garbage

tall buildings

our fortunes & our sacred

pea brains / cheap plastic

except of course

when I look back from my counting

to the field full of cats

on the projector screen

unassailable

I am waiting to discover

soup in a fishbowl

a fresh ballot

a welcome mat

of waste & of waste's god

moving parts

but they don't mix

sexophone orange lace flannel

that follows you

to reunite

in the bathroom

through the turnstile

the mover said

over there

leaving no trail

behind / in the watershed

it's the moment that we're living

with distinction

the wrong kind of dirt

too many cars

"saints"

shit & a feeling

of wide open speciousness

a wordless / dawn

plunges

into a fishy host

their lips in chorus

across the watery plain

eyeing

two pennies

the everlasting dyad

the jumbotron

of strange commitments

on my hands

& knees

a languid fix, the future

i am more or less susceptible

a nice little locality

science fiction

the load reduced

a handshake

a formal note

cognitive dissonance

the last of the bread crumbs

a more rigid form of reprobation

but that's a whole different story

haiku

gray spring
one cherry in blossom
the other dead

***

bare toes
in the cool green grass
a scent of lilacs

***

dandelions
gone to seed
our neighbors fighting

Salted Cod

Confronted with the head of a dead salted cod:

the animist pondered his sacrifice,
the beautician wrinkled her nose,
the corporate vice-president claimed ownership of a revised policy statement,
the Dalai Lama smiled enigmatically,
the eel gulped,
the fanzine editor wrote a worshipful column,
the guardian angel was just a moment too late,
the harpist cut her finger on a string and bled profusely,
the Iberian Peninsula just sat there,
the jurist opened her dusty book and said, “aha,”
the kaffeeklatsch held a moment of uncomfortable silence,
the litigant stammered uncontrollably,
the musicologist revived a popular sea-faring ditty from fifteenth century Basque country,
the number crunchers ran out of ink and panicked,
the optimist drank half a glass and asked for more,
the pessimist brooded,
the quiz master said something really stupid and everyone laughed,
the ringleader swallowed hard and tried to explain it all again,
the sycophant wiped her lips with a linen napkin,
the tyrant looked over the wrong shoulder at precisely the wrong moment,
the union rep made a salient observation,
the virus mutated,
the Walloon language stuck out its chest and began to sing,
the xenophobe refused to leave his room,
the yodeler slipped on a rock and split his head open,
the zither wouldn't stop playing, but nobody cared.

Over that is over and over

"Having surpassed the time for comprehending the moment of concluding,
it is the moment for concluding the time for comprehending. Otherwise,
this time would lose its meaning."
--Jacques Lacan


they are aware
made intelligible, small town
objects

of the singular
mind in the hooded concrete
and the swept floors

the generic
workman bones, but with a feeling
of the timeless

fish-line

and a fine black thread
stone love stone

they appear
to emerge, talked for an hour
indignantly

with copies
of the absolute, talked
of the blank page

they recited
gathered and dismembered
clusters of Ur-speech

and Hegel whispering
in their ears

spoke of the voiceless

value, attached to the surface
of a missing limb
they tried to disguise

on the threshold

credulous people

their blue-shirt
reputations
the brain-swinging

forest
in which they clump

measured by rightness
a world of sense
the pure form

of this conception
neither recognized

nor defineable

My Brilliant Career

Last night I wrote a screenplay

     not knowing how to write

     not owning a pen

I wrote and uncovered

     a midget in tights

     ... wrote 3 acts on this one midget

Then I fell by some bottles on the floor

     and slept with the dog

     ... thrilled with my new career

[apologies to Gregory Corso, Gillian Armstrong, & little people everywhere ...]

Pellucid

He puts his ear to the page and listens for a voice
Nothing is heard or even hinted at
He peels the page, skin by skin, as one would peel the skin of an onion
Not realizing that the voice is merely silent
As if in contemplation
And it never occurs to him to engage the silence
To touch each skin as if it were a revelation
An inexpressible hymn to beauty
That would bring tears to his eyes if he could only hear it

(B)anality

I. First Cycle

A bearded tongue. 

II. Second Cycle

Accept it as it is.
A centered emptiness.

III. Third Cycle

A child was born.
A circular space.
A couple of nice outfits.

IV. Fourth Cycle

A defiled expression.
A disembodied head.
Aesthetic qualities.
A false terminology.
A few days later.

V. Fifth Cycle

A fierce warrior goddess.
After a minute passed.
After she fed the multitudes.
A gigantic metaphor.
A layer of wounds.
All our names were related.
Also occurring.
A lyricist and a composer.

VI. Sixth Cycle

A magnifying glass.
A minor aspect of her oeuvre.
A more complicated sense of being.
A mother who weeps.
An abandoned river bed.
An altered state.
An equal regard for connotation.
A new curling iron.
An extraordinary world.
A natural conclusion.

A new sign.
An image of the symbol.

An ink splotch.

VII. Seventh Cycle

An invariable pretense. 
A normal conversation.
An ornamental fragment of a line.
Another shadow of language.
Any way that we can do it.
A paradigm of regeneration.
A pleased expression.
A puddle of tears.
A raging flood.
A reinvention.
A rule pronounced.
A second glance.
A series of statements.
A set of press-on nails.
A severe glare.
A side table.
A silhouette of two trees.
A small figure.
As previously determined.
A sweet-faced kid.
At first glance.

VIII. Eighth Cycle

A tongue lashing.
A vast field.
A vital link.
A younger sibling.
Baggage of the possibility.
Before the apocalypse.
Beneath a stone house.
Between the North Sea and the Alps.
Between us.
Beyond the perpendicular apex.
Blame it on his mother.
Borders that still exist.
Bright lights.
Broken beneath his feet.
Broken into sand.
But she loved him.
Carved wooden sandals.
Ceding the dilemma. 
Characters in a play.
Clothes piled on the floor.
Clutching the window sill.
Coming to grips.
Compared to her dissociation.
Confronted directly.
Connecting to the stronghold.
Consistently insightful.
Contents of an hallucination.
Cutting into her hide.
Dead by means of silence.
Destructive power.
Deviations of the known.
Discovered in the role of a “center”.
Disjointed phrases.
Distress and disintegration.

IX. Ninth Cycle

Divided into three sections.
Double-crossed.
Do we like it.
Do you have a name.
Dreams and fantasies.
Dry arid land.
Ego blows.
End of the word.
Established as an intermediary. 
Every day.

Everyone looks happy.
Evidence of the tongue clamp.
Exposed by a circular image.
Extremely pleasing. 
Flashing your tiny nothings.
For a couple of minutes.
For an understandable relapse.
Form does not conform. 
For the purpose of avoiding.
Four more mouths to feed.
Four years later he returned.
From his confusion.
From the essential function.
From time to time.
From where he was standing.
Full of loathing.
Gravestones raising questions.
Ground into mulch.
Haunted by multiple losses.
He asked.
He came back smiling.
He didn’t stay.
Held in place with nails. 
He'll be staring blindly.
Her father demanded something else.
Her mother would have wept.
He supported the family elsewhere.
He wasn’t one of them.
He wiped his nose.
His arms outstretched.
His major contribution.
His predominance.
His teeth gleaming.
His white knuckles.
Hit in the head by lightening.
How it all began.
How nervous she feels.
How they were beaten and starved.
Huddled in a constricted space.
Human faces filled with emotion.
Human stones.
Humdrum.
I bet you were happy.
If you ask other people.
I have no idea how long.
I let him hold the gun.
Implosion of form.
In a big tent. 
In a fictional account.
In order to serve.
In silence.
Intense layers.
In the altered space.
In the doorway.
In the form of an apocalypse.
In the manner of a fractal.
In the newspaper.
In the rice fields.
In these moments.

In the very center of the circle.
Introspection.
In which it appears.
I stepped in it.
It called out.
It looked like trouble.
It makes a nice ornament.
It seems to hang very well.
It senses everything.
It serves as my work space.
Its impetus is to act.
It's not itself.
It turned to blood.
It was an old joke.
It was a statement.
It was groaning.
It was growing weary.
I wasn't there.
I won't discuss the conflagration.
Just this once.

X. Tenth Cycle

Just this once.
Keeping up the charade.
Kind of like a repetition.

Languages with the same last name.
Largely unpopulated.
Larger-than-life.
Left to die.
Like a bird.
Listening to voices.
Look at the screen.
Man woman.
Menaced by psychosis.
Modeling her dream on a question.
My eyes, my eyes.
My feet crossed at the ankles.
My voice steady.
Networked and programmable.
No material.
Non-mimetic.
No reference except for myself.
Not associated.
Nothing like my counterpart.
Novelty of exposition.
Objects transformed.
Obscured by rain. 
Odd phrases.
On a beach
Opportunities for growth.
Our clothes.
Our faces.
Our guns.
Our house is full of flies.
Our intention was not to please.
Our record of inscription.
Our shoulders were touching.
Out in the kitchen.
Outside the moment. 
Over there.
Owners of the language.
Pale and deranged.
People inside our circle.
Perfect for something.
Poised as if dying.
Predominance of a specific value.
Process of searching.
Projective power.
Put it on the kitchen table.
Raised in small villages.
Read sequentially in the proper tense.
Replaces the outside world.
Scattered at our feet.
Senseless questions.
She fell instantly in love.
She felt no lightness of being.
She is ready.

She replied quietly.
She said it is going to swallow him.
She still hasn't answered his question.
She wakes up extra early.
Shrinking and delinquent.
Sitting quietly on the floor.
Six months from the outside world.
Someone who frightens her.
Someone who is entirely different.
Sometimes in belief.
Sorting out all the tangents.
Space has become confused.
Stereotyped and inadequate.
Stiff from time .

Still fragrant and green.
Such as it is.
Such promise.
Supranational spaces.

Surrounded by a concrete fence.
Sweet grapes filled with healing.
Symbols of apotheosis.
Taller and also stronger.
Tapping at the windows.
Technology. 
Thank you very much.
That's how it goes.
The actual calling.
The beginning of the end.
The commotion over there.
The contract and the white spaces.
The dangling streets.
The door of their apartment.
The experience.
The first bombs.
The first cycle.
The first three paragraphs.
The fraying edge.
The function of a crippled dog.
The illusionist.
The invasion of comprehension.
The meaninglessness.
The mighty waves.
Then softly repeating.
The object of her love
The outside and the individual. 
The poverty of frequency.
The power to preserve.
There are more than three distances.
The referential function.
There is nothing more to say.

The retractable lens.
There was nothing special about it.
The same expression.
The same people twice.
The temporal pause.
The tongue of nations.
The very desk.

The voice on the radio.
The whole damn surface.
The woman.
They are at a party.
They eloped.
They were living in Berlin.
They wondered.
Think of a time.
This is worth knowing.
This time is different from the other time.
This will not seem so negative.
This would imply he hasn't understood.
Those who are hurting.
To codify.
To consume.
To damage property.
To destroy.
To feed the crowd.
To feel more involved.
Together at each lull.
Tongue of the belt.
Tooth wounds.
To show you how it feels.
To superimpose ourselves.
To the detriment of being.
To the expressed object.
To the left and right of vacancy.
To the observation.
To which everything is related.
To whip the child repeatedly.
Treated as an object.
Two lanes and a cell phone.

Coda

Three streams of thought: typography and reflection. Unceasingly developed. Understanding the individual movements. Undetectable moments. Very seriously. Visions of the center. Watching them die. We can't understand anything. We deserved it. Weekdays and Sundays. We have been at it for aeons. We laughed repeatedly at every opportunity. We should be thankful. We spoke in his absence. We were shooting photos. What are you doing today. What did he say about the production. Whatever he meant by that I don’t know. What is behind the camera. What she called the calamity. What surprised you most. What they meant. When he pronounced his purpose. When he spoke coherently. When I drove to the shore. When time disambiguated. When we were still a bar code. When we tested for depth. When we were just being born. When you squinted. Which lasted for about an hour. Widespread approximations. With a cork screw. With frayed cuffs. Within its own realm. With jealous pleasure. Without confusing. Without fruit. Without knowing. With the genuine article .With the other stragglers. Woman man. Word as an object. Words relating to time. Yellow jogging shorts. Yet again. You opened up by chance. Your mouth is an eye. Your tongue is spatial. You don’t have time.