A HARLOT HIGH & LOW
It’s a shame to look so good in such humble surroundings.
A carriage waits at the fence, or whatever gorgeous young hobby horse
one might have mingled with. Beyond that
damp shapes – criminals and police spies, classic Paris –
invigorate themselves with the hopes one has for pleasing people.
Moths were also unsuccessful as familiar, loving reincarnations –
outside of the folklore of the Philippines anyway – but thank you
for lending me these blurry little kids you like so much,
to watch them shuffle until some clarifying emotion attaches
visionary directions. That is to say, I have put on
my make up and am ready to listen to some microscopic recordings of decay
which turn out to be infinitely scalable
unpleasant service.
What to others might have seemed like a chance for interconnectedness
arrives in a towering monument to the first person singular, extending
the nozzle of its century, holding hostages, becoming more educated, concerning
itself with mundane activities: this was our brush with glamour.
Then a horse that looked like me was suddenly just standing there.
So this guitar does have an evil sister, to wake up my pistons covered
in hair, unable to navigate curious geometrical pattern
that might also be my name. But what I actually said was,
my estate donated this corridor. Since the beginning
individuals have prospered in an arena of total fairness circled round
by biblical and modern curses like gonorrhea and roller limbo. Metamorphosis follows
like a climbing vine the seasons that splatter the concourse in a tightening spiral,
the shape famous among conspiracy theorists, as an ancillary recording
witnessed by no one. And it goes on like that, researched via meditation…
Fascinating Mr. Panitz, thank you for coming by to check on us. Let me say,
that although we’re often forced to sit back and just observe this stuff, ones self a mere
ancillary recording as I believe has been said, in the psychotic gulf between liking people and
despising them, surfing the autism of the winds of sunset, and – continuing on with the
same sentence – lightning rods in each fist, conversating with hidden gems, looking into the
eyes of virgins, giving freely of both good and bad gifts, soaking in Epsom salts, letting
yourself go, doing a multiple choice test,
worshipping an inverted phallus, transitioning, eating Greek,
trying to use more adjectives, waking up earlier and going to bed later,
transitioning back, narrowing inwardly and expanding outwardly, nearing an inverted
pinnacle, peeing, seeing stars. Although one is forced to merely observe this kind of
venturing availability that feels like a series of left turns or arpeggios or rat kings, there’s
opportunity for private appreciation for what goes unchecked, bearing the quaint
armorial devices of one’s discontinuous consciousness, to hear the passionate
remembrance of lawns over which great landowners once passed.
**
When Keats Fucked that Corpse
The flavor of satisfaction leaves one foraging for some horny goat-weed
under an ample moon free for lateral movement. Even though
we’ve come to explore at will, occasional ambivalence quizzes us
with an aura of inexorableness, of stuff just happening.
So that’s pretty much what’s going on here in lieu of quality literature
or similar lubricant to improve the eye-brain-hand circuit’s connectivity.
One nonetheless may hope for some double-hung saloon style entries.
Enter hips first along with the equal and opposite in the coy pond tonight.
Come pumpkin o’clock, come reverse diabetes, come bus driver wanted
you have to wonder where these marmots learned to wield fiery apples –
how could this have happened within the concentric rings of my slogans
unless to eschew responsibility created a liquiform ripple effect.
Your theology is so egotistical you should eat more micro-greens –
the forestry service probably had some kind of a program renewed
one of those minutes that lasted several thousand years in the 80’s.
Without realizing it we’ve addressed each of the elements by name
plus their supervisor, red mud, over by that downed tree has been learning.
**
TAMAS PANITZ is the author of several poetry books, most recently Wild Lies (New Books: 2023), and Vesuvio with Joel Newberger and Losarc Raal (New Books: 2023) Other books include Conversazione, interviews with Peter Lamborn Wilson (Autonomedia: 2022), and The Selected Poems of Charles Tomás; trans. w/Carlos Lara (Schism: 2022). He co-edits the journal NEW, which he co-founded. He is also the author of a pornographic novella, Mercury in Lemonade (New Smut Series: 2023). His paintings and stray poems can be found on instagram, @tamaspanitz. His book of essays on forgotten 19th Century American poets, The Sleepers, is forthcoming from The Swan (2024).
