Imperfection, Achieving It
1
For my name-day treat
last week’s watery pink
dawn. Or, let’s examine
a trunk, “a dwindling kit
of sharps.” Whenever confusion
fails to find expression as fear
I rent evidence that shame is here –
has “resulted,” a weasel verb
I can’t and can’t not afford.
Feelings as experience the grail
a model of orientation of supreme value ha
o aspirations, compulsions, goals, investigate
unhelpfulness – what is it, extent of – and
how and why shame can’t parade
(in public with us) the bun it merits,
false obviously pillow, what is to be an object
in this world if not pillows, I ask
or say, addressing only myself, a duck
sorrow, sorrow, the family of feelings.
2
Things wonderful or
certainly say
worthwhile, recognizing
a sunlit June evening,
not recognizing a stranger,
how, no that
the whole train is relieved when
one gives up a dream – but why all
at once? Post onslaught
my patience reappears
handsomer, I can’t escape
is it setting subtle traps,
call it practice, call it research,
call it a counterjab my
psychic condition worsens
patient, I don’t fucking think so,
a patient, I’m a stranger steering
the game into channels malformed by
abstraction, force 2 assert yrself!
it worked,
one can have had tonsils
3
So I say to myself you’re no help,
talk of nerves
need not involve
actual pointing. Why, I’ve been used in the presence
of simulations warmer than you to show
this happens when one
veers away along routes
despite literal tons
of bracken by, ready for mauling.
Say an egg balanced on one’s head
topples off but doesn’t crack. Its
discomfort, down there at one’s feet, is less a form
than a symptom of benevolence – and
a reminder one values most an opponent
most like (one’s image of) oneself. “I wish what
my brother wishes,” Charles V, craving a city.
4
What they’ve cried
this evening over
loudspeakers – who knows,
noise. My guess, water is a
the least form of powder?
that’s true. However, that’s wrong
everything is the same,
it’s all conspired to kill
another of my teeth. Dear molar
how seldom really I saw you, yet
I am begging you look at me,
nine teeth down,
grieving you beneath a sky
loudspeakers occupy.
So, this is shock. No further points
just one: it is total fucking crap
I should lose another tooth to this world.
5
Where observation flourishes
drop talk of sense, let us today
my name-day or is it my birthday
or a rare day off
acknowledge focus a choice made
unawares, awareness be hanged. And also that
knowing, or agreeing, one is never at liberty to think
avoids a patch (a trap) largely color. Which is to say
description never
gets you the bump, you don’t just win;
having ascribed the world a shape
– for that’s always what you’ve done –
you’ve lost, or so it seems to me, dying –
the inner workings of the box remain
less beyond than behind reproach,
as here
on the level where one lived.
6
You, you
you and
you, but not you
or you, are in danger,
risk putting in motion
the whole machinery by means of which
a foul yellow cloud of reproach is made. I’m saying quit
operating. Denied the cat-clawed footrest,
wide open on tile, I’m asking to be closed, the law
demands it, a lie, well my feelings do, “the home appliance”
is
an ill-defined unit, I cry. See, open my verbal inhibitions
are set at NONE.
7
Introspection tells us
a golf ball feels these
many types of struggle
are too many. Maybe
when “more” is known,
the position of the self in space and why
one must supplement introspection, we, or I,
will experience delight understanding
why one must supplement introspection
to know the position of the self in space.
People form habits they do, they do,
mine — ignoring the work of a hen
not works of a hen who
rescues, good verb, breakfast, again
and again – and ignoring too
(but badly) the group her hungry eggs consume
If you think about it, it is reassuring
we bystanders can be twisted in a rubber way
not merely optics, not one last
attempt by optics to win the day,
8
After
agreement with some entity not joy
fuck a struggle whose outcome we know
near the center of my visual field
to my discomfort I see a glow
in my (also-failing) eyes, I drive
I drive away with it, where
did I think it would go?
9
All basic junk here – my body, an
obsolete monitor, tag. And we produce only
0.2 pears per year, “no April, no May,”
let us now see the continent. O
sunk. I sense however the presence
of a mass, as when a person afraid they
might find something
somewhere won’t look. It’s
maybe a whole damn drowned
people, infamous for discovering laws
– “wax melts because neurotic” –
whose discovery
is fate. Anyway, spied in
a busted monitor, I am beautiful for being
on my way to having been.
10
Unhelpfully this year’s
“applesauce,” crushed from
our level’s .2 pears
can’t, or won’t, at any rate doesn’t
do it. Ashamed and ashamed too
of having pleased myself deploying
basic, right-out-of-the-box virtue
(earlier, in connection with a different matter), I contact an agency
distributing hostility locally. You don’t need identification, ready
monies, or even – they claim – a body; immediate receipt: never any
complications. Other agencies take note! I direct said hostility at proofs
not everything is tolerable. THIS SHOULDN’T NEED PROVING –
that the assertion itself is
intolerable intolerable.
Angrily I consider my move,
“do you,” I ask myself, “proceed
silently, automatically?” quietly
sure, and, hm not automatically but
as if I know the terrain or
as one does having put
pieces together before
dressing, cooking
11
How about now some
talk of objects, fantasies
putting them to cruel
rigged tests as portions
of a world that made
a self in a field going
up and going down, what is
going up and going down?
a puny jumble of countable instances
of limbs, hairs, a gut
figured wrongly (for good reason)
home to the “colossal internal break”
sponsoring useless fantasy, talk.
12
It isn’t my whole self hiding
war-weary amid sorghum
tassels of thought sweeping up crap
and I’m not alone,the deer
want something soft.
the future will be like the past
within certain limits electric? Or?
performances may be different
performers are all the same
do that again? do what again?
*addresses deer*
If our whole lives long we’d broadcast for pay
our internal colloquies, and now, flush,
could buy a pair of farewell moods for you,
for me.. Imagine! A wordless state that looks
like this yes, yes but without
bodily functions to control while afraid.
13
All these doubloons
but I have warts and so
another’s pity and so
am furious. I’m joking,
I’m broke, can offer
this joke molded
on the “war-mood” I remember
and miss. We all felt it.
I’m joking. Here,
have property.
What does it mean
do your best?
Does trying to think
count?
14
Morning
ambush
hedge
scrutiny ineffective.
Conscious tolerance
of pain. Alliance with
magical powers preferable
to disbelief,
now. Trucks lost,
the desires of trucks, their habits!
Some further defense of objects,
cards
in a hat, other trucks,
the prawns firmly
placed in the sky as
a unit, a
constellation.
Then sleep.
15
Even in this Area
called “mine” by me,
gross with palaces, fountains and
cosmetic blunders galore, interest
in the body tends to usurp
all other interests. “Don’t poke
the Area.” My head hurts,
impossible I’ve lost it.
To be blue in daily traffic…
not not a procedure for finding
epic life. How blue
are you
16
Long live this
obstinate bunker’s
yellow utility light
I use as a spot.
“What if
what survives is
personality in
a broad sense” Next
see me declaim
my RIDDLE IDEA
a green flowing robe
on a figure called Night.
**
MARK FRANCIS JOHNSON lives in Philadelphia. He is one-third of Hiding Press, along with Andy Martrich and Jon Gorman. His latest book is Diary of a String (Spiral Editions, 2024).
