Tagvverk

Astral Rejection

Sounds fun I’ll be there.
Yet what the odds won’t tell you is it’s an action-comedy
truism how so many kisses… emulsify, diminish …these words for world-
famous secrets
that sit on our hands.

My friends, it’s airborne.
You will know the true test plate when it leaves your microscope:
and it was good then to be that searchlight trained on the bare floor
uncontested.

In the bottom-right corner of all things
my inner mindfulness cop,
vigorously opposed and protected,
isn’t even looking!

Foam hugs the tripwire to sleep.
Joyous ground-rules drag us onstage.
A languid, blasted desert blues hums along with the microwave
in its realism, quantum-heap desiderata, the frosting closing in on humankind.

 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 

Roomful of Equipment

Teeming plainclothes, the infinitesimal can take awhile.
Two dead ends make a straight line.
Is it a sign?
Is what a sign?
Does fate summon us,
or do we just steal its ideas?
Tongue to its glass drops
everything and describes a circle,

II.

the sun is hidden in me.
It seems pretty committed.

The power-mad are always trying to convince everyone their prison is within.
The obvious eats up years of misrecognition.
Fear of loss, fear of gain, fear of too much or not enough of either, fear of no
change,
in figurine death free-associated myself into some kind of foresight…Total
intermittence!
Should we enjoy history? And you and I in the sleep-
walk of wellness
slackly daubed, yet backed by neuroscience—
well I was almost not someone enough once
to see a show of hands when I know one… (A moral best mumbled through a
torn-up storm screen,
what only dust in sunlight can explain.)

No one sees the past coming. III. The dream closes its wrists.

Along a crumpled river, passage of burning tires and garbage;
pulleys and planes for the emblem, force, crime, of motivated hearsay…

I watch reruns backwards on mute.
Paradise of honest mistake.
Everything is someone’s twin.
Only one word in the manual and it’s “switch.”

 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 

Peace

for thinner ruins
ran its voice out

whole cloth to
the new past

its outstretched
innards sound

say everything’s
ahead of its time

lumen naturae
reason in its mouth

an ill-fittedness
deliriously green

summer light like
caution tape

licked in sand the
strange unstated

and getting by
on birth alone

as shadows cast us
louder than

a new moon
everywhere and once

who loved government
in its new look

a heartbeat too
far for bodywork

not to wonder in
its secret language

honest-rumored
absolution burning

down the door
took viscera and walked

then I wasn’t
now I’m not

along the circle it
took to get here

a world made
for disbelief

trickle-down dualism
in another half-

wrecked culture
crying with greed

under the sun’s
infected eye

innovation-weary
aching to be fucked

new flesh
in ritual backlash

difficulty swallowing
a vacuum to what it

thinks clean
religious insides

keep the aspect
ratio stretched taut

in the defacing
thirst of its froth

fedback haptic
clickbait looking

backwards both
ways for time

in anger and
togetherness

and music that
seems only to recede

hey great spirit
smiling through

my lab skin
backlit into a-

tonal grayout
fire that makes its

own weather
where a voiceover

in power
fed the air I

knew I needed
to be wrong or

nothing happens
my marrow

my chrome
had long been

different since
the big move

and hungered
from the depths

of a blood-clot
as the selective

evil of attention
trembles off

as pops and skips
people laughing into view

and a peace fell
upon the media

asleep at the top
of its lungs

sucking its loopholes
thinking there’s time

in the world
wherein I’d spin

back apart if we
weren’t already walking

through the bright side
of what none know

breeze of fixative
anciently pixelated

(continuity error)
how to live

what to do
if I couldn’t

maybe I would
in wrought narrows of

where’s this going
where are you

the sky a blue
wall of silence

high-concept
minutiae

in the shape of
what I told

the truth
bleed it back

written such that
you could hear the

world around me
praying through its teeth

lust wincing in
a window’s defense

the mirror in knots
same difference

too much to remember
too much to forget

not to work like that
not to fit in the trap

heat lamp in
broad daylight

soul taped to the
back of his head

spinning threshold
erasure’s guest

in a chaos of worth
light of day of

in fear of enough
and form and color and

the more you dig

the less there is

“that told no tale
and let no witness in”

(cf dark union
tao te ching 56)

hugged awake
we were faithful

we gave each
other birth

psych-rock circle
of light around

how a person
even manages

in little police state
teething its niche it

couldn’t have
happened any other

way because it
didn’t O my pain-

killer missing the
point the right the

wrong gnarl the
wind goes the

way it came
not waving

not drowning
REJECT

ENTERTAINMENT
NO DEATH

NO ANALYSIS
TEXTURES IT

encroaches with project
poetics NO PALLIATIVE

VERSUS THE PERFECT
though killings

are limitless
and pain

without distances
it is possible to concentrate

and still
be useless

wrong in one’s symmetry
breath presets

in the casual
cruelty of personal

space
(neverending

semicircle)
worn to brightness

by the strobe-
lights of home

wet hands
set me down

and feel the sun on
someone’s face

from practice back
to habit back

to accident to under-
brush personals

heard down
its throat

saying you’re not
lost that only images

are lost you are
the wrath and solace of

moonlight on
an open wound

world music within
be why I’m here

until supposedly
final touches collapse

in delirium
middle begin again

homespun dying
for some singsong

in my body art
bit into the cusp

follow the blindspot
regalia loyal haters

follow dusk burst
like noise into law

dry to the touch
in an eon

touch-starved and
still I hesitated

oh today won’t be
yesterday for long

and between deaths
the permanence

of life led me
and when I lived

 
 
 
                                              
what was the difference
foundation crept in

repeating sideways
we never turn around

back to the bandage
chest to the skin

stiffen and wane
in the dead of spring

time doesn’t tell
time does nothing

until the accident
peace is coming

—for Brian Ang

BRICKED is an ongoing XR writing environment bearing witness to memory loss.

In the summer of 2019, my family orchestrated what would later become a final vacation with my grandmother, who had recently been diagnosed with dementia, and my father, who passed shortly thereafter. In the work, an exhaustive inventory of the objects that populated this trip is accompanied by text fragments on the losses that accumulate within both human and technical memory systems. These samples are arranged from assets in development, hung upon Tagvverk white as a defense against forgetting.

This version includes soft citations from Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, Wendy Chun, Hal Foster, N. Katherine Hayles, Habiba Ibrahim, Trevor Owens, Michel Serres, and Mackenzie Wark.

Your fingertips

imprint the veil
removing paralysis
one object at a time
a dent we seek
to match the color
of this offloading
future—try hoarder—
no more leaning
stacking pushing
under piling on top
of saving for later
DO YOU ENJOY
THE BURDEN OF
AN UNHATCHED PLAN
the sky’s a certain shade
of bargain, the spill
of its space is the light
of its day decrescendoed
into a sweet pink dot
blood’s up to the con-
gregation the spine
is a flight-feathered
gutter writing
the ribs into life

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Generous loving

confident intelligent
powerful coworkers
send you confidence-
building youtube videos,
you perform confident
postures in bathroom
as preamble to scribbling
in notebook / shocked you
have a master’s degree
asks why you don’t
have ten books out
yet panning shot of world
trade center tower
shimmering in immediate
distance a distance
you can run yr fingers
over feel the tingling
thrill of future exploitations
too many to count but just
the right amount of suffering
exists in the world
I arc forward with you
I’m sorry I’ve spent decades
AVOIDING A PLAN
the abandonment
of my inner child
is implied by my salary
dancing here or inert
on the bloodsugar cliffs
does madness still exist
what would be the point

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Trees dropped

the act a long
time ago we
don’t continuously
need to cohere
nothing does
witty and urbane
taking the helm
for the turn’s
sake a flash of
clarity in the sling
of movement
is worth all
the hidden frantic
doubting a gap
in measurement’s
teeth or small
daily history of
valiant surfaces
there in the ripped
pocket whatever
falls out you’ve
found forever
great purpose
comes in the ego
thrusts forward
like a confident
reflection
O beautiful
desert of height
give us your best
cornered stance
take off yr masks
and brandish yr
unmet winnings
adhere to exclamate
freeze response
is best detective
of what’s left
to us of this
winding stew
of truncated war
hormones stalled
CEO posture courses
future poems home
to the shadow body
head cleaves torso’s
hemispheric listening
a human scale of
decorative clarity
meeting a vessel
for st. francis
talks about guerillas’
be killed before
killing’s seeking
to be understood
before the big
blink’s big blink

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lay down these carbs

and hold aloft what vision
i can crumble from
the edifice of shared life
don’t talk at me like I’m in
your past you haven’t met
me yet I’m palming the illusion
of a rat behind my back
for a laugh just one
second’s worth of rupture
per day will part the pages
and attract an allotment
of stutter this joblife’s
a gap between fences
like avenues in affluent
sun call mom call dad
pay yr debts write poems
to yr inner fascicle craving
all day moving between walls
floor to ceiling decomp-
rehension thought needs
an object’s interior speed
editor suffers to float
the edits your platform moves
with you my body a fist
of fear we all know the same
alternative discourse radical
disdain wears big glasses
my naive misreadings of public
temperature confirm a strong
bias toward slipping and slopes

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Road of excess leads

to the road of excess
recent decisions thread
through the ears and
unfurl into the future
updated inventories
pour decisions
battered vehicle or
ornamental face?
Ritual’s environmentally
dependent or contingent
I swing away on a resonance
for every pile there’s
a distinct and correlating
emotion why did I not
study philosophy get those
burst pipes in the head
to speak cleanly and w/out sound
where fingers become
a supplement to ear
the phone famously
weighs in at impossible

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Eye to eye in lanes

of self-centering don’t
stop the music’s filth
layers of slick market-
able body horror
the torso is tangled
beyond use or
recognition throned
absolute in service
secrecy interrupted
calling and collated
in the minor winds
of authority well
it’s always hallways
or corners we bring
the tv to the table
but what are we
really constellating
in our pockets
mispronounced
in the waning gray
of June rain an expansion
of air to ignore
the boundaries intended
to be helpful but these
lines rip like footsteps
through the body
and echo only a solitude
of interior invasion

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

The concrete blinking

in and out of the channel
you might only get one
or two productive cramps
in the back of your hand
the world rushes by
when someone opens
the door and water whispers
ensconced in a small
square the headroom
is the primary selling
point far from the poem
just the initials ranking
the daily fauves you’re
not wrong in tasting
future sediment
a thorough sip of stone
cylindrical gleam museum
at night flustered into
a sleek patrol layers
patrol is what’s for lunch
the awe-ful writing
will admit at least
one spirit inspirit this
pen I’d like to pronounce
or renounce collaged
deity on my shirt
surface remains un-
transformed

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bracing for inexact

impact smash yrself
against the wall until
yr an abstraction don’t
short sell yr interior
decompositional balance
the infinite’s revealed
in a controlled glitch
life as management
of this bubbling up
of fear my ears are in
my knees when you speak
thank you O unseen
wheelies of light
an extension of the common
resigned feeling then sleep
with the tourmaline
in yr mouth quiet
dreams will pool in
yr unplaceable center
and sound their waves out-
with ripples of repair
these relations that dissolve
into water / death seems
an inappropriate solvent
sell of the sour steam
we can rejuvenate our
systems a progressive
universe would show us
the spirits, the interior
pressure is ratcheted up
what do you want to look like
what do you want to do
now you’ve externalized
your long habituation
–enter adult self–

Mouthgazing for the lost popular
bougainvillaea eco-poetic
RANGE ROVER

fire-split
mirror “Oh here under here you will
see “see” rubs the mouthless, fireless

vacuuming lot, “that which is”

“itinerant or
INCINERATED

is not a threat”

“Oh here under here you will see”

Oh subway stop
speaking to “the underground
material botanical”
CANAL FOR FLORAL
boats
“selection” pretending to pluck firm branch from sole
in music “selected” by way of alternatives
“to educate and remind” such speech is air
such
“Oxygenating Associates” such as
leaves
are

“Oxygenating associates”

Oh collaborate and breathe
“in all earnestness”
to landfill: Get filled

“these images in reverse” can contain

“a cavity”
I’d bloom
“downwards
since there’s glass above?” I approach in the lilyhat full, the
perverted isthmuslistener

In conclusion,

“In conclusion,”

A purse snaps into teleological scarcity
revealing itself to be
a bee landing in a mouth
growing under observation —

“Control us

!

[Seeing bandages as ghoul eyes, seeing]

Seeing bandages as ghoul eyes, seeing
thought as blowholes or bandages, white
gulls, dirty. Flyers already know how
to move. It’s obvious, thoughts are bandages
are ghosts healing. Actually
do not touch me again. This is not frantic
to be a splayed whale, when I’m all out.
Then you give me a lemon
from your grocery bag. What
if I were a grocery bag.

[Wanting to be like him, drifting toward machines]

Wanting to be like him, drifting toward machines
at supermarket, a young four or sixteen, dimensions
depend on whose looking in who, I look in the eye
machines with his feelings. To wit, feeling
hymn-like, to all observing me, means lesbians
fugue the bull, in a supine shift into
legibility, wanting to believe in being
me him-being, for four
hours or max. twelve. In the bleach aisle
I am a peach whale yawning up
hydrogen, squared, that is

“Count the pillars next time you grocery
store attendants there are mirrors
or suck the youth right out of my
math mouth. My mask—mmm”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Now like dadwatching her spot]

Now like dadwatching her spot
of sisterlight gimmick into dog’s play
I get the shivers. Men look, like, in
her eyes watching her spot into
dog’s play under the soul of a moonspot

inside the restaurant. It’s warm
for September not
warm enough. Like our dad, I’d
rather give my sister bones. The other
rolls her tongue around a pill, but

[If I were a doctor (make that into a mirror)]

If I were a doctor (make that into a mirror) I
would blink at studying the waiting room
and swallow my cancer. Scrub
all X before police arrive. If I
were a doctor (window)— Big time
and white cloth all over the stage. My
telephone lines
(hanging the laundry)
!

If I were patient I put on the robe. I put on the robe
the room is mine. Banter, lights, cameras, syringes. If
I were patient I put on the robe and smile down. I smile
down. Geese, frogs, crocodiles, hummingbirds. I simmer
too long in robe. If I were patient then I a video song

A song in the medium, a video.
A medium song video.
Videoing a medium song.

In the video you see my wrists
of death, they awaken.
Wrists, they awaken
ankles that tell you another
that I speaks French
and it is 100%, the room
is mine two weeks out
not to be transferred
patient. Health, witness,
blockade, rat poison.

The song is the medium, videoed. Me…

Me dum, ami!

I Did It

I didn’t want to. I didn’t
want to do it. I didn’t think,
even once, before it happened,
of wanting to do it, of wanting
anyone to do it, let alone me.
I was free from want. I was
oblivious, entirely occupied
with other things –
the rocks, the leaves, the
pursuances. I had no
attention left. It hadn’t even
crossed my peripheries.
Truth be told, I hadn’t even
heard of it – I had not the slightest
inkling that such a thing were possible,
let alone so popular. When I realized,
for the first time, that I had done it,
it had to be explained to me. I was
that out of it. I really didn’t even
understand what was happening.
I just kept on in my normal fashion,
maybe somewhat slightly aware
of the gawks and agape mouths
that surrounded me. But they didn’t
register – not really. I only
somewhat fantasized about them,
and only for a split second. In that
split second I simply thought
that some outrageous
stunt had occurred behind me.
I thought maybe some acrobat had
face-planted into the brick wall behind
me. Maybe a big old truck was on
fire. Maybe a swirl of green had left
the sky and come crashing down to
earth, plastic and oozing. But
I looked back and saw nothing,
of course. There was nothing
behind me. Only a wisp of
breeze and some billowing
strips of trash. So I kept walking.
Faster now, head down. Unnerved,
I guess, aware somewhat of the
consortium of gazes but incapable
of reconciling them to the anonymity
I had up until then assumed for myself.
My pace again quickened, and
I brought my head lower towards
my chest. It was almost as if a great
pressure were pushing down upon it,
my forehead, forcing it down – a pressure
gathered from all directions, coalesced
into an invisible corkscrew driving itself
at me. In retrospect, it made perfect
sense. What other way was there
to feel? How else was I to react?
How else was anyone to react?
Everything that was happening
in that moment was entirely logical
and understandable – I know that now.
But at the time it was inconceivable.
It’s so funny, how far from ourselves
we can be. I imagine, in that moment,
there were two,
parallel versions of myself,
held within the same outline, their
appearance and movements exactly
the same, doubled so precisely that
any deviance from an absolute
sameness of appearance was
imperceptible to the naked human eye.
And yet, I also imagine that those
two versions of myself existed,
simultaneously, at the furthest
reaches of metaphysical coherence
from one another. They were two
beings sharing an identical
physical reality, and yet
existing in two realities of intention
so dissimilar that it’s maybe impossible
to refer to both as something even
akin to a reality, as if they each
represented a matrix
of discernible, graspable
indicators, some aligned some not.
Instead, they’d probably be
more like polarities, or tunings –
aspects of relation. They’d exist only
in a vibrational ether refracting
the clean and complete oppositeness
of one another: one that knows, one
that knows not. One that does,
one that does not. I might
hazard to declare that the tone
produced in the disjunction
between those two becomings was me.
It sounds a bit obtuse,
but that’s simply how I felt,
in as precise a language as I
can muster. It was me. And
what was I doing? People will
say otherwise, but in my mind,
I was simply strolling. That’s all
it was. My only wish for that afternoon
was to amble lightheartedly
down the sidewalk, in search
of a nice treat. All my energies
angled me towards that outcome.
I’ll admit it: I love a treat. I love a
delectable little morsel to whet
my palate and send me off
on a happy quest. Most mornings
it’s all I can think of – very rare is the
day that gets started outside
this ritual of indulgence. On this
day in particular, I remember my
treat of choice being a pour
of tonic water in a glass tumbler,
with two ice cubes, a slice of lemon
on the side, a ritz cracker on the side,
the intent to eat half a bag of M&M’s
later on, and a nice long inhale of climate
controlled air in the pharmacy
on the corner, one block down
from the café I frequent.
Now, I’ve been told before that,
individually, these kinds of choices
might not add up to what most
people understand to be a treat.
But my feeling is that
the consistency of a treat
lies not in the actual consumed
“treats” themselves, but in the
degree of specificity with which
they are chosen. The more specific,
the more precise to a moment,
is the desired object, the greater
its status as a treat. For me, that
day, the most precise thing I could
determine was a pour
of tonic water in a glass tumbler,
with two ice cubes, a slice of lemon
on the side, a ritz cracker on the side,
the intent to eat half a bag of M&M’s
later on, and a nice long inhale of climate
controlled air in the pharmacy
on the corner, one block down
from the café. The act of manifesting
such an explicit arrangement, cementing
its appearance within that episode
of the day – fusing it to the day –
that was the treat. That was the
extravagance: the making real of
an absolute set of conditions whose
meaningfulness lay exclusively
within their mystical adherence
to an inherent but elusive
personal compulsion. Of course,
I understand that within this formulation,
there’s the risk that such precision might
result in something ridiculous – some
self-consciously wacky or absurd
designation, like a game of scopa
played atop an elaborately woven
tray made from the fine shed nosehairs
of pekingese showdogs. But I’d never
do that. Such a scene could not denote
my desire, nor anyone else’s really.
Nobody could honestly demand
such a thing. There’s no truth to it – it’s too
dependent on the abstruse distances
between its component parts.
The magic is lost. It’s no longer
a treat – it is instead more like a whim.
But most people don’t understand
the difference. Most people
probably couldn’t even tell you
why they would want a treat
in the first place – they spend
their whole lives ignoring what
they want. Worse, they spend
their whole lives imagining that
the wants they experience satisfy
an essential, fundamental aspect
of themselves, when in fact
what’s happening is exactly
the opposite: some essential
aspect of themselves is
being satisfied by contriving as
a treat one of these patent absurdities.
Because the essential character
of most people is an incomprehensible
morass of infinitely differentiated
impulses. A true want – a true treat –
cuts through all that. It’s a column
of gravity that pulls you together
and nails you to the present.
To merely reflect the discord
of the soul is to unhook oneself
from life and float, directionless,
unconscious, disintegrating.
Take, for example, this thing I did.
I don’t even know what to call it.
In many ways, I don’t even know
how to describe it, because I can’t
visualize it occurring in any way
other than how it occurred when
I, myself, did it. It is inseparable
from the fact of having done it
myself. And I don’t think I’m alone
in having borne this relationship to it,
because, in its immediate aftermath,
after the dust had settled and the
passersby had uncovered themselves,
and the fog had lifted and the
shaking stopped, and the uncountable
blades of grass had stopped waving,
and the moisture in the air had stopped
flickering, and the clouds had burst
into light, and the light had begun
pouring out from within the heat
of the sun, which had stopped rounding
in the exuberant depths of space,
and the shadows hiding behind the
houses and the cars revealed their lengths
and let into themselves the voices
of the animals that had
all gathered in a broad circle around us,
and upon their hind legs stood and
bellowed and bowed and stomped,
and danced and gleaned and pulled
from the weight of the stuff of the day
the shapes mounted upon my lips,
the words: no, please, you,
have to believe me,
I didn’t want to, I didn’t, I swear,
I swear, I didn’t. They then threw themselves
upon the ground, and wracked and bent
their bodies, and flipped and
torqued and withheld, and
having wound themselves
into such pressure,
pitched forwards without stopping,
like round shot
from a cannon’s barrel,
their little furry bodies flung inwards,
towards us, at a terrible velocity,
at a speed interminably mounting,
brutally stretched to the ends of vision,
and the sound and taste of the atmosphere,
shredding, all of them,
in the mounting friction
of their great pursuit,
the ends of their fur igniting
and turned to whistling
mounds of eager flame twisting
in the day’s breath.

RIPE FIRE

I.
All the card-readers in town
have been drawing the Moon for me.
God forbid one flips the fifteenth, he’ll
see — o, but they tend to not take
these things literally. Still,
I know they all goss about me.
Scuttlebutt’s I’ve been keeping a secret, but
they can’t suss what.

I turn, face
the effaced diffuse blue
of the World and bellow o
above and below
I believe in God!

I believe in Him simply, because
the opposite of Him’s the impossible. No,
I believe in God mostly
because I see the Devil all the time.

In skinny-fat strip-mall villies
so smotherous, the beautiful
face of the World’s turned
empurpled, emblued,
slow strangled by the unstrange.

But somewhere on the sterile air

is the voice of one crying
in residual wilderness,
spare us from nothing but nothingness!
 
*
 
I’m drinking dirtinis,
possibly even fernet with the Devil.
Old Nick’s inspiriting
my friend Nick the Younger,
one of his guises of Dis. His
suggestion is
that the World could be God,
if She weren’t some perverted
homunculus He birthed.
Then I
of Her demi-telluric humus,
exhumed dust unearthed?

Hell’s the dyspeptic
he’ll say
underbelly of Heaven or else
its back door.

Well I’ve never been to Heaven,
and even though Old Nick has,
I don’t know if he still falls for it.

0.
O! Where is the card called the Poet?
Where is the card called the Dream?
Unless they are the Fool,
his face shown shining in the Moon,
his heart crossed with the Star.

So! Poet as Joker — the only major-player
to ramble and gambol his way
through to the post-modern packs.
The wild card went joker-mode
while arithmetic annihilated archetypes.
At the last trump, he that.

A joke I know goes:
the wisdom of the Fool’s his familiar.
His instinct,
but it follows him
around, not the other way.

Unfailing, his kept pet keeps him
from cliffs, unfalling.
 
*
 
Little wet god, maybe my in stinks
but it senses
nevertheless ever the lessening,
great grinding refinement,
some thin akin
to Her humble crust crumbled to dust.

So I compose composites of poesies against anhedonia,
mixing my ups of words burning with fell flame of aphasia,
from violet fire dead-on-the-vine
I hoard red of Her purple toward blue tomorrow:
those fragments of schist I’ve shored against my ruin.

And yet
schisms like synonyms
are still syntaxing me,
this-ing-of-that-ing
in fissions without frisson, as if
the old ode on Keat’s Greek urn
were in potsherds,
Truth and Beauty
in sharts,
so one reads now only
Know and Need.

It’s times like these
when I find myself saying its fine,
not every day needs to be poetry.
When what I mean is
I don’t need to need love,
truth and beauty, illusion,
wise lies, the sublime.
But what I really mean is
how else will I become
the sweet swan-armed prince of the crepuscle?
Meaning —
how else will I be human
in my next life?
 
*
 
Maybe I should have a baby.
I’ve been feeling experimental lately.

Isn’t the body God’s bawdy
labor-atory?

Every poem a hysterical pregnancy.
Every eventual letting
proportionally laborious
to length of gestation or festering.

I’ve found that to let,
one must allow
oneself to become an issue
to issue.

Then foolish you! It’s no issue
to render unto Caesar the sections
which are Caesarean.

But I was from my mother’s womb
untimely ripp’d! And I am still
waiting to be born.

Fool, is it you? New issue
of the usual too-earnest ennuïeuse,
spleen-eat’n-ideal,
mouthing off in the agora again,
inspir’n ire, enthrall’n y’all.
 
*
 
Driving home, I wonder on the way
in several of the seventh’s renderings,
the Chariot’s drawn by twin sphinx.
Male fantasy!
What legitimate riddl’n trickstress
would ever let herself be curbed?
Surely she’d hurl,
fell herself from the cliffs before this!

II.
Home is the second story, apartment.
In the catalpa courtyard are,
running up from my stopped spot,
stairs to the deck,
the back door. For me, John’s
left the light on, let
the little dog out.
She barks down at me now
as if I’d fallen
from her to here.

Edith — seen between tree’s
deck-level leaves — what shuffle
to draw out the Lover, now he’s
on top of my deck as well.

But at this angle, he seems to me
as one hung from the beany tree:

not ankle-hanged
as Le Pendu, rehearsing his reversal,
but breech as un perdu — umbilical noose
to the neck bluing him, sluice
of albumen and other indignities
already filming his skin.

John — he has his issues. I think
part of me came out of him.
 
*
 
As from Adam’s side,
as the “From” story goes,
his sickle-rib was Eve cut-out
just as a crescent
cut from Sun made Moon.

But all that was Before Centuries.
Now who performs Eve’s costectomy?

What comes from some Made-Moon?

I see the apple-act as a pharmakon,
her cursed curiosity cure.
Eve saw a red world suspended
in Eden-green monotony.

A globe of flesh delicious
secreting, secreting
tear-shaped cyanide seeds:

Eve’s seizing ripe fire
of the first impermission.

Naturally Adam the Namer claimed it,
it bobs in his throat to this day.

Though with it he riffs and rather
gives Nicknames — like Newton to
the slither-trickster
who fell not far from the tree
and accidentally invented
the inevitable — gravity.
(Genius, he.)

Eden was the green room
for those who would live
precipitously.
And go on to fall
tragicomically — like in love,
off the edge of the self,
or even all over themselves,
all under
an arch prismatic
of proscenium, promise of
punishment, curse of labor to issue,
permission thus
of this her work to be heard
in word-profession,
which first was Let, thus lit.

MI.
Then let me
skip ahead — up another set
of stairs — though those are spiral,
sinistrose — to the Song Silo’s
one-thousand-and-first story.

(Time, let me
move through you, you me
like you do true prosody — in an
in-and-unfolding
toward an infinite
place of pace
in which we may muse through we.)

Heaven-ascendent and escha-progressive
I go toward what’s on deck,
an epic breath
out-sounding, speaking-free.

Word-letting is bloody medicine,
pharmakon of a sensed necessity.

So I say
Eve, even if it’s only
vapor or vanity,
even if it only grasps at wind I say
all beauty is useful!
(They let you say it if you’re sexy.)

And I am
in the highest silo of Castle Babble,
tumid tower sundering thunder,
a shaft set against
swollen, nigh-cellulite-thighed skies,
cumulonimbus on crack
with a varicose lightning barely suppressed
by purpled surface of cloud.
Wild light of violet letting, its hue suffused
into bruise of night.

I lock myself in long towers
when I need release,
or at least to be struck by something.
But do I need to be rescued or screwed,
a knight or a bolt or both?

For once I’d like to be shocked by something!

Like the lightning-path
to Heaven is lit, this of which
Old-Young Nick spoke as he wrote
and rode the dragon’s tail
to its bass-ack door.
(I fall là-bas),

as if from cliffs,
slipping on mind-grime,
moon-grease, my eyes
on the star’s unfaltering
stares, down stairs,
back down dark
as the backs
of stars unfalling…

The truth is, I was tripping
on all this — go figurative,
a flailure of imagination.
 
*
 
Now all the poetry slowly.
Pours out my ears.

Sanguine, I, supine, lie
under the catalpa tree.

Ezekiel’s four freaky angels encorner
my fissuring window of vision’s peripheries.

Venn-diaphanous planets collide inside me.

World’s one word — but all the World’s truly
tout le Monde:
so many souls whither we’ve issued.

So maybe
the great soul mates
with many, the most
in poem-orgy,
collaboratory.

But do I have one of any
separate
from this breath or body
that was before
so many stars’ dust?

At the last trump,
take the Last Adam back
to adamah, to ashes of that.

Then anyone, anyone,
if you drew
out my Moon for me

I’d draw the wild word down
from its bough, I’d draw
the wide World into your palm
like you were a god.

Then I know — you’ll love me too.

You’ll need to — I mean, my God!

from …AGAIN

Jack pines. Junk food. 1-800-GOT-JUNK. It’s just another episode of Hoarders. It’s just another empty parking lot outside another shuttered JCPenney. J. Crew relocated to the outlet mall outside of Lee. Need a job application? Either you’re in jeopardy or you’re on your couch watching Jeopardy. Eating Jolly Ranchers. Eating Junior Mints. Junk bonds, junkies, bondage. American jobs. So just keep a journal. Do a Jigsaw puzzle. The Jack O’Lanterns are beginning to rot on the porches in the suburbs. Maybe look for Jupiter in the night sky. Watch reruns of The Jetsons on YouTube. Jetstreams. Jewelry boxes full of stars. Northern nights. Or maybe we’re just in a new kind of jail. Spiral Jetty. Injustice and joblessness. Circle Jerks. It’s in the daily newspapers behind the paywall. Frozen Junior’s cheesecake from Price Chopper. Or drive to Jack ’n the Box and come home if you have one to watch the killjoys on a giant flatscreen. Juxtapositions, juvenilia, juntas. Trump, at the podium, jitters and jives. Jehovah and Jekyll in one. Long live Jackie O. White jellybeans. The New Jim Crow. It’s beginning to sound a lot like jackhammers. Every day is Judgement day. No justice, just the police. Just junkyards. Just the braying of the jackals.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

Halcyon days, like the Keynesian days, are history now. In America, there is no again. Maybe it’s karma for how the country started. Knights of Columbus. KKK. Fake kink. Kmart collapsed, but the KISS Army survives. So maybe a quick trip to Kwik Trip for a Twix, or KFC for a KFC bucket because why not, the kingdom may be crumbling but the drive thru is still open late. Or swing the kettlebells. Make a kale Caesar. Kill or keep track of your kilocalories. Drop another kilo. Out in the country where the kindling is kept. And kegs of kerosene. Sing karaoke (maybe something by the Kinks or Killing Joke). Kneel with a knife over a deer carcass. Knick knack paddy whack. Pass the ketchup packets, the Chick fil’A Zesty Buffalo sauce. Kumquats. It’s just a joke. We’re not really joking anymore. Knowledge is kryptonite. The men in their beloved khakis, white knights kvetching about “urban crime.” Kidnap the curriculum. Run it through the kangaroo courts. Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Conan Doyle. Sing Kumbaya. It’s all off-kilter. It’s more than a kerfuffle. Killing time sometimes. The rest of the time it’s kaput.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

Lithium. Lingerie. Abandoned NAPA auto parts store near Lebanon Valley Speedway. Old RVs settled in for the upcoming winter. A few leftover fires. Limp tires, retreads. Get Little Caesars delivered. Landscaping businesses. Northern lights. Like it or not. At one point in history we were called the lumpenproletariat (from the German lumpen, “rag, rogue”). Just labor now. Belabored. Refugee workers, migrant child laborers. Crumbling factories that lack investment capital. Lack love. An era that’s lost its luster. Laughing gas, generic laundry detergent at the local laundromat. Like Gain, again. Laughingstocks. A life sentence? Every sentence feels like a lifetime ago. Lapsed payments. Lease expired. Lifetime Channel movies to help you forget. The lightbulbs are lukewarm at best. Life cycles on life support. A line of nine harvest green John Deere tractors most likely won’t be sold until next spring. Lines through the parking lot at Long John Silvers. When I left this morning for a Target pick-up my daughter’s window shade was drawn, but when I return a few hours later her window is open to the light. If only history could be a little more like this. Haybales lightly dusted in snow. Dusky late fall sky. Foliage on the forest floor. A pair of northern cardinals singing the old lullabies.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

Munchkins from the Dunkin’ drive-thru at the edge of Pontoosuc Lake. A sord of mallards muck about on the soon-to-be frozen water. My Family Assault Weapons sticker on the back window of the SUV in front of me. A Blue Lives Matter sticker, too. Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, Tiger Muskellunge. Ice fishing shacks and snowmobiles coming soon. America is American after all. Morning sickness, murder mysteries, melancholia. It’s programmed into the algorithms. Come to Dunkin’, Big Mac Meal Deal. The madding crowd seems madder than before. In the parking lot at Walmart, mercenaries wearing MAGA caps. Buying MAGA flags on Amazon.com. So much moxie. So sophomoric. It’s late autumn. In the night sky, there’s a waxing moon or a waning moon. Moonshine. Maybe or maybe not. It’s like a mortuary here sometimes. Sometimes it’s like a morgue. Dead deer on the side of the highway. Misty late afternoons, or is that fog again. The mountains, the coyotes in the mountains, the mice in the stomachs of the coyotes in the mountains. There’s maybe a momentum here of some kind. At least we’ve got Munchkins and maybe we’ll get a McFlurry, too. Best of times, worst of times. Pots of dying mums.