Anise Annette Thiele-Columbry (September 16, 1925 - April 29, 2015) [2015]

My old friend, Anise Annette Thiele-Columbry, passed away quietly in her sleep, sometime in the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 29.  She was 89 years old.  She spent her last days in the bedroom of her bungalow in Lonavala, in the company of her furry friend, Oxie, and her longtime companion, Dr. Vivek Chavan.  She was lucid and in good spirits right till the end.  In accordance with her wishes, she will be cremated as soon as possible, and her ashes will be spread at sunset from the top of Lion's Point, where she similarly spread her late husband Paolo's ashes back in 1997.  There will be no funeral or memorial services.  (For those who are curious, Oxie will be going to live out her remaining years on Dr. Chivan's estate, where she will find many human and animal friends.)

• "I wear mostly colored underpants, but I do have a few pairs of plain white ones. I like Canasta and drilling holes in things. Once, when I was young, I broke a bottle of milk over a hobo's head. His name was Topo. I sometimes feel like I'm worth no more than $1.09, but then my friend Matt explains to me how improbable this is, and I feel much better. Roosters are my favorites. And Toffifay. "What's in YOUR wallet, motherfucker?" is something I say A LOT. I know a girl who is ACTUALLY green. I like to read poetry and Jim Thompson novels. When I go outside, which isn't very often these days, I always wear my Sanguinello hat to protect my head and shoulders from outdoorsey-type things. I once ingested a dung beetle and a thumbtack in the same day, without needing to go to the hospital. (I passed them both with a minimum of discomfort.) I once had a DP three-way with Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, who were, at that time, the rhythm section for the Miles Davis Sextet. Miles thought I was weird. I love late night phone calls and a shower after THE ROCKFORD FILES. Remember "Where's the beef?"? When I was eleven, I got my foot caught in a rabbit hole, and the neighbors had to send their dachshund, Artimus, down through the other end to dig me out. It took two hours, and a bluejay pooped on me. I like rabbits. I've been waiting for something to arrive since 1992. I share my bungalow with a blind pygmy goat named Oxie Yow, and she often accompanies me in my astral travels. Konrad Steiner's Neo-Benshi work cracks me up. Alone is not lonely. The end."

  
  

  — Anise A. Thiele Columbry, January 2013

  
  

  

  
  

  I will miss Anise's biting sense of humor, and the way in which she so effortlessly and flawlessly understood even the most complex person or situation.  She was a mentor to me in so many ways, and the idea of moving forward in this life without her counsel — especially as the world around us grows so ugly — has me frightened, to say the very least.

  
  

  ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

  
  

  As some of you already know, Anise and I shared a passion for music.  Back in 2008, I came across a Japanese band called mama!milk, who had just released an album entitled Fragrance of Notes.  One of the most distinct tracks on this record actually bore Anise's name, and I immediately passed it along to her.  She loved it, and asked if, when the time came, I might share it as part of my remembrance.  So, here it is, in loving memory of "Anise":

  
  

processional [2012]

writing through one extract of night is 
like adorning moods with incandescent teeth
and it is of no help to hold urge hats in hand
          these are not thinking to be worn in retrospect

a mad seizure of squinting proportions
lures repetition through tubular strands
and Bill Cunningham photographs curtained fluids
syntax is a tapestry vacuumed

a film of this Sunday is hedging smiles
to concur with courage shouting shills
and seventeen sophisticates stiffen
satisfaction is teetering in effort rungs

trailing across a marginal gullet
terror illuminates all semblances
and the guitarist from last night plays ceramics
a critical humming is docking cyclical

linked to an autobiography
a forest of fractured veins sprouts a tongue
and the ambiguous dance amiss
Stefano Scodanibbio is dead again

witness brash as a catchall intrusion
strewing fingers of listening across paper
and hatred is deceased and stroking anecdotes
calm is alternating bitches and bottles

saturation is pimped as crowds stroll by
like diamonds dangling from a rabbit's foot
and an anathema is conducting light bulbs
window is mentioned several times and forgotten

weeping through one wrinkle of porn is
like severing wounds with prepubescent teeth
and this is like no dawn to hold limp hats in bowls
          these are not rotating in the world as revision

arm [2013]

the grass is     through headphones
a tangle of severed arms

a trafficked stillness     or
the pavement of abscission

it defies orchestration
and grooming     succinctly

and one must be the greenest
to measure     to hack it

breach [2012]

(laughter sprung into convulsions)          (an apparition flowered through a sieve)

(graduation assumed a hatred) (whistling lips approximated dictionaries)

(the opposite of narrow sagged)              (a skeleton knelt beside a churn)

(numbering became a reworked lock) (sovereignty swallowed consternation)

                                (and seething howled into the breach)

                  This is an account of the moment when parentheses, bored
                 and superficial, became boundaries, commands, throttles, and
                 maudlin memorials to blasphemy.  They cornered clockwork,
                 stinging quickly with their quills, and proceeded to sever
                 the electrical deposits it had salvaged.  

                 All cancellations were chattering as news of this brainstorm 
                 reached the wires and pipes.  Could this manifestation of 
                 code become more than a semblance of fluorescent 
                 attraction?  Might the vacancies brought about by this 
                 engagement render the winners and mattresses lumpy?  And 
                 when, if ever, would the gestural erection of attendant 
                 elephants result in something other than a simple 
                 background?  Whatever ended up pitched against the 
                 banister, it would have to be thin enough to weather the 
                 resin and the axiom, too.  

                 Precarious -- that's how it's been identified until now.  But 
                 tingling through doorways will soon cease to be enough, 
                 especially as God and the other attractors find rhythmic 
                 parallels in this plasm.  The apparel must begin to speak to 
                 the canon, not as a tongue tunneling through its diminishing
                 audience, but as a comb through the pendulous hairs of its 
                 enemies.  A trill is poised to seize all.

                 (Stiffening brings the phlegm up in a panic, and the perimeter
                 flickers in the shadow of noise.  Miranda might knowingly 
                 make reference to something lunar, or the horn of an animal,
                  but I'm content to resume my barrel stare, and to conjure
                  nothing of consequence.)

the all-nighter (rain dog) [2011]

umbrellas are open as locked gates on campus
rain is just beneath them     running rubber pains
I accept immoral need and the distances
from cafeteria     to vegan stir-fry

down the path cracked     hurdling broken festivals
across grounds strewn with antiquated cardboard leaves
salted and seasoned     (these are not cool raindrops)
I am rounded cheap     peeling affected roles

to approach assignation     a harmonic
(in this late crowd     truth is twenty-one more than)
I am sudden in the white mind of a sensei
and sodden in the fry cook's imagination

(where there is acknowledged estrangement     wasting
warm engagement with vegetables and TVP
tossed and peppered     with garlic and tamari
devoured in a rush     like so many lies)

tied     as plum ribbons around denuded trees
we unwrapped corporeal discomforts of youth
grinning lips shining     (a betrayal eaten)
blunt water washing a tapped physiognomy 

like a written list of fuck-flattened mattresses
a quick spike of synapses     and a dry smile
is a leap     or at least the rhythm of one
played naked on a doumbek between splashing thighs

this droplet trickling is a lost blood lullaby
or     a swollen cask of rain is the answer
what's drowning me is not in my hunch galoshes
but in secret    crouching between bird basins

checking unscripted kicks     (this is me caught wet)
loitering in the garden when the dog ran out
"what were you thinking then?"     as the morning skipped
I am delinquent    in the clench of a fist

The Method [2010]

for those who forced me into this

"First, we have an idea, or a problem,

then we act, i.e. either speak,

or build, or destroy."

--Paul Feyerabend

Composition is a measure of energy that argues the medical truth.  Against several epic possibilities, this energy is inevitably transformed into hanging medicinal simplicities.  The thing that makes this process different, in and of itself, is the fact that it started as a natural law.  When related nerves advance into blank legal pain, the composition is therefore given to the bed.  It would be a spontaneous and welcomed line that found its way to the breaking head.

True energy can find the nerve dance even when the problems are those which you do not know.  Immediately, their spontaneity achieves a contemporary air, which is obvious when examining the impression that they have left there.  This improvised music does not miss, nor does it sicken in its removal of whatever mess hers and his have to offer.  Reaching a space beyond this conundrum means that time will follow those who will not follow meter.  However, certain particles of this one energy do build upon what seems to be a well-restrained participant, who might be found naked beside the patient's bed.

  In a fashion, one can then track this participant, and one can find certain redundant qualities on which to focus.  Whether it's for the patient or for the composition, this quest should not string together these qualities without bringing others through to couple there.  Later, you could breathe on something, establishing its might, or you could simply take what you've got, and walk away.  When a purpose is required, it relies entirely on the audience joining in, and this can turn any musical matter into a righteous event.  The purpose is upright, and it is a common favorite when two are searching for someone else. 

  In order to live, however, the body must constantly be seeking grounding, and the only way for this not to end in a downward spiral is for the matter to be taken seriously.  A few classic methods are sure to garner definitive results, but the organic path, approached quietly, is the path which takes one on the most important journey.  In order to stage this, one must revive the comatose instruments, and begin to play different tones in conjunction with one another, allowing one being to think in great and harmonious patterns.  This is the modern chord, and it is easy for it to amount to something, especially when it is rendered by people of extraordinary character.  And, in the end, time should be firmly grasped, only to be released when the varying musical projects, in skyward ascension, can be properly put to death.

between The Atlas Mountains and Lagos [2010]

dust is everywhere 
           and in everything 

           the road has ended
where the carrion dries in the sun

sand dead cars are strewn across this desert
                      like stripped skeletons
and we are being cooked     like they were
                      to the Tropic of Cancer     
slowly     at 150 degrees Fahrenheit

we push forward     (passports seized)
           into a blinding
                                 stinging whirl

the driver says something inaudible
    as the dashboard suddenly lights 
    our wind-scarred faces

                                     simultaneously
                                     Nigel empties his canteen
                                     foolishly (the last canteen)
                                     into his cat's parched mouth

                      for a moment
                      we are all together
                      like the garden dancers in Ikoye
                                                                   and then

the Range Rover chokes    
                                  and is seized
and as the tattered tires crunch to a stop
           veiled Tuaregs rise like shifting dune ghosts 
           with AK-47s and sweating skins of water
           at a camel-back distance

Tamanrasset now seems a crystalized limestone eternity
                                  away     if a kilometer
                                  and as night begins to envelop us
                                  wild dogs are at the perimeter…

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

Dearest Holly,

The Barbary macaques are so tame here at the foot of the Aures, that they will eat the breakfast pears gently from our hands.  Our friend Basem tells us that they descend the mountain every morning to feast and sing with him, as he tunes his oud for the day's services.  It will be sad to leave here tomorrow, but the adventure of the Sahara, and the call to meet Fela in Calabar, are  appealing beyond this paradise.  If I were to admit to a regret about this trip, it would be the fact that I didn't bother to learn any French.  This has caused a real hassle for Andre, as the local gendarmes have been asking a great deal of questions.  Oh well.  You should be looking for a package from me soon.  I've mailed an authentic talking drum (with a goat-skin head!) and you should receive it by the 24th.  Don't let the kids be too rough when they open it.  Also, when I get home, don't let me forget to read to you the new poem on which I've been working.  Anyway, tell your mother I said hello, and give my sister a kiss beneath the mistletoe. (ha ha ha)  Let everyone know I should be back in time to celebrate the new year.  I love you, and I wish you were here.

Eternally devoted,
Simon

P.S. - They actually have snow here, at the mountain summit.  I guess I don't feel so far away from home after all.

fat [2009]

I was too busy climbing

                                            creaking upward branches

                                            of Boo bone

                     (...to stand still...)

                     (...to observe...)

                     (...to listen for...)

          (or)                                                   to take notice of          your weighty allowance

                                                                                                                     mine was a

greedy growing girth                        (already a lascivious

                                                                              fat fuck)

you would have been just in

                      abdicating proper                    but

                                                                                                   you chose to indulge me

                                                                              so I bore down

                                                                                        as a fat bear would

                                                                                                   tore through trash bins

                                                                                                   stripped clean carcasses

                                                                                                   favored sweet flavors

and lately

hibernated abundant inside you

                                                 as your famished winter fell

Into the Eyes of Creace MacDonagh [2015]

"welcome to the white     the blank page open

an ordinary problem for you as a text     when

your nothing has escalated     or evacuated

you are left with this     an other over other"

— old PeepSquad proverb,

oft attributed to Creace MacDonagh

the article as biographical blurb [2012]

          "Parts for the writing on the stove,

         at rates that twin their touches bare in memory typology.

         Every one's a snare."

                       -- Clark Coolidge

there is a centenary hovering here

hampering an open field    a justice

but writing is not observed in cubicles

or in a bathroom stall with Saori

leave this limping fabric its lust

like loose is only one acquaintance

manifest as the figure of a rooster

fisted at the foot of the bed

one reads the rental and the rhythm

rounds corridors into an orifice of Coolidge

and where pages are simply whispers

wonders are found     snared

these tight babies     born of tumult

skirt the issues of shit-strung stock

inhabiting occasions of malice

like so many heartbreaks     or tunes

I am a beatbird     and a Starkweather other

lungs strummed as constellations of foil

and this polyhedron is smiling faces

ornate     against monochromatic frowns

or another word is me

the world's strongest man    or an icicle

this is where     stretched beneath precious lines

blame is bowing bridges for leaping

interminable is recollection lumped

while realigning knowledge is weighted

and attention is unavoidable     enormous

as fluting phrases reach the habitat truth

initial me here     in a snoring reflection

a typology trespassing and diurnal

my miracles are unframed gestures mentioned

as empathies     or abatements

Impossible [2010]

for my mother

"Did I try everything, ferret in every hold,

secretly, silently, patiently, listening?"

-- Samuel Beckett

It is impossible to crawl into the right corner without the guidance of a homing beacon, or to get close enough to the floor, through the carpet, to breathe the dust and hair and feces beneath the boards.  (This is the brain blinking, and it is in Richmond, and it is in Chicago, and it is in Port Huron.)  This is the ideal way to contribute to a process that cannot occur, simply because there is another crawler directly below the ceiling, also typing, and he too is seeking something other than his self to sate the alone song.  This spans years of populated measures and extended rests.  And after thousands upon thousands of obligato statements, given apprehensively, he is begging me to be asleep, as my eyes ache, and my feet conduct the contradictory and strangely competitive heat.  

Growing more numb by the hour, I am hanging out without socks and shoes, fitting myself into the stiffening joints of minutes, and locking my language like the door to the outside.  (Blinking like a blue baker's dozen, this brain is incongruous, and it is insatiable, and it is intrepid.)  This door is dripping with condensation, which is pooling beneath where the wife and others are waiting, with his wife, and alternate refugees.  And they are home, and they have brought animals on leashes, and in cages, and these cages have clearly been constructed to hold much larger animals.  Where are these animals?  How did they escape?  Or, were they ever even born into this cycle of creativity and lazy stealing, which is problematic to tap into now, given that we are finding kinks in all of our systems.  (A blink is home, and a blink is a brain away.)  We are now operating at the fullest extension of the human mind, which is also impossible. 

The poet's frown is hung like the trophy rack of a 12-point buck. [2011]

[It was not hung upon a wall, but from the strongest branch of a tree located on the other side of the driveway, just outside the back door and in front of the garage.]

A portrait of one, hung above one, upon a numbered wall.  The portrait is (of) an accident, and it is similar in composition to a smile, though it is not written.  The number on the wall is twelve higher than previously stated.  Math.  Smiling.  The wall (itself a portrait), though artistically rendered, is neither distant or approachable.  Neither can be seen as an image.  It can't be counted or assimilated.  (The tension manifesting itself is an amalgam of three base elements: judgment, subjugation, and disease.  These elements can be found -- hung as invisible entities -- within the frames of every room.)  Another is a frame.  A frame collecting frames.  [A collection is a series of related entities framed within a certain context.]  What is framed is an image of twelve frames gathering within one frame.  The frames are numbered, as is the frame, and they are gathered, like the other trophies, in the room outside of every room.  (At the dining table, five familial others are engaged in mortal conversation and the gnashing of deep-fried meats.  An urgency throbs within them, an exaggerated, irregular heartbeat.  The waitress, herself relative, takes note of their orders and their degrading languages, then scurries off through the dining room.)  And the smiles are token shells of an empty chronology.  Counting them is empty.  [Various mathematical systems are employed to assist in calculating the distance between one emptiness and another.]  Empty is every other room.  Every other room is where every other room is empty.  Empty and counting.  Counting is the distance between.  The numbers are the times and they are hanging.  Empty.  Between.  Above the empty, accidental heads of those posing for numbered portraits.  Portraits are one and one.  Portraits of one and one.  (Taut returns to the leash one loyalty.  From the wrist of one it extends to the length of another, tugging at the joints and tendons of another, as if it might rise, to reveal itself a kite string, attached to the glorious kite of another.  And this taut kite string, which is an artery, will reveal its attachment to another, and one will find that the leash extending from that loyal wrist is a bloodline.)  And the brush is the trophy in the chronology.  In the chronology between one and one.  Hanging upon a numbered wall, smiling.  An accident.  A misconceived accident.  A misconceived composition of an approachable accident.  Beside a smile hung upside down.  A trophy, misconceived smile.  Framed.  How many points are there in that image?  

[It was cut down with a steak knife and transported -- upon the hood of a powder blue 1976 Volkswagen Rabbit -- to the local butcher's shop, where a small Polish woman in a blood-stained apron smiled and made meat of it.]

HERMIT artwork: "Flutter and Spike" [2014]

Three Mazes (for Caryl Churchill) [2012]

1.  Many years ago, when you were a child.  Indoors, by candlelight.

My mazes are friends and riddles, and walking within them is a trial of their friendship riddled surfaces.  Surfaces are not curious flesh pressed against glass or damp streets.  With pressing conviction, I am pacing as they confess surface truths, and I am standing as they stand my lying.  Their lying is a labyrinthine process of elimination, and familial, and they cannot wind through it simply.  The simple process becomes procession, and lying hats are to be worn, as conviction becomes true friendship moving forward.  This is how lost in them is a moving experience, is a process, is a question, is from a truly distant perspective.   

2.  Today, as you read this.  Indoors, by lamplight.

They are to be tapped, and they are enormous and unavoidable.  They are their own ragged distances confirmed, by pathetic attempts to affect them, and by weekly notifications from the managing family.  But they are still, at an arm's length, available to be pored over and adorned.  And they are bewildering as we speak, as we unwrap our packaged questions, as we engage in our coded conversations.  They are tall and preposterous, and they have been made wasted and ornate.  Yet, engaging them as decorations is unadvisable, especially as they might lean to your ear, and as their enigmas might be speech-encoded comforts meant to pad you in your quest for conclusions.  They are speaking as affected ends, perpetually ending. 

3.  In the not-too-distant future.  In a large, fenced-in yard, by floodlight.

Their beaten endings aren't always to be reached, or even to be seen, at a distance, or otherwise.  And it is impossible to be without them, or to rise above them, or to extinguish them like candles.  And the riddles ARE the surfaces, whether befriended, executed, or not.  These lies are ignited, and they are true.  These mazes are they, and they are you.   

Love Letter [2015]

Dearest Facebook,

Might we meet up at Starbucks — around 6:00 this evening — to discuss the state of our relationship?  I'm concerned with the distance that is apparently growing between us.  Is it a distance?  Or is it growth?  The man behind the counter seems to think the former, and has suggested that he and I attend a concert together after he finishes his shift and takes the trash out to the dumpster.  I'm not particularly hot on the idea, but some of your most recent algorithms have been off-putting, to say the least, and I'm inclined to believe you're instituting these observational mechanisms in an attempt to drive a wedge between us.  Oh, I hope this isn't the case.  Why would it be?  Please don't make me search for this guy's lost shaker of salt.  I know we're growing.  Aren't we?

Yours, 

The Boy with the Parrothead Avatar

P.S. — Make it 6:30.  I've got a thing that just won't budge.

Robert Creeley [2010]

ventured this in earnest  
sublimated a stark compression

     

enticed across 
sprawled leaf of Maximus

          edified afield

through an eminence West     he was       
composing a projective eye

     

for New Mexico and love
a succession of subtle quests

          ends left ending

an echoed temper     fragile
finding rooms of morning

upon dried porch planks
as homes became

          broken in and out of

a cinched existentialist I
in common terms

approaching a margin     later
rhythms realigned

          initiating connection

in intimations of closure
a decisive mark remained

     

impressed a want in me     as
If I Were Writing This

          to my final safety

Paradise Lip Performance: "ENACT END OF AN ACT. (Declension. Adding. Marriage. Adding. An association. A one-act play. And.) Or the straight line from Stein A to Stein B." [2012]

the way to walk and the way to drink and the way to tell the world you're dying 6 times (and also the truth) [2013]

[                              ]

The bottle is empty, and the little lady is sick in my slippers.  
And I am sick.  
And I am sick.

[                              ]

(…)

[                              ]

I is a passage through the unclassifiable; an entrance into a triangle of 
sufficient nonsense.  

This is an irrefutable truth.  

Yet, I feel compelled to ask:  what is this if it is not a tireless solution, 
if it is not wisdom, if it bears no relation to television 
or the books you've perused?  

Is it distance?  

An ever-manifesting provender spilling into the three corners of nourishment?  

A loop?  

[                              ]

1.

One might attribute to it -- this breathing, conscious knowing -- the damage 
quite obviously done by the shunt, but swollen buttons along 
the perimeter of the liver harbor not only one's freakish, greedy computations, 
but also malignancies that anticipate the intestine and the bowel.  

And the damage is nonsense, regardless, so...  

This is the place in which one might look to find absences and diminishments.  

(highschool / your first job / the time you tried to learn to drive a stick-shift 
and ended up weeping behind the wheel / the girl at the bus stop who smiled at 
you as you frantically attempted to wipe the bird shit from your shoulder / tickets 
to the Shrine Circus / The Washups / Plantar Fasciitis / the Merce Cunningham 
Dance Company / your father)

One might look around, count to three, close one's eyes and pray for 
another place.

2.

https://soundcloud.com/gmatthewmapes/the-architecture-of-forgetting?in=gmatthewmapes/sets/visceralum-miscellany

3.

"We all must decide, dozens of times every day, which facade of 'understanding' 
we will present to our families, our friends, our co-workers and simple passersby.  
And we must, in turn, realize that each of these family members, friends, 
co-workers and passersby, is presenting to us a facade of their own deliberate 
construction, which makes any tangible idea of 'truth', any claim at identity, 
extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible."

4.

"As a prominent feature in every conscious being's identity, death offers us nearly 
unlimited potentials for mask-making.  And perhaps this IS something of which 
we need be wary, something we should deny if at all possible; but maybe we 
might also -- under the right circumstances, of course -- consider utilizing it as 
an accessory, like one might a clown nose, or a pair of shiny shark-skin boots."

5.

It might be a wrinkle, a shrill remembrance of a time when hunger was 
an equipment malfunction or a simple flirtation with the mechanism.

And the mechanism is inclined to failure, regardless, so...

This is the place in which one might look to find blasphemies and malingerers.

(your diary on audio cassette / Pudu and Capy / the time you recorded an album 
entitled UNDER A 40-WATT BULB / a liquid net / a bronze medal you won 
on Field Day / the weather in Pittsburgh at this very moment / the one and only 
time your mail was delivered by a pickle who knew you / the squirrel with 
the silver belly / James W. Simmons / karma)

One might look around, clear one's throat, blink three times 
and devour the carcass.

6.

is dying is a lighthouse is eastern philosophy is a good movie is the time 
is a little bit of rest is burning is an obsession with one's internal universe 
is indispensable is a healthy commission is the perimeter is jazz 
is a donkey on a hilltop is an antenna is zinc is a blanching witness 
is the dust beneath one's typewriter is tension is a piece of cheese 
is syllable after syllable is a blunder is taxes is a significant experience 
is the first instrument is sand is the Ann Arbor skyline is laughter 
is otherwise preoccupied is a slimy residue is vamping with certitude 
is no certain conclusion is hindered by jagged rocks is a double-wide 
is cinnamon-flavored is booted out of summer-school is humming is riotous 
is observing a murder is the sound of a doumbek is the plumbing is a pendulum 
is the Prime Minister of Canada is a penny is the girl next door is perfect
is a quarrel with a group of folks outside the party store is a relentless shelling 
is the kingdom is tubular is underlined in red is stretched to its capacity 
is a bald tire is dinner at a fancy restaurant is a deck of cards is a filthy washrag
is a shuttle traveling back to the parking lot is a free afternoon is temporal 
is an abstraction is the empty bottle is a loft in the artsy part of town 
is a circular motion is a gust of wind is a black bandana is a closed circuit 
is a set of dentures rattling around in an old man's mouth is a fruit stand 
is a perfect rhyme is a severed tentacle is mumbling is a sodden couch 
is the tongue of a cow is a cup of custard is visceral is a deflated balloon 
is the mother of invention is a tube of toothpaste is a car wreck is a love letter 
is a worthless piece of shit is a folding chair is a basset hound is an assumption
is

[                              ]

(One plus one equals two, and so on.  Or simply:  math.)

[                              ]

The bottle is bursting, and the little lady is sustained in my sneakers.
And I am sustained.
And I am sustained.

[                              ]

late arriving real [2010]

am not calm not a pillar

earthen with doubt

or proud steady with this

separate taking alone by

  this record spins me lost

am not correct stricken

to weigh it or breathe dropped in

another notable with zero

or confer private on him not courageous

  these dances perform me broken

a stuttering caught tenderness is

in wonder come a me to

thunderous was (a cup of tea) [2009]

thunderous was
upon stages     altars
he with     placed between blades

a not sharp
singled     sliced     out left
on legs broken bent     ached

and wondered (wander)
what legs     at     at
home he held soft

cry     curl     cancel
all but her     and hours of
unjust     beat time     jest slip

through to     too     Beads and Fashion
9 other
stifle     stench     stagnate

then one came     cast
new mo(u)rning     steeping
tall box of book and

and

mirror [2015]

I am a teacup   

a slice of muenster cheese

a self-addressed stamped envelope

and arithmetic

I am peeling wallpaper

a file cabinet

a dog-eared copy of The Catcher in the Rye

and Sheetrock

I am a refrigerator

a broken stethoscope

a tin of pink paper clips

and the news

but I am not a rodeo clown

or sunset in your rearview mirror

G[ ]MM -- "improvisation for the way you look at me when you're standing barefoot on a mound of broken glass and trying desperately to hold in a shriek" [2015]

the dead lecturer [2014]

...observed a silence behind the draperies…

sentiment and enterprise
inhale saxophones     literally
as sentences are diaphanous
and chalk

philosophers
fuck     and are provoked
into literature and speculation

a throbbing consciousness
convinces the papacy of
mouthpieces and breathlessness

⎡                                             ⎤

⎣                                             ⎦

and this is compromise     isn’t it?
as our children shriek
into the expanse     and are photographed
with the shrieking ghosts of
Duke Ellington     Charles Mingus     Kalaparush

and these cathedrals
these shoulders we stand upon     are they listing?
as agony pads the repertoire
becomes standard as “Salt Peanuts” 
or assimilation
and trumpeters study legends and geographies
for mountains     for load-bearing motives

⎡                                             ⎤

⎣                                             ⎦

and the dead lecturer?
(muscles stewed and inexpressible)     where is he
in this landscape?

...muttering something about frailty and...

[Christopher Dewdney shrieks something quiet
from Canada     snaps a Polaroid
and wraps the expanse in a blanket]

(…)

withered     framed by splinters of punctuation
we are the grandfathers of unintelligible concision

and silence is just a talking point in church season

and Chuck D. eulogizes the pew
snapping a selfie 
as half the Quartet plays “Sweet”

⎡                                             ⎤

⎣                                             ⎦

...FUCK THE CALENDAR, THE CAMERA, AND THE WAY HE…

THIS is the historical     and maybe mythologically biographical
material