This Concludes Our Broadcast Year

ENACT END OF AN ACT. [2012]

(Declension.  Adding.  Marriage.  Adding.  An association.  A one-act play.  And.)  

Or the straight line from Stein A to Stein B.

"It is necessary to recover the primeval force of the shock

taking place at the moment when opposite a man (the viewer)

there stood for the first time a man (the actor) deceptively similar to us,

yet at the same time infinitely foreign, beyond an impassable barrier."

-- Tadeusz Kantor

I have been alone here at this here is not here this is not this blank book a looking back at this I

blankly looking back to alone times when not here I read this book to blank and back it

revealing black and the white spaces reveling in this here this alone this back before

bending was not bending but bent blank space black before it was revealed

to be some other alone some suspect book blinking back a revelation

like the time I alone here at this very here this very not this

went forward into not bending not toward black not

but toward bent black me an alone like white

like me looking back and blinking

at the I which once was alone

which once was blank

once was also          

black.

(One pigeon.)

I am a card collector in Paris.  

I collect cards of rabbits and famous works of art.  

I am a card.  

I collect rabbits and works of art.  

I am sentimental.  

I am married to a pigeon.  

I am not married to another pigeon.  

I have a mother who is also sentimental.  

She was also once married to a pigeon.  

She is currently unmarried.

She is currently looking for a new pigeon.  

She is a card and a collector.  

She does not collect rabbits.  

I am also an as-yet-unknown entity.  

I am growing uncomfortable in Paris.  

You MUST be.  

She is sweating on her cards.

(One pigeon.  One pigeon and a performance.  One pigeon and a performance is two.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story of Cher Ami.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story of Cher Ami the hero.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story of Cher Ami the hero of the Lost Battalion.)

And an association.  This is half indoors or how short longer grass grows short longer than shorter yellow grass.  One pigeon need not be certain of certain associations in order to associate Saint Therese with certain other saintly associations.  Alas.  In doing so said pigeon becomes a magpie.  One might be two doing what one might be trying to be certain of doing if said magpie takes to the sky.  Of course.  This is an indication of the number of acts to be introduced as envelopes.  Envelopes filled with four saints born in separate places.  Four saints.  One two three four saints.  

Four saints in a menagerie.

Four saints alone atop a hill.

Four saints giving birth.

Four saints in blackface.

Four saints scheming to steal your boyfriend.

Four saints limping toward the finish line.

Cross it.  Have to have to at a time in the summer when it is very easy to be winter.  And saints are easy too.  When Saint Ignatius completely tries to be certain he is very likely to be seen as one who is nearly a pigeon and easy.  Nearly.  He certainly might then be associated with saintly doing.  However.  Certain wrongs might be certain while certain beings (Saint Ignatius.  Saint Chavez.) might certainly be wrong.

Subtract one pigeon.

Imagine four benches separately and the four asses upon them.  And this most certainly might lead to wrong doing in the doing of wrong.  It might be wrong then to assume the association with wrong as the sisters and saints assemble to reenact.  Certainly if one is not completely convinced of certain other certainties one must become saintly and act nice.  Certainly.  And it most certainly could be a great wrong if one were to find himself associating certainty and great doing.  This wrong association is most convincingly certain in its being.  Four three two one being.  This being is not flying or posing in the grass of separate places.  It is simple.

One pigeon becoming ugly.

One pigeon stepping across the tabletop.

One pigeon finding forbidden love.

One pigeon in a tree.

One pigeon wrestling Saint Gallo to the ground.

One pigeon ignored.

And where were you when the window opened and thirty-five and forty-five numbers became four.  And the saints relived their numbers and became additionally cunning and away.  And ordinary pigeons became trees.  Trees.  And the pigeons became saints bending in the breeze and involved themselves in casual conversation with themselves.

                    

                              Saint Plan.          Is this scene four.

                              Saint Therese.          Dialog.

                              Saint Plan.          Once in a while.

                              Saint Therese.          Yes is a word.

                              Saint Ignatius.          When then.

                              Saint Therese.          Once in a while.

                              Saint Settlement.          This is uncomfortable.

      Saint Therese.          More than one table.

      Saint Ignatius.          A green plastic bottle.                    

                              Saint Therese.          Or the roots.

                              Saint Answers.          Ten.

                              Saint Therese.          Like four talking to three.

                              Saint Therese.          And three.

Saint Therese.          Pigeons.

[The subject is pigeons not saints.]

[The subject has grown shorter.]

[The subject is yellow.]

Most.

Certainly.

This.

Is.

Longer.

Than. 

The. 

Grass.

Associated.

With.

FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS.

"(this is a stage     and it should be perceived as one)"

-- G. Matthew Mapes

Merztank [2016]

happenstances [2012/2016]

1.

wrest the cigarette from a congestion of rhyme

and the kingdom is cast into happenstance     

underlined in baffles     we are tubular

(totally)     in smoking speaker cones

and we are lungs and tongues strummed birthing

on the stump at midnight

2.

passing as a fracture     a diminished vamp is wishing

is a rhythm     is a canvas usurping jazz

and where circuits tax the brackets of otherwise

corridors are horns blowing     inflating parentheses

and speaking craters into the back of a chair

is confusion     or a punctured afternoon

3.

my own face is strings scraped     an entrapment

as tremors occupy the evening’s body

and we were glass and silence broken     unclassifiable

over the head of any ship’s captain

or a lantern     a platinum quitter at dawn

is everything in language     dust     and television

4.

this abscission isn’t sudden     or flirting with the skyline

and I am flexing happenstance     posing

where animals once articulated the bottom

where nepotism is miniscule and the earth

and where we were once the world’s strongest man

and a decimal     immature beyond all our moons

5.

(leaning     leaning     leaning)     and knots of universe unwind

in the suburbs     in the transition to malignancy

and satisfaction is usually cumbersome

or circular     or a movement shying into language

but this passage is temporal     is teeth chattering
as another cigarette is drawn from the diurnal pack

Meat Market [2010]

(a reassembly of the first piece from Harryette Mullen's S*PeRM**K*T)

Square type family baskets pushing names of frozen gutter space.  Individually, the label faces align, scanning your oddly familiar stand displays.  A share place wrapped in squirming catches incites the ways hand.  Young tail bulging, or her cherished eye line wait; assemble a six pack throwaway outside.  Widows organize eyes and list themselves on the margin, while bold listlessness singles shelve meat all evening.  Divorced express lines and compartments straighten more footage.  Women wait in the market aisle.

Robin Blaser [2016]

Trying to understand this account, as the sun tilts past the center of the sky.  

(I am understanding.)

And I am alone in the living room, with the vacuum and several pairs of 

shoes, listening.

Robin Blaser is out there, somewhere, doing the work.  Or he is dead.

[...]

I've eaten too much something, and my head is the sun, tilting toward 

the trailer park.

Repeat and contemplate, or simply smile, slip into several pairs of shoes, 

and greet a ghost or two.

(This is an anecdote.)  (This is an anecdote.)

Ugh.  Robin Blaser has become his own scribbles, and the living room has 

disappeared into language.

[...]

This is this account.

G[ ]MM -- "Etude #020 (the Palm-Leopold's living room blues)" [2016]