Sunday, May 31, 2015

language elemental [2011]

  after Bill Orcutt

this articulation 
of travelled rings stricken
does not exhilarate 
scraped vocabulary 
or a quick inversion 
of siren chord gossip

            calloused fingers compel
an imagination

strung metal corridors
whistle spring dissonance

breathing language opens
into the slightest voice

and through the sepulchral sound hole
wind and dust
                      converse

Saturday, May 30, 2015

the time [2011]

10:47 PM -- a black horse stood stock still

10:59 PM -- a black horse stood stock still staring

11:17 PM -- a black horse stood stock still staring into an open abyss

11:42 PM -- a black horse stood stock still staring into an open abyss with the errant rider 
                       on his mind

12:02 AM -- a black horse stood stock still staring into an open abyss with the errant rider 
                        on his mind as a grey man approached from behind

12:07 AM -- a black horse stood stock still staring into an open abyss with the errant rider 
                        on his mind as a grey man approached from behind and attempted to 
                        restrain him

12:09 AM -- a black horse stood stock still staring into an open abyss with the errant rider 
                        on his mind as a grey man approached from behind and attempted to 
                        restrain him with the Queen's bridle

12:12 AM -- (something ((which is unknown)) occurred at exactly this time)

12:30 AM -- a black horse stood stock still staring into the eyes of the reader


Thursday, May 28, 2015

wet [2012]

  a sponge

thrusting barbed wire into loopward pinholes
isn't aging     or a matter of destitution

  seventeen syllables are made monuments to harm
while conforming to a monotony of character

                                      how might [       ] confront these fountains?

                                                 a towel

expectation is a cork-tuned bearing     enfolded in paper
as a bramble and a bunghole lie soothed and outstretched
  it is natural for patterns to shade the wilderness lip
and keep the curtain of motion in confidence

                                      when might [       ] drizzle onto heaps of we?

             and when itching night shrouds the principals and the page
and the actor assumes his role
the space is an amendment that must be agreed upon
before daybreak spills into language

                                            or a cup

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Eternized. [2015]

I try.  I mean, with the distraction and all, it’s tough, but…  I try, nonetheless.  

No need for an attorney.  No need to address the emptiness or the airways.  Awareness. Awareness is key.  And I run errands all day, sometimes into the night, and the journey is often long and uneasy, and the birds are unkind, to say the least.  But the sentences that manifest: these are wonderful and synthetic.  Modern.  Yes, I’d say modern, if left with no other option.  Modern, or maybe western.  Breathe.  This is the way into outright lies or awareness.  And I am left brewing utterances in the Western Railway Terminal, smiling a pale smile, looking into mirrored windows as the train pulls away.  And I am breathing.  There can be no doubt that I am breathing, and moving my mouth, and saying little things, and smiling.  And my utterances are enough to fill a teacup.  I am breathing and aware.  Aware. 

Numb.  

Aware of two men in the room.  A white room.  Two men dressed in white smocks, in the same white room as me.  And cauterizing.  And I can smell myself cooking as they cauterize their work, as they run their errands down my leg, into my slipper-sock, and then out west.  Breathe.  And a woman, a tall, modern woman, perhaps my attorney or a bird, alternates between outright lies and mirrored emptiness.  Breathe.  And strands of her hair are sentences unto themselves.  Beautifully constructed sentences unto themselves.  Themselves and an uneasy, modern awareness.  Or a journey, to say the least.  I smell erroneous and uneasy, or synthetic, or intriguing.  Maybe.  Maybe intriguing.  This is perhaps the last time I’ll be this wonderful, this aware and intriguing.  And I can’t remember whether I left my keys in the pale-blue bird dish by the door, or in the teacup, or in my attorney’s attaché.  Breathe.  

I mean, I am distracted, after all.  But I try.

Monday, May 25, 2015

4, 3, 2, 1 ("…voided voices still…") [2010]

from the sound of it
  you've been given the time to compose

your alliteration is time

your voice is a clock
  and your ticking tongue
conducts the minutes and seconds
of its gift orchestral hour

and I am an envious counter
a tin-eared non-listener
            staring down the sound

Friday, May 22, 2015

hinging [2012]

tantamount is wood housing surrender
pitched against sequential anymores
and this volume is a vacancy     a habitat
passing hoax-bones and churches

waiting on the audience     clockwork
wanders amiss the filament staircase
while flickers whisk the rafters
nascent columns become cameras

a background     sitters and pinchers blank
the skeleton banister of approximate strolls
echo is the quickest antique
to divulge its dictionaries     its lisp

or the opposite is an advantaged heft
a temporal cornucopia knell     we
sneak one lozenge of knowledge     a pedal
into an envelope of graduates

for the erection is lumbering     lapsed
a doomed variety of oracle
and the shoulder has reworked its knuckles
as a remnant     an apparition

this hemisphere     throttling wire commands
diminishes penitence and the nude
and knowledge is poise     an instant rummage
through the superficial spine and metal

[                              ]

meanwhile     the mantle turned a howler and
John tripped down the runner     hinging

Thursday, May 21, 2015

converse [2011]

I have been empty and overheated
I've no idea what my noise might be
loneliness has led to emptiness
my poetics is slipping from me
I am failing to renew necessary energies
this is a complaint-based art form
my liver is surrounded by me     and is being choked
music has become bland to the taste
papers are not poetry     but are due just the same
perhaps note-taking is the way to make a resurrection
I've never seen my ass across a crowded room
working toward someone else's blind spot
perhaps I'm at "the turning point" of the line?
moving beyond a "significant breakthrough" 
at least I'm not exhausted today of the smiles and greetings
the line is extending as I write it
if only I could converse in my writing     or confess     or observe
when I do these things     they seem somehow "untrue"
I don't trust my "process"     and this makes me nervous
                  despite his many negative aspects     I miss the "contributions" of XXXXXXX     
and I wish he were here right now     (he might have the "answer")
poetry is difficult when it's confronted with so many options
when you look at me     what do you see?
I wonder:  if I actually wrote songs     would they eventually become difficult?
I miss being bright and engaged     I need to "run my mouth"
don't come to me with your pathetic desperation
I need to be invigorated by something "fun"     (is this even possible anymore?)
I am     in so many ways     unfit
beauty and ugliness are often the same thing
what are these young people (writers) doing if they're not working on their writing?     (fucking?     trying to fuck?     talking on the phone?)
I often feel trapped     or constricted     by the limitations of the page
big fish / little fish / inconsequential fish -- what is all this fishing?
I am not entirely self-sufficient anymore     I "need"
is language uninteresting     or is it daunting?
am I desperate and pathetic?

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

meticulous [2012]

after "bossing"

What is to be garnered from this adherence to systems of torrential downpour?  

(rich is to receive plagues of
humidity     and
Samuel Beckett's ghost
wears a nightie for me

in the last tilled armistice earth
I planted my trust in you
my memory coat
my 90-minute mix tapes)

Who are the enemies of your sneakers?
Your lava-lamps?
Your Cornish game hens?

(I am in roundabouts and waiting
at the dumpster with a peony
in my hand
give me your heart
trash     and I'll paint you 
a masterpiece mourning
love
gun-metal blue

and the reasons are for seven
like the four is for regret)

What is a simple science but a formula for sophistry?
(a try is a curve toward tumult and
a given reward is inking in
the reservoir

paste
pace
somehow     the whereabouts of
a drunken coin slot is unknown
beyond the waistband)

Is Zukofsky's A a letter?

(the wilderness lip has been
co-opted     and fortified

paradise
what is absurd is a spiked hammer and 
a man hungry for face

a smile)

Was my tongue born before me?
Before De Kooning?
Picasso?

(she candied her cough and
opened an umbrella of
temerity  
and nearby is humid 
                               
                                                my tongue was born before me

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

the steps (for M.C.) [2010]

"A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection."
                                                             -- John Cage
 
LGHT                                   a crippled recitation art
                                             words not yours but in love
CLR                                     pulsing along common random    
                                                 trespasses and mushrooms
SND                                  in anechoic I Ching translating
                                             a deliberate ascent as biped
BRTH                                   is swollen still stepping
                                             through mirrors of my sleeping
MVMNT                               failing how the music did not
                                             or an encore of this repose
THGHT                                 left me without principal
                                             derived of steady sound frontiers
PRCTC                                 steep the educated peak then
                                             beyond geodesic heaven to
DTH                                     fleeting forms of poetry life
                                             slipping birth again to slipped end
SPC

Monday, May 18, 2015

cleansed (excerpt from a one-week diary) [1994]

cancel that opinion
and drop that pen, man
for I've discovered something new
it's not blasphemous or black
acid, speed or crack
but it concerns my relation to you

you can bang on your drum
in your rented highway slum
and pretend you've got it all together
but you're using up good space and air
and there's more and more of you everywhere
popping up as trends wearing leather

I can hardly think to look at you
and somehow you think you're thinking too
it takes more than legs to stand up tall
once you've gone there and seen that
and been to where it's really at
spend some time leaning against the wall

Sunday, May 17, 2015

The Gun Room [2011]

Bleeding profusely from his left knee, the boy was hurried up three flights of stairs to a place they called The Gun Room: a converted walk-in closet that housed a CB radio workstation and a large stock of firearms.  Once there, he was made to sit on the edge of an old Air Force footlocker, and as he attempted to situate himself, his father tore away the remains of his tattered Toughskins.  The deep wound gushed with every rapid beat of the boy's heart, but there was no sign of the broken glass presumed to be lodged within.  Observing this, the father cursed under his breath, jumped to his feet, and ran out into the adjacent room, where he could be seen digging for something beneath the king-sized bed.  The boy's mother -- arrived from the kitchen stinking of raw meat -- leaned over the boy, stuffed a rolled-up dish towel into his mouth, and instructed him to bite down, which he did, just in time for the rag to muffle his panicked screams.  His father, with a determined look on his face, had returned carrying a rusty grey Craftsman toolbox, which he methodically placed on the linoleum beside the boy's blood-drenched feet.  Then, in a hauntingly calm voice, the father instructed the mother to leave the room; and when she did, she closed the shuttered black door behind her without looking back.  Tears streamed down the boy's flushed face as his father opened the toolbox and removed a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Friday, May 15, 2015

The 'Bogdana Carpenter' Cycle [2010]

G. Matthew Mapes
An Abandoned Storefront
Whereas, MI

T (734) 335-7053 (disconnected)
M (734) 756-8590

gmatthewmapes@yahoo.com
gmapes@emich.edu

Bogdana Carpenter
Professor Emerita - Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Michigan
3040 Modern Languages Building
812 East Washington
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1275

Dearest Bogdana,
I hope that this letter finds you healthy and well rested.  I can only assume that your recent retirement has opened many new worlds of experience and opportunity, and that these, and these alone, are responsible for your alarming lack of correspondence.  Has it been a year?  My memory fails me.  Alas, I am a wreck here, in Erika’s past, and I’ve long since disposed of my calendar.  Regardless, I must ask of you, at this most crucial of junctures, to extend me a favor: Lend me your familiar eyes, so that we, together, might look upon a cold, perplexing request: Create a new genre of prose.
(Wait.  First I should confess that I’ve not yet been able to raise the autographed original copy of Hermes, Dog and Star that was promised you in the aftermath of our last collaboration.  However, I assure you it is here, somewhere in these stacks of milk crates that serve as both my makeshift filing system and precarious shelving unit.  Soon, perhaps even tonight, the discovery will be made, and I shall then, with great haste, have it delivered to your door.  I am, as our beloved Mallarme once was, “late for you”.  I am conspicuously stamped “For Services Rendered”.  And I am, in light of it all, advancing.)
Rob Halpern, arrived this autumn from Paris, has charged me (of all mendicants?) with the task of committing as Bertrand once did; as Baudelaire and Rimbaud.  A new genre?  Another?  Have we not already received and incorporated the finest gifts of prose?  Are we not the better, the wealthier, as a result?  This is how I am plagued, by insubstantial candlelight, this past poor week.  This is how he mocks me.  I am at an end.
To make things worse, my advertisers (yes, I’ve foolishly pre-sold advertising space) have begun to turn the proverbial screws.  As a matter of fact, just this morning, my postal delivery woman kicked me square in the solar plexus.  And, as I writhed on the ground, struggling for my breath,  she threatened to “cancel (my) service”, tossing the day’s mail into my contorted face.  The situation, I regret, has grown dire.
So, please advise at your earliest possible convenience.  As you must realize by now, I am beyond desperate.  But I am, and will continue to be, forever indebted to you; forever in your service.  Tell me: How might Herbert have handled this trickiest of propositions?  Oh, if only I could be Zbigniew now.  Instead, I am alone, starving, and nearly frozen.
Sincerely yours,


G. Matthew Mapes

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

(“I” might propose that: 
It would be left-aligned.  It would be single-spaced.  It would feature no indentation.  It would offer no indication of paragraph.  There would be no standard narrative.  There would be no title.  It might influence the lawmakers of its day.  The only punctuation featured would be the period.  It would be made up of simple statements.  These simple statements might or might not feature allusion.  It might be left in place of a suicide note.  One might be inspired to erase it.  It would feature almost no imagery.  It would be plain.  It might be the one thing you find you can’t live without.  It would require your full attention.  It would drift between tenses.  It might feature time markers.  It might be seen as an “event”.  It would cross fact and fiction.  It might be mistaken for a piece of correspondence.  It might be burned to create heat.  It would feature no definitively identifiable characters.  It might be utilized as a tool by an elitist faction of publishers.  It might be stacked like used newspapers.  It would make a good statistic.  It would be within parentheses.  It would make a good dessert topping.  It might be designated by an ellipsis.  It might be ignored.  It would not feature even the slightest ornamentation.  It would not be pretty.  It might be the last thing to cross your mind.  It would be easy to read.  It might be worn as an armband.  Boys might see it as a threat.  It would be tedious.  It would lend itself freely to social networking venues.  It might feature instructions for simple repairs.  It might make use of astrology.  It would contain 40% of your daily recommended allowance of Vitamin C.  It might serve as a manifesto.  It might be a good way to initiate a significant relationship.  It might serve as good traction in slippery conditions.  It would be read aloud.  It might cause break-ups in those aged 19 to 25.  It might occasionally need to be jump-started.  It would be handed down from generation to generation.  It would begin and end in the same way.  One might find it tucked into the dust jacket of an influential contemporary novel.  It would not fit in well with others of its kind.  It is often ignorant of the details.  There would be no recognizable continuity.  It would feature references to music.  It might be accompanied by comic drawings.  It might be re-ordered.  It might find itself banned.  It would exist in the public domain.  It would be attributed to no particular author.  It would be composed by “editorial staff” or “I”.  One might feel he “knows” the “I”.  It would often stink of sulfur.  It would not relate well to numbers.  It might “mean” something.  It might not.  It might require editing.  It would make economical use of “white spaces”.  It might be influenced by Russian existentialist cinema.  It might be invisible.  It would be easily translated into many languages.  It would be best served over rice.  It would be black and white.  Girls might read it while combing their hair.  It might appear on more than one page.  Those pages might be numbered correctly or incorrectly.  It might be printed in a variety of fonts.  It might feature an allotment of space for advertisements.  It might eventually find itself to be obsolete.  Its corners might curl in excessively humid conditions.  It is almost immediately out of print.  It might serve well in lining the bottom of a bird cage.  It would feature food.  It would be edible.  One might include it in a gift basket.  It would feature the occasional one word sentence.  Alas.  The form would rarely be used.  It would be a surprise.  Animals would flock to it.  It might not be valid.  It would be misunderstood.  It might be endless.  It would be out of necessity.  It would be in response to “you” and “yours”.  It would be left-aligned.)

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

G. Matthew Mapes
An Abandoned Storefront
Whereas, MI

T (734) 335-7053
M (734) 756-8590

gmatthewmapes@yahoo.com
gmapes@emich.edu

Bogdana Carpenter
Professor Emerita - Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Michigan
3040 Modern Languages Building
812 East Washington
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1275

Dear Bogdana,
I can only assume it was you who provided the guidance, and for that, I am most grateful.  Just yesterday morning, I awakened to find your gift tacked to my back door.  (Very clever, by the way, placing it out of the sight of my vengeful mail carrier.)  Upon reading the instructions, I immediately began to compose the piece.  And, before long, I realized that it was going to be exactly what it needed to be.  Thank you.  You have miraculously resurrected yet another poet.  
Please find enclosed a copy of the finished piece.  Also, please note that I’ve requisitioned a courier, for Monday, November 1, in order to have delivered to you the recovered Hermes, Dog and Star.
Faithfully yours,


G. Matthew Mapes

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

(Also.  When last we were together.  I am an icicle in your hand.  You had found me to be disappointing.  We walked along the frozen coast.  You are a pendant in my breast pocket.  As such.  One lane revealed another.  The tracks were different than the year before.  The wind is responsible for my tears.  This is one of several familiar spots.  Stopping is not an option.  The air was rich with the fragrance of cinnamon.  Your husband was asleep.  The wrench is not the right size.  Insofar.  I carried the books and a candle.  He wore a flashing light on his forehead.  The tree-line offered shadow.  We watched each other breathe.  Her car was warm and safe.  The call came too late.  
He drank your mother’s whiskey.  ⎡                         ⎤                                                                        
                                                       ⎣                         ⎦
Albeit.  There were two rabbits.  Only three photographs were taken.  You sprinkled your popcorn onto the snowbank.  The conversation is open-ended.  We stopped at mile-marker 47.  The florist stamped his feet to keep warm.  I have a can of soda and a bottle of antacid tablets.  Heretofore.  The story was later conveyed in a letter.  I chopped the wood with a small hatchet.  A slight plume of smoke is visible in the distance.  You tore your scarf on a protruding nail.  It is eleven o’clock.  It is three o’clock.  It is five o’clock.  I am at home.  It seems the weather is always a factor.  He helped her to her feet.  His instrument was the jawbone of an ass.  The fare is affordable.  That kindness was not expected.  The napkin fell into her lap.  The records are kept in a cabinet in the back room.  He tripped over a crack in the pavement.  
The music is Duke Ellington’s "The Single Petal of a Rose".
http://www.amazon.com/Single-Petal-Rose-Queens-Suite/dp/B000UBRMX2/ref=sr_1_7?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&qid=1431734801&sr=1-7&keywords=single+petal+of+a+rose
Whereas.  There should have been a cake.  A group of monks gathered at the door.  She collected more than enough.  I am a Taurus.  The man behind the counter suspected the worst.  The distance was too great.  It was realized that her opponent was unformidable.  I found the whet stone in my messenger bag.  They located four potatoes and a pumpkin.  The tea is no longer hot enough.  He was curious about the failed business.  There were kids involved.  His mustache tickled her lips.  They stepped back onto the dock.  It is a family heirloom.  He received another patch for his ragged coat.  They struggled to remove the ring from his finger.  Clouds surrounded the moon.  The blade was dull to the touch.  You meant more than you said.  Alas.  I wanted more pepper and oregano.  She waited for another hour before leaving.  
The package was small and wrapped in twine.  ⎡                         ⎤                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                            ⎣                         ⎦
Henceforth.  It could not have been a more inappropriate time.  He found himself living there.  It was the coldest winter she could remember.  All that could be done was to try.  One enjoyed himself while the other did not.  The sound was familiar to both of them.  It was more than just a problem with the law.  He could see three streets over from the top of the hill.  She simply threw it into a box.  He waited.  I found the marker and wiped it away.  It eventually melted.  Also.)

Thursday, May 14, 2015

autobiography [2013]

the song is “Barracuda”
as a light rain falls

I am crouching behind
a spool of telephone cable

visions of S.W.A.T.
Logan's Run
and Baa Baa Black Sheep
occupy my mind

(the children approaching me
from behind
are heavily armed)

I am caught by surprise
and captured

this will later be known as
the best day of my life

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

…evangelical [2012]

stinging into the gash of practical everyday
these boundaries are an approximation of murmurs
pendulous     and an aspersion cast

            attended knowledge is instant steepling

what is blasphemous is clicks (and tingles)
a twinkle zipped into rumor mathematics
or the parenthetical distress     blistered

anymore is looping in otherwise attics

  and initial enough is innocent
weathering marriage moons     a smudge
never mind the contention and tangents
density is divulging gadgetry

so crack the latch     sneak the epiphanic
the suspension of tonnage is lucid and stiff
and its ellipsis is sequential mistaking

opinion is underlined in evangelical

Monday, May 11, 2015

posse [2011/2015]

an obvious way to put strain
on an outlaw is     to send him on a trip
to witness the day with no light
make sure to check
his bags before he can show
the other outlaws how to play

now     there is no way to play
an outlaw against his own strain
but you might ask him to show
you how to properly trip
up a banker with no check
while carrying a flashlight

though this is certainly no light
burden     it is also no play
for power     and to suddenly check
oneself     or put undue strain
on one's back is not the kind of trip
for which this firm would care to show

support     what we would like to show
criminals     is that you can reach the light
and that it is possible to recover when you trip
up in your life     that the way you play
does not necessarily have to put strain
on your early morning bed check

we would like candidates to check
us out     find out how to show
off their particular strain
of criminality     we are no light-
weights in regard to how we play
the game     and we are no simple trip

we would ask any interested cowpokes to trip
on down and check
their horses at the barnyard to play
with the others     and to show
up with their particulars in light
green bags     and with a strain

of an old acid trip on show
for all to check out and pay light
attention to as we play the final musical strain

Sunday, May 10, 2015

tapestry [2009]

pulled taut
too tight to tear, it now
conceals the pale flesh of me
shades my shadows and other from 
the distances and ignorant light

it is where great trees once stood
and lesser flowers
and lesser, much less, an indigenous man
alone in the ground cover, and rocks
and dust

but, when later
meals are taken not at tables
and some are not there to sit
this tapestry will drop to drape me
and only keep me warm

Saturday, May 9, 2015

it is dentists and the mirror image of dentists [2015]

1.

took a picture of the deer head
          it smiled at me and licked its nose
and I thought about crying and knowing

going up the chair lift     was kind of like an escalator
but it wasn't     and not knowing was the taste
          "c'mon buddy!"

          of an onion     of a pair of leather gloves
put on blue pants and a pair of sneakers
found four kids beneath the shoe horn

smiling and playing hand-held games
          "this is what digestion looks like"
or maybe it's a picture of a deer head

2.

what is waiting but knowing nothing
"I was thinking about flexibility and tradition"
          and I can't remember right now

but I know I slept through most of the weekend
and this is no problem     "thank you"
I think a club sandwich sounds good

trying to think     "she" should be here soon
I am smiling at the fire hydrant
          but it's warmer than you'd think

this picture features your grandfather and me
          (that small tent is the toilet)
and I thought you did but I wasn't certain

3.

I had read that she lost it and found it
-- beneath the shoe horn --     and digested it
in the tradition of deer heads and flexibility

"I am choking"     "wait... I am choking"
but kids know nothing about onions or taxidermy
          count down to one from three

and warmth is a condition     a principle
          (nothing I thought ever amounted to a lick)
like going on and on about clothing and crying

go ahead     "you'll have to excuse me"
smile and pretend you don't know
          it never does what the picture does

*

or the mirror     this is where the teeth are found

Friday, May 8, 2015

QUITTERS IN THE CABINET OF A JUNK FUTURE [2013]

(or     why is this not a block of ice
a hair net
or the leftovers in my fridge)

"Words cannot avoid meaning something,
but they can be divested of intentionality."
  -- Ulises Carrión

[…]

through tubes of viscous gunk     indisputably
these afternoons are sequential and riotous

they make contortions of their chimes     and symptoms
of their efforts to be misconstrued

with swiftness they are taken aback     knotted
as a forest might blanche before vanishing

[…]

but this is not to be mistaken     for shrill
for the ridiculous precedent that's been set

this is a liner like any other     dull
with the potentials of junk gone missing

[…]

the weather there is a circuit     divulging
mechanisms and an obsession

with midnights     with Roman numerals
with the doctrines to which we've subscribed

or rhythms     those hatched in the interim
as nepotism transitioned into cold pizza

[…]

this
specific ignorance
is
a patchwork
of
miniscule bruises
and
fractures

[…]

a passage of this baffles     and a camera
tunes the innards to a sentence

while vanishing is seen as wishing     wafting
through your entrances like smoke smiles

[…]

conclusion     what is quitting but repetition
and can confusion be a symptom at the octave

slacking on the floor with animals     and rubber
is as unclassifiable as it is crystalline

or the wondering is an alignment     with laughter
with the illusion of opposites and phosphorescence

custard      and the certitude of kitchen hippies
their instruments frozen above the sieve

[…]

"…this music in the dim early morning light,
accompanied as it was by thunder and
flashes of lightning… […]  I do not understand,
and that is EXACTLY how it should be.
Thank you."

[…]

might I be locked into this tomorrow     this symptom
if impressions of me are to be kept current

and is the liver an invisible organ     truly
if a rabbit wedges himself between it and its waste

or sets a precedent     or impresses the intestines
or hums a tentative dirge as he munches

[…]

index of some of the words used in this work:

television
satisfaction
avenue
justice 
nightstick
occupation
effort
compression
building
bandages
blinking 
sunlight
monument
equippage
tireless
couplable
cancer
perimeter
whittle
tightrope
nudging
immature
kingdom
edgeless
hermit
burning
provender
diminished 
alerted
young

"One day I shall certainly have to start using words 
to uncover what is real, to uncover my reality."
          -- Georges Perec