FOLDING SEQUENCE
PEOPLE CIRCLE OVERHEAD —
strange to be so quickly crushed
the forces of right and real and gone too soon
turning toward distress, despair, delirium.
broken by ordinary dreams while
staring at stars.
strange that yesterday arrives today, that
the plants and aphids change partners endlessly.
an old woman used to live in that house up there;
if an animal was on the road she’d run it down
with her Oldsmobile—she said it
was “bettah-forum.”
roads lead to common destinations.
and tonight a young man rides in the back of an
ambulance, five holes in his lonely chest,
body becoming cadaver as the
ambulance slows in pace,
turns off its lights.
strange that tomorrow arrives today, that
the plants and aphids change partners endlessly.
strange the resiliency of the last reprieve.
strange that the people circle overhead.
RESURRECTION THEME —
Mastodons wash slowly ashore,
atomized in miners’ gold-gravel
They arrive with no pretension to truth
alive in the visible form of disappearance
city-bound inside metal vectors
Annihilated by longitude and latitude
natural surroundings surrounded
surging forth, the mastodon confronts death again
in the grotesque picturesque of the lens
in the screaming reappearance of the screened
The state of the world in our absence
preserved for our presence, is a décor
dictated by decree and demanding irony --
like the fly, with its faceted eye and
broken line of flight
MARK OF THE BEAST —
An asymmetry
Unveiled for censure alone
Thrown, twinned and twisted
Ensnared by the white-mosquito
Or mile marker 11-44
Premonitions of tragedy
Everything
An act of
Willpower
WHEN THE INCARCERATED INCARCERATE EACHOTHER —
When systems dissuade themselves
Bodies coalesce and thrash about
Absorbed in energy of their opposites
Vengeance is confined to special effect
Revolutions to equilibrium
Devolving forward
Death unravels itself
In exquisite seduction
Dead hands reach backward
For the ellipsis
As carcasses collapse
Confused and convulsing
Caught flat-footed
On the crumbling
Foundation of things
PRIMITIVE PROGRAM —
one must find
ways of doing
layers linked to lines
called edges
a sequence of 0s and 1s
AND, OR and NOT
each enter from above
depending on
an array of gates
a circuit
appropriate according to
predetermined formats
languages
windows
a nightmare
resulting in number
in time
one way of one
LIFE EATS LIFE —
Roots traverse
The water table and the sky
Life eats life
Survival and violence
Grafted here in copulation
Convexed in a condition
Of pure exhibition
82. RESPIRATORY SYSTEM —
as
a precursor
a people
chamber the clefts
the apertures
the walls of
young gills
the primitive form
decomposed or burned
an unweaned child
taken into the lungs
then expelled
as man
VYGOTSKY'S RUSSIAN 1915 - 23 —
the tragedy of joy
will be published
in the lights
a poem on
private archives
the process
multiple
ON INTELLECTUALS —
Comforted only by the promise of
Successive approximations
A curious detail weaponized
And woven into the background
Jackals wallowing in
Other people's blood
PERSUASION —
the triumph of the desert
is geometric —
dictated by event
circumscribed
by geology —
self-liquidation on a hill
in the valley
CONSUMMATION —
In mother's harsh delight
WOLF CRIES —
she made threats
she was likable
even talked me
but
and she asked forgiveness
PRETTY DAMN GOOD —
my right and talk in a
soft urgent tone,
probably about
their love life
to my left is a couple
who stare continually into
each other's eyes and
laugh about everything
and nothing at all
the Vietnamese cooks are behind
me chattering loudly
I don't speak Vietnamese
so I tune them right out
like the buzz of
electric lights
others are everywhere
talking about this, that
and the other thing
they are angry, happy,
sad, in the middle,
unsure, and together
in the seat directly across
THE WAY IT IS —
except maybe
solitude
drunkenness
and loneliness
that looking
an angry man in the eyes
makes him more angry
that the factory men are
always better company
I am hardly real
and
there is no roof over
the mountains
THE CORONER —
too late
too gone
the warmth of wrath
replaced by distance
the light roots
held before
the dark
a procedure precisely
lacking
in time
_
DEAD AT 46 —
but I wasn't there when
she drowned in the lake
and I wasn't there
before that either
Kate was 25 when we met
funny, strong and sometimes
lovely she was hard to handle
I slept next to her once
she was hot and cold all night
pain and beauty in her wake
a tenacious