Islets irritations. Charles Bernstein. by Jorge Posada

Islets / Irritations

ISLETS/IRRITATIONS

Charles Bernstein

Copyright ÂŠ 1983 and 1992 by Charles Bernstein. All rights reserved. Grateful acknowledgement to Jordan Davies who originally published this book and whose design has been carried over into this new edition. Cover by Deborah Thomas. ISBN: 0-937804-47-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 92-80987 This book was made possible, in part, by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. Roof Books are published by Segue Foundation 303 East 8th Street New York, New York 10009

CONTENTS Islets/Irritations

Cue Sprocket Damage

4 5

Lift Plow Plates Force of Habit "was, rain, dish" Staged Marches

9 10

Motion Sickness Gradation Contradiction Turns to Rivalry

19 24

12 18

Parameter Neutral Density Filter

A Question

Asylum Even So The Klupzy Girl Cedar Cover The Day Dark Is When You I Cannot See Signs of the Particularities Nine's Redaction Lapidary Entropy Baggage

36 46 47 52

53 56 57 60 61 70

Sever

Looking About

Substance Abuse

The Measure

Celestial Mechanic

Lode (Mrs. Mao at Gulag)

Part Quake

ISLETS/IRRITATIONS to proper to rectilinear

behindless weigh in a rotating, our plated, embosserie des petits cocoons

pliant feint insensate, round bands of immense release fell, a crudity form of the assignmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; increase by venture populace animated by appeal to which ends, almonds, lacquered unguents embrasure matter articulate as trails percolated, pertinent graceless simulation beak in otherwise pleasant up and may this, after appropriate as to kind of scopes deadline & partly muttered motioned reversal, assume who certain elsewhere pertain calling the guarded eyelids lacrimonious discoloration all the more polished predisposed blemish shops sitting out with

making matters brittle tooling

tonight, in the state of the long-lent, long-tokened shrugment languishing piano advisory lodging, larger plate glass divertimento mildly fretted ocular disproof the bleak the black the all too scanned propose, then purpose porpoise resilient inventory, lackadaisical compliance pumped of substantiation sense yourâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;raise the exchange moonstruck destitution the count, which is imposed or, anyway, of at least briefly strikes in reply at least necessarily here the infinitely complex short, that it, & then

in, the patience cushions of soda pop frizzing

out of all proportion

grandied apples, candied glasses

insomniac trees sealed

quake and

lips buttoned, voices

topiary delights, topological regressions

current as of

noisome targets

toe tapping tabulation

exquisitely contoured schmuck abjures

indecent confidence

mistrusts what alone flaunting

their contusions

I describe a square, a parking lot, a battering ramâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you begin to coast

archeologic tires

awash to climate torque indentured savant

rhythms, braces

riding with botanic insufficiency

flukes

floats

for at least,

with no more urgency than took to, leading in absolution, lost to nomenclature, hardly applicable

incidental curtains

barometer rises, volition stutters to the anterior

the gleam, assigned

triangle of the heart's lost longing

infinite impression, unarguable casement human semblance window

ventriloquizes

the dust of the docks

ardour, departing

empathy that does not outlast car starts

vacant explosion

the swoosh of the ill-conceived

major repairs, minor concessions outage upsurge

suitably deplaned

out-of-line puckishness

redress, relished resentment

impeccable

who forever floats, bent

by the tide, recrystallized, plumb line by billow board, marbleized, infraplanetary, belly bound,

dioramas of memory's

echo chamber, flatly mesmerizing the woof and warp of the screened

barnacled remonstrations, paralyzing half-wants

inconsequence beleaguered by surreptitious separations estimating marsupial planarity graded remnant in hot pursuit self-congratulating fluorescence arguably inoperativeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;beats way down, sort of slingshot zoom, replicating morons passionate precepts undermined by falling chairs wafers on their way to class drains of the inaudible assembly, jars of consent and stacks of by interest is numbed, the bodiless stare of the oracular preference slurping the sums "my mission was to, I no longer saw the . . . " hypnonarcolepsy avuncular tenancy rift accommodated to avoirdupois dictation brusque tubing laddered by recalcitrance double upon grafted, accomplished to pole population deckers, speckle and vehement contours accused of altitude, brace of a court of some kindness piles of clocks miserably shut away patrons of impressive perforation stacks the hampers: insatiable drip of the nosocomial dactyl premised on glare, harmless harmonics bathe the waning harlequin gradual asymmetries cascading down the residual artifice invested on accumulation, the tourniquet ensnares lewd animosities, setting the hand aspin, phases of delinquent mean inaudible paroxysms cheap reminders

CUE You're breathlessly out-of-pace with the rest of us. Frozen stare and slurred animation only corroborate, in comparison, the slum of deficiency's grandeur. Mottled alarm which does not contain or agitate (while parting in the other room you . . .). These are basically twin planes: but you've heard enough about resurgence. Restless eyes that permute at each referral, guarding a still quiet approach to make this singular horror announce what outages allowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;forgetting to engage even moment's interruption, so deep in your own anxiety's quiet refusals. I turn to my office and lost in a wonder of illegitimate display, a pretend fog that doesn't lessen the nonsense, speak of you often with a recurrence of the thought that punishes questions where you and I cannot speak, for the silence demands more than an interval of disburdening, but a sundering of the gradual hope I have sometimes had that it is possible at some time and in some other place to say what you demand of me. No more possibility exists, just the endless request for a location. These long strides with deferral. But I am not afraid of a thing itself, only the image that it casts.

SPROCKET DAMAGE Functions make the day (hours of tendency unpopular) Air of the heartwheel assigned to white and silver pumps. What happens opens up into what happens the next time, Or even later a man with a camper pulls up and says You'd better pack along. That ends up being fuel begins all The sooner in fomenting decoration, the plumage recalling the notorious Moments of past passage or future plunder. Inanimate waves wound up To deliver anemic oscillations—sonorous distension in double time, At slowed incentive. Vigilance, representation, insult—tendaciously recalcitrant, Hoot down alarms, set forth, stands for, bumps between. Nowadays Beams amplified by conveyor belts get these tips to reply forthrightly, But the arrogant hoops trip me up— not you, holding the bag Over your head, or those other mercurial

tides, so called Manchester Pleas: who depletes other, always other, while Here bands blare their dutiful chants, anyway to chart doors, closing Windows. Fronts assuage blessings, pale before fulgent monocrystalline Retraction. We build balloons and pump them furiously. Cartwheels verse us. Adverse to pails, hope to get down to sometime, sound them out, Essentially to support as such, in as if get articulated, so brings middleRange, subliminally, imported among the counterpart. A kind of spell Over. Like I can just totally, say, e.g., allow since from a Look will hit one's fixed, as much similar, well, what across, What specifically raise, overlay, catalogue. Make our bottom button Overhaul, for silliness, in a word, holds no water in the process. So another day rollerskates along, nothing more to suppose.

Making out. What can say here, burns. Mind as vacant as a Waffle. But too much noise. But always starting it again. What a clumpsy gymnasium he turned out to be— Lone silhouette, water tower of the foot's composure, fence, Dodge, duck. Peopled with sickness. No, this would be the Chance—no end to warps. This sweaters this, so mistakes So, when allays when, if constricts if, whether misses whether, another Eyes another, such reports such, in abrades in, how forges How. The summer of our artifice, hole in the door, waver. While What finally realized makes awkward name, the man with the Antidiluvian suit, sits proper, and not without fin, gives head Its angular remoteness. I mean very well to become what All license reflects—inadmissable head-

way cloistered behind a brown Veil. No, these do not satisfy the rummageâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;coats at A glance, material desperation. Each replay the replies. A Very complacent size-up of the jerked-off partiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;some more Agreeably detained than others. But I motion you to make no Sign, nor signal your regret. Stuffed in an echo-chamber Screaming the words to the songs you can no longer remember, No more necessary than the chain of connections which Lead you here, before each of us, those many, any of, down the Bets and abatements, prolonging the sensation. I get Very tired writing so fast. My mind shuttles back across the Lobby, a single stream of panic loaded around the motor.

LIFT PLOW PLATES For brief scratches, omits, lays away the oars (hours). Flagrant immersion besets all the best boats. Hands, hearts don't slip, solidly (sadly) departs. Empire of sudden letting, soaks up flaps of fumes, these (his) fumes. When in the midst ofâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;days, chartered whether or not. And suits. Simple things (thugs) poisoned with inception. Such tools as amount to ill-bred orientation. Mrs. X urging Mr. Z to amortize Miss O. The snowperson snowed under. On beam, off target.

FORCE OF HABIT Fanciful as might otherwise attest. Accuracy implicate on horizontal load zone fusion. Freckle motorizes bejesus spanking tall tarpaper. Along then, brain in hands, sail the mechanism three times beyond sight of house, rolling unconsciously in chaos of already presupposed forces, winding way into all the more inappropriate breach of already insufferable attitudes. Pentacle of allergic repose blimped out on marvel comatose cryptographers. Peculiar petulance, mouthpiece of insulated reflex, pillar shock tabular spacingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sunglass, piped at partially, guess whatever sears with silly sorties. Lumbar from antiquated resistance, concoct what seeing fells. Funny these tulips, inlaid with enameled frost, guileless manipulation, altogether benched. Target to presuppose umpteen incineration. Multipurpose flimsy, albeit unabashed. These shames at having truncate what alarms, sealed matting to savor horn rimmed metrics. Time the measured sustenance, becomes all more alert to maze like hat

of bemused focus. I take hat in hand, by hand announce a sequel logic, steady against the line of the shore, pushes back as keeps coming, dote on pressurized feed grain, wells it shut. Something taken, something fleshed on fluorescence, gush with parting stem. Springs redress, funneled cue note to lost dominance. Fulfilled at setting. Maintenance of the available materials, discarded remittance. Fund for the city of the unincorporated, the scattered talk in the apricot park. Taking from glum gloom its sullen discretion. Given, a protein substance neither panicked enough nor wary enough to take the cow by the tail and lip read limericks to the assembled labelsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; false warning of the make believe embroglio, hand painted summation.

was, rain, dish our, an, much took, kid, stretch well, real, didn't immersion, wanted, attractive oooooo, my, served &, see, so mean, was, into felt, tenderly, beacon personal, like, trip looking, many, someone 20, out, preparation ethos, squabble, so quelling, quality, little in, we, about intense, reel, something tired, shadow, was down, very, how claim, forward, of express, manually, evolve strength, man, rigid now, no, jaw puddle, rush, a pleat, obtaining, mine flit, that, the doing, oh, but incipient, to, see

summarily, $116, available screaming, they, off down, is, all level, elucidating, moxie long, slow, turned loaf, sex, for dream, sure, when gets, a, six far, Al, for might, great, there sum, precious, vowel padrone, flattened, let wicked, ain't, undetermined flash, fish, nautilus asked, you, about kiss, bus, so push, if, warp crane, mild, forward you, that, after point, it, formality applauded, of, quasi there, bet, quibble much, moving, us able, crush, more pretty, lots, age

presume, fear, which affront, obvious, dogma that, considerable, nevertheless their, enclosure, her unlikely, by, & edge, we, cherish pause, felt, too saw, you, last just, okay, fine thank, susceptible, a each, some, fine dig, cheese, laying bench, drink, focus any, hole, distant bun, man, little way, Emilie, TV plus, certain, nails something, it, is works, current, after less, be, in of, stock, all moves, right, streak want, much, sending real, certainly, favorite hear, remember, a

you,turned, sense prelude, &, fusion overriding, story, be loss, Yiddish, loose is, but, is piece, finishing, bounds early, I, say context, of, story alternative, the, things thoughts, as, to something, fluid, else differ, alone, in not, way, of as, is, which shape, early, on lives, seem, we resort, point, kind describes, a, fluid dialect, a, see space, some, which sees, as, making own, back, not there, hands, talk object, time, it's liver, as, &

prior, things, though wonder, back, from feel, not, situation gotten, them, beside lots, latest, which here, I, was didn't, not, yet should, seems, Chicago yet, here, of possibly, you, or unlikely, seemed, phone crush, pace, away wonder, still, few over, want, break out, lots, getting Lyn, ever, stays nothing, unwilling, let break, off, for let, lines, same so, what, mind additional, satisfying, your someone, who, reminds always, could, send afar, kinds, feels halt, call, silent

hardly, stay, same we'll, hard, thing is, how, it emotions, much, more so, what, are all, that, we so, okay, before missed, a, how are, an, there thing, between, once guy, isn't, what actually, believe, made going, can't, this constantly, getting, is they, &, see color, I, my take, your, but presence, as, adequate pressure, worth, for jumble, yet, these best, will, board

STAGED MARCHES The other way around is what suggests the brace of momentary slippage. Seepage arises not too uncommonly every once in a while. Far out, far off gates clang etherially recording bits and slabs remembered only for flimsy devices, unfathomed discretions. To be joined by so adoring a procession, left half-way between the ink and the elevator, lifts my spirits into paroxysms of privacy, hoping to guard it right.

MOTION SICKNESS The blue pertains amassed at course return insuring troubles to admit banished ceremonies nearer a wall retains irksome edge unfurled along delighted regress which holds us to its promise no longer weary or caused to care ink lined capacities lolling in majestic saunas burned out on hope thankless reproaches, intermittent handshakes beams fix themselves a soda assume inordinate proportion the tan boxes stacked three high alarm the cable belts & the shoestrings begin to snap their patience, gusts of change creating an inoperable breeze flushed out hideaways grinding their trademark while the deep heart of inside invests its percentage on a runaway ticket

proportion of fatuous irregularity, chimeras cast into bronze cots happy just to be there along with all you mystical fellows oddments adorned by querulousness from which no return is known in whom a breath amounts to epidemiologic evidence of misdirected loyalties neither glamorous enough or sad enough to earn a share of comment amidst the lawns stupefication backed by officious charm the fingertips radiate & the happy men returning with their eyes in their ears pretend to describe the forest willful seclusion, stunted insistence alone bear all to their deriding shunted by disobedience relaxed into the nightly escapade & the day's bleak injustices by their own inconsequence, stare poised at feeling's chaliced attraction

the boy with an irrepressible allure costumes the floor and lives sideways wishes to vanish but increases a head bunched and pasted out of the way, in a way totally provisional bands of ludic conviction embroidery of the getting by a round, a thud, a reflex before which an approach adorns only adore be at promise's end false magic all conjures by which a thought equates what we have always seen behind and yet in us but not recalled disparaged at costly advantage a play of feeling's loss exchanged by load buckets made of damp profusion to immobilize illusion's project set aside by selves hammer, pulse, exclusion garbled beyond belief as pact against remorse

retains its melody of unheardness resounding at chosen refusal or later engaged in preoccupation perfumes the harder focus the meek countenances of fact figure the presumed desires obsequiousness requests pleasantly a knock on the door of the inner space a spastic glitter chiming in on the right note the insufferable time swiftly buffs all odor lending credence display thought only to panic what had reclined too long considering the loneliness of the spot hidden in irritation's neglect vista to condemn loud moorings upon the pitch and particle of obedience another's word rests upon the everyday commotion surer of its complicit authority disowns the chronicity of discerned conduct waiting with trained assurance

for the new chartings and more effective commencements long since endured by all those statelier than ourselves who dwell here all befuddled sorting our rafts into wheat and chaff remarkably encumbered by the traffic's elocution implicitly, silently

GRADATION Seriously, these sorts of far away presentations enfold their columnar pretense. Good looks tear down the harpsichorded shaft, pained target fit to mists. An array of suits needles the bannister: white boxes, checkered mistakes. Fumes detest the, who, which. An inherent probe wakes an huddled personage, bleary of floating fluorescence.

Comraderie turns to rivalry when 12 medical students learn that only seven of them will be admitted to the hospital. A CIA agent is ordered to feign a breakdown to trap a spy at a mental hospital. A field study of Zululand's mosquitoes and velvet monkeys reveals them to be carriers of viral diseases that cause high fever and bonewracking pain. Defeat comes to the Nazi conquerer: Film footage highlights the February bombing of Dresden; the advance over the Rhine, through the Ruhr and into the heart of Germany; and, from the east, the Russian encirclement of Berlin. A brilliant doctor's erratic behavior causes concern at the hospital. On-the-street subjects render fragmented versions; a two-way mirror provides some unexpected "reflections"; a pair of outdoor phonebooths and two muddled conversations befuddle a man. A backstage view is interwoven with a tragic story. A detective is captured by a mobster who plans to hook him on heroin and then deny him a fix until he reveals the whereabouts of the jealous hood's former girlfriend. A retarded young man witnesses a murder but is not articulate enough to tell his story to the police.

A husband is betrayed in medieval Japan where adultery is punishable by death. Julie grows attached to an abandoned baby. A grim smuggling operation and a dead hippie lead to intrigue in Malta. Boxed candy includes frog-filled chocolates. A girl finds herself between the worlds of the living and dead. Henrietta Hippo believes she can predict the future by reading the letters in her alphabet soup. A man withers away after being exposed to a strange mist. Conspiracy of silence hampers look into fatal beating of teenage thug. Bachelors are all agape over a new girl in town. Rob sees red when Laura goes blond.

"Genocide." Graphic film footage depicts Hitler's persecution and extermination of the Jewish population in Germany and in the occupied countries. A mental patient returns home to a cold mother and a domineering husband. A freewheeling narcotics agent works with a junkie's vengeful widow to track down a shadowy syndicate boss. Everyone chips in to help Henrietta Hippo bake enough pies for the country fair. It's the dog pound for Roger when Jeannie turns him into a poodle. Nellie has the most lines in the school play, but the player to get the most out of the project is a girl who uses the play to bring her reclusive widowed mother back into society. A hot-shot flier thinks he can wage a one-man war in Korea. A woman tries to keep her individuality after marriage. Bilko feverishly schemes for a way to escape the summer's heat.

Lucy makes an impression on her first day at her new job when she breaks the water cooler and floods the office. Midget creatures emerge from the center of the earth. An emotionally unstable woman unconsciously blots out all memory of seeing her date murdered by her closest friend. The corrosiveness of envy and jealousy is demonstrated. A blind girl is terrorized by persons unknown at a country estate. Strange signals from a nearby island. A young woman's horror of leprosy plagues her.

PARAMETER pardon quickly / adroit breeze / argue tonic / in issue / practical platoons / returns slowly / that make mason isospheres / unheard relief piston spender churn enhancement / marking action / most delight hernia multiphase / marketing reliance / only meets / bemused curtain / must use lost to / bend gapes / mill flatulence / implosion's sift / sharp hum / burlesque of / pertinence paralleled / pleat quakes braid with / nautical becalms / ferocious festering / suction tripped / penurious penitent rotate ammonia / launch lake ample frost / reveal applesauce endogenous elation / Larchmont

pixilate steepling / reluctant island / matriculates demands shuttered mannequin / shell sockets / gradent / three-ply tumescence / vault putsch / puck nascience / relay backwater / dyspeptic loquacity / marring septum / ceding quantity lurk slope / pummel precursor / co-penitent physiotherapy / largely pester poached persimmons / bandied ailerons / coated around / pediment crossover / malignant enthusiasm / obdurate fence-eater within each of / chiropractic firefighting / walls warrant / toothy dilapidation pokes jam / stretch avid marked by lurch / with and tonic silicone / cerate around / microne

perspiration / pushy dart / mope epigonous ardent recalcitrance / feather quixote / hints buttress / protuberance askance mile fester / blemish straightens / available annoyance / saturate oblique Mars / biscuit cuticle bounce

mauve

impair / fiber salvo / Oniontic cut / brick beam sumptuous Saturnalia / forced tonguing / enhance optic immanence / material duplication forest forensic / latent shoulder / esplanade beside barns / ceramic sublimator / motion retention / metal detour / lawn macadamized

NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTER Lips move on top of quiet nor do I harbor preclusions though they define me all the same. Still can't get off that, left in the that ends up being more a sense of wanting to making angles override creating off-the-hanger relation that gets twisted and argue itself out of, stands. Opening up this to cut out that. Everyone gathers hereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she starts to work up a very obtuse emissary. Which requires the announcement of tailored differences which loving enough of pretends to bonus out on. Everything bothers herâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;trail outside the stone floor, laminated appropriation. The status of too much determine, relate alternately to circumspection

at tailgate. No ideas but in housing projects (pineapples). Rolling like feel real actual as torsions scratching at qualities of direction. Body burns out, mind takes a leak. "My mind has turned to jellyfish." To recognize these brooms: again which zooms in the speed of railroaded time. Or take out a moist towelette and douse the flames of the overcompensation you (I) no longer (etc.) Guilt that by notion obscures relief, in the car of the no longer cared for. A verse partly on open shelter which takes the boat up the way. Arrives and/or emerge. Socially splendid. Becomes minor skirmishes on a checkerboard nobody

knows about. Envious of want jealous of need. The brain gets fried while the stomach gets pumped. Flourishingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; they don't flourish they insist.

A QUESTION A question of what's next to call or pull my emotion's archaic semblance. What belies the concord of an annoyed prematurityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;unprotected miscellany which jump amid the chapel.

ASYLUM rooms, suites of rooms, buildings, plants in line. Their encompassing or total character intercourse with the outside and to departure such as locked doors, high walls, barbed wire, cliffs, water, forests, moors conflicts, discreditings, failures of assimilation. If cultural change the outside. Thus, if the inmates stay victory. They create and sustain a particular kind of tension dangers to it, with the welfare jails, penitentiaries, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps some worklike task and justifying themselves army barracks, ships, boarding schools, work camps, colonial compounds, large mansions abbeys, monasteries, convents starting point. By anchoring them; what is distinctive attributes. In speaking of outside world. Each grouping bitter, secretive, untrustworthy condescending, high handed superior and righteous inferior, weak, blameworthy and guilty

Even talk across the boundaries may be conducted in a special tone of voice swamped. On ward 30 unless Dr. Baker himself asked for them persevering, nagging, delusional groupâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; "worry warts" "nuisances" "bird dogs" in the attendant's slang passage of information, especially information excluded from knowledge of the decisions taken regarding his fate a special basis of distance and control restrictions of contact presumably worlds develop, jogging alongside bounds. But to say work, then, this outside. There it. This is ceremonial, payments, such required, induced not by reward can buy; all needs staff; here They say. Is it us? For by

hour; paid to work, paid sleep: always those halfpence up. Impossible, therefore to dignify a job it well. It must waiting, but another job self respect. (Staff members, the family. Family life living, but in fact existence. Conversely, culture" (to modify) of being "in" or "on the inside" does not exist apart home world. Upon entrance abasements, degradations, humiliations and profanations is mortified of self. In civil life taboo. Although home. The role such. It may not be up, at a cycle, the time advancement, in "civil death" world. The process

well. We life history, photographing, weighing, fingerprinting, assigning numbers, searching, listing personal possessions for storage, undressing, bathing, disinfecting, haircutting nakedness. Leaving off on, with clothing, combs, towels, soap, shaving sets, bathing facilities disfigurement, beatings, shock therapy, surgery dispossession integrity. At admission way. Given movements, postures, and stances demeaning. Any regulation, command or task that forces pose, so he may "sir." Another beg, importune, humbly ask a daily round of life his body, his immediate actions, his thoughts clear of contact violated; the boundary relationships. (Similiarly, hold oneself off

every gesture and nuance of error forms, for these over: forcing upon men of his own type and badge its effect, with a disruption his arts attacks. The individual situation; he society, when of self, he is sullenness, failure to offer usual signs of deference, sotto voce profaning asides, fugitive expressions of contempt, irony derision. Compliance activity, citing society, audience avowals and implicit claims thrown up well-oriented, antagonistic process, since doctrine. A "permissive" situation is collapsed itself, and he action. A second assault of regulation and tyrannization

judged. Beyond this pace. He need not fit into regulations and judgements by staff; the inmate's above, especially unthinkingly "One!" "Two!" "Three!" shirts on pants at shoes at any noise, like attention, hands thumbs even face or head enforced. No official, visitor, guard beyond sight still and hidden smoking, shaving, going to the toilet, telephoning, spending money, mailing letters submissive or suppliant teased, denied, questioned at length, not noticed

put off able yet lacking unsupplied. Even indefinitely, while dress, deportment, manners the press of enveloping tissue of constraint school, but certain rights sanction. (This arrangement, outside, the audit work, or diffuse, novel, and strictly enforced ones, to live the consequence of breaking disrupt or defile over his worldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that he is a person a soft bed quietness at night "pretty please" jump up for it his will. Less ceremonialized superfluous. And instead restrictions by renunciation, beating by self-flagellation, inquisition by confession

to talk; on the outside such rights the building of a world culture, and yet sharing; it almost cigarettes, candy, newspapers animals and children components, put together power. This power ridicule, vicious ribbing, corporal punishment "messing up." Messing up escape), getting caught fights, drunkenness, attempted suicide, failure at examinations, gambling, insubordination, homosexuality, improper leave taking, participation in collective riots cussedness, villainy, or "sickness" a vocabulary "the angles" "ins" as by objects, then decent human beings pervades slogan shouting, booing, tray thumping, mass food rejection mutinies; but these

plateaus of disinvolvement broken (as they disciplined, moralistic, monochromatic sponsor an ideal it cool." This cramped, arduous engendered. The low process, creates a story, a line, a sad tale means of accounting conversation and concern tactful, suppressing misdeeds, and the refusal on,and wasted or destroyed or taken "done" or "marked" or "put in" or "pulled" hard. This time sense dead and heavy hanging field game, dances, orchestra and band playing, choral singing lectures, art classes or woodworking classes, card playing industrial alcohol, nutmeg or ginger of dead sea in vivid, encapturing outside. This

sharp smell of fresh air pass the loss or failure circles from which

EVEN SO The waffles march, even so the ache in landing relied too heavily on unsuitable barges, barging beyond report, worry to needs, worry to what instigates what's about. Decisions decay in the intricate rubble of motion's dethroningâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; fine for the hat, inscrutable for the bologna. A personal life wishes unpacking, settle in, finger the frontpiece. Escape toward or release to. No sense of his, or, a modest keeping in the soap sends the launderer to the Balkans. Small as snails and wild as cotton candyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; petty pretense, routine misalliance. A dusty demeanor on a recycled platter. Knocks on the door of deferred opportunity (mops on the floor of perfumed importunity). We remain but not to test the wobbles and wings that "allow for the continued coordination of as many people". "As many lives as loaves." Projects that had to leave the project. We're already started in fact.

THE KLUPZY GIRL Poetry is like a swoon, with this difference: it brings you to your senses. Yet his parables are not singular. The smoke from the boat causes the men to joke. Not gymnastic: pyrotechnic. The continuousness of a smile—wry, perfume scented. No this would go fruity with all these changes around. Sense of variety: panic. Like my eye takes over from the front yard, three pace. Idle gaze—years right down the window. Not clairvoyance, predictions, deciphering—enacting. Analytically, i.e., thoughtlessly. Begin to push and cue together. Or I originate out of this occurrence, stoop down, bend on. The Protest-ant's voice within, calling for this to be shepherded, for moment's expression's enthroning. Able to be alibied (contiguity of vacuity). Or do you think you can communicate telepathetically? Verena read the epistle with much deliberateness. If we are not to be phrasemongers, we must sit down and take the steps that will give these policies life. I fumbled clumsily with the others—the evocations, explanations, glossings of "reality" seemed like stretching it to cover ground rather than make or name or push something through. "But the most beautiful of all doubts is when the downtrodden and despairing raise their heads and

stop believing in the strength of their oppressors." To be slayed by such sighs: a noble figure in a removed entranceway. "This is just a little note to say that it was nice working with all of you. It has been a rewarding experience in many ways. Although I am looking forward to my new position with great anticipation, I shall never forget the days I spent here. It was like a home-away-from-home, everyone was just so warm and friendly. I shall ever remember you in my prayers, and I wish you the best for the future." Preoccupations immediately launch: to set straight, to glean from her glance. Terrifically bored on the bus. Any really you want go to mixed on me. Sumptuous slump. As it becomes apparent. Just that I thought. Contraction that to you perhaps an idealization. Have I kept. But that point isâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;such repair as roads no joint, what?, these few years must admit to not expecting, as if the silent rudeness might separate us out. & maybe anger would be better than explaining. When in tents or families in comparative. Which sums digest. Disclaimer alights what with begin. That's maybe the first pace, the particular. I mean I feel I've got to and a few while I can just look to see unrelenting

amount of canny criticism whatever occasions overriding for comparison spin for the sake of intrinsic in that or that I've already made although against reaction's consequent proceeding. But it's to the point that you've begun to broach like you could almost fault me on as if you were going to use could become primarily propulsion to affinity have itself so. She gets nutty. Oh she settles in, she settles the curdles, unhooks the latches, but I, preferring hatches .. . When batters, benumbs, the lights in a basket, portable. Potted & make believeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;your rudeness amounts to not noticing, i.e., I'm on a different scale of jags. To be in replacement for a number of linings. Tubes of turmoil. To stroll on the beach is to be in the company of the wage-earner and the unemployed on the public way, but to command a view of it from a vantage both recessed and elevated is to enter the bourgeois space; here vantage and view become consumable. I can't describe how insulted I felt, it's a ruthlessness not so much I didn't know you possessed as that I didn't think you'd turn on me. When you stop acting in good faith any residue of the relationship gets really unpleasant and the gratuitous

discounting severs what I can't necessarily define the circumferences of. "There are a number of calls in the June bill which I have been unable to document. We believe these calls were made by S O who is no longer employed by this project. We presume these calls to be program related although she did not keep a log of long distance calls as requested in the memo circulated March 11, 1980." It has more to me than please to note acquits defiant spawn. But your letter does not scan its view nor serve our own resolve. Little noticing sectored demonstration, or flail with inheld throng. Content to meet or not to meet what inlays subsequent flustered adjustment. "The Good is for the fact that I will it, and apart from willing it, it has no existence." "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism." Blue suede pestilence. Binds bins. History and civilization represented as auraâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;piles of debris founded on a law and mythology whose bases are in violence, the release from which a Messianic moment in which history itself is vanquished. That's why I'm perplexed at your startlement, though obviously

it's startling to see contexts changed on you to have that done to you and delivered unbeknownst. The Ideal swoops, and reascends. "With real struggle, genuine tax relief can be won." A manic state of careless grace. Mylar juggernauts zig-zag penuriously. Car smashed into; camera stolen; hat lost; run out of money, write for money, money doesn't come. Long interruption as I talk to woman most of the way backâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a runner, very pleasant. Get off in Boston and everything seems to go crazy. All of gets where Round dog-eared head The clear to trying Forgets issues of trembles Address vestiges to remain These years after all Fog commends in discourse

CEDAR Forget whatever has disappearedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; long-term irritation flunks oddly, dyspeptic flooding the stockpile. Wish you were on it, exercise shuttled in gradient rotundas who bear with incoming frenzy, small wonder to quiet various noisemakers.

COVER interaction—uneasiness about him around that?" More persons who can personally part. (An frame-up, bumps into, pass situations, having incident.") But kind, are carefully, and "with" out of—especially hand, if mind. To groups; the hence individuals, especially those efforts, then, one line." A out—sometimes completely. (After print.) Too naturally belongs, is us, air tabooed in "mixed" category is perfectly "affiliation cycles"

society. In any case off-hand way, they "her own" a shudder. A newly virtual contact rank over time, becoming, in the extreme disattend. On the "wife," for particularistic, open out-of-a-kind serial, recently, through it; a So,too, attest, not merely as a distinguish him. It hence our courteous, uniform as, in ends up something like her. She as a blind person led into the dark sure, also blot is anchored concept, except

voice. (Incidentally body bound still, a stammer person. Skin "we," and those is. If

THE DAY DARK IS WHEN YOU I CANNOT SEE These sitting here, percolated collations and inevitable, bound to be, reshape at. Lost interest in resolve, counts out on slipped. For instance, you've interfered with, now a distant focus, unavailability of tunnel closing, all these edges— gilded, happier in spaces than. Original landmark station follows checked out lurches. So supplements a modest wake, actually raided suppositions—both gratuitous and laden. No, these only cloud the reversals. I goad ahead, represent entelechy, resolve for abrades. But the munificence of your labors guides me along, showers argument which I feel flaked off of. The grim gains—I get just static disclosure, trying to piece together. Breakthrough, lookout, but abandons that cornered corner. The moment wavers at half-mast, imbued with a pastel unease: wind a chatter, sky haze.

SIGNS OF THE PARTICULARITIES Objects mesmerized in the memory. Flag, bath, border. Sitting on a couch. They meet again without my assistance. Pull & pug. "Aren't you supposed to respond when someone says something to you?" Things of context present. Hidden choice of seamless handles that before lace and fret. Apparent being not with, alienation of use cheap chiaroscuro with, things of nature but. But. A bridge of cites. "For the first time in my life." Found at evenly, reflector pumps egress deadspot, repeat. Its incandescence: grain of mind, hunked and lathed. What see and back for a while look to tempted. Hovers around it another leaps demand in actual fact an appendage filled with violet, brandishing a flourish. Lying in a bed. Constellation of consternation: fragments of a

simplicity. Crystalline visual planes bowling over with fresh fruit. The very tenuousness of it, pulses. Miscast mind. "I've changed my brain." Slipping away. (Vertigo.) (Horizontal.) (Rivulets.) "These physically based, nightmarish sensations." Spark and sputters of that other one. Impossible sluggishness. The slat wood floors, the boys bouncing on them, intercepting the light. Eventually. I couldn't tell you how much. "Introduce yourselves, make yourselves at home." A shrill. Relic. Broiler. "Don't be rude", she just walked off. The syntax of irreparableness. Completely cold by now. Opens up & pours out. Oiler. An oily character. Early & kind of tawdry. "He's a spiller." Gnawing. Maybe sometime. Not here. Other & better. Figment of a glimmer. All the conditions that favor the occurrence in us and can therefore be enumerated

among the causes. A flutter wheel, a journey to a star. A bully, a pug nose. "You made my life so glamorous." At any moment I might lose it. An influence beyond our conception. Spellbound, it weaves. The open fire hydrant pouring water into the garbage strewn about the curb. Passing over in silence. Saying it again. "This time it will be different." Turning away. Paisley wallpaper. Cerebral palsy. A flower sometime; a person in black standing against the side of the road. Body shaped also as hum, stiff as board. "I could do worse." The weight of a gaze signifying its intention. I can never figure out why it is. "We must here generally attend to what has already occurred." I wonder if lesser is a weak enough word for it. The dawning of an aspic.

NINE'S REDACTION Such weight bends That adjourns in Feeling's arcane headiness Servant to savor Outstretched by song Announcement brings unbroken Field of sand's allotments Stings abuse So long as sated The toil of Still betokened labor Remains unabated

Such weight upends That feeling's call amends Apprised of savor Surmised by song Chosen brings unbroken Field of hand's dominion Rings as sated favor Entokened labor bated

LAPIDARY ENTROPY 1. the last time I had pot roast the rain poured through the ceiling & it was fat. my teeth got stuck (too chewy) & I wondered if the butcher wasn't getting worse.

I got a headache & all the paintings have been switched around the impressionist one is now on the other wall & the one with blue floating shapes has been moved to the living room from above my desk where a plant now sits 61

3. USE AND MENTION michael mentioned jane delynn & ted & bruce during his reading but not ray but then ray was mentioned twice in Charisma. "I called it that because it's about the charisma of all my friends." only at the time he wrote it he didn't know me. maybe next time he'll mention me, too.

4. when she tumbled to the ground on 3rd street I couldn't believe she was that drunk cause she talked so lucid

5. heat's off again or still & it's the coldest winter (it's always the coldest winter)

6. SONNET See the idea of form is to fit tight (Frank O'Hara said that) & a sonnet seems like one of those turtlenecks that if it's a good color & the shape hugs then it becomes one. Oh Chris I miss you & your name, breaks across any thoughts I distract myself with.

7. New England is awful & the grey snow & the grey steeples stink, too.

8. Dear Charles— Too bad we didn't see you before we left—you certainly are busy! Palm Beach is a beautiful place & we're enjoying our visit here very much. Dr. Blum is here too, so we see him often. Hope all is well with you and that the apartment is now complete—We'll be home on the 13th. Love to Susan. Mother & Father

9. another headache! but I think of you (oh boy) & it's hard to keep straight (maybe you'll meet me on 8th street & we'll get over all this haze of distance between us).

10. & the sky is cloudy & the radiator clicks too loud & the florescent light in the hall buzzes all night but all I can think about is you & how you called me up & sd "sure come over" & later, looked at me with eyes glowing like Saturn ringsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; your hand on my hand

11. For Ellen michael & bruce & ray & rae & susan & jane & betsi & gale & charlie & steve & alfred &ted.

12. I'm a . . . & won't give it up

13. TELEPHONE CALL "did you speak to ted greenwald he called at ten to nine. also, I had some cereal & my tooth still hurts."

14. READING AT THE LOCALE 3/13/77 big crowd & everybody said they liked it but some people (grouchiness I guess, but also true) said I read too long. would they tell Billie Holiday she sang too long. ah, well, music's not poetry. 68

15. for Terry Swanson

I get up— shit— coffee's burned, another day.

16. MORE STEALS everybody's talkin bout the fall of man, but nobody's makin an effort to get up.

17. "HE KNEW THE SCORE' Bruce says, call it— "deeply felt".

BAGGAGE Thinking ain't doing, so really I'llâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; partly I've never gotten in the habit you always seemed to turn so where begin to, where report. Waist deep in, keep fronting for, fanning, desire to type. Not combatting, becoming. All weighing down same time as forcing to surface. The shining keeps flashing back, long riders knife in head. Curious as to how you're making, what you think about you add it up to. Droops away, smart money on November Estrangement. A park of mystical accumulationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;outstanding for our wishes useless for the dishes. Which heads alloy. The reticent distance of doubled flooring. Mind humming to a halt writing sputters on. Missing your coming absence present, presence absent. The acrobatic times diminish but the heart gets no more used to jolting. Not my aim's dislocation: you, you're why fenced, probity increased to need.

Luncheon manners, pencilled petrification. Performance indicators swoosh, apartment argues irascibly. Why layer these brownies any longer. Sad tires, resilient coaching. Glassed funicular, half-assed particular. Which break amends to heft. Get dizzy dancing there. But increasingly gets tired of all these pretensions. Sorry to see you so sullen. The mildewed garden retains indications of awkward evenness. Lucky leaflets floating on versions of fumigation. Relevant reluctance. Force manner of closure. No other unfolding than the one you ease intoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the raconteur's premiss that she cannot display type more prominently. "Watch your ingredients." X is in G & no doubt looking for M. I'm on my, having seen, & so on, back to, for, now being

I can't remember the last time. Only here maybe I should have stayed a little longer, had lunch with the hoi polloi. The bunkers debunk a replica of as much as. "Noâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I'm tied upâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;go away." I continue to speed along the rail waiting for my mail.

SEVER These trees squeak ice-cold, minimal alibi returned with a vengence, lost to sun's sum, deploring various constellate our eyes see too much of. What helps with final breach serves manners a glass can stare at, frequency employ the glimmer in a sandbag. Fortune, for which is most embued, startling columns of recollection until it's shaken out. Yellow follows upon, graces fallen thumps.

LOOKING ABOUT How many times sat here same spot and wondered in this way, going down to this place, having things and doing things, all of whom wave goodbye when you get too close. For instance, today I was at, now all of a sudden feel, but what think of turning the benches, loosening things. A cycle comes and a cycle comes wheeling around, how loosen it, how is it fastened inside. I like to think of the time I lost .wasting for trains in the subway. So how press back, but if you have something to go on (model, token, ball) . . . She slipped again on the linoleum. If you are broken so. So that I can't imagine even a glance or otherwise remind her. What is this anxiety one feels in arriving late, not meeting deadlines, desires, go-betweens. To tool annoying monsters in the dark, the rakish coils that affirm or aver our decided places. Not even on according to what flickers, sun to betoken, image a few answers to where the jig is up, where

I just flow out the rhythm, clip to temptation, pattern that back, ie physical, of thought, me on the way out of, the other side of. Guided, guarded. Fleets, flits. Summon the same old summon.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE I become convinced of the itinerant congestion of filled out hollows. Boards propose wefts, largely inured of (for) baskets. Forget these chilly masquerades. I feel (felt) stripped by these changes. Who takes me in different directions and therefore I do not let go. These clip these oasis.

So these sorrows pronounce themselves in rhymes before my eyes, but no easier way arrives in which to predictâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to predicateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;allusion's sentimental anorexia. You who, while .

I proffer the usual explanations for this less than desirable behavior. At this point I'm months behind. I make this point because your gazing at a so projected grouping "at a distance" clouds your viewâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; I'd be reluctant, practices vary, & certainly even out of the normal, to include for instance, as would be appropriate. This is not avoidance behavior, the very project cannot be reduced to it's least interesting motivation/ realization/abuse. Personally, I don't know what I received and what I was shut up with.

These break at having mend which wails absently as substantial people rely on ice. So long strokes in, swabbed by ego's reply, adjacent but always curtained off of what ruffles and rumples.

I feel like a very nervous man. The moments do not compel my compliance to either your fugitive fear of expiation or fever's last embalming of my own falsification. One guise disguises itself within myself, the other within my text.

Everything I write, in some mood, sounds bad to me. It reads like gibberishâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; unnecessary rhymes, repetitions, careless constructionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a loss of conviction. Whether I am content to want to let those orders I find speak for themselves, if it is the orders as I make them that I want to compel my own lost recognition. No matter how the slack is removed I can see through it. Rough cuts satisfy, intrinsically, no more than seamless webs. "A person must make their own occasions." & what are occasions than cross-hatched projections of 'person' onto 'event'. There are, according to our lights, neither one or the other. Michael said to me the other d a y . . . & now I sit here and the recollection is far more occasioned than at the time itself. That solitude is the most public place of all: not institutions (for the "advancement of the public"). The individual mind is the "Divine parasite" (the phrase is Christopher Dewdney's) of the body

of us-allâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the trick, then, to keep the channel open both ways. Nor is this simply a conjuring of phenomena, or simply its productionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; since we are inside of phenomena at all time and move from the nodal point of the self back and forth to the omnimorphic and acentric locus of our collectivity and our desires.

To move from moment to moment without Break is the ideal from which there is no Escape. But isn't what is wanted to Stop and hover, go back and forth at meaSured speed, to dwell everywhere or only as Chosen. Such reflections candy our lives With conditional Appalachias, the Real facts about which are as hazy as beet soup.

There's no sport in supposing an even bent to be resistant to.

I'm at a bit of a loss, but have never figured out a system such that everything is out of the way and where to go to. To think I can plug sections into, cut-up, detain. Or I just gobble conscious morsels and am discorporated within them. "Edit is act" but why waste time on sputter. Intense bluing of the sky. Left-over concepts, hard edged ingratiation. A gift so parsimonious in its intent that there are immediately blandishments on the part of forays. I don't even own a scale.

Nothing tires a vision more than sundry attacks in the manner of enclosure. My thoughts toss trippingly on the tongueâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an immense excuse for proportion /perforation/. What I am saying here will only come out in joinings: but to loosen the mind, limber it for bounding. What does ear contain that norming senses lack? A resolution in the air.

I find the nature and tone of your questions to be extremely discouraging, and to reflect an alarming lack of understanding of the nature of our activities. You have unilaterally and arbitrarily determined new evaluative criteria without regard for the fact that current documentation procedures do not pertain to these new criteria. In fact, the statistics upon which you base your "analysis" tell more about your attitudes than our program.

The depths of consciousness can never be fully sounded, death is the only apparent limit.

Trial impressions leave you perfectly ordered. (Totally amniostatic sludge: buzz, buff .. . ) Everybody comes to a stop in their own time; look at each other, starts coughing. Which tires very much wake up, snarl. Gold plums plunge: better batter better.

What hand hides pleasures only suggestâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a glimpse of its morsel, postcards from the subjectless static: make-believe enchantments in the erstwhile gaze of a buzz a milieu fades rapidly into.

They only start slowly who occasions without chance of redress. A while warns its first displacements. Ongoing / undoing. Fumbles with fondled alacrity without which thumbs do not choose a staked equation. Put oneself, desperately, in the neck of premature going-on-ness.

leans looms remains dwindling fade fumbling, quivering pull shade dreary slates splits record

Can a person who has never been bored be described as smug, or merely unsettled.

"It's supposed to be pulverized."

A frame of some letting wakes whatever wagers contest. To challenge, pull behind.

Nominations demure in the receding music of stringed violet.

Why have I shied away from this purposiveless activity, as if the investigation of purposivelessness were all a thing of the past & was no more to be visited upon me?

I seem to be out-of-sorts with everyone latelyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;after each interaction begin to rethink it, where did I, (s)he go wrong? You've gone all the further in appointing me to your undoing; I only wish it were mine.

Anxious and waiting for something, but not definableâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;amorphous. What pans out? I'm afraid to set it down, to contend with the medium at hand. Or not to be nice: reassuring. LOSE ALL TOUCH. Return to base one. Do the dishes again. Shopping for ashes.

'I'm all washed up": i.e., come ashore.

THE MEASURE The privacy of a great pain enthrones itself on my borders and commands me to stay at attention. Be on guard lest the hopeless magic of unconscious dilemmas grab hold of you in the foggiest avenue of regret.

CELESTIAL MECHANIC What errs in parting stems a boulevard Moved to tip in turn Adjacent theory indentured Effort to repeat what lengths inscribe These views of tired respite, jumbles Anxious to wait (emotion's quaff) Spills that all alone allure Make pristine rub

LODE (Mrs. Mao at Gulag) Desperation of production (at engagement). At table with. Felt, or feels (matte, rotate, ovular disarray). At fortune to furnish, please. Votes on rote burden, calendrically shrill. Asleep to meet the heat. And not any why expose, magistrate (which might make) nickname, blessed at evenly difference. Marbleized doting, even as distrust permits a person patronage and hungrily marvelled, intransigent with passage. Style of grey: intimation of unease to drift of persuasion. The grandiloquence of the dampâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;fostered, perennial. In which, like sills of a pronouncement, laboriously preaching unadorned secrets, in the breathless cant of a numbing forensicâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; implacable orchestrations and third-hand poise. Degenerately dissimilar. Votes mood argue path to circumvent, stride or blond mist. Or angrily detonate, discharge, abraid. "It is" hollow acorn "no longer" instrumental inclination "the prophetic" while as "vision of a" who may "single person" dubious phonecalls "that carries" timorous doorjamb "art

forward" pink bench "now it is" triplex "the gigantic choir" originating confusion "of the" who, so, ever "people's triumphant" second coat "spirit, the" latched handbag "natural urge" testy, tinsel "of the" Baby Doc "spirit to rise" complacent whimsey "upward" fretted, boric "from the" ankle high "primeval depths" stare, stunned "toward the" paralyzed faculties "light of delivered" cascade, poached "humanity". Fundamental auction originateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;plain jars of fibrous distillate. Formulates arrangement of detail. Begs promise. (Loosen when not afraid to be: locked in, seashore.) Got to stir up before can feel at home at: domesticate, territoriatize. Instinctuive demeanor. Forget demeanor. It is not myself but the circumstances that created me that is my project; to remake such circumstances not in my own image but in the interests of the present demands; to construct such passions in the place of a nuclear unrest.

Then what do I become—another minor incident within a minor incident? And how to provoke a sense of span. Both sides insist on the affluencies of your forgetfulness' memories. But my heart cannot stalk to touch, my hands grasp with impunity. An attack resists its timorous intent a tendency thinks too much of. Both affirm an eventual conception—the possibility of morning to occur again, & tomorrow. Denuded eversions to the brown certainties of the circumspect encounter. "It is as if a curtain has been drawn from before my eyes"— Not only report—swallow, aver. At this point, filled with a deep contempt for the machinations of the prosecutor and the snivelling reaction of the judges, Jiang Qing denounced the witness as a liar, and, after repeated attempts to

silence her, was dragged from the court. Fronts to assuage recalcitrant blessings, trompes d'oeil leading to the wrongâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;vanishedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; desire all available avenues designate. To roll beyond octogenarian's circuit, sentient archetype. "This is a puzzling, difficult conception that unfortunately does not seem to be supported by the few truths we have wrested from our observations of nature and human life." But at least I have been lucky in respect to teeth. Gigantism of unfounded remorse and depleted ambivalence, waist high in the lamplight of serial aversion. (. .. revealing a configuration of other curtains, but locating them for me, placing them.) The swelled precision, the grim retraction. These florid schoolings (what is announced and what is only incurred?) trumpet replicas of things that had glowed, abandoned chambers of a mirrored interior. But what did you expect? That the charm of an evening would endure the daylight, that the broken and abrasive thoughts would disappear in the rustic luminance of the perennial calm hour, that

your hat would cover your head, shading from the sun, protecting from the ice. What a klutsy kind of glamor. I glitter without hesitation, withdraw my hand with a jerk from neighbor's touch—the body so weighed with the reticence of consolation, the charcoal gawk and the edgeless sigh. Summarizing the assuagements—blustering, hardball, munition. I grope copiously. Mislay the allures. Or alter time with jars. A salt seller's reward for scaling the instep of defiant spawn—neither lucky enough or rotund enough to make candy out of cotton by the vertiginous storage lockers of concocted grace. Fumbled protection, hardline quiver—to give petulance a name to hang its hat on. Hoisting the flag twenty feet above the roaring mass of a single will that was the crowd, the mottos of crushed insularity braided betrayal to the forces held in check by the prior principles of a consolidated rule. Arms arm the man the man invested, while we turn another round in the chandeliered fortress of our own reluctance, thinking of the innate beauty of webbed formations, huddled dementia for an afternoon nap.

PART QUAKE The restoration of slighted, by forecast thundering, faded aggregate sweeps plane in wanton arch the very lacunas discount. Preclusion of emphatic instability inflated within cornered propulsion. Militant valence, or sense of seen. When fills of, for, former entail portends an increment, adjourned at what is loaned, all to sudden screeching. Drop, instanced bodily (lozenge, prick . ..) by motor denotes, held in caption, ritual zoine demark. Learning of the sightless colors with serpentine grimace, the limp for asking favor. Favor what polity demands, all else to regulation. Alone, unbuttoned, only inbred whisper of remote inspection. These awnings bright with happenstance, glance of idly set elations rounded to deceit. By glue the stamp of deferential promiseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; allure, alas. And ornaments of clouds.

It is for this act alone we wait, this recompense. A trail followed by a circumlocution that is homeground. That, as if by appointment, expresses the legitimate aspirations of the heart. Or shows to live in faith, woe of fact sleek upon, shower's helpless throw. A grey eminence there is that announces its limits in flickering arcades of slate and implore. Feeling rather faint and implied in this a remonstrance that never alone can acquaint, not that the small ministries embark aboard a relativized collusion but that they fend for themselves. Only noticed once it has passed, irritating irrespective of promises galvanized again to the rope's dogma. Here are two forces, each equally determined, but neither installing a claim to degree.

Agitators are heard and then disappear into the crowd, metering reduplication forensically around billiard balls. Still even now you cling to your habit of music. They ridicule revolutionary theory and sneer that having a correct position is sectarian. For thoughtlessness recount a tremble for alertness. This, too, is part of taking hands into our history. Nothing to say to structure around an empty if strategic accomplishment. On May Day, therefore, the workers' eyes turn toward socialist Albania, the shining model of life without capitalists. And in vain we conceal our hearts within us, keep our courage checked. Under fictive encounters, lament of overthrown announcement. Of this no lullaby will now relieve. Garden that none attain. Are the working masses, then, to become broken and wretched slaves

crushed under the iron heel of police terror and racist gangs? Near is, and difficult to grasp. The games are garlands of detraction. In the light of, everybody loomed, a weave of weft (wept) in the throaty dissimulation of occasion. I rock against these boundaries to feel them. Make bridges abide. And the roads ahead demure, a holiday of retreat. What is divine, that only can we seeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the dunes amid the rubble. But strikes only those in looking, having heard. Cups of preemptive declension, rising on tides of neutralizing disclosure.

So surround a sunken acceptance with the vague reproach of the already spoken. Sitting there amused at the habits of the accomplice in flight, a greater pedantry than last week's oars, such is the state of the soil. Or barricaded in, the sigh of the enclosure, fortified against oneself, at peace with the other. Each configuration leads to the same unfilled potential, a houseguest of improbable translucency. Might as well, someone recounts, take the day into one more foreboding distillate than has been managed with the Aeolian harps of irregular stupor. Famed condiments of a hereafter believed in on Tuesday, worldly worthlessness seriously supposed to unhinge or disband. These however strike unobtrusive, as if from behind, and can't really be adequately counted in the realm of exclusion. A sudden accord conceals an unseen presence, as when I say you don't call you reply the

expectation was all your own. Erudition become inanimate, the congealed syntax of forced instrumentation. With some it's summer, spatializations in which to pass the day. But the notice is given and the marks are abridged, dozens of toothless, topless topologies regarding their plunder with a weepy sentimentality sufficient to make the battery gag. And Bobby Sands lies dying (dead) in a blanket. This is the next thought. "I'm going to cut your face." Disregarding disgruntlement, akin to principal semi-structure, the hawking or the having, gears its semiotic pitch to the blank physiognomies of the undermasses. A road impossible to ridicule.

Half-inscribed and half-distended, though such polarities can't hold, X informs YofZ, A bedevils B, Q convinces R to protest to S, M remains sidelined. How to work that in, a world that so impinges that we, an entity it's impossible to overcredit, push back with a might that makes only the heavenly a force with which to contend. Don't get, replies that, in virtue of, forgetting actually downtown, pressed insurance, waylay aboard, which spanning moments engrain. A pattern easier to remember than disgorge. Or flicker, pent-up pentagonals, insatiably barren. Who forecloses on which net? The burning evidence of the somber frenzy.

100

lives mostly unleavened. Arresting torsion succumbed at lately. There was a sharp metallic click, the one sound guaranteed to raise the hair on my neck. The gap between us, five years at least, was too great for anything constructive in the way of action. Turning, rolling, twirling, tumbling. Cleaving cleverly till a wrinkle clutches. Nothing to make of, out of. Hardly or beforementioned, felled the between.

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O T H E R

R O O F

B O O K S

Andrews, Bruce. Getting Ready To Have Been Frightened. 116p. $7.50. Andrews, Bruce. R & B. 32p. $2.50. •Andrews, Bruce. Wobbling. 96p. $5. Bee, Susan [Laufer]. The Occurrence of Tune, text by Charles Bernstein. 9 plates, 24p. $6. Benson, Steve. Blue Book. Copub. with The Figures. 250p. $12.50 Bernstein, Charles. Controlling Interests. 88p. $6. Bernstein, Charles (editor). The Politics of Poetic Form. 246p. $12.95. Brossard, Nicole. Picture Theory. 188p. $11.95. Child, Abigail. From Solids. 30p. $3. Davies, Alan. Active 24 Hours. lOOp. $5. Davies, Alan. Signage. 184p. $11. Day, Jean. A Young Recruit. 58p. $6. Dickenson, George-Therese. Transducing. 175p. $7.50. Di Palma, Ray. Raik. lOOp. $9.95. *Dreyer, Lynne. The White Museum. 80p. $6. Eigner, Larry. Areas Lights Heights. 182p. $12, $22 (cloth). Gizzi, Michael. Continental Harmonies. 92p. $8.95. Gottlieb, Michael. Ninety-Six Tears. 88p. $5. Grenier, Robert. A Day at the Beach. 80p. $6. HUls, Henry. Making Money. 72p. $7.50. VHS videotape $24.95. Book & tape $29.95. Inman, P. Red Shift. 64p. $6. Lazer, Hank. DoubleSpace. 192 p. $12. Legend. Collaboration by Andrews, Bernstein, DiPalma, McCaffery, and Silliman. Copub. with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 250p. $12. Mac Low, Jackson. Representative Works: 1938-1985. 360p. $12.95, $18.95 (cloth). Mac Low, Jackson. Twenties. 112p. $8.95. McCaffery, Steve. North of Intention. 240p. $12.95. Moriarty, Laura. Rondeaux. 107p. $8. Neilson, Melanie. Civil Noir. 96 p. $8.95. Pearson, Ted. Planetary Gear. 72 p. $8.95. Perelman, Bob. Face Value. 72p. $6. *Robinson, Kit. Ice Cubes. 96p. $6. Seaton, Peter. The Son Master. 64p. $4. *Sherry, James. Part Songs. 28p. $10. Sherry, James. Popular Fiction. 84p. $6. Silliman, Ron. The Age of Huts. 150p. $10. Silliman, Ron. The New Sentence. 200p. $10. Templeton, Fiona. YOU-The City. 150p. $11.95. Ward, Diane. Facsimile (Photocopy of On Duke Ellington's Birthday, Trop-I- Dom, The Light American, and Theory of Emotion). 50p. $5. •Ward, Diane. Never Without One. 72p. $5. Ward, Diane. Relation. 64p. $7.50. Watten, Barrett. Progress. 122p. $7.50. Weiner, Hannah. Little Books/Indians. 92p. $4. •Out of Print

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