Agency Representation


the tide dropped out
while still enrolled
puta in the sun
scared moon
certainly not the heroes
darkly begging at the shore’s feet
taking advantage
the only thing
at which they’ve excelled
no other way to get it done
their shoulder / your shoulder
their back / your back
the chorus unable to prove anything
anymore distracted by distraction
comparing
work to worry
reaction to action
syrup to syntax
the anti-war movement of the ’60s and ’70s
sabotaged the culture
their heroes heathens lords of dew
acknowledge the abusive sutra
turned themselves out
there’s hero shit in the street
and no one picks it up
which is to say
everyone refuses to pick it up
who precisely is this no one
and are you looking
for agency representation?

Vicious Mercy (Vermeer in Death Valley, 2020)

Leave Vermeer alone.

When I write The girl is dying I do not mean to enter the girl nor deconstruct her state of abstract goingness.

It’s a figure beyond an open window in a time of plague.

Disemboweled skywriting or the family name forgotten in water.

Which is to say: Vicious mercy becomes the uncountable gallop of the ruddy horse forging the sandy horizon.

Let the creature offenses stand in beauty among their rare pigments.

Honeycut, should I fail to mention light — What kind of poet is this? — but here!

Look!

Cherry and evergreen ring the moon like a bell unrung, you see them or don’t.

These next few moments of balance determine your eligibility for brief happiness.

Remember first to crucify the middle-ground; translucent, gathered up, mercurial, for modernity.

Mobility.

Into sun-sucked ink, oil, platinum, I vandalize form.

You, widely recognized as a modular prophet, briefly part the asbestos curtain.

Who, among these long-ago minted currencies, profits from the quietus of pulped paupers?

Ultramarine, of course, picked up and deposited here at my feet like seed, forms the reticulated reach of your life.

They do.

When they’re gone they’re gone.

Something else, especially if this chaotic rest goes unexamined.

Time lays a recursive trap in which most get caught.

From the Old English for eye-hole.

The skin that threatens to scream in from its triangular sleep, vanishing from the fog of natural history, just as quickly as it had long-ago been shed.

You suddenly appear vaulted and the sun is beautiful.

My favorite spot across the entire desert.

I am describing the man who offers the creature, spoken into long-to-go life, a bucket of sewing needles.

Mostly I see your bones and saddle.

Faithful reader, a sharp splash of light on the cheek come, potential space for potential space.

Collage Burning Landscape

Ridgewood, Sunset

what’s even worth painting anymore? all the nerd
girls in big striped sweaters warming bleach moms
gym guys in slate sleeveless tees and they make
shoes out of knit polyester now tight pants loose
pants clouds bodies minds bricks piled up high hair
gel on a young couple four hundred feet away
i’m worried about their screen time is their crib
flammable age sex location trap beats the problem
with not liking anyone is you always have lots of
company imagine for a moment being a sixteen
ounce poland spring bottle the thin crinkling plastic
threaded neck choking hazard threaded cap
arctic-nothing impermanent black they don’t do
decaf here i listen to the gods who do not have my
best interest at heart is it ok for me to smile at the
incandescent young lesbians so in love i’m
repeating myself my recycled edges ache at the
thought of appearing a fanboy Eileen Myles in
my hands my eyes my neurons my hair dirty teeth
rotten and unbrushed like i said: no one’s looking
out for my brief colors i strain to love anyone but i
fear a relapse into hate for everyone hocking trace
antagonism — like me i’m afraid i prefer living in the
cracks and this world powerwashes squatters rats
milkweed moneywort morning glory like us — there
i go dreaming again self-flagellating my verse-thin
flesh which is bulletproof if bullets are tsetse flies
i am genetic i am bodied and disposable if extant
— there is a cloud there is the gelic memory of sun
leather loafer real burning cigarette appropriately
scented altar i don’t care what your mother named
you i will love you anyway without me.

Parallel Sunsets Hidden in the Head of the Word

Wikipedia Poem, No. 948

i’m the only one who tells me when the poem calls
that poem the pancake color of my charged-up
fingernails that were no rhyme scheme
your head was a poem called lookiat
charging burn of my fingers
that was the intellectual me where
i am i am seeing the poem doesn’t have
to cope with heroes
you did it and you saw it
another wasted intellectualism of fuck it
they would have curved no metaphor
for the poem called your life and it gets tasty
that poetic squid head of quotes rising
above the horizon i finger the radio
or you don’t have to cope
with his going out for non-renewable resources

pull back the color of my heroes
didn’t you decide on an electrical power source
you don’t open into it the poem calls lookimy
heroes ;; another outlet for deicide kettle’s on
you saw it acquire some branded intellectual shock
we look like sui generis bedrock gardens
we look at sui generis bedrock gardens
fingers plasma!! it doesn’t have a squid head
or you look back at the black outlet weeping
like a weapon the storm hammer club her human body
it has a god given right to the poetics
of a stock car violin
intelligence betraying stone
cut from etna i was called a poem
look for an outlet in hopes i would
char char char

Molly Springfield (II)

Wikipedia Poem, No. 911

secret
memory
can be physical
classic
memory
can connect
the couple-weeks-long process of
you in the bay
area

meditation on forms
ghost screens all
day — rather
ink
doesn’t
take

past
projects mine
where
ink doesn’t
work

and dedication forms a minimalist proust in fact
memory pieces
together
xeroxes
in secret

zombies
translate
a handwritten version
of industrial source-work
drawings
each into
fact

current shows
ask for a secretion
graphite on paper

The Mitterrand–Pasqua Affair (Charlotte Rampling)

Wikipedia Poem. No. 866

single-ghosts.jpeg

Bad manmade structures effluent as a pistol and Caprus, while a
good more easily in
marmalade darkness, can lose
things dreamt amongst millennials is that a terrible
parts per trillion of iridium
in engineering a recalled forecast about 2 years into the Lycus. 
         The most common lyre is time
         someone
has died during an outflowing of the alien. Laodicea
is a ball. It's an outflowing,
the
inescapable parts perform
more violently, about
20 parts per trillion of
you can lose
your thought, dear reader, what a dogged lover 
or gas to go to: 
         The figurative thing is the alien.
Laodicea is my substitute for a
philothaumaturgical body of water, Asopus and
         their waters; Asopus an
outflowing end.

Are things of water
outflowing or are there magic
ends, while a good more
easily my substitute
forecast something like 2 years into any
water or gas to go: They last approximately 2 years into
iridium in
the figurative thing of iridium dreamt there
amongst the sheeply
hills between the shapely forms of the bad moon
in small rivers Asopus and Caprus, while a good 
         more easily in
         my substitute forms bad moons in
their waters, Asopus and Caprus,
while a god, more
easily in my godhead, news performs more violently 
         and it's a ball. 

It's the figurative forms of a performative structure. 
         Effluent is my substitute.
Forms bad-out like a fan of marmalade structures.
         Effluent is their water or gas-to-go: Where the
form more easily
engineer a chemical reactor. Fluent, more violent,
about 20 parasite dreams per beknighted forgotten desire
amongst millennials. Situate the long spur of iridium
in magic... shucks, 
         we're talking about
         time, someone has to die.

Only about 20
parts per trillion of you can lose the figurative thread.
Forms made into a milkshake-like lattice. Effluent 
         is the difference between
lover-of-magic bodies and given bodies between the 
         afterlife
and, well,
you: Bouton-de-Roses,
terrible parasite dream, millennials, 
         outflow of advertising
structures. Effluent, in reverse, 
         returns to the figurative think tank
what a lover knows is how to make figurative 
         the inescapable parts 
         per trillion of you, Bouton-de-Roses, 
         that a terrible end fears ends.
         Are we thinking in English again? is like what a terrible
parasite
dream amongst friends.
Floating down the Caprus, while a good more violently,
         about 20 parasite dreams
attempt to bring forth the common alien in law. 
         Laodicea is hell.

 

spacer1

Mostly Anti-Capitalist Art (1996)

mostlyanticommunistart-jordan-sm

this father
in between this
father i am
here i am in between
my name is father
and you listen or do not

outside
cats &
animals you could
permits imagination
& cats
permit imagination

it is folly to connect
the landscape is my mouth
is the transience of the
mouth free of use? tense
with permanence of
transience of a single noun
paparazzo

circle
seek balance
abstraction of
upstairs monster
not abstraction of not
circle circle circle

scale of burning flesh
life take a step back
red rover
the volcano calls red rover over
roll over red rover roll over

Chase & Repoussé

Wikipedia Poem, No.  826

SUNFLOWER-718

subtle white clover
yields at dawn
shifting cubes of light
pliant suburban lawn
chase and repoussé

Authentic, Rare and Valuable (Landscape in the Diminished Field)

Wikipedia Poem, No. 822

w822.jpg

sea glass purity of the heineken
seed glass of man made pond
self destructing purity

north toward precocial ducklings
floats east then north toward the east
on heineken sea

free of heineken sea glass
purity of ducklings floating east
then north toward an apple tree

“Feminist Modes of Production” by Arielle Greenberg

This poem appears in Arielle Greenberg’s 2015 book “Slice” from Coconut Press. Her work is brilliant, please support her writing.