i don’t want
to do your work
do you want to
do your work
work is screaming
at the dog
a terrible person
who can’t be bothered
with other people
the dog lays there
right there
her allergies
her anxieties
on the leafy greens
and onionskin
and cries not at me
she’s a good girl
at the baby nursing
on her belly little
heart beating so fast
i don’t want to think
of the hummingbird
her fragility
her natural work
her glitter
where’s my glitter
there she is right there
please o god help your subjunctive soldier offer up one original thought
before moving on to black coffee rising to meet morning disassociated
walking dog blue-striped potential-of womanly veil of soul-making
one must have ample reason and the right instruments to break this silence
real question what system gotten oneself into legitimate danger from
answers to deeper form of question dark web hits fashion subliminal
advertising models come go sticky anywhere but there/their blood thirsty wild
board memory of japanese steel through pink paper time slips frame
every once in ochre while please body of clay this is me begging
is a story
first about places
of worship and
winter’s
verbose
soul
like the cockatrice
coming home to
roost like a photograph
aspires to distill
feathers fiery i
want to say
i burned himself
at the stake
ruddy rectrices up
from drifting smoke
addled measurable jawn
miserable i’ve been
unable to live
under these conditions
of resounding success
of first impressions
proof of laziness
i burned himself
at the stake
no monumental ever
but one’s life
the after-father eternal
alabaster born in power
i wanted i
remember slower motives
drawn from records
of dawn discovery
momentary challenges form
i burned himself
at the stake
long forgotten architect
amidst the inferno
of genius vandalized
permanent civil war
naves columns vaults
facade transepts crossing
and apse plans
and photographs burnt
plaster models smashed
i burned himself
at the stake
snowy february morning
explicit appreciation homage
and circumstance of
life her personhood
list of words
and phrases eurub
i like ike
bob’s your uncle
gale poets exaggerate
i burned himself
at the stake
everything you need
to know paginated
drunk knocked off
course young poets
old whores lol
bolaños let loose
like balloons struck
from chest stunk
old sneakers times
are tough times
have always been
tough in time
i burned himself
at the stake
square pose bubba
gump shrimp selfie
stick sagrada familia
20g gunpowder 20g
ethiopia 20g bitter
20g still water
cooked uncomplicated surveillance
software in neon
syringe of hammers
o i burned
at the stake
hours without touching
another freeman’s tongue
welcome says amygdala
sorcerer’s teaspoon of
distraction of slight
of face of
wild fathers’ simile
like ruddy fears
exploitation so rips
i burned himself
at the stake
fulsome feathers from
his dictionary good
advice hard advice
advice deeply swallowed
in that suck
called breath brooklyn
rusty
premeditated
agent
i burned himself
at the stake
life’s a story
first about places
of worship and
the venous cockatrice
coming home to
roost among memories
of photographs over
blazing patterns a
genealogy in light
This is a test print
describing subtractive black
and what’s lost
when process tongues
the burn of riot.
A hate passed across generations
over borders an ex-vast desert
here
a black wall scars the landscape
i do not know what i am in it
what it gives me destroys me
i do not need it not today
not tomorrow
desirous alien interior
crown fortune its endless skull walk exposes the delirious face grabbing and shaking-down of who or what anymore and goes away from the island dune with a tavern of warm milk and upside-down memory of friends and if a place is too familiar it removes its visitors like certain meteors from near constant travel i stand at the immense black wall and scream in wind at the constructing god
here
as in under
my feet here
sheathed in
goat leather as in affronting
here
as in without fear of
description discipline or performance
idiot rush at the gold farm gods open your terrorist wallet
trap the house of esplanade and swallow god
It made them feel like poets and it made them want to write more
black camel mahler stops death can be a poem he didn’t have to leave though i demanded it with my hands and bleak words i hoped anyone could understand the desert media or what remained drew up plans my intentions my privilege like a deep wind-up across sand and i wonder how he’d bred a modern aesthetic echo the private world of containing wishes: no black river neon bootleg nothing ashamed of … as a poet i dream about him buried deep in the sand in the lungs in the lugs
deep enough to have had enough of other people’s worlds
woke up screaming bronica barbacoa bankrate
like that would fix anything
and here i am
the white noise cresting the horizon
she said looking back one final time
at the black wall
Those moments accumulate in the interstices of someone else’s history
and beach dragged back hands intracoastal churning
snatch from impossible tides certain hopeful
loneliness imposed
the bodies of others i thought i saw an iguana at the gates
swung open manna born from a factory i scratch the wall
first with stones and dried plant matter and stones then
fingers
beguiling
consistent
fingers bleed wall remains black black black
through travel we charge the scene
a belanced knight tilting at god
these innersee references
insufficiently sophisticated
inflicted upon us by lesser
the job of an arrow is to brand the world what puts the reader to sleep — that is you to sleep — passes for a story between hands the simultaneous wall do you understand do you have this inside you?
the sky above the city is the noun constantly reintegrating parameters these are the questions made obvious against a photograph but what about the outreach the compassion the drama of it all otto had the look of a killer big bald head dirty lederhosen someone nearby spinning out the color of green apples big black eyes quiet let his friend do all the talking not the type to confuse numbers for bugs (or vice versa) had many famous friends now none
c. 1400, “make impure by admixture,” from Medieval Latin sophisticatus, past participle of sophisticare (see sophistication). From c. 1600 as “corrupt, delude by sophistry;” from 1796 as “deprive of simplicity.” Related: Sophisticated; sophisticating. As a noun meaning “sophisticated person” from 1921.
they are gone out / they are beautiful / they are never enough
DESPITE a community rises up around me a community rises up around me a community rises up around me a community rises up around me a community rises up rises up rises up DESPITE i sink into community into community into community rises up around me around me around me a round me a rondo a nonce an ounce of community in my pocket a pound of trounce in my hand a ton of electronics on my back DESPITE a promise to tend to the garden to the garden to the garden tend to tendencies tenderly a garden a garden a garden worth guarding tenderly a community DESPITE rising up around a ton of electronics tenderly gardening my back DESPITE an ounce of rondo in my pocket
you ask yourself: is the next minute enough? enough to pull you into them? to keep you there enough? is its plurality of negations enough to keep you reading forever? independent of the men in caskets we come to the incinerator or from the incinerator — there’s a world through this door
poetic form necessitates a poetics of absence less attitude more altitude reality holding your hand we walk backwards down a fall of steps individualism into the chopper i wrote myself a letter in sand no i will write myself a letter in sand no i must have forgotten not writing it with precocious expectations of a strong handsome noun on my knees at the wall with obscure eyes the letter didn’t say west of here is a nice mass grave and east of here is blue smoke of otto more violence more opiate i wake up wanting
survive make friends at the inn at columbia tell stories
whenever i hold my child
the hair on my body turns
white noise white heart
welcome to the world
it’s just me you’re ok
oh my god you’re ok
the moon of thicknesses and texture of papers one for photo one for text quality absorption two i’s a k and a p pile high like huey dewey and louie in a trench coat attempting to purchase pornography or an assault rifle or enriched uranium galk the image is gone he’s piloted guys chariots into the sun melted melted axle horse and hope alike the image has dispersed the boy my stand-in meditates on his describing destruction and finds opportunity for new life to bathe its hot fault lines there’s an emoji for that the old phrase goes
when i lift a palm-full of warm sand i feel it coursing through my hand though i see it still in my fingers the sense receptors haunt the skin wrapped around muscle bone breath the warmth of the sand the atmosphere of it of them our misunderstanding and inflate with metaphysical charm surreal pleasure undeniable expression the inward experience of what kind of story is this story
the menu at the storm is written in an alien language that looks like begging a stranger to buy your underage-self violence and sounds like the opiate state protecting your fragile body on offer are the powerful horses of a new god
I don’t know how else to tell you there are problems with what little soil remains problems with what little oil remains problems with the spoiled chaos of which there is plenty the dog-boys expect one in every tribe to make a mistake i put the beginning at the end and pray
i close my eyes and pray for rain
c. 1300, despit (n.) “contemptuous challenge, defiance; act designed to insult or humiliate someone;” mid-14c., “scorn, contempt,” from Old French despit (12c., Modern French dépit), from Latin despectus “a looking down on, scorn, contempt,” from past participle of despicere “look down on, scorn,” from de “down” (see de-) + spicere/specere “to look at” (from PIE root *spek- “to observe”).
The prepositional sense “notwithstanding” (early 15c.) is short for in despite of “in defiance or contempt of” (c. 1300), a loan-translation of Anglo-French en despit de “in contempt of.” It almost became despight during the 16c. spelling reform.
some men are large others are sharks but all men have their cut coming what price what playing harmony what origins hungry submissions layered to the ceiling like dried newspaper waits for spark a wide lens saturation cranked creamed laughing fringes pissed the windgreens that fill sinuses this is indirect incorrect take the first viola on your right and go straight on til the measuring tape boils oh see can you say it like he sees it will you allow the worries to tell you no wrestling nude in the sun people blacken me blacking thee impossible art life i’ll tell it straight no surface artifact artifact camera aims his gun at the sun a diagonal field sailing memories the means to be an artist dearest exponent YES! i like top ten art as much as the next guy but here in the desert there’s only survival
i don’t want to hurt people that’s the point i guess jane the fried of the west said the best you scream when you know jane didn’t say that i said that no not that even i’ve acquired it put it in my pocket like a write of passport it was born here what do you want from me screaming burnt hair test the limits of the dog-boys laying there depressed dried out next to their dreams of milk next to a soundscape of rolled up death that gives way to the blackened mind
in the wallet of the last quarter century don’t know how to spend it don’t know that if we ever will
the data bears this out the data proves popularity is a marauder straddling a spreadsheet from station to station the numbers are bright and clear as the moon ticked on the ocean wall in chalk the countryside evaporated by nuclear strike like a crow like a crown like a clown from the diving board insert yourself here transfigure possibility and cliche
the men he met at the wall and they were always men displayed no dedication to the pilgrimage no ambition to elide its infinity they plant their feet in the hot sand and shed blood an ear upon a pedestal this masculine beauty
so we waited seven years anymore how do you experience cold it’s not cold to be uncomfortable would it even register as cold or just certainly not a breeze a sensation experience an external sensation register as different from in your belly proximity to celebrity on this the final day of the final april
what is this crocus trampled inconvenient bottom boot beside the dog-boys’ leftovers in the sun warning our flesh some listen some tilt listen i’m thirty seven trying to get to the under of this big wide doing so far so guilty so unwinged by the mage or the architect or god the builder send me a picture of there
poets exaggerate
everything you
needed to
know about
me back
then could
be summed
up thusly
coming upon
a page
underlined by
amazon’s popular
highlights feature
in whatever
kindle book
I was
reading knocked
me off
course every
time knowing
that 22
people had
previously highlighted
this passage
in Bolaño
about young
poets and
old whores
ripped the
soft cotton
stuffing out
of my
chest it
stunk of
the path
most travelled
old sneakers
the bubba
gump shrimp
in times
square selfie
sticks at
la sagrada
familia last
evenings on
earth fireworks
“Frustration has become a key response to certain recent art. Frustration because the viewer is looking for a complete “idea” and is foiled. The notion of completion (i.e., self-containment) is at fault.”*
Mel Bochner
March 2021 — A vast sucking sound invades my consciousness even god dies many men are god over and over again and again confusing the prophecy smile with the pissing of one’s pants horrifying child reach down into the worksheet subconscious and pray for us — reader and read — spit the stuff of life into the dry bed of our hair
Herd of wishes tiktok cartwheeling in the 2021 pandemic rain
Look out now into the field of the poem:
An invasive, patriotic pan into an urbane shopping center in praise of everything average fire from the gods every popular poem of the last 400 years a streetcar sunrise eventually finds time to name check chicory and sage this one begins with blood moat pikeways spectacular arguments theory of riot like a match/strike and riot literary technique milk as cologne rot as physique reason generates contradictions being the moment of fixity decaying protest protein establishes work as crucible
“When it examined a work of art, materialist criticism was accustomed to ask how that work stood in relation to the social relationships of production of its time. That is an important question. But also a very difficult one.”
Walter Benjamin
Encyclopaedia Logica negatively rational complications of basic machine translation abstracts from the fact that every few days I dream about the staten island ferry terminal — never the ferry — cavernous poisoned with workers worriers and weasels red corona around time’s neat little rows like
I’ve taken the ladies heaped on our generation’s greatest writers and turned them first to dust then to paste then tipped in my photos look at us here in the margins singing out loud like
With a shark knife this isn’t magic but middlebrow slight of hand I hollow out the differences between things the car is always parked comically far from the party my hands are always full of papers I hope will contain valuable information my shoes are too big no one likes me I am alone my mode is survival shame let’s do the time warp like
Alive on the internet baby snails rabid preteens snapback starter caps wreathed in mycelium the message is clear get ready to floss billboards are no longer optional avon barksdale whistles like
The results of a promising life come back negative so the reader fingers across coarse vellum begins to trace the source of the information back to its etymological roots stainless steel web of memory no one will rent to a poet the dog punishes the cat anymore for being slow small and weak captain communism strikes again like
How many cows have to die after climbing into a tight high attic — red yellow green blue pink — ALL OF THEM the inscription reads SLEEVE NOT CUP followed by an 11 digit phone number not magic but martial disorder I was just looking for the bathroom but he was an entertainer with a high iq i know boo-hoo no one has said anything good about me though memory is incomplete and what is complete is corrupt like
Hallucination as savior my Pietà of language crumpled but full of etymological life in arms I watched the four, there, in the delicate black corner sprout wings no flight but possibility and strange other outcast the deep uncontemplated darkness of the eye cries like
I can’t stop repeating the words astra and zeneca like an incantation to our collective effigy is it big enough this elegy said brave but meant careless mad dissolving head the poets like gruesome biblical angels want what’s best for it/god
For us the hotel staff provided drugs and provided thousands of pounds of rooms but no hallways no keys the elevator was controlled from the destination floor hooligans frequently mashed the nauseous fast button mother and the first man were there Adam cut the safety line mother watched
The poet chirps rhythmically yes I let the dog bite me I ask the influencers what do you do for money and get no reply bite chomp rip stomp I mostly think about a long vacation one year to justify who I am or was meant to be a lie a list a liar a black market bug electric fingertips the kind of person who doesn’t as vocation
All we heart have beat breath hearth and got here we turn to need & formalism I’d rather buy it cheap than learn it hard Og-noid the flagrant turns toward the busy sub on main street and aims his psychosexual power What he attempts to resist what I also attempt to resist is easiness how gorgeous the hands of the clock pointing at nothing I dream of vesuvius fists against sex workers impotent rage of soldiers of consequence ponytailed picasso woman’s blood in steerage on a stream ship from Italy on canvas bills on florescent future oh heavenly heart welcome to New Jersey
The child quits as the sun provokes birds from wherever into the rhododendron below an eastern cottontail and just about a diesel truck delivers a box full of lithium ion batteries every cow walks around with its leather milk and beef eyes for the buzzards discarded bits for tossing into the dog’s bowl companionship it is spring not a symbol of spring you’ll remember this haircut long after I’m dead
We let things die and eat our friends and family
Every photo ever captured contains at least one suspect. A photo of a fish contains suspect of fisherman. A photo of mountain contains first ascender. A photo captured by code contains its coder. Every actual moment in a river is success, every photo is frustration of that river.
—
*”Frustration has become a key response to certain recent art. Frustration because the viewer is looking for a complete “idea” and is foiled. The notion of completion (i.e., self-containment) is at fault. What is thought and what is experienced continually replace each other. Nothing reveals itself without at the same time concealing something else. The concealed is the source of thought. And thought, which we hoped to use to “fill in the gaps,” is in itself bottomless or … incomplete. So every work is only the residue of thought’s attempt to simultaneously close itself up and its frustration at not being able to do so. The artwork, whatever “form” it might take, is the visible center of an axis connecting intention and disappointment.”
Mel Bochner
revivified cicadas end dormancy
fans outside the garden at night
saying the stars hark an advertisement
for more stories
from today’s affronted vases
flank new eliminations of
doe queens
of canceled revenue
a screenshot of the dead lie
three men inside a high rate of speed
burn cash
as others
stay grand
at kill station &
terminal statistics colorized
cells from an oyster of city and state
support us or die
(repeat)
hung in the shadows
on the western wall
emerald cone boasting corona
of dipped lunatic cotton fails
serially with each attempt
(once every three minutes)
to intellect through short
dire sentences despite being broken into
labium labrum maxillae and mandible
the discourse remains functional
powered up and spread warm butter like the sun
like the museum’s most popular gallery
quantitatively as the reader fails
to consider commerce here the radical mage conjures
a million jerry saltzs dehydrate mutants
no geiger counter for this
kind of subjective observation
through a starbucks window
clearly the majority look onward and upward
while elements class traitors sift
form from function and some nonzero number
of postdocs see a leg and writhe in pain and some
nonzero number of highly marketable postdocs see a shark
skin wallet and movement becomes impossible
consider minus zero as a vector of possibility
a long time ago lived a lengthy brass ladder
known for lying who unscrewed
an exit sign named piero manzoni
the ladder was high as fuck and craved a little zappo
critical discourse emerged simultaneously from the academic journals
commonly read by building inspectors
widely known to be bad men damp
men with all sorts of wicked contradictions hammers
hardhats marshmallows cargo shorts and bibles held
to account hauled up by their judith butler-lookin lobes
tonight is the night it is impossible to judge these men
at this hour but long ago judges went unmoored
a mythological tap of little sausages enticing a blue arc
back then everything was faked
everything was cheated an ounce or two everything
surreptitiously observed and tweaked
their values modified until reality
felt just about right
without transubstantiation of the aphid
this reality slithers from open space to open source
its brand much improved especially popular
among college educated white liberals aged 18-24
who earn each rostrum feeds then snaps predictably
with a super majority obeying basic digital commands
retweet unfollow promote accept all
the role of the curator has changed
for the wurst since wuhan
impish discursive corona dip
thineself ankle deep
into serious intellect
unbreak your reader
fall from function
into a nonzero bouquet of legs
move only when movement becomes impossible
my love
uploaded virus
unlocked door
can of the artist’s shit
save my planet
one salsiccia at a time
Contains a modified line boosted from VFX artist Matthew Wilde in Simone de Rochefort’s article “Why the bottles in Half-Life: Alyx look so dang good,” published Jan 6, 2021, on Polygon.
ankle was zoloft
bush was yearling
cock was xyzzyx
diode was warlord
escarole was violence
frigid was uvula
god was tired and true
hush was sacrifice
ingenuous was ritual
jigger was quake
kallyope was paris
limp was oaf
mopping was numerology
nuke was murder
oatmeal was luxury
prosthetic was kaput
quarantine was jewel
rhizome was intimate
sweat was hearse
trout was gallup
ulcer was function
viagra was earthworm
wagner was death
xenograft was coloring book
yarrow was backlit
zambia was appropriation