“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
My Pietà
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
Market Bug (Rhythmic Chirping)
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
Og-noid the Flagrant
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.”
with no ill intention to the artist what the fuck were you thinking the mangy dog and the electro- magnetic implant fine! but replacing the u with the v? what a braggadocious pile of staten island’s finest piled up to intellectual affidavits — i once asked allen ginsberg should i be scared when the polish barrister holds a luger to my temple and demands fried bananas he said you’ll never move to krakow don’t fret my pet i pianeti della fortuna no ill intention to moloch or the electromagnetic swing the dog abundant and widespread in hungry this abandoned city in the days since the airing of ruth bader ginsburg coordinated inauthentic leaderless lurking evil the writer goes down the one true rabbit hole a meeting of senior government officials four cholinergic cherubs armed with radio poles lit upon the roof of the confident wannsee manor unclear if these birds are gripped fast to the edge of indivisible azalea branches or synaptic clefts between bit and byte cast totally aside countervailing rights — unclear unclear
with honesty and love
he carried
me over the earth
to
burke reason, honesty and didn't once put my
head on a stick
or make me
do terrible things
to the truth
now i am a head on
a stick
made to
do terrible things
and love
trauma
many other kings
from their hearth
pull gratitude
from people i had hurt
carry me
without the gratitude of people i skewer with magic
made to do terrible things
to burke reason, honesty and earth
i am a
head
i am a head
on a stick again
and didn't never once love
the earth
who burkes reason, honesty and
wompsters alike
have carried me through gratitude
to people i had once loved
and burked myself
with reason, honesty and mirth
i am a head
on a stick
made to do terrible things to truth
a head once loved
a head
on a stick
made to do terrible things and never once loved
tubercular wompsters
have carried me over the earth
to the granite people stuck
on a stick
that
once loved
the truth as a trunk
i am a g and a wompster
carried beside the earth
to
burke reason, honesty and fellow
wompsters
don't concern yourself
with my trauma
many kings
once loved
the head i have become
don't once love yourselves
head concerned
with trauma
many kings
many truths
i am a head once loved
on a stick
made to do terrible things
to heaven
to the
earth
to burke
reason, honesty and wompsters
i have carried myself over the earth
to
burke reason, honesty
and wompsters
i am a head
of
many kings don't concern themselves with
love
do terrible things
to burke reason, honesty and truth
i am a head once loved
for its amplitude of attitude i had on a
stick
and chompers
chomping all over the earth
to burke reason's honesty and don't come once loved
and many kings
and many traumas
and many earths
burke reason
honesty and don't
and don't and don't
mount etna
he is nowhere sunflower
dragon's breath of fact
he is nowhere near divinity
his pupils wise as
dinner plates
the first contract
he is nowhere sunflower
his students who stitch up
the girl
squatting teeth marks
it's all too heavy
for flight
you can
smell it on his students'
chainmail
his students' girl
squatting in the first ready to worship
god.r with the alley every colloquial girl
squatting to
worship
god.js
in fact wreck thee
he's all too heavy for flight
you can smell it on his pupils
his worship god
supposed to notice
his bitter dragon's breath
hiss alley
every contract he nods
at every colloquial god recalls his worship
god
weather
inside (again)
to be roasting of a colloquial god a way of a colloquial god the first readers
to
be roasted
in mount etna
hunger wasn't supposed to worship god
to notice he lies
nowhere near divinity
even
his students wise as a way of leaving the colloquial
girl squatting
to worship
god.d
a way of weather
in the first readers his students
wealth
his students wise as chainmail
hunger wasn't
supposed to the first reads of fact
he is nowhere near divinity
his paper alley
even his students wisest students who have
paid dearly
to notice he lies
nowhere
near divinity and worship god to notice
his worship
god.nts
wise as criminals
wise as criminals
his wise
as chainmail
roasting teeth marks
it's alley
even
his students
wealth
inside wings are but life has
a way of a colloquial girl squatting
in mount etna hunger wasn't supposed to worship
god.s
roast in mount etna
his students
wise as divinity worship god
this students' way of fact
he is
nowhere sunflower
his students
wise as a way of wealth
he's alley
even his students wise
as chainmail
inside winter
his words chainmail
his worship
god.or flight you can smells its divinity and worship god the first reads of fact
he is nowhere near divinity
hunger wasn't supposed to notice
he nods
at every
colloquial god
colloquial girl
squatting of a colloquial god
supposed to notice he is nowhere near divinity
his words contract
wealth
roasting
tendencies in mount etna
hunger wasn't supposed to be roasted
to be roasted
in mount etna
hunger wasn't supposed to notice
he is
wise as chainmail
inside wings
their volcano's throat
in mount etna
Alberto Giacometti “Jean-Paul Sartre Leaning on His Elbow” ca. 1949, graphite on paper
a woman on the bus
asked if i was jewish
i said what she said
are you jewish i said
my father was jewish
she said good i said
nothing she said
there are a lot of good
jewish people
i read the bible every day
i said nothing she said
we’re going to win you know
i’m christian she said
jews and christians
are a lot alike we’ve
got to protect one another
she said we’ve got to win
this war she said
and got off the bus
your smutgrass will not grow here
i am the realizer the realizer i am
supple cast into tinderbale summer air
shitting and reading bomb hiss
page turner
astrologic tortoise
barren mango seed
these hands
wad of pedagogic khat
delicious trap cannot conceive
cradled by radioactive fog i am the secular seed
seed of balamb garden
controls the freckled and pale realizer
balamb garden i implore you
control the start of yr anti-capitalist pale
i'm in favor of yr anti-capitalist pale
you are the only one willing to abuse yr body
and i'm so here for that
turn to food
better debtor
talk of talk
many beautiful villas
talk of many beautiful
villas on beautiful villas
on the argument
villas about authenticity
one from palermo
one from agrigento
the ingredients of
staying in
palermo versus agrigento
the talk of course will turn to
many beautiful villas
the talk of the talk of the
many beautiful villas
on many beautiful villas
they will turn to food
you can also be
stunning in one of the many beautiful
villas on the talk of their ingredients of course
you will turn to straying from me
the island of talk
one from palm trees
one from baryte
one from palermo
one from agrigento
talk of another naturally
occurring crystal formation
bet they will turn
to talk of food you happen upon
beautiful villas on the talk
they will stay buried
in one talk of course
will turn to food you bet
on authenticity of the ingredients
of many beautiful
villas on the many beautiful villas
ars authenticity you bet on
many beautiful villas
on the talk of the signature
of authenticity two locals
sit down at a table they will
turn to bet on something stunning
one will turn further
foreground
many beautiful villas
of course will turn too