Even though even
Sacraments are mysterious
Recall her last journey to Mexico and the episode by the road where she remarked how good the sun felt on her cunt
So at sunset the clouds went nuts
They thought they were a text of radius r and length l
A maybe gold coffin suspended in space
A karaoke Cluster Chord Omega
There’s a volcano snow-capped in the air some twenty miles from here / in lit clear air
Prolonging the formal implications of the expressive act
Absolute time becomes dream machine flicker
When I got back from that party, I cut all my hair off, leaving green, foot long dreads on the floor
But the bouquet you made of doorknobs, long nails for their stems
Shark paint in the skull-like flowers
The author’s words have now, in effect, flown free from the page on which they are written
Skipping down what could have been these slopes
The field is thus constituted inside itself as a figure of its own absence
But what, after all, does it mean to say that something is “literally invisible”?
To say be you, these must be them, also
Buzz buzz buzz buzz; buzz buzz
Ransack the data calls to mind a drag queen, whose “covered” voice has finally been released
Asking had we seen [possessive pronoun’s] many molecules (famous for escaping)
For if one body is distinct from another
And looking at me with a silly grin
My dear salacious friend, if you have a moment we would very much like to talk to you
Roll – trill – flip flip – and all I do is wiggle my toes in leisure / leisure village
In the suburbs with the butterflies
“What do the ‘voo-doos’?” or “What is this ‘somethin’?”
Ashes on my open book
Mitsein differend
Rummaging through photographs who had been spared a face but twined with ivy
One reason children and lovers on St Valentine’s Day exchange heart-shaped candies bearing brief messages
We all like looking at each other
A sanctuary takes us in, the last of the legs keep dangling
A self-identified forty-two-year-old male “Assistant VP” reported a similar experience
Authenticity is clearly a moving target
AND T SILLY (heard) i n s paren thesis [flattened into one line]
As Novalis put it, “We have outgrown the age of generally valid forms”
Hetero-reference is reduced more and more to the “unmarked space”
The sight of a thigh-bone protruding from an upturned, burnt-out car
Nicked by the light alone, diamonded / by the light . from which the sun / alone lifts undamped his wings
Trip[s] the geist
If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?
We
Boom my my my my my had to have had to have had them
And yet, there is no immunity without autoimmunity
Globalization shows both immunitary strength and an autoimmune weakness
How does the air / come to pulse / like a muscle
Collapsing the even movement of the clock
–Then–when the naively prolific accuse me of a lack of imagination–“Jesuitical caffeine” –how make a reliable business of it?–with tats, provided I could croon like an Asbury Park Klaus Nomi
Also
When ,
When juiced in alembic straits–
Aching information’s dumb tide
(The foetus can hear inside the mother’s womb)
Aspires to condition of music & ends up writing nature into existence ……….possibly virtually all vanished in simultaneous extensive word space
The lovely lightness is quite gone through thee
This piece of storm in our city’s entrails
Ghosts follow other ghosts / up climbing stairs of wind, / across black stands of pine / to the last source of loss
Without any recourse
Laser line skips optic control gate: “We see you, sexy baby!!!”
System adapts well
…
He who is guided by reality adapts and evolves / / like neo-Kong cinema in out-of-the-way Chinese theaters / on badly subtitled video
Boom boom boom
Boom boom boom boom
This has enormous political consequences, which we do not have time to deal with now
But if we had time, I would try to show what the equivocal consequences would be of
Yet another stick with which to beat us “For Change” for sure
(Cf. the … the sense of smell in sexual life)
The doors open and close …
The house trembles
[PART TWO]
He tried to use photolithography (considered a lowly commercial cousin of fine-art lithography) to make a print based on his birth certificate, which featured his newborn footprint
He would have titled it FIRST PRINT
Halfway through his residency the workshop’s exasperated director was prompted to ask him, “What is this crap you’re trying to put over here?”
A plausibility
Analogy to “quick” sand
Blue patches breaking clouds up in the late afternoon
Sprays of light can bear their own weight or lift something heavy
They can, like a golden envelope, surround an object or, like a glistening worm, move inside it
Sooner call nothing without shape
We b*t*e the the
On the JE NE SAIS QUOI, see Il ‘non so che’
It might be a piece of tongue, or something severed from us
At what moment does the narrator speak?
T0
Hash out–
Lock in–
He’s not making up funny desperate American characters in a spectacular flat American small town nowhereland somewhere inside his head
Another psalmist says “My tears have been my bread day and night” as if it were possible to live on the salt in teardrops
Follies all right great here is as pleased are like all said
Which both never leaves itself and never arrives at itself
Think on this when prayers fall like thick paint on dry asphalt
We are not conscious of the proto-self
Language is not part of the structure of the proto-self
The proto-self has no powers of perception and holds no knowledge
And as to laughter, if you allow it in one place (Sixties hagiography), you must, I think, allow it in another (radical worship vasectomy)
You have built a mountain of something, / Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument, / Whose wind is desire starching a petal, / Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears
The not-yet of extraterrestrial subjectivity
Passions and sensations succeed each other
They kissed like tarantulas beneath an infinite sky
Insurgent materiality
For a long time / after that / there was no argument
Dots, splotches, flashes and slabs of colour
O.K.
Meaning what I just said confers with this but a licking sound
‘Re-emotionalization’
The action is interrupted, the situation tense
Errit, hist / well, deafening – smoothing hegel means of a formal
Cavett bladened writers braids monitering career beads all torn plank kerouac paisle achilles
(A sill / of crays) …
My occupation can be described as the ERECTION OF HOLLOW GODS
Dismembered gods
Plaster gills
I promise you won’t find our flesh a theme without variations
APPLAUSE
Compliant enough to include everything
For a free catalogue write to
Recall her last journey to Mexico and the episode by the road where she remarked how good the sun felt on her cunt
[Note: I took the verbs in Alan Baker’s “Girl Singing Singing” in order, matched each with a word beginning with the same letter from in the “Directory of Alternative Terms for ‘Intertext’, ‘Intertextuality’” found at the end of Mary Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts; used a bit of simple gematria to connect them with a page number in From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960-1990 (ed. Douglas Messerli), In the American Tree, 2nd ed. (ed. Ron Silliman), or Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (eds. Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar), rotating between them,and lifted a line or two from that page; took a book from a stack by the side of my desk (gathered for another, failed, project), found the same page number in that book, and lifted a line or two (if the same page number did not occur in the book from the stack, I did some more gematria to find an appropriate page). I also threw in bits from Rodrigo Toscano, Platform, Brian Kim Stefans, Kluge: A Meditation, and Other Works, and Rodney Koeneke, Musee Mechanique, and 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II (found semi-inexplicably in the pile of books from the failed project) in the 3rd of every 3 sets. When the failed project stack hit bottom, I switched to the books I picked up at an estate sale the morning of 3 August, then to the other stack(s) on the floor of my “office”. This is now known as the ETE transformation. I did not correct gematric or other errors that had interesting results. If nothing else, the pile of books from the failed project is dedicated to Eileen.
Sets and sources: singing/salvation: Susan Howe, “Silence Wager Stories”, Robert M Mazzola, “Kathy Acker and Literary Madness: erecting a pornographic shell”, in Devouring Institutions: The Life Work of Kathy Acker (ed. Michael Hardin); singing/sampling (music): Stephen Rodefer, “Codex”, J Scott Turner, The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself; reaches/ready-made: Sarah Gambito, “Scene: a Loom”, Katayoon Zandvakili, “The Eglantine Deal”, Deborah Wong, “Plugged in at Home: Vietnamese American Technoculture in Orange County”, in Music and Technoculture (eds. René T A Lysloff and Leslie C Gay, Jr), Rodrigo Toscano, “In-Formational Forum Rousers – Arcing (Satire No. 4)”; skipping/summa: George Oppen, “”Resort”, DJ Spooky, Rhythm Science; singing/synaesthesia; Rae Armantrout, “Tone”, Stephen Rodefer, “Words in Works in Russian”, Mark Rose, “The Author in Court: Pope v. Curll (1741)”, in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature (eds. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi); insist/imposture: Fawzia Afzal-Khan, “Amazing Grace”, Rosalind Krauss, as quoted by Harry Polkinghorn, and Polkinghorn himself, in Harry Polkinghorn, “Space Craft: Collage Discourse”, in Collage: Critical Views (ed. Katherine Hoffman), Brian Kim Stefans, “Kluge: A Meditation”; chant/cut and paste: Jack Spicer, “Thing Language”; David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music (the latter bit is actually one page from that gematrically called for); will/world wide web: Tom Mandel, “All These Examples”, Christopher Miller, “Trait d’union: Injunction and Dismemberment in Yambo Ouoluguem’s Le devoir de violence”, as quoted in Marilyn Randall, Plagiarism: Authorship, Profit, and Power; become/boredom: Charles Olson, “Monday, November 26, 1962”, from The Maximus Poems, Pierre Valdagne, as quoted in Françoise Meltzer, Hot Property: The Stakes and Claims of Literary Originality, Rodney Koeneke, “My Blog”; keep/knot/knotting; Rae Armantrout, “Tone”, Ming-Qian Ma, mostly quoting Louis Zukofsky, in “A “no man’s land”: Postmodern Citationality in Zukofsky’s “Poem Beginning ‘The’””, in Upper Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky (ed. Mark Scroggins) (actually one page from that gematrically called for); dimming/dialogism: Tina Chang, “Origin & Ash”, Avital Ronell, “Kathy Goes to Hell: On the Irresolvable Stupidity of Acker’s Death”, in Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker (eds. Amy Scholder, Carla Harryman, Avital Ronell); milking/muses: Aaron Shurin, “Foreward or Back”, Barry Ahearn, Zukofsky’s “A”: An Introduction, Joan Rothfuss, Escape Artist”, in 2000 BC; worn/writing: Peter Seaton, “The Son Master”, Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Shaped Music (the latter bit is actually one page from that gematrically called for); let/logogriph: Hannah Weiner, “LITTLE BOOK 107 May 13 77” from Little Books / Indians (the latter bit is actually one page from that gematrically called for), Niklas Luhmann, Art as a Social System (tr. Eva M Knodt); fell/fetish: R Cheran, “I Could Forget All This”, WC Williams, Paterson 4, as quoted in Elizabeth Gregory, Quotation and Modern American Poetry: “Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads”, Rodrigo Toscano, “Blue-Green Superfund Roundelay”; fell/free indirect speech: John Ashbery, “Hotel Lautréamont”, Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages; whispered/wit: Bruce Andrews, “I Guess Work the Time Up”, Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida; lost/lyric: Eileen Tabios, “Tercets from The Book of Revelation”, James Elkins, Pictures & Tears, Brian Kim Stefans, “The Further Adventures of Oedipa Mess in the Countess Second’s Flat”; wish/wisdom literature: Robert Creeley, “Body”, Luce Irigaray, Thinking the Difference for a Peaceful Revolution; play/psychoanalytic/psychoanalysis: Robert Grenier, “Notes on Coolidge, Objectives, Zukofsky, Romanticism, and &”, Dante, The New Life (tr. D G Rosetti); reply/reader (as text): Gemino H Abad, “Jeepney”, Dom Moraes, “Gondwana Rocks”, Jacques Brunschvig, “Skepticism”, in A Guide to Greek Thought: Major Figures and Trends (eds. Jacques Brunschvig and Geoffrey E R Lloyd, tr. under the direction of Catherine Porter), Rodney Koeneke, “”Neo Adapts Badly”; singing/sound byte: Robert Grenier, “B Boom”, Jacques Derrida, in Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation With Jacques Derrida (ed. John Caputo); insist/introit: Ron Silliman, “Afterword”, Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents; proclaim/plunder: Ayukawa Nobuo, “In a Dilapidated House” (trs. Leza Lowitz and Shogu Oketani), Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition (trs. Howard V Hong and Edna H Hong), Joan Rothfuss, Escape Artist”, in 2000 BC; scoff/substitution: Ron Silliman, Tjanting, Elaine Scarry, Dreaming by the Book; watched/weaving: James Sherry, “In Case”, Benedetta Craveri, The Age of Conversation (tr. Teresa Waugh); singing/syllepsis: Abbas Beydoun, “White Lie” (tr. Fady Joudah), Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Rodrigo Toscano, “Notes on the Great Strike of ‘97”; risked/ready-made: Michael Brownstein, “Paris Visitation”, James Elkins, Pictures & Tears; hedged/helix: Bruce Andrews, ”Funnels In”, Jacques Derrida, “Ulysses Gramophone”, in Acts of Literature (ed. Derek Attridge); muster/mashal: Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, “One more say”, as quoted by Nathalie Handal, Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Brian Kim Stefans, “Blabbermouth Night”; hear/hypogram: John Ashbery, “These Lacustrine Cities”, Kelly Oliver, in The Portable Kristeva (ed. Oliver); lost/laïs: Michael Palmer, “Echo (a commentary)”, IDavid Bromige, “My Poetry”, Lisa Gabrielle Mark, “The Binding Factor: The Maternal Gaze of Marlene Dumas”, in Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave (“organized by” Cornelia Butler); unfurled/Ursprache: Kedernath Singh, “An Argument About Horses” (tr. Vinay Dharwadker), Bruce Chatwin, as quoted in James Meyer, “Hodgkin’s Body”, in Howard Hodgkin (ed. Nicholas Serota), Rodney Koeneke, “Evil Dummy” (actually one page from that gematrically called for); rise/rupture: Diane Ward, “Approximately”, Lorand Hegyi, “The Possibility of Emotional Painting: Sean Scully’s Hidden Narrative”, in Sean Scully: A Retrospective; betray/boredom: Susan Howe, “P Inman, Platin”, Howe quoting Inman, Eduardo Paolozzi, as quoted in Brandon Taylor, Collage: The Making of Modern Art; unfurling/utterance: Monzer Masri, “A Dusty Skull” (tr. by the author), Walid Bitar, “A Moral Climate”, Bruce Conner (title of a work, 1966); changed/cipher: Dennis Phillips, Means, Atlas Press advertisement on last page of Oulipo Compendium (eds. Harry Matthews and Alastair Brotchie)]
