Where
to
stumbl? Where’s the little opaque gate
letting
in
the
beneficence
of the imp and the ossibl?
The naked radios …\\
… the involuntary nervous system. Did a nude dance with his
tongue
protruding. Let
the epiphenomena try
to
tell their
tale. Always – that
attraction
I attach
the word love
to.
And Kenneth
Patchen came by
to
read with
a jazz combo.
Stand that side of the sundial, will ya?
I want to dig the [dying grass and the] shadows
the
Good true
& beautiful. “Bourgeois
copout[s].”
Strip the
blankets from his
wistful
limbs: the
columns of amethyst,
the
angels of
marble & wood,
the
hyenas at
daybreak. I is
a
comma. And us asking Are you coming or going. Through that thing. These mediocre shocks say Superstructure. Please introduce myself.....
.....Now an I, I locate myself in the alphabet. There's a kind of lemon taste.
But
the landscape
falls away before
us,
& the
literal fall of
this
hill may
draw some of
its
beauty from
the other terror
that
will not
so naturally find
a
form. Goodbye
Piccadilly, farewell hysteria,
everyone
was singing
the same song,
and
it wasn’t
in my dreams
where
I’ve been
seeing you. It’s
like
being told
I’m harboring a
fatal
disease, but
more so, much
and
yet not
at all.
ACK ACK
ACK
Tight Corners
Light &
dark
elves. Petrified. [Toast.] Poetry is the theory of heartbreak. That sentence can be rearranged so that its nouns are in any order of precedence, and still be true.
[If]
in
this world
there’s a secret
[how would I …?]
In
this world
there’s a secret.
Blot
any excess
with a towel.
Statues
& pictures
aren’t alive. A
horse
thinks with
its ears. The
wind
makes the
grass move. “It was very dark inside the fish.” “This is among the most poignant: thoughts I know.” The
Spacing indicates what
Gluing the units to be other units to which we glue
Light forces it.
The
plague had
been upon this
land
before he
arrived but he
had
to be
responsible. “we
have lost so
much”
Little lamb who made thee?
“Shit.” “Angels.” “Night sauce.”
(optional comma)
Down the steep steps he slipped with many abrasions, only to find the Club Serendipitée, where he caught some GREAT sounds
like say
Hello
I’m Thanatos (or Eros)
[Note: Sources: writings of David Bromige. & a few mostly bracketed interpolations & typos. A cento of sorts, interspersing bits from books in the library’s collection (taken in chronological order) (except P-E-A-C-E, which I felt I’d have had to quote in full) with bits found via his EPC site (taken in the order they’re listed), augmented with a bit from his memoir at Big Bridge, a bit gleaned from Charles Bernstein, and a bit from Golden Handcuffs Review. I didn’t know DB but he was always there, at least since my days at Black Sparrow (early-mid 70s). In memoriam. “The Spelling”, “Wrists”, “First”, “The Present”, in The Ends of the Earth; “& Moon”; “An Interlude”, “The Ends of the Earth”, in Threads, I think - forgot to write down the book title; “My Memoir”; “Fall (Rilke into Californian)”; “Letter”, “The Weather Man”, in Ten Years in the Making; “Are You Coming or Going Through That Thing?”; “Proofs”, in Birds of the West; “Coming Out of the Ether”; Piccolo Mondo (with George Bowering, Angela Bowering, Michael Matthews); “Tight Corners”, in Tight Corners & What’s Around Them; “Finding Spells & Blessings”, in Spells & Blessings; “In Place of a Preface”; “Seeing That You Asked”, “Our Tongues”, in My Poetry; “Ten Poems from As In T as in Tether” (“A Spell (11)”, “Midsommarsnatt: Time Out for The Authentic (7.5) ““They Gain Control of My Tongue (5)”); DB as quoted by Charles Bernstein, 3 Jun 09 (also the source of the bare witness); “Lest We Forget”; “An Excrescence”, “Soul Mates”, “Typicality Enthralls with its Particular Failures”, in Desire: Selected Poems 1963-1987; “Doubt not thy name is certainty”, “Eastward Ho! a succession”, “I.D.”, in The Harbormaster of Hong Kong; David Bromige and Richard Denner (w/a little help from W Blake …), Spade ; “85”]
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