rework 2

Morality's enlarged minds
have settled on a truth.

I would like to extract from it
gender, but it has spider-tendrils.

Also, I think need has no place
in truth, but that may be because

truth disgusts me a little bit.
I prefer urgency and fight

and roots down to far water--
the parched land splitting

into fissures as it attempts to
hold the the dry singular vision

the swollen have achieved con-
sensus on, in mutual smothering.

rework 1

The translations have ceased.
The first wave of contractions was followed
by a tightening of border security.

The general feeling was
a reverse of globalization to be
possible even preferable
to continued terrorisms
and also to sharing.

Those already in dispute over
territories were locked in a room with
a shovel or a match depending on custom.

Soon nation-states were again intact
but certain internal dialects made things
uneasy. An abolition of the spoken word
was followed directly by the written
and finally, acronym.

The linguistic armistice made every
communication face-to-face, a sort of
dance which led to problems
of form, type, and technique.

We were told to stop moving
to avoid altercations already physical
in nature. It took great practice and
restraint, but in our voluntary catatonia
we have found a kind of harmony: that of
stone withdrawal, that of monument.

We stand where we once
lived, outside war.

from TOOT (65)

ever doubled
a bond, or again, very
within the abstract.

a particular arose--
be God, theory--
ask wholly all

interconnected: form

from I (65)

India, diagonally.
Munich interested.
No one were Hirsch.
Without bangs, an eternity--
another negative of Berlin:
a rare number, my bid, an obituary.
Deceased whom?

from POP (65)

an interior hybrid
inserted in the subject

perceived first by categories
of meaningful geometrical contents

human only locally
on principle

avoid, seek, upsurge:
a world not of its making

from AVOTROW (65)

With great pleasure I have long

affection leads me earnestly

to morality, the enlarged minds

between the sexes ha[ve] been extracted

together with duplicity in civil, sinister

finesse that injures the substance

by hunting modesty grossly

in women. Observe.

from AROOO (65)

Translations have ceased.

The talking, the solid fact

--scribblings.

If I were the Wars, then it matters her

folios tamed the solitary master-

piece experience upon

the grave. Done. Bell.

16 seconds (after Andrea Miller's Chanson de Roland)

Out of darkness, procession.
One is pulled backward
by her foot—spun.
She looks to her hands, she looks
in the dark, to the audience (always
witness to her/my/our confusion) back to
dark. She drums
drums and reaches to a voice, far off.
Her testimony wrenched
backward, spirals into a crossed
seating. Prim, minced steps
and suddenly she is sprawled forward
face to ground and scrambling
backwards (again, backwards) until
she plants her knee and turns to look
not with eyes, no, but with sternum
--that splay--
up. And the light.

4.20.9

from tofinity (65)


in the absolute--
the already-by-origin--

flow

does not suffice

or else the knower
betraying
would command

it

only manifests

it

4.18.9

Prayer as tinker toy, with the sticks
and honeycombs. I don't manage.

The world opens in one day and boy
is that exhausting, the way there's

sun suddenly and smells: the pear trees near
Ridge with their low-tide semen breath.

You could stay up just to make the weather
last, you could stay up writing. But the pull

of moving curtains in a dark bedroom
is as strong as the strong tea you'd

have to brew. Jesus, where did your life
move to? Florence probably, without you.

You like where you are, partly because of
the decay, the sofas dying along the train

tracks, the entrenchment, murals, onions
mustard and the rivers almost as old as

Belgian block. Just as peppery as always
the spring and still, you can't pray.

Tree took the train to her studio. She couldn't stop thinking about Chip's odd call. She looked at the people on the train. Most of the time she didn't. Look at people. Most people were clothed in verts--it was safer in the city to be covered. Many wore big glasses--verts on the outside, personal computers facing them. But today Tree looked at people. She did what she could to imagine their naked bodies beneath clothes, unclouded faces underneath hair and behind vert. There was a small woman across from her with blue hair. On purpose blue, not old lady blue. The woman's lips were chapped. Tree watched her lick them twice and wipe her nose on her glove, an ivory leathery one, possibly antique: it had no digitals. Tree thought the woman to be about thirty, with a frail, pale skeletal body. Perhaps with freckles across her chest--she had that type of coloring. Tree couldn't decide whether her thinness was hunger or fashion. But it mattered, and she tried to scrutinize the question. The woman coughed and Tree wondered, Disease?

It was more difficult to see the person beneath than she remembered. In the slumurbs when she was little, people had worn less. An apron with a vert perhaps, or on an overcoat. But more and brighter verts meant poorer--so the scrappers in the slumurbs tried to keep it subtle, tried to hide their reliance. In the city--though--standards were different: reversed in that way that indicates a rebellious attitude combined with the complete lack of power and will to change anything. Everyone embraced the verts. Everyone on public transport anyway. The people with enough money to use the skyway--she never saw them. When she sold an erasure to a rich client, if she got to meet him or her (sometimes they wanted this), they'd have verts on their clothing. But Tree imagined, as with their homes and with her art, that if they wanted to--they had enough money to make things blanker.

When the train pulled up to her stop, she stood to get out and the blue-haired woman stood with her. They walked out of the train together, and for the first time in a very long time, Tree felt someone's presence beside her own. She liked the sensation, also she was pained by it.

buffalo, burbled god in a dress
home angry peeps thought dew you wed?
want? construed? traipse? fort?
viva? slick? never? t'ain't?

nigh on yawn? no--course not.
--and then?

4.14.9

as the world vaults and
inches toward failure

i realize i understand
imprisoned
more than i understand war

i don't understand war
at all i can't live inside
war outside it not
the same way i

live

a half-life in a basement
or can imagine that

my possible horrors
limited by smaller
horrors I've known

held

the issue is how to get
more room on the down
and the inside more

bedspace for feeling
and the children begotten
of feeling

4.13&14.9

pomology

macintosh sloshers say it’s wet out there
willow weeples sit me down upon the bank and cover me
extravagala offer hors d’oeuvres
first edition apples are signed in wound
empires and my relation to them are troubled
basketed apples are wasted by the bushel
fallen and rotting, red and yellow, forgotten and sleepy
snow white’s got lodged in her throat, when the prince
came to kiss her—what worms
delicious ones, teeth catching skin
ground apples
granny smith—bitter and like it
jonesing-for is better than keeping-up-with
apples on the brain invite arrows
apple only—the label on bathroom doors in the tree lounge
big: doesn’t even look like an apple
bright: why polish apples until like wax? o shiny shiny
firm sweet juicy young, apple body
tome, a book about all apples, an obsessive
an apple for me is not an apple for you
encyclopedic apples, belabored
apples for hire, assassination apples, apples on the half-shell
whether gunning for apples or dunking, a bullet hole means a bad apple
apple-a-day is a preventative or a brainwash or one trochee one iamb
nightreds—apples eaten at three a.m., in preparation for the strike at dawn
blushes and albino apples fail to exist
eve’s and others’—apples to be sucked off the navel like tequila
except redder, redder

4.12.9

I see her muscled move, I see others
She muscles through others' moves
She is not music she

is a diversion of moments from which
taut lines of movement are drawn
drawing, waiting, hating
maybe praying

I cannot choose to erase others
and watching her I do not
wish really to undraw
the others, threads
somehow--of she

4.11.9

a monstrous burrowing
into a child's head

the black-red blackguard
legs working behind
its tight mouth

relinquishing not its giant
prey, the tick resigns

itself to death
by eyebrow tweezer

she pops the blooded
beast whose head is still
now, inside her child's

who knew hate could latch
onto so small a life? she did

she knew she could
hate, even, she knew
she could something just

in its struggled living

4.10.9

I touch the spot
darker red on dark red
I touch the wet spot

My aunt would tell you
it's noon somewhere. I sing
out but songs sap sorrow.

I collect all dark
saying in a bucket. Words
for broken, for sewage.

Yesterday our pot had
a chicken in it because
chicken was dripping and cheap.

Do you remember the book
about turtles with pictures
of ancient, superfluous skin?

I don't think this pen
is going to work anymore,
at least not for me.

When you leave the laboratory
at three-thirty and drive
backwards through gloom--why do you?

I have a cyst, I have
bible-wrist and someone
with have to thump me.

Tomorrow the name of the new
game will neither be salvation
nor poetry. Maybe vegetables.

4.9.9

she is universal in her behemoths
unpleasant in her afterthought
forthright in conundrum
artful in her apostasies
gargantuan in her panty gruel
playful in her puppets
persuasive when she should be placating
knowledgeable when knowledge is debatable

she is to be commended for her spoons
A- in her cups
she is decadent and forming
flayed and painfilled as a jelly doughnut
she'll make you sugar
then ask for pleats
but she's always a numinous being

4.7.9

I bray
donkey-woman wronged
you think I'm an ass
but just I'm
kicking

4.6.9

to kiss: mutual cannibalism
to walk: an addiction to falling
to speak: the chronic inability to dance
to have intercourse: greed
to dream: an addiction to flying
to write poems: avoidance of sense
to dance: temporary flight
to fly: dream without technology
to text: limited discourse
to make love: to engage in euphemism
to be: or onanism
to believe: or both

4.5.9

All my fetal birds
are muppets.

All my muffins feed
on blurbs

All my blurrings near
are tuppence

Tuppence for the birds

All my hope is
quasi-human

All my quotes are
pope's and girls

All my girly wisdom's
hopped up

Hopped-up quasi-modal pearls

4.4.9

Description: to draw lines
in the sand. Someone now registers
as closer to the tide. In famine.

4.3.9

to teach is a talon turned
inward to pluck
the string to grow that one's nest
and up its nestlings

my own is bare inside

this odd egg which rathers
empty to quaking--fears
the purple knot's squirt

ink through translucence

better I weed my viscera, out
it, than throb its vision into
the big-bruise blind of
all my fetal birds

4.2.9

White, cool walls
hurt and soothe, what
lies is white--

Worn as I am, out
within four walls which
is enough, I am

propped up by these right
angles, bright angels'
warnings--a fornicating

near the ceiling.
Reeling from light, I try
to hide me but they

flaunt their bodiless
knot in lullaby--naughty
naught--they taunt-tease

and scorn in skin-envy
the way I will not, hidden in hands
ever get my body at God

4.1.9

In the poetry room

eye may vivisect eye

scoop flesh from prior to lens

unlace vein


eye may not may

not disarticulate mine

and you are mine


I have locked this door

against you a decade

lain against you

for a decade our skins

breathe against intact

one another, sheers


windowless poetry room

sharps are too many and pretty

wires dead cells phones files

here I cannot protect

eye instrument

interrogative of decades


If I let you enter it is

to ophelia you into a woman

who would have me if

I only decided how cruel

and stopped cutting


then


the flowers but if I have you

here to excavate ethics

are unnecessary extravagant

in the face of

your face which is caves


In this room I can't help but

begin have begun, eye dug

eye pickaxe eye shovel

salt water I am well up to

my knees already exploring your

pled-dark your muffled

song