Hum (6 page)

but the roads are cool

proceed

      from what speaks to what is   the homily endorsed   and heat

and the also lost injunction to protest

on the day reserved for protests, yesterday,

in the thrall of June

when we waited for the call,

words easily assayed in the forgiven, by way

of local trade:
I love you, I love you too

as if this were a fact with the consequences of fact

where one might quote Arendt, her dissertation on Augustine,

By desiring and depending on things ‘outside myself,’ that is, on the very

                                                
things I am

not, I lose the unity that holds me together by virtue of which I can say ‘I am.’

Or one of the texts garnered from the ancients,

something from Thomas, the disciple whose gospel was lost,

who wanted to put his finger in the Wound, who

pulled the beam from water.

Jesus said: If you bring forth that which is within yourselves,

That which you have will save you.

If you do not have that within yourselves,

That which you do not have within you will kill you.

When I was young I began to draw.

This was after the incomprehensible occurred.

A drawing of a creature with enflamed wings. I believed it could fly.

Pulled    against a gaudy
predicament    gaudy
  a lance or trap

“predicament” as was being said before the talk after the ease coming up against this

maw of shine, abundant also in a direction

where you could say form is what repeats itself

or what inhabits the sign of its meaning

predictable, yes, the graveyard only a stone’s throw from my throat

glad to be smiled upon even by those

A doll, let’s say again a doll, dressed in her conceit dress,

flounced, elaborately tied, buttons, bows,

tiny underthings, smalls and smaller smalls, white socks,

black shoes with laces. It

does not age, it fades, molds, rips in the ways that beset things.

Is this a lyric? Can you tell me if this is a lyric?

It is about a doll, which is a thing and also an image, one

kind of thing image. Anyway, there is a doll.

A “female,” or else a cross-dresser, doubtful, but

an interesting idea for an image.

You would have to lift up her petticoats.

Is this the same doll? Is it archival?

Is it part of a collection, people have collections of dolls,

they are serial doll lovers.

I have had many dolls, and many lovers.

Does this make me a lyric poet?

Am I singing now, the way the doll might have sung

something from “Guys and Dolls,” a musical,

in which there were lyrics I once knew by heart.

If I know things by heart, does this make me a lyric poet?

If I substitute the word “God” for doll, does that make me a religious poet?

“They are serial God lovers.”

“I have had many gods, and many lovers.”

“Something from Guys and Gods, a musical.”

“Am I singing now, the way God might have sung?”

In this substitution, a gull flies out,

and it cries real tears. Does this make me a nature poet,

a metaphysical poet? A god is an intellectual thing.

Trickily absorbed into ekphrastic juvenalia

shot from the hip. Think I’ll listen to Emmy Lou

before the fervor of the andante.

Shostakovich, plural and harmonic

but repeated over there, in the mud

with young boys and their tools, their faces

sweating with boundary.

Old goat’s lust for the worldly arena.

A woman of emendation, a man of domestic glass

came to speak to us before our trip,

upbraid our vague dilemmas

and such quotidian enunciations as the Dow

beyond what we might have witnessed

in the early homespun riot

before the colossal carried us off into infrastructure

inverting the usual designation of

girl-boy trials—she

tracks the insignia of thought, thinks the bleachers

will hold, he would open each flower, blossom

in the appellant of a kindly disciple: Moses, one shoe off,

rises to the tinsel bush. She is

recursive, belonging to an addition, like a

good logic, marries Mayakovsky to the sublime

as she submits her laws to our court.

His entreaty to come through the kitchen door

rivals concordance, and so

they agree:
trot trot trot
to a different beat.

Curtailed argument for small    alert

less than alert    contaminated

thought contrived instances of good

the good night captured

illegally captured  drawn smoke

without looking up smoke rises through slots

drastic in the slotted spoon or held

Annunciation’s drastic fidelity

still following as faithful thought

hurt its lungs, slept.

Such incipience must conjure new ordeals

ordeals specific to this

this being troubled by sanction

so that the sanctions come from above

as if rain, from above but superimposed.

The superior army imposed

the prohibited calm

those who erase the calm rims of Enlightenment

those who spend secular gold, light

those who omit light

his mother in shawls

father in custody

the family custodian arranged chronologically

without deviation   children     first second third

trays of numbered slaughter.

X

(   ) settles in

mirage person go! go!

be punctuated be

adroit

    (    ) settles

dead one dead three

thou sand thou one  in the desert

hi!

   (     ) settles

why these should be removed

and these later

this plus this

you have too many in your program

you have too many (     ) in your (    ).

and the exception to this rule is? And this object?

We recommend you

furnish (    ) with another

and that you buy only what is

transparent to the

the eye.

Is the eye a good judge?

Y

Knot.

Aha, a little

jokey pun.

Jokes are a good thing

under conditions of the non-joke.

To untie the knot.

Now?

The heart is

awakened by a small

mis-

take or de-

lay or am-

big-

u-

ity. Do you want to save

the ex-

changes you made

to X?

Z

Let’s do the numbers!

“Care, community, comfort”

Dollar value?

Wrong letter, wrong (       ).

Offshore dummy corporations,

ancient, ex-

patriot,

ex-

change rates, moving

with cash, suspicion,

American practice.

Paradise.

cf Milton
PL
Book IV

Satan

Hell himself.

Gates?

Brand name angels.

Everything fell.

Z-1

But not in love.

This is the post-temporal, post-serial, post-

A B Cs. Meeters & greeters

not allowed to cross (    ).

Z-2

Some kind of rent relief.

No one thinks that will happen this year.

Music.

Z-3

Good Investment:

Bed, Bath, and (   ).

Z-4

Announce personal  hymn

to make a chapel

against wholesale (        )

devolution

            (         )

               
A cigarette burning down at high speed

But there are X thousand people inside that cigarette.

“Well what’s it like?”

“Children.” (       )

                        retail or retell

Z-5

More or

less.

Z-6

The ancient came with me it was nothing I loved him

4.2 miles a brief stretch in the car he could not speak.

Votes destined to again unearth

mirth in the fabric of the morsel. Please do not underline

design my speechless-

ness, not while I am still

ill in the cave’s

nave, resisting normal urges

purges to get on with things

cling. I doubt

out of time

lines, despite the impromptu gathering with ripe pears and cheese

ease. I imagine the clocks

rock, that the remainder is still

drill sweltering, water arcing

larking across the twilight

blight, the tourists

forest’s crumbled immensity

density. Things continue to be planned ahead

dread but I no longer want to risk the materials, and so have taken

mistaken, fumbling, hoping for tact

fact to be productive, if not the detachment and humor we have come

dumb to expect.

“Awash” in the inscrutable palette of roses

roses unscented in the few

new perfection. Music rides

hides against honky-tonk beer

cheer. The moon

soon half full, never half empty. The second hand

lands outside the circle and

demand threatens to usurp the young road rats on the bus

us, all our distractions seem arbitrarily chosen like a form

norm of nostalgia in an indigo drawing: Whistler’s fog. The heart’s

art, caged in its gauze, making a poor sound. Gears slip and now

Dow it seems is being held up by so

low many cheats, instantly assembled, not one exactly like another,

others interchangeable. If a part hissed

mist, then it was hissing for good. Were we dangling, inevitably a delay

fade. Not anything I want, since delay’s advent

meant sorrow. In truth, I have left, so

go little by little, it seems as if

life is a refutation. There is no one to comment or to abjure,

lure the little enlightened spots, herds

not words exactly, but what refuses to be underlined or condensed. One

sun steals the day, this for

more examples, the fog and the police car

star sitting above the browning grass and thought

wrought under the table. The cat is not dead but her eyes now wide

died with wonder. I think it must be wonder.

Everything quiet now in the zone

clone of retrieval. Through casts of zeal

real life narrows as a pipe carrying gray water to the zero gauge

age of reproduction in its video mirror

error’s blind truce among those who still matter

latter loved, without courage, traced

faced with the fools of redemption who came easily out of the widow

ditto the indictment, ditto the harms

farms and the industrial park

dark collapse. Call this our time

I’m lonely for the integrity of sacred life, not religion, but love’s

troves, its coil around sex

text comes after an ordeal of risk, the way we went back

lack or crisis because we had neglected the loom

room I suppose, even as the inventions are all for a violent solution

revolution, quiet as a street at dawn, in a city, a city so sadly

badly used.

And then these attenuated thistles.

Spoken from the sink, from the adamant.

There is no room, no

more room. Stuffed to the brink.

Object dispersed, whole into—

agitated, fielded. Throw us a flake.

Up to here. Up to the

mouth’s bright contrast, its

sponsored aggressive silence, held

by interlocking dots.

Chapel among the drawings.

Trees up to their boughs in snow.

Or this brim, above the giddy mechanics

of instruments, their oiled

dissonant animation, the clock,

men with their staples

behind sliding doors in white hats,

the copper clad wall.

Taking these in

toward hibernating sorrow

things having been seen, persons

having drifted from view

pink repercussions of the metal,

a jacket, a cup.