For Immediate Release

Traveling into the past on the Internet

I see an old friend from forty years ago

Now dead five years. He hasn’t changed a bit.

Or listening to a tape there are lots of feathers

Another friend’s feathery voice

Stilled in a mix of blood and French gasoline.

Deserters both of them, one from Hitler’s army

The other from consensus reality:

“When he was good he was just mildly insane

When he was bad he was out of his mind”

& into another we could not know.

And this is one of those “long ago” poems.

They did give me courage: I still run

On some of their essence. They were fine deserteurs.

“On some of their ... “: “essence” in French -- gasoline;

“deserteurs” (Ft.) -- deserters.

What’s current? I mean misheard?

Currently misheard? Shelf dancing? Alpine badminton?

Now write a sampling on one leg

Of composed being with shaky eyelids

Who tells you “I am in the art, but molecular

Only by dint of a visiting pillow;

I am the author of Author.”

Now shall we agree, say I, before the bar is toothpicks

That poetry is a chicken in good mud-tennis weather?

Such tube-lit discourse. Ten dollars a waltz.

No tidy archery. So sell me that bumper, no, I meant

The mouse calliope, yes, that’s it! The ego

Seriously in tears at the holy beneath

Dangerous furry feelings -- beware the hole punch

Of darkness, shrunk from the world.

So. One mouse calliope, please.

from up there on the ridge

the successful manufacturer of vacuum cleaners

surveys the valley: ah, all those little lights -

each one of them a “home”

with at least one of his dear machines!

it is festive

it is the festival of Saint Retail

that ends every good U.S. American’s year -

martinis uber alles!

but bellicose poem no buy dinner

but the sea slug remembers everything, you hear?

It remembers Everything

“but the sea slug” - sea slugs have been immensely helpful to human memory

and dopamine receptor research.

all that fifties-style

wretchedly splendid

better living through chemistry

when people said things

like “haven’t I seen you somewhere before”

always worried about hitting exactly wrong note

hence tall strung-out conversations

with hypothetically beautiful persons

remember those? but now

I am pissed off at you old sport

even though you are dead

to my regret & possibly even yours

no longer hanging on to tatters of poetic mantle

or moth-eaten unacknowledged legislator’s wig

Now that was pretty simple-minded wasn’t it.

A dog barks in the dark. It’s simple-minded.

It probably belongs to some simple-minded person

who cannot understand what the dog wants. The dog wants

some simple-minded attention,

that’s all it wants. 2. ~~So softly stirs~~

3. So stubborn are the boots

walking an old man. His matter hesitates

where there are doors among the glaciers

furred with brine. O softly stirs, when he goes out,

the next door cat, pees on the holy book

under his pillow. So the old guy grits his teeth

and wishes for that song “She Is a Country Woman”

to call him back to the bars of?. Late Modernism?

Attempt the Latest

A false vase or flourishing

On the tilted

Economy without rungs

Forced tongue in a whisper

Or series of whispers

The thing now gone

Away by the permissive finery

Too heavy with plot or restriction

It’s all yours, mighty Rocko

Go hitch your station to some wagon

Or series of wagons

Latched to common punch

Where it gets classic, edgy

It will make you pink

I don’t necessarily need you to like it

I’ve changed my mind

You can if you want to

Too loose in the mercy

Of photographers by rain

As clouds sank

Compressed like foreign money

It did in fact

Revolve in a culvert

Of impeccable test patterns

Before the eyes averted

In a twirl or surfacing

Toward the conveyance of shadows

Dislodged by graphite tongues

The train fell off

An important rejoinder

In back of the apartment on the date that exploded

As lines which flagrantly

Are trashed

How about you?

I’ve bottomed

Out, only to reemerge in the rapid

Transition from springtime

To hardball

A stick-figure formality

Shattered like bricks

In sunlight, batting a thousand

Decoy

The story arced

Above its head

Who dared not look away

For all time, or in summer

Toward that which we increasingly could not expect

Velocity kept in a box

The story, by itself, was not explosive

Things trapped, in a mirror

What was your reaction

I could store

The trapped things a little

While

In the room before burning

& Sealing them

(Becoming more unglued)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, it is night

Something goes away

Carefully in the trap or middle

While I surmise my legacy

& The juices of some flowers

Captured as an insect

Grave upon the distortion of thought

Art imitates thought

You have no emotions but those onscreen

Unresolved in gesture

A tabletop, or what was still

Felt increasingly to correct the barriers

For what’s lived is still unseen

As some vital rearrangement

Or else by thought is stricken

Desires

In what was lived or settled

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The blue horizon develops the retinal image

Whispers ossify

Gather meaning

The turnpike bridge is closed since Tuesday

Everybody feeds

On them. You wouldn't want that information

Published

Meaning gather

Up the contents of your purse, & follow

In the old ways, what had been done

Before

Between acts & their ambitions (facts & their

Concurrencies)

The retinal image & the ravished boundary

No one

Would console them

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bashed in but not

Promulgated

By screed- arose, or rose in

Belligerant prose-

Belligerant like

Heaven

On ludes (alludes heaven’s levers’ connective

Phrasing), bent or shifted

Into the eddies, deafening

On the condition of splitting

Guaran-

teed as rope, though not delayed

For peeps, a thorough

Sutured

Tragically to come home

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Though yes dissolved in sparks

Hedonistically swiped

“The story arced

Above its head...”

Unimportantly, until the next skirmish

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This

Isn’t

It. How

Does

One do it-

Suppressed

Or leaning

Back

Against

A future is

Unoccupied

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rebegin. Set merge to

Null

Compliance. Gray as drifted

Scenery. Prod equivocal

To a lip sharpener

Replace music then when ordinary

Lift faxed eddy

Who what or where while screaming

The rapture was marginal

As a daybook slumber. Link again

Under provost steps

To a hatch, lulls secrete

Inter echo variety drill. Thus it reaps

In order to disconnect

A trinket on the

Post something heap lamp;

A tarmac to the stunner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This matter of

Against (she’s in

The lab, an array of

For the line, like

Her name’s mis-

spelled

On the cover, roof

Dins, I want

I want you to frame it

No, I can’t believe

Rushed against my startle

A great deal of time’s misspent

This is called history

Written though in fact

A curvature of hearsay (heresy)

My utopian rope

“I doubt it very much”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reptile. figurine. dust jacket. scare.

The great scare-city from which we (don’t) awake

The Screens

Fly, or were they complete in the assignments of launch with attacked participants? **Time out** I have doubt of form attack per night towards heaven. Or freeze as if the significant balance were falling asleep, fall or form with regular Disturb one moment of song be attack itself, be very balance but repeat in any event touch fashion. The night attack fraternizes a figure, a figure a going beyond be very differently. Catch up with in order to himself delay with space between an original and its shade- crenelations of houses, billboards fast with memory become more stable, "at least you can hide." Towards a figure, a figure, you can hide that in your gardener **time out** among the scenes of accidents remain calm. Or having a place set on the fire in addition to some screen- the matter touching them- there have in part to steal or place on fire in addition to some screen- the scene of positioning of buildings on the fire in addition to some screen- the interval, true like the setting in sheath or tactical While-You-Wait for, true, like the setting in sheath tactical (the going beyond the moment that your gardener, the deracinated gesture in the disturbance of the household form in the matter which touches them. Was there part to fly or form with regular (I doubted the matter which touches them) was there part to fly or was there in fallen sleep or was there just complete the assignments of launch with regular, disturbing balance. Or form with participants attacked or fraternized toward the question. I doubted the scene of the positioning of buildings on fire in addition to the screen; the scene of the shapes of households while waiting, true, like the setting out of tactical sheath night. I doubted the matter which touches them, in part right or early.

Because

because I have to put ice in my shoes

this is that future. this is that past. this is still only this

presence. always looking over the shoulder

because you do look different

the blank label already affixed. you can articulate the shadows

if you've forgotten the names things came with.

the words were still in the refrigerator

because the alarm sets itself to crazy hours

I am not given to sleep. now this instant is already

over. and my looseness

extravagance seeks out remnants as proof

of lucidity (a necessary misunderstanding)

because this is what wobbles

and I'm afraid of silence. crazy lumps of gravity

the details all occur. so delicate, unsure

It's all understated, understand
my heart may be short, but no one reminds me of it

the picnic's made and gone, transport it

orchestrate it (you can't help it either)

the gulf of it, parting: this dark is bad

call for it, the land of milk and yearning

(drag the river, dredge the shore

drink another dram - it's scenic

I'm only fooling my liver

when I fall on my face yet again)

it's just a mood, yes, a word

last year's expert who swindled us

all these years (later)

get your finger off my sweater

(all my scales are falling off

I can't hear myself in the spa)

see your cinders sitting there

scattered after the Vermeer

it works, hard though it may be:

a slow drunk on the upper bunk

(onward, feet first, scoot forward -

free canter, it's freer there)

closer to the border, greener

I'm almost sorry when it's over

with the backstreet yuppie

scrounging off of angels as we were

Nocturne

"I dream mostly about love"

but occasionally of raptors

and the distinct impression

of weightlessness

( )

This medicine is an emergency

the floorboards, next door, a comforting

debilitation the skin renews itself

the pipes whang an inert display

to immunize the self against its own memory

it's important to emphasize the positive

we no know where Osama bin Laden is

a kind of pinprick smiling at your face

I can't see in the dark

even the worn out bits

the maps and rivers on my eyelids as you speak

this refrain lasts forever

This emergency is a medicine

this is what emerges: defiant and strange

open-ended stuttering

where the button pops out

and the fabric pulls away

calling attention to secrecy

I warn you, as always, after the fact

Eye

is the field of it

the overarching that astonishes

the body with the shadow of a depth

or its simple migratory prism

the showing of the slow dust of

transfiguration

held to flame of air

to the wideness of river

the complex host

of separation and desire.

In the eye

the beam is a latticework

net of receptors

the distant made immediate

the near an intimate room

breath the issue of a touch

grazed by

the web of belonging

the fineness of the instant

that is also the longitude

of our desertion.

It is the myth of light

ascendant the crux

of jubilation that makes

possible a world and its forms

of speech the saying

of the obscure light

by which we love one

another through the reciprocal

modes of brilliance

and penumbra

signifying totality

the feeling of

crossing the street

at midnight the entrance

to the grove or sweep

of grass the sense of

being amid

in this blaze of care

where the iron world stuns

us poor along the axis

of diurnal bone.

Eye to eye

and speech from

speech rising

to the morning of the room

of the visible

a stone surrounded

by what halo

what shadow

even the unspecific bird

on its unruined winter branch

would drink from it

for light has turned it

to water

and water has knelt

before the eye

proclaiming the kingdom

of sight.

ii.

But who looks plummets to accord.

The inlet and perverse obligation of the Thing shining in its thingness and then.

The sense that we must persevere in our looking.

Staring stone-straight-to-sun and ardent with the hope of a greater burning.

That would lift or erase, sever or join, the totality of all possible perceptions.

Who we might become in the instant of the gaze and its consumption

its self-emptying gesture to the abyss of a single day that contains us and.

Boon of sundering.

The faraway is what exaggerates me.

Size of a rolling point of an object in space

because it surpasses me

blesses me.

Withdrawal of domain.

You claim the world as the very first

and are undone in the mode of

the body of another uninhabited

but for the liquidity of this exact

circumambient stammer and blush.

This preposterous wideness of O.

And who hovers

by the lamp of things

that maps the investiture of skin

the broken field of the sea

combustible everlasting iterations

put to sinew to flag of bone?

These are the things that are told

and told here again for the fold and fall of them

ever in the bright crease of words

spit split and gone.

iii.

And when I say that I see something at a distance

I mean the express size and approach

and I mean the rise of a greater convergence

and I mean the things of this world are braided with light

and falling and I mean

my body is broken open

and the stones and the stars are inside it.

Adorn

the drip of the body’s murmur

with the pulse of the turning soil.

Turn

on the ocular dais

all the spent -ologies of breathing.

This becomes us more than

we can guess to dream the beyond

and not parse but praise its utterance.

For the force of longing is exhausted against.

The body of light cast by the body of light.

The moment of grace that hangs from the tip of the lip

and enters the eye

and goes blind or deeper than

all the avatars of loss.

iv.

To the wavering tune

of the visible

the heart of the world

scatters in the prime

moment of its opening.

Soaring where I am touched and touching

this incomparable sonorous being

overwelling the order

of the seen

to repeat the interweaving circle

of vision, fission and return.

That there is vision.

That the eye is aperture and conduit.

That it sinks and is subsumed

in the flesh of the world the carnal

realm emitting photons before

a theater of clouds

the obscure lamp

doubling us in our beauty and decay.

Immense air alone burning

in its nothingness.

What holds us to horizon in the dream of being

able to go beyond.

Mourning for Palinurus, he said, we went down

to the city, cold air licking at our ankles

once again. The bourbon tasted funny, beer

left metal in our mouths. Hit the town.

Fast basketball on TV in the bars

bloody bodies from small wars,

or from the streets.

Burn their furniture for heat.

The men around were far away, might have been

shadows, might have come up here

through the wrong door

the edges of empire, or

with other surprises:

told us how he died,

lines of cancer already behind the eye,

fleshy tubes growing around the heart.

Slept. And then,

Mourning for Palinurus, we went down

I'm sure they're hatching mysterious things

on days like this, the streets

cloudy and bright at the same

time, it's part of the mystery.

There, all is order,

pleasure and tranquility

but here women striding about their business

They have not come from the ends of the world for

you, they couldn't care less.

Celebrate emptiness

Its corollary, the perfection of desire

What are you doing with the mourning dead

they won't even help you in the cemetery

they are absent

what are you going to do with them

with the mourning dead

Speak gently to the mournful dead

their silence is not enough

their murmuring

everything has been taken from them

iii.

Walking around with the unmourned dead

bloated with mourning fluids

With the unmourned dead

he did a lot of drinking

The unmourned dead

lay with him in sleep

Be gentle with the unmourned dead

Listen to them, listen to them all day

The mourning dead walked with him in the street

the sound of their mourning moved through his life in silence

or white noise, their keening filled the room

like tinnitus, a sound you learn to live with

The sound of their mourning moved through the house

The unmelodious dead

croaking at him

in the morning, the evening

the croaking dead

What are you doing with the mourning dead

vi.

They all crowd round me on the avenue

they pull at my lapels, their faces

thrusting into mine

others push me from behind

The aggressive dead crawl into my bed at night

they want to know

The evening dead came out to

	For Immediate Release guest-edited by Patrick Pritchett
Volume II, Number 4 April 1, 2002