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the close comfort of
migraines being lost then
found again the meaning
of discard
a crab without a
shell
not to take them to
heart such ideas
obsessed & possessed
him totally swallowed him whole like jonah
a seventh-day stupor
the sky scrupulously
opened & rolled back
a periodic dream of
memory
& the setting-out
to find his other
flesh of hallucinations
a stuffed monkey on
a pedestal with the gift of speech
something weighed in the
ear’s scale
something
mysterious & profound as
boredom
held to it through
thick & thin intransigent to the very end
a good place to
start laughing
now that he’s dead he
won’t lie down
the ironic grimace
to believe in darker
times than these
we’ll be spared at least
that
the sinuses breaking
down the little white pills smashed flat
a meat truck parked
below the window on the sidewalk
the smell of it
crates packed with offcuts waste product effluvia which also are the
facts of life
COUCOU
DUBUFFET
a cowslip, a crate,
a heap, a cuckoo. l’abus
d’alcool est dangereux
pour la santé. this should be
thoroughly obvious. the sky is a red & blue
monkey puzzle. a contusion
with paragraph
breaks. a brownstone, 12-tone
row. momentary
grief, nondescript. to shut up & live
in the present
temporary
form “where man’s
an inch high upside
down.” the too-
familiar orange night sky
with rained-on apartment
blocks. why believe
that one thing must
lead
inexorably to another, in
time or in
place? an invoice
for “services
rendered,” payable
within thirty years. do you realise just how improbable
you seem already? hurry up
nobody wants to solve you
anymore
lost objects. a bottle or a cylinder containing
“unknown
quantities.” could inanity
be only a kind of dis-
cipline? portraits of food stuffs. later the
sun
cracks open, the same
time
as enjoying
its content. can it be
fixed? “free association,” for
example, is no more
natural than
cutting up. the
interrogation room, with his
head the dunce
says no. words
regarded as facts, a child’s
balloon, a commotion in
the
belfry like cinched
testicles. credulity
is not our
marking the wind as it
counters
the tide. a violent quietude. it is the
shortest night of our ill-
founded love. a picture
held us captive, we could not
get outside it. into the
gap compartment. things acquired
in
desperation, like “need” “hapless”
“almost.” as now
under the
bridge. an omission. something
has been
shortened, is out of breath