Laura Mullen
the dream of loosening
the relationship to things already said well-founded phrases on which I am
dependent floating quoted in or out of context seemingly complete my friends loosening
the relationship I wandered lonely as my friends countrymen ladies and germs
colorless green theories of leisure lending your tears to this pure failure of
barriers pouring over and under the system listen in the words give me your
tired and poor discovered discoveries unearthed to be announced as buried gems
and stratagems of verse or vice versa beat beat little birdless wings sign in
the air for an ardent gaze at a page gone somewhere loosen the drummed-in dream
of freedom not to repeat in my countryÕs only language loose memory of day
shifts risk until at last IÕm only pretending IÕm pretending itÕs all me others
structures finished off give a certain polish to my rough phrases for true or
to prove something move us echoing as they do some Edenic instance of perfect
understanding citizens hacking your way out through the attics antic remember
every thing no longer to be referred to as refugees O you euphemisms come with
me kinship and legitimacy you know you know the story why donÕt you sign
something a little action in the ether these agreed upon markings make us aware
of a disturbance in the mirror-like surface in order to remind us that we do
and do not step into the same water or better little bits of proscenium
appeared as we spoke here and there or rather staged our culture our shared
affair tortured into the area of interest or rather the expected answer the
dream of loosening the relationship to identity as architecture nothing but guy
wires reverent reference less whatÕs said than who said it first the production
of papers placed onstage as adored stiff and awkward in her borrowed robes the
producerÕs whore a sore subject bored by these fragments I have shored against
some fear mine or yours or letÕs say ours that is a fear I think itÕs safe to
say we share or in the immortal words of the immortal board of supervisors of
the immortal army corps of engineers copter in some lengthy self-important
throat clearing here let me make one thing perfectly far a slit bit of undoing
in the either or lightens the load of a white permissions hunter mission
accomplished a flicker of victory fingers lifted over the head oh no those
scare quotes note a distance from the doxaÕs noxious matter got by rote and to
the letter in anotherÕs patter for another hypocrite lecture neither are those
flowing words my own nor is this weather
Of clouds. Of the
possibility of saying something about them, of finding something to say. A
shing. Of the need to say or the desire. Of the need for a description to match
the thing described, overlay or exchange in motion, sportscaster style: now,
now, now. Endless necessity of finding the words new words for exactly that
shade and shape of nervous anger, that deflection of interest which,
increasing, allows one to walk out I speak of his face now, nothing there, Ōnot
a cloud in the sky,Ķ unless you count that vague high haze of brightness both
of us trying to be in fact properly interested always the possibility of clouds
anyway. Endless attempt to find the words for what, the nothing there always
there, no disaster, just a failure to be there for each other, to be there.
Self-doubt mirrored, the endless advice which was all it seemed sometimes we
had to offer and always the damped down but barely chilled frustration with
that advice so it was as if we were always in some low grade secret almost
struggle saying change, change, change, and why canÕt you and you donÕt and you
never muted accusations anyway heard and thank you for the advice I know youÕd
like me to be happy because then IÕd be nicer maybe. Endlessness of distrust
having decided not to be fully honest, each word, each tiny movement, taking us
further off course into someplace strange and stiff and silent itÕs going to be
a lot harder to get back from if you can ever get back what does it matter you
start to feel youÕve forgotten how to talk, to think, to hope, what holds this
together anyway, nothing, only the endlessness of further transformation in
fact breaking up vanishing slowly ragged edges fraying out