#364 Variante de la Tristesse

Chaotic day-
dreams. Entropic
nightmares. She left &

went uptown. The bus
was full of particulate
matter in which she

recognized fragments
of her own amino
acid chain.

#363 The Voice of Space

Not how I would have
preferred to spend
my time. But when The
World asks you to
take a turn around
the lawn after lunch
how can you turn
the invitation down.
Forwent the siesta ex-
pecting insight &
the exposition of an
ideal set of corporate
goals. Instead subjected
to an egotistical list
of mergers, takeovers,
strategic alliances, &
plays that have no
other purpose than
an exercise of
personal power. So sad
to find The World is
just another business
that is run by men.

#362 The Bathers

Elsewhere it was the
Weimar Republic, where
elephants paraded & a
Zeppelin as likely as
a stork to go flying over-
head. We would go
bathing, away from the
municipal pools where
the Nazis were starting
to set up their "swimming
clubs." Found them dis-
tasteful. More to our
liking the outdoor lidos
like the Strandbad Wannsee
where we could go naked
& nobody minded. Which
is where Leni Riefenstahl
saw us, saw in us the pro-
totype of what she could
flesh out when the time
was right. Calisthenetics
as political exemplar of
the purity of the race. Of
which we unwitting, un-
aware. Later ashamed.

#361 Le Musée du Roi

The man is the night-
light left on to make the
dark seem less fright-
ening. He is outlining
a way through or, may-
be, a way out. All it
takes is an oversized
horse's bell; is used as
balance, needs a granite
block wall to rest upon.

*

The hills stretch away
in rows, into the blue,
each row a different
degree of darkness, on
one of which, neither
fore- nor background,
sits a chateau. It is the
only man-made thing
contained within the
Museum of the King —
though doubt has been
cast upon the pro-
venance of the nose.

#360 Collage (1966) (1)

hand / men / curtain


one of the best
hairstyles a man
could sew by hand
was a hypocrite of
great proportions


curtain / sphere / sea


embellish your window
treatments with a clown
fish & a sea anemone, or a
symbiotically bound glass
collection from west elm


men / sea / sphere


Nine geometricall exercises,
for young sea-men, &
others that are studious. I
knew it behoved me to
drop at once. Far below me.


sphere / hand / sea


keep starboard (green)
NGOs are acting as subjects
of a global institutional culture
the dino sphere is the novelty
bio-kit of the future

#359 Le Coeur du Monde

Five Four
unicorns. One
died in the
making of
this piece
of the poem.

*

Later he read
to her. She
listened
in braille. A
unicorn caught
its horn in
the holes
on the page
& broke its
neck trying
to get free.

*

No primer, so
eventually
the beta
carotene bled
through the
whitewash. Nothing
so sad as a
donkey with
a carrot on its
head at a 75º
angle while
its dick
hangs limp.

*

One
unicorn left.
One unique horn.

*

In & of it-
self unaugmented; but
the box it comes
in is quite decorative.
&, anyway, there is
always something
striking about
a dead unicorn.

#358 Oasis

The stillness of death
ranges over this vast
plain. I am at a cross-
road in my contiguous
physical map; any
therapy seems only
to have adverse effects.

The shape of the time
interval is less recogniz-
able, imposes limitations
on the raster & vector
datasets already open for
business just across the
street from the condo

development. 95% of
all cats will become
ecstatically attached to
any thing hollow or over-
hanging. Whole kernel
corn right out of the
can is a treat for catfish.

#357 L'Écuyère

                                    There's a nursery rhyme I part
                         remember. Something about
                              riding a cock-horse to Banbury
                Cross, to see a fine lady upon
                                        a white horse. Perhaps that's
                                  what's happening here. The 
                        young girl, now dismounted 
                                     from her mother's knee, has
                              turned her back on the white 
                                     horse & the lady in — though 
                     clothed — Godiva pose. Is per-
                                  haps contemplating the cubism
                             of the tombstone that her body
                               has become, the tumbled straight-
                                       edged landscape, the upright
                         dwellings, the church beyond. 
                                 Is that Banbury Cross? she may 
                                          be wondering. Which way is the
                                    lady facing as she rides along?

#356 (Untitled Collage, c. 1926)

Eyeballs drone across the
sky at regular intervals.
Occasionally they fall. Still
see nothing. Or, if they do,
it does not register. The

bird on wings of song has
escaped its cage, lies flat
upon a table. A 1920s
flapper thinks the cage is
an apartment block, looks

for an empty one to live in.
The sky is a sandy shade
of ambergris. It may not be a
bird. Whales swim by. They
sing. In an unknown register.

#355 The Song of the Sirens

I am waiting for the Prince
of Ithica to pass by. My

weapons for the skirmish are
lined up behind me. A glass

of water to wet the throat
should stronger singing

be required. The candle is a
lighthouse in reverse, as an

attraction not a warning. A
leaf to augment the wreath.

The stone wall to keep me up-
right when he embraces me.

#354 The Silvered Chasm

           The e-library                 charges
       me $42 for                    a 24 hour
          pass to access          any
          single steam           punk
       novel. They                  do not
      usually take                       me
          long to read;                       but
        this one has                       a serious
     tension to it,                           that boils
   its way to eat                       my walls 
       away. It melts                        crowbars, has 
           peeled the eyes           from the jester 
    bilboquets & left             them pasted 
         to a nearby                        plinth. The now
       revealed bells                  ring out in 
           horror. I can                     not look 
         away. The                      steampunk novel 
     remains unfinished            reading. $42 
             PayPalled for                  another day.