“An alien in jeans sold by a promise before Levis.”
What of construction the line becomes if not the real of stories,
what other realities can we structure, what other measures
through what other coils, what other face,
what other other. No such thought as knowing
over the curved space of stone, no such thought as end,
but what thinking can’t know if Kid can’t know
he thinks thinking with no knowing no knowing of presents,
no knowing of gifted now givens by alien unknowns.
I don’t even know if they’re sneakers or shoes, or shneakers
or snews, says Kid, or why days flipping out into numbering.
Meta moments, referring to yourself your whole
self and nothing but yourself. Sure, but even the stone’s stony
becoming, and Kid went out for pizza,
came back with a cold and some Zima. It’s like popping
a balloon, says Kid, in reference to the hungers.
In reference to the others, to look up, to look up at a star
but look over, as in check, as in the fiction
Kid writes to entities, an alien in jeans
sold by a promise before Levis. He hasn’t looked
a tree in days, the sticker said hemp let it grow,
and the clock’s confused. What matters the plotless,
which he guesses everysomething, prone to a synchronic city.
Prone. Get up and get your work on, go home
to idiot box and dream, the American dream,
when next to wake up to a, as A is for Alarm.
• • •
“No next just happens. Impossible.”
He can’t decide on a side, for if there is no outside
then there is no inside. Choice a thunk, a Platonic baby
in the tub. That hole to peak through,
say a bucket, say junk it and restart the machine.
The story is of breathing, pollen and letters,
shapes of bees, an abyss behind a shadow hand cast.
A die. A table of bets. When in doubt, flip
to feel what you feel. Among the agencies the machine calls,
blinking workforces, campers wired happy.
The company will tell you about you. Kid’s hungry
but he can’t figure next, needing in his canary cage,
as yet another whole. No next just happens.
Impossible. No perceptible luck but a scratch.
The cat dragging herself in, mewling, a catalyst
in foyer limbo harping detuned. All these blank-headed horns,
feedback confessions, ciphers of brightly
chirps, the sounding meshes quickening
quibble squalor, somewhere a humanoid engine
knocking on doors in searches for pacts
with that Jesus from Topeka. Kid lights another, slow
toward a rush. Oxidation not an option.
Possessed by possessions he hasn’t to the mystery of real life
a clue, and there are dishes he had to have come to.
Awake, dinner by satellite. Channel of history,
your own privation screenings. The green lights of bombs.
When in doubt, flip to what you feel to feel. Something
in the void. An empty structure.
• • •
“Sound imperatively arrives.”
Once in the story you can’t get out. At least that’s mesh theory
or time to riff punk through an autonomous night,
darkness with its own laws, an agglutination
of ciphers say cell messages. To save or to delete,
that is the question, that is the question of rhythm and of cycle,
the repetitions never but danse-paysage, O Blaise,
the light wasn’t on before remember, says Kid,
that’s why the moth seems new. The clicking the clicking
clicked to him, mandibles scraping, beetle
with the mod cut got to him. Got to. Sound imperatively arrives.
And Kid figures quanta a manna, tequila a Shiva,
and bed the home of a roam. And always an entering,
waving lengths in figuring figures of figuring figures of measure.
But why there can be for to slow, as how here can is be,
but to feel at great rates say discount the numbers,
cheaply sounds chaotic aortic goes will go go.
Something’s wrong, says Kid, I’m giddy without payday
and there’s nowhere to do. Say yes to space,
as in amplitude, the distance between
if you move or you’re moved. What’s a brink’s a brink,
says Lilah, a limit that makes the more
beautiful question everysomething, the whole void and nothing
but the void the matter, fragments floating
in heating and hearting, thou art hearing ear here,
you know, a particle trying for light a speed.
I like the folds, says Kid, I like the folds over till, speaking
besetting jazzmen at keys, jasmine tang of happenings.
Sitting up with the lights. An instrument not
the hanged man strung up like out.