Prediction: The Cold Stone In The Chest

My Beloved -Her Name Harvester- announced that she was leaving with a voice only slightly more dedicated than it was to breath.

My Beloved -Her Name Kerf Straightener-was cutting cucumbers for a salad, and continued without the slightest recognition to the weight of what she had just uttered.
My Beloved -Her Name Weather Vane- knew the power of her words but had been moved beyond concern for the damage that they may cause.

I threw myself at her feet. I stare at her toes; there I could see in her posture that this had been something fully decided.
My Beloved -Her Name Severence Package- had already banished me from her heart and I would no longer be recognized there.

I felt dragged between two powerful beasts, the neglect of one and the extortion of the other.
I want this all noted for the record, though I make no excuses for my behavior. This happened.

Work Horse

I own you because I have to.
I am not self-sufficient.

When I tried to be poor, I was thrown gold;
When I kept the gold, I was called a wastrel;
When I gave it back, I was shunned for my ingratitude.
And you tried to please me, but I will never be pleased.

We are simpatico; We both know futility.

We made the land work, but neglected the niceties.
Those who have done the reverse dislike us.

We dislike ourselves for the work seems like grief.
And what is work anyway but a turgid mirror
whose revelations quiver in recalculation:

We are something today; we are nothing today.
We are something today; we are nothing tomorrow.

With Certain Blue Crystallizations

The night is of the color
Of a woman's arm
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals himself.
A pool shines ,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.

I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way the ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.

When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of the gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not Far off.

Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the dromes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.

I Can't Be More Clumsy With My Inferences.

Longing Of The Wayward Cloud

Sometimes it's the heat and the humidity.

The Beloved Infidel (C-Up v.1)

Of course all of life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside- the ones you remember and blame things onand, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once.

There is another sort of blow that comes from within- that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.

The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick- the second kind of happens almost without your knowing but is realized suddenly indeed.
- Admiral Fitzwallace (Trimalchio, O' say can you see, Uncle Francis Scott Key?)

-these photos have all been used before- REHASH -death of the thinking bone, but we still love you Pat Hobby

Snakes and Snails et al

I wasn't born of a whistle
Or milked from a thistle at twilight

No, I was all horns and thorns
Sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright
So enough of this terror we deserve to know light

And grow evermore lighter and lighter
You would have seen me through
But I could not undo that desire

-this disembodied voice on the line is high pitched and ... fey.

Molded And Cast Aside

"This diagnosis carried an emotional tone that could not be parried. The world as a chorus now rejected all that I knew to be myself, for now there was clinical justification for this calculated and aggressive elimination of self-as-social-being."*
" And this chorus was not just a selection of my (recently) former intimates and friends; it was the world of birds and pine trees, the world of canned pineapple and fluorescent lights.
The world of tea and coffee and polite conversation. "*

"The diagnosis was the porthole to the world of the nameless, and the abstract class of 'human-being-as-object.' "*

[*a Werther's Candy 'Original']
"On an ordinary day
a child's bright laughter fills the air
one loving word
one loving glance
there's sunshine everywhere
Your Werther's are his Werther's too
So glistening, with its golden glow
So sweet and creamy, it tastes so good
You're so alike the two of you.
Werther's and that feeling
That you never will forget
When one who loves you says to you
You're someone very special too."
(Werther's sorrows are His sorrows too-?)

Alas, Poor (Parson) Yorick!

I hath been framed

And it is the walls that I speak to. Yet when they answer I begin to take note of thine own voice and in it harkens the sound of...treachery!

Post-it Cliche

It is a sad state of affairs when even my cliches are cliche.

The term cliche originated with the movable type printing presses; the idea of hammering out an image or phrase repeatedly.

The French call snapshots cliches. This began in a sort of derisive manner; insinuating that posed photographs were overwrought, hackneyed, and disingenuous.

I am lost as to who needs to be striking that "right note," I am not sure what is expected of me. I am not even sure if you are catching all the subtle clues left here.

Fluttering Dangled Modifiers

I never thought you threatened me-
I've seen a sparrow alone.

It's a bird that nests in many places,
so it's never far from home.

I find comfort when the world's amiss,
So take this as your cue.
I'm whistling into a great abyss
...but have I frightened you?

Eternal Recurrence- Again

How goofy and horrible is life. Just
look into the faces of the lovers
as they near their drastic destinations,
the horses lathered and fagged.

Just
look at them handling the vase
priced beyond the rational beneath
the sign stating the store's breakage
policy, and what is the rational but
a thing we must always break? I am not
the only one composed of fractious murmurs.

From the point of view of the clouds,
it is all inevitable and dispersed—
they vanish over the lands to reconstitute
over the seas, themselves again
but no longer themselves, what they wanted
they no longer want, daylight fidgets
across the frothy waves.

Most days
you can't even rub a piece of charcoal
across paper laid on some rough wood
without a lion appearing, a fish's umbrella
skeleton. Once we believe it told us
something of ourselves. Once we even believed
in the diagnostic powers of ants.

Upon
the eyelids of the touched and suffering,
they'd exchange their secretive packets
like notes folded smaller than chemicals
the dancers pass while dancing with another.
A quadrille. They told us nearly nothing
which may have been enough now that we know
so much more.

From the point of view
of the ant, the entire planet is a dream
quivering beneath an eyelid and who's to say
the planet isn't. From the point of view
of the sufferer, it seems everything will
be taken from us except the sensation
of being crawled over.

I believe everything
will be taken from us. Then given back
when it's no longer what we want. We
are clouds, and terrible things happen
in clouds.

The wolf's mouth is full
of strawberries, the morning's a phantom
hum of glories.

Subject/Object Deathmatch- Chapter: Prologue

The gaze does not belong to the subject but, rather, the object.


"I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there. A window for instance, if it gets a bit dark, and if I have possible reason for thinking that there may be someone behind it, is straight-away a gaze."
-JL(GazeMaster)

When viewed, the act of viewing changes the actions of the subject being observed.
-see- (Nathaniel) Hawthorne Effect [or Reflexivity]

But is there any gaze at the non-existant?
The Subject as the Platonic/Symbolic Object for political concern.