Interogation


Interogation.3

I.
How many sets of dusty books do we have to dust
Off to get at
The whole picture—all at once—
Large, perfect, far, as well as detailed, segmented, close
Hot?

How much quiet is there to be measured
against the protestations of the shit-storm?
            Like, not to castrate them, dirty-apple cheeked
Angels, no—but can we discover exactly
How many hill-people die rock-unlifted by the
Human hand of the mainstream/media/society?

Why do I feel it is my duty to ‘discover’
                                    the ‘secrets’ of these ‘books’?


Here is the secret: this city situation
Abuts the extremes, so to see
The brokedown baglady pour water
On her stuffed-full-of-shit plastic bags,
--To wash them—
            Makes me feel very my my relative class
            As—well as what it is—
            Even my hair feels like class, as it swoops down my brow.


II.
Indirectly, we’ve come to one of the major components
One of the basal ingredients underlying the foundation,
‘like unpressed pulp to the dusty books”—

Indifference. Indifference 
lies in these lines.

The writer thinks and writes about ‘the poor’ and about class all day,
But despite reaching chilling conclusions, does not move to challenge—
Only really wants to keep on getting stoned at night, and then life’s alright—
So? That’s how indifferent indifference is: even when I care I don’t
Do anything. It doesn’t bode well.

What does though, these days?


III.
Inadvertently, we’ve come
To a basic factor in the personal calculus of ‘the writer’:

The connection/separation between ‘the world’
Created by their writing,

And the ‘larger’ outside/social world in which they live…

So? Well, ok. Just saying.
To write draws in and destroys the world.

Making ‘a world’ on paper. The paper world mirrors,
Mocks, cat-calls, questions the world ‘outside.

We are perilously close to a whirl-pool scenario
With this type of relationship. So many
Writers are drowned. They just don’t know.
Oh, they know. They know. They. Know.

Interrogation pt.2


This piece, a companion to Interrogation, was compiled using a method I quite like, whereby a previous work has chunks of text (no longer than a line) randomly moved around and mixed up, over and over. After the blending, harsh edits are made, and a pared-down, 'new' poem emerges. Previous Butchered Switch poems employing this method include H O W L and Mynifesto. Enjoy!


Interrogation II


Here is how the world ends,
everything  speaks:
The deform tree,
the angels,
that secret  home.

The touch burns our focus
wavers.
Taste that man-specter
whom defect works to speak to.

But where’s the home?
Maybe in ‘stone.’
A personal rune:
the stone wafts poetry.

Error my poetry.
Tree: the empty form.

Revolve upon us
Tree,
we keep sucking.

N T B T


At what point does jump that won’t end become flying?

Point of light / order playfully settles on the shoulder of the day

an action of rising: the day assures itself by sketching

on a page in the book of days: an artists graph-- 

Not To Be Trusted. Well, certain avenues of clearance are open.



Riding the bus of a morning with a dogged feeling,

of a sentiment not yet conveyed to myself the best of abilities.

Sitting forward quietly watching insurance ad copy swim

into focus on those banners they drape in the buses in now—

“A busted pipe in 4A can turn into a flooded ceiling in 3A.”

The unavoidable idea that in the city you begin

to see: ‘Mayhem,’
            advanced peopling--horizontal, vertical, motorized--
            makes it impossible to foresee all the shit that can drop on you
            through no fault of your own, save proximity.

Then the radio cuts in with
“due to the president’s visit traffic patterns will be spontaneously
adjusted and road’s blocked off throughout the day.”

And I just start.



Trafficking in the gentler mayhems.

Being in the bus, being a boy, submits

to the vast wash of

the heart at the heart of the crocus—the roots, the weather

the vital bus—
          ascending and descending
               uptown and downtown
                    all at one and the same time.

My sweatpants are whistling.

The bus is filling.

Today all the people are real

Interrogation 1

I have no tradition

I feel lonely
          I must build and rebuild

my personal everyday
          but the continuity is not here simply quite simply


this personal devolving 
            conscious: lingering

doubt: What do I want?
           As a hetero-white American man without defect, I don’t think 

I’m supposed to even ask. I have
          everything I have.

Right but maybe
          maybe you’ll say I shouldn’t feel guilty

Or maybe you’ll think ill of me for being self-pitying.
          What are you talking about? 

What is the underlying organization?
           That specter

That personal
           expansion that comes with music: poignancy

The central message that appears and fades is stronger unnamed.


The individual plays in a small black room inside a large white space

We reform and deform and the angels and
            the chariots and the empty form 

revolve invisibly about and impose themselves upon us

and we keep sucking this bottle keep trying to get laid
            and the band plays the music and the smell wafts

and there is a lonely reference of the past
            poet riding his horse backwards into the brambles

and the speed increases and everything runs better with grease.





Hello I’m speaking. 
            Not the poet but his work. This

accretion of script that doesn’t really cut it.
           Cut it up put it back together

go on saying this trying to get to some next level, not beyond, simply next,


 Here is how the world ends,
           everything we want but no notion of why or underlying system.




Maybe there is no better way
          beyond the ‘stone’ of a referent

a personal rune: the shaking,
          soft stone rising out of the loam

spitting secretions and
          desecrations with no mind but such force

the hot stone to the touch burns
           our focus wavers but the stone remains