DAILY GRADUAL

I prepare for a collage the same way that

I prepare for a day: searching for the

impossible conception, the way a husband

may tell his wife to cut off the fat.

She responds Stoically & abrubt:

"Perhaps if I cut off your testicles . . . "

—silence always occurs at this stage;

silence of the human slug. So to speak?

My collages are the gastronomy

of Genoa. I rip out the warm elegance

of a master bedroom, paste it to the

railroads that may go through the Pacific—

a future slum of glue; a dab here, a dab

there (I grin concentratedly like a child,

feeling daring, less impressed by

my helplessness) filtering through

the alternations between engaging tempos

of ephemera & breaking them free

from their hidden epithelium, neighborly

hecatontomes. I pause to consider.

I unpause to reconsider, the way that

New York City is never phased unless

terror strikes, & even by then the media

plays pantomime, plays out, files away.

In art, disregarding rules is like NWA

disregarding police, except without all of

the symbiotic rage. Chunky protein collage:

essence of Klimt, sloppy Joe, faint cracks

in the absolutes of a scholar's pale face;

holes in his eyes replaced with replicas

of vantage points. The world around him

falls in the night; hard-bitten, an abyss

of colorful strips of folded jar-flung regions.

What is this collage, these collages, but

fractured bits of composition within the sum

of cranking parts? I stare near-sightedly over

the results, put a close to the downrush

of wild energy, can hear the closed-off

howls of a new creation as I walk away

seeking dinner, the way youth vanishes.