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.

bARb

Techno-Impressionism or 17th-century motets—
where O where is
Barbra, O Châteaux,
Streisand?
Barbra
Streisand
is all over the place, even though she is no where.
While other actors & actresses are kicking out the
jams, I am wondering why others are not embracing
anarchy in this great mysterious
Streisand
cutting-edge ponderment. Imagine seeing
Barbra's
youthful face while one day eating a peanut butter
& jelly sandwich. Neil Diamonds in the gut.

(My father once said that
he would only prepare
one sandwich for me in my
entire lifetime & that afterwards
I must prepare my own.
Everytime that I prepare
my own sandwich, I think of him
while thinking of how
my grandfather, to this day,
still asks me if I would like a sandwich—
he leaves it sitting in the refridgerator
for me, wrapped in a newly-fresh
plastic sandwich bag.)

Imagine time-lapse imagery of a middle-aged
B.S.
while she writes saucy letters to you & later
gives you a stunning topaz to swoon upon.
Imagine seeing
Barbra Streisand's
face on your neighbor's flower pot or perhaps
her face in your window at night, & then lightning
flashes in the background creating a halo around
her head, in which she "mouths" the following words:

"Hunger is a monster,
disregarding every law, it can make
a cannibal out of the flower
of our highest civilization,
& neither Jay nor Crow
nor human creature is to be
punished for what they are driven to
by starvation."*

Somehow you are able to decipher
what she has said. You had been
starving, had been reading a book
about birds, had been thinking about
how uncertainties are more raw
than a wind-worn ground-growth
or pinkish-winded mouth, as dry
as stale biscuits.

____________________________________________________________________

* from What Birds Have Done With Me by Victor Kutchin.

The clouds are living, like the onward

Rush of all things. I pay attention.
The only stars this night
Are street lamps. I am here
(perhaps with you) exploring Idea,
Exploring & finding the chord-y chorus
Of Language (it is mounted for
The sole purpose of being disembodied
With no obstacles & no conceptions)
As if all words were lying back-up
In a field, like the death of Robert Walser
Whose familiar Spirit creates
Snow angels in that same gaping spot.