Torsade Literary Space 
These poems are based on five groupings of eight, beginning with Robert J. Lifton’s principles of thought reform, as identified with despots and cult movements: milieu control, mystical manipulation, demand for purity, cult of confession, “sacred science”, loading of language, doctrine over person, and the dispensing with of existence. Next will be eight tactics of subversive propaganda: interrupt target’s work, create false urgency, denigrate all achievements, shift goalposts, abnormalize the normal, sow paranoia (attribute setbacks to “someone doing it”), withhold information, generate enemy relationships. Third, heading back uphill, the Bushido warrior’s eight virtues: righteousness, heroic courage, benevolence, respect, honesty, honor, duty, self-control. Fourth, Aquinas’s preferred form of logical determination, the disputatio legitima: question, answer, thesis, agreement, refutation, argument, suggested proof, final resolution. Fifth, a story told in chess pieces, King, Queen, respective bishops, knights, and rooks. And last, the noble eightfold path of Buddhism: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
Thought Reform
Milieu
Mystical
Purity
Confession
Sacred Science
Loaded Language
Doctrine
The Dispensing
(Jump to Propaganda)
Milieu
You like and you don’t like
Thin chances but first to subtract aplomb
A fellow’s duty done
Subtract an unobstructed view and brace
Like Dr. Bellows dressed
In oilskins, your slumbering other self
Can’t help but help
Be national interviewee miked and lensed
Smooth criminal’s aileron roll on hurricane winds
A sly, ingenious, patron-gifted, faux autistic
Foe lays a cunning trap, strikes a deceitful pose
Craft, as the fang of a cat, fatuously arrayed
To tempt
Or not
Or so you think
Or so time says you nay
Five points to the order blank, pole star
No, you’re not meant to like it
Though Orion’s dog might have scented it
All that money changing hands
Top cats get cash, you, football, get
Your kicks, riches of embarrassment, but
Coy you, the way you wear your hat
The way you eat your crow
The bird’s eye’s heartless assessing
Ceiling-mirrored show
Why, you, it was you, your face said that
Mystical
A tribute to your thoughts
Brother Nostrazerof**k
The gift of seeing first is yours
That tweet you called it
Months ago when others snored
Coincidence is the crossing
Of a tool’s path with the genius
Groove laid down by his new master
You wake in the mornings
Tapped on the chest by your guardian angel’s rummaging
Drawers in a multi-bayed Garage Mahal
Where shiny Craftsman tiers on wheels
So red and bright as to raise the spirit
Of William Carlos Williams
Depend on that
All alike, old human lives and their paraphernalia
New inventory to purgatory’s clearinghouse
Comes continual
Here’s yours
Of silvery screws, a few, dropped in a jar
Dropped a-purpose, little seer, they clink out one by one
A Tropicana
Flying Down to Old Havana
marimba tune
Dink dink…dinka dinka dinka dink…dink dink
You wake in the mornings
You carry awareness of great things
You find an ankh and wear it
A Cherokee bear tattoo it
A Nepalese mandala
A Celtic maze
Peramble it
Amulet of moonstone
Yinning you to fearful excess
Balance this with dreams of rockets
Purity
Can you be more use to the world?
Wend into your twilight and return your minerals
The tab-man counts the unatoned dollar
Spent to see firsthand
A grateful Europe wrought upon by science
You accept that power seeks its balance
That men of vision won all this for you
You accept your low-tier back-queue status
Accept the cracking altarpiece’s wrapping
The satin bow with its pronging pin
The blue planet in an Easter basket
Handed across for you to look at and then
removed
Fingered-over public items interfere with the IV tube
You accept the origin myth is altered
You accept it is not god
It is the father
You accept that sacrifice is virtue
You accept you are an earthly angel
For sacrificing more than had belonged to you
To be not at fault for anything
All fault be named and numbered by the visionary men
To be not at fault for anything
Occultist warnings jesting late
Flitter down reshuffling files, stories’ dates
To be not at fault for anything
Halt the growth inside the brain
To be…why did you come here…why at all?
Not at fault.
Confession
You want to resist
Oh yes. You resist the teaching, you do.
Hadn’t they insisted at the little meeting
Hadn’t they insisted…?
(Oh, but I think you know what I mean)
Hadn’t they shared with you, trusted you
Been kind to you, for joining us may be your redemption
And yet, it won’t.
Because you won’t be redeemed.
Your head seems lowered and your eyes shifting
You were asked a question and your leader, sadly
Smiles. He would be happy if recruits
Could be trusted. But they can’t.
Can’t yet. Can’t advance yet.
His fatherly love is not bandied
It is a thing hard won
When you came in, your gait…
Your walk seemed reluctant, your sitting in your chair
Attitudinous, disappointing, heavy
You made noise
You do not sit erect and answer with alacrity
You hide your stubborn worldliness
Thou hast not put this sin away from thee
It may be you don’t really belong
Worse, you are dishonest all along
The leader murmurs, I suppose
…been that one’s purpose.
It grieves the leader, speaking louder, turning to them all again
Grieves him, but he admits, sometimes, yes, the envious…
Sometimes, yes, we find mere hirelings
Of the enemy, infiltrators
He glances left and right
His two lieutenants nod
Sometimes, yes, betrayers…
But the loyal, after all
I don’t blame them. They feel strongly
Now, do you love me? No, you don’t
And here I’ve come to speak to you myself
Sacred Science
The Light is the Light
It is thus, New Ones, young Flowers of the Sun
The This
The Instrument of Inner Tunefulness
Our Helmsman, He our Earth-Names denote
Father-Sage
He Whom the Light Awakened
Is the Helmsman Whom the Light Awakened
As the Ultra of the Nebula Pulsahria
Ordained
And the Teachings that to him were given
Are the Teachings that to him were given
And the Empty who were called to follow
Are the Empty who were called to follow
Now be filled
Kernel-Stars of the Ultra, question nothing
The Lesser, who are falsely filled
Are falsely filled with Love of Earthly Lucre
Keeping ties with lying counsellors
Earth-Bound counsellors who shall not be taken up
On that Day of Great Return
Why (answer this, if you’ve a heart to)
Should lovers, friends, or parents care so much?
Dear Children
Perhaps it is not you, it is your money
But the Helmsman has thought of this
In his nightly Emanations he has not summoned these
Father-Sage, Replenisher, the Helmsman knows
That Which the Helmsman Knows
And knew, when first he sensed your Being
The Atomenes in their billion millennia of Ages
Gain passage through the Flesh of their Former Selves
And when the Light journeys here at last
To Herald the rebuilding of the City
By their faith shall The Tuneful be new-made
Loaded Language
The housing of Dillard’s vital organs
A compress wrapped to resist untightening
Larded arteries under dress clothes
Slick heels on his buckled shoes
Cocked in a goatskin executive chair
His limbs clench at the camera’s disclosure
Despite he kicks in feeling rancor
He shoots from the situation room table
Remounts his seat in a sluice of warning wind
His black socks pillow
Despite he puts his ankles up
A button just above his belt is off
But Dillard’s Self in its flesh-bound husk
lives entrepreneurial
A loveable fraud like the peddler of Oz
If worse, he never seemed so
His actual wife, thinks of telling this
to the press
Thinks of appearing on a game show
Kernel Junior, dough-faced, pimples bright as tumors
thinks of killing
Dillard, their Helmsman, gears to speak
Strangers aggress themselves climbing the compound gate
The monitor Dillard watches on, cathode ray
He believes it, no one can hack these things
Feels smugly retrogressive as to technology
From other cameras, chaotic scenes
Sewing machines unused, uniforms half-crafted
Dishes in the sink draw flies
Khaki-sack-clad men and women
Oily-haired, shamed about the eyes
Weep boarding vans and give their names
“Let the unworthy leave us…the jealous…”
And he adds, a new address, “My Beloved”
“Let the losers,” he says, “flee to the arms of their
Lying exploiters”
He falls silent and Junior takes the microphone
Doctrine
They said there was a sage and revered man
Who for his vows spoke never, but did chant
The psalms, his mien aloft of earthly cares
And soul among the blessed…this was known
A bird of fields, he, counted it a break with God
A deeper thing than ordinary sin
To have taken thought for his next meal
When in the villages illness came or famine
Ah, then did they beseech his prayers and oft
Were there any crust of bread to share
Bade him be sated, his sainted lips, their cup
A living mystic’s relic borne in awe
To the sick-bed, whence his miracles gained fame
They said his arm-bone measured a golden mean
That, for the sake of sanctity, it came to be
That of the abbey dedicated to his name
Each block was hewn, fit flush to this same length
They said that war, when veiled anciennes
Alone still told the ordered words of orison
And fasted Wednesdays, lest the deity forsake them
War machines, made by men whose gods were other men
Had crushed and set aflame the charted layerings
It was no more the faithful had been asked
Than trust of Will, in webs of the Divine
This math, of a greater power’s design
In symmetry and intricate
Bloom on bloom
Feather on feather
Wave on wave
All puzzle-cut in plainest sight before our eyes
The hermit’s holy measure moved to garden walls
And street pavers
The Dispensing
Is the person, as such, pleasing
In ways, does the person please, and in ways offend
If the good were scissored free from, we will say, four inferior samplings
Sleeve, bodice, skirt, stitched, with a neat, tooth-to-tooth intermeshing
Of their pinked edging
We should be left to ask, part two, whom does this garment fit
Need it fit?
If so, we do not wish the person to be other than he is
We might pick out the seams, remake him, retaining the idea of the person, but altering
the perception of the idea
He is not to be made out of whole cloth, styled sufficient in autonomy to maintain
unpredictability, as threat or bringer of fortune
Oftentimes, a Tom, a Dick, a Harry
Dressed in anecdote, a player fabricated to beguile
But the mannequin is like a man, he serves, in that he moves and speaks
He speaks, sketched in with crabbing fingers pinched
He moves, made to do right at key points, the audience
Marionette Tom or Dick is elsewise of no use
That he lived contents us
A certificate of birth and a likeness
One or two remembered acts predictive
And if the story is of victory
And if the story is of failure
Let the story be the one at first, and then the other
And when the strawman falls from favor
We may dig from his file a daughter
Propaganda
Interrupting
Urgency
Oh, You Did That?
Lines Attached
Abnormalizing
Picking Brains
Withholding
Enemies
(Jump to The Bushido Warrior’s Creed)
Interrupting
Bright comes the sun o’er prospects verdant
Bright comes the upglow of new-booted screen
Bright the blue ink on fresh-peeled Post-it
Bright the gay tinkle of first text received
Here is a pincer move to keep the target tautened
The dandiest thing in banquet platters, name-tagged, yours
Heaped with meats and glistening sauces
Heaped with southern layered biscuits
Pies that steam out pumpkin spices
Only you had better get that
No, rather not, sign a petition
Well, yes, one cares about the subject…
Just, though…in point of fact…
In the room behind, the feast puffs out its little heat
But of course…can’t commit
under pressure
And in the interim, someone has taken it away
It takes some brooding on…but to feel bumpered
Plenished with that sense of not going it alone
Say hey gang to a few non-friends, vent via bad day emoji and meme
Check again
Next you find yourself in Dutch
(And mental note: Can one still say so?)
Failed at reading the urgent email
Is a filter’s sensitivity anyone’s fault?
Algorithms seem to go by their own seditious thought
By afternoon, fancies of spring weather
Living in a camper-trailer
Funding findings on the road, of kitsch and retro
Learning to penguin-walk backwards interviewing Self
Who knew there was a museum dedicated to the witching ball
Or this place, the birthplace of the inventor
Of miniature golf
Urgency
Being on a holiday maker’s tramline
That rendezvous with Moment
Or the narrow, might be boulder-strewn
Road that hugs the mountainside
Just past the curve, or here. Where you are marooned.
Warning signs say warning signs say
ROCK FALLS
Rock falls…it won’t help knowing
You hardly know how to do the brake thing
But then, for the going up, where traffic’s crawl has slugged itself
Wholly into stasis, it seems your fate again, stuck in a gear
You doubt you’ll have the crucial hang of changing
Momentum meant a lot, and you’ve lost it
Still you have the vista
Diagonal below, through the side glass like a TV show
Depending those worse off ones
Bad luck’s baubles on a string
They weren’t expecting this no escape scenario
If the serial killer is a pot-shotter as well
Bored with easy pickings car by car
Or, if rock falls, why not cyclones roar
Is that shine on distant clouds the end of day
Or deathly cataclysm’s roll?
But relief at the hotel
A brief scurrying in with bags
Majesty and awesomeness, why does nature importune thus?
Sitting in a restaurant with a window view
Lasering sun finds every mole in bas relief
Maybe this the terror your mind should focus on
Next year perhaps no further of this travel
Think of how they’ll fire you before the tests come back
Was your see you Monday taken with a smirk?
Oh, You Did That?
(Denigrate All Achievements)
Feathering yourself as a useful magpie
Quick and quicker your knack to apply that eye
Does a trained birdbrain need a pat on the head
Flies know a trick too
Everything carrion to them banquet once to you
And it is the spoilment we speak of
Never mind the worthy principle
That we don’t thank people for doing their jobs
We don’t belittle the dignity of labor
Suggest the worker’s state disgraces her
She only petitions the bossman with favors
And so we break a little bit
Your psyche aches to leave its seat
She strives for you, you claim an upper hand
that isn’t yours
Not your cog (ig) nition
spins the globe
Sputtering a bluish smoke
You dive…you right yourself with a master crafter’s
mind, set assuming your printout diploma
crony-minted by your school of Fair Chances
Lets you arbitrate the lesser birds’ adaptations
A hummingbird…why pretty why beloved?
(Why dainty and protected…why fed and not expected
to bear loads?)
A crow that counts and uses tools
A blue jay hustling up some action, a stork
That corners the baby-making racket
A flock of pigeons’ modern take on public statues
A cardinal who for his wife’s dull coat
Cites religious exception
A sparrow identical in markings to his mate
Lines Attached
(Shift Goalposts)
Bulletin: All leaves are cancelled
Spring clamped tighter in a chamber locked
For the next release ASAP
The initiative going forward hews to
Lines attached can safely pull it down
A limited set of data, determined by newer measurements
taken in recent months
Bulletin: Everyone is to develop a skill
An empty mall with a chance of housing
When called upon be ready to deploy
Undam the superheroesque chest swelling
Ignore the menu printed on the 31st
Stand by to learn where A-F, G-L, M-R, S-Z
Are scheduled to rehearse
Bulletin: All individuals must pass a fitness test
Those most apt for throwing tantrums tapped
To siphon trusted capital, “up here”
And demonstrate their competence at math
Suited best to punch the card in protest
Conversances in languages desired but not
Designated disqualifying for combat
Bulletin: At checkpoints find the highway closed
Carry in your lap safe conducts references
On request, old shackle-mates who vouch
if not found out
People you count among your happier successes
Yours now to prove their testimony germane
There is at the beginning, starting
Abnormalizing
Should Dr. Comus mount to the podium
Begged before he dies, of a valediction, lightning-bolted by the gaze
When freed as angels his victims anneal him
And words break out, in patterns of revealing
His ilk, his false-named friends, a younger colleague
A theoretician, but a go-getter, they turn them out
that way, it’s admirable, the zestiness, of the United States
different kinds of cutters
shape the dough into different cookies
sleighs and stockings
bump-edged rounds
featureless limb-splayed men
Dragée smiles onto them, the wiser sort of guys
Who won’t be taken in, now prove that you are not a skull
wearing the healthy skin
of a human being prove you aren’t a radio receiver
Tuning voices from Pacific atolls atomized
Cries for answering cries, in still, early hours
Stating facts the stating of makes injured of
Secreted persons laying vials on slabs of white Formica
Let us choose for you your prize, absolution of the sin of pride
By a Calvinistic bent, it is your destiny to help
hidden even to yourself
Symptoms you display, thinking thoughts unbridled
And if the subject thought the thoughts we think
There would be no God
Everything is somewhat true, around the backside
of the globe, under knittings of squat palms
clumps of grass that bouclé steppe lands
Data of sequestered realms, sequestered truths all lock
their knucklebones together, fencing off
Grim Gordian knotters
Everything
Somewhat
True
Is it necessary to break the house
Life, you say and say, is mission
The old men linger, radiating their weak charisma
Picking Brains
[sowing paranoia]
Why are you here?
The silence extends. Though silence, in interview
via teletype is contempt, confusion, thoughtfulness
Thoughts of…what’s it mean, why really am I?
How do I work this thing, is it some kind of setup
Equipment breakdown, line traffic, any of those
What is your name?
I don’t believe they haven’t told you
This is an exercise, and so the rules are somewhat different
Uh huh, picking brains, what they said
That’s a good thing, helpful to you
Now consideration needed on this end
Sarcasm best answered straight-faced
In every case
Yes, you are being helpful, do you know
what you have been hospitalized for
to protect me from killers
Who are these killers
I would take care of that if I knew
What then
Excuse?
What then tells you that they are killers
as opposed to ordinary people
I am always told who I ought to look out for
You have a friend who tells you this
The killers tell me, I can read their thoughts
Silence again. A number of approaches possible
As, the doctor types, you read these words now
on paper? I mean, as though they were
No. It is a sort of cloud above their head.
And there are no written words
The words are read to me
By a friend
By God
But, none of that really answers my question
I don’t, in fact, know your name. Will you tell?
Len.
Are you a man or woman seems not apropos
The doctor has been taught a number of notions
Taken for soundness in that era
For female hormonal states, in the young
In the menopausal
His ingrained assumption being female paranoia
Has such causes, or for those never married
Or childless, an ill-defined and vaguely Freudian
Theory of incompleteness
Withholding
What is the act of picturing, given in imperative
What is useless while pitiless while infectious
Or the opposite of good
What is the consequence of forked currents and
stoppered things uncapped
What is the doghead to the loud man’s fingersnap
What is the faith that errand runners get their tips
What errand runners seeming to have laid their prints
In fossilized depressions rites of a commonplace bent
What roaring, jawing, neck-worrying, but shining, ringing
Space-dominating, figure gains the adoring eye
What office, being held confers a means of making
Questioning a crime
What is the leaky sack of borrowed time
Swung careless shedding Things to Do Together
What is beyond excuse a case of poor prioritizing
What is a case beyond excuse of poverty in listening
Of scavenger hunting in neighbors’ houses envying
Tags unclipped from middle-class possessions
What is the patient teacher of the slowest learner
What currency in flowering reduplication
Floats every boat and never cheapens
What parting of fingers squeezing dimes what stress
The argument is never yours to win
What, again the sack, the mind unshelved and dusted off
Spoken, prepared at least for speaking, the long promised
Coming of age story for elderly juniors not yet grown
What is the merry hornet’s nest prodding of the otherwise
Disabled as to right-things-being-done
What shame if the one in command
Is boringly expected to give orders
The Death List shared with charity workers
What is this shrugging accidents will happen
What needing what is wanted now and other people
Are not me and I get nothing from a book of fetishes
What is the defendant’s plea
Only countersuits and fresh venues
Enemies
The way I fall in step is oldest news
But don’t ask me, the goods I got, it’s on authority
I could quote you the bible…or, how bout?
Tell you this, a little fairy story
I know you’re after sympathy, they all are
But listen to me
You don’t have to be so low on the totem pole
Come on…I’m not too close? You don’t mind a little friendly
Touch…? Enemies. Okay…yeah.
Don’t rush me. What you wanna know?
Never mind, I’m telling you.
It’s how the troublemaker gets in the door
They say you don’t smile and be friendly
You make your little jokes, the way for some folks
Life’s a struggle, wouldn’t occur to you
Absolutely. No, am I on their side? You got it right
They don’t do anything but envy you
They try to make it all your fault
They’re cleaning up your messes in the background
I never said you could fix anything, you probably can’t
But, see, that’s the game, that’s the setup
But meanwhile, you should be a little grateful
No, you’re right, you got it, there’s no reward for trying to help
I have three enemies to clue you, and then I’ll mosey
She is, you know, her, lucky
Lucky people get more than they ought
You wanna say there’s only so much to go around
So if you don’t got yours, who does? Fill in the blanks
Now, look out for the guy who needs a favor up front
You wanna be second banana all your life, agree to that
So third one makes you think you got a problem
Shoots a look at you when you’re doing nothing
You feel cheated and mad at all your friends when he walks away
Oh, and, that’s all. See ya later.
The Bushido Warrior’s Creed
Righteousness
Heroic Courage
Benevolence
Respect
Honesty
Honor
Duty
Self-Control
(Jump to Disputatio Legitima)
Righteousness
They won’t go on horseback
The captains have decided even negligible waste
points to a fault of decision-making
You have to draw the line
The small picture should be as clear to your eyes
as the distance between these and the scout’s
salute
throw lives away at least
on footholds
gain by gain
so nothing but a thirty-leagues’ crawl
not food nor water enough to grant returning
Ravense, your face will never be forgotten
If you or any one change clothes with an enemy
to be carried with the wounded inside
Cut your own throat for the sake of
time
gain by gain
and that you cannot speak
I read the news and there is no news
The roaches swarm the larder
No news of flaming pitch from firmament
Or any sign the nibbling jaws are judged
There is no news and I read the news
in hopes the stores of sand-grained mounds
Stirred by feet as dirty as our own
remain
Heroic Courage
What it is is dying
that, but… if a moment comes
you take them with your mouth shut, both
Respectfully, no…
Both
torture and release
No. I don’t think a hero can rescue a hero
No, you’re half right, never boast, I’m saying
Dying may not be requisite
However, the ultimate
Little engine of glory, dear, that pistons away inside he or she
the subsumption of self, ability to
Think, if one god defeats another, only the victor is God
here the drinks are waters from glacier melts
northern and southern caps the dare of imbibing
emerging bugs, old plagues, pandemics
They meet to discuss aims of a new party
inroads and ignorance ignorance inroads back athwart
the conversation the fat talk of canapé eaters
canapés littered with small infections
snipped from bloody gauzes
bitter chemicals
scraped with the point of a knife
from chalky or leaden elemental mothers
at the center sits the globe of a lamp
under it a cheese-sized chunk (purportedly) from
a rod extracted by a cleanup crew, waste of a near-armageddon
Because World Enders aspire to immune themselves
in millisieverts and micrograms
hard-skinned and incorruptable
to acids and poisons
but the speechwriter in the room
Asks again what is heroism, we talk about heroism, we cheapen
heroism, if heroism were easier to come by now
for being mass produced, we would see more of heroism
Benevolence
Off to beg
off to ask a promise be remembered
rifle charity clothes and find
wearable estates of men and women, botheration…
scoffing rid of Grandma’s stupid things
(amounts to spending, not inheriting)
senescent children shooting cheating sidelongs
This or that “worth something” hmm? (ooh hoo)
in vintage, maybe a dollar in a pocket
shining threads in a church or funeral jacket
where on the spectrum lights Earnest Will
if you keep quiet and aren’t asked to give it back
within the bounds of never making worry
of your sorry being here to Factor…Factor, dear
Merciful guardian
Be you pleased, don’t have Old Father Ben thinking
I waste my time
Courage is a challenge
Courage will come to be
But giving without your grudging fingers sticking
Taking what you have, have filled your shelves with
as life, what it offers
Everyone else is different
How very hard it is to find that virtue
And if you find it can you keep it
Do you need to preen and strut
Or to smack yourself so silly
with such glee Sweet Thee top-drawering…
You above all donors
bless your beggars and co-saint bestowers
Respect
When my child died to me, you had the task
of going from my sight, or if returning
If seeking your old place, no glance aside
No murmuring. For these rebuke, it is not kind
to come into my presence with such looks
That, saying much, and saying naught, dare teach
a parent friendship, flaunt a mourning heart
Vain! For ’tis, that you imagine only show
Long faces, weeping eyes, dark locks struck white
Those griefs of fathers we by legend know
Express what never, no more, shall be spoke
One hour my wrath compounds itself, and grief
Besets me in the guise of waste and shame
How little I incline to mercy’s balm
How like a tower young recklessness can loom
And if I flee and wander for a time
What do I see but haunts of my lost child?
Through glass I watched him play his games alone
Let this suffice, my work is done, done, done
Honesty
Honesty become a tool of abuse
Your hands pumping frankness
up your neck-strings, mottling your frozen features
with lifelike mantling, roseating from your mammoth pores
Soon
As, from your salesman’s case you pull nothing
Saleable to the present state
But bandy, as a bandwidth manipulator
Your loutish telling of your It
Like (you say) it is
Like the only mission worth pursuing
Had been to map the body’s nerveways
Soon. We’ll stifle the crying
No use for it, now we know you’re lying
It’s beyond, beyond, what you swear is true…har, har, you
Kidder. Outside eyes
narrow these days…those Orphan Annie dots of yours
(Annie…Hey. Let me put an elbow in your rib.
This is gonna make you blush
Carry that memory of yourself to the grave)
Arr, but sharpster, not you, you can’t accept excuses
Excuses, excuses!
Lips so crazy loosèd
Where is the honesty? Where the sincerity?
Right away you’re raging and disgusted
The human species’ doubtful range of “trust”
muscle twitches fool us…there is far worse
Did you know, if your lacrimal nerve was tingling
You’d convince yourself that you were weeping
Honor
First no one gets blamed, no one can
You have honor enough to shoulder
the gross mistakes of humankind
You embody discarded virtues
No one wants to drown or burn
count seconds in a broken plane
Om! (sob) Om! (sob) Om!…wait
hemmed in by traffic
The tsunami wave, the nuclear cloud
the rolling fog, again the flames
Mumble forlorn curses…
What have they done? Use your fucking brake!
Lie in a ditch, painted in sugar pop and ketchup
Ant-devoured, a murder hornet in your bonnet
the boredom of your brain dialoguing with your brain
suffer thou the racks and tongs of jot this down
remorse
Heaven ordains it, apologies for the spoiler
Flesh you’ll shed, or are in process
of shedding, daily
under which the sterling core ought to show
Or would have by now, if it were going
to, why would God care, He, as soon
Would have you past endurance sorry
Sorry to know it counts, what you were harming
was dear little you yourself
Twisting tortured with it relax
I tease, you can’t…
Lucifer’s mill forever churns
How do you pass into the kingdom
Short answer: you don’t
You have been fairly pleased, not hampered by belief
Only—
You believe, because you live
in faith that you’ll be better later on
Duty
“He is lauded for standing by his post”
“Standing by at his post…”
“Hmm…yes. Why say it? Are you happier about all this,
for picking nits?”
“Well, close by. Nearby. Remaining, anyway, as duty
required. We might find…”
“Might find…evidences, do you mean?
Perhaps you aren’t fit for the work.”
“You think I’m joking. I’m not joking. Don’t you think we will?
It must not, six years gone, be very horrid.”
“Sometimes great pressures cause a kind of…fusing.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Have a look. See how we climb the hill, but don’t
yet see…whatever’s to be come upon, the other side?
The view resolves slowly.”
“Something, you’re saying, that doesn’t look like much…
Will tell its story? A creeping revelation? Could be apt.”
“Another facetious remark. Any more of that tone…
I’ll radio back, have us turned around.”
The comrade falls silent. He does not know how
he produces this effect. He feels sober, counts himself somber, even
…to the degree that shades apply…
Shades…mild ha. A number here, may be, haunting.
At their posts. Close by.
Willing, he counts himself, with respect, to face down parts,
identifiable and not.
Pack them away in the foam-lined box
Sober, somber…if he said it, it would be taken for a wisecrack.
Self-Control
We enter the scene at an awkward moment
pending the interview where the two
where alive to tell the other’s fate
he shuffles a windowed passage talking over
under breath, his listening mind hears sound of words
his warning mind the rendering of account
the relations come the mythic ancient
in sedan chair delivered by sons and daughters
The story is a honeymoon story
You have this
a past to draw visuals from
a future to foresee the passings
of error, choice to right error
error again, rare freaks of risking
memory to measure things you’ve felt
feel this moment less and differently
or more and with less cause
you have been tired, dirt, diet…
tried, kept by questions, sometimes eager
sometimes feathered stinking falsehoods
a barnyard bird, you think, come roosting
to squawk in your tray of later’s to-dos
but slighting
lacking the rein
all within your self-control the chance to act in time
pride within that
anger within that
self-flattery within that
currying within that
putting off within that
assuming much within that
self-pity within that
envy within that
temptation within that
avarice within that
fearfulness within that
lassitude within that
bigotry within that
bad counsel, given and taken, within that
bad prayers for tiny terraces of cataclysm
to rivet eyes in a magic way and leave you unattended
each thing of import mild but threatening the next
The mother says, “You live and she is dead.”
Disputatio Legitima
question
answer
thesis
agreement
refutation
argument
suggested proof
final resolution
question
Natural feeling
Natural detachment and attachment in—
Balance, Right Balance, and the difficulty in
the word itself
A sub-question. Do we want it to mean a mean,
a quality, a norm, a commonality
How much and what sort our chief concern?
Which is to run ahead of the point
And if indifference is the pure…envisioning a scale
You feel nothing but neutral and willing to care
We skew the objective putting value on the positive
All things ranked neutral-plus if encountered unknown
Attached to a storehouse of similar things
a value within a range assumed
The range more or less determined?
Asserting its parameted quality on our thing proposed
Not then of indeterminate value
You see, we begin already chasing circles
Gain is good for me and so my affection
Lodges at self plus gain
Equaling engaged support for gain plus self
Call that love
answer
the fleas die and the seedling trees die
ants that mob your cabinets and the crawling
earth’s answer to your time of living, wait
to shock you in a flare of lit escape
on bathroom floors at night
Of vegetation again, ivies and vines
ugly flowering things in beds made for inconstant returns
Of vermin again, who roll under your wheels die
and you have slaughtered by mistaken pouring
bleach and turpentine to inch the basement drain
and warning: contains lye inch to the cracks of city pipes
somewhere breached something of your household choosing
marks your arbitration
then become human
vermin, on thin representation repine in indignation
they would rather not the answer be
a quarantine or barricade or a plowing into molehills
their bellyaching is a plea
“Father, yell me where to go.”
under the tunnel sits no foundation
water carries sand, and carries it away
feet, that if touched hands, would start and rout
mill, in air, while a mill turns in the endless head
No one is having this argument
because the ants, hants, humants, whatever bargain struck
narrate on loop by rote behind façades
don religions and others’ skins
won’t have their song of crisis stilled
thesis
This is not an easy thing to say
…or will be hard for you to hear
or, he thought, we need to talk
at last he thought, let me ask you…
better, she’ll have to say okay
no one says no
no, because I wasn’t ready
no, because you ask if you can ask…
…and I see. But with an upsetting empathy
he sees. The yawn before them not the old ennui
If I go
If negotiate entente, plug start and finish times
into a meeting app and we allow the power
to each, of switching the other off
we talked, in early days, you had the place
the fenced yard and quiet street
for a garden, for a dog
at times the old woman, from her kitchen
slow steadying on an ankle, hand tight on the fraying screen
door, we had to wait, for politeness’ sake
for the other shoe to drop
at the pickets she always said
you can have it, I’ll take off the rent
and when she died her son said no
we have to sell both, this one and that
and found a buyer with a leasing scheme
more than the two of us, pooling resources
could bleed, free of our small savings
this is not an easy thing to say
agreement
1) is a murderer the new celebrity
2) are bong shops good for failing towns
3) new technology or none?
4) if we mined all the gemstones now
a) could we bulldoze tidy covers
b) grow greenswards to obliviate temptation
c) have forests and orangutans
d) trade shares in rare blue opals
5) can we sit in our chairs sending pity to thousands
6) can predatory men be taught to crochet
7) will faxes be sent in ways unthought
a) docility by our gadgets broadcast
b) via EM fields
8) would a man in a golf cart, suffering mini-strokes
a) slaughter by mishap a cluster of students
b) be dragged in time from his smoking ruins
9) will all clothing become billowing overshirts
a) fitted to snap-on pants
b) and bolero-sleeves for warmth
10) should we plug withered shoots in gardens
a) cutting to the chase of drought conditions
b) stop fires by refusing to live near them
11) should the hero’s hometown receive his cadaver
a) shoelaces wrongly used as fasteners
b) instigators to spend every night alone
12) are hoaxes too grim when bystanders are killed
13) hoodies go upscale when made of sueded silk
a) sized to hefty and beyond
14) shall we boutique antique chickens
a) promising inmates let out to tend them
b) adoption profiles solicit mentions
15) xtra spice with zippity spelling?
refutation
because every vice wears thin, vice and fame
every fame makes damned
the what she eats and what she wears
and what’s she doing? Standing there
at the window looking
She looks at men who stare
because we treasure leavings
leave treasures fast maturing
up next, another failure-fetish-failure
in vicarity seeks electrification
wagers against inertial burdens
bones defeated by bodies
no longer lives of dreams, only lives
muzzily observed with a slow blink
be better browsers of felinity
find hearts in heart-shaped boxes
wings in buckets
causes and passions, hilarity, hates and betrayals
thumb movements
losses leave the grieved in a stupored freeze
and the half-slumbering student has the same eyes
argument
You’re a sugar cookie, you’re a fashion plate
When dressed by experts
you sit, deadly tasteful, a smug subdued disc
sporting a simple initial
You’re a peanut butter cookie, you smell nice
in the oven, you pair well with chocolate milk
you disappoint a little, why? perhaps
it’s your neither-here-nor-thereness…
Lacking the star quality of a tollhouse
Maybe you’re a snickerdoodle, a gingersnap
the import more adult
but short of a white pepper, sea salt
brie and brandied apricot
invent any basis
measure regardless
the argument is going places—
which the relationship is not
quizmakers like to chart your stars
data, however jury-rigged the source
is the sarcophagus to the reactor
a concretion that points to structure
as though answering for the contained interior
we agree that collections can be made
that this and that are objects
to appraise
we refute that our preoccupations have a heart
we battle still for a way of seeing love
or not seeing, the universality of
suggested proof
if they were friends, and independent, their odds were not bad
if their status had been desperately unequal, and dependence
soon afterwards began…
millstones, albatrosses, balls-and-chains
five o’clocks in bars and hopes of new friends
but time is the enemy of stable things
a nature that finds contentment wants to cocoon
one curious and seeking, comes to seek the moon
ambition and perfection bring couple-stardom
within the home and hearth
to the man and woman (as in this story, they are)
Then demand fades
people they know move away; their performance no longer
garners praise
she and he show marked divergence as they age
“Well,” says the counsellor, “what is love? What do you think?”
Loyalty…
“But what is loyalty?”
“Respect me. Respect my choices.”
He asks: “That’s respect.”
She shrugs. “Put respect on the list. What do you want, fidelity?”
“Fidelity doesn’t belong in a relationship,” the counsellor says,
neutrally.
“No, but…” And a long silence.
“And if,” the counsellor says, “you had infidelity. Give me a number
between one and ten.”
“It can’t be done. Don’t you see? I don’t want to know. I don’t need it,
being told…having to hear a whole stupid story. I want someone who would
cross borders for me. Throw himself in the path of a grizzly bear.”
He laughs. He laughs until it isn’t funny.
“Couldn’t you?” he asks.
Much later, she says, “To be honest, no.”
final resolution
what is the divine
to lift you above
the shits of the world
Who sits aloft, alone
what is It
to love with evenhandedness
and no one, no one
released from that embrace
no matter what they’ve done
then, what is the divine
so large a thing
making the one to one
of humans discarding one another
a mockery
Well, no. A falling short
What climb greater than the climb
what mission, for born-to-the-grail types
what sacrifice? A cool, edge-of-doom, “Got that.”
when the aspirant chooses Alone
not to be Messiah
no I am, I want, I
no reciprocation, no uncleareyedness
no inner drive, save but
pity, and wanting the poor creature
to find a home
Here, if harried from every other door
Chess
King
Queen
King’s Bishop
Queen’s Bishop
King
Artsy is the acquired name
The King of this domain not cute, believe it
And swords don’t pull from stones, but a crazy with a knife
was witnessed once
Things happen on the beat and things get made
only for use but color
color is a natural it’s a world
ready-mosaiced in cheerful throwaways
when we end we’ll float awash
on plastic—no hate—is a great material, bendy, easy to cut
and free, unwelcome, easy to get
and if you know the nitty grit
you don’t worry about the future, well ahead of it
I have to get your permission to publish your picture
Someone said
Like, royalties?
No, for a story.
And they can’t get jokes, so the hand is digging for change
There, the King would tell his real subjects
Is your best sign. People don’t carry dollars, they don’t need em
One day, when one of these foreign emissaries wants to help
It’ll have to be, buy my product
I have a product
Besides a personal sense of style they want to steal
They want to film an apocalypse with an unpaid cast
And I don’t mind I have a home to go to
They think I’m wrong in the head, too dumb
A sock, squashed in the gutter, one thing I got today
It sat on a foot, now it sits on mine
You see, I draw it in, I own a little piece of everything
That’s what I am, a vessel to the universal flow
I’ve got lives in my empire, a phone that holds its data
A sacred text for the coming prophet
A lady’s bag, lifted, not slashed Empty
but a Life Saver… Wash it. A linty Post-it
And here is how I reconstruct the crime
(more to come)