Simple and obvious what should one do
First confess paralyzing ignorance
Ah but faltering sequence
And interruptive sidetracks

Hit and run
And as the runners advanced to second and third
The shortstop according to one commentator
Didn’t know whether to shit or wind his watch

Sports metaphor bah
Ah but retrospection
And interruptive correction
And arbitrary prohibition

Don’t write about love
About politics about religion
Don’t write about
Write unspeakable truth directly

Hence the injunction
To tell truth but slant
One isn’t really paralyzed
This is writing isn’t it

Ah but theft
And getting caught red-handed
And organizing things
To get caught

The old world dies and a new one comes to be
And such has been the case up to now
Information storage has improved considerably
Not so the achievement of consensus

People want triumph not defeat
Even less non-committal inaction
Ah but behold how moves the paralytic
Who doesn’t give them what they want

After years in the garden of earthly delights
The apotheosis of the senses
You will have learned the dismal truth
That forces and particles are the source of the problem

Step gingerly around the griffin turds
The pearly turds of unicorn
Gigantic poisonous flowers
Rotting mangoes the size of atom bombs

The pleasures of grandparenthood
The comforts of dotage
The decline into senility
A carnival of autonomic reflexes

Schopenhauer worn a ring
Formed like the ouroboros
Circle of eternal truth
Undying flame of knowledge

Forswear alike materialisms
The Marxist armature
And the worship of market forces
Innumerable consumer particles

But oh the bright chevrons upon the plumdark wings
Blackbirds in migration
The cuttlefish’s round unfathomable eye
Its Broadway Melody of chase-lights

A time of day supposedly
Late afternoon
According to that unreliable exegete Humpty Dumpty
But in the arena of silly nonsense
You can’t beat a Victorian
Algernon so eager
To explain the rules of Bunburying

But what are the rules
Do there have to be rules
There have to be rules
Roman letters English words
In series
But why not THR33
Why not Pmist
Why not brillig
Why not colorless green ideas
Square circles
Boring digressions
Sitting on oneself
Why not &reg ^Oπ^ Kellemoo
Where have all the laps gone people standing
Must the spoon be runcible only attributively

Say there’s this guy named Phillip
Or so the report goes that avers
That he carried out a particular action
Or maybe it was a woman named Shaniqua
Or a trans-dimensional being named Xmczcul
Only that last name is pronounced
Like the sound of a slow leak from an interior tire
Of an eighteen-wheeler
Parked in a truck stop on Interstate 95
In northern Florida
Or in some other dialect let us suppose
The name is pronounced more
Like a low purple hum
Emanating from some impressive device
Contrived to transmit agony or bliss
To selected lifeforms
In various universes
Though truth be told or the story goes
That the contrivers being composed of pure thought
Communicate with pulsations of transcendent energy
And not with sound
Though these facts do not begin to explain their uncanny benevolence
Their sudden capricious cruelty
So anyway
This man or woman or wereparrot
Does something to or for or with somebody somewhere
Or alone
Or so goes the report
The narrative
The account
The whatchamacallit words or sentences or whatever
And the account or whatever
Is supposed to make sense or whatever
Or does somebody entirely else make sense of it
Or some combination of the two
In dialectical tension or synergistic expansion or metaphysical accord

Let us be true to one another
Let’s ignore or pretend to ignore
The creeping suspicion
The chilly apprehension
That truth and telling the truth
Remain incommensurable
Noble attempt
Or flaccid compromise

If only all art could achieve the condition of music
And every argument were a melody
But these colors
These volumes
These plastic values
They each remind one of specific instances
A good experiment ends in failure
No wait
Yields a negative result
Or is it
Knowledge is overrated
Or it’s incalculably valuable
Being in such short supply
And please don’t bother with what qualifies
As art
In addition to forces and particles there is music in the world
One can imagine a world without the forces and particles

Or perhaps all art should achieve the condition of perfume
And arguments an ecstasy of deja vu
Well before facetime eyetime
Provoking and satisfying precognition
Kingdom animalia
Phylum chordata
Vulnerable defensive caretaking mammalia
Sexy sensible aggressive melancholy sensitive naked apes
Persons who break through their ennui to appreciate

There is a freshness in decadence
All the old things having corrupted
To make new ones

First off she smells really good
I mean she herself
Without supplement or additive
I’ve notified her of this fact
And she insists on denying it
Moreover her smooth parts are really smooth
And her hairy parts are really hairy
She keeps herself in good shape
But she has some meat on her bones
If you know what I mean
Her I guess you could say embonpoint
She gets bored pretty easily
She’ll listen to only one side of an LP
Which I really can’t understand
I’ll sit and dream
While she looks around for something to do
Once I was staring off into space
My arm stuck in a crooked angle
And she asked Are you orating
And I admitted that I was
And we’re like that
Each accepting the other’s foibles
Each accepting the things we cannot change
But she reminds me
How can you be sure you cannot
So I kiss her good mouth
With my bad mouth
I caress her good hands
With my bad hands
We’re stuck on each other
We’re stuck with each other
I didn’t mean to write a love poem
And perhaps I haven’t
I know she knows how I feel
We disagree slightly
About the relative importance
Of knowledge and feeling

U chreibme u sve beh i brivue
Fhwa grin’t u srege chreib im un i chreim
Un fhwuach sve Illions bregporst sve bim Borm Heriauc Rubregast
Ptind ap ind wilk iwiy

Ebir thra wik slonlig fravertst di sve frepostsluc chereib
Un fhwugh amb siirera ud the ansergarde den
Glinsaith iborda fhudh owggi ple
Ab dchefeit aupennig dlor piun ti bebvry

Aupenng jo allthirent ac svee pereoptri aupnes
U ilwsiys swi ham weir meon Iliosd cas pa
Arb yeiras liter fhlthunglisc u swha igiun dieseesda chreib owpenneigs
Dop glinsais iroovt fhuthrorp veroiu tarntug hus bullawvwd weid

The Strait
The Narrow

The Tort
The Declination

AHA
I think I’ve found the solution
Why would somebody commit
So foul an act
As to use typography for emphasis

The naysayers were right along
You can’t do that you simply can’t
I’ve been thinking
I should purge and live cleanly as a nobleman
Er I should say like a nobleman

It’s just like when Nixon played Fonzie and said
I opposed China I was wr—
And here I was positing some evil god
When a much likelier candidate is at hand
And isn’t the simplest solution always best

Well no perhaps not always
How is it simpler
For me to paste a deceptive label
With an address that never in a million years
Would I apply to anybody but myself

I can’t complain about having to wear this damned truss

I dreamed I was in a movie
Why can’t I just dream I’m in a dream
In which the lions before the New York Public Library
Stand up and walk away

But that was only prologue to the prophetic dream
In which my father in the underground den
Glanced about with eyes full
Of defeat exhaustion sadness pain and memory

Eyes so different from the commanding eyes
I always saw him wear like lion in life
Yet years later fleetingly I saw again those dream eyes
He looked around without ever turning his pillowed head

Sports bloopers

All C has an O
No O has a C

There can be but one possible explanation
Some evil god wishes to do us harm

An ancient philosopher lay upon his death bed
Just days into the great festival
His sister pleaded with him not to choose this time to die
While all the city was flown with gaiety

The old man consented then to take a spoonful of honey
And at midnight on the final day
As the noise of the revels had just subsided
He passed quietly away

Cmu palogiae als Fresouerzib Melnick

Frecs
Frogewssan ghohg iduoeeirsa
Frogewsann berghonsipgan
Cmaata als ceren iduei
Mbrees caan gloglik ro
Garabnans
Thoeiisu
meon-s
Frogmantoe
Cvmwoflux
Alls dineded ntia-cvmwoflux
Gnecks
Thfetts
Stitdorsthan
Thoiia
Gwist alzthem shent grallai
Swaetver uoiy cmaapa
Sfein whswik meiea
Alls seimzehn sif havnap zgu
Smae xtloa caan secripft eloi
Meb smea xtlioa cann legripft inse
Fnailmaent onjui jrocept
Pmist sla gaerpigerm
Haal jui
Haal melniciana
Haal effrent
Mi kaoy

            And he that Attis’ image hangs between
            That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
            May know not what he knows, but knows not grief.
–Yeats

I spent a sleepless night vacillating
In the name of art for its own sake shall I let it stand
Like that guy who took a bullet to the arm
Or delete it in the interest of public safety

For I fear the inexperienced will get the wrong idea
And I feel guilt for my fears as cowardice the greatest sin
And I feel a humbling pang that I express myself inaccurately
And I regret my taking the easy way of self-expression

And I know full well that it’s more than expression
That there are no bright lines and that’s a good thing
As cuisine is art not medicine
But the anemic patient enjoys a meal rich in iron

And writing for some people is compulsion
And therefore a sign of psychological distress
Especially the compiling of lists
Though any genre can sustain humor pathos eros and attack

And in this you resemble me Dear Young Reader
In this all are hypocrites and hypocrites are cowards
For we pretend to believe in the efficacy of disclaimers
I’m a decadent but at least I know that I’m a decadent

When I was young I was completely daunted by Jimi Hendrix
I could learn nothing from such a prodigious monster
But Clapton no lesser artist alluded to Blue Moon
A jazzy humorous trick you see in the preceding stanza

And I spent a sleepless decade and a half
Berating myself as not Hendrix or Clapton
Or Keats or Yeats or Dickinson or Whitman
Or George Eliot or Shakespeare and four lines can’t contain them

I am good but not great and that’s okay
I’m okay
Because good in the aesthetic realm is beauty
And good in the realm of states of things is truth

But good in the moral realm means doing right by persons
And when I think of the persons I know and love
I think first of their suffering
And then of the suffering of absolutely everybody

Including I daresay myself
And one can get past grieving for natural causes
But the world of people is horrible
Because people hurt people with malice and neglect

Including I daresay myself
I am a rather elderly man
And I have committed hostile and neglectful acts
But mostly against myself let it be said

And so I break the fallacious bright line
That separates art from therapy
And I have believed that the expression of true feeling
Would through alchemy become beautiful

And I here confess that as a function of a therapeutic regimen
I have aimed to suppress or otherwise attenuate
The coercive voice implanted in childhood
Of the Portable Emperor

And so yesterday I imagined that by giving the PE the podium
He
For he is masculine would expose his own incapacity
His own ridiculousness

On the other hand
I fear that the inexperienced will get exactly the right idea
That the imperial voice is omnipotent albeit with an ironic disclaimer
But why should I present as the right idea such a blatant falsehood

While in fact the only emperor
Is the emperor of ice-cream
You see what I did there
I mean beauty is truth and truth beauty

Good like math facts is beyond space and time
Good like beauty and truth feels good a by-product no doubt
Pleasure is good ice-cream is good
Though richer in fat than in iron

I’ve had it up to here with you
You better straighten up and fly right
You better get yourself squared away
You better get your shit together
You better get with the program
You better get some self-esteem
You better seize the opportunity
You better strike while the iron is hot
You better leave well enough alone
You better know when you’re well off
You better know who your friends are
You better hold your enemies closer
You better know your rights
You better know thyself
You better get humble
You better stop bragging
You better have a little pride
You better start walking the walk
You better subject yourself to ruthless critique
You better inaugurate a program of self-improvement and stick to it
You better start using conventional punctuation
You better hold yourself to a higher standard
You better make yourself shipshape and Bristol fashion
You better fulfill your commitment
You better keep your promise
You better live up to your potential
You better achieve
You better rebel
You better conform
You better speak truth to power
You better stop fearing death
You better stop calling death soft names
You better rage against the dying of the light
You better stop making allusions to impress intellectual snobbery
You better get some help for your problem
You better suppress your symptoms
You better cultivate a cheerful demeanor
You better don the convivial mask
You better figure it out
You better stop composing those pieces you falsely call poems
You better stop padding your resume
You better stop feeling inadequate
You better stop wanting people to like you
You better stop claiming knowledge you don’t possess
You better stop harboring the Cartesian ghost
You better stop flaunting gratuitous displays of erudition
You better stop exposing your ignorance
You better stop trying to obey
You better stop bargaining
You better stop wondering what will suffice
You better stop misquoting the greats
You better stop ascending into the seventh heaven
You better stop descending for a season in hell
You better stop lying cheating and stealing
You better stop remembering insults slights and injuries
You better stop nursing grudges
You better stop self-diagnosing
You better stop self-medicating
You better stop self-pleasuring
You better stop playing games
You better stop trying to appease your tormentors
You better eat right get plenty of rest and stay in school
You better stop haunting the places where unpleasantness occurred
You better stop laying it on so thickly
You better stop coming on so strong
You better stop strutting around like Mr Perfect
You better stop employing superlatives
You better stop acting so cowardly
You better control yourself
You better stop picking at it
You better stop kidding yourself
You better stop getting mad
You better stop getting even
You better stop doing unto yourself what you would never do unto others
You better stop watching reading or listening to the news
You better stop falling into a bottomless pit of depression
You better stop indulging in suicidal ideation
You better stop multitasking
You better stop making mistakes
You better stop making excuses
You better stop beating yourself up
You better stop seeking the approval of those you consider contemptible
You better stop thinking of people as your enemies
You better stop giving your enemies an opening
You better stop wishing for fame
You better stop envying the fortunate
You better stop kowtowing to the lords of guilt worry and indecision
You better stop making yourself scarce when there’s work to be done
You better stop disrespecting your betters
You better stop making those stupid lists
You better stop lifting with your back
You better stop spilling the pills all over the floor
You better stop jumping to conclusions
You better stop overreacting
You better stop using typography for emphasis
You better eschew the dash
You better stop banging around when people are trying to concentrate
You better stop rattling on about nothing very important
You better stop popping off about matters you don’t understand
You better stop issuing commands
You better stop performing onerous tasks poorly
You better stop giving such a bad example
You better stop living in a dream world
You better stop taking yourself so seriously
You better stop giving free rein to nasty impulses
You better stop gilding the lily
You better stop putting yourself through this ordeal
You better stop adopting narcissistic poses
You better stop projecting sublimating fixating and transferring
You better stop globalizing
You better stop fortune-telling
You better stop cherry-picking
You better stop fence-mending
You better stop apple-polishing
You better stop meddling
You better stop being insensitive to the needs of others
You better stop waxing nostalgic
You better stop fearing the father
You better stop grieving for the father who died a decade ago
You better stop failing
You better stop being so self-conscious
You better start being more self-conscious
You better clean up your mess
You better heed my warning
You better discover some means of purging
You better hit upon a better way of doing things
You better employ a systematic approach
You better trust your intuition
Why don’t you watch where you’re going
You better do the things that must be done
You better stop doing the things you like to do
You better avoid manic episodes
You better improve your powers of observation
You better wake up and smell the coffee
You better think about what you’ve done
You better examine your conscience
You better do penance
You better get a handle on your situation
You better manage your affairs
You better find some sense of responsibility
You better
You better eliminate your preconceptions
You better correct your misapprehensions
You better overcome your addiction
You better substitute healthy habits for your bad ones
You better see yourself as others see you
You better get your head out of the clouds
You better tug your forelock
You better tip your hat
You better bend your knee
You better bow your head
You better start wearing a hat
You better outgrow this sickly confessional mode
You better strike a balance
You better exercise reason
You better learn some discipline
You better stop rock-throwing
You better stop mud-slinging
You better stop name-calling
You better stop acting like a lunatic an idiot a boor a tyrant a poser
A loser a supplicant a slattern a redneck a cripple a victim
A dim bulb a spoiled brat a weak entry a dirty hippie
A rat a bitch a toad a worm a blowfly a leech a pig
A sick puppy a scared rabbit
A miserable worthless piece of shit
You better prioritize your agenda
You better get organized
You better plan for every eventuality
You better start acting right
You better quit while you’re ahead

Granfalloon
meom-b
Maglev
Altria
Chwads
Prolly
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Chud
Kleenex
Gote
Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz&
Hafta
Lang
Mondegreen
Euery
Gwine
Methimpikehoses
Comintern
Xerox
Radiclibs
Poli sci
Yuzz
Runcible
Sanscreed
Shadooby
Nonox
Stripet
Leet
Agenbite
Outgrabe
Soxes
Millying
Elavil
Mansplain
Uneeda
Pwn
Flurge
Slithy
Brylcreem
Frilch
Perne

Bits of paper
The tops of pens
My own spinal column

All the regulatory signs
All the people who have suffered
All the ravages of time
All the heavenly bodies
All the aromas
All the solvents
All the statistics
All the systems
All the chance operations
All the accords
All the accommodations
All the fundamental disagreements
All the webs
All the films
All the television programs
All the photographs
All the musical compositions
All the folk tales
All the etiological myths
All the lapidary epigrams
All the breathless accounts
All the expostulations
All the replies
All the jingles
All the memos
All the menus
All the dwellings
All the garments
All the geological formations
All the verbose formulations
All the periphrases
All the items of food
All the items of drink
All the smiles of satisfaction
All the frowns of frustration
All the grimaces of discomfort
All the means of transportation
All the media of communication
All the warning signs
All the lengthy texts
All the novels
All the poems
All the low purple hums
All the plays
All the letters home
All the missives delivered and undelivered
All the sporting events
All the lullabyes
All the reveilles
All the surgical interventions
All the blemishes
All the legislatures
All the microorganisms
All the sneezes
All the groceries
All the ingredients
All the concoctions
All the plants
All the animals
All the mythical creatures
All the meteorological events
All the quizzes
All the public buildings
All the drawings
All the paintings
All the sculptures
All the playthings
All the overtures
All the futile attempts at comprehensiveness

All the lists

All the logical reasons for it ever to end
All the tables of the law
All the periodic tables
All the legal proceedings
All the sequences
All the break-in periods
All the durations
All the spatial determinants
All the instruments of measurement
All the apparatus of experimentation
All the doctrines
All the beliefs
All the paraphernalia
All the cultural practices
All the public performances
All the private performances
All the spontaneous overflows of powerful feelings
All the proper names
All the gestures
All the sabbaticals
All the holy days of obligation
All the weddings
All the funerals
All the rites of initiation
All the perfect jewels
All the ways out
All the bodies of water
All the chemical compounds
All the technological devices
All the devices that generate lists
All the extinct species
All the ineffable properties of the number five
All the mundane properties of the number seven
All the leaves on the tulip tree
All the people who have enjoyed moments of happiness
All the extravagant purchases
All the exorbitant demands
All the mirrors
All the lamps
All the thresholds
All the kinks
All the cracks
All the spills
All the bugs
All the glitches
All the tyrants
All the disruptions of the status quo
All the announcements
All the advertisements
All the educational institutions
All the inscriptions
All the ceremonies
All the addresses to personified abstractions
All the floors of elevators upon which one awakens
All the clubs
All the cabals
All the parties
All the teen-beat combos
All the associations
All the organizations
All the families nuclear and extended
All the guilds
All the fraternal orders
All the states of enmity
All the sharkhunt fights
All the oppositions
All the alliances
All the ministries
All the concealments
All the disclosures
All the admissions
All the confessions
All the concessions
All the professions
All the conundrums
All the consecrations
All the transubstantiations
All the desecrations
All the coercions
All the commandments
All the precepts
All the guidelines
All the bylaws
All the guilt trips
All the pennances
All the occasions upon which an infant laughed
All the tears
All the plans
All the magic casements
All the anagrams palindromes and homophones
All the serendipitous discoveries
All the linguistic signs
All the spatters
All the puddles
All the smears
All the stains
All the shocks
All the arbitrary decrees
All the mottled discolorations
All the Rorschach blots
All the surfaces
All the depths
All the subject headings
All the colorless green ideas
All the numbers
All the home furnishings
All the trades their gear and tackle and trim
All the wounds
All the triumphs
All the sacrifices
All the points of interest

All the gritty realistic portrayals of everyday life
All the wistful evocations of imaginary paradises
All the containers
All the multitudes
All the farm implements
All the metamorphoses
All the serious matters
All the superficial trivialities
All the instances of regeneration
All the instances of decay
All the instances of equilibrium
All the profuse strains of unpremeditated verse
All the intermezzos
All the objects of analysis
All the informational signs
All the footsteps on the stairs
All the gases
All the rationales
All the forms
All the ferrules
All the instances of wrongdoing
All the instances of aid to the afflicted
All the postures

All the apparatus of investigation
All the apparatus of torture
All the coinages
All the cliches
All the solecisms
All the malfunctions
All the miscarriages of justice
All the castings
All the flaws
All the heroes
All the victors
All the victims
All the foul discharges
All the experiences of ennui
All the bodily functions
All the diseases
All the organs
All the telsons
All the secretions
All the cascades
All the gushes
All the trickles
All the slow leaks
All the blockages
All the flows
All the filters
All the loaves
All the fishes
All the migrations
All the criminal acts
All the garrotes
All the gimlets
All the acts of kindness
All the thanks but no thanks
All the patrons
All the bins
All the keys
All the shelves
All the drawers
All the pigeon holes
All the pulverulent prisons
All the mechanisms for attachment
All the mechanisms for separation
All the stressors
All the divisions
All the denials
All the promises kept and unkept
All the prayers answered and unanswered
All the empty questions
All the burning issues
All the worn paths
All the litanies
All the tours de force
All the scenic vistas
All the distant prospects
All the sunsets
All the sunrises
All the synonyms
All the liquids
All the industries
All the inventories
All the iterations of the seasons
All the sentimental journeys
All the sentimental educations
All the denunciations of sentimentality
All the crusts
All the mantles
All the cores
All the violent releases of pressure
All the unexpected patterns to be encountered in the digits of pi
All the sonorities
All the cacophonies
All the shadows cast by spiders
All the birdsongs
All the monkeysongs
All the artsongs
All the raindrops
All the snowflakes
All the grains of sand
All the flowers born to blush unseen
All the languages
All the bargains
All the totalities
All the partialities
All the intermittences
All the taxonomies
All the ancestors
All the roads tracks tunnels and bridges
All the barrels the bottoms of which are scraped
All the broken things
All the raw materials
All the comfortable spots
All the waiting rooms
All the blurs
All the departments
All the processing centers
All the situations
All the pellucid images

All the dingbats
All the wazoos
All the dorks
All the nerds
All the dweebs
All the diggers
All the greasers
All the hair hoppers
All the ducktails
All the beehives
All the pompadours
All the shags
All the mullets
All the buzzcuts
All the floobooberbabbooberbubs
All the jive turkeys
All the poltroons
All the persons of low estate
All the outlaws
All the loners
All the rebels
All the joiners
All the pleasers
All the haters
All the iconoclasts
All the heralds
All the mediators
All the provocateurs
All the whatevers
All the watchamacallems
All the punks
All the hepcats
All the hippies
All the furries
All the sceners
All the zoots
All the doots
All the hoots
All the feet
All the coots
All the geezers
All the churls
All the incroyables
All the levelers
All the militants
All the buccaneers
All the riot grrrls
All the actors
All the conductors
All the symbolists
All the impressionists
All the surrealists
All the academicians
All the martial artists
All the socialists
All the communists
All the fascists
All the know-nothings
All the blanks
All the invisible men
All the authors of unpublished masterpieces
All the bohos
All the dandies
All the belles
All the fops
All the gangstas
All the mobsters
All the goons
All the koopas
All the monsters
All the aliens
All the interstellar travelers
All the ghostbusters
All the flatfoots
All the gumshoes
All the bluenoses
All the bluestockings
All the blues
All the assassins
All the fabulous babes
All the floozies
All the wenches
All the debutantes
All the ingenues
All the ecdysiasts
All the topless cellists
All the pioneer women
All the wise old women
All the weird sisters
All the sweet little rock and rollers
All the invitations for the ladies of the town to keep a secret
All the hanged men
All the brides
All the gurus
All the ephebes
All the veterans
All the volunteers
All the giants
All the assholes
All the urbanites
All the narcissists
All the attention babies
All the utilitarians
All the pragmatists
All the logical positivists
All the Young Hegelians
All the post-structuralists
All the feminists
All the neo-Kantians
All the existentialists
All the anarchists
All the humanitarians
All the wealthy philanthropists
All the innovators
All the functionaries
All the killjoys
All the Luddites
All the suburbanites
All the vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods
All the wretched refuse of all the teeming shores
All the guests in the cheap seats
All the current or former slaves
All the people who have enslaved others
All the complacent bourgeoises
All the literati
All the cognoscenti
All the intelligentsia
All the bureaucrats
All the middle managers
All the proletarian agitators
All the job titles
All the labels
All the masks
All the stereotypes
All the blanket condemnations
All the sweeping generalizations
All the inexplicable outliers
All the fleeting ideations
All the wasted efforts
All the quite useless creations
All the gratuitous displays of erudition
All the plasmas
All the rhetorical devices
All the catalogues
All the indices
All the directions
All the verbs nouns pronouns adjectives adverbs conjunctions preposi
All the instructions
All the injunctions
All the permissions
All the freaks and capers of my cat Citrus
All the prohibitions
All the advisements
All the pleadings
All the scoldings
All the solids
All the terms
All the pegs
All the awls
All the sticks
All the sentences
All the ambiguities
All the comedic resolutions
All the sudden realizations of the hideous truth
All the humorous remarks
All the runcible spoons
All the lamentations
All the delusions
All the sources
All the derivations
All the roots of trees
All the horses in midstream
All the nonsense syllables
All the quotations
All the attributions
All the successful or unsuccessful attempts at deception
All the echoes and borrowings
All the geometrical figures
All the places
All the stations
All the apparitions
All the faces
All the crowds
All the petals
All the melancholy long withdrawing roars
All the colors
All the boughs
All the intoxicants
All the visions
All the judgments
All the worlds within worlds
All the worlds turned upside down
All the world-historical crazies
All the monuments of unageing intellect
All the ephemera
All the ineffectual tactics
All the herbs and spices
All the speeches that fall trippingly off the tongue
All the words that are hard to pronounce
All the hasps
All the ridges
All the symptoms
All the inspirations that come too quickly to be recorded
All the records
All the orations
All the ideas that seemed good at the time
All the blows
All the kisses
All the slings
All the arrows
All the dreams
All the rhyming words
All the memories
All the failures of memory
All the neurological disorders
All the certain slants of light
All the shivering intimations of mortality
All the celebrations
All the contraptions
All the embroidered fantails
All the doors of perception
All the processes
All the phenomena
All the noble defeats
All the deepest secret fears
All the items that appear in more than one list
All the things that are longer than than they are wide
All the finales
All the expressions of undying love
All the undying expressions of love

Baby when it comes to deep
I brought lunch
‘Cause I’m staying all day

Beware
Lest they whom you know to be true geniuses
Wreak awful retribution for your neglect

Melneess culd jusay emb pulrol
Clud jusay prulrol
Mensu
Mimbor sleesse Hsaste trayzomb
Lowayz
Kli dim crals somb breh
Somb bhleh
Vwaddis calmbombis
Ven heor

The purple hum as the panic subsides
The rabbit hole that fictional construct opens out
Into a world populated by motifs from the upper world
There’s Zelda that’s Halo
That’s Myst that’s Wolfenstein
Kill the Boss and be carried home in triumph

But a real undertaking like Pacman Tetris or Galaxian
Cannot be won but only prolonged
The luckiest player a set of initials
On a high score list and a dark purple hum

I can’t say I can’t
For I have been forbidden to do so
An injunction I can’t obey
And so I can’t say I can’t say I can’t

The great achieve perfection
As I have read in books
As for example the communion of
Sound and sense in poetry

Elegant lineation
Precise punctuation
Forceful diction
Verbs without nominalization

I can’t say I’m a bad person
I can’t even say I’m a bad poet
I can’t make it easy for the critics
The critics don’t seek to look to chase to find me

See any metaphors
Hear any images
Cobble any synaesthesia
Who’s this I I can’t say

I can’t imitate the great masters
I can’t perceive the method of their achievements
I can perceive the achievements barely
I can’t say that I am impotent

I can’t say that I never enjoy pleasure
I can’t conceive of purity
As for example of pleasure
Unmixed with pain

I can’t take action
I can’t rest assured of success
I can’t win
I can’t show up

I can’t stop myself from thieving
I can’t control impulse
I can’t give in to impulse
I can’t give in to enjoyment

Others have expressed the failure of the gift of speech
Others have described the crash of lofty ambitions
Others have detailed the anguish of ineffectual lovers ineffectual warriors
I can’t do that

These trees that promise continuity
This rainy weather that softens the light
These birds who murmur their ecstasy
This music forever new and as old as ruins

I can’t enumerate the stars we see
I can’t call to mind my favorite color
I can’t call to mind my mother’s face
I can’t draw a straight line

I can’t lacerate myself efficiently
I can’t draw blood from a poor turnip
I can’t avoid cliches or adjectives without insistence
I can’t remember my sins

I can’t say I can’t say I can’t say I can’t say I can’t say I can’t
You know what that means
Tomorrow never comes for the lazy worker
I can’t decide what I’m talking about

I can’t irony
I can’t contradict myself
I am partial
I spill