I am not a good enough painter sculptor poet musician
I am not Pygmalion nor even Yeats
A true work of art projects a non-ontological entity
Or more simply a joy forever

Achievement does not come from instrumental reason
But if at all from negative capability
Or more simply doing without doing
And personal desires just interfere

But without personal desire
How would one make the attempt
The frustrating paradox
Human all too human

And worse
The tired antinomy of form and content
And worse still
The stubborn facticity of materials

And the rules the rules
Without which nothing
The rhythms of Ronsard
The rigors of terza rima

Who trip thou ask’st in these bad days my mind
I much
Chevalier of self-defeat
Engineer of incapacity

We have a word remorse
Backbite for the evil we have done
What then is the word
For the good we’ll never do

Nostand amede cwumfot

cvmwoflux
Pmist
Ardonor
meom n
Hwy nost
Owtop

cvmwoflux
Pmist

Pmist
cvmwoflux

Pmist

cvmwoflux

They call it data
But what she really processes
Is much more than numbers
Kristen spends her days
You can’t tell that they’re days
Insulated by artificial climate
She is a necessary extension
Her brain making distinctions
Among non-numerical facts
She likes her job
But when her mind wanders
She makes mistakes

As when she worries about Red Dog
Able to enter the kitchen
Or trot out to the back yard
At her pleasure
What is Red Dog doing right now
Is she sleeping under the patio furniture
Or barking at a squirrel
Has she had an accident
Red Dog always smiles when Kristen returns to ask
How was your day
And Red Dog replies
Great but I’m glad you’re home

And sometimes when her mind wanders
Her thoughts take a frightening turn
The more frightening
Because Kristen doesn’t want such thoughts
Knives that cut
Perilous voyages
A certain unpleasant memory
Involving a certain person
Who got carried away
And sort of forgot to ask
What Kristen might want

And sometimes she thinks she has merged
Physically merged
With the keyboard and the monitor
And she tells herself
She doesn’t want to tell herself
You are a device
And she knows it’s wrong
It should be
You are part of a device
But over and over again
Like a catchy song
You are a device
You are a device

Ickan nustsent erreby
Pmist spretu cvmwoflux

A violent yearning to escape
The prison of personal identity
The nasty habits
The reflexive routines
The drugs

To my life I gave my genius
Said the unjustly punished hero
The quixotic aspiration to make
One’s life a work of art
An image of perfection

Heroic brave and futile
And hero-worship only serves
To convince one
Of his own incapacity
As does self-worship

O a thousand dollars for a lapel
O to live up to a piece of crockery
O finally to become causa sui
To admit the aleatoric motive
The kindness behind the brunt

Where shall I enter this bright canvas
I beclouded on the ocean of ennui
How surmount this ever-liminal state

One foot on the restless shuttle
The slag of consciousness
The pains of sleep

I envision you spectral reader
On the other side of the receding plane
While here events tread apace

I hear that quiet song
As it languorously unspools
Is this what one does

Is this what one does
This nothing this inaction
This weather

They say the people of Hiroshima
Drank the black rain
To assuage their uncanny thirst

Should I be grateful for the world’s shifting
I a pause a meek caesura
A moment’s indecision amid the flames

Should I feel guilty in egotistical bathos
While you silent reader applaud the text
All all deserve to die

How can a voice so dry
Drip with such contempt
Eyes so lifeless so keen

I hear the patient litany
Of those insubstantial essences
Stately calm impervious

But over on this side
Windshear lacerates the travelers
Who crawl from point to point

The city stands silhouetted
Against the sunrise
Tainted by moonlight

A vigil gathers
At the ruined cenotaph
For the cheerful giant

At the toll booth drivers queue
To make atonement
The economy of punishment

I’m sorry for my compunction
My scruples my innoculations
My adverbs and adjectives

How shall I enter this sterile surface
This evasive scrim
Is this what one does

No sphinx shrieks anywhere
No flower blushes in the desert
No machine produces the articles of decorum

Lingflu bhle zerstistor
Ginnid qut zet pirmabhle
Rabn nerg brek sobbata
Lessluss fui dorla
Cumfunduer cvmwoflux
Fteh gaurgor moltseh thjan
Id vela l’crim
Prem depmisti
Ardonor
Ardonor

cvmwoflux

Pmisti effrent

Breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe

Breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe

The crow’s black beak
Its feathers’ overpowering gloss
Why the compulsion to account
Must the apprehension of beauty
Induce mythological aggrandizement
Or are we better off with scientific reduction
It’s all just evolutionary adaptation
Nothing but forces and particles

Pmisti sigurd O sergreta tanez C
Falgord peitu mlisti C als C sirgurdin

One wiser than I has said
Self-loathing speaks well of a person
And I myself have written in lyric verse
Only the better sort of people get to go to hell
A theft claiming that feeling the pangs of guilt
Achieves something like acknowledgement
Something like giving account of wrongdoing
But this only repeats albeit by introversion
The old canard that the wicked deserve to suffer

Nobody deserves to suffer
And the worst pain I feel
Is for having inflicted pain on another
And at this very moment neuralgia
Shoots through my right foot
Yesterday it was my left
And I rage at mother nature for her dereliction
To allow such undeserved agony
Or did I commit neglect or vicious excess

And what if I did
Do I therefore deserve to reap as I have sown
And I read recently
That one of the greatest artists of the age
Suffers peripheral neuropathy
As did the great hero my late father
Both of them careless of the substances
That make up our material cosmos
Thereby meriting the grim passage through pain

The smoker deserves to die
The one overweight deserves to die
The murderer deserves to die
The child who fails the spelling test deserves to die
The children of the drug user deserve to die
The Hindus Muslims Jews Christians and agnostics deserve to die
The weak the ugly the sick and the sinful deserve to die
All shall perish and rightfully so
All suffer torment before they go

I it is I
The asserted I
Who vows nevermore to indulge
In destructive self-contempt

The eminent critic
I am not a critic
The author of the paradigm-shifting argument
I am not an author

A poet much less than an author
The foul rag and lonely bone
That shakes against the grease cold
I am not c c c c c

Ledger of avowals
Intentional derangement
Surplus numerology
Compassionate not contempt

Do not scorn that I am not
It is I
My only addressee
Narcissus sister

The testimony of a fiddler who hears
When all else are blind with fury

You know how I hate crowds
I never knew that death had brought down so many
I wanted death to be just for me
As Keats was just for me
And Hendrix just for me
Artists famous for their deaths
As Aristotle earned fame for error
Among arrogant science students
Of course there must be billions dead I thought
But here I see only conceivable numbers
Vast to be sure
But any more than one
Is too many

Because a puppet was wrathful
The world has grown furious

For Ethan

Kelkay durest termendos whe
Tjnbui pmist effrenti gurdrif insay

My earlier avatar
Sylphlike
Limned in silver
Spoke with men
As other gods
Scorn to do
Most consistent
In inconsistency

Liquid metal
Pregnant virgin
Surf boy
Fade fairyman
Innocent experienced
Long-haul trucker of moonlight
Fragrance of lavender
Flight of wing’d heels
Chirrup
Leaning on a staff
Wet falling red and green leaves
Elegant contrapposto
One thin dime
Snake handler
Filament
Orientator
Blackball
Retailer of charms
Wine bibber
Permeable boundary
Detachable penis
Root hairs
Puppyface
Plastic gasket
Glitter girl
Potpourri
Autumnal equinox
Converses with crows
Chrysalis bursting
Secrets in a metal pouch
Lithe and lean
Fovea
Cochlea
A well-polished helmet
Deciduous tooth
Foil for the jewel
Particles
Floating needle
Great ape with pen
Face paint
Love button
Arch scamster
Ah! A quiz!
Tinker’s damn
Shining cinder
Boygirl
Sneakthief
Metagirl
The number seven
Catswhisker
Jerking crocus
Tiny dancer
I am not what I am
Cairn of pebbles
Klein bottle
Derailleur
Lampwick
Goosehorn
Triangle
Piccolo
Kalimba
Kaleidoscope
Kaligraphy
Sanguine song of sixpence
Weightless ichor
Cheesecloth
Sequin
Crispness presence
Pine scent
Tweezer case
Fillip
Pease blossom
Fate ferryman
Baby rattle
Reservoir tip
Taste tester

All those years of schooling
To fill out a few forms