The famous critic had already
Been accused of Nazi collaboration
By the time I encountered his observation
That she dies in the blank space
Between the two stanzas
And I castigated myself
For impercipience
Of that which was so obvious

It pisses me off when somebody says
You never know
I want to scream
Isn’t it pretty to think so
And sure
You can’t compare finite knowledge
To the infinitude of ignorance

But some things you know
That you can only wish you had never known
As for example
The horrors inscribed
Behind the closed eyes of memory
And here are my poems for anybody to see
And unsurprisingly
Nobody sees them

I know that I don’t know what makes a poem a poem
Much less how to make one happen
And the thought occurs
That others might possess that knowledge
Thus making these pages an object of derision
When I know full well they’re not worth the trouble
And so I write not out of conviction or even of desire
But merely under compulsion

Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five

Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five
Twelve and five

The triumph of the willy-nilly

When I read a poem
Or when I merely read about a poem
And on many other occasions also
The urge to write comes upon me again
The painful stirrings
Not unmixed with anxiety
And why fear the inevitable
But feelings too of happy anticipation

And then the disagreeable business of composition
Not foul or sordid or nasty or disreputable or louche
But kind of dirty
As in the phrase
Not afraid to get one’s hands dirty
And the anxiety of during
Somehow worse than
The anxiety of before

But then the shameful acknowledgement of after
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
The eloquent voice of the Accuser
You should have worked harder
And if you have lost
You didn’t want it badly enough
Because winning is the only thing
And wanting must always be done badly

Complete
Closed

Open
Obscure

Contained
Callous
Claustrophobia
Contempt
Cordial
Calorie
Colon
Corvid
Crapulous
Contaminate
Chthonic
Corruscating
Corrugated
Clamor
Confound
Chromatic
Cost
College
Cancerous
Causation
Comedy
Choice
Cognition
Condign
Couplet
Crowbar
Condemn
Chorus
Combine
Capacitor
Collude
Conformity
Clog
Cordon
Cochlea
Compulsion
Coelenterate
Calamitous
Correspond
Convention
Command
Chronic

Outside
Overlap
Obituary
Oral
Obviate
Otter
Oenology
Orbit
Operation
Oyez
Opportunity
Obey
Odalisque
Organ
Ostinato
Oxen
Oleaginous
Oboe
Obsession
Origin
Obloquy
Onto
Ostensible
Ovum
Orotund
Orgy
Obstinate
Ombre
Oleander
Oblige
Odd
Ossify
Obsequious
Osprey
Orpheus
Ogee
Obesity
Olive
Ontology
Ohm
Onomatopoiea
Oppose
Ooourooobooourooos

Fi sagst haal
Sagn haal knest
Agnerm ya mestric
Slaint cnungny

Ni memos ni meom-m hmunus
Malg azamt
Cirt lignes sid konaist lagnap
Obvich effrent castagis splan

Slemnapild clomber tur efil
Veldan i cinddag
Cagt sembla retrab
Sickerly tismann senagot west

Necra haal vincera
Ni ven deranc
Sid azamte
Za dern mgut thoiesu thecor

Let us praise Citrus while also acknowledging his defects
For he is big and beautiful
For he speaks when spoken to
For he speaks at other times too
For he is occasionally playful in his advanced adulthood thereby calling to mind his frequently playful infancy
For he is intelligent and demonstrative
For he indicates the food he likes
For he bites Marian’s ankle to express his wants
For he received his charming name from Lydia
For he does not object when called a dumbass
For he is a fiend murderous of moles chipmunks lizards rats and alas birds
For he is the beneficiary of irrational indulgence
For he is often in his affectionate nature underfoot notably upon the perilous stairs
For he damages the furnishings
For he flees sneezes
For he was the chosen of two brothers Abel to Cain Jacob to Esau Isaac to Ishmael
For he has survived thus far in a threatening world of coyotes
For he sets up with gravity which is patience upon approbation in imitation of his great feline predecessors
For his personality is distinct from that of Bunbury Thammuz or Yellow Melissande
For he is obese and unashamed
For his motives are mysterious as of the lashing of his tail
For he has seduced his master into death-defying feats
For he exerts a therapeutic influence upon children and others

Gratuitous display of erudition
A phrase I learned from Mr Smyth
As something to be eschewed
For one should always express modesty
For both practical and Christian-doctrinal reasons
But what of Milton and his Sminthean archer
But the poet was vox clamantis
Or rather Jeremiah under house arrest
And which is the right side of history
Muddy Waters examplar of the American Renaissance
Proclaimed himself the greatest man alive
And no reasonable person would gainsay that contention
For it arose in a poem and poetry is fiction
A made thing
Neither true nor false
But only decorous or indecorous
And Milton made the purely fictive move
Of enrolling the gods in a roster of demons
No fundamentalist he
Just as surely as he followed the Mantuan
And myself am in no wise averse to theft
Neither from the great masters
Nor from my secular obligations

Do I pity myself
Well then I pity myself
And perhaps my suffering is too paltry for pity
But how supercede the mechanical operation of the spirit
And more anxiously
Evade the peril of blunder
For though I open-carry the curricular certificates
And even preen as preceptor
I am not a learned man
And few are in any age
For learning is lovingly cultivated
And I have lacked devotion
To the beautiful and the good
And our age is more degraded than many
For it adulates with orgiastic frenzy
The gratuitous display of idiocy

Thou

An apple
A receipt
A yellow plastic fastener

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