Deadpan cont'd

with Dorothea Lasky

Bumper Car

Purple night with the black trees
I am in a bumper car with my love
Except he is the kind of man who is scared of everything
And I am not, the kind of person who knows anything is wrong
I was born into oblivion so I do not
Care what they make of me in this world
I go free into the darkened night with only the heavy hearts of my ancestors and not myself
Orange ancestors, with their bright red masks and lips
Handicapped only by their antiquity, how they escape into time
Astronomical too like the black night they take me into
They speak of the great night, which comes after this one
This one they take me into, O steadily
The darkness they stretch their arms out into and grab me
To be erased completely by darkness
Except, instead of being pulled by their arms into it,
I am driving into it because I have no other place to go


This is the Deadpan (1)

Dear Thom, this is the Deadpan
That is racing at us in the noonlight
Do not be afraid dear one of the thing that is contained
Do not be afraid of the thing
No, but you were never afraid
You were always here, resting
And I too was rushing at the moon with all my thoughts that have no place in antiquity
No place in the olden times because those are too much what is bronzed and here
This is a letter to you so that you may write back to me
This is a letter I write in the fading light
As I am fading my every breath
A kind of candle at the very faded moon
The moon
He was an old thing
That I spied when I was out
Among the trees and woods
Great fox was he
These trees and woods
These trees and woods
That were in me
I could see them planted
Even when I never knew their names

*

Baring our teeth.

The mortal
Rocks me with grief.

Am I the
Animal or are
You?

Our will is
Bound by accidents.

The apprehension
Of that motion—deadpan.

That is, the dead pan

And become what
We live for.

Try these motions

On for size,
These simple

Machines shock and

Awe. Teeth marks
Indicate eternities.

Falling doesn't fail
to amuse us.


Minor moons dominate
Differently than the sun

Sleeps instead of me
Instead of night being blue

In the glass that was you
My case reflects our formal

Sky tho the park is closed
And it is cold out we

Walk thru it clouds move
More quickly than dreaming.


While we are here
before it the formal
sky these separate
entities in our awe

the white just grows
large there is no
thing can account
for black which like

a wall erects light
whole universes of
ideas and sound-
images against us

what makes us awe
or tremble is never
our friend neither
friend or enemy

powerfully neutral
like black and white
overwhelm us in
their neutral blank

spreading over every
thing they touch so
this is when I want
to touch you whenever

this ends touch begins
again and the world
begins and “and” and
“with” begin conjunctive

worlds communication
relation a commons
you could feel because
one withdrew from all

that joy in magnitudes
and fear crawlspaces
of the spirit anteceded
our heart ‘s dominion.


Your marriage is on my mind
that knife of poetry drawn
to its object they said an un-
conscious process we blow

our tops off slice open heads
expose them to this wind
realer than anything and yet
make from our words meat

our extreme exposure insists
what a body can do be deter-
mined so this is meat’s only
moral—-whatever exceeds it.


“True true true”
and not true birds

rock doves and every
thing else happens out

those windows no one sees,
no one cares to see.


The structure of flame is not flame
it is something else the mind
can’t get a handle on the atoms
before we knew what everything was

we imagined them something there are
brighter colors you see rather than
nothing you feel like little bolts of lightning
in your eyes migraines like a second

starlight impressed in the retinal attention
of everything one sees in their hell I
is hell instead of others is at least colorful
and keeps our interest in the details.


C'mon!

The name we share is *techne*.
What is there to fear?

I am not seeking anything,
but to crash into things with you.

Our thingness in the world
little deaths, sex and teeth O

to be with you, to be with
you my fellow animal.

A kind of third sex the corpse
always in us, a reuniting force.

To rehearse these deaths would leave
little else for our amusement.

Cadavers, we fell highest
abandoned to this world.