Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Amberwaves in Negativeland (Nonsite)
We are not a camera obscura
for the world as was once sup
posed and this is not opposite
day after all you can do that on
television the way your smile
triggers something in my brain
waves an implosion makes yo
ur body disappear into the things
we have made keeps gesturing
but can’t explain the war away
nor this fiction they call nation
Like we was even exchangeable
there or able we must be a means
the fire must be our fire we must
own it as we write and read this
book erstwhile sprinkled with le
aves and dirt because we appear
in the world we are sites for sore
eyes we mean “X” as in wrecks
places became subsequent to this
urgent complicity this being with
Confused tulips and spring ca
me too early this year so actually
your mythology is outmoded
April is the cruelest month for
poetry can only break your hea
rt if it doesn’t persist in some
allegory of agency or love which
is a kind of allergy or actually
produce that world we would want
because that is what we feel
the words must say the city in
its springtime that is not our mu
sic yet not green wrecked enough
so we can see us surpassing it
Nor any ideas but in relation
to each other often contradiction
becomes this city we must live in
because it is nature more than
nature more than the trees were
nature when what flowered was
wheat too bountiful for the realty
so our “common law” is reality
contradiction became a quanta
for which we use for how we
are used land art and land use
art art of use not a useful art
The air was this quanta the privati
zation of our barest needs purifies
blame does not purify the world
every thing we seem to touch this
nation turned to shit long ago we
need a body for this endangered
consciousness made from the fail
ure of all this discovering some new
mode of gathering in what remains