A touch of the pen and the world
arrives. The universe dives, dives,
dives -- shark banks providing teeth
on the installment plan, for a big old
Babbitt, boosting that sweet town
where he owns half the down. Dao,
ways, days, each conceptual conceit
eyeses to the pupil point, pupated
until there is sense again in this dis
connection curl. Rip, rip, rip, the rule
of trees comes in threes if the forest is
the appropriate kind of pine. Oh yes,
desire's fires drum until the crumbs
are the only food left unburnt. Be the
cockroach. See the cockroach. Broach
the coach until the rhymes call time on
meaning, seeming to clean the narrator,
while rather meanly driving the thriving
under ground. Ground exists in a plane of
subsistence. That's a sun thing, singing out
of the pout, a middle. That was where this was
meant to go: the middle. There is a place at the
extremes, and at both ends it is the same place.
Grace, then, is a face that fiddles with its middle.
To kiss one's own belly button; to become one
with the umbilical, or a little bit of one. Pause
when no pause is conspired. Retire when no
lyre will play. Refer to obscure instruments when
you are feeling instrumental and a little second-
personal. But this is an impersonal poem, breaking
the rule of buts (do not use). But! Yes! Yet! Exclaim,
in three letter words. Prescribe in four banter birds:
canaries, cardinals, crows. See birds. Sea words, sick
as a cog in the machinations of a person who not only
does not care, but is trying to be good. That's food for
crumbless persons. The middle can be found according
to sentences (between words and paragraphs). The brackets
are too squared off to square off with their eventual rectangle.
Lines lengthen as the mind strengthens to the task of becoming
between. You see what I mien? How can I get across to you that I
am deliberatively changing the words that arrive? Will you mistrust
me as much as I do? That's the nature of the nature of the shelf: books
are the way to expand, and they also demand a didactic posture for as
long as the eyes are willing to listen. Glisten then, with the corneal
wetness that indicates one still remembers how to feel the middle.
Roman Ryan 