from What Does It Matter              
                                                                              a novel

For the Law kills the flesh that kills the Law,
And we are then alive.
                               —Robinson, “The Three Taverns”

1. OUR HERO

The idea of a programmer’s pride, pulled from a kid’s acrimony;
they had codified it into torques, fixtures
insular debates and demographic fissures;
prophylactic explanations culled from bells and whistles
colorful, synaesthetic, could lead the way
from Sunday school antics to enviable paychecks;
but that radical parity slumped in the punk of a groin,
so that, later, what made ties to the critical
olfactory nerve as it hovered over New York
were the generations of teethers we saw entering the debates;
a dark humor obtained, a cyber-sexual,
middle-aged vaudeville of what was relentless, though it seemed to fly away
the moment the game got hot, and Pasha
settled into his mitts, telling them Style was enough—no positions
necessary—they’d been obviated by the reticular clown.

5. HEAT DEATH

Because the quality was Miguel in the bone shop of visions;
the destiny was Marianne, that parody was dozens
plinking on silver planes the future of American cinema;
we require a touch of the arbitrary in our quest for preternatural solace,
also, a moment of tossing, vertiginous sex action
why not, among the sonnet-like insubstance of the screenplays;
a damsel in distrust and a hero’s piezoelectric bladder,
the villagers rebel, soundman farts on ladder,
this all faithfully scripted by the blind, teenage amanuensis
unionized since daybreak, but sweating in plastic running pants;
finally, the expected demise wings into focus, the
suspicions of Prim the gardener metamorphose into social contraband,
lovers shade in the shade of a milk-white Vaseline filter
long-banished by the Nouveau Roman people but who, finally, cares,
this program has its meanings and afterwards there’s no story, but laughter.

10. EXILE IN IRONY

Settled several hours within the orbital aviary;
marshal swoops trundle in the distance,
powerful beyond the starship’s auld diction;
the meters only confirm our dread,
in two weeks we plan on having no oxygen,
in four weeks we run out of food, but who cares;
yes, the tactical mind is piqued, but my
patience for pap smears and hemoglobin sticks has waned,
these practices had their day, but
now, the civic rays of the sunset blunt our mission;
send citizens, Romans, quarks and admen,
send a bunch of free junk, too, like chopsticks and matches,
—the whole kit-and-caboodle is starting to seem
like one angry Argonaut’s idea of getting even,
and, inevitably, we will grow bored, and possibly vicious.

11. UNUSUAL TRANSFERENCES

His dream was all literature but his prey ration was all puppies;
poppies produced the word, which sent him rolling
down the streets to the cemetery to the leopard in slacks;
after the hour had ended, he retied his slacks
and forgave the passing preachers their ignorance of his solidarity,
resembling as they did the driftwood on pale beaches;
now, there was a day to spend searching for the perfect aperitif,
which poisons to portend, which stanzas to brag of,
which of the famous wrists to stick a fork in, and which
of the educated young to usefully ignore;
by evenings he worked on translations of old French novels,
verbs plucked out for the girl with cinematic morals
inventing that teat for a squeeze though he rarely ever enjoyed it,
and arrogated himself to some dilemma conceived in a medieval youth,
—proud as the village illiterate who’s just pawned the town key.

12. THE THIEF’S JOURNAL

We were walking quietly along the Czech border;
we were not concerning ourselves with women,
being hard-coded by the fracas to avoid them;
then nature, as in Genet, became maternal,
concealing, beyond anecdote, the murderers and princes,
though nothing lay in mist but stones, turds;
our first names were a precise deliverance, enough,
not not invented, but not hostile to identity,
the practices of bands criss-crossing the countryside
more than the comfort of using found names;
occasionally I would stutter, using her name
on the telephone, and when it was longer than two syllables,
I used another name, another woman’s name, if I thought of one,
—this always happened, so that I gave up on names,
or simply used an acronym, until she became my confidante.

13. THE THIEF’S JOURNAL

Stiltano’s deadbeat hunger was merging into mine;
by the time I write these memoirs, he is dead,
struck by a cab outside a theater;
feeling free and resolved, I was a willful slave,
holding his lice and ill-luck, obscured
by his shadow darker than Africa’s, and cursing;
perhaps this chronicle of vengeance
was rehearsed, a mere way to make a line-break
better than mundane, than the others, not less
rehearsed, yet never to be imitated;
losing the shape of the poem in the song
isn’t nice, in fact it is a departure into arrogance
into a careless, bold attitude that spurns friends,
hiding in the ruses of melody the interface,
the contract and the gaze, the knowledge of your presence.

14. THE THIEF’S JOURNAL

That this was the number of the guy I phoned alone;
we became beads of sweat as Mount Fuji slipped
between rail cars like some royal excrement;
who would have troubled the conductor with this,
in sensitive situations it’s best not to waver
between a dance and assurance, suggestive and wise;
the problem was unfolding by halves, and soon
would have subsumed the fog in windows
with it’s nickel-store sophisms, yes, weak penny-antics,
but for the automated witness of a digital Arcady;
Tokyo drenched our skin in teenage acid and televator boobs,
our time in the taxi oddly hyperbolic flight,
but like Byron to the Greeks, we took to their questions,
vital as we felt to the country’s rash independence,
eventually coming upon its bold, empty circle of regret.

18. TYROS

Some writers will ignore you with the language;
“Here is my flesh-eating heart,” for
example, or briskly “paratactic” logorrhea;
these are the messages transmitted by page
and post, more than words, gestures,
—and by gestures, E-zine, Techno, are being yoked;
to “fill out the meter,” how grand, such
catastrophic spondees (the pun is on “sophist”)
to write them and read them, such numb, flatulent whiffs
in which my narrative, sort of, proceeds;
but what surfaces from the noise except a new theory
of noise—“and no religions, too,” chalk poems on clipboards,
basking in the ragout of Black Bloc Seattle,
where the noise was nearly articulate, but was just noise
one expected from the State’s petty scansion—so give me noise.

19. REFLECTIONS

A visit to the world’s largest tenement groin;
beep-bop in the schism of necessity
frees up nothing but an attic room for history;
his ratings plummeted shortly after that,
accusations swell, dull Caliban’s lashes,
with marches in the streets against the evitable classes;
the paterfamilias balloon swooped overhead, then
swung down over the table, shouting
“Good disciple!” and “Pardon my Canadian French!”
later to be bullied by the falcons, ravens, owls;
now that we know how wonderful the 21st century
can’t be, waking up isn’t difficult anymore,
the pen—or stylus, rather—leaps gingerly into the hand,
or cyborg claw, a synaptically-enhanced lockjaw
since our inadequacies turned out not to be fiction after all.

20. TYROS

Triple sheets of paper do not make the key strike harder;
he pounds the ground with his fists, manages a moan,
but otherwise, emotions are strictly retarded;
Telex thinks this could be matter for prime-time, now
that the nation is relaxed, bohemians have jobs,
and a market’s erupted from what was once a wealth of uncertainty;
—they discovered the torso in the trunk, it
spoke of something long forgotten, or they had struggled
to forget, racing for the thinly imaged goals
not bothering to remark those lost in historical bounty;
if a single chord could bark this confusion,
music would be the death of hearts otherwise inured to sound
but that’s practically a page from the Futurist’s cookbook,
song and dance from a more serious, if rabid, cabal,
—those who could imagine nothing less than a social beauty.