Anselm Berrigan

When I was little I cut off the heads of many lords. I can’t count on the energy that took to rise in me at will, but I’ve strengthened my ability to make a stand-firm surface. A steady gaze will drive conflicted information away, back to the abyss from whence it came, but I’ll be right here the morning after, wracked in a private shame too awful to admit and of no consequence at all. I work very hard not to let myself go. Any channel can tell. Due process appears in beauty and misgiving at once; an agility borne from creative malice, a benign insecurity. The plain truth: I forget the curtains are open sometimes and the hands wander. The room stares back from its things: They understand the end of the world, will not waste time feeling your pain, and every- thing tragic in between need not be known. I don’t want love or remorse to follow I want them in the way, things to burst through corollaries to be roped and tackled by surprise, get killed, and thank you. One fate transforms into another, but I won’t touch that bandaged story. I won’t belong to this scripted conversation, though I may play along. Identity theft accepting renewal orders, copycat pre-emptive attacks an obscure murder string on the public glide by sight, the victim a John doughnut pining for leadership from the passenger seat. The threat of meaning reassures: I know it’s being made for me. Am I supposed to believe we’re receiving information? Can I defect back to curiosity in the moonlight, stone rabbit? Hit on by Echo, I go cold for the love of my own exile, and while I hope, my flesh explodes into an arrangement of stars pestered by darkness. Those aren’t birds you hear, just their corresponding holes in the sky. All the bottled water isn’t fooling anyone.

The sun got its new angel wings tee-shirt smudged with the sandbox’s finest demi-mud. This would render appearances partial, with a cornball’s incongruence. Sidewalk chalk radioactive Well, we’ll never write that letter to the lozenges, I mean that shrinking postcard on the way to Saturn Will someone please hand me my martini, so I can make it through this The                                       awful ordeal? title                                Name there placed                                   in the palm the                                                of your natural action                                                         tremor off-center rendering that floating green eye, well it floated off onto some bell somewhere Yesterday’s duck seemed to have three parents: a vulture a turkey, & a something a plastic shapeliness unaccountably signaling Dark Star Winged creatures suspend shyness & we were stabbed with permission all over & again, the assemblages of guilt frozen in dispossession Did that closet just murmur? “No mere solar beam can harm the lord of photosynthesis” “No barrier can stop one who dwells between all boundaries” “Welcome back to life, my former foes” “& be tied to the end of your string / flying in the air babes at night” 9/4/16 Tompkins Square Park

Just wasted and taking it. In life I rally constantly. Effort is what we breach. And accountability. Honed limits do you require ruthlessness or subtlety? The # for that delivery service I could find. My instinct is to agree with the collective. I’ll flip over their indoor/outdoor reversible rug. But my feelings & their representatives the passing sacrosanct mob cuddle stirring expedience are mine. Gradations of default tenor. Anything but more instinct. A proxy of determination in a cosmic discharge salon speaking freely of cost’s elephantine deployable former charm. I’m micromanaging nausea. The dishes are twilighting. The dairy scythe elevatrix skins my shining teleprompted sporkdom. As poor specimens go, the trail left inhabitable trails. Arkanoid as meditative space, if we travel by dragonfly. I cling to thy moving perimeter. I want payment for all instances of being caught on camera. We all should. Mutually assured destruction overdosed on civility by comparison. Babywiping lead paint dust from my soles. I’ll read entrails for omens, action figure entrails.

In the error thinking of non-intervention with you. A red sun (don’t look) pokes through. Staging development and the cutting loose of its facile integrity its disproportionate personal non-response. The wince. The shrug. The belated semi-acknowledgment of owning just enough to take part. In the era, thinking of you will quit my job in one year to get more done, work harder to insert myself into the fragile extension of space between us to get something done. In the ear thinking after you.