R O B   S T A N T O N
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THREE POEMS

 

 

Arch

(up unborn)

‘We're tired of trees. […] Many people have a tree growing in their heads, but the brain itself
is much more a grass than a tree.'
                                                               DELEUZE & GUATTARI, A Thousand Plateaus

Born, like many others, trailing caul. I see you absolutely ( really do) . Bowing for his guests (or under
    pressure). (‘Preserve formalities, or squander pleasure.') Provoked, perhaps, to these nearer events. In
summer the gills collapsed, breath came in jags. (Attempt at some ark or other. The calling beasts. The
    shuttling. Big box of stuff.) Go on : take some untheorised bourgeois pleasure in all of this. A constant
resistance? Detox gladly. Assisting in appearance (‘she wants you to be turned on'). A rhetoric built
    to resist rhetoric. Sense is little more. Mind traps mind. Beckett's disembodied head o'erlooks your
sleep. Ceaseless experimenter, ruined toe. Addicted to quietus. Nobody ‘just' anything. A new type
    of communication event. Good cop. Others around: the pack, the team: lock mind into theirs and
hold on tight. Closing your eyes to the mud, opening them again: a preference. Multiplying multiplicity
    (complicity ). Cities. Scars. Cities. (Cities barred; canvas blank; set for paint.) Divergence on the idea

of fish and lily. Flight to find energy. (Editing as compassion/compunction.) Overlapping circles of
    perception – yours and others' – moving, interacting, bumping off and merging – making a circuit; I-
dentity extended through the frame – the arm, the leg, the hand, the touch. Rhyming lends itself happily
    to nonsense. My god, big. Bright orange rectangle, spattered with black. Matisse's snail: servant-to-
sun. Or spinning. Or spirals. Blocks. Land flexes: muscles; knuckles; groin. Nothing is better: a steady
    pulse. Nothing is better: ability to stand above and know . Intrusive light, letter (‘be for me'). ‘But this
presentation is still too simplified.' As far as you can see/so far as you can see. Mother emerges at least
    likely moment. (Route of the flying. Guy with two phones. ‘Efore you board.' Positive totals. Fly this
way. Take this down. Pain barrier. Hate crime. Pray to your briefcase. Too bad, boys.) ‘The point was
    to arrive at several conclusions concerning the unity and diversity of a single stratum.' The drunk man

in charge of my head. Flutter of worry in voice. A sudden laugh. A temperamental old machine, the
    computer whines and whinges as it's on. A dream of sounds. Skills and concepts to master. ‘Your
knowledge in the real world.' Worms. Forms. Worms. Assembly line/point. Making sweet (as if). Your
    culture. (What do birds find to talk about so much? Really quite beautiful. Jargonese.) ‘She is, in fact,
the phallus.' Shoal. String of life. Inns' sincerity. Recurring daily. Light work ( if you can get it & if you
    get it won't ). Mirror mirror. Many practical tasks. Taut innovations of a latter day. (Taught? Not
on your life. Nor in it either.) Brow level/formation/hierarchy. . . . ‘I cannot use that technology, but I
    approve of it.' R & R. Yeah, OK, well, right . Irony is its own reward. (Another snake completing its
ply.) Possession. Incoming ignorance/innocence. In the central node, rooted. Said his lady to him: past
    paste. Gott ist mein bulwark . My idle masters. Blanket of bird talk; waves of; living sea. Starlings vs.

Beethoven. (It ain't so bad, being banished.) ‘Beer and pain-killers.' Prickly plants: moving constants
     in a frame. Multi-directional sway. Boys were brought to Texas last summer. Movement sparks
the sodium lamps. To attempt to. ‘Nothing is more terrible than snow falling in a church.' Gunshot
    sun. Arrows, arrows, arrows . Constant motion (in a flame). Find Proust. Darkness with no definition/
dimension (step down into it). Paper bag as (almost) light as air. Squared off truth (a bracketing out). A
    simple sample. Test your wares. Striated light (on frost). Free and tangible. Final. There really is ‘no
time like the present'. Giddy through pain. Physical alchemy. Machete. An elderly vision, bolstered by
    decrepitude: the whole damned tree again, budding and sprouting, catching yourself at the root and in
the branches. Flag position. A thou. Tout. A roller-coaster. A transport to all contexts. (‘What is so
    wrong with exaltation anyway?') Do snow. Come In and Browse Free. May mind mould. Obviously

swimming. The happy shift from dense philosophical text to known rustic environment: a routine
     unshaded by necessity of change, though it is coming. ‘When one considers that an ampersand (&)
resembles a seated figure (&), its elbows resting on its knees (&), about to sip from a cocktail glass (&)
    or bowl (&), it begins to appear the perfect connective (&), an intimation of company (&), of bread
being broken together.' Broke the healthy rut. Read that book by osmosis. The night sky a photograph
     of age. Wit sparked off sunny days; collapse-clouds; entangled eye in ferments of repose. Voyagers
touch heliopause. Mock dislike/levity. Important than angels. Commitment to origins: we grind for
     you. Mellow and well balanced. Useful bodily expression. Line on your skin. Over the years used
machines develop personality. Unruly tongue. Slowly getting the picture. Courting an exchange that
     does you wrong. THE ACADEMY OF / THE / HOLY / CHILD . Anti-genius, scouring terrain. You

cannot help but think them beautiful and ephemeral. ‘Buildings made him [Bacon] look.' His man that
     was. Still ill, even now. Carrying round a black hole in yr head. A plot . . . a circle of tales . . . a snip
away . Everything models for something else (in her work). All bonds and none. Everything separate/in
    suspension. Machines to make you care. McLow. The world could be different, but isn't. Fact. Non-
sense is supportable. Fact. Looming red presence. Really hip version. Found language: ‘I didn't hurt it,
    it hurt me.' ‘Just like a simile!' ‘Plant roots are analogous to the heads of animals.' Get a load. Read
me/Meet me first! ‘Don't blood-red berries make you musical?' Suppose so, yeah. . . . Bowing before
    the work (closed reading). Saying ‘nothing' rather than staying silent is the radical gesture. ‘My name
came across it.' Dot constellations. Shameless interlude. The proper manner of exit. Divisions of time
    and energy. Reassessing the perimeters of your hunt, factoring in the traffic noise. Nothing scatters

windward. Memorable endings: post-death final vision; four horses after art-works (in colour); camera
     pulls back from impossible island; kid and mother as granny; ‘mutant' kid moves glasses with her
mind; tiny house inside cathedral ruin; the tree ‘lives'. Career span. ‘Not simply, smoothly lyrical, he
    likes things that clang and clonk.' Coming from / a tree. Cache Memory. Memory Installed. Serial
bus controller. Promise Technology. Wow! Whatta Whopper! ‘All those connected by an infinitely fine
    network to the great mirror.' Tiny music (swallowed). Micromusic (tuned). Melt/thaw/resolve. Sister
dislikes transformations. Species of poesy. Ego-heavy bottom-feeder. Malls and bars. Emily the Lion-
    Hearted. Line length. ‘Things are even more complicated than we have let on.' Starving . . . emulate
Emily. Biographies always have the same ending. Bossy. Active philosophy for sex. Radical moves are
    limiting moves – discuss. Dissect. Things you don't wear (and some you did). Comfortable is. ‘A

logic / of infinite / speed.' Tradition of resistance. Punk rock jelly baby. Cat, hiding. Your imagination
     is being inhabited by old movies – an underground kingdom turning in on itself, twisting. Starting to
look untidy. ‘Smother me not!' Sheep Beer Fudge. Two mornings' worth of lost thought. Worryingly
     close to sense. Hands that grasp. Another system develops. Endless sequence. The possibility of re-
currence counters the notion of infinite complexity. Temporary Entrance. Running fluently. No oxygen
     to continue combustion. That ‘universal' animal, God. That which is simple and exits actually. The
true creature's ‘jerks of inspiration'. Doorstep fresh. (The pathos of the lock in the door at just above
     knee-level – not just that it is there, but that he – forgetful – was not expected to notice it.) ‘For one
magical moment, he really made you believe there.' Here in my hand a hurt; a heart; an answer. He
     was his own hero. Fool. Pig-baby. Warm, throbbing pain, intimate and glib, flirts. Mutant fingers (at

this angle). ‘It's been, as ever, a pleasure.' In the hands, or the laps, of the gods. The hand-gun made
     for house-guests. First spider. Authentic jargon. Breathing is a compromise. We are doubters and not
knowers. Pupils. ‘But you talk of the eyes, and I of justice.' The most obvious, fabulous and bewitching
    co-stutterers. Iteractive. Lifelike, selfsame; pig-angels, life-gannets. Hurt-matrix. Pain. Things seen.
(Bye-cycle.) ‘Ignored – and gnawed – though you were twice the man.' Eerie helicopters. Changes
    are perceived. ‘That's so unearthly sad.' Run rings. Disagreeable erection. Ruddy line. Strangely, the
parallel with Oedipus had only just hit you. Typeset in Dante. Area for consumption of food. Cardiac
    pigeon. Tha Peelas. Various uses (subject to planning). What a long complaint. ‘Yes, I am largely
pro-noun.' (Trapped in brackets.) Talking about trousers. The ‘cataclysmic' stayers-at-home. Useful to
    have a profit. Point. (Or not.) Horseshoe Crescent. Nebula. Poetic of drink. Half-cut. Half-light. Bee's

knees. From here, fountain looks like guy pissing vehemently. He who has more to say wins. (Tell him
     yr nothing. First person absent [semi-authorised]. Imagine I sleep. I will.) Beautiful, but she has
no arms. Sampled whistle whistles. Luminous, ill-looking as a swamp. Uncertain surface. Giddy from
    pain. Supposed authority of a transcendent model, even unto the twentieth century. ‘OUT, OUT' at
an angle. ‘If a man of sense has painted he.' Stubble dry; single tree; panoramic. Do snow. Pastel
    sky/haze. Hesitant. So far as you can see/as far as you can see. Shoal. Words as structure/Words as
failure. In and out of conscious mind. The form is ended. Risk repetition, on, on. Shore is. Yorkshire
    portions. Spores spur spats. Spars. Reading friends. May mould mind. Faint blue rectangle, spattered
with white. Crowned god of plants picked up big bag of trimmings. An offering. Bouquet. ‘That was
    a powerful day, I think.' (He would, wouldn't he?) That mantra? Nothing new? The sun itself is.

 

 

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