- the stupid
- the irrational
- the deformed and/or deformative
- the unfinished and/or disruptive
- the driven and/or transportive
- the irregular and/or anti- and ante-regulative
- the blurred and/or blurring
- the curved
- the canted
- the arabesque
- the parergon
- the outwork and/or mad absence of the work
- the outlaw
- the would-have-been-outside
- the thing of nature that defies or defers, rather than presupposes, representation
- the social whose life in exhaustion of the given has often been mistaken for death
—Fred Moten (from “Black Kant”)
the stupid
Once was twice of me so we could be double-tapped at one gunclap. It was I was skin tags someone picked at till I was it. Was all vermillion-border ragged and hollered a “fu—” then came down an ordinance what creased my ligament good. Oh lord, make me make it make me a vessel for lovingjurisprudence. Else it’s making me something or I’m vesselling me, thus to catch me shirking responsibility or acting all agent [sound of ligament as khaki fold at retail outlet]. Is pants sing. or pl.? I’se pant, sing, or pull a thing from want to got is my line. Working, I’m humming that old song went I’m nothing without and the background singing ontologigolo ontologigolo—I’m nothing without I’m nothing without. Once I was someone picked at, ragged, creased, a vessel, which is me—(singular) (plural)—a thing what does. Ducking the supervisor shmoove, till I arwhoolied that old jam went you better see me twice. . . . That cut was one hot platter—I’d forget my head were it ours. I wouldn’t look for it, since which of me should—you look, lazy bastard, lazy bastard, you look. Impassed thus, I’d sally about fancy glandes out because love got to do with it. Blood, same difference. It ain’t mine, though, so “fuck!” and flee the scene of our job whistling Doo doo dooDah doo everything, background all lemon to a lime or lemmings to sublime—nah, the fruit. When the clapping always come, I’m an encore of exeunt.
the irrational
I postulated breathing-cum-spitting into the saxophone would grow it lungs but instead made me an aardvark cyborg. Sucked up half a colony of notes from Bizet’s L’Arlésienne and sicked up beaucoup contranyms. On some spontaneous generation, out that mess sprung reference junkies who reefered me metonym for dark deeps deeper darker than Thanatos rocking a tux under a doctoral gown in a smoky jukehouse down The Bottoms (fixing to be renewaled as experimental theater space). It already was already (years before yoga charcuterie and cold-pressed designer breeds). My brass proboscis scrapes floors, thus sparks up a constellation; though maybe it’s the sax dragging me: meat shade. You find the notes where they’re going they haven’t been. Let them stay doing what they do. Into a colony of reference—deeper, darker, experimental—already years before, you find they haven’t been what they do. Junkies need something doesn’t they; e.g. my skin gets red. In our kitchen, I study scale—proposal: if the notes I blow is big as colonists, figure I kaiju my cyborg ass. Crescendo myself past circular breathing’s maximum occupancy. Even if that shit tear the stitches out my khakis. The housing crumbles around me, inhuming fossil from the future. I’m too winded to stop blowing now. Them dummies still think they’re tenors and weze vehicle.
the deformed and/or deformative
—thing to mortify curiosity—conquer. Guess Bobby L reckoned claiming Jekyll’d hide his Hyde, his fake book counterfeit atavism, his palmed bum shilling. MONkey MAN VicTOriAN ZIP COON (policing scan to apprehend which foot get promoted, which demoted to a knuckle?). When I stride, Wherever’s tableau contextualization pour into me all Patterson-Gimlin vérité. Bends, really—brightness has its way into dimness like that. “No ideas but in things”: thus, for Williams and nem, shouldn’t we be philosopher or tome? To conquer, demote, pour into: bend figures into things. Opposites or posits, but too. But there I go all night at the all-night funhouse peeling mirrors off mirrors to see ourself. A troop of me with razors and intention. If I had me a greatcoat, I draped it on a glass’s frame, being in the hall as I was from those doctored fogs. Mist a clear a view of time as digital watches. The brimmed animal clutches a cane, making of avenues menageries, nicht wahr? A spanner in the ointment, nacht wir? A blip how death done shriveled to shame when they looking like what they look like looking at us like they do.
the curved
“Broken English is ghettorically speaking, apparently. English is speaking. Was a tongue in search of a mouth, or mouth in search of a tongue, became the combo featuring Tongue and Mouth dueting for a head. Tongue bowed to the dust, Mouth gripping it in aspirational cartography, marking with indexical detail all the places they’d forgotten to look. When ordered to hit a straight lick, Mouth, in solidarity with Tongue, chose crookedness. In solidarity with Mouth, Tongue practiced alveolar clicking and lisping as fine raspberry varietals. Nonstalgic for a head that could at last house their newnesses, they cut a parabolic groove into the would, breaking it down and laying in it. It coulda been them but they was playing. They played dead as aspiration research. One bit the other chapped the other, a means to swell, a way to flay. Former: the head might erupt from accumulated fluid; latter: it might help cracking the lips’ shell. These were the available logics, they flogged the combo’s desire for home. They realized though, that their movement was articulation, a fugitivity that bent without breaking. Ain’t not-ing and we iz-ing, they headed off, pursued/pursuer/pursuit at once, and dust cloud.”
the outwork and/or mad absence of the work
13. hootie hoo
14. [this here in a out]
15. —the hell
16. damn damn damn
1. dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
dumb dumb
2. I wish someone would
3. gonna
4. ay
5. laaaaaaaaaawd
6. laaaaaaaaaawd I gonna hell damn dumb
damn dumb ay someone [hootie] in this here
wish I would [hoo] [ ]
7. a natural/unnatural
8. yo gonna the hell laaaaaaaaaawd damn
damn damn this here in a out a natural/
unnatural I wish someone would dumb dumb
dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
laaaaaaaaaawd gonna hell damn dumb damn dumb ay someone [hootie] wish I would [hoo]
9. [show don’t tell]
10. hootie hoo this here in a out the hell damn
damn damn dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
dumb dumb dumb I wish someone would gonna laaaaaaaaaawd I gonna hell damn dumb damn dumb ay someone [hootie] in this here wish I would [hoo] [ ] a natural/unnatural ay gonna the hell laaaaaaaaaawd damn damn damn this here in a out a natural/unnatural I wish someone would dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb laaaaaaaaaawd gonna hell damn dumb damn dumb ay someone [hootie] wish I would [hoo] [show don’t tell]
11. [“oh hell naw, but yet it’s that too”]
the social whose life in exhaustion of the given has often been mistaken for death
Shit that our lives, collectively, need struggle for mattering—is we is we is we ghosts? If so, passage through taxonomic walls should be categorical, but I stay busting my unmattered nose on the margin. Meticulous in my essays, comes to pass these tests lay me levelled, a kind of plain of face. My research done been undone lacking a working physics for insubstantial contradiction. Onward despite no way. What is too high to get over, I leap at; or too low, I dig; or what holds fast, I throw us at many one more ’gains. The blood on my face seems my face, shouldn’t it, under theoretical ghosthood conventions? We lay down again though face down this time: I aim to gain such insight into crime scene geography! But then: that isn’t a priori versus a posterori knowledge. That is, if I stay a kind of working way to get blood, we am such insight, that knowledge. Both. A ghost toils at haunting a where if you’re there hearing chains bojangle or no. Bet this place was haunted prior our being borne here as trespassers. The wind that stutters yonder curtains ain’t nothing but us breathing. There are no ghosts they ain’t already killed.
