Tissue Of Truths

Little cameos,

pocket machines, sometimes helvetically perfect,

self contained, in moto perpetuo,

others unfinished with gears awry,

random spars of unburnished raw substance

projecting, unsignifying, in stark rebuke

of the maker's craft;

or puzzle boxes, matter, substance, vessel

in mock unity, in single voiced cacophony;

never-watertight essays in gifting complexity.

Observable yes, but exceeding observation,

as though extending unseen into metaspacial dimensions,

planetary dice that show differing glyphs

as their faces rise above the limb,

or cross the terminator.

Or sometimes nothing like that!

Sometimes great howling fucking screams of songs!

Incantations, superstitious OCD rituals

and incoherent vomitoria and ragged beasts,

and signals set in motion and repeating like tics,

and bombers dispatched beyond recall,

and violent scripts triggered by secret words

like 'mustard' or 'death'. Yes,

the gibbering of a madman in a reference library:

'What is sweeter than honey? Sexual intercourse.'

Sometimes muscle: tensioned sinew

or that heartbreaking valvetronic protein,

the heart. Heart of a youth,

singing her little heart out,

or terse, toned, twanging resonance

of an older, wiser economy, ruthlessly bereft

of tattoos or other crimes. A bell tuned

to answer recognition's clapper

with its maker's needful pitch.

Sometimes insensible bloody assault, selfish sharing,

anaesthetic shout, unpremeditated importunity.

Campanologist, victim, time-teller,

eavesdropper, die roller, listener, reader:

giver of meaning to fragments of code.

Chooser of meaning! Maker! Maker of meaning...

Makers of little cameos supplicate you;

generations of howlers crowd your antechamber

begging your indulgence, entreating you

to bestow the given upon their gifts;

to understand.

To grasp complete in all its overwhelming irreducibility

that sole specific instance of

the ineffable, inscrutable, untransmittable business

of being self, and other, and having to die.

Sometimes inconsequential jokes

or life affirming observations;

sometimes simply rhymes.

Always utterance, utter failure

of all other signifying means;

parole of last resort, beyond retort,

tissue of truths, reifying dreams.

Midi-Pyrénées, August 2010

As I'm very new to the business of trying to write poetry I hope I can be forgiven the occasional self-indulgence of writing about poetry…