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From "Lines in Space"



on worthiness


1. in this case it is true I
am not worthy and the post-development backwoods don’t require my
happiness they suggest rest
beckon with what they have to beckon with on the pinespice


HOW TO BE SO AND WHO TO ASK TO JUDGE



temptation demands a resistance—a stream drags on the ill-placed limb
sucks on it implores of it, shuddering with wanting



steep banks adorned with trolley and trish-trash



last year’s duct-grate deteriorating, its thematic half-life…
along come wild-life and well-wishers



you need to get to the other side of this
precarious substance of middles and the consonance of struggling (as sign)



who wants that who needs this shit I
(width voluptuous) agree with you, what more is there? and
would love to see you tell it to him straight to his face man would that be sweet a
swift shift of feet and we are all bustled on by

2. why resort to emblems when actuality is so im- mediate and attractive?



SUITED&BOOTED



(with) paradoxes any fool can solve and be king of this shambolic interplay
but why be king for a day?
what can anyone do in a system such as ours in a day take a week hell,
take all of time itself, human and uncanny too, go on be my guest
after all you have been through / we all at wastecom inc. think you are worth it
just aces peachy keen top one

3. meanwhile the
gloaming is after your guts for garters your
people put a price on your head [two beats] it was seven pounds 52
precision, how you are fifty per cent right and fifty per cent wrong most of the time
called it compromise, a brush against the serrated bark of it
framed by the fox yelp and a mystery snarl…grrr



you emerge on a slip road, a vauxhall corsa mirage purrs there
step inside the function awaits seems one can never go back as that portal is fused shut like an eye after a hundred years of troubled but ultimately satisfying slumber don’
t worry I will be your guide / I will be your guide, worry
“For what it’s worth, sir, I never much cared for your predecessor. The post outgrew him and he never noticed. Isn’t it a shame how some people can’t bend with the wind?”


4. mytheme: setting out across the dunes to the final destination
the pineta a disappointment after all we’d heard
the beach was bigger than either of you expected however
“so this is it” subject-pointer you said, “nice” subject-menace you replied
and it was, really really nice, nicer even than that
big things can happen, off course, on literary beaches, denouements, cycles and
meridian dances but we just walked along it leaning into something of a gale
we enjoyed ourselves in an uncomplicated fashion and each other’s quiet
the salt-cleansed scattered tree-forms like so many dinosaur bones in
the film “40,000 years BC” (I think that’s right)
everything is worth it in the end because it is the end and that’s what ending makes one want to do, sum up, make amends, cast a place for meaning to dwell and not erode as allegorical waters advance and coarse granules exfoliate beyond any capacity for human imagining


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