in: dirty goat #3 (1989) by: charles a. perrone
re: 177 words to address:
“what are you trying to do [in your poems]?”
among my collection of things poetic is a collation of dozens of statements from different lands and centuries about what poets/poems are (or not) arranged in the form of spokes around an empty hub. what i’m “trying to do” is slide my fingers down some of those spokes — poetry is that which is untranslatable, the poet is a pretender, a designer of language — to get a temporary shine. to discover peculiarities of the tongue, strange cousins, words echoing each other’s materiality and possible significance. to respond to, extrapolate on, and de-center a centrifugal image, usually the beginning, the provocations of certain such “epiphanies.” to follow up on these acoustic, visual or even conceptual foundations, which may reveal something about the arbitrary nature of language, perception, attempts at irrational knowledge, the dialectic of meaning/non-meaning. if not to build imaginary blocks, to create create atmospheres (moods?) of words, shapes of syntax tones and rhythms, in which hypothetical selves may temper false realities. in (ergo) sum, to exorcise macro-demons of perplexity by creating micro-demons of patterns and motion.

(poems follow)

Media Literacy
What the broadcaster says is professional like-
able probable even verbably likely given polls
pronostications calcullations and second-
opiniated confirmations of viewing areas
labelhoods frontal expediencies and sin-
dependent rank and role ratings.
Moving and still temptations of phone-
in or disaspectful cacaphony
cronipherous satellite links
preposturized cable and calk.
Balk! Caucus contre wiretrapped in-
accuracies in eptitudes in-tapped
and rave prensile agilities.
Ultimate wards of the spate
stave offly statements of loqualacious
regionable actuality and nation all impact
words of the art fee acts full agendae and artifacts
laurels of the great tomes of factual medium glisten.

A Report of I-Thou Rapport
1. a nameless mirth first cracked
the untold secrets of waiting
through the first-born crop;

2. in this “sometimes sentimental education”
there were staying pains to grasp and file
the rawness, even years,
prey of staid and deafly friendships
without sails, odd years,
spawning polish for feet
rather than hands or minds,
as tildes make the words of spanish shine;

3. to search the speaking of the heart and how we sew it,
silence followed, and s/he said of the fleet:
their new erotic poetry is neurotic poetry
their lyric “I” is a lyric “my”

4. confessions conferred lesions in the mesh,
a festive festering of confusion and deferred sins;
if allegiance was suspect, it was concluded there
must be a clamoring for continuation,
a search and destruction where
the padres convert infidels and revert
a catechism of folly, an account of true schism;

5. the phonology of pace
the ex-motive of experience
the temper of time and space
and the persistent question
what have you done for them?

6. and finally overcoming that burden of inquiry
and naming the unfolding birth as it may seal
phase, peer, seek, sphere, split, tempt, fail or feel
like a telling and unswerving service.

In # (19.. ):

Bridge taxes and western thought

Far be it from me to presume to pontificate
about the beyond, the other side of thisness,
some ridge back or gated ontology,
or certificate of being.

So forgo me pondering arcs and suspensions to make
amends, a more modern montage of shreds and planks,
or build, construct, a covered goal or yonder link,
or large the brink to strike or set a toll,

simply to charge a new and un-
expected pontage.

Staybreak

then the certain regular fluke taking by surprise
the reversals that sever relaxed ties;
figures of driving lack, daily presence
without cuffing or restraining, strapped to
this person a being-bent-deeply-over himself:
the precarious fashions and fictions of meshing
(with others, Others and remnants of the living);
the fleshing rituals of imitation and imprecation
(passing over fads or fifteen-minute fame);
the guessing, threshing and trashing of tasks and
this absolukewarm bath prior to the next
material and ethereal doses.

second staybreak

bent but unblinded to an early sign
a cool release of beginnings
to be able to sense and select
the accessories of seasonal disease,
an accent rising to warn and sort what
appertains to this suit of anger or amour
worn by active sects of beleaguers
in a commerce of goods and deeds;
cease to be sorry for the selling of ease,
the success of reason the reason of success.

EQUAL JUSTICE

COMES NOW CITIZEN HAND AND ALLEGES:

OPEN OVER OWNER OLDEN
BOLD BRAZEN BLOCKING BEREFT
TAKEN TOOK TILLER THEFT
DELIVER DELIBERATE DEFENSE DELAY
POINTER PAIN PAYMENT PAWN
SUNDOWN TAKEDOWN GUNDOWN CROOK
PETITION AGGRESSION REVISION SHUN
TESTAMENT WILLING TESTING THRILL
THRASH BREAKAGE VESTIGE THROES
QUEST CLOCKING WRESTED CLOSE

WHEREAS SAID WRONGING IS WITNESSED IN WRIT IN STATEMENTLY LEGAL-SIZE COMPLAINT
DULY SWØRN BEFORE
THIS COURT