Читать книгу Mean Free Path - Ben Lerner - Страница 8

I finished the reading and looked up

Changed in the familiar ways. Now for a quiet place

To begin the forgetting. The little delays

Between sensations, the audible absence of rain

Take the place of objects. I have some questions

But they can wait. Waiting is the answer

I was looking for. Any subject will do

So long as it recedes. Hearing the echo

Of your own blood in the shell but picturing

The ocean is what I meant by

You startled me. I thought you were sleeping

In the traditional sense. I like looking

At anything under glass, especially

Glass. You called me. Like overheard

Dreams. I’m writing this one as a woman

Comfortable with failure. I promise I will never

But the predicate withered. If you are

Uncomfortable seeing this as portraiture

Close your eyes. No, you startled

Identical cities. How sad. Buy up the run

The unsigned copies are more valuable

I have read your essay about the new

Closure. My favorite parts I cannot follow

Surface effects. We moved to Canada

Without our knowledge. If it reciprocates the gaze

How is it pornography? Definitions crossed

With stars, the old closure, which reminds me

Wave to the cameras from the

The petals are glass. That’s all you need to know

Lines have been cut and replaced

With their opposites. Did I say that out loud

A beautiful question. Barbara is dead

Until I was seventeen, I thought windmills

Turned from the fireworks to watch

Their reflection in the tower

Made wind. Brushed metal apples

Green to the touch

All pleads for an astounding irrelevance

Structured like a language, but I

I like the old music, the audible kind

We made love to in the crawl space

Without our knowledge. Robert is dead

Take my voice. I don’t need it. Take my face

I have others. Pathos whistles through the typos

Parentheses slam shut. I’m writing this one

With my eyes closed, listening to the absence of

Surface effects. Patterns of disappearance. I

I kind of lost it back there in the trees, screaming

About the complexity of intention, but

But nothing. Come to bed. Reference is a woman

Comfortable with failure. The surface is dead

Wave to the cameras from the towers

Built to sway. I promised I would never

Tell me, whose hand is this. A beautiful

Question her sources again

Unhinged in a manner of speaking

Crossed with stars, a rain that can be paused

So we know we’re dreaming on our feet

Like horses in the city. How sad. Maybe

No maybes. Take a position. Don’t call it

Night-vision green. Think of the children

Running with scissors through the long

Where were we? If seeing this as portraiture

Makes you uncomfortable, wake up

Wake up, it’s time to begin

The forgetting. Direct modal statements

Wither under glass. A little book for Ari

Built to sway. I admire the use of felt

Theory, like swimming in a storm, but object

To antirepresentational bias in an era of

You’re not listening. I’m sorry. I was thinking

How the beauty of your singing reinscribes

The hope whose death it announces. Wave

In an unconscious effort to unify my voice

I swallow gum. An old man weeps in the airport

Over a missed connection. The color of money is

Night-vision green. Ari removes the bobby pins

I remove the punctuation. Our freezer is empty

Save for vodka and film. Leave the beautiful

Questions unanswered. There are six pages left

Of our youth and I would rather swallow my tongue

Than waste them on description

A cry goes up for plain language

In identical cities. Zukofsky appears in my dreams

Selling knives. Each exhibit is a failed futurity

A star survived by its own light. Glass anthers

Confuse bees. Is that pornography? Yes, but

But nothing. Come to reference. A mode of undress

Equal to fascism becomes obligatory

In identical cities. Did I say that already? Did I say

The stranglehold of perspective must be shaken off

A live tradition broadcast with a little delay

Takes the place of experience, like portraits

Reciprocating gazes. Zukofsky appears in my dreams

Offering his face. Each of us must ask herself

Why am I clapping? The content is announced

Through disappearance, like fireworks. Wave

After wave of information breaks over us

Without our knowledge. If I give you my denim

Will you simulate distress

To lay everything waste in the name of renewal

Haven’t we tried that before? Yes, but

But not in Canada. The vanguard succumbs

To a sense of its own importance as easily as swans

Succumb to the flu. I’m writing this one

With my nondominant hand in the crawl space

Under the war. I can feel an axis snapping

In my skull, and soon I will lose the power

To select, while retaining the power to

All these flowers look the same to me

Night-vision green. There is nothing to do

In the desert but read Penthouse and lift weights

My blood is negative. That’s all you need to know

Sophisticated weaponry marries the traditional

Pleasures of perspective to the new materiality

Of point-and-click. I’m writing this one

As a woman comfortable with leading

A prisoner on a leash

Combine was the word I was looking for

Back there in the trees. My blood is

Scandinavian Modern. I kind of lost it

But enough about me. To return with a difference

Haven’t we tried that before? Yes, but

But not from the air. Unique flakes form

Indistinguishable drifts in a process we call

All these words look the same to me

Fascism. Arrange the flowers by their price

Then, where despair had been, the voice

Of Nina Simone. Parentheses open

On a new gender crossed with stars

Ari removes the bobby pins. Night falls

There is no such thing as non sequitur

When you’re in love. Let those who object

To the pathos swallow their tongues. My numb

Rebarbative people, put down your Glocks

And your Big Gulps. We have birthmarks to earn

Around 1945 the question becomes: Sleepyhead

Since the world is ending, may I eat the candy

Necklace off your body? Turn the record over

Turn the pillow over. It has a cooler side

Like a vein on the wing of a locust

The seam of hope disclosed by her voice

It cannot save us. But it can remind us

Survival is a butcher’s goal. All hands

To the pathos. Let the credits

Bend the plastic stick and break the interior tube

The reaction emits light, but not heat

The tragedy of dialectics. Sand-sized particles

Of revolutionary possibility fall constantly