[NO FEAR / NO DIE]

سکوت

'BURNING AN ILLUSION' [Menelik Shabazz / 1981]

"It's too slow in here"

CHALLENGER DEEP

Collections down on the bottom that we did not know / shone a light but he tries to tell us out of a crisis / don't think this / this whole time the floor of the Mariana Trench

It was yenning for that trash / passings go on and on above the trench in an ache that will not dip, settle / but now that part is holding some slim heaps -- rubbed off signs on tin cylinder--thighs can crush these so easy -- heaving boards -- is it a bag or is it a harder red solid [a crate] can't be seen well by ours -- / the trench cradling this and more all down deep in wet black 

No light when hours end in Moody Gardens / in Galveston / pyramidal & glass is stacked to make it
No light but the animals still moving inside / no one looking at but they are there breathing /
Thronged with nursing rooms / Triangle 3 holds the Arapaima
They pull their bodies up in water like they might not be able to turn, holding weight -- that large
A scale from them for a nail file / A tongue from them scrapes Guarana / Their cousins are Cichlid holding babies safe in a male's mouth also
White slips out from females' head babies feeding on it / To think of them small lapping in this white from breathing red-lined, nothing-warm bodied Mom

These things in a head of a girl / knows they're under hi-glass sieving water thru gills same the minutes that she's supine / swelling with this
He's loud moving into this space / ruddying on his face been downing Materva and scent's on his breathing / tamping his body down into their sateen he makes it smell a fold of sweat / some red glitter from another body on the cheek / lips raw bulging been mashed between palm and teeth / she does not know why & heat's bothering /
flips his own face into hers but that / that / is as much as he will do

Own teeth of hers if you could calcify beads of a blackberry / make them mineral / s
Palatial mouth / studded on the gumline
Letting little in / some air not enough though

Asked for all this / yeah / to settle in her chink
Refuse / dross in him / too much piling / she is collecting
Holds onto so much to the thinking of the A. Gigas that want to pull a thing like herself down to a bottom where they feed / They are big enough
Clamps down on the things that fall in / she sleeps in it /  all down deep in wet black sateen

THE BLACK BLOCK - M. DURAS

"What you're going to write is already there in the darkness. It's as if writing were something outside you, in a tangle of senses: between writing and having written, having written and having to go on writing; between knowing and not knowing what it's all about; starting from complete meaning, being submerged by it, and ending up in meaninglessness. The image of a black lock in the middle of the world isn't far out. 

It isn't the transition Aristotle speaks of, from potential to actual being. It isn't a translation. It's not a matter of passing from one state to another. It's a matter of deciphering something already there, something you've already done in the sleep of your life, in its organic rumination, unbeknown to you. It isn't something 'transferred' -- that's not it. It might be that the instinct I referred to is the power of reading before it's written something that's still illegible to everyone else. I could put it differently. I could say it's the ability to read your own writing, the first stage of your own writing, while it's still indecipherable to others. It's as if you have to regress, condescend towards other people's writing for the book to become legible to them. This could be said in other words again, but it would still amount to the same thing. You have in front of you a mass suspended between life and death and entirely dependent upon you. I've often had this feeling, of a confrontation between something that was already there and something that was about to take its place. I'm in the middle, and I seize the mass that's already there, move it about, smash it up -- it's almost a question of muscles, of physical dexterity. You have to move faster than the non-writing part of you, which is always up there on the plane of thought, always threatening to fade out, to disappear into limbo as far as the future story is concerned; the part which will never descend to the level of writing; which refuses all drudgery. But you have the feeling that sometimes the non-writing part of you is asleep, and thereby yields itself up and enters completely into the ordinary aspect of writing that will constitute the book. But between these two states there are many intermediate ones, of differing degrees of felicity. Sometimes you could almost use the word happiness. 

Writing isn't just telling stories. It's exactly the opposite. It's telling everything at once. It's the telling of a story, and the absence of the story It's telling a story through its absence."

JULIE CAMPBELL, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON

STEERING & A PEAR

WATCH ME TAKE THAT THEN I CHANGE LIKE A MOOD RING

Asked him
What's your perfect wife?

"She has to be sluttier than I am. She has to read more than I do."

GROW LIKE YOU DID AT NAZARETH

3.

Grow like you did at Nazareth

Leaves on that whole tree
Hang so / Hang on it and it looks like a screen / those leaves that will shake off a screen / ALL HARLEQUIN

Just a heap hung in sky
Leaves on all branches have been resized big to little / switchbacking

Can you grow like that

To neg her / he says she reminds him of the NANNING ORPHANAGE / see I'd say she reminds me of MOSSFEASTER FUNERAL HOME

She can see something that was wet / but dried now / on the side of his face / not going to ask
He stands on left side of her / keeps standing to the left of her /
STERN LEAN

She's hearing someone on right say 'I tried to close her mouth to help her'

And now skin hangs on the roof of her mouth / how did it get raw / Now, won't stop tonguing it / she cut it on the seam of stale gum / cut through lollipop her mouth worked on

Her face it's at rest / see it from the side--

Knows she won't grow like that again

She cares about that building in Bastrop / More than a hanging green heap
Building sits off the access road / brown building / government / olive green oily tinted windows / looks bad
It's a place all the way custodial / how it smells / she has to / she goes in
While walking slips a finger in her mouth to feel the cut again / keeps wool gloves on / why

"I saw Adam's bones reposing in a cavern under Mt. Cavalry deep down, almost to water level, and in a straight line beneath the spot on which Jesus was crucified"

No more growth.

COPING JEWEL --

Whole walking cane's a solid white / tics it on a tile / man is blind holding on it in a double fist they did him in wrong / mani's fresh, 4 days in, she's saying the nails look like teeth--but says it like "they look like 1 tooth tenned" / no reason for that man caning all in front to know his teeth are bright set in his mouth like jewels / solid white rubies / but they are / gleaning out / a coping he has / but he can't know unless we say / more clicking this time from his feet on public outdoor marble that can only look dirty once you walk up to it / I want to tell him / he's on top of steps that we all see clean at a distance / but so gross from the shoes going across if you're close / this one's not a coping just some thing he won't know / He is no Stesichorus

Jewel Mae Devorse
East Hartford '45 - '17

 "What would you like to say about Jewel?"

everyone I could set into AlumiRes resin / she's one of them / I sit far away / this woman walking fast no fixed way on a court / we're so hot it's a bad hot 3 PM / get down on concrete smells like sweat / she's big / semi-mesh shining nylon shorts these are a cherry red a deep red all-over diamond cuts but you won't know the shapes unless you get up on a pair of them / those shorts wicking away anything wet dripping down her / my lashes hang on by baby magnets and laughing but comes out a straight dirty hiss / at her / I don't mean a jeer at you / comes off like a jeering / at you / ask her is she building muscle / looks at top of my forehead says into me "no working at stubborn belly fat and I chafe, I chafe, I put the baby powder all over" / after a blinking back to her see a fistful of talcum mixed up with Tricofero for the hair until it turns itself to royal lite purple paste / she's jerking in the air from behind but I make her still / all I do to make her into that is look down / "who has to bear much" / now she is a Tantalus to me / parched no lake for her to want / lumbers too strong / I see her so I set what she looks like into the etching for Lanman & Kemp-Barclay tonic for the hair / 2 cone planters either side of her / I keep her / I'll keep her in that way

Jewel Stegall Hughson,
California
'47 - '17
"What would you like to say about Jewel?"

He says he wants his music to sound like a recording of a small dog in a designer carrier being pulled around a city for a day

 "I just hope people understand that was a year for him," he went on, switching to the third person. "And I hope everyone has a successful year and I hope that's in the past."