‘What gets me
is, how man refuses to acknowledge the consequences of his disposing of himself
at his own entrance — as though a kiss were a cheap thing, as though he were.’ — Charles Olson, The Human Universe
This
like everything and everything else starts elsewhere than about itself but not
necessarily at the heart of it all or indeed anywhere which, for now, we can
give a name (or at least I could if, and if only, you were something able to be
reduced/aligned/forced into such a space other than the event of your own
eventual whatever) —
a
poetry of deliberate indelicacy will do
none avoiding the impulse, a Derek Bailey sort of distance with a ‘photographic memory’ masking the sort
of resentment only a P.E. teacher could love, day in day out, within and without, grotesque and glorious exterior
lasting long after the rotting of the core
(so)
save
unable the /
crack fingered lilies
despoiling /
never
and ever under meat find posh bitch drinks /
a fifth meme weekday
evening cunt of a bike healthily /
extinction
becomes checkout love heaven and /
fucked side concrete moment hybrid
fucker made /
honour
and empty the retired bright syntax inside /
bad grammar incest
dialectic. //
The
need to make the moment run. The unfounded, completely and forever. The
distraction I never said. Avoiding her in passing and his self-aware splitting.
Turning from some labyrinth or lasagne recipe not out of fear or pride but
simply to make the faces quiet. Mao and Edmond Jabès. Adolescence is a notebook
and I put things in it. Finding the name of a long poem. The simple and the
repetitive. A Beatrice I talk to everyday.
You
ask me to write about lived experience so you won’t mind receiving this nest of
lies in a found form, a lost form excluding any other surface which, and which
only, takes something beyond your conception and my command, the grand general
or global transcendence of the declarative ‘we’ where (and where so ever, out
of your mind/out of space and time such as it is when, and you better know
when) the moment of imagining arrives just as they’re putting whatever they
find to the first use it demands —
there
are more than the sort of lives whose
eulogies read like UCAS applications and the sort who never read anything to be worth reading at all, a Jeffrey Bernard
sort of musing, a forgotten father of pragmatism, taught me how to love,
now wishing in terse reconciliation it never happened at all
(thus)
purse extraction more /
enviable
perineal realm with /
fortune
if straightened fictive equine typecast /
fuckwit inspection delegate each and every fuck /
a
theory of fuck give twice and repeat /
entirety wholesome spastic at least /
countdown
to outward presentation of meat /
moves
if direction if found time around. //
Sitting
opposite but not beside. It’s all made up. There’s nothing betrayed by this
rhythm. Stop it becoming a conscience. Yesterday’s gestures are today’s
aversions. Keep it arbitrary. The imperative is to never appreciate. The long
game. The barriers necessarily between us. Her hair. There must be a hope but
I’ll resign before I’m fired. Harold Bloom making a broccoli-centric quiche and
being upset at how light it is. The things that dreams are made of. Imagined
postings about alcoholism.
The
moment of the extended present given when and when indeed there is no other
form or need or further need of form to or from the incessant but not
unreasonable demand to (and you guessed it/could see it coming) conformity to
whatever has gone before not to make it cohere but to give the illusion that
the form of whichever point of reference preceded was (and is/and will be)
entirely contingent to nothing but itself instead of the inconceivable
possibility that this apparently spontaneous descent can be (or should be/or
hope to be) anything other than its own premeditation and enjoying it —
a
choice to write what is known to be only of the now and will be entirely
of the past even when presented, doing it for a laugh, Angela Davis with
gingivitis, ‘says more about κ than it does about γ’, gestures that may be
misinterpreted but at least circle their object, as you like it, so there
(hence)
place whatever tradition two /
metric
four if postcard perhaps /
slackjawed slattern if
given made /
sex
is and only circumlocution /
misrecognition as torture domestic /
memory
has and there been malleability /
liquid presence sacrifice to freeze /
home
find here for knowing not else. //
The
new in the old, calumny in its quiet prevalence. A conference on The Fall.
‘Poetry and Abstract Thought’. Getting stuck in the worst of too few ruts.
Ripping off Peter Manson. The man beside has a girlfriend but I have no dust on
my double bass anymore. There’s a moon in the sky but fuck me if that’s what
whatever’s on the other side would call it. Promiscuity. Looking busy on
laptops. Trying to find it all then settling in the comfort that this, this
little nuisance, is only ours.
Here
is knowing a past definition of there and if now, some then, making certain or
a measure of certainty in a mutually appreciable unit to say, or at least, it
is all as given unless interpretation distends the poverty of the moment into
reflexive and selfish return-loop discourse, seeing, in its way, and if, to
what, the end of the necessary feedback leaving an impression of these
quote-unquote figurative gymnastics and whether it lands/flies/or not, leaving
love in a bad place and hence just love, justly (this could have made use of
better form or better things or a better form of things but to consider this is
to ignore the pressing possibility it should have appeared outside/jumped in
the opposite direction to this freefall between fucking and fracking) —
when
starting again is so very much a question of why it is starting again, drunk
enough to have strength to cry, Kurt Gödel making the best of a Dutch prog
band and loving every minute of it, here are the little things barely
held together but together enough to know exactly what they are for
(therefore)
love elevator reject advancing /
wet
passage middle when optic shit /
crunch
up joist when glass yolk /
dark
planar sweat on each when /
cum
former disc now made career /
is
and to from shower misé boys /
disgrace
flick beard for holes above /
time
and again peat quarks. //
Lesbians
I thought about fucking once. Looking into tenebrosity. Recommending Sophie
Robinson to strangers then sitting quietly through arguments about the relative
merits of sitcoms. An overuse of the word cunt. Too much talk about the wrong
thing in the library. Helping friends research dissertations I’d never think of
writing myself. The radical nature of love is that it demands doing what you
don’t want then you end up wanting it. An ex-girlfriend’s screen-printing
acquaintance making me a Peter Kowald t-shirt, somehow.
The
possibility that this will never be repeated or the moment will be just that
and the body politic a misleading title (we shall not use
name/orientation/description) and a better sort of violence may likewise be
imminent, and if, and only, and then, the interrogation of your
desires/feelings/on-the-blink intuition on and towards the matter (for it is
thought and not object that ails us now/and here/and wherever) may well, very
maybe, with a good fucking chance prove fruitless and tell you that you were
indeed living in the moment but it was your definition of living that
failed/contradicted/problematised the moment as the moment was not wrong nor
were you out of it —
a
singing while constantly scrubbing the surface of the matter, ‘forever trying
to recuperate and reclaim’, the pain barrier after which everything is
as easy as a vaccine but never too early always too late, Kayne West as
the most noble voice out of the seminary and oblivious to it, these nameless
lists of the moment distracting all attention from the sky
(but)
agitprop
tableware sold /
tartan nonce getting kinetic /
overboard
time waste on horse /
victory of object orient /
theft
up bovine displacement /
replace facing unfuckable
adversary /
winning the history true and black /
rolling
their bloody own. //
The
overbearing imposition to apologise for Wyndham Lewis. Looking back and
thinking, missing and signing. Dungeons & Dragons as a means of avoiding
work. The Sartrean ‘no-thing’. Rarity. Dull boys and the women who dream of
being ignored by them. All it takes is a car. Finding rhymes in my memorial
detritus, instruments we no longer know how to play. Among the same cunts in
different positions. The satisfaction of minimalism and contactless payment. A
bunch of grapes.
Matthew
Andrews is a writer and musician from Norwich,
UK. He has poetry forthcoming in Mineral and his work has otherwise
appeared in Rockland, Caliper, and pamphlets from his own Soviet
District Press. He can be found at sovietdistrict.com and is notional editor of
upcoming print-journal Pragma (@PragmaJournal on Twitter).