at one

these are notes.

not an argument.

so i'm trying to eat good food. smile at the sun. cross on green and stop on red.





i read somewhere that saying there were not serious and lasting aesthetic differences among American poets was like throwing a sucker-punch. A mean gesture. Not ameliorative.

But maybe our sudden realizations take us aback and we can make new differentiations once we've regained our senses. half the time i deliberately place myself in the path of oncoming shock. this is kocik's susceptive science.

i'm not satisfied with dissatisfaction. its not a stance, proposal or a program for art.
that smart writer Walter Benjamin explained Baudelaire's broodiness as somewhat dependent on the consistent quick movements he had to make to get from point a to point b in crowded places. That and combining a kind of appetite that is cheered and checked by an equally appetitive company (or lot). Arakawa and Gins design architectures to make it very very hard to get to the bathroom, thus extending our lives indefinitely by making basic fluid movements impossible. this is a recipe for romanticism.

if i could sing with the glee singers of bright pill-crushed joys and festive reedy stringed things glittering like shiny green crystals and hairy nimbuses, get lost in rhythms' wooden-wagons circled ukulele plasma squirt in the wildflower meadow i'd do it all the time.

i desire to achieve a lasting sympathy with the scope and scale of the popular entertainments. an effort immediately palpable in the results. but there's a lot we forgot. we forgot sooooo much.

if i could eat greeny greens and drink fresh fruit juices all the time and run at dawn and salve all scrapes encountered, and open up Doug & Mir's Texts and Textiles again i sure would.

but there are liens and leases all over the place. "No sharing" someone told me. on the train they pipe in the words: "please do not give".

i fell into a swoon and collapsed and dreamed i was in a crowd of dissatisfied wanting people who were impatient. i must pay very close attention to my thoughts at these times, and observe them very carefully. i can't read the iconography very well any more. but i can see where the symbols tremble enough to gain purchase.


there is no reason for writing if not part of a conversation. sure, i'm comfortable with Blanchot's infinite conversation, inasmuch as we can be comfortable with the basic premise of discomfort he presents us with.

but i'm serious. i called seven people this morning. i don't want to be typing right now.

read the announcements, show up in the place, say hello to the people. do this. it is enough.

there is no one driving the source of the shock i deliberately placed myself in front of.

non-dairy whipped topping, sugar, margarine, cheese food, canned tomato soup.

there are no outsiders, no outre poets. forget art.

i'm happy to give due acknowledgment and greet warmly the suddenly perceived off-garde poets.

off-garde poets and artists don't apply shocks and are as happy to get them as they are hate mail and the quietude of critics who won't review their books and are reluctant to speak their names in certain company.

off-garde poets are susceptible to unannounced delays and unexpected rainshowers of gifts and surprise kisses and cuddles walking right up to your room and saying, "there, you needed that"

they don't throw sucker-punches

they have kids and eat in restaurants. o my.

they throw parties.

they don't mind people stealing all their best ideas, because they're worth imitating, even if badly.

no not giving!

no not sharing!

they find the minutiae of individuality as perplexing as the silliness of the thing they walked 44 blocks to buy and got yelled at at every intersection and very nearly chopped at by an irate pedestrian. but the smiles of gentle souls are as shocking also.


their kind of love is not insomnia or tobacco or fetish mediation posing as direct experience.

they don't hunt madly for mirrors as confirmation.

like this and like this and like this, it's beautiful now, see?

*.*