(i)
first fundamental law of the sane: shun bell-curves of enchantment
with would-be colonizers perusing mirrors
over breakfast, multitasking the grimy business of chitchat
and whistling Patsy Cline like maybe you’re a serial-numbered life form
attached to faulty recharger … inside these refrigerated minds, the whirring
irks even (and uneven) saints; next fundamental law
of the sane: avoid interrupting all who stare like children into
techno-divination, those hubristic robots prone to feeling immense
sovereignty when not exhibiting classical shutdown
behaviors; life is, after all, no empire drama for work-free belligerents
banished into the psychic wilds of a never-arriving
Oedipal epilogue … a further fundamental law
of the sane: social capitalists trade upward, always, near-empathy for the broken air-con
of a conversation about the neighbour’s new divorce
or another workhour lunch spent googling old flames, exchanged
for a grandmother’s not-forgotten sense of the impending; the heart
is a complex ledger, where nothing can be pretended nor any ever truly go debt-free
(final fundamental law of the sane: be careful,
human being, those condominiums are full of bad days)
‘Enchantment’ (Sherry Turkle)
vs ‘From Old Europe to the New World’ (Thomas Piketty)
(ii)
typing names in the boardrooms of our inertia, we
make ourselves a home, hanging pictures of sanity from hooks
in the fattest shadows of enlightenment
ancestors (look!) crouched in cowyard idylls, pointing at howling timber,
‘here, here’ punched back-and-forth ’twixt tribes like ontological sport; we are
re-typing names in boardrooms of inertia
surrounded by edutainers suggesting history was once
populated by shaman and BMWs, sacrificial plastic, certainly there were
plenitudes of electricity; inside the fulsome gusts
we’re protected from marrow-eating lunacies
by civility, training winks across mirrors each moment we’re not
typing names (feverishly) into inertias
of boredom, our domains gridded by inexhaustible machines
roving like fellow creatures across primordial, twittering districts
inside the fabled gossip of our enlightenment
we sleepwalk (unhandsomely), dreaming in the
registers of castrati, the ideas of light hanging in small globes through darkness;
typing names inside the boardrooms of our inertia, we crane
ears toward approaching furies
Paris Review, Spring 2005, #173 (Les Murray)
(iii)
so many searching for a someone, hitting all the parties
to purr speech into rooms hopping with Bodhisattvic supertoys, smitten
haltingly in the warm atmospheres of foreground
these festivals of experimental affect, where none need licenses to hunt
and emergent fondness happens like eye contact between insects, so
many searching for a someone busily
consulting with internal directories, our quirking babble
functioning (near-impressively) across intersections of autonomy, lorn and
visceral in the warm atmospheres of foreground
we are dolls enacting life-sized repertoires of symmetry
smalltalking bodily toward futures set to moonlit photography etc, so many
searching for a someone, hitting all the parties
while outlines of historical selves rattle kinetic across backdrops
and musak functions like fingers pointing at mossy utopias with underfloor heating
in these warm atmospheres of foreground
attachments are happening in real time around tables of baked custard,
the cold and juiceless dunes of night swinging new angles at us, mirabile
dictu, so many searching for someone inside parties
faltering and astonished in sudden atmospheres of foreground
‘Complicities’ (Sherry Turkle)
vs ‘Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?’ (John Cage)
(iv)
our sorrow liaising with unlaid ghosts, we take nothing seriously
intoning into dictaphones held against the heroic, dead grammars of conformity
inside these rooms there are
many passions (viz. skilled chafing; listening to blood throb; brainwashing) while
vulgar wads of money tuck into the waistbands of reality, things growing everywhere
and our heads complex with virtue, we take
nothing seriously, the newest costume among those born damned and always wanting
straight ahead in formal, regular measure while
satyrs wander the rooms seeking fellatio, like a heart attack
so many common territories to disappointment
below blizzards hanging limply inside photographs, the valves of businessmen
tuned to the lowest hostile octaves, taking
everything seriously, the mood an endless shriek inside homespun habits
where ideas shudder like birds in oil and devils slouch, authentic curios
inside these rooms there are
such inventive restraints, imitated inside bodies, waiting
acutely while questions flip off lips in wondrous sound, and yet
we regret almost nothing, seriously, our passions liaising with unlaid ghosts
(inside these rooms there are many)
Paris Review, Summer-Fall 1964, #32 (William Carlos Williams)