style="font-size:15px;"> 4
[Terrarium Letter #5]
5 [Notes for a Song Called “All It Takes”]
6 [If We Dig Up the Overworld]
1 IV.
1 [Narcissus the Paperwhite]
2 [Terrarium Letter #6]
3 [Notes Upon Completion of a Record]
4 [Telegram]
5 [Terrarium Letter #7]
6 [The Dive at the End of the World]
7 [Notes for a Song Called “The Drift”]
8 [Pastimes]
9 [Terrarium Letter #8]
I was born at the bottom of a wishing well.
BOB DYLAN
“Motorpsycho Nightmare”
THE STUNTMAN
[Telegram]
THE EARTH BROKE OPEN CAUSE WE BROKE IT OPEN, FIRE CAME OUT IN THE FORM OF AIR
EARTH IN THE FORM OF FIRE WAS OPENING MOUTHS, A BYSTANDER TURNED INTO A TREE, WITH SHOCK I SHOOK IT
I WANTED TO STUPEFY EARTH WITH MY FINESSE, LAY IT OUT ON MY BLANKET & FEED IT GRAPES
I.
[Narcissus the Debutante]
newcomer grows in, killing familiarity
the wealthy scramble to incorporate
he attends their dinners
like demons they need new bodies
downlooker comes to town, comes to their parties
they think him shy
no, he knows there’s no such thing as eye contact
the wolf has a horizontal sweet spot on its retina
for spotting prey on the prairie
the stranger has a narcissus
shaped sweet spot
all the better to spot himself
here is his typewriter retina,
he swaggers from ocular to oracular
to alienate everyone comprehensively, encyclopedically
is to become, in essence, alien
[Dotted Lines]
he bursts the windows round him
he dreams
of being tenfold or a hundredfold
like a paper airplane bent
into a paper bird
//
(over the mainline highway,
the low-lain bypass)
he beaks his neck to his chin
he folds his neck up and down
but I don’t care,
that man’s never becoming a swan
[Voyeurs Cum Voyageurs]
you know the first fucks
here were trappers
they dealt in pelts,
they sold chambers
of meatless animal
& mortal coil
here coal stains, here gun grease
mingles with bear grease
but so what
if you sleep in a hundred deaths:
beech, birch, beaver dam, bear-dam
we lowdown our hearts in the tundra
we lowdown the spades
& just when we think no one is watching
everybody is
[A List of Scenarios]
a bird with a broken wing
“two bars walk into a downtown”
the piano is under lock & key
nobody on the riverbank knows what “riparian” means
grand canyon as eyesore
a bird that is only a wing
hollywood (i assume) was once wooded with holly
people identify themselves with dances rather than names
the obelisk song
“i remember the pre-nostalgia era”
you
