my work

Here is a poem:

I would sit in the sun if there were some.

And there was some.

If there were some grass it would not be a lemon.

A lemon would be placed on a metal chair.

The metal would be not iron. Maybe.

And I would be chain smoking the snow.

The grass would be melting the sun.

And the lemon would be going slowly.

The universe would be this.

Every part moves slowly.

The sun would situate the trees.

The lemon would spread through the trees.

The lemon would spread.

And I would be not yellow.

The Object in Community: a manifesto

1. Collect objects, i.e. nouns.
2. Construct sentences.
3. Sentences obligate the objects to do something.In a given example of my own writing the objects “would” be doing something.I am therefore obligated to consider why they are not doing these things.Or perhaps I only obligate the reader to consider why they do not do these things.
4. Likewise when an object “is” doing something one may be more likely to consider all that the object “is not” doing.
5. If I am active in my not doing is that to say that I am thinking?
6. Make a list of sentences in which an objector a collection of objects do or do not do things, commit or do not commit actions.
7. Words are objects, i.e. individuals.
8. Sentences are objects, i.e. individuals.
9. Alphabetic letters are objects, i.e. individuals.
10. Words and sentences both then are communities.
11. Communities are collections of individuals.
12. To what extent do we allow the individuals of our communities to be different from one another or to be the same.
13. My own writing attempts to imitate the community of an individual using my own self as model.
14. So we can say that a poem, or page is a community of sorts, a series of individuals existing in the same place.Or the page can be an individual, or a community within itself, made up of individuals each with their own identity.
15. In this way, an individual becomes a collection of other individuals.
16. This is not a picture of me or a story of me but let us say that it is.
17. A close attention to dreaming has allowed me to make connections between separate things quite easily.
18. Dreaming allows practice for making connections between objects, events, people, actions.
19. This negates, I think, a tendency toward the law of cause and effect because one begins to see that one thing relates to any thing.
20. And therefore, when two individuals find themselves to be in relationship, this relationship, although different is not unique for one finds oneself, eventually to be in relationship to each one, always.
21. I must be living my life around the poem.Poems feel like parts of things or collections of things. A syllable feels heavy.I stop to breathe when one line doesn’t extend so far to the right as the next.
22. Move syllables. Try to remember weight.
23. “Just as a motion picture is actually a series of pictures, so a poem is a series of poems.”“Since sequences (even those we call syntax) imply consequences, they also provoke concern—they excite the sense that there is meaning or the desire to make meaning.” –Lyn Hejinian
24. Anne Waldman says that you can read Kim’s work forward or backward and it will do the same thing.
25. How arbitrary can a sequence be?We should note here that Anne’s observation does not consider the possibility of cut-up, i.e. sequence matters.
26. One tends to be less concerned with the collection of individuals than with which individual stands next to which in a given collection.
27. So let us assume that the poem will only be a list of sentences in which each sentence is an individual that will have necessary consequences upon its neighbor.
28. To what extent do we allow the neighbors of our communities to be different from one another or to be the same.
29. If the audience were always the sameI could continue on with the next part of the story.But old friends walk away and sometimes never come back and therefore can never be entrusted to contain a story that would be me.
30. This is not a picture of me or a story of me but we are saying that it is.
31. And I can never be trusted to tell a single story as that to which I am speaking is not always the same.
32. To what extent do we allow an individual of a given community to be different from itself or to be the same.
33. The bulldogs of Harry Mathew’s SelectedDeclarations of Dependence make me laugh.Each right hand page contains the same bulldog.Shade varies but I am convinced that it is the same bulldog on each page.
34. In this conviction I ignore the difference between the representation of the thing and the thing itself. That is assuming that this is the representation of a real bulldog.But perhaps it is only the representation of an idea of the universal bulldog.
35. So we must assume that in repetitionMatthew’s bulldogs become at once both representation of the thing and the thing itself.
36. Gertrude Stein proposes by the example of “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” that it is on the fourth repetition that the rose becomes other than what one would normally take it to be.
37. Gertrude Stein also owned a series of poodles and gave the name “Basket” to each.
38. Thus repetition and variation.Each Basket is a new thing although it carries the same title.
39. It takes awhile for repetition to become funny.
40. Harry Mathews’ bulldogs make me laugh.
41. It is a very heady laugh. Repetition is funny.To say that something is funny is to say that it has meaning.
42. Repetition is a simple way of extending relationships beyond the one on one.We can see quite readily when repetition is present.
43. Can story function on the level of form then?
44. Bob Doto notices that seeing the event over and over again on the TV allows him a desire for the next disaster.
45. A man in a coffee shop agrees.Says this is the natural progression of the human mind when you set it on a story line.
46. To what extent do we expect the individuals of our communities to make stories of themselves.
47. To what extent does the assumption of story require an individual of a given community to be different from itself or to be the same.
48. To what extent does the telling of a story determine an individual’s movement through its community.
49. What constraints does the story of a community impose upon its citizens?
50. What can a single sentence do to change the story?
51. The heated argument of Andy Warhol, as portrayed by David Bowie, in the film “Basquiat”:“It’s in New York.”“It’s in New Jersey.”“It’s in New York.”“It’s in New Jersey.”“It’s in New York.”To which Andy finally replies:“Oh, I didn’t know that, did you Bruno?”
52. To suddenly reenter an argument as though you had never participated in the first place.
53. How does one forget the momentum of the story?
54. How does one remember the individual itself a collection of individuals that allows the movement through the story?
55. A story is a succession of stories.
56. Stories are told by communities and by individuals who are in themselves collections of individuals.
57. Words tell stories.
58. Sentences tell stories.
59. The text has an opportunity at the end of every sentence at the end of every word at the end of every letter even to choose what it did not plan to choose.
60. Change, then, happens on the level of the individual even when that individual is a collection of individuals.
61. How can the individual remember itself in the telling of the story?
62. Words on a page represent action where there is no action.
63. When the citizens of the language hide themselves for the sake of the story then, does the text remain the terrain of the mind?
64. The physical individuals existing within the text are the citizens of the language, i.e. words, sentences, alphabetic letters.
65. Story is only an idea conveyed by these citizens.
66. Story can only be held up by these citizens.
67. How is the individual to know itself from that in which it moves?
68. How is the individual to know its own borders without bumping up against something solid?
69. This is not a picture of me or a story of me but we have said that it is so let us say it.