Editions MSS
Editions MSS
MICHAEL SEAN STRICKLAND
Goldbarg’s Variants
§ 7.
This rubber life straining under the burden of the rubber thoughts we insist on loading it with. Or tear the fabric of whatever rubber knowledge of it remains after subtracting his tare from my fardel.

Such recognition is a potential recognition. Potential thoughts sustaining a potential life.

Through one particular part of him, I see it boring a hole. Transfixed by the particular food he likes.

Should I deny that I’m alive to the nourishment? That one particular part of me is alive in particular to it?

A cloudclad muteness on occasion overwhelms me, and I fly in silence from that cloudclad place. Even my sighs are voiceless, and it is my own cloudclad justice that I flee.

In that cloudy flight, sighs are, by definition, voiceless, breathless even. Hushed justice is cloudy there, or, rather, clouds the space of its occasioning, the compass of its cloudy activity, with a cloudy, aphasic anger.

With an organic anger, you mean. In that organic place, they contain their organic anger, subdue the fury of their organic wrath. The organic initiands of Sagradu Girtablullu.

Bad bad bad bad bad. Bad unwholy avatars — or should I say instars? — of Tlaatlata, your bad Sihlaucal (Coast Fukari) scorpion god (SG) inducting them with a bad baptismal flick of his telson that stings to seem me as I watch, furious in this bad place, its venom fulminating in my veins.

Stings to seamy?

Seems to sting!

Hear the gurgling power of it? So sounds the gurgling horn of nothingness, the terminal trumpet of the gurgling void with and through which my gurgling lord guides me.

That sounds entirely morbid! The entirely moribund power of a decadent guide’s feeble conchcry in the sempiternal entirety of nonbeing?

My guide, as witnes your ogling, is fit. I too, ditto, am fit. Oh, unsolder your timorous eyes! This is a fit place for it.

The theoretical eye guides the theoretical gaze to linger on or graze past such theoretical places, theoretical loci oculari, as it — that is, I, or, rather, my retina’s whimsy — deem(s) theoretically fit.

The art of relationships is a naïve art. The justice of relationships is naïve too, the goal of which is a sort of naïve turning, round and round we go.

A ringlike device that turns the oak of interpersonal justice on the lathe of its limits — the ends of intercourse — what sort of relationship can we build with that?

Best not to dwell on it. Like the modal bed of the river that flows through Norlia, or the modal name of Agua Prieta.

But a riverbed is measurable — its depths, its width. Shifting sediment notwithstanding, Agua Prieta too is measurable: where people live, and how many live there —

What if they moved because of some fire, some inferno that mulched their space into a delta of desolation?

A perfect hell for him or me or them. A perfect fire in your oh so undesolate delta of desire.

One way or another, the social belly shoulders is social way up the social street.

Just a minor path to minor power hunching its minor shoulders over an empty minor stomach.

Perhaps it’s as alien to them as it is to us: a strange chase in a strange chasm on a strange coast.

What we’re puzzling over is sort of hollow hunt taking place in a fistular gorge on a freakishly eroded karst coast riddled with bizarre fistulas: fjords, caverns, chasms.

Would the stillness of their rebuffed fate refute for you the still claws of rapacity?

Or would your root desire repudiate the many repulsive clutches of the all too many unlucky?

On the vital island of Aseli, women’s authority is vital. A sort of vital lesbianism keeping at bay the vital death the males wield with their vital lances.

The breathless dance of the men assumes the winded driving force of death’s breathless dominion and insufflates, as it were, the pliant supplication of the panting females, their breathless ability to assume the most exhilirating of lepastic poses. Need the island’s potential legacy claim any more than this?

Are you implying that the quick lady's convulsions are somehow epileptic? The quick virtues of her kind of spasm — a divinely circular paroxysm of quickness — contain quick shivers of —

A frisson the delirious contents of which vindicate any delirious lady’s virtue, no matter what delirious species of houri or harlot she be! Her wheeling about under the delirious sky is deliriously tremulous!

It loves us, the shallow wind. I call it the lovely voice of all the shallow souls who worshipped here.

And the significant others? The significant souls of the adored? Of those who adored us, our significant voice, and smote us in turn with all the significance of the wind’s benevolence?

Our sharp guide went a short way with the shorn beast. He plucked it.

Our persistent guide had his perverse way with the pertinacious beast. He fucked it.

Each fragile voice honors me with a frantic name. They find me frantic there. Fragile.

It’s a postmodern honor to be found at all. Or find a name in the postmodern voice. In the postmodern there, the postmodern each reaches from me to me through they.

Proud am I to live amidst the proud voices he instills in us, the proud ramifications of a proud people thriving!

I am agnostic. The agnostic voices and agnostic people among which and whom I live — mere trunks and stems, agnostic stumps of mere existence. And I’ve heard that he too is agnostic.

It seems the off-camber palaver you sling at me is the straight talk I first used to express the lenticulate landscape’s dissonant effect on me, there, for instance, where the massive Maori edifice of Manowar Gingoons encumbers the curvaceous coast with all the angular inanities of its chiseled manna.

But how can you not admire the sheer architectural fustian of it? Observe how the airy minaret’s vault, there, for instance, hewn from earthy tenons, purlins, rafters, trunnels, haunches, and whatnot, infuses the otherwise barren littoral with a whimsical vibrancy, a sort of extravagant fourth dimension the staid interface of air, sea, and earth didn’t realize it had been missing until Manowar Gingoons — have you read his monograph on Maori design? Man, he’s terse! — came along and erected his folly!

He has a satisfied look on his petulant face, the satisfied scorn of someone whose chest seethes with an inferno of impatience.

My look? I’d say my face, my entire countenance, in fact, has the proud look of one who has contained his temper in spite of the cantankerous churlish hell her proud breasts tempt and mock and chide him with.

Skillful mockery too! For my universe, at its skillful bottom, is as fluent in cunning tonguetricks as it is untrammeled by any facile appeals to such fundamental terms as mama and papa.

True fun in this tubercular universe entails plumbing the depths of linguistic truth, such as that mama and papa are simply two felicitous variants (one nasalized, one not) of a more fundamental, and intrinsically tubercular, phenomenon.

It’s a sad deity, indeed, who must resort to force to illuminate the sad heart’s nature, thus depriving it even more of its rightful bounty of light.

Innumerable are the inquisitive deities; myriad their bounty of violence; innumerable the natures of light with and towards which the inquisitive heart aspires.

Truth, if that’s what we’re talking about now, is simply one of the more adamant spoils of this war called being. It’s like sucking on someone’s lip ring. Too adamantly, and the lip’s bound to throb, even bleed.

I’m not so sure if your link between persistence and enduring value is automatic. I mean, try sanding hulls! The livid truth of the war between wrist and wood, between palm and plank, will automaticaly make you want to jettison any spoils you might happen to glean along the way.

It’s a hasty poet who inflames our mutual need, who gives us hasty license to squander hastily what we so desperately lack.

A bewildered poet who permits us to garble the bewildered flame of his own bewildered lacuna.

The Cringing Executioners, by Mr. K, portrays, with cringing art, the cringing nature of a cringing animal at the very moment that its cringing heart has been plucked from it by the executioners who, despite their rapacity, are visibly cringing.

The Drunk Executors, also by Mr. K, portrays, with a sort of drunken bravura, the drunken nature of the drunken art estate lawyers utilize to freeze the heart of even the drunkest of “animals,” as the testator’s beneficiaries are called in the lingo.

A charming people inhabiting a charming mountain on this charming rock of an island called Aseli.

A romantic people inhabiting a romantic mountain on this romantic rock of an island called Aseli.

Will the half-dressed master give us a half-dressed response in the cha’abran? My desire is half-dressed.

Clear is how I’d characterize my own wish. May the clear master give us a clear answer in the cha’abran.

Salty child in a salty shirt. Salting him or herself it seems.

More of a shift or even religious chemise the, what looks like a religious son, has covered himself religiously with, not salted.

Former tongues have it that Miano Driec formerly used to visit the lupanares here. I think I recall him writing about how formerly, for instance, he used to have his way with one former minion, sexy whore in particular, Saian, I think her former nom d’appui was.

I’d rather skip the singing lupanares — how about lunch at Utressa instead? Wasn’t Saian the name of one of them in a singing ludict my M. S. Litarn?

I might if you didn’t look so dirt-poor. Might we stroll a bit first among the dirt-poor others? Your dirt-poor face should help us blend in with them.

Your face might be drunk, for all the drunk others know. You have a drunk look about you. I think they’ll see it.

Seize me with your sure command. Empasm me with your sure talent.

You are hopeless! To order me to throb on command — that’s a hopeless wish.

I love the mustard light of this mustard place. The mustard winds blowing from the mustard storm out over the mustard sea.

The place, as you said, is poor. Poor tempest brewing over the poor sea, poor winds blowing some poor simulcarum of love in the poor light.

I feel you plucking at my miraculous shoulders. Your mischievous voice.

Your large shoulders sheathed in latex. The large squeaky voice of it when I pinch.

I find the air anomalous here. It seems to sigh with anomalous, though answerable, complaints.

Such complaints are widespread. The widespread exhalations fill the air with widespread trouvailles of hereness.

[ A not-for-profit instantiation of human imagination and human labor ]
Copyright © 2011 Michael Sean Strickland