a sequence of dispoetry after Christian Dotremont
The wood’s illegible waves on the desk
as you write. The first principle of form:
the wave, rings of a dropped stone.
A ridge of water, muscle stretching
in spreading circles,
gathering in what lies around,
gathering up the stream it is part of.
So the rings of a tree: the tree ages,
thickens into the space around;
marks its past concentrically.
It remembers itself: flesh over flesh,
core hardening to rind,
becoming its own record.
Drawing in the years to lay them
side by side in space, in time.
The trees are exclamation marks,
the snow a long white knotted cry.
A forest of geometry,
each flake locked into its neighbour;
a polar hive, walls flush as well-
laid bricks. Each minute of the day
in place: the eye, round as the world,
sees in waves: fractals, pixels, jpeg,
the plasma screen. White busy against white.
Sleighs harvest the silence.
The cabins breathe in/breathe out.
The boats are flying in upended sky,
icebreakers clean their beaks on clouds of rye.
The hiss and suck of the thaw
angles becoming curves, diamonds becoming tears.
The bubbles rise like stitches in the glass:
threading the spirit to the body,
winding the water round the wine.
Fire and ice, ice and fire:
take away the bottle and the drink still stands,
shoulders braced against the air.
…as they move along the page
the virtual/
the vellum, cursor skimming
the blue ripples of the laptop;
the quill slides,
the electric ink of its wake.
Disks glint, stacked in their archives
of ice. The paper dreams of the wood,
the grain implicit beneath
– between – its skin.
Return journey to the void
via plenitude.
My bad luck. Nobody gets off here
but me.
The fourteenth station.
I love you historically
who gave me everything you had
save nothing.