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I have been working on a poem sequence called "Noble Mice" for the past few months; the first section below was written pre-9/11, the next two sections after it.
From early promise, barrenness. From vaunting,
vaulting ambition, sprains in both groin and wrist.
To what conceit should we now turn our hand?
Between self-shielding obscurity and exactitude
striking the carapace, the angle of incidence
is equal to the angle of reflection. Nearly.
In hiding, withholding, you show some grasp at least
of the matter, be it with yourself. Suggest
proliferation as the collective noun
for counter-measures. Load up on kryptonite.
Maybe we can turn this thing around
in mid-air, give it - I dunno - a virus
or something. Rotate the frequencies. Anthrax-tipped
warheads no match for eggheads. You bet your ass.
* * *
Our agents have depleted self-esteem,
pass unchecked through osmotic boundaries;
are even now at work in schools and dairies.
Revise contingency; brush up on contagion,
small god of casual sex whose name is legion.
Exchange immunities, lest worm of worm
run rings around the commune. In the warm
of reciprocity share recipes
for violent tortes, exploding canapes.
Each mutant strain of love extends the en-
tity drawn fibrously across an N-
dimensional continuum as sponge,
as coral, as the arbitrary angel
folding, unfolding, his wings into space-time.
* * *
Aufklarungkrieg, enlightenment's discharge
into the folds of wickedness, seeks plush-
lipped puppet-scapegoat for possible climax; packs
a payload of some magnitude, as witness
these curtly lopped and cauterised daisy-heads.
Obliterated, yes. Verklarte? Nicht.
Illumination please. Our leader's brain -
has it known lightening-flashes, not unlike
those routed through condemned half-imbeciles
in Alabama, say? Flesh scorched to earth
will rise again from clay to model justice
perhaps, but not in this life. In our time
officious maggots oozing rationales
for torture feed among the city's dead.
(note: Aufklarung is enlightenment (also, in a military sense, reconnaissance); Aufklarungkrieg is enlightenment-war as Blitzkrieg is lightning-war - an obscure trans-lingual pun. Verklarte Nacht - "Transfigured Night" - is the name of a piece of music by Arnold Schoenberg, based on a poem the name of whose author escapes me.)
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