Two formulas of constraint for text-making:
Formula number one (vroom) :
All poetic installments must index the wiles (as well as vagaries) of current global class struggle as currently being acted out in the text-designer’s actual locale of habitation. All installments must allude to—own up—flesh out the text designer’s directed institutional or random institutional bodily relation to that drama. All installments must in situ deconstruct at least two competing representative strategies to that drama. The text designer must deploy LIP, as in, “You givin’ me lip?” “Yeah I’ll give you lip!” “Yo, he’s givin’ us lip!” as the building blocks of the drama. The text designer must create a distance between LIP, the drama, the text designer, and THROG. Throg must tug. The words “Haitian Revolution of 1791” must be liberally plopped onto every installment without regard to either grammatical or logical sequence. Shipping is still a precarious business. So too is Literature.
Formula number two (vroom vroom) :
All poetic installments must put on display at least ten proper names that reference the flow of European Art-Wares to Atlantic-American Cultural Trusts. All poems must delineate a nuanced correspondence between such a flow and liberal-bourgeois democratic tree-cutting practices. The words “Haitian Revolution of 1791” must be strenuously avoided. Any references to the text designer’s secret stash of cash must be sublimated into SLOG. Slog must slip. And slide. The Cyrillic alphabet may be used. Although the words incunabulum, perambulistic, and defenestration have little tug on the masses THROG, they are to be slipped onto every installment. The robe may be worn loosely. Or tightly. When the time comes to kiss the installment good morning, the text designer must simply say, good night. When the wood-pile is ready for shipping, call us—for an estimate.
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Jonnie Cochran: “if the glove don’t fit, then you must acquit.”
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Dear Colleagues,
Presenting the following two sentences “I’m agnostic as to whether formal constraints on text-making essentially enable or disable politically useful articulations between issues of Race Class and Gender. If you want it to, ok!” would certainly not be enough to garnish the remaining 30% of my honorarium. The 70% in question is twisting on a thread. I should say more: more.
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Does Republika Srpska have an interest in chance operations at this time? What role could chance operation poetries play in such operations? Does Bosnia-Herzegovina have an interest in constraint operations? What role could constraint poetries play in such operations?
Can stuffing a pig with unripe pears produce a beefy texture, or taste?
—why you such a pig?
Why are you such a pig?
Does rubbing a million million D-Marks
make a slippery foamy pearly
Krajinian corridor?
Long live!
Soap
Long live!
Francis Ponge
(by the way)
and long lived Ponge
and long lived Tudjman
and long lives Karadzic “the poet”
Soap poets!
Of Croatia (the official / awarded land mass)
Do we know of any?
Are there any aspiring sub-operational poets in this room?
I raise my hand
not in the manner of a sponsored statelet in formation (at the Hague)
but in the manner of a full-blown super-state (at the Hague)
Sysiphus, a decidedly agonistic model of futile struggle
was indeed the first
I’ll give you lip.
He gave. He got.
So, I’ll give you lip!
If you’ll give me the inside track
As to how to
ROCK OUT
These Transnational-National Cultural Assignments
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Contemporaneity says, “I’ll give you the shape
of things at hand
if you’ll quit
the lip.
Which is okey dokey fine by me.
As
adaptive cultural adjustments
lay claim to
suppressive intents
As
counter-suppressive intents
lay claim to
re-adaptive cultural adjustments
So as regards RCG (Race, Class, Gender)
Same
Same day
Different lip
Different day
Same lip?
RPG
Rapid Propelled Gender
I’ve been hit
I should act like it
I should not act like I haven’t been hit
And yet, I am not a sans papiers
I might still get my honorarium
What true love might true sans papiers have for constraint poetries?
What need might restraint polities have of vers libre?
“if the glove don’t fit, then you must acquit”
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In relation to everyday life
Is the legacy of epochal revolutionary life
In relation to epochal revolutionary life
Is the legacy of everyday life
Everyday life
Has a good ear for epochal revolutionary life
Epochal revolutionary life
And its cultural re-directive results
Has a good ear for everyday life
Both epochal revolutionary life and everyday life, however, have somewhat of a tin ear for you
This is a mystery
Every move youuu make
every move youuu—ah’ ah’ ah’ ah’
stayin’ alive stayin’ alive
ah’—
(blageur
idealiste
revolutionaire)
ah-huuh…
huuuuh
Sysiphus:
“I’m going—
NOWHERE”
teu’ teu’ teu’
Tucumcari, New Mexico
as real
as real gets
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“I’m looking at a lush digital forest from my Lakeview house, where Hume’s trouble with induction smiles politely at the radical science movement, and Fredric Jameson is preparing a bunch of JPEGs for Marcia Bates who’s talking incessantly about hierarchical relations in conventional classification schemes.”
Why you such a (oink) “classification scheme?”
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October 10, 2005, 18 hundred hours, 4 minutes, 25 seconds
1789, 1791, 1848, 1871, 1910, 1911
October 10, 2005, 18 hundred hours, 5 minutes, 37 seconds
1917, 1949, 1956, 1959, 1968, 1979
October 10, 2005, 18 hundred hours, 6 minutes, 14 seconds
“I’m feeling a little constrained on this platform”
à quelle heure part ton train, mec?
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All poetic installments must describe their five closest neighbor’s house decorative tastes as various forms of labor discipline from around the globe. All installments must affect a Jesus-like fascination with self-canceling moralistic parables. The exact dimensions of literary activity as the text designer has known it must be described as objects on sale at a flea market. LE FLIC—must appear as a watermark on every hard copy of every installment. The Phoenician Civilization as a whole must be made to stand out in clear relief against Roman Expansionist plug poetics. It’s a relief to throw out old fascinations with surface as mere surface. The words ASK THE BOSS IF I CAN PEE should be made to appear as surfacing in the text. The Apparition—is hilarity embodied. All installments must in situ situate the Text Designers actual bodily requirements. “Requiem for a Porcelain Elephant Smashed up into Jagged Shards” may be used as a title for a poem.
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new
lip…
oh!
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Though what I want to really say is what I really think is that committing to the word-made-word level of language is an affirmation of life, of the vitality of life, of the irrepressible nature of. You see, Fascists love spirit, all the stuff of spirit, the spirit of the Nation, the spirit of Democracy, the spirit of the Sentence, the Word, the spirit of what the president said last night. But for the booty to be booty, “for me to be booty”, words must be treated as words, “we must be treated as words”, no need to plug the inny as an outty WHEN THE IMBILICAL CORD GOT CUT [release now] THROG emerged, some say a human happened, but I (“us too!”) know that ain’t so. Humans don’t “happen.” THROG—like an oxen—is yoked. And look at you now! May God…look over you. Who’s more oxen-like? You, God, or Words? There’s the rub! Where? Fascists, you see, are deftly afraid of the spirit of spirit leaving itself. That’s why they hate gays, and won’t let you pee. “Katrina, The Spirit of Help” by George Bush. When the angel Gabriel apparuit, it wasn’t in Englisc neither. So shut the fuck up. What you know. All you know is gasoline prices just went up. “All we know is all we know” EXACTLY! SH’ “and now from our live studios in Times Square, Gabby Goblin: “yes, the president spoke of the need for restraint of constraint, and constraint of restraint, he said the American spirit of Freedom would reach out to whoever, wherever, whenever, however. Those four words—in a row like that, struck a chord in some who were present. They wondered whether the president had been dabbling with programmatic poetry while at the golf course over the last year, and whether this represented a departure from his m’ rarin’ to let them cattle roam free way of thinking.
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If
adaptive cultural adjustments
lay claim to
suppressive intents
If
counter-suppressive intents
lay claim to
re-adaptive cultural adjustments
it may be time to
ROCK OUT
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I’m looking at a lush digital forest from JFK International, where Duncan’s trouble with Watten scowls incessantly at Shlovskian Americana, and Slavoj Zizek is preparing a Flash Presentation for Marcia Bates who’s talking incessantly about simulacral dimensions of informatic horizons.
Why you such a (oink) “informatic horizon?”
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more
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more
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Yes, a good amount of fun coupled with certain advantages in foregrounding methods of inspection of word-become-word schemes that are analogs to the limiting and de-limiting of human agency according to notions of freedom bandied about in the contemporary swollen breasts of high culture to advertise and get a flood of responses having to hold back the meaning-milk which is so nutritious so many many in the world like letters upon letters and flames dancing within flames black smoke ancient chants ministerial thought occludes it all that good stuff fleshy fleshy breath breath fleshy fleshy moon howl sun scream
And so contain constrain ministerial DIE STAAT BUND freedom we must
And so enough of persecuting migcrancy!
A flick of the wrist
and the cuffs are off?
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All poetic installments must destabilize the text designer’s (so-called) “better judgment” as regards the text designer’s (so-called) “special area of interest”. All installments must either super-inflate, ultra-miniaturize, or completely gray-out the text designer’s ego. All installments must indirectly express at least three competing super-egos. The text designer must deploy FLUTE (as in “you’re gonna play that flute like that with muffled ears while we frolic in bed?”) in the interest of CLARITY. The text designer must clearly delineate between “frolicking in bed to uneven flute music” and “revolutionary frolicking in bed to uneven flute music”. The words Dessaline and Le Clerc must appear in a poetic installment at least once in the text designer’s lifetime—voila. A lifetime must be made to appear as fitting in THROG. THROG must never be represented as merely flitting.
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October 19, 2005, 10 hundred hours, 5 minutes, 38 seconds
“I was about to ask you”, said the stranger, in the station (while the rain poured down so heavily no one could stand on the platform for very long without being totally soaked and thereby ruining any appearance of dry-pressed neatness that might be required for wherever any one was headed) “something…but I can’t remember what, exactly.” I responded (as the rain seemed to come down heavier just at that time in sheets heavy and thudding with a clap a sound a certain relentlessness that seemed heedful of nothing but itself that suddenly startled my sense of inner comfort) “that’s ok…you’ll probably think of it once you’re on your way”. “Yes” said the stranger (as the stranger’s shoes were suddenly then hit directly by a wave of rain thereby ruining the appearance of an untouched soft-to-the-touch brushed suede the taupe surface of the shoes now speckled or flecked or one could say mottled or splattered or simply touched by rainwater that would take at least a half a day to evaporate) “you’re probably right”.
The conversation had been rather awkward. I had lately been avidly reading those Multinational Finance Magazines (the one’s that give one a hovering gleeful sense of motion over the surface of the globe in astute recognition of stabilities or instabilities, prospects or lack of prospects with added hot spots to entertainment trends likely by then old hat but packaged so that one may precisely revel in old hat as if to say And Now We’ll Show You How To Ratchet Up The Value Of Things In The World) and so my mind had been rife with apt words that fit the issues, and such an abundance led to such a flood of flitting opinions of things far and wide, my having of a sudden lost my ability to sense my body in relation to others. And so I wrote a poem about this particular constraint, and had the gall or vanity or simply stupidity born of idleness while in transit, to give it to the stranger, waiting for what kind of response who in the wide world of cramped train platforms could possibly ever know!
And that’s when the soft patter of a few drops conjoined with the stranger’s wry smile, which helped to shape a faintly discernable scowl on my face.
Having restrained much. And constrained little.
October 19, 2005, 10 hundred hours, 10 minutes, 48 seconds.