déshabille-toi! by Lisa Pasold

after Apparition by JKD

Alright the bar doesn't mean just because I was born here. I wish you didn't drink yet here I am with another beer in my hand. It's not exactly speech, coming back here, but good and tactile. god I love to drink, even with the usual wary, tender uncertainty of appearance in a phrasal universe. Yes, all those big words, for you in this parking lot, in this same small town you're haunting. I'm stripped of bearings, again, you ghost you. Syllabic but grounded with sensory inebriation. Where is this touch with its false demarcation? Your opposite of red, your skipping stones, your electric conviction to be judged wanting. Blank as that reproduction of me in-between image, imagined, veiled. Yes, I know the voice outside the window singing off-key Broadway songs, yes, I know, that voice is mine, professed, unmoored. And you, not arriving anywhere near the demographic of departure. The drinking might have been just a phase, if you'd had more time. A phrase, unverifiable. Most literal. So how come I now know all the words to this lyric?

Apparition (new, after listening to Oppen) by JKD

*

I feel « the uncertainty of appearance in a phrase universe » places, light « looking through it, » I am « passed » and stripped of bearings, grounded to sensory inebriation. Where is this touch to lead, this false demarcation? Skin. Our darkness the opposite of red. Which burns, here, when reaching over left on electric comes to howl and to howl and to… I am not. Or blank as that reproduction of me between. An image, imagined, an imago. Take it back, unveil it, déshabille-toi! The voice is mine, professed. Rain is only sound inside the enclosed here. « There are no moorings in conversation ». Voice other than, credited, solitary within the not arriving demographic of departure. That is, shaking when I may be remembering. I might have been just a phase. A phrase, unverifiable. Tactile as is wary, tender and dangerous. Speech. Syllabic.

No One by JW

After N/O/1 by GV

No one
is giving anything away.

No one
has enough for anyone
but themselves.

Everybody
wants something for nothing.

Of course
everybody
wants something for nothing -

especially
if the something
is a valuable something.

But what if the nothing
is valuable too?