It's a Fine Line by Jonathan Regier

after Tones are lickin' under by JKD, Approach Misled (Translation) by Sue Chenette, Distillations by Geo Vance, The Music by JW, The Greyhound

In the city night, it looks like a fine line one hundred kilometers away. It has nothing to do with the laws of perspective: it looks like a fine line up close. A homunculus is riding his bike along the line.

I ask him, "Are you a Virtue, a Cherub, or one of the tribe of Seraphim that hide their multitudinous eyes behind peacock feathers?"

Falling off his bike, he shouts, "Be quiet! I'm not far away. It is a ... 'fickle gulf'!"

When he says, 'fickle gulf', the heavens shake as if a tremendous Scrabble piece had been turned over. I cover my head, running to the shelter of a nearby tree.

The next evening, I understand the situation better. It was indeed one from the class of Virtues that I met last night. They must be so tiny because of the very fine lines that they navigate in the world. The winds doth rattle the hand: one must slide one's finger along the creases of the petal or dangerously lose the sense.

The next evening, I approach him from far away. (Although it's difficult to know when I've gotten close enough, because he doesn't change size.)

I holler, "Orchidblues!" A storm cloud appears beside his head. A yellow bolt of lightening pops from the cloud and shocks his hat, and all the felt and stuffing explode.

He looks up at me with terror. He begins racing along his fine line.

"'Hello-tropic'! 'Hype the love'!" (I'd prepared all of these that morning, noting them on a morsel of graph paper that I folded up in my pocket.) A milk truck flies out of the intersection with its horn running so fast and long that the doppler effect puts a shiver in my spine.

I laugh deeply and bellow, "Thou dost ride thy bike like Job himself!" Then: " 'Please relax', 'Shaft of salad', 'Writing about snow'" . . .

A greyhound--which had been hitherto the stone adornment of an ancient fireplace--springs to life and speeds alongside him.

"The spheres turn and comets whizzz, but nothing can out-pace the greyhound! He is faster than television, he is the fastest of all the arts! He is faster still than even Virtue!"

Everyone’s having children now . . . by JR

after all the talk of coffee from brahic, vance, rq


Everyone’s having children now My legs, I say my legs,
Are not vines to be - - Wash your grubby little hands
Playing in the soil, morning noon and night,
Morning like a bridegroom throwing open the doors

I will drink my coffee, children, until Leave the butterflies
Alone They are exquisite wonderful They go to Mexico
Piling over the mountains Scraps of blown around paper with daddy’s
GPS in their magnetic blood

---------I’ll drink my coffee, children, black as soil
---------Until I sympathize with you or whichever comes first
---------Get to your level

After an anonymous 16th century optical riddle by Jonathan Regier

A sun in eclipse, although with the coin of the moon not
Fully spun atop her, the blazing sun in half-eclipse, in semi-eclipse,
Through the crosswise pattern of fingers held up, likewise through

Put what I don't have in the sink. I'll wash it with what I do have.

Put the plates on the plates and the bowls on the bowls.

Occasions at Spirit Plane by Jonathan Regier

(happy second anniversary to Rewords)

London. Cherubs in.
Chandeliers which factotums
Turn on and off by their peculiar
Quotidian accounts of home life. Phantoms
With muscular faces who rode
On top the red omnibuses in shaking
Coats when long coats only
The sciences can be honest. Women
And their bosoms tied and glyphs
Rudely on their underarms.
Unknown and unseen
Prevail. The fat in the
99% milk without fat.

Nuts & Reverie by Jonathan Regier

After wirecannies by sean s, geese and poles by sean s, Circadian rhythm by Jen Dick, and the Moron Poems of George Vance and Jonathan Regier

The squirrels in Australia aren’t even 1% visible
And are still more visible than the squirrels of my
Heartland.

I have a theory—your mentioning the power-lines
Made me remember it. As a child I could never get over
Some basic difficulties. Walking was such
A difficulty. The learning curve was like an egg
Balanced on my head, and when one breaks it one dies
And can barely work until retirement in the stock room
Of a liquor store, or until the slow axe of diabetes or the
Old oak of lung cancer. Consider that the best runners
Wear the crappiest shoes as children. No one needs to say
What’s behind the comfort of modern footwear.

Those fucking squirrels live a true life, and everybody
Knows it. Everybody knows by their speed on the wire.
As a stupid child, learning to run and learning to speak,
And dropped again and again off the precipice of the schoolhouse,
I remember a flock of squirrels that
Ran from the sun to the tree, and from the tree into
The equal sensorium of inner space. Those I call
The squirrels of vision. And they never return unless
I return to a foreign country. But we’ve also got
The squirrels of my memory. And those are bounded
By the huge salt oceans.

SS Cauchemarine by Jonathan Regier

After Circadian rhythm by Jen Dick

I’ve been drinking my coffee
In the morning
In our captain’s suite
Because he never got on.

I’ve been smoking beside
That shadow on the wall
Our quartermaster made
While sitting in the sun.

I’ve been keeping house
With the mouser’s water dish
And the wainscoting of
The mess where the mice
Are supposed to live.

The SS Cauchemarine
When we set sail
Had a different name.

A man wakes in a hammock,
He and the hammock
Like a sibilant.

The name of the ship is
The SS Cauchemarine.
The inquisition of the sea
Thumps her between
Eastward and sleep.

The Dangerous Part of Sleep is the Afternoon by Jonathan Regier

After Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick, After Sue Chennette's What Was Offered

The dangerous part of sleep is the afternoon.
The dastardly truth about fatigue, it gets desperate
For reason. Getting desperate for reason is a feller
Getting desperate for women, liable to choose the wrong one,
Maybe live with her a long time. Although keep in mind
Wrong reason, come winter, is certainly better than none.
Winter’s funny because light gets cold, specifically light
In the bones. Wherefore I say light, bones, and reason
Should not endure nightly. They should all either sleep
Or die. Too much enduring makes anything crazy.
Have a look at our crazy lie.

Morons? by Jonathan Regier

After Moron-egging by G Vance

The arrow is to the huntress at origin.
She has never saved any man unless
Endymion. He was an astronomer
By some accounts, and put to sleep by
His profession. Spock, therefore,
Has a better chance than you and I.

Written About Doll by J Regier

after "What Was Offered" by Sue Chenette

The marrow is bright.
The dog is big who cracks
The bone. Rock makes
For a natural human head.
It is hard to bear up
And by virtue of that
Can itself bear up a good deal
Through diverse epochs.
A rock is a good distracted
Head. A marrow is bright
If a village or city dog cannot crack
It, but the mouth will be very wet.
She will have many children
And live to see theirs.

Ursus (or: I am not a poet for the masses) by Jonathan Regier

After many poems on Hypotheses
Dedicated to poor Nicolai Reymers Baer (Nicolaus Raimarus Ursus)

First, two quotes from the same work:

#1
"A hypothesis or fictitious supposition is a portrayal contrived out of certain imaginary circles of an imaginary form of the world-system, designed to keep track of the celestial motions, and thought up, adopted and introduced for the purpose of keeping track of and saving the motions of the heavenly bodies and forming a method for calculating them."

#2
"For it is the distinguishing characteristic of hypotheses to inquire into, hunt for and elicit the truth sought from feigned or false suppositions. And so it is permitted and granted to astronomers, as a thing required in astronomy, that they should fabricate hypotheses, whether true or false and feigned, of such a kind as may yield the phenomena and appearances of the celestial motions and correctly produce a method for calculating them, and thus achieve the intended purpose and goal of this art."

In quote #1, Ursus identifies hypotheses as fictitious suppositions. A hypothesis is necessarily fictitious. He argues this point for quite some time. So, if you fiddle around with quote #2, you can get:

---Hypotheses, all of which are fictitious, whether true or false and feigned, can hunt for and elicit the truth from feigned or false hypotheses.---

On a night like tonight, that's exactly what I'd call Intellectual Honesty.

I Say by Jonathan Regier

After Beverley Bie Brahic's Heads I

I say,
-------Periwinkle is beset by fraud--
-------On the other hand,
-------Having never known abstinence with itself,
-------Is limpid and warm.

I say,
-------Gold is a very pretty metal,
-------And I never saw one without feathers
-------Colored so. A moth is of itself
-------A feather of one, and thereby burns
-------Less so, Praise God, than the bird of the sun.

On the Contrary, A Reversal of Status Takes Everything Very Easily by Jonathan Regier

After Circulars, by Sawako Nakayasu

Brontology comes on. Where would you go? Do you have a brave face or a cowardly face? Would you take yourself for a swine, a lion, a parakeet, a red block the very color of a solar limbec? Would you give me the best gift you've ever gotten? What did David Porter say when lightening struck him beside an apple tree in a wet field, near to a lake that was not blue?

"Would you take from me the best gift you've ever gotten?"

What's Enough by Jonathan Regier

after "Correlatives", by JKD, after "On a Sofa Somewhere Over the Atlantic", by Jonathan Wonham

- & dedicated to A. Grossman

I.

To the extent that rain is its own Metropolis,
A guard stands at the iron drawbridge of the palace.

Once he crosses, we've got no luck of crossing into it.

II.

For Galileo said:

"Rain can't ever,
A certain voice hearing, overtake running
And greet its brethren walking."

III.

Our windows here climb upward to the past,
Going back forever. Our windows are lit
From the upward rushing future.
The stars at night we call
"The Streetlights of Tomorrow".

One day our ancestors shall greet us,
Rushing strongly upward to see us.

IV.

Say the old faith:

"I believe in Universe without Void,
In the Plenum, in the Vertical lacking Emptiness,
Filled with Touch among its Creatures."

Say the new faith:

"I believe in the rain mass in the chest
Of Metropolis."

What I’ve got like any good person by Jonathan Regier

After “Exceptionally” by JKD

1
Owing to What I’ve got like any good person,
Make haste. Owing to,

Also,
A great deal outward the dessicated field
Holding its own ribs,

And an irrigation trench under
A sodium light and dynamo.

2
Autumn weather brings
A great gift of concern for
The undying shades, which,
Being pixelated, are rising up
Into common bodies, persons,
Curtains, bedposts,
And flickering there, like
All things that wait around, like
A television screen without
The television, and in the shape
Of a leaf-like tongue of flame.

The Greyhound

after Slow Ignition by JKD

The Greyhound,
Sitting with its long muzzle down,
As if sitting and sleeping.

Idling and Listening to Music by Jonathan Regier

By Jonathan Regier, After JKD’s Returning

A man walks out of a grocery store called Ferrell’s.

Give me a second before I tell you he’s got nothing in his hands.
He’s really got nothing in his hands.

Now, I don’t know what time this man woke up in the morning,
But I know he woke up. I have a good feeling he woke up.

I have a very good feeling about it and would stake money on it,
Because I would stake my money on any bright horse this afternoon,

Because he and I have a quality, yet undetermined,
That I can’t really put my finger on.

And I think we will both be remembered in a very small way.

New: The Lake to the Sea

The Lake to the Sea

*

That lake, that’s the place where I went with the sticks of perfume,
Selling little skulls on delicate steel chains, also impermanent tattoos.
I didn’t sell glass bongs, as the State would allege. I have a red Buick sedan from
1995 in my head. A doctor of medicine is in the back. He’s selling me things
That I refuse to forget. He’s a science-fiction man. I’m gonna start with
The pulmonary state of motivation. It’s on a map. Nebraska hangs over
The waters, then snaps flat. I’m angry at myself for forgetting. You get told
How stupid you are, again and again. Then you’re on to something.

*

-------------------------------------------------When the doctor says,
“Stop,” I’m willing. The road runs a thousand meters along the cold Atlantic,
Then stops dead. The houses aren’t built for winter. I say to the doctor,
“Now, please go outside if you want a cigarette.”

The snow’s setting in
Planar over the ancient sea.

“We should sleep out here,”
The doctor recommends:
“You’ll run the engines if it gets bad.”

“Look, Doctor,” I say, “there’s only one engine in this sedan.”