In my day, we knew how to drown plausibly,
to renounce the body's seven claims to buoyancy. In my day,
our fragrances had agency, our exhausted clocks complained
so beautifully
that cause began to shed its calories
like sparks. With great ostentation, I began to bald. With
great ostentation,
I built a small door in my door for dogs. In my day,
we were reasonable men. Even you women and children
were reasonable men. And there was the promise of pleasure
in every question
we postponed. Like a blouse, the most elegant crimes were
left undone.
Now I am the only one who knows
the story of the baleful forms
our valences assumed in winter light. My people, are you not
horrified of how these verbs decline—
their great ostentation, their doors of different sizes?
•
I must drive many miles to deliver this punch line.
I must drive many miles in the modern manner,
which is suicide, beneath this corrigendum of a sky. Tonight
Orlando Duran went crazy. He smeared every doorknob,
lock, and mirror in his apartment with spermicidal jelly.
To expel air from the lungs suddenly
is not to live beautifully in the modern manner. Rather
one must learn to drive, to drive
in the widest sense of the word, a sense that seats four
other senses comfortably. Tonight Orlando Duran
delivered himself in the modern manner,
delivered himself like a punch line. Is this what he meant by
"negative liberty,"
by "sound of one hand clapping is a heartbeat"?
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