Stephen Rodefer

from For More Lectures

Farewell to Innsbruck I say. I say leave me loathesome night and I

might lay down awhile beside the babbling brook. Death is the absence
of cloud on glass. Breath is the original dope. Then it all starts to complicate
with the introduction of the breast. It was something. Mother’s milk was addictive.
The things she had. It killed the pain. I felt home. It was the land of the bull.
I wish I hadn’t travelled that canal. I didn’t want to leave there. Now look where I am,
worn, marred, unmarried and still warm. And warned continually of the peril of still
drinking born spirits that make the number days to count their milky calendar.
Develop some indifference to pain. Better self love than neglect. And we should fear
the native might in art’s bosom, while not forgetting dear Falstaff died for Agincourt.
Me, I’m from Overlook Court, Bellaire Ohio. You can still write me there while I
court the A before the B before the C before the D. And A is an arduous angel
in the Shakespearean morn, through which I walk enveloped in this cloak to ruminate
the coming siege and try the spirits of my jannisaries. Camped with nervous dread we become as though jealous of contesseration, then make a little touch/to harry in the night.

Unmatchable mastiffs the color of nutmeg inkly thought as hot as ginger berries.
Happier men than she hold their manhood cheap. Sadder women than he value honest sex.
Vivienne Walker takes a fellow where he lives, Earnest Hare for instance.
Cramps. Generation. A county with a migraine problem, unemployed, editing the sciatica.
Put some water on. Listen to the noise. Who could know what was in the crates
Brahms just chucked in the Rhine? Well, you could always guess like a scholar,
preparing for his autopsy. Publish and Perish, in the magazine Reputations.
Or better exercise. Cut some kindling, make some kin and put the author thing down
to authorship. The authorities are at the door, we’ve got the context turned up too loud.
Our readers are the plaintiffs. Accomodation for a night. A person united will never be divided,
until they meet their autopsy. Self consciousness is always one of parts as well.
The jaw bone is the first to leave the skeleton. Libido leaves the veldt.
A word is the last thing any woman can say to a particular other. Rife gate
to the ruin run by the sun. Slow chapters. Sweet ball. My hat in your pocket.
Blind surrealist love is windowdust/ but do not change too fast the registration of the pelt nor of the pelting.

SR 10/22/90