Aught, no. 6 (2001)
Louis Armand
Because a work does not aim at reproducing natural appearances it is not, therefore, an escape from life—but may be a penetration into reality… an expression of the significance of life, a stimulation to a greater effort in living.
— Henry Moore
not thought, but described: the actual flesh, the hand
forcibly—a more or less concerted movement, propelled
by instinct towards the same measure the same
body—filling blanks
as darkness moves in on the allotted
dispensation (to arrive at an identity?)—or keeping
the approach at arms length, through progressive stages
of apprehension (becoming
“acute” at the point
of reversibility)—the emotional idea depends
at any moment upon the discovery
of likeness, or complete-
ness of representation: an arcane significance
beyond what is otherwise
reprehensible “in the self”—to speak
of replacement, a dangerous alliteration in which an idea
takes form: already a motif, if not yet
a motive—two figures
in bas relief, that having emerged must seem intentional
Sleeping Positions
& do you return often?—on the face of things, a difficult
enactment: the situation is not clear
lines which extend from one to another in ap-
prehensive genealogy—it’s strange
to be searching for something, focusing to a point, as if that were
possible—to know the disposition of
each of those rooms, their
closed humidity, both abstract & de-
notative: a lampshade is leaning over & casting
a lopsided shadow, like a neck
tilted, like a rigid
shoulder blade—it is necessary to “complete
the line’s gesture,” to go back
to an avowed purpose, in flesh &
blood—but what does it conceal? the patient work of countless
filaments, generating insight
as though some nightly excavation
of a mysterious physiognomy, its
interlocking pieces that come together to form, not resolve, the puzzle
Personal Appliance
regular as the silence & the clocks they are
putting on their listening faces, an
alien intelligence—it is only a matter of
time before the scape-
goat ritual, “memory lessons”—one thing
leads to another, the idée fixe: a door standing open, the shape
of a bed pushed up against the wall, the walls
like blank footage of
something “beyond our control” (whoever
is hatching us / has left no outcome unchecked), it is a mortification
closer to the ground, on all fours
in a posture of infantile psychosis—someone is being de-
fenestrated, backwards, frame
by frame (you say that it is raining, one
blow at a time—the meaning
is all wrong, it is a question of gravity
of projectile motion): the nightlesson
carefully unfinished, written out only to the proof—an equation
of irrational numbers—but if
it is meant to add up, why are we still here?
Copyright
© 2001, by the author. All rights reserved.
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