DI/ODE
Louis Armand
DI/ODE CCLXXXI
insomnia pacifism & toy guns / in the cut-
out cereal box futuro-home you brochure
a rebuild / witness as scheduled power of
no protest conditioned reflexology / e.g.
adopt adumbrate add-to-wishlist adderall
wordpuke / night sweats conspicuous biome
tric head-on-maypole-ism exclusively for
you / ’re TV lovechild’s zoned indentured
cannibal labouring full frontal lobotomy
hello is this some kind of sick joke / well
there’s a cure for anything kid just throw
money hit-the-gimp-in-the-smacker wins
a prize / lightyears into future so bright
they keep locked in cyclotrons w/ smiley
face recyclable brainimplants you can eat
DI/ODE CCLXXXII (for Reza Negarestani)
headtheatre of the obversed & revered makeshifts.
disjoint temporarily out-of-time
each time the trick of vocabulary fails
to find login. shoot first point last the lost
fasces of ancient software bundle
shows cause. reversed because observed faces
in mirrorland two eyes like spiders
eating each other in a jar. what does it mean
light can’t escape? sees only the op
timism of circumstance between hyphens
where danger’s an object of grace.
return to panic-cycle of loosed faeces come to
tell what’s already known. the subject
is time & this is timeless a pent-up magnifier
an untimely. later they’d deduce
the ace in the hole was its exact duplicate.
by any other abject pandering to
fragile & solitary measures wld ending be as moot.
DI/ODE CCLXXXIII
a word of warning makes Chinese whispers down
the pneumatic post / ear to ear & mouth
to mouth / eyes blank beneath / the rewound
tape, subtly punctuated. gathered
in that place / sacred to the scapegoat, tongues
anointed w/ snake oil, they renew
their vow. wheels turn / the calendars go round.
soylent dreams of interplanetary realestate
launch the ships / where once piratical seas
now the summit of a stateofmind.
ash rains for years at a time but still the days
do penance, taking neither side.
like eavesdropping on a dispute / between
a lobster & a fish. or the worm
experiencing the apple from within. “what does it
know / that we can’t?” the world in a
banging conundrum, a dead dog’s dinner
on a plate. does candour break the hyp
notist’s spell or deepen sleep? in polar snow
white as sham piety, when the pilgrim kneels
to kiss the human relic of themselves
& bring it back to life.
DI/ODE CCLXXXIV
we have to learn our lesson, do we? the dog-days
of Pontius Pilate accessorised
after the fact. teargas & happy oestrogens
rejoicing in streets paved w/
alien calculus, such is the random thing that
brings stricture into worldliness.
though no amount of understatement wld ever com
pensate for Amerika. I, too, have
felt its leathery cold hands upon my face,
in dreams of banishment of the uncooperative humours.
humanity may be extinct in the “wild”
but when ex
planation knows the score before you play it,
do you still play it? let them sing
to credulous monkeys the poetry of advertisement.
if infinites in physical
theories flower on a hillside, like free love or divine
excrement, exponentially small.
DI/ODE CCLXXXV
impenitent fruit light fear’s cold nocturne. an ad
versary in a cage, a lapidarium. what do
headwaters know of the ocean? these migraines
are real even if their sufferer isn’t.
I dispel winter, I raise the body
to the power of itself. & by these acts declare,
that for every rule of art a platypus
lays an egg. concerning alienism, there are other
worlds to be saved, other orphans
to stow in the escape-pod. mass movement
tells of pending impact event.
le mot juste is a-million-to-one,
& does data, too, dream of
paternal recognition? “forsakes me, for
sakes me not. forsakes me, forsakes me not.”
LOUIS ARMAND’s poetry collections include Infantilisms (forthcoming 2023), Monument (with John Kinsella, 2020), East Broadway Rundown (2015), Indirect Objects (2014), Letters from Ausland (2011) & Strange Attractors (2003). He is the author of the libretto A House for Hanne Darboven (2021) & novels including The Garden (2020), The Combinations (2016), Abacus (2015) & Clair Obscur (2011). His critical writings include Contemporary Poetics (ed. 2007), The Organ-Grinder’s Monkey: Culture after the Avantgarde (2013) & Entropology (2023). His work has been included in the Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, World English Poetry & Poems for the Millennium, & has been widely translated. He is formerly an editor of the international arts journal VLAK.