from Necrologisms

 

by Greg Cohen

 

 

 

 

i.

 

 

First thing in the morning I went directly into debt.  Early worms, you know: “Dead, it’s what’s for breakfast anymore.”  Please, it’s the least I could do for that fat class war on wallpaper.  Patriots may act, but I prefer to bend (and really, I mean, wouldn’t you rather be fish-farming?). 

     Later that day we all met downtown for a bit of ringworm.  It was warmer than useless, less priceless (now just $19.99 plus handlebars for all this and wait, there’s more!).  It’s the same but really, no, it’s the same.  And besides, I can’t drive until I’m six times more likely to have tumors with a mild case of laryngitis.  Not that it won’t turn up on my website (text me, K?).  Not sold in stores.

     By time it was all said our work is never done, the water had boiled whet stone dry and plenty of blame to square round lay at the foot of my doorbell jar.  I sat up with a start (who doth be this hour at that late?).  Just the Greeks going bump into that good night darkly?  Well, as they say.  By the way, any Who’s in the audience tonight?  Give it up.

     First thing tomorrow morning I swear I shall foreclose.  Blood everywhere: it’s the only way the neighborhood ever truly goes.  (Not right this minute.  I’m occupying.)  Here, the wall, you can’t see?  Honest, it wasn’t meant to be so very derivative.  At least it never trickles down.

     Got shot?  No?  Shit.  What, then?

 

 

 

 

iii.

 

 

On a scale of one to, oh, say, ten, who are you maybe?  Was it mother dressed you over, or was it someone in the water?  Strange your moth wings slyly furrow just like tiny browbeats.  Got Silk?  Bilk whom?  But think down on it: is any body merely biological any more?  In a word, it’s all about the pain: tilded, granular, or just this side of rare bird.  Know what it means?  At the end of the dalliance, I am but a caller in your daily hospital, now, don’t jump to confusions.  I mean.  Sun or man the scale, it’s all or one or ten, remember?  It ought to get right at the concentration, purse the rosy tips, turn down the eyes, lips, and hardly bother not to warn them: they’re sure to go all about it.  At least our very own lost grail blows neither this way nor there. 

 

 

 

 

v.

 

 

Concave zephyr, catch drift?  You, the only child to turn wine back to the well, are never beside the point of every departure.  Sancho may have said it best: not so easy being mayor (much less when cities are so solely fungible).  At some point, listen, just put the colors up on the wall, square by squaring circles and cones and, well, all your Sunday geometries, lo.  We really cannot hope to creole so much shapeless sound without another day or two more spare pins and needlepointed.  Oh just divine, oh look at it just, would you?  I’m not saying doesn’t mean I don’t care.  It’s that there’s space, see, then there’s world: it’s a certain quotidian state of indifference, and there’s nothing you nor shiver my worm can do to stanch the flagrancy of it all.  Flood water water, the impossible streets of these architectural nightlies, see?  Doubt not.  It’s all just to pass up time, wait for the morning stream, oh most frangible transmutationist.  Out the window, rest your surfeit: everything appears to remain the same. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greg Cohen earned his doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard in 2008, and now teaches in the graduate program in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles.  A poet, visualist, and freelance curator, his intellectual pursuits range from experimental cinema and aesthetic philosophy to experimental archives and visual culture.  His work has appeared in Annetna Nepo, a short-lived, multilingual journal of experimental poetry.