First Mark
-
I
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“The mark
is the proof of the pudding in the eating of the bird
In the bush of the hand -
It’s a Malevich play
Victory over the Sun,
adapted for Broadway
“Let’s get the numbers up:”
a group of figures enter
slowly to the left with somber airs and a gravity of movement.
The figures are recognized as Frida Kahlo,
John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Falstaff who moves like he’s got
something in his pants, muttering
“Falstaff to my friends; Sir John to the rest of Europe;
Sir John to the rest of Europe; Falstaff to my friends.”
Yo ho I am who I am... Yam
Yam... Yam... Yam.” -
We’re obligated to believe something so believe your
Marks are the left over broken eggs
On the breakfast plate a meal disturbed
Long ago the moment came and went simultaneously
Our process conjures the meaning
And the word floats up unhooped from the landscape
Till memory
Forms and sensibility informs the sound where
Memories abound.
In England the lordsrocks with the power chord
LordWatever bellowed from the stage, “I hate Beatniks
Teddy boys and pop singers cricket’s the game of
Life
Not muchshould happen uneventful is no struggle or
Strife
Straight bat at wicket no complaints its not cricket.
Advice to the young. Yo Ho I am yamyam
Temporal lord mm Man. Nineteensixtyfive I was
Age ni ne -
You ‘re a fu cking li ar-
You ol d shit covering your own asrse from being kicked
I heard that myself
Friar Tuck and Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest
Did their robbin when they could
Took from the rich and gave to the poor
Tried to settle some old taxation score -
I packed and blew and flew as soon as I could and walked and tripped in
the crash on eighth avenue and forty-eighth street
Nine teen seven ty eight
hit my head on the truck. It began when instinct returned
and the lights went out, and the body too, “Are you here?” “Are you
there?” And repeat the discovery in my head:
Some Greeks were fighting among themselves:
Pericles, Phidias, Polycleitus, Praxiteles. Inside my
Headman the greatgreeks are deadmen
For the wet mouth warmth of the buttocks and
Genitalia. O, to find
The one mark that starts it all!
This your honor is a testa ment tothe origin of
Recorded meaning.
The mark of handMeaning full and meaningless.
Yes, I read the story to reformmy
Memoryandmagnify its meaning:
Meaningful and meaningless, it is —
All there in the onemark firstmark before
Differentiation in cultural forms.
Torn, I couldn’t walk and wired jaw so couldn’t talk.
The hospital gave me time to think (with little
Opportunity for... what’s the rhyme: drink).
The Judge enters
You had a motorcycle accident -
and
were
in hospital; am I correct?
“Yes sir.”
And when you woke u were in an obscenecircus,
a corrupt and fixed game for bodies an dart?
“Yes, sir that is my testimony.” -
The marks of the brothel are raw skin rubbed from the
Spine
The back and bruising of legs and
I guess that’s titillation slavery sought and bought -
Sell what you got you hypocrites and fornicators
Yawn. I yawn.
You yawn how do you look when I don’t see you?
I look to you and you to me
As many ways as I can imagine you to be. But
I see you in me more clearly when you touch me.
But my hand is hot and yours is not.
I’m going home: footprints in snow.
I believe I live at number 88, I know. Knock!
Knock! I’m
Here and not late. What date? Was it me who said
“I think heard it said or somewhere read —
All things living all living things are living.”
Are what. Not dead?
-
I am I and you are
Here and next door
But I think, next door... Is that I living there?
I’m puzzled but I buy bananas and breathe the air.
Words and marks are cooking dissolving melting
wax in the bowl of thought and meaning together.
Cooking in the fall
Then we throw ourselves and crawl
Hand to mouth and lay the body on the ground.
The real issue the real topic is meaning or
Compression or word-Compression. Word and
Meaning are pressed like cow tongue cooking
Makes good tough words soft eat and feel
Fully alive into a dampish world and wide the -
Marquis de
Sade enters to the right nonchalant and apparently drunk,
Holding the severed head of Hadji Murad.
I was waiting in the next room and
overheard this conversation,
“Hockin’ ass or haulin ass.”
He strolls across the stage: -
Inevitably the marks that made the path were self-conscious: stroked
and pushed to find —
Direction but to wander and wander the foot and
mind down the market Halls. When you find a new
path it is always well trodden and leads from The
mountain to the town and from the town to the
mountain go forth we Take the corn and chicken to
the town. The Zapotecs abandoned the Citadel of
Monte Alban and they slaughtered the lord priests
and the warrior caste and what they say or how they
Pray don’t determine if it rains today
Led astray the people abandoned the citadel.
Some heads got chopped but always do and likely
will roll some more.
So many men and women walking on the rock face
singing.
The song of what they forgot one day and thoughts are
all we got.
They returned to the mountains and begin they began
Rubbing mouth buttocks and genitalia informally and tattooed
On the body “Are you here?” “Are you there?”
This is the origin of recorded meaning.
Read the story reform memory and magnify its meaning.
Meaningful and meaningless they
Learned it and forgot it empty shop on Bleecker —
Nelson is buying lace waiting for the shopper the Shopkeeper asks
“Lady Hamilton is singing at the singing place?” But thinks
Why has he left his flagship The Victory? -
I recognize myself self in Santa Cruz. I sense these
Are my people
The cinder block palace had open fires and concrete
Foundations, dyeing
Direct experience to connected experience.
Recognize yourself —
You have done this and that and call yourself what? -
Pipec ock Jackson
And let’s say absolution when I looked I didn’t see it
In a quiet moment in a Mexican summer I feel the
frost and teeth of winter.
The center remains unsaid, words surround the blissful calm.
The still point around which the sentence coils.
A true representation of sensory experience is a single breath
Producing the single mark.