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Victor Coleman Parking Lots for Greg Curnoe From CORRECTIONS The Coach House Press 1985 [ 1,231 words ] Why is Robert Desnos sleeping? Any man who'll not accept the present terms is radical — No adjustment is needed — too personal — the reason for an open fly — Calamity reigns in that area Then there's laughter — the exchange of the unexchangeable glow all over us — as when I come in her mouth and millions of tiny tapioca boil white in their clarity - translucent joy and jelly babies — divers strangers swallowed in one or two gulps With hot dogs and hot rods and chewing gum wrappers crumpled and torn with blackballs and Jonnie Hand Warmers — Big Little Books with Dick Tracy or Plastic Man divesting the image with the villain's broken mirror — defeated by the sharp-edged reflection of himself I traded comics with a 9-year-old girl down the street she had huge overbite buckteeth and holey underwear which I saw when she kissed me in the closet pressing her smelly 9-year-old body against me teeth pushing hard against tender boy's lips Each one of these doors leads to the present — No engagement is needed — the present is yesterday's memory sliding in the mud of sad travels and dreams climbing cat's cradles in webs of imagination — here today and gone tomorrow No adjustment is needed In either case I'm joyous as jubilant dew drops from my beard on a hill up which we climb in the shade of a tree heaved up over the road — Little lamb who made thee? No adjunct is needled — junipers and fat red cedars in front of my view of the world Not Kumush . an old man's old man trapped inside his wandering adolescence sowing his magic from a bag of old bones over the land so that men might arise from them in tribes — the alleyways and streets of his wanderings through the serpents' houses to perpetrate an image of himself . no reflection . a joke No need for readjustment CH'IEN . THE CREATIVE: HEAVEN in books and old documents — art and other well-worn dildoes inventing this man in your innocence NO! to your please . Need rots — walking, walking . Oh, parochial Give me the song of the stout-hearted sucking in swoosh of the tea head, followed by fifteen contemplative minutes better than talk about art and degenerate dollars — this is my first barter . Yes! I will buy your violence . take off that redress Move toward an image . a vision . of heaven The Earth . Colour the atmosphere ochre if it pleases you * THEN THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO TALK TO THE TREES AND THE CHANGE CAME My 4-year-old son spends an hour in the morning arranging his small pile of books to resemble a printer's ink-coloured silent flat sea — for his set of toy vehicles he wanted in the middle of the living room a parking lot Robinson Jeffers entombed in an idea . Dead anyway . no more than Ed Ruscha's portraits of square feet in thousands reduced to the page size — delicate and intricate . Lifeless I am not complaining . I am not complaining . The waning of the harvest moon is not a poem . it is a waning a perfect picture of imbalance in the pause between this world and the last I don't have to talk to people anymore! One-syllable words form standing trains waiting in the station for people to get on or off What you see . what you paint is paint . a colour no sea enters No discourse of object and fact disinterested artifacts . The mind does not live up to any of its promises The gesture of plains in the paintings of Georges Bracque — locations moving in the air . in earth . paint projected on the present sense . ability the tension between us: attention Finding two in one . three in two . into decisions we make about magic numbers dividing us into their anti-numerical over-symbolic surfaces towards real qualities — not significant detail . everything's mass . secret political prisoners locked in each cell The body of work is no more ill at ease than the work of the body . Ask the drugs about their pertinence Gather your rosebuds where you may but sniff of the air and listen to the sounds of worlds colliding in the garden This is no scene from a movie . this is no small town, big city, rural route environ the body is all we need to break initial water until what holds us is a tide freed from its chamber Trees and intractable mountains through which no middle-class American children dance they're too busy sleeping and playing engaging in human relationships This has gone much further than I ever intended — I'm the man whose pockets are ever full of silver enough to insure the austerity of the spirit like a hacker's amazing ability to articulate the same three phrases from the corner of his mouth — Moebius running the same line These lakes were given to us . Drink me * What are the Rolling Stones talking about in their music? The future? The torture? The ardure of living in Britain? I doubt it. Amphetamine dreams of resurgence in blood undermined by Hershey and Nestle those beautiful birds of oblivion How can a man be a vision in worlds turning slowly asbestos and plastic and bullet-proof alloys defensive infernal metals . license plates here read: 19 BEAUTIFUL 68 The navel's knot . not centre of the earth not our intention . She comes in colours everywhere she combs her hair . The Real . she's like a rainbow . explanation of the music of the spheres is not a simile The plenary abstract . the word 'colours' with its optional dipthong impotent in the present context: darkness I have no reason to believe in what you do My belief is unchangeable fact I have taken the liberty of removing your name from a long list of great artistic promises and have readjusted the order in my mind to include all the sempiternal gods who walk around in our genes like twisted guests . evergreens don't have them, won't we inject false light into the blood I have taken the liberty of advocating the use of drugs in the afterlife . the halflight off-white, spurious and uneventful . addictive as anything . heavenly popsicles to sooth the heat of dying . through truth a disease that suffers our doubts where collage is so available Surrealism has nothing to do with it Dada is Father . a rhythm . I asked for a sandwich . they gave me delight in a cup A song has nothing to do with it either Sing, anyway . Be surreal. Don't go mad in the face of their constant boredom before so much wonder as long as you've got something in your hands besides their currency . empty pockets . use them, please, on others Art's a caress . careless and fickle as words lying each day for a bit more space compass pointing always in the same direction attracted to the mercury in my eyes coins replace slowly the fine bones with long brittle members and incapable digital fingers and toes Don't count on them! A comparison: a line of grey paint / the horizon changing * * * From CORRECTIONS The Coach House Press 1985 Text: © Victor Coleman. All rights reserved.
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