jim leftwich
NOR ANY
Nor any, since many mustered acts as law against the few. Not too flee into the each as though single any since conception, but else is out of reach, stilled in such of us. We are many, and they are few, while she contains multitudes, and so do you. I have not come to testify against their sad misfortune. Twice folds into itself as seen before our moment, and we become between ourselves and us the reach of that, its faceted touch times five. I smell no sulfur, though I can taste the tale. To the touch it sounds like truth incite. History we think unfolds in both directions behind us, while in fact it’s just ahead, awaiting our invention. Nothing, precisely, we have always known, is written in stone, other than that which is written on stone as a lesson to us ephemeral. Revolutions never travel in circles, they spread out over the tundra like flowering deserts, the miracle in the mirage, ice in dust like billions of broken mirrors just for us. We go on, some among us, to reach the end of the sentence, as this ought end at any of many along the way. There’s a rhythm to the breadth of change. We don’t think we’re more than in it.
01.06.07
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OUR STORY
Should be as is is not, but is surely where this leads. Slow explosion, constrained but not controlled, is nearer to how we go about than going out to journey. The story is a mythic proportion, jump-cut narrative condensed to a bridge between false and hopeful, barely any bridge at all. Stand in the lower left-hand corner of our circle. Dip your imaginary quill in the spectacle of their blood. Begin at the still point and draw a spiral to the ceiling. The top of the spiral should be as wide as the bottom of the circle. Mark an X connecting the four corners of our square. The spiral will collapse onto its footprint. Snips and scraps like strings litter the mythic labyrinth. Each is a curve and a heap. We sit if a lotus on the basement floor and savor demolition smells. Begin to knit and clump a road. Our journey requires of us a road. As we go along the discontinuous will have been contiguous now at aggregate mnemonic up ahead. You only get every chance to make it up as you go along once upon each time a long long time ago, so we may as well get it right and blame the rest on them.
01.06.07
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HOW
How close should be a question. But with neither beginning nor end it has no site from which to ask and end itself, so it must be a hypothesis, stated as such within the constraints of grammar and punctuation. How close to what would seem to follow but in fact only serves to change the subject.
This close is clear. It should be a statement of fact. Instead, it orbits itself, an absence of an is. It is only this orbit, nothing else.
The mirror faces the wall. As there is nothing to see, so there is nowhere to look, and we are reduced to reading its immediate absence as if from memory.
X – Why such nothing.
Y – Let it be between us.
X – Why this less than that.
Y – There is only this us at now.
X – Why such serial why.
Y – I remain your hybrid half of this.
Y – I am also not yet an other.
Y – Nor even this as such yet and now.
X – This then at that.
Y – Only then as such.
I am also at yet nor even an other in that. Even as this is this, this close and that clear, I am tracing a horizon to recede against its future. It pursues me there while I follow it near here. With neither beginning nor end it takes no stand in which to judge itself as falsely accused by me for your pleasure.
I desire to lift a finger, one finger at a time, to be as small as our disaster will permit. We don’t get off that easily. The path of least resistance leads to the pith of this resistance, but that is not how we got here, and it is too late to believe a word. Let the letters interrogate the surface of the next.
This close to being here now, and you think it’s some kind of trick.
01.06.07
||||||
Nor any, since many mustered acts as law against the few. Not too flee into the each as though single any since conception, but else is out of reach, stilled in such of us. We are many, and they are few, while she contains multitudes, and so do you. I have not come to testify against their sad misfortune. Twice folds into itself as seen before our moment, and we become between ourselves and us the reach of that, its faceted touch times five. I smell no sulfur, though I can taste the tale. To the touch it sounds like truth incite. History we think unfolds in both directions behind us, while in fact it’s just ahead, awaiting our invention. Nothing, precisely, we have always known, is written in stone, other than that which is written on stone as a lesson to us ephemeral. Revolutions never travel in circles, they spread out over the tundra like flowering deserts, the miracle in the mirage, ice in dust like billions of broken mirrors just for us. We go on, some among us, to reach the end of the sentence, as this ought end at any of many along the way. There’s a rhythm to the breadth of change. We don’t think we’re more than in it.
01.06.07
||||||
OUR STORY
Should be as is is not, but is surely where this leads. Slow explosion, constrained but not controlled, is nearer to how we go about than going out to journey. The story is a mythic proportion, jump-cut narrative condensed to a bridge between false and hopeful, barely any bridge at all. Stand in the lower left-hand corner of our circle. Dip your imaginary quill in the spectacle of their blood. Begin at the still point and draw a spiral to the ceiling. The top of the spiral should be as wide as the bottom of the circle. Mark an X connecting the four corners of our square. The spiral will collapse onto its footprint. Snips and scraps like strings litter the mythic labyrinth. Each is a curve and a heap. We sit if a lotus on the basement floor and savor demolition smells. Begin to knit and clump a road. Our journey requires of us a road. As we go along the discontinuous will have been contiguous now at aggregate mnemonic up ahead. You only get every chance to make it up as you go along once upon each time a long long time ago, so we may as well get it right and blame the rest on them.
01.06.07
||||||
HOW
How close should be a question. But with neither beginning nor end it has no site from which to ask and end itself, so it must be a hypothesis, stated as such within the constraints of grammar and punctuation. How close to what would seem to follow but in fact only serves to change the subject.
This close is clear. It should be a statement of fact. Instead, it orbits itself, an absence of an is. It is only this orbit, nothing else.
The mirror faces the wall. As there is nothing to see, so there is nowhere to look, and we are reduced to reading its immediate absence as if from memory.
X – Why such nothing.
Y – Let it be between us.
X – Why this less than that.
Y – There is only this us at now.
X – Why such serial why.
Y – I remain your hybrid half of this.
Y – I am also not yet an other.
Y – Nor even this as such yet and now.
X – This then at that.
Y – Only then as such.
I am also at yet nor even an other in that. Even as this is this, this close and that clear, I am tracing a horizon to recede against its future. It pursues me there while I follow it near here. With neither beginning nor end it takes no stand in which to judge itself as falsely accused by me for your pleasure.
I desire to lift a finger, one finger at a time, to be as small as our disaster will permit. We don’t get off that easily. The path of least resistance leads to the pith of this resistance, but that is not how we got here, and it is too late to believe a word. Let the letters interrogate the surface of the next.
This close to being here now, and you think it’s some kind of trick.
01.06.07
||||||
posted by jim leftwich at 11:40 PM
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