ORTHODOX IN APPEARANCE

An overring into the (say) truncated fourside cone maw floating in air, the romance of breezeways are
they. The thought of anything going away – David said conjurers please by making less stuff
and vanishing is our paradigm. Still in the pocket Robert-Houdin palms florins while tinkering with little gears,
struck by nickeled streetcorner cups, the English conjurer like a monkey, hat covering coin whips
away it’s a guinea pig the gypsy wife unnoticed, sad but a relief, the
French coin with eight sides pleasant to the touch as monel metal would stack
and vanish like air no longer coins but banknotes from his finger ends riffing like French
flags in Manet, pensioner stumping in thick coat bluer against yellow for cobbles hot cha.
Down the chute this mass of losers (bad Yeats) Day Lewis Chatto these
(Ruth Pitter) among roots waddage as if catching drippings of their betters
then as public hexagons, town council told Romans did it, Aeneas
killing deer for the troops not drilled as in Gibbon. A bluebound Boswell missing
could queer my card, no sandalwood card-case f’rit. Loss built into all
recorded performances, Lehmann’s copper tones described like trashing the metal pressers.
A man left his Visa and came back for it. Logistics forgot where
the baskets were for tickets. Could you say memory is like intaglio or asteriskflanked shop number to check checks.
History the expectable hexagon at foot to gritty mop strands noisy on grouting. One writes,
here, against music against history backroom packers’ din they’re told two speakers one carrier consumed consuming
in what’d classically be fire I imagine amethyst aura around people trying to be persuaded of anything,
Heidegger at the snow line hearing the snow on trees likely to be pine (branches asterisks side on) for us.

12.19.84