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First Mark


I

“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.


II


       Put the mark on the page and spread it out
       Tbeornotseebeingandconventionseebesee
       Sacred (sacred) defiled by a smirk and happy
       Crap.

Ah yes, our cultural theory a story is in
Ev in in ev in ev inev it table explains
The sun shine and the shoe shine the rain falls,
And the fastball. Don’t laugh I make my devotions
       hallelujah
Dogma forms dogma forms. The Authorities employed a
       gang of cutthroats
Who took to cutting throats priests. Hey! I’m not talking
       the usual deal —
We do the explainin you do the workin
Leave the special theories to us. Send the tribute of slaves to take sacrificial
offerings into Tenochtitlan—

We will sequence creation.
The movement of heavenly bodies.
The Procession of one day into the next —
Handle monthly fertility make monthly payments
A group of the most renowned artist courtiers enters
some young some old
Wearing denims or Italian suits many in sunglasses with
petulant but unthreatening
Demeanor. Motorcycle boots and handmade slippers.
The chief oligarch summons them
From their studios within the city walls. He curtly states,
“You are the chosen and you
Serve your masters well but now you’ll be gelded.”
(some older artists shuffled uneasily while several young artists applauded)
But most were plainly confused.
“I’m all for being paid in gold!” cried one.
“Does this mean they want us in some sort of Guild?” cried another.
The chief oligarch was irritated by their stupidity. “No, it
means you are to be castrated
– Your balls are to be cut off. Do this and you’ll retain
the favor of your masters.”

They looked at one another to see what the other
might do but not one dissented, all
Nodded in agreement. It was the right thing to do.
Whatever it takes yeah man who needs ‘em. There are only winners and losers.
Whatever it takes I never used em anyway.
We’re working for the cause. The Lord Chamberlain
moves across the stage. I knew
I could count on you to do what’s right for us all...

.
I’m talking about the whole thing man; and I’m feeling
       good about it
Whole scale WHOLE SALE SALE of the whole total: The aroma
of ripened honey Floats on the breeze and Through the blossoms on
locust tree leaves. Sudden
Vivid memories, of experiences I never had of
The shrew, and the bat, the horse, my boney and meaty
       relatives
Arise from the original stew.

Lightning fired the flying bat and us up
And myself gloat in common ancestry. I’m
Dancing with the honey, horned and goat-drunk,
       celebrating
Osmosis. The effortless joy of sensory experience shakes
       our bodies
Loose, and we dance together spinning faster and faster
       until we drop
Euphoric entwined in the twitching movements of the
       animal body drenched
By fire and the honey flow of insects and the warm fluids
       of mammals.
Look there! The Neanderthal’s doin’
The juicer dance!

The protozoa had no mouth so
The honey flow is the memory flow.
I reached to turn the outside in, in-
Hale and exhale and keep some for later.
The originating force. Bee wings evaporate
Moisture to ripen the honey twenty thousand
Wings beat the harmonious drum. Genetic

Based aesthetic experience stretches back passed the
       Mayans
To the shrew. They’re all still here... still present and
       some
-times you can feel them. Once it starts the beat

Has us dancing again. I’m so happy I’m
Seeing life vivid, full and open ripened memories
Undifferentiated with me the goat, chicken, and bees...
Of

Course men and women pass through each
Other and input from sensory systems integrate
With memory and body systems construct self and
Present. Three drives constitute the present: food,
Sex, and eating rocks.


In America, the mark still runs;
paint is still wet; instinct marks the
tree; the landscape gives no settlement of thought. Our
good intentions get all fucked up in our tortured cultural
meaning. We came for belief, ideals, and to make a buck.
An unintentional sideways glance catches the truth,
glimpsed peripherally to our culture’s glare. You’ll get to
it as easily outside as inside. We’re creating and feeding
on it. I’m back in the garden repairing Eden, making the
marks of the Waxman
again.


I’m looking to find the central
Model of consciousness. It shows
You who I am and what I have made
And how I made it. Meaningful and meaningless.
This is the first absorption of my presence and it
Forms within your eye. Everything absorbs by osmosis
Changes and returns. Flamingo and dove both love birds
About the house. Art making begins close to home.
Fancy footwork comes later, after the music starts.
In the garden Adam and Eve made a honey and wax
Figure, sculpture, then ate it and were expelled.

Scale is irrelevant to creation. Eden
Is two inches round and round and upside down.
It’s been a long stare: forty thousand years at the mirror.
Reflections of love; hate what have you; the usual
And they’re still tossing the beautiful girls
Into the Chinote so god can git the perty
Gals. The bee told me not to worry: assign
Likely meanings and intentions and leave it at that.
Don’t concern yourselves with details and become
       nervous
In our concentrated form. Cracked spines and
Crushed bones first mark and scream

But what’s the beginning point? The basic elements?
Tolstoy was a great bee man. He knew the workings of
       the hive.
He recognized the French occupation of Moscow as a
       queen-less
Hive. Finished. Doomed. This lady owl is created
       through touching,
Stroking, making accumulations (of feathers shaped in
       owl form).
But who are we? Breathing or dead in the method of our
       creation
Is the answer. The cave breathes in dead summer mist
       and returns
The dead to deep earth and exhales bright air of autumn
       songs too.
The bumpy cave wall reopens the world it contains:
       bison, rhinos,
And lions, horse, owls. His smudged hand mark is all he
       gave
And that’s about all there is. It dwindles. Flickers and
       returns
And re-gives all there is. Meanings are assigned and
       meanings
Adhere after a change of posture on the seat; and the echo
       says,
“Look that child is crying — his screams fade down the
       cavern’s

Bronchial paths. The sliding of the past into present into
       future

Gives the mark its form

How does he look? How does he look like when you
       don’t
See him? Well, how does the body feel like when you
       can’t touch it?
The imagined body never touched it? To be honest, it’s
Always been a blood-soaked tale: Hundred Years War
       Napoleon,
Hitler, slaughters. For absolution reveal yourself to
       strangers

From Waxman into a new cognitive aesthetic model.
       Ho...
Ho... Hey... Instinct repressing medication. Love...
And art. Central model of consciousness.
Maybe now is the time to start again. We’ll
Leave the doctor’s office, unseen, and walk toward the arid
Plain.
Buddy bad boy whitey’s buck naked in the woods,
Dancing and screaming about nature in chaps and western
       duds.
Cortes landed on the Yucatan and went wild. Bernal Díaz
       takes up the story:
“There were idols of Sodom in their sanctuaries so we
       tore the wings off insects
And chopped down the trees. We knew about the sword
       and the cross and left
A piece of driftwood with axe marks on the shore. Let’s find it! Let’s
find the Word, the mark, the incendiary, the spark-word, the verb of
conquest and Submission. A word was the bomb we call the Daisy
Cutter we slipped it into Monte’s brain [and the depth charge flipped
him out]. Beards also played some Part as I guess they could grow
them. And the word? I can’t tell you but give
You the name of two who know Señor de Royo and San
borne Jumbo. They
Are the word whose meaning cannot be worded. It’s what
       happens next but never
Happens what we never get to: the sequential mark the
       next mark in the sequence of the pattern on a cave wall