Drew Gardner
Memory

these events might take place
on the street, on the phone, in fantasy,
at work, but rarely register as anything
but both sides of the problem
flattening the hierarchical states between entities
we consistently find errors
ricochet an external perception
unconcerned …
I would suggest rather than working you not work
neither love nor lover
the pitiful and useless diffuseness
as round as our heads—the wing beats are loaded questions
caricatured the mind that replays and repays
more completely intended than sound judgment—a disaster
artifactual subway platforms stared into
the lack of memory as a model for knowledge:
don’t do this sort of thing
It is French fries.

my mind made up like the refrigerator,
lovers are always vertical, like the refrigerator .…
Morton Feldman a compact disc in shape
edible paste for resonance through the difference leaks—
mere French fries .…
an “orangutan” figuring out what it represents (and the converse)
a variation on existence … Baudelaire, who also opens a poem with
“why can’t you get the fuck away from me?”

like a Siamese twin you shut down the system,
the internal components can be very hot
you must let it cool before continuing
unplug all external connections
locate the DIMM slots on the logic board
hand writing pierced with eyes—they look together at the dream
except the power cord is in the air
It is French fries .…

do you think somebody’s age is an envelope?
yea, overlapping but coming back to object to something—
that’s the point, the point of departure
sinking into an analogized carapace,
all the cars in the world suddenly the same thing.

ice of nature as collaboration,
things are connected to each other by slowing down the molecules,
humans in republics as fall comes after summer
it’s raining inside the storage closet
the answer in other words, the trunk
of a tree much like ink spilled with permissions errors
and an inadvertent net of proof
so—back to living duration trying to include everything.

bumper stickers overheard what you said
bumper stickers that have attained consciousness
words are mere golems
and produce explosions
and render harmless all the atavistic bombs of
holding a connection as though it were a fear
I can have or cannot have, gently press both ends
down until the tabs are vertical
a distance from what?
didn’t I propose this distance
and my connective tissue—is that also not me?
somehow you get co-opted
by the chastity belt on every wall and floor.

now filled with connection on the bottom edge of the
deflector into the three slots in the bottom frame done
in the name of love
your own hand writing is collective
replacing the access panel
if the latch is down, it will not seat correctly in the enclosure
allow intimacy to be space.

fire is a recording instrument
perhaps a tree in free fall
hanging around the 19th century residues
why should we be bothered?
lift it straight up out of the system
align the enclosure of sheer deluge,
an enormous accumulation of data
the millions of people who get it on
in the light of an accident.

if there is anything that concludes
when the earth’s sun,
made of nothing, undoes love’s moment
with larger consequences
the spotted dots from a distance of quietness,
as blatant as fluidity
seek out more confused music.