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Amniotic Dream

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    The Amniotic Dreamby Timothy Lavenz

    1

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    3

    I

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    the open duct

    never conducts

    breaks all my

    notions of

    love

    peace

    thought

    wrings action out:

    animation

    pagination

    autochthony

    blot

    sequencesof absences

    belly-breathing

    crowning

    talk

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    5

    time:

    surrendering

    to the current

    in the rock

    love for all the creatures

    feature-caught

    love for the measure

    mammon brought

    love for the missing

    ought

    love for whatthe sequence

    taught

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    6

    echo for the present

    is what forthe present said:

    to halo

    over horizons

    of hatred

    to be blatantin the amorphous

    element

    to have a word

    about the alias

    in our dust

    to be

    trusted

    to

    us

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    7

    are you feeling

    the forerunnerof God?

    never to be arrived at yet:

    the possibility of calm.

    oh but that too:

    the possibilityof connection

    tease taste

    tulip

    arm.

    oh too:

    fingersbreasts

    strokes

    errors

    logos

    stars

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    8

    cant read

    the mindit tells me.

    cant speak

    what it speaks

    to me.

    cant stay opento the tune

    I swim in

    essentially

    cant but capsize

    on falseness,

    abuse

    cant but see through

    to the dark

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    every horror

    grapplinggroping

    every mannequin

    straddling

    stroking

    every ghostgroggy

    going

    every ashbag

    focusing

    numbing

    every pirate

    lonesome

    roving

    every lassitude

    grounding

    molting

    every alibi

    demanding

    devoting

    every parachute

    landingsoaring

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    All I am

    is a drooling storysuccumbing

    to the maximum

    of things.

    All I am

    is a pooling porosity

    belovedto the seepage

    of dreams.

    All I am

    is a groveling gossiper

    coaxing out

    filamentsof seed.

    All I am

    is a motioning marvel

    enfolding

    the correspondence

    that rings.

    All I am

    is a local minimum

    summing

    the cogency

    of lead

    All I am

    is the barking comma

    salient

    in the utterance

    of realing.

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    All I amis a forgotten remnant

    witness

    to the happening

    of loss.

    All I am

    is a shifting augurforgetful

    in the cellophane

    of being.

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    angel

    arms splayedwide silent

    earthful praying

    cup

    of winters fountain

    like spring

    breath

    of eve

    the beginning

    life

    the feeling

    of me

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    anxious

    on the wingof tomorrow

    summoned

    to the pinnacle

    of possible

    openin the flow

    of laudable

    grown

    to the limit

    of powering

    waiting

    in the mirror

    of love

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    14

    relaxed

    on the bridgeof myself to myself

    I thought of what I wanted,

    thought of what myself,

    trailed off into the valley

    of the world Id always loved

    didnt need to knowwhy it was lost,

    didnt need to know

    why it was off,

    didnt need to know

    why I loved

    only after thatI thought:

    the bright bridge

    going over

    is us

    whatever we said

    longinglywent across

    whatever was true

    went on

    unlost

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    bubbles of truth

    channel throughthe ether

    faces turn outward

    expose all

    interiors

    minds conjureantidotes

    to fearful

    hands touch

    on the silence

    of meaningful

    language

    brims over

    to see through

    answers come out

    like air

    to meet us

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    desire more vital

    than any living needsustains me,

    whispers me

    to the ears

    of the lost

    at all costs

    wrapped aroundthe open artery

    of a scream...

    cringes at being

    known

    we are not

    would goright now

    to the coffin

    were it not

    for the fantasy

    in between

    were it notfor this love

    believing us--

    infinite

    animate

    amniotic

    dream

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    radiant convection

    of nightcoming to consciousness

    in my bust

    the pedestal

    outlawed,

    the spotlight

    corrupt;

    desire

    to be more like

    what else?

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    deep into the lyric

    thinkingtrickles episodes

    of irrelevance

    into meaning

    lip-balm

    for the damned

    seizures

    seeing

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    19

    adance

    ascantaskew

    asunder

    in this

    horrid clouding

    mirroring called

    you:

    I

    record

    an image

    a distance

    a disease

    eternal

    try

    to focus

    the winds

    of dead

    echoes

    on the bodyripped apart

    by language

    delivers

    truth

    to the others

    we devourlike mad

    in ethers

    pain of

    outside

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    the lurid

    frame of

    a kiss

    a lift

    impossible:

    alive

    amusedabused

    adrift

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    the trappings cascade

    tear and away

    how clearly then

    we speak to say:

    this being was made

    to speak this way

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    22

    the power goes out

    a call goes off

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    23

    A silent science

    of listeningintrigues

    Into the Other

    is poured out all reason

    Liberated

    the covenantal trustof singers

    believing

    Spoke

    of innocence

    wrinkled

    and shivered.

    Rose

    into the clearing

    a Host

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    Love

    that onlyhaunts and hurts

    The climb

    of the supercell

    is perfect

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    25

    beings and letters

    return to sendershredded

    mourning

    the code

    in the keep

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    26

    but as the eyes scanned

    and the images danced

    as the heart leapt

    and the world planned

    one grim epiphany

    rose and subsumed

    all phenomena:

    I is that

    mechanism

    to dance;

    I is that

    code-cancellingmachine;

    I proclaims

    the inexistence

    of meaning;

    I lovesthis world

    without me

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    In darkness

    a lark wandersin the name of

    peering farther

    does not

    give a hoot

    about tomorrow

    does not

    wonder why

    it cant be tamed

    will not know

    how far

    it has to go

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    arid emphasis

    or curse:

    theory burns

    the heart

    of the learner,

    changes his charge

    into crypt-keeper,

    grits his styleinto twirling,

    twerks his loaf

    into a million

    everyones fed,

    no count goes missing

    the universe

    spits up

    a miracle:

    translucent,

    ignorant,

    deliberateturd:

    language,

    suffering

    everything

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    loose imaginations

    starringthe reason of trust

    turns the image

    into bust

    corporeal

    in love with nothing

    to do with it

    cannot find the way to it

    but does

    birthing

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    Please, light,

    dont leave me

    Please, light,

    leave

    Please, light,

    be me

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    vanished light

    the sky

    with rain

    is writing

    I am trying

    to remember

    my name

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    32

    The Naming

    given you

    my embrace,

    my word,

    my start,

    my absurd,

    now its overnow I go forward

    recessed light

    shows me better

    aches out

    from the words

    is into you reaching

    for bold,

    for passion,

    for true

    let you have that

    in absence

    let you go away:

    was on time

    to go living

    someone else

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    33

    II

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    34

    Generations of tutors eagle-taught:

    natures evil, willdevour what its named.

    Generations of letterationalities

    for what?

    Pretend to be awake in thought.

    Pretend to name God.Pretend the Thing has got

    a thing it names.

    Pretend child.

    Pretend us.

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    All this weary ought

    to writhe and lesson;all these dreary Bogarts

    to repay.

    Smells

    from the Motherland

    wash in and shake

    the sea.

    Shakeeverything

    that can be.

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    every letter funnier

    but I hope to see high shadows

    where I walk.

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    Spread out in one quark-bubble

    was the whole human impulseto make love and trouble,

    to travel and fable,

    to frolic and scream,

    for which we had

    no more than a moments

    praise to dream,

    for which our one bright day,

    limitless in its want to be,

    constrained in what it was to be,

    absorbed in metamorphoses

    too encompassing to see,

    was enough

    topop.

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    39

    Paceshaken,

    he tried to subduethe cruel and pounding

    flight from epoch to epoch,

    corner to corner,

    word to word,

    tried to plunge the briar

    back down into the seed,tried to trudge the tower

    back down to rock and clay,

    tried to torch the errors

    fears momentum

    had so haplessly

    strewn about the way;

    but vile morality clung,

    passions whip clacked and stung,

    cancer ate away the hugging flesh,

    loneliness won over every harmony;

    shouting became the timbre of love,

    jealousy the yoke of the gaze,

    demand the object of prayer,hatred the essence of trade

    and who could ever dare

    tame that? God himself

    could only have bowed his head

    in shame, could only have suggested

    the one constant impossible thing:

    to show the pacestrickenwhat most they fear:

    the halting of all initiative,

    the undoing of all contracts,

    the collapse of every fortune,

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    the end of every ceremony,

    crowning an incapacitated I canwith the silence of the dead messianic:

    those who arrive not,

    speak as speaking not,

    live as living not;

    those for whom time

    is already long lost, gone;those who wait and accept,

    drenched in thieves sweat,

    a most horrible gift: existence,

    hell-bent by social destiny,

    at rest in the downfall of things,

    unified only in remembrance

    with all the distant soulswho ever distant uttered

    their impotent, disgusted Stop!

    before being lost in turn

    like everyone else

    who wanted to go further than thought

    and instead ended upmangled,

    forgotten,

    dropped.

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    No more path

    from torporto providence.

    No more wisdom

    to slicken

    the long choice.

    No more deadlocksto change

    on the doorstep.

    No more verse

    to carry forward

    the Word.

    No more way

    to hear

    what we heard.

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    Gods of idleness and taste

    chary of the splendorous Bloomsooner strive to give their take

    than into being strive to move.

    Apportioned to them by eager vow

    is the Bride of all gained things,

    the chaste and veiled old Body

    in which space beats all feeling.

    Jilted words, whittled, break in,

    sad, taciturn, without failure,

    passing leisurely, pouring through,

    fireflies listless in the evening coo.

    But the blessing instant remainsdistinguished from all timed fate,

    for they remember in the Main

    the destiny of what there is to do.

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    The beds all day

    my eyesshimmer frozen.

    A life of ones own

    cannot be live.

    (To give to emotion

    all that is human,all that there is

    commotion in the abdomen,

    lucky and

    alone.)

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    The springs arent wicked,

    the missions not insipid:out of all fallen petals

    to write the tell-tale ending

    of existence sonata yet cling;

    to sing the bulb

    into nights moon outstretch

    oer all waters down-bedding,into perfect signing tone,

    uncried, unkept.

    How easy it will be!

    to live up: each one

    impression for the motor

    fortuitynaked photosfor the heart-held hold

    blind

    in that damned eternal

    remnant of spring

    bellowing inside thee

    spheres, squares, surfacingto ring out

    hollow rings:

    ode,

    ambrosia,

    cantor,

    king.

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    Taste of my cauterized

    thinking this eveningand Im regressing

    into speeches million-

    folded and revealing

    that destiny motioned

    forward by linking

    nature to my nature:

    gulpblinking.

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    O sadness,

    revive me frommy hatred of myself,

    deliver me

    from the wasteland

    of my presence,

    give back to methe nothing

    I so relish,

    teach me

    to accept again

    my abandonment,

    guarantee

    one last time to me

    that I will go,

    and I will go, sadness,

    I will go on after you

    to love.

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    All my pain

    in my own onetomb. Loseable,

    stayed,

    unknew.

    Whereas real

    I was you

    to touch you:the truest gaze

    I drew

    between our times

    and triumphant

    scuttled

    through.

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    WATCHED

    In me: the seeds

    of every speech,

    but I cant

    speak.

    Sets up erect

    mans eternaldevil-squeak:

    words squeezed

    from the Mind

    through Hell bleaker

    than all historys line

    dissolute inscripts

    from the incipittortured in the brief

    quilts anomie.

    In such night

    deprived vocation

    bereft glad images

    I was ledat deprivations last

    to Gods grave

    named at last:

    The cart nows been scraped

    cross old Nagarjunas back;

    the shrill axis of accessechoes vocalless back

    the scar,

    the tired claw,

    the clogged sieve:

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    time,

    too roomy,too open,

    too black.

    So that I will lose you

    in that; but

    here,

    take it,see me

    on my knees,

    racked.

    Unclasp,

    kind demon,

    and pray.

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    Nothing but nothingness,

    there is my startto go nowhere after then,

    not even to art

    though I try

    and I do not lie

    still so collapses: my heart.

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    Ghosts pull all the strings,

    erase everything,made it come back streaking,

    dancing like tomorrows

    in the pastI,

    pleasant puppet,

    host of torment,

    laugh and cringe,

    sing my sorry feet on some sick songI,learning-to-live dwarf,

    critic out in motion,

    satires tired sow

    now ghost.

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    Presents presence

    all displaced;

    rats and evil

    premonitions

    unseeable by words

    course through

    my breath.

    Am I dead?

    Am I breathless?

    Am I doomed

    to outside all being

    course instead?

    Am I pain?

    dear God, give me

    nothing to gain. Let me

    no longer

    rest my head.

    Rest, my head,

    o God,and give I shall then

    no less.

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    Brim again

    sin again,give again

    in. No

    finish then:

    mourning is

    to live

    however

    grippedin nervousness

    dissuasion

    stone-lipped-

    tipped

    then again

    into this,

    fishingfor my twilight

    in your sun.

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    56

    MEME

    The rind of Treblinka

    is chinked on Wall Street Wall;

    Canada hums liable in computer code

    worse than Babel; Ernest stocks up

    like the prodigal son but not

    to return the product

    or to thank the Fathers seed;Anarchys angelic factory

    is commanded by satisfied feelings,

    starved wet by apples in our dreams;

    each hears unequivocally

    the players pre-caring the Truth

    magnetic to the point of crystal

    Energy, saluting as to the Starthat like David went down

    had he.

    At the end

    of history, guilty; which we are

    and cannot say, the dead

    robbed all reparation. Have we

    forgotten our shameand not only? Ambitions

    shadow casts farther

    into the maddening hardness

    of revenge and foreclosed grief;

    down into Hells contemporary

    last circle, where the only word

    to echo is obey. But closer now,

    murmur: the chidings over,

    the meanings all run out; law

    out of service gets undone; being

    gone home and worthless with a nothing

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    saves nothing but the outline

    of a caterpillar, cold to borders,amused. The messiah

    that

    came yesterday

    to drive justice past destiny

    to we who wake and wade

    uncomfortably uncomfortably to sing

    the dwelling-prose that made menow chrysalis for the crystallization,

    now grave for what decays in it,

    now tired sullen motion to that gate

    now antiphon,

    now meme.

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    Antiphon

    The hurdling coddling magnet does not bleed.

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    59

    handbleeds on the scarcest

    orifice gnawed black

    or you saw it or

    awe

    came at last

    and dying laughed

    and no morpheme

    and nothing

    past;

    your eye

    my see-through organ

    that grabbed it,off-the-wall down

    clasped it,

    sheltered me glass.

    but the final moment,

    the final friendship,

    the final,bites back.

    I'll have made no painting

    to bleed

    on your hands.

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    60

    Decays not the one

    that will work usaway; you can see

    flayed limbs praying

    still in the encasement

    where only language seems

    to hone its way.

    I took pleasure there,here in its final time.

    Took time there

    now where whatever is

    is your say.

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    A crystal note

    runs over my eyeliddetached as it is

    from my agent.

    After your eye spoke

    and heard

    the same rain

    there was no oneno more.

    The street

    gorged with them

    buckles and

    gives way.

    The crystal note

    rings,

    hopefully.

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    62

    An embroidered page

    weathered yellow by the sunshows on its black veins

    no signs of going green,

    no sign of comic age;

    seeks there a code or a cage

    where it frays,

    where it tries to namein hope or in shame

    by the instep of all dust

    the standing truth:

    What trusts there

    the one unique instant

    of luck or chance, a gazeaway and up, of

    not enough yellow pages

    to speak that nature.

    The desk crawls

    with people

    like a king crabto his last dusk,

    in sliced wood

    squashed and patterned

    home,

    where it warps, splitsand pinches

    the earth.

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    The care of a touch

    robs the night of its angst.

    If I

    on the silence of that edge

    dont come back,

    forgive me.

    Come with meyourself

    to that edge.

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    64

    Silent is the lonely heart

    that stumbles and crumblesand knows not to start:

    Let him then

    just come back to his art

    and he will be delivered

    from the grave

    hes offered in

    Let him

    be dropped

    in the middle of his thought

    Let him

    withdrawinto the offering

    of his name.

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    65

    What Ive done cant last,

    what Ive shelteredpassed.

    I lay down

    in the bedrock

    of my fear.

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    Down

    to thecage

    where

    trickles

    page

    praiseof what might

    come in.


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