Louis Armand
NOTES
FOR A PROSPECTUS
(for
david egan)
1.
after months at sea re-
hearsing
the property rites.
a
shotgun barrel a dark
clockface
surrounded by
vegetation
&
laughed silently
the
time of appeasement has
passed—bulletholes
&
bridal
gowns
after
the silent advocacy
was
spent under vows
working
a borehole
line
by scant line
a
too-severe
symmetry
of design
forecasting
the
long
dry season
&
no truant memory:
seeds
of dolomite
sewn
into the
black
stream, irrigating
a
dust-worn image
of
the one-who-owns
&
the one-
who-must-be-obeyed
2.
maddened by the flat outlands thirsty for
altitude
& spirit-levels / the
thorn
bursts into rain darkening
teeth
in bloodsweat weather
northwest
from kamilaroi country
to
port-of-bourke
a
string of muddy
waterholes
gateway to the
nevernever
compass-dark & needle-eyed
the
hugely mortal beast
sleeps
under
petrified
scales—
its
dream
swarms
over
the plains.
salt
nebulć
burning
the scrub
night-pale
3.
breakneck after the fall
gutting
the run-through
cattle
grid & cyclone wire—late warning
across
three states
the
stormeye gathers
red
soil
old-testament-like
into
its ferment—tearing up the
paralytic
lakebeds
in
a cumulus of bloodlust
&
the fire wrapping the air about it into a
whirlwind
thick
with crazed insects
4.
dunes of rusted steel in full glare of the sun beating
on
the old dry wrecks behind the viaduct
blood-alcohol
& flocks of white
sulphur-crested
cockatoos
screeching
at sunset out along kaputa road
grey-red
from scrub fires
a
hundred kilometres away
artifice & truth melt
into
one another in a vista that
dies
out between pine trees as night & the access road
descend.
though nothing will have been proved
we
are digging a hole
into
which all the arrangements can be
upended
& buried
facing
the dark parentheses
after
the words are spent—as though the gesture itself
were
already an ultimatum
ORNITHOLOGY
skyblack in
photo emulsion over williamsburg bridge
the distant
arrivals & departures like
slow-motion
pinball machines drooping in mid-
flight. already
those images have died a
postcard death
in the sorting rooms of memory
flushed out
into the river’s accommodating
scent—night
plants grown from un-
salvaged
objects of misplaced longing drag roots
through
greyblack enamelled waters. shadows of
streetlight
vista & dockside exit ramps
south on canal
street—a shift-worker
knocking off
before dawn
the
giant’s alarm clock of times
square … life
is other than the critic sees it
vast masses of
disorganised iron-
mongery painted
blue like the upper decks of
manhattan
bridge—these & other
adornments of
the commonplace, resigned
to the fact
that this too must form a habitation
beyond mere
observable. to eat
breathe sleep
& dispense with keeping its
inventory of
costs always before us. what could be
more humane or
more
humorous
than that? a joker’s
simulated
laughter undergone like a malediction
can still be
heard on the other side
of the
ubiquitous glass ceiling. daylight spreads
across the
outer bridge like a child’s grin
wide with
foreboding & foolishness. the world
is a cartoon:
yellow taxis fire engines hotdog
stands—the
cats are mating on the roof an el-
evated train
thumps on the walls cut it out! the sun’s a
clown
already yes &
the birds have
freed the stopsigns!
COMPOSITION
(for
john gamble)
cityscapes
in rain or hail—move often—
the
very idea of a bridge
alphabetical
fire escapes
as
lattice points on the rectilinear surfaces
of
harlem tenements—or downward-
spiralling
stairwells
reflected
in a wet sidewalk
&
sky as labyrinth of flight-lines—
no
longer paraphrasable meaning
but
urge to outer (space?)
of
the infinite interior—taking a brooklyn-
bound
a-train as far as beyond—
stare
at the atlantic for a while
imagining
others on the other side
staring
back—erosion
gradually
of everything to sand swept
back
& forth across the ocean floor, even—
the
smog-mute leviathan of dusk
presages
entropy—switch channels & it’s
night
again then day no point
debating
with the obvious—knowing
its
time is always now
though
still a chance of missing
the last
connection & the last turning back
