appearances


paper: I have to ask you to save me again
honey falls into the emulsion
my importance has fallen into disuse
I picture a real friend’s face
and how it looks at me
the hands have retreated to a frosty lawn
telephones club Looby Lou
savage egg chest light breaking burns
I was a fern’s leaf
I was a breeze in aubretia
I was a personage of reflected regulation


•



objects that could be called uninteresting
made interesting by their placement
by our conversations about their placement
like whining children
unity of the environment
disunity of the environment
unity of disunity
the complexity of the marketing
opposed to the banality of the product
the idea attempting to become an object
to become a place
opposes
the object
the place
erodes
place


•



the viewer cannot see himself
if he steps away from the screen
is therefore compelled into passivity
to be part of the image
or clowning
in one place
waving
other
gestures
falling
short
of actuality
which is punctured
by the fangs of cameras


•



passage of autographs on tickertape
how the words are a quiet wood
near our house
under light rain
I am trying to walk there silently
which the words don’t want
needing to sound things
              
    write on walls they say


•



the audience the audience
a Cæsar at the games
who does not see does not see
the value of what is witnessed
the value of what remains unwitnessed
the artist puts on a suit
or publicises the decision to shun suits
actually makes nothing
where all must be made

dirty fantastic
fantastic dirty
the experiential versus the experience
processed food after raw potato


•


the invisible
which sits among us
a firefighter

the relationship of nothing to nothing is relevant to nothing

to describe the air we breathe
may choke us


•



grief of my disappearance
the integument of silence
painless drowning
in an archive of chits
without the ligatures I actually see
as it were a lever made of light
a hammer of water
sliding into the histories of others
to lose all bitterness
absolved by the falling of dust


            © Keith Jafrate 2003