The Sense of Trap as a Narrowing Cone One's Got Stuck into and Any Movement Forward Simply Wedges Once More -- but Where or Quite When, Even with Whom, Since Now There Is No One Quite with You--Quite? Quiet?

Let me try this equation: I understand that in the scheme of late capitalism's inexorable grind to oblivion the decisions that Dixons and Geithners and every single smartest guy in the room makes for the 1% that own everything makes as much difference in the inexorable grind's end result as the decision I make in four hours on where I'm gonna eat lunch today. They, in the end, will be just as fucked as me, but I will be fucked first, just as Corporate planned. What? No?

Have some Elkin, from George Mills:

He didn't know what hit him. He didn't go to church. He didn't listen to evangelists on the radio. Nothing was healed in him. His back still hurt like hell from the time he had picked up a television funny. He didn't proselytize his neighbors. He talked as he always had. He behaved no differently. Not to his wife, not to the dispossessed whose furniture he helped Laglachio legally steal. Finally, he did not believe in God.

Holyfuck, if I was shown the last few posts three years from now when I read them I'd know I was reading Elkin when I wrote them, the rhythm and diction of what I write but mostly the frenzy he releases in my head when I'm happy, but this is busiest shittiest month of my working year, I'm reading four books simultaneously while thinking about what I'll read next, and these are the strangest days of my life, and what the fuck happened to my campaign to be quieter, calmer, more circumspect and peaceable?

• Endless political paralysis.
• Fayette Nam.
• Obama as curator.
• Narcissus and Echo.
• The misery of mullahs.
• That thing you do, whatever it is.
• Don't go out in the rain in your socks.
• Murphy. Once I'm done rereading this and this and reading this and this, 2012 is going to be the Year I Immerse Myself in Beckett.
• I understand why Nirvana was important even if I think their music meh and the imitators they spawned suckful of suck, but jeebus fricking christ.
• This week's new releases.
• Glacial wave.

AGE

Robert Creeley

Most explicit--
the sense of trap

as a narrowing
cone one's got

stuck into and
any movement

forward simply
wedges once more--

but where
or quite when,

even with whom,
since now there is no one

quite with you--Quite? Quiet?
English expression: Quait?

Language of singular
impedance? A dance? An

involuntary gesture to
others not there? What's

wrong here? How
reach out to the

other side all
others live on as

now you see the
two doctors, behind

you, in mind's eye,
probe into your anus,

or ass, or bottom,
behind you, the roto-

rooter-like device
sees all up, concludes

"like a worn-out inner tube,"
"old," prose prolapsed, person's

problems won't do, must
cut into, cut out . . .

The world is a round but
diminishing ball, a spherical

ice cube, a dusty
joke, a fading,

faint echo of its
former self but remembers,

sometimes, its past, sees
friends, places, reflections,

talks to itself in a fond,
judgemental murmur,

alone at last.
I stood so close

to you I could have
reached out and

touched you just
as you turned

over and began to
snore not unattractively,

no, never less than
attractively, my love,

my love--but in this
curiously glowing dark, this

finite emptiness, you, you, you
are crucial, hear the

whimpering back of
the talk, the approaching

fears when I may
cease to be me, all

lost or rather lumped
here in a retrograded,

dislocating, imploding
self, a uselessness

talks, even if finally to no one,
talks and talks.