reading without comprehension
: orbiting this crouched, silhouetted figure, a world not in the least understood; stratigraphy jumbled by maps of unreliable or possibly reliable reports, advertisements, editorials; a statistical canyon of total isolation in which demographic man is pictured in dense upwellings of flavorful, cherry-tinted data columns, rising, falling — would a story be advisable, really, now, when story does notever but beguile — or/and is silence better? for instance the little vegetable plot, the room in darkness, neighbor pitted against neighbor, ascending derangements, provenance of the tomatoes in midsummer — one does not speak but for fear of the moment they come to blows; a precarious intolerance in beribboned pinafores; this zero-sum game is to win, to lose, at top one header, two columns, footnotes; games recommend winning, or the fugitive life in wartime, huddled in the umbra of one’s silhouette until the end blows over and is no longer the end; but BEWARE, the storm outside the door rattles the panes, drawn to your name; signature streak of a white missile; 89 trackers blocked from targeting but what of the rest; this weather idles for as long as it takes for the mouse to pop out; all frontiers are taken, no shelter, no here where one used to lunch; WHAT ABOUT, suggests your silhouette, a philosophical position you may adopt while in the meantime your house is blown down; what about beauty or love or something; what’s not won, not lost? — relax: devise a new pastime? — but your telomeres are nubs, recombinant options for your DNA are out of moves; wait there, in your silhouette, as you hoped one day to wait in his, in her, silhouette: featureless, safe, or take up arms; WE, together, look for silent intervals to shore up the bones, attempt a return to the interstices, but our hips have lately grown too wide; this, our nightmare, you dreamt last night: We Are Too Much Alike, the little one knows amounts to no more no less than what the other, give or take;
The roster of things always more or less, always give or take; things; soon between our silhouettes the Paradox Of Intolerance arises in conversation and is implied in conversations in which it does not arise, an undercurrent perhaps, a basso ostinato; how tolerant shall we be of the intolerant, or how intolerant while remaining tolerant in the main, or shall we be the intolerant of whom the tolerant complain; but seriously, how tolerant of the tolerant are we expected to be, it’s intolerable; can we take Voltaire seriously when he suggests we tend only our own gardens; who has a garden but the renter, on his corroded fire escape, the owner, in her disused backyard; are these plants healthy or even edible; we are hungry, if only we hadn’t opted for decorative flowers, aromatic herbs; we pass through a room, through the yard of our plantings; visions disrupted by the music, so-called, of a neighbor in heavy boots stamping up below, closer, louder, grilled meat from next door, oiled silver smoke; could we bear children, watch them germinate, waft in the wind, watch oblivion and sun curdle their seed; try to intervene? never helpful, not effective either; we have to let go; where have they gone? are there better words, do words miss the mark that weaponry attains?: forged iron, rhetoric, an armory stocked with shadow-epithets; hidden in the dim, cut off from disturbing influences, beneficial influences ; what influence could be beneficial, you can’t imagine
Apprentice Comprehenders sit before a screen, vague, of blurry text, reading the few words in a moving slot of light
• time grows thick, the wick burns down; sounds of marching, odors spreading, harsh lights maligning the night sky, from across the hall, down the street, from next door, the ceiling, in the dark room; down, comprehenders, follow down the only page there is, the skipping slot of light, down the page, across the border, the next life, the only life, better next time, give or take,
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