Poems and essay by Allen Fisher

Editorial note: “Confidence in Lack” is the first of four essays in Allen Fisher’s 2007 collection of the same name. Rather than reprint the complete essay, we’re posting its opening paragraphs and direct readers to Fisher’s website, where they can read it in its entirety. — Michael S. Hennessey

Confidence in Lack

Most recent modernist, and much subsequent, significant poetry writing has negotiated damage, in awe of a range of specialist vocabularies, used in the public sector by commerce, education, and the war machine. Throughout this period it has been evident that in spite of, or in deference to, the restricted and figurative use of language much that is public has involved catching a logic bus into an aspiration for coherence. One apprehension and understanding would be that poetry is at great variance to these expectations, both with regard to logic and coherence, and with regard to making vocabulary available and has led to a confidence in lack — a confidence that poetry, when it is at its most efficacious, cannot propose logic, as it is variously perpetuated in paternal and public thinking, and cannot aspire to coherence, as this is also prescribed. In particular, poetry needs to make these proposals or have these aspirations in a period following the extensive pollarding and retro-harnessing of modernism and its huge variety of materialist and fascist engines.

In February 2007, writing for Nature, an international weekly journal of science, a group of physicists, supported by the American army, Yale University and commerce, proposes to resolve the issue of photon number states in a superconducting circuit where they expect to distinguish between coherent and thermal fields (two apparently different orders of vocabulary) and create a photon statistics analyzer which will generate non-classical states of light and perform superconductivity quantum bit-photon conditional logic, the basis of a logic bus for a quantum computer.

The paper thus celebrates a dilemma. Poetry and engagement with a Public, like Science and its public, provide a significant mismatch, potentially involved with self-deception, or more often, active deceit. The premise for this mismatch derives from a range of incapacities and inabilities necessary to the frailties that underpin vulnerabilities and contribute to sensitive thinking; that contribute to the æsthetic and ethical basis for all written poetic and scientific practice. This is a necessary dilemma in conceptual and historical terms, set against the western proposals for logic and its modernist aspiration to cohere …

Watusi
from Entanglement (1991–2003)

In Memoriam
Barry MacSweeney and Doug Oliver

5.i

We are dying in April showers
falsehood of sweet options
The geneticist joins us for lunch
The garden is rosy
I can smell metal
lift from the bleach dew
surrounded in bitterness
even though I am the spinner, whose
music willing did mask
with spacetime talk, in rested weeds
odorant one
a new breed of men and
women spend their measured
meal counting
between one and two in the afternoon
36 people walked
past the bus stop.
 
4.i
 
Tired of walking marks
the reader reaches dizziness
energy and position exchange values
experience distinguished from information
an international convention to return a stolen
mesh of organic and abstract
economic products
commodity and
peddled possessions
wandered at random,
debated as an order,
‘in a congealed state’
the imagined petrified
‘substitutable,’ in Fit
theory, a personal relation to things,
 
1.i
 
The Inspector lifted her glass emptied it,
I simply wanted to label the axons, it was only,
The Geneticist ordered more cocktails,
coincidental that cell bodies become involved,
Weren’t you using a modified gene trap?
When I trapped my first gene I used a
placental alkaline phosphatase produced
I was very taken by the recognition,
a bicistronic transcript from the enhancer
two encoded proteins.
Using these traps you can identify
gene functions in the brain.
 
l.ii
 
You have to accept an element of risk.
Well, in the process of introducing transgenic markers
the genes begin to mutate. Obviously you
balance uncertainty with a confidence curve.
You can compare this to economic conditions
The vague fear of the unknown doesn’t help.
knowledge of recombinant DNA has put the scares about,
broader social problems,
 
l.iii
 
taboo and classification systems proposed by the Anthropologist
transformed into biological pollution.
The Inspector checked her watch, You can calculate
the risks within acceptable margins of error.
This need to experience
the ideas of a work as they exist in the work
ever-prepared to apply a systematic interpretation
 
l.iv
 
the tropology of the argument
in a locality under authority
The good outnumbered and everything for sale
love truth justice
stripped naked in courtesy and beauty
afraid and released from mere dependence
on speculation, Truth finally
not simple but tied to reward
Conscience’s insistence upon complexity
The seat of impetuosity organised
in familiar grooves of self-interest,
given this opportunity, preys upon itself.
 
4.ii
 
released as criminal offence
through spurious adaptation to realistic needs
denotated as ‘thing’ —
without truth
dominated with colour
without locality
an expansive illusion isomorphic with cosmos
persuaded that we can’t make a difference
attached to things
the sheer quantity of the specific
due to an inside
antagonist to the self
dream cabinet, opposing diodes
revolving in a box.
 
5.ii
 
When taste brings death
and the wall is smashed
genetically modified or simply cloned
a sinking music on a sacred top
spins inspiration like is was truth
united
with reed of burlap
how the head long and birth
rosy in dawn shop
delays the float
the oracle of a narrator’s
smear-guided flight
indicator synaloepha
followed by a draught
This compromise and talk down
beckons wrath. She begins to
question this. Her balm starts switching
 
6.i
 
Offended by reliance on measurement
a contrast of quantum-field and symmetry
unification at a scale too large to study
held beneath pigmented tension
I was not in the garden
but heard a thrush cracking snail shells
the constant heat larger than the time of flight
a question of locality discussed in phase space
‘a face of contradictions resulting from measurement
rout influence of orientation some
mechanical predictions impossible to mimic
by realistic street occasions
grams sinking to the base of a coffee
 
2.i
 
The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium used a
hierarchical mapping and sequencing strategy to construct the
working draft of the human genome. This clone-based approach
involves generating an overlapping series of clones that covers the
entire genome. Each clone ‘fingerprinted’ on the basis of the pattern
of fragments generated by restriction enzyme digestion. Clones
selected ed for shotgun sequencing and the whole genome sequence
reconstructed by map-guided assembly of overlapping clone
sequences.
At the time of the pilot phase the sequencing efforts were renewed to
develop clone-based maps covering specific regions of the genome.
To construct these regional maps, we screened artificial chromosome
clones for sequence-tagged site markers,
 
2.iii
 
Techno-inauthenticity signals
orgiastic return encourages
indifference boredom the demonic
levels irreplaceable response of self
reliance localised misunderstands
individual as a role, not a person
persona, not existence
one speechless carriage
filled with sounds of departure
 
2.iv
 
goodness given
“dissymmetry of the gift that is also death”
subjects receivers as law
another kind of death
irreplaceability confined
from the site of death
calls to responsibility
“No one can die . . . . . in my Place.”
 
2.ii
 
fingerprinted the positive clones, integrated them into the existing
maps, and selected the largest, intact clones with minimal overlap for
sequencing.
In three years, to keep pace with the ramping up of the sequencing
effort, the ongoing efforts to construct the whole-genome bacterial
artificial chromosome map were increased approximately tenfold.
This map allowed the integration of a range of data, including
fluorescence in situ hybridization cytogenic clone localizations,
landmark data, obtained by polymerase chain reaction and hybridisa-
tion screening, clones from other libraries with associated map data,
and working draft and finished clone sequence and associated
electronic polymerase chain reaction landmarks.
Together, the human genome clone map and anchored sequence
map provide synergistic resources for future analysis.
 
6.ii
 
glued to internal consciousness — visible 
photons in selected in breath cascades
multiply-connected visible light
from birefringent crystal balls
predict two output channels and an adjustable
orientation, a scheme in which settings are changed
during flight, and consequent locality partly realised
in practice instead replace each polariser
with a system involving a random periodic switch
to significantly violate distance and levels of confidence
influences faster than thought allowing separate
parts of the free will become entangled
deeply felt physical existence somewhat a non-local
aloneness and without tangible proof.
 
5.iii
 
gate of a stair well
near do well
create share bell flick from dimmer switch
breaks the lead a pitch
of a night top of
the stair’s falls ebb
shock at a stare gate
of the light trap
flicker in brain sight
green yellow to blue light
orange lilac to red
damson shed
ripens juice in the heat
                                                reddens sheet
“Stop it!”
The Painter turns to the others
 
5.iv
 
In morning pink striations lift
proceed and dew us
in a switch from dream
levitated and warm breath
on trees in window and a stream
flicker of light and wings
in distance call sounds amazed
as she rested from love in array
looked on the Primavera dawn
and on the opposite wall
surfing towards flowerfall
lifts head to speech
“What’s going on?” she asks
Shared boldness admonishes her,
disrupts ascesis and
diegesic representation encased in
a third-Person narrative
 
3.i
 
A general virtualisation
without conscience sustains
the aesthetic of disappearance
a science of truth removal
without momenergy’s particularity
an endless back-fed
telescoped advice in acceleration.
Abuse deemed absent without
universal gravity’s pursuit of limit-performance.
Loss of local time cancels
any reality of distance
a substitution that mobilises
destruction of cultures and geography,
a local exterior to all
in situ, precisely localised.
 
3.ii
 
In accumulated wealth
in speed its concentration
reduces distances from temporal compressions
to tele-surveillance spread
a soft stupor enumerated in
victims of reversal
a noisier foolishness where
flowers bloom among radioactive fire engines
kinetosis for traveller-voyeurs
in preparation for instant transmission — weightlessness
 — I can no longer walk
back on my feet at high speed
I can’t hug or see light my
embrace and eyesight devour each other.
 
4.iii
 
Substitutability persists relates
distance and enlivened order
Materials and how he thought them
inexplicably intertangled
in place through connection
his ecological niche
liberated from single location
 
4.iv
 
promotes a social set-up the
site hovering over a range of edges
bundled kinesthetic situation
in fields of perceptions solved
altogether through walking
more important than locality a
punctuated equilibrium
records this onto film.
 
3.iii
 
A process of substitution placed
affect in self-consuming gunfire
a discourse from definity of place
acquired rationalisms
of knowledge and ratio
without bend frozen process
typology of before renewed
in representation scattered over
visible surfactant unfolds
on mortuary ground
exclusion of existential relation to
what this becomes through saying it
 
3.iv
 
then scansion contrasted to paratactic
delight not surprise hence
a calculus of possible coordinates
analyses situation
miniaturised complexity fudged,
it is enough to fix the image
as paradigm, reiteration that it
happened, a gesture of setting aside
rifted lapse of an ecstasy
without identity
hidden inside a system
invincible summation.
 
5.v
 
Now enforce a far unfitter rasp,
For clones burn to change my open needs,
and rave out of nights and
Gentleman’s Relish paraded sleep
in long silence
too smashed, the sacred regiment
to raise the ground in leaves of
dull tongue
fetter the wars and loves moralised
as song
rendered inexcusable
in prolepsis
the warning signs
and flesh yield
pulls as they clone
to spark through song
our tendered pants
out throws the cited mode.

Winging Step  
from Entanglement (1991–2003)
 
Initial engagement recorded risk in London commerce
a recognition of damage perhaps simply fragmentation
dimensions recorded in exhaust gas and tiredness
given shape in air moved
the narrative takes rein specifies location on a road
encounter with a second tarmacker
abrupted into syntax and narrative journey simultaneous with
natural phenomena juxtaposed rail tracks crabs of colour.
A following engagement named discipline and context
then specific quest and spacetime
linked back into initial risk and at a county boundary
traps and ideas of eternity or
the movement of a müller over glass
and in a garden focussed
followed by a return to the second engagement.
A new initiative locks in with specific semiotics
chains onto a shift of meaning
notes troat artificiality
and its natural semantic parallel
crossed with further record of damage
in rationalised details.
Again initiative clocks in as imaginative
memory of self in the image
trapped in London commerce
with a sense of helplessness.
 
A momentary sheen from complexity unfastens
relieves a pressure
undermines history
intertraced with added memory.
Rhetoric held in deluded appearance of natural images
the possible absence of representational tropes
superimposed orders, the riflemen cross the border
permits multiplication of represented object
implies a series riflemen cross the border.
An enveloping sheen, gossamer egg
a paranomasis braided to
mimesis and metaphor
a diachronic pattern of narrative discourse
usurped by radicals injected by machines
Another record of explosion or gun fire
as if randomly spotted
across a graph of moving trail lines
in a witness box, on a geiger check, by the self.
The Painter skate boards a range of chemistry boxes
posts a range of letters.
 
Tendency to perceive connected regions
uniform image properties
different from the neutron trap
luminance, colour, texture,
motion and disparity
stops responses
adapts, but retinal blood not
perceived sees what she expects
experience on the basis of edge information
lost focus, reception dependence
shape largely invariant over similarity transformations
underlie internal representation
conscious perception of texture segregation
requires attention
suggests expectation
as an important component of inattention’s blindness.
From the middle of the enclosure
clipped hedges and a fountain
air craft and sirens dependent
on personal meaningfulness of extra stimulus
a kind of attentional blink
perceived viewpoint remains
non-conscious process to the level
of memory.
 
The trapping region fills
with isotropically pure helium
in a cupronickel tube. A cold
beam passes through a series of
teflon windows, collimated
by a boron carbide ring, and
into the trapping region gets absorbed
by a beam stop. The trapping field
created by an assembly
of superconducting magnets continue to be
confined by quadruple racetrack constructions.
 
Switches from one object to another
incur additional cost
do not attribute to distance
a number of disconnected spatial regions
at the sametime attention split
among multiple objects
at different levels of her visual system.
A direct association cluster
printed colour word and sound of colour name
between colour itself and the naming
A logic of relation
between brain and consciousness
a supervenience in which conscious events
require corresponding neural activity
without relational structures she does not
experience different colours as more closely related
than shapes. Her expression of red
could be completely different from
the Burglar’s attention to corresponding
internal experiences that arise from
viewing the same modified plant forms
“We were up,” the mobile noted,
“l don’t study objects but the relations
between them.” The emergent complexed
neurons firing as low as 35 hertz
and as high as 75 correlate their
brain activity of visual consciousness.
 
More material than the Painter can possibly
cope with each moment she
visualises a recalcitrant fact
rises out of confrontation with this
to break it up and
make a further effort again
and again several until something
not in the surface looks
somehow in imaginative grasp
consciousness immersed in activity
that she may not wake up from
to reinvent herself enters
the room knowing she is away
in another country a different trap
attempts to keep innocence
to avoid dilution of the world
noticing what no one else has paid attention to
as surprising as a new species of lizard
incoherent experience caught in coherence
conveys new sensation of proportion or connection
early in the morning
incessant burning
200 sketches blazing in preparation
for anyone to warm from
integrated to its background
in revulsion for what she did before
a geometrical diagram
richness and sadness transformed into
subtlety and joy.
 
It gets easy to manipulate
the parameters used in sequence
interpreted without knowhow
Resistance reflected in music
the exploitation of already existents
a defiance, profound horror of society
signs of irrational exuberance
strong growth in money supply
a rise investment share
widening current account deficit
personal sector plunging
into deficit
all indicators flashing red
soft landings never seem
in reach a combination
of further rises in interest
rates falling dollar
the left hand revolves around
irregular ostinato defies
sense of pulse the right
plays increases quirky
figuration above this
switch between quite different
materials meaning generated
by juxtaposition dissolves occurs
instead of a cut
material developed off-camera
well-equipped ingenios
investment before completion ready
for operation at least eighty or
a hundred men at once set
up a mill trapiche to crush
canes pressed sweet syrup after
extraction from cunyayya level
turned a steady wheel around
old chain pumps the artifice
of oppression. In tobacco terms
a cachimba becomes cachimbo
contempt for a humble plant
puffing smoke-stack set against
need to buy slaves, experts and
skills for mills, boils, refinery,
capital to manificar the sugar
money enough to induce
departure from a history of death.
 
Ripped apart stars and gas suck
simply adds up the masses dead
quasars in neighbourhood calculates
energy equivalent of mass
from formula multiplies
efficiency factor do the
sums, the total energy
radiated by quasars
turns larger than accounts.
Recurrent intense headaches
visual and gastrointes
tinal disturbances characterises
attack conversations between
friends reveal friendly follows
different patterns a one-at-a-
time overlaps speed avoids
hedge against personal issues
shared matched conversational
floor incompleteness paid up
dream of single formality
the untenable meta-narrative
incompleteness result absolutely
undecidable infinity surpass
powers of finesse a new
consciousness. Tame and medicine
pursued the melot bites off his testicles
throws them in front of the hunters
escapes reforms bites and is
unclean. This badger in rocky places
scrapes and digs
against spines against deceits
and robberies torn inside
cage-traps baited and caught on the border
between Ross and Hereford
the pro-cull zone caught and shot,
A comparison of left edges on
autoradiograph image
and corresponding gel
computer-assisted drawing
represents match section
on filter paper with gel.
On the basis of blot results
one badger, four hare
sites, three hind sites,
nine hedgehog sites present in
human genomic DNA
amplification product.
Spatial organisation develops
targeted sampling uses
standard immunostaining,
fluorescence microscopy and
digital image analysis to
scrutinise cell surface
molecule expression performed
on intact monolayer and results
in cellular intensity
distributes reflect spatial
heterogeneity in adhesion
molecule expression returns
rifle to his holster lights a fag.
 
The image obtained upon scan
inverted to give a more normal
looking image, the nucleotides
appeared as dark bands on a
light ground. The Rifleman
set the upper and lower limits.
Proximity to most intense inverted
band against intensity background.
Image then exported to other
manipulation the badger on its
hind legs revealing its loss of genitals
for printing and labelling.
Phosphor storage erasing screen
by visible light in a linear
fashion, with adequate erasure 
needing five minutes.
Visualisation of amplification
a finger print profile and rough
measure for the specifics of complexity
where a higher degree of speed
is supported by a rise in asset prices
and an equity correction likely to
give a larger economic impact
starts to beat the drum too early
for world fiscal stimulus
do not believe a hard landing
is inevitable a shelf of plans
ready for temporary fiscal going
beyond automatic stabilisers.
Sugar at 470 showed 9.1 increase.
Real and abstract form inwardly
equal. No definable difference
between emotional significance of
a chord and the formal relationship
of the chord to other notes in the work
the dissonance and symbolism related
and do not mean or signify each other.
Easy to manipulate the parameters
used in sequence interruption
without knowhow of programming
the production of diagrams
show distribution of change,
hydrophobic, hydrophilic,
antigenic, propensity to form
different types of structure
along the sequence.
 
The original building design
in the shape of an X to
maximise natural light.
A reliance on physical infrastructure
food not found in a cafeteria
subsidised prices and electronic
cohesion. Many small buildings
for smaller groups to encounter
co-workers in daily routine
Virtually all offices the same
furnishings and dimensions such
that struggles were sitting and
thinking that included hierarchy
a Biosphere 2 self-sufficiency
instead of a health club or child-care
four weeks paid leave, business and
life built upon successful mediocracy
and how to get the most out of ordinary folks.
 
Unused mental band width a waste
set against genetic maps posted on ceiling
massively parallel until the
good programmer sought to work
with others in the same field
capacity on a thesis of
n minus one in a situation
of growth to underline message
that we cannot understand
the coordinates of quantum escape
breath and gravity.
The human body, bridge and tree
all alike in constant struggle
for balance between unceased
attack and defence of gravity
a condition of nondisappearance
as a whole toward the Earth
centre supplemented by a condition
of balance of each part of the
structure of interaction forces.
Action on the human structure
weight as a force keeps them
on the surface digging and many
a hard bump holds individual
parts as the head sits and ribs hang
the pelvis is braced. A knowhow
of weights transferred one to the other.
Feel the sharp tuberosites the
ischia in relation to the end of the 
spine and thigh points.
The animal faces the rifle in a
deep-seated growl or hiss which
serves to lower its centre of gravity
frees its structures for active
forward movement. The sound
of ‘sssss’ continued and valued
in slow and lazy hiss
without break employs
deep throat and body-wall
muscles lengthens the thoracic
cavity and ribs become closed
inward and downward and the
circumferential border of
the diaphragm with them.
Sugar 401 down 3 per cent.
The central nervous system
vulnerable to ischaemia
downregulated by endogenous
mechanisms in hibernation
resist hypoxic attacks in
a sleep organised to celebrate winter.
 
Democracy could only be made
in phased spacetime.
The Rifleman raises his sights
promotes a mysticism of fixed time
where the shilling in your head and the
two bob in your pocket never meet.
The experience on robbery controls
hope in a self-conscious anthropo
morphism without analysis the
badger confronts the rifle in a cage
as the chemistry destroys grey cells
turns them cadmium orange and red in
a black explosion, an organized
disassembly in the garden of love
tomb-stones where flowers should
in black grounds the riflemen
walk their rounds
binding with briars
Blake’s joys and desires
vomiting poison.
The marksman’s reflex
undergoes learning when
there is persistent retinal slip.
Flocculus signals the brain stem with
feedback visual motion
neurons announce learning need
feedback of image target velocity
minus eye velocity provides
negative signals to allow adjustment
as the Rifleman tracks target.
A copy of the motor signal
the efference-copy information
goes from the brain stem to
the cerebellum. During target
acquisition this signal builds up
maintains a positive feedback memory
as the slip velocity goes to zero.
 
The Rifleman continues to track,
stable vestibulo-ocular flex
achieved by adjusts feed forward
inputs to the cerebellum cancel
the positive feedback copy
syntax and semantics overlap.
The introduction in 1990
of phagemid vectors in combination
with wild-type helperphage made it
possible to construct a hybrid destroyer.
Shot-gun cloning displays of
ligand-binding domains of prokaryotic
receptors approach 100% correct clones
without any prior knowledge of the receptor.

Woodpecker
from Entanglement (1991–2003)
 
1.
 
Some humbler attendant of my understanding
the rate at which we rotate limits
to a series of set values and not continuous range
the pleasant gratifications of a luxurious city
a Placeness different from embracing weather
Spacetime’s tool to breed method in air
a particular place a certain inward effect
differentiates representation by likeness from chance
Vexed chores display tragacanth shrub of vine tomatoes
the sublimation of passion, a narrow skylight
positioned above the easel, extends the width of the studio
a breeze throated in wealth. Richmond.
 
A tiger leaps the wall to catch a water-rail
a long-scattered score of broken processes
sentiment free of instinctive report units
this asceticism of the negative
enthusiasm I felt that day its origin in the future
the harmony of mutually divergent things
                that kind of muddle
constructed out of experience in the presence of place
a lability of long-term memory at
each recall modified and reconsolidated
tears filled me a suppuration all the long day
my heart full of a tremulous inner spacetime
a friendship derived from instant intimacy
announce a fall regained to trick stammering bereavement
Some humbler attendant of my understanding
negative spacetime as potential meeting within me
envenomed traces from rays that strike
Stalked agreement to share careerman’s site
marked  on local maps with a purplish blotch
the lineaments of the body express a diversity of passion
Shift the toadstool showers stenched with spores.
 
2.
 
She entered a fluorescent, timed air
shot with gene-coated gold particles
knowing in transition does not to abide
held by ligare in the cut ring of the plasmid
sporzando duties
amid roots in the cork sway
liberating subjectivity from lack of culture
abstraction as a method, landscape experience as source
 
rails and wires gleamed like so many traps
the possibility that we might be organized in
hitherto unsuspected avenues of gravity
Join’d to the prattle of the purling rills
 
An itinerary of procedures in the form of recipe
the scents of an Eden’s mulberry
hair upon the Horses the Leaves upon the Trees
the real visible and tangible promotes the problem of consciousness
that each of us constructs projects it into a further construction
Precarious descent of Roehampton Lane
experience a fund for spacetime’s properties
nervous excitement in which idle speculation chases
 
devices discreetly play white noise mask window
vibrations picked by laser-based eaves dropper scans
fraught by twinges in position
turn against a random pleiotropic effect
the gravitational pull of oblivion
Bright pink walls, The Haywain
arousing spleen to administer vapour
on circuit through visible purchasers
a care frayed to pen
A pleasing land of drowsy-head
in strident disbelief read
photocopy of an antique map.
 
3.
 
It is a question of changing the horizon itself
the fish gene did not work in the tomato
until a promoter with a flag was included
a street in Italy set against a plastic frog
emulsion of tubercular bean sprout phage
to stake out shifts between gas and solid
registered by the sounds of burning acids
the whole process of gene expression
 
Anxiety for the knowing, for the beautiful and good
promotes a confusion of time without space
Glistens in a waste of regeneration
This far suffering concealment
dispelled wonders from a constructed posterity
polished copper, glass, chrome, plasticised wood
and the Stones and Gravel upon the road
station to station in a wireless embrace
a false consciousness of timid objects
The time chosen early morning before Sunrise
transcribed into a single stranded molecule
simulation energised with poly-adenylation
 
horizontal bands of wood chrome buttons
The smooth returning flow of epanalepsis and epanodos
Rent in perturbance and re-sorted clones
A fall fastened and penned
Drawn in fragility and combustible
A warning
In each quiver of line each breakage
the copiousness of merismus within merismus
Pour fleece and fronds
Storm in fragility and combustible to
a gather clocked and screened
marble aggregates table top and floor
 
4.
 
In a quest for chasing and haranguing the self
on a map in suspended animation
                that kind of fudge
north of an exclusion zone, ‘the night bar’
Does it really matter what we die of?
passaged in snow ash bleats beyond strain
contours intertwined, sometimes through each other
an inscribed wall of plaster hung on the surface
The factual concealment and configured purism
enthusiasm I felt that day
infra-sound of the trochaic conundrum
deplored this sheen of taste
become active in the ‘quiet’ DNA
An enclosure inside the enclosure beginning to burst
Taste, a myriad intruding nose and eyes
rotating with continual range
Bent into the risk of a scud before wind
Simulates permission to cross concrete and gravel
shifting views of the same location
An enclosure inside the enclosure beginning to burst
Taste, a myriad intruding nose and eyes
rotating with continual range
Bent into the risk of a scud before wind
Simulates permission to cross concrete and gravel
shifting views of same location
exquisite posing of similarity against variety
in a poignantly negative reprise
Acoustic torch a message without signs
Lace rimes fool to feed mesmeric care
Anamorphic shoes tread gas where
the soul remains unnumbered, unmeasured
she knows influx without worry if its lead
a broken mirage in toasted air
distinct, indivisible preoccupations
analysis of new samples of weight
studs in boot base confirm marked out space
turquoise, maroon, cream wall blanks
a still life, a chrome and neon ‘R’
in the midst of the town, the feeling of being self-sufficient.
 
 
Slop
from Leans (2003–2005)
 
The Burglar effect
holds light a moment
less than a millisecond
robbed of love
blowing clover and the falling rain
entanglement with mythical forms
of multiple experience
ancient shields scoured of rust
into an old pot-lid
liberated from ritual and cult
 
Her garment was so bright and wondrous sheene
That my frail wit cannot devize to what
It to compare, nor finde like stuffe to that,
From her unhastie beast she did alight,
And on the grasses her daintie limbes did lay
In secret shadow, farre from all mens sight:
 
Laboured to render myself useless
entangled by logical fallacy
that delight in giddiness
count it a bondage to fix a truth
which judge itself
teaches that inquiry
of love-making
enjoying that truth a sovereign
knowledge that too much amorous affection
quites both riches and wisdom
of no computer programme whatsoever
 
Things combined, halved, interchanged,
connected
in preparation for nuclear attack
that great persons had need to borrow
other opinions to think themselves happy
He judges by his own feeling, cannot find it
but if he thinks with himself
what other placed moments
would fain be as he holds
 
The Seraph of Peace from fury had fled
The room in which the interrogation
as opposed to torture
to be conducted defines coercion
The colours of walls,
ceilings, rugs, furniture
should not be startling
should be free of distractions, Pictures
should be missing
 
identities presence absence
page as
    installation space
                                       timed
talk and composition
where good is prescribed
   privileged time
      spaced
   from left margin
 
The mixture in the City
solemn, silent, sterile,
bogus, provocative, inactive,
very expensive
unsure which is which
counterpoised
spontaneous, shameless, fertile,
ordered, arduous, active, love offers
grave serenity and peace as much as sexual and felt
 
Then he holds happiness
as it were by report
when he finds the contrary within
he lifts the first that finds his own grief
and last to find his own faults
where parts and signs of goodness are many
his gracious touch
and courteous to the Stranger
shows he is citizen of the world.
 
Spin and momentum coupled
in spin-orbit
ultrafast optical techniques to spatiotemporal
resolve spin dynamics
in strained gallium arsenide and
indium gallium arsenide
epitaxial layers unexpected
observation of spin splits
arise from strain in semiconductor films
 
His heart not an island cut off but
joins to other continents
compassionate towards
the affliction of others
shows his heart
wounded itself when it gives balm
tasked to discover connections and their expansion
dangers no more light
if they seem right
 
Sensations vary and appear to
duplicate or repeat
experiences link memory to these
sensations and finds difference
and similarity
whether to renew experience or
repeat it as likely as new
experience at each perception facility
to memorate spacetime with internal gorse
 
Trapped inside phase-coherence,
two pulses inject the control
results in absorbance of a signal field and
storage of a quantum state of the signal.
The suppression of noise
vital to avoid decoherence,
even tiny amounts of stationary light
introduce large nonlinear
effects
 
Every medicine an innovation
hard to speak with truth and untruth together
in a few words, Whoever delighted in solitude
either wild or a god where natural or secret hatred
towards society is savage unless out of a love
and desire to sequester his own high conversation
where solitude in a crowd produces without love
and friends are scattered needed only in misery
aperspectively to make visibility
 
Contemporaneity of the future
difference of dry light to his drenched affections
a councel given by others and
his own flattery
Friendship offers peace in affection
support of judgement
twin desires in a body
a body confined once with a typewriter
and ideas of politics in another.
 
 
Boogie Stomp
from Brixton Fractals (1985), now in Gravity (2004)
 
It’s easy being alone, but who cherishes it.  cooperative motion.  accommodation of transient energy.  fluctuations.  not an intrinsic cycle.  happiness without local strain on interchain bonds.  for instance, the exchange stability of beta-sheet protons reflecting structural flexibility.  combined interaction between particles.  turn out more than you’d get by using the parts.  sum-up an overview.  then reject it.  put down the ’phone.  again.  continue diagram of a crystal.  condensation on window.  cold identified.  ice caps, glaciers already melted, retreated.  sculptured land.  viscous, just underneath it, adjusts, to decreased load.  the dimmest flash.  a postglacial rebound. 
 
Perhaps eye strain.  an average of seven equalising particulates.  a simple proton.  tectonic acts.  relaxation of impacted areas.  rheological and viscous properties.  irritation, but no real discomfort.  circadian what?  male periodicities.  not agreement with the world, yet happiness.  the sun spots.  a solar core rotating about twice observed rotation.  thermodynamics of becoming.  recognise this whilst the feeling hurt.  core flash mix without prediction.  stellar change.  lattices of breath.  puckered hexagonal rings of water. 
 
Stacks in sequence.  ABAB.  or turbulent plasmas in a pressure-drop.  a magical study.  ice as “one of the strongest materials known.”  ordered sets of oxygen ions.  compare stars of different masses enveloped by tenuous plasma.  chromospheres, coronas, with ice subjected to high dynamic stresses.  fractures by cleavage.  creeping solids stress-directed.  diffusional flow car.  slow carriage.  taking each breath.  as if that simple.  blood volume in the head above minimum.  facilitate recall.  letting it happen in the same environment as that in which learning occurred.  position as multiple quantity.  drawn in as forces on the diagram.  draw a vector label it v, times the unit vector i.  frictional losses recorded.  dot. 
 
dot.  eight cans.  each once held tomatoes.  each identified, labelled.  space between a can inside another.  Toscanini, told by his bassoonist of a break on the lowest key note, paused in phase space, “It’s alright — that note does not occur in tonight’s concert.”  name the grass.  cost of the seed.  method for cutting.  cost of shears.  servicing mower.  volume of water.  sharpening shears.  frequency of cutting.  plants weeded out.  where’s the seed from.  where’s the mower made.  where’s all that water from.  what’s the soil underneath. 
 
Exercise.  forget the counting.  bone cracks.  another press-up.  count.  short breath count.  enough of counting.  vision as memory plus perception: possibly.  a creep law calculated with a power law dependence.  dependence on what else.  stress marketing.  cross the room and forget.  activation energy equal to energy for proton rearrangement.  adjusts.  an adjusts.  from experimental lout.  science policing.  intensive analysis on every moment, each transition.  temporal dimension extended to the whole process.  incalculable motion.  in the far, for instance, decline in spectral sensitivity.  perhaps bruising from over blinking.  unaffected by absorption in the lens.  unaffected by self-screening.  affected by distress in another. 
 
Order in ice two, disorder in ice one.  glide of dislocations.  rhomboided.  melancholia.  periodic scream.  optical light modulation from red dwarfs.  understanding as an extreme.  manifestation of star spots.  the use of niacin, or simply yeast tablets.  look into ice six.  a structure of two identical and independent frames.  chains of tetrahedrally linked water.  mutual interpenetration of molecules.  self-clathration.  (one of the components enclosed in cavities of the crystals of another component.)  difficulty with the principle.  difficulty with least action for continuity.  eloquent error.  typed as whurr.  overstain or, reposition the table lamp.  eidetic analysis of perhaps.  a language and an energy to speak.  but you’re not here.  until the ’phone, or bus across town. 
 
Two different environments the same time.  alone in each.  how to mutually recall.  avoid tenacious illusion.  meet you at the sands if we get out of here alive.  periodicity of intense love and inertia.  dealt with in the physicality of this expectancy.  a such (where shape offers spatial affinity).  not search as renewal.  not legalised or rational.  the independence of pigments prior meeting without notions of mixing, or analogies of new colour.  rather, configurations of tactile boundaries.  almost definity.  instead, the slightly possible. 
 
Many directions (misunderstood as spread).  each hormonal event sets a readiness for the next.  another ovulation.  or pregnancy intervenes.  watched as ice six formed at room temperature.  compressed water in a gasket between sapphire anvils.  ABAB.  computing the photometric parallax.  assumption of alternativicity.  crystal another comfort.  seat of disorder over stability.  stability repressed alarm.  dark noise.  scaled to fit the zero peak in the flash.  generalised laughter parodied as six crystal systems.  glide in the structure seen on dense planes.  dislocates glide after a steam bath on the glide set.  bonds cut.  dissociates low energy stacking fault. 
 
Science vocabulary in hysteresis.  measured wheezes.  dislocations moving on the shuffle bus.  going for reorientations.  an intellect steeped in empiric lockjaw.  ice compressed into silicon or whatever it’s forced to.  begins move.  cuts through obstacles to analytical solutions of thermodynamic lattice problems.  imports techniques from particle fields.  I makes Ising lattice problem arbitrary.  the good chthoned into strata.  hierolatries.  increases of nearest-neighbour interactions.  a tensor algebra to derive a focussing.  the elegant mambo.
 
Changes in size shape orientation.  you’re not here, that’s difficult.  too easy to be difficult.  the approach involves bringing another dimension of analysis, to relativise the contents of this analysis.  oscillations of bioplasma.  affined to a change in male responses at the same time as the partner.  the whiff of your attention.  in the presence of the magnetofield.  whiteness hums in my head.  on the ’phone.  suddenly a tapping in the phase space.  why we need to know about control.  preempt its ability.  eidetics and empirics moved to a phenomenology of vision.  a search for alternatives to coherence.  range of perceptive angles.  parity not conserved.  radio interference.  eye strain.  telephoned conversation.  a focus on sound that changes the phase space as well. 
 
 
(All the above are from the three volumes of Gravity as a consequence of shape [1982–2005]; all the titles are from jazz dances.)
 
 
Three for VLAK, New York, 2010
 
 
This slow universe does not seem at all isotropic, on your back in
tension it’s difficult to imagine at half the speed of light watching
starlight and the radiation background coming toward you, from the
direction toward which you are moving, with much higher intensity
than from behind. Beyond this skylight window the universe is said
to be the same all around, an isotropy precise in cosmic background
microwaves traveling through you
from the day of your conception,
somewhat more difficult to speculate that you, or humankind,
are in any special position. In formulating the assumption of isotropy,
you could specify that the universe seems the same in all directions
to a murmuration of freely falling neighbours, each with the average
velocity of typical galaxies, typical brain muscles and simultaneously
all of them might see conditions pretty much the same.
 
_________________________________________________
 
 
Surface tension of droplets electric
pulse-pushed through perforations
generates liquid-bridge adhesive,
the shape of clouds, precisely recalled,
a clarity of directional signals in the right
entorhinal cortex correlated with the
performance of autobiographical memory, with
a specific neural representation in a network of regions
in support of spacetime cognition, where landscape
roughness and apparent quantum coherence
result in slow folding
unfolding and lucid harvesting of light.
How observations of leaves in rainfall and the structure of clouds
shape the memory that patterns knowing.
 
_________________________________________________
 
 
In slow irritation impatience deprived
of light buffers an aberrant quantified shearing
short of recognition, where shape demands a shell
case of lesions dissipated with formative graphics, with
entity, the appearance of fractional signatures in an escape
from crowds, the rigid, precisely called, accelerates lipid membranes
adherence, pushed through difficulties with gesture, tension limits
communications. Any quantum system or human encounter remains
subject to random phase errors that dramatise
the fidelity of a desired operation or measurement or
prediction of decoherence under realistic conditions
making it tough to yield agreement between experience and theory.
How determinations are conventional, to maintain Euclidean geometry
and alter the results as needed to keep the total system simpler.