& MOON

by David Bromige

Call name. Stop. On the Avon, a swan; in Cleveland, a river of fire.

Cowabunga. Call me Stop. Fog-on-the-Avon causes genuflection.

Cried for you Stop. Learned to think like X but still felt like ABC, forbears and forbards, funny hats.

Weep Stop. The mote might be removed in the form of a letter or more heavy breathing. The ash from a J perhaps.

In the corner, a secret. The weather is changing. There is nothing to laugh at. Roll the Sucrets to the front part of the mouth.

Address stuff to author's office. Move to Suffolk or Sussex? The circle is buckled. Ride Brighton Line or Soul Train? Stick toilet on wall, next to telephone. Part agent and part pencil, partly at once, writing backwards to erase last trace of locquaciousness.

Listen Stop. Where the river rises it gets visibly physical. Hear it's difficult to stop the bubbling. Here's a present, eye to eye. La! Allover tan? Passe! Venereal past, fast approaching.

Crying to myself because I almost died in Switzerland, figured in a romance with a lyricist, fussed over the blue clothing we affected, dressed up like chickens and went to the movies. Ate at the Israeli-Japanese restaurant So-Su-Mi. Saw Devil at that resort. He read palm for a trifle over dessert. I must never name the real trouble.

Must never say the word Desert.

Must only mention others' feelings.

Must always belittle same.

Let these rules repeat.

Must sleep in the entry-way to the fort, compare the Avon to a silver snake, must avenge in this sleep. Repetition of known facts pays.

Born in a particular hotel. Had to be quiet between 1300 and 1500 hours. Mulled things over nonetheless, and when required to speak, spoke well and to the point. Later, graduated to Pompous Old Fart, claimed this was a New Direction, was buried with his money, by then considerable. Sexy story.

2

Said that what was evil was anything but duress. Did a nude dance with his tongue protruding. Must dream He was my mother.

New rule. God is the involuntary nervous system. Gave Mike a shock and he dropped a book. We had asked him no to.

Dear Diary. Must feast on corpse of rival and grow great with rival. Avon rival, George rival. Mon nom est A rival. Cease, rival. Any day ends in a diminished i.

Write Stop. In a him and a thou pleasure is an aid to sorrow a real treat sign here. Newer rule: Only I is permitted Irony. Him speaking.

Him singing. Her form, her figure, her fugue, her gig, her effigy of sand his oeuvre, his big but.

Draw a blank till it shrieks. Nothing's impermeable. They meet at the corner of High & What. The person was vague and sticky. Was pushing up on the metaphor's jaws. His the blind and her the widow. Jackpot.

Jackshit. He breathes as he speaks, mists the pane.

Traces. On the mist or on the pane? Anybody breathes. Il pleut on the lunch, the tracts and the projects, limbs, blood, organs same there as here, light-headed over their dark roots.

Snatched to the Underworld. Someone with that name grew up on the mezzanine. Appraised the language of baseball stars but dealt cards.

Everything I am uttering you are undersand. Richard, you cream your knickers across a crowded room. I name you in order that you may ask me to dance. No. Face only a mother could sit on.

Snatched, Underworld. Goes on and on and off. Stop. Face in forest, light to show the dark. Light on a seashell. Lump in the moonlight Pit for space Video to make the light useful. It hurts to light.

A word is a horse to him. For an experience, take a doorwedge, shove where sun don't shine. (He has some big doorwedges, for a house whose doors are small). Edgar Allen Ice's supple epic What The Parlor Wanted With A Door. Among my souvenirs your lips are chapped.

3

Ice's supple trill names her. Wants control of that phallus. Wants it to pee through himself alone. Thinks it's to count on, thinks that's this's idea.

Speaks of self saying I am training to decry your life. Speaks saying ours is not the same mother and he must be right. Substitutes a magic show he thinks not his. Music Room, Smoking Room, Study, Library, Parlor, Dining Room where we ate his words, full of Clue. Servants he dressed down. Then rammed he resolution up them on couch supplied by citizens.

Employees with spiders on their fingers and roofrats at their mouths, quenched fires resembling his thoughts, his pencil.

Human to write, inhuman to compute. Drop the Oaken anchor into icy here.

Employees whose news was never viewed -- applications from Detroit, from Demography, from Jarry Priory or Reed College, send syllabus check's in mail, baskers in the glow of his address.

Dancing to forget we or I drank heavily, heavely (only here could you hear it). Visited Less-or-more-one-speaks-to-Stop. Vietnam confused the Mass. At Mardi Gras Icy. He lit my way underground.

Hollow laughter the passage. On vault wall: Who finds the most faults, wins the most votes. Tittering and then characters. Then those reversed.

Wearied of the white glare where discernment was a wash. Bored by regular time, weather. But Zuke for Shake, wetlands for river, moonlight to find way (not back), to cease. It began with pouring words. Elijah! Your silent J.

The star had fallen already when we met. I admired your silence. My head was on upside-down. Telling you what you know.

All human light's reflected. Any others are about to utter their words through this School of Broadcasting. The naked radios admired the wireless orgy.

It began with everyone away, so one drunk on words. The first sentence bore a swan. A swam. Swarmed a song.

Comes to this. A shock of wheat in a harsh cry. Every question having just six sides. The moonlight did good in the film noir. No such knowing as Is Known. Who are you, identity rocking out? Wrote this in lieu of their death.


may 15 & july 19, 1994
appears in FIFTY, and anthology from Sun & Moon Press, LA, 1995

Bromige - &Moon - 85 - 86 - 87 - 88 - Salazar Library Exhibits