Alan Davies


Today As A Way of Esclape


These vestal crested moments all but abet the time’s moments

So cretinously full of spaced casing as against the aghast filigree

Specularly spacing itself over the tomb walkers spending days

Speeding against curtails and the emblems of slept walkers

Going away from away, toward form and the egoless basking

Of cakes into days, but for the gradual horizoning of plants over

Days as a kind of dusking supplants memory and the swept clean

Triumvirate separates all but itself from the terza rima of olde

Not that basking betters itself as an antiphon sleazing over the

Realmed slept squats of toned stuck stuff, that being the moment

As defined by the moment, in an abyss, and out of any abyss

At all oddly sneaking over toward the horizontal bars where drinks

Are quaffed vertically and the slay days itself into ineffable

Horizons (there are no horizons) as momentless slim offerings glib

Themselves up and demand something of the lingering populace

All but dead just from being the lingering populace and quite apart

From the sluck thingle quackers going over and aboard the bring

Boats that take nothing here (from there (or elsewhere)) there being

No here (not as the days slip themselves into absolution) and no there

(Not as the days slip themselves into dissolution) and no elsewhere (not

As the days slip just slip slip just slip the days just slip slip slip away)

A kind of casketless egolessness felt in all that, courageously wishing

There were wishes or that there were courage for that matter, or that

The courageous wishing had happened in the first place (hah!) for that

Matter, but butter only makes the bread look better it’s all a beatific thing

That only tries to look us (us (to look us (too (to look us too)))) in the eyes

To lingeringly admit that nothing gets any better and that old friends suffer

And that their suffering doesn’t get any better, and that it hurts us, hurls

The us that would have been us against the gnomic sarcophagus that passes

For literate speech among the literately speechy (the very very few mind you)

So that testimonies linger on the stand, nowhere to go, no woman no man

Nothing to stand for, them, nothing, nowhere to stand, the words alone

Slipping past slippage into the banded heterodox of meaning as it is meant

As it is meant as it means as it is sometimes meant to happen, a palimpsest

A palimpsest of all that, containing all that, of all that containing all that

But with nothing in it with nothing in it nothing nothing with nothing in it

That’s where the age goes, a kind of pen in an inkwell, well, you know

What is meant, the right hand tied to the left hand and neither of them right

Neither of them getting out of bounds (bondage (political bondage (political

Bondage (bondage political to this time (this noontime))))) fleecing time

Of meaning as if either had time to be but no, there’re only gerundless fucks

Sqleaking over the of into the prepositionless abetment sequestering quest

Ions that slick up the slide of flate, glaring over the frost flick frame of form

(No form!) as if treatment had a way to go until tomorrow and the eager

Ones the ones not beaten out of eagerness (are there any left) have a slim

Chance of sequestering greetings as against the fluck slam dim crape corpse

Sinking into the some (the ones) the some the sad some (those ones) ones

Who can only get up when it’s too late to get up who can only get down

When it’s too late to get down (or up (for that matter)) who lose just by being

Into the lingering fluck gutter, old memories of the old memories slept past

And the sling hardenable fasteners that clack back on the recurring monstrances

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping (there was sleep) where the wary clop, an instance

Of clop, as the cakers snake off with the sped slup slangers (those who can speak)

Into the days’ worst enemies (the days) and the nights worst enemies (the nights)

So that memory eats itself like the soil of the enemy and suffering is only the

Answer to the question about suffering and people keep saying that life isn’t fair

But saying so isn’t fair either (dammit!) so flut the shuck up (maddit!) or sleep

Or sleep my little ones or sleep, or be sleep or be sleep my little ones or be sleep

In the drilling moist moons of noon, the splitting moist droons of bloon, the slap

Shaping itself already (against that (against (against that))) into a fist into a

Fullblown flist claking sluck manch dread where dread is better then death on the

Quantrails of sleep slick stuff (the old kind (still alive)) but there is eagerness

There is eagerness there is eagerness there is eagerness after all we do try

To rip up they sheets before they decay of their own volition their own volute

Volition we do try, but, there aren’t enough sentences to go around we get stuck

We get stuck having to share the same with one and with god wouldn’t you know it

Just about everyone, not that there is any such thing as just about everyone, but there

Is there fucking goddamn well is, just about everyone, and with them, with them

The we that is we share what is not we, the end, flaking up against us like the age

Of the prophets (the one without projects) (the one without age) (the one without)

Such that (such that?!?) (as if that were possible!!) there’s a meaningless word

To follow this one and by god do we have it for you, now where was it, what did we

Do with it, did we ever have it, what did we mean (by that (or any of it)) (flake)

Ok no no-k, no word, no this one nothing to following and therefore no word lost

(Hallefuckinglujah!!!) as against the cancerous cells of what the language really is

And don’t let me remind you of that don’t let me even repeat it don’t let me even say

It (I didn’t mean it) god (hod) I hate the fucking first person how did that slip in here

As if there were a one, and as if that one could speak, hah!, nothing could be further

From the flurth, get that through your flucking fled, I did and by glod did that hurt!

Alright, ok, alright, I’ve thunk we’ve gone a little overbored, let’s reign this in here

Back to mothership flirth (the quacking (oh the quacking)) because treatises can only

Be signed between two people who don’t know what they’re doing, people who don’t

Know and who can’t sign (that keeps it safe) such (suck) that it’s all a negative

Don’t you see, a negative with you in it, one that I created, so that it would have me

In it, one big negative with no positive in sight, nothing to look back on forward to

Nothing other to be to be there (or here (for this matter)) and only sadness sleeps

Out of our wounds as the day winds down into the slippery flap sails slinging rope

Over the side of the dim hope, the sluck track strack slinkers, the real ones, the yous

And the mes, the nameless (all of us) that gastrously glet misspelt, trimpt, slumpckt

And slaughtered, it’s that simple, or haven’t you been paying any kind of attlention



here

to this



Alan Davies edited A Hundred Posters, one of the important “little” magazines of the “Language” movement. Subsequently, Davies was included in the crucial anthology devoted to “language-centered” writing: In the American Tree, edited by Ron Silliman (National Poetry Foundation, 1986; 2002). Davies, who is a Buddhist (as pointed out by Juliana Spahr), is originally from Canada. He has lived in Boston and is currently living and working in New York City.

 
 
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