Tom Beckett


Description

begins outside.
In here, though,
time
is perforated.

Holes
riddle
everything.

Corners defy anything.

(Word
is “saving” Description.)

*

Desire constitutes the armature
of Recognition.

Desire constitutes the armature
of Recognition.

Desire constitutes the temperature
of description.

The world is all that is upper and lower case.

*

Is one symptoms?
Is one reducible
to failings?

What follows what?

Are questions symptoms, synonyms?

Is health a grammar
or Bestiary?

*

Listening can be an aphrodisiac.

Listening can be a “regime of truth.”

Listening can be strenuous.

Listening can be all encompassing.

Listening can be a source of salvation.


Listening can be the death of the self.

Listening can’t be anything.

*

The sexes
are
how many?

*

Allusion or illusion?

*

Shape
of
thought.

Shape
of.

Shape.


*

Entry is regulated.

Entry is regulated.

Entry is regurgitated.

*

(Empty set.)

*

No one.

No one.

*

(Every word individually crossed out.

Every letter excised.)

*

A, B,
C, D,
E, F,
G, H,
I, J,
K, L,
M, N,
O,P,
Q, R,
S,T,
U,V,
W,X,
Y,Z

*

Insertion,
desertion.

An ethics
of
punctuation.

The prevalence
of
holes.

*

David Bromige sings “We are
marching
to
aporia.”

He haunts me.

*

Do something,
question
what’s been done;
do
something else,
question that too.
Try
to
keep
going.
Try
to
keep
questioning.


*

I know that there are aesthetics based on interruption—
Bertolt Brecht’s, for example.

And the Language Poets, of course.

I suspect
that it goes deeper.

Has anyone
ever thought
about
writing a cultural
history
of
interruption
as
praxis?

*

Split-screens
are
our
normal.

Things
“quite naturally”
phase
in
and
out
of one
and
another.

*

Description is this cascading sense of things.

*

Description is this.

*

I want you
to want me
(sincerely want me).

Isn’t that
a fundamental
problem
of
art?

*

Practice might be everything.

*

Practice might be something
to
think about.

*

Think about erasure,
about the removal,
especially willfully,
of
what
one has done.

*

An image
of thought
walks into
a bar.

Ouch!

*

Confusion is mostly fusion.

*

And out.

*

This poem is dedicated to the memory, the example, of David Bromige.

Tom Beckett lives in Kent, Ohio.
 
 
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