[An Experiment in Editing]: Ambassadors

[2003]:

Wrapped up in syntax and soap-bubble birth
vexed by spiders and sapphire blitzkrieg
in spirals
and some people drive through the
Midwest and get the fucked-up idea
that space is nothing more than
absence and lack
but voids attract activity with vacuous
velocity and i don't see too many
of you moving to Iowa.
So maybe the black hole is the coastal cityscape
skyscraper starships sucked
in and stuck
because the plains are so full
that mountains that try to reside there
are flattened and swallowed.
The Dakotas, Ojibwe, Oglala, Lakota
occupancy firecode
packed more than just passing through
can bite off and chew.
Their whole highway haunted
because celebrities are just
ghosts kept from leaving
the flesh by flashbulbs
and trapped motion
simulated by repetitive imagery
and the certainty of isolation may be
a murderous cretin
but what's more certain than steam under
streets and stories stacked statically above?
What's more bloodthirsty than that
concrete fact?
Displacement and misappropriation perhaps
but we spill and embezzle ourselves
like the guilty little fucks we are
and leave our homes empty
skeletons with only the memory of the
organs they held.
We hit those wormholes
and suffer whiplash at every attempt
to look back while leaving.
Maybe we are like the mountains and forests
that place doesn't need
or maybe we're all headed back there in
the end somehow anyway and just don't
notice
too concentrated on the step to be
concerned with the walk.
Expatriates, ambassadors, tourists, and



[2010]:

Some people drive through the Midwest
and get the fucked-up idea
that space is nothing more than
absence and lack
but voids attract activity with speed
and danger and
i don't see too many of you moving to Iowa.
So maybe the black hole is the coastal cityscape.
Skyscraper starships sucked in
and stuck.
Crashed in a vaccum inhaling
an infinite density and a collection of wreckage.
Maybe the plains are so full and thick
that mountains that try to reside there
are flattened and swallowed and
become the rich earth, become the wall
or get thrown out like there's a bottomless centrifuge.
Bounced like they violated the firecode of
the Ojibwe, the Dakotas, the Lakota, the Chippewa
the Oglala
and somebody had to go. We all had to go.
Maybe the occupancy is packed more than just-passing-through
can bite off and chew up and digest.
Those greedy jaws have eyes that dwarf their stomachs and
they don't get it. Don't eat healthy.
They gorge and choke - guts splitting at seams imagined
into place.
The Midwest knows when to say when
when to burp and excuse itself and catch a nap.
And the certainty of isolation may be
a murderous cretin, indeed
but what's more certain than steam under
streets and stories stacked statically atop
one after the other after another?
What's more inevitable than the fall?
What's more bloodthirsty than that
concrete fact?
Displacement and misappropriation perhaps
but we spill and embezzle ourselves
like the guilty fucks we are, like
somebody's gonna measure us by the markings
by the spaces we can fill elsewhere.
We leave our homes empty
skeletons with only the memory of the
organs they held.
We hit those wormholes
and suffer whiplash for every attempt
at backward glance, considering
our speed and our danger.
Maybe we are like the Mountains
who that place doesn't need.
Maybe we fucked around and got spit out
our wonderings too deadly and fast.
Too much to move around in a space already so full
of space itself. And we set to wandering
not because we wanted to.
But because the Midwest wanted to teach us a lesson
about sharing alike
and how to make room.
All piles lock arms with gravity.
All heaps struggle like all trajectories arc back
to the windless ground.
Maybe we're all headed back there in
the end anyway and just don't
notice
too concentrated on the step to be
concerned with the walk.
Expatriates, ambassadors, tourists, and


...
you may have noticed that i've been posting a lot of older pieces lately. in the process, as i type them in this little box here, i've been editing them - adding little fluorishes and cutting bits of fat. but i thought i'd try something a little different with this one. the seven-year-old version remains intact, exactly as one would find it in the notebook in which i originally scribbled it. for the remix, i just copied and pasted and then went through and fucked around with it. how does the comparison look? personally, i'm partial to the second version, but i still think it needs some work. it's a little chunky in some places, while a touch too frail in others. like popeye's arms, perhaps.

a note about the last line: whenever i read this one aloud, i would have a last noun after that "and"... i tried to improvise it, see how i was feeling that night, about that particular performance, etc. most often it was "corpses." i think once it was "insects" (which i rather like now) and only one time did i just leave it at the "and." some others i'm thinking of now include "attractions", "soulmates", "widows", and "carnivals."

oh, and about that beginning in the original version: i used to have this really annoying habit of just writing down random shit to get started on something. a lot of my poems from that era have these opening lines that have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the piece - subject or style. just verbal masturbation to get me warmed up, i guess.

-andy