Improper Intimacy (for C.R.) by Robert Mittenthal     
           

It deserves a poem but ends in prose.  Born into the cash and carry business of empty rooms and improper nouns, history reserves its rights.  Dirt arrives one paroxysm at a time.  He believed he gathered no dust. Words gathered their sounds around him.  As if incapable of making mistakes: a pinecone symphony of liquid song.

Too close to see, too close to be seen, an eye looks into the future and sees nothing.  Likewise, nothing depends on the past.  Compared to a leaf beneath our feet a daisy sits in the dark.  A dandy lion lowers itself waiting to pounce.  The intention of the animate is to find what’s inside.  A collection of actions strike out – refusing example.

Imagine proper nouns at a dance.  A blonde wig sentenced to sleep in a tightly packed suitcase. At daybreak her towels unfold into his.  Circling back to a blackboard, the angles of white noise.  Clamoring for a 5th wheel – an aura of back formation banished to the personal ads.  I desired the inert gas of the readymade, a promiscuous decoy.  It’s an abuse of space – internal chaos encrusted with jewels – a theatre of smell where touch times out.  It’s the carpet I was rolled in.  A cottage industry that cared for us. 

Too close to see, too close to be seen, each night I experience a sort of imaginary concrete.  Wm Blake was right – the abstract workers are on strike – hallucination is now the body’s project.  Porous glue stiff in the breeze.  It’s a field day for the immaterial.  My nostrils flare until feeling pours out.