alas o páramos o peces
traía la mano de george bentham cálida
de mujer que tocara en plena luz
ya húmeda ya clara ya feliz

¡ah george bentham cómplice!
solía irse solito por los corredores
que atando o uniendo lo tenían a la madre central
la célebre de espumas

la que flotaba cuando empezaba a desnocharse
después de haber amado o ardido la piel se le apagaba
en el fulgor que la sacaba de toda oscuridad
y daba miel y daba leche

y daba george bentham sí señor
una invención total para estos días
negros de pésimas negruras
ah madre a la que hijaron/como siempre

por eso:
fue cuando Dios comió bebió
tomó otras medidas populares
que george bentham apareció triste morido

y solo a punto en la mitad del peso
que va de george a bentham y volvía
y quería una llama de oro
brillante y fuerte como el sol

vamos al río a tirar piedras al agua
vamos al río a tirar piedras
vamos a tirar piedras george bentham
nadie te sacará del malagüero

aunque críes caballos de vientre hermoso
hermoso ampáralos del viento
que cae del propio george bentham sí
hoy no te irás te irás mañana

si hoy no te vas te vas mañana
pero no temas a la muerte de ojos de fuego
uno que dice george otro que bentham
y brillan como el sol

quien dice george te habrá cubierto o cubrirá
quien dice bentham también
y nadie sabe cómo hacen
para darte de comer


allá habrás de crecer george bentham para atrás
en dirección al comienzo de todo
habrá rocío para tu herido corazón
y después bailaremos

por eso:
cuando george bentham murió
por fin callaba la su madre dando
o diciendo suave otra vez
"chaparroncito no me mojes/mío"

cuando gallagher bentahm murió
se produjo un extraño fenómeno:
a las vecinas les creció el odio como si hubiera aumentado la papa
feroces y rapaces comenzaron a insultar su memoria
como si el deber obligación o tarea de gallagher bentham
fuera ser inmortal
siendo que él se preocupaba cuidadosamente
de vivir imperfecto a fin de no irritar a los dioses
jamás se cuidó de ser bueno sin ganas
pecó y gozó como los mil diablos
que sin duda lo habitaban de noche
y lo obligaban a escribir versos sacrílegos
en perjuicio de su alma
así
creció famoso por su desparpajo y sus caricias
"ahí va gallagher bentham el desgraciado malparido" decían
            las vecinas con su hijos
y lo mostraban con el dedo
pero de noche soñaban con él
de noche una extraña nube o mano o seda
se les metía en la garganta soñando con él
¡ah gallagher bentham gran padre!
pueblos enteros habría fundado nada más con su hijos
de haberlos querido tener
de no haber sido por los versos
que no piden de comer y es de lo poco que tienen a favor
de modo que murió nomás y la gente
desconcertada por la falta de ejemplo del mal ejemplo
o con la sensación de haber perdido algo de su libertad
designó representantes que entrevistaron a gallagher bentham
y por más preguntas que le hicieron
sólo escucharon el ruido de abejas en su cuerpo
como si estuviera haciendo miel
o más versos en otra cosa siempre
es difícil saber porqué el vecidnario de Spoker Hill llegó a odiarlo
            así
lo descuartizaron una mañana de otoño para alegría de los chicos
no hubo más nubes en garganta de mujer
ni desquites feroces en la cama con marido extrañado
o hasta sueños de las más delicadas que llenaban la noche
y hacían girar el viento y llover
todos los arbolitos de Spoker Hill se secaron
menos el tábano real que volaba y volaba
alrededor de gallagher bentham o sus últimas mieles.

paranoid automatons
surveying themselves
within
de-civilizing panopticons;
a missing guard
in a rich light tower
watching you
watch yourself

"O JEREMEY....BENTHAM!"

He called his walking stick
"Dapple!"

He called his teapot
"Dickey!"

He called his elderly cat
"The Reverend Sir John Langbourne!"

He sits with his real head
between his legs

long after he was
dead.

His body preserved
so that it could be

wheeled out at meetings
if his friends were missing him.

At a College council meeting in 20i3
marked as"present but not voting."

Didn't believe in Christian burial
the Church's teaching "nonsense on sticks!"

Thought folks should be useful
both in life and in death.

Tears always when remembering a lady
presenting him"... with a flower in a green lane'

"Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future
– do not let me go back to the past."

"O JEREMY....BENTHAM!"

He called his walking stick
"Dapple!"

He called his teapot
"Dickey!"

He called his elderly cat
"The Reverend Sir John Langbourne!"

He sits with his real head
between his legs

long after he was
dead.

His body preserved
so that it could be

wheeled out at meetings
if his friends were missing him.

At a College council meeting in 20i3
marked as"present but not voting."

Didn't believe in Christian burial
the Church's teaching "nonsense on sticks!"

Thought folks should be useful
both in life and in death.

Tears always when remembering a lady
presenting him"... with a flower in a green lane'

"Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future
– do not let me go back to the past.

"O JEREMY....BENTHAM!"

He called his walking stick
"Dapple!"

He called his teapot
"Dickey!"

He called his elderly cat
"The Reverend Sir John Langbourne!"

He sits with his real head
between his legs

long after he was
dead.

His body preserved
so that it could be

wheeled out at meetings
if his friends were missing him.

At a College council meeting in 20i3
marked as"present but not voting."

Didn't believe in Christian burial
the Church's teaching "nonsense on sticks!"

Thought folks should be useful
both in life and in death.

Tears always when remembering a lady
presenting him"... with a flower in a green lane'

"Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future
– do not let me go back to the past.

Such a shame to let loose
That I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing
But pretending seems to work so well;
You all claw at plasticine symbols
The letters deplored with a swish of the ink well.

Calligraphic self destructions mean something to somebody
Over an ocean with eyes so slight as to shine in the darkness,
Glinting in robes of black on the rooftops of rich dynastics
And the rhymes of yesterday creeping to the forefront,
Reminding me just of how hopeless hopelessness is--
The assonance of a retreating boxcar
Is steaming into the backdrops of consciousness.

Is it time to rewind somewhere?
The visages of paintings only mean so much
To the blind bats on cave walls in cavernous reaches
Of static television snow drifts.

It seems that you and I have come to the biggest of filamentous rifts:
Sifting between now and then we have mind-skips
Of epic proportion, a sickened distortion
Of all of the children left in their contortions
It's all leprosy in my eyes
Since the skies are burning down as we pinpoint abortion.

And we release that defeat, and try to find meaning in it all:

A lie of great size
Told from my lips yet it was--
You who believed me.

Together we made a chimera
A deception even worse than anything I've ever known
I said that some god had told me all the things that
that
that--

I can't begin to begin an apology
My mouth mummified by request next to Jeremy Bentham
I only wanted what's best for you--
But look at what you've done!
Oh, Crusades! Oh, Crusades!

Children don't lie with your eyes on the sunset
For Nietzsche is the ultimate navigator!

And you finally catch sight of the top of an alligator
floating in the oil, staring at you
slanted eyes smiling cruel.

It all makes sense now, what half believed lies
That explain how the darkness will come to rise
But the opposite side of our crystalline marble
Has known all along, they knew all along!

Facing the east, wasn't He?
Then even he knew
Perhaps what I said was not all untrue
And in fact
the fault lies with Him
Not me,
Not you.

Sincerely,
The Bible.

He sat in dewy grass
Writing a pastoral dialog.
“And death is also here,” mused he.
“All art depends on gravity.”
He neatly ordered his pages.

She wove lilacs in her hair,
Standing on moss in the damp morning air.

He considered that God might be in all things.
Was he blaspheming by crushing the grass?
But of course Bentham’s calculus obviates sin.
He thoughtfully scratched his chin.

She approached him from behind,
Dismayed by the clutch of wildflowers
Someone had wrenched out by the roots and thrown away,
Yet suffused in the absolute peace of that day.

She touched his arm—a summons.
What was that sensation?
He was left without rational explanation.

“Our characteristics smear through us,
Like colours in a stick of rock.”
He says to the audience of ties and blazers.
“If I cut you open, what shades
Would I find in your cross-sections?”
“If you cut me open,
There’d be a fair amount of red,
I should think.”
I say behind my sharpened teeth.
“And my parents wouldn’t be very pleased.”
Oh how witty I am
With my quick fire of sarcasm,
And petulant spasms of acrimony.
Eight miles away,
Our house is full of September;
Raincoats and Crane flies,
And I water my Guinea Pig’s tumour
With tears I owe elsewhere.
A teacher at my school
Committed suicide, people say,
While we skipped waves
And created poetry from the leaf-light.
They can’t tell us the details,
Of course not – sensitivity is key –
But that tells us all we thirst for.
School clockworks forwards
With a hole in the Geography office
And I forget about remembrance.
He drove a BMW and laughed
Small laughs that coughed with nervousness.
I sit in History, pen-chewing,
Thinking of all these more important deaths.
The school bells don’t hold silences
The year sevens don’t stand
Or bow their heads in room 180
We try making futures for ourselves
And apply ourselves to those things
That still have chances tied to them
Like clover leaves and birthday candles.
We turn on lights in the evenings
And I wake myself from darkness to darkness.
My life consists of the cooling,
Cotton-throated early mornings
And the bike that my brother bought new
Six years ago.
And the drag of my newspaper bag
That claws backwards from my peddling.
The world is blue and grey with rime,
I rip my fingers on letterboxes.
My shoes fall apart from the heels
My ballet shoes fall apart from the toes
My life enjoys unravelling itself
From wherever I’ve chosen to stitch it
And I fray and crimp at the corners.
I prefer to go barefoot
Across the rinsed, diluted garden
That smells of rotting apples.
Ballet tights rolled up my legs
So that my bruised toes get kissed
With grass slobber and the faded zeal of autumn.
Slugs crisscross pavements like surgical tape
Then get stuck and frazzled there
While the sun toasts them.
“Maybe I’d find hopes, dreams,” he says.
“Maybe you’d find organs.”
You’d find me weeping over pirouettes
And geometric lines and extensions.
You’d find a twice-broken arm
And an array of internal fractures.
There’d be shards lodged between each rib.
My parachute lungs, pumping filth,
Would continue to tear and furl
Until they wouldn’t resemble
The things we scalped in biology.
I re-write lists of ‘Things To Do’
In the hope that they’ll seem shorter
But I add all my flaws to them
For amendments and for procrastination.
For some reason people still expect things
From this emptying girl
Who actually thinks
That the one who cut into her
Would be in danger of finding
Nothing but a brittled, bitter hollow.
I highlight my essays
And highlight the cracks
I’m carving in my personality.
I paste impressions of myself
All over my exterior shell
Alongside character traits.
Who knows what lies beneath
The papier-mâché of well-played parts?
My fingers play music on the computer keyboard
More than they practice the piano.
But the songs they make are far from sweet
And rarely beautiful.
My parents think I’m working
On Hume, Bentham and Kant
But really, I write jaded poetry
Which forms its own philosophies.
“Your experiences would be evident,
Spread through your character.”
My brother ate away at his life
Until he starved.
They set him down in a mental unit
For the ‘Screwy’, ‘Freakish’ and ‘Insane.’
So I buried my childhood
In the side ward mazes
Of hand sanitizer and tubes and tombs.
“I’d find what makes you unique –
Your religion, perhaps.”
I laugh away the suggestion
That is actually the truth of how
My Sunday mornings fall under ‘Church’
And the afternoons are ‘Top Forty’ –
I don’t even like chart music.
How can I be ashamed of the faith
I try fervently not to doubt?
The sun drips from the evening sky
Like a squeezed lemon
And Monday cycles round again
I live in a little world of spirals;
Eternally coming back to the same place
Just worn a little further down.
I waste my life on the vanity
Of mirrors and self-deprecation.
Sometimes I think I must be arrogant
To make the pretty little assumption
That I don’t have to wear make-up.
It’s funny that I lay my skin bare –
Always –
But can’t manage to strip myself down
To the crudest, rawest truth.
I can only write for people I don’t know;
I let my parents believe blindly
That I’m a creative prodigy
Instead of human
By refusing them the blessing
Of honest words from ink and paper.
But the truth is;
I am not the faded mystery
That I pose as in my writing,
I’m just someone who sits in school assembly
And tries to make self-portraits from words,
And tries to forge intelligence,
And tries to never grow old,
And tries to be something,
And tries nothing,
And tries –
“But what I’d really want to see
Is compassion,” He says.
I turn my face down to my knee bones
And permit myself to agree.
Compassion, I tell myself
And, just for a minute,
I feel a little less
Superficial.

"O JEREMY....BENTHAM!"

He called his walking stick
"Dapple!"

He called his teapot
"Dickey!"

He called his elderly cat
"The Reverend Sir John Langbourne!"

He sits with his real head
between his legs

long after he was
dead.

His body preserved
so that it could be

wheeled out at meetings
if his friends were missing him.

At a College council meeting in 20i3
marked as "present but not voting."

Didn't believe in Christian burial
the Church's teaching "nonsense on sticks!"

Thought folks should be useful
both in life and in death.

Tears always when remembering a lady
presenting him "... with a flower in a green lane'

"Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future
– do not let me go back to the past."

In lee of the Ash
'twould be me
hiding in trees.
bare arms held high.
raw from rubbing the bark.

breath a ragged whisper,
the language of dead leaves

lingnen umbrellas once shadow makers now of the dark

encased in abandoned shade,
stability is a fabled illusion

colours of autumn fade.
forms become skeleton.
dirt is fed.

earthen daydreams corrode,
fertile nightmares,
demons grow in place of daisies

their eyes are hungry in a barren place until the ash buds swell

dried petals melt to gravity,
possess my naked frame

under the low sun after dewy drapes lift.
green blessings distract

undulating bodies,
supplication of sweet release

'tis what demon desires and to have must part with pomegranate

the seeds of damnation,
lament dearest Persephone,
your cry shall reign all dominion

a Bentham call for the utility that the wood be of seasons

colors of autumn fade,
forms become skeleton,
hello death's wintry mistress

colours of spring wait.
Morbid redress

leaving hulled seed a heliotrope with skying ambition.
Brethren in tumultuous glory.

Bask eternal in tumultuous glory.

I like the woodshed,
a smell of wet putty
and dead paint,
but
they wheel me out
occasionally
for a function
and it blows the cobwebs off me
although I no longer care.

Once I was the cream of the crop
and now,
just yesterdays fare.

It seems the seams have come away,
afraid now that I'm frayed,
the dog end of material upon
which the footlights strayed.

just like Bentham at UCL
on show I go again
and
although not in a cabinet
it feels to me the same.

I remember
something sometimes
and
then the clock chimes to remind me
there's not much point in doing so
and
back on show I go
life goes on.

I

        Enough. I am done.
I have no dogs in heaven. Nor one of the Prince’s cockatoos
to leverage favor from. I am the ****** on a cactus.
        I have no more
languages to speak truth, but draw blood.  
        I am a coward,
My tongue not so sharp as a sword.
Remain still. Courage not so stiff as it once was.

II

Everybody inside. On their heels. There is panic
Breaking on the back of soundless numerals. Is it safe
To beg for mercy in the streets?

III

O mercy. The ever-redemptive lack.
And what words at my mercy not co-opted
by avarice, or Sig and his ivy-eyed nephew.
        Ah Um.
Too easy to franchise martyrdom these days, minute 2 minute
        Things swing as usual ah um
Sssome people get rebellion-medallions; most pawn them
in tomorrow’s liquor stores.
                                                         And swing.
O merci, Satyrs of a newly profitable goat-song!
        Who can resist them teasing out the milk?

It almost seems fresh, piped thru
        loudspeakers in Bentham’s skull
Howling ah, Um, Imagine:
Most deformed Society members .  .  .
Strapped to their rocketships, mingling w/ stars
         in corporate menagerie,
Senators and a gaggle of catamites.  .  .  
         On call
Young-things, playthings, old news; money is eternal.
Their’s is a sickness that makes mine worse.

IV

That said. I ain’t got a clue; or a word
to say. Without a code to program the spleen
        in my bomb of a heart.
All communication is shrapnel-blasted-out-shrapnel.

        Grinning over a screen.
No, Worry, slow down. Spleen, relax.
I’m just a man with a telephone wire
Not the sax-playing Mr. Apollinax
Sure can’t talk politic but ah um I can start a fire.

V

My robe swinging open,
        I hang over the balconies of twilight’s regret,
                exposed, and unhappy.
I wish nothing more , that the boon of despair
Drop it, an atom bomb and burst the windows.  .  .  .
Everybody inside, solitary: radiated by me.
Maybe we’d all smile at each other
         when we finally come out from our houses.

there was a time to read two volumes of
Knausgård... and since i don't speak any norwegian:
it didn't really matter...
whether it was in english or western slavic...
will i get to the other four volumes?
i can only remember giving william burroughs...
so much of my attention as to complete
the oeuvre...
                         and unlike the translator's note
from michel foucault's... surveiller et punir...
i was really going to start reading this today...

- foucault uses the infinite: to the effect of an
'impersonal imperative'...
          this nuance is not afforded in english:
or is just plainly denied...

- the verb surveiller... has no adequate translation
into english... the english noun 'surveillance'
is apparently: but also obviously
too "technical"...

- the range of connotations between 'inspect'
and surveiller as a direct translation...
alan sheridan: this in part verbatim joystick
is... bothered by the work of a prior to his own
work of translation: a jeremy bentham...

- 'supervise' is closer than to 'inspect'...
                  but the word applied: is not close
to the word being translated...
      
- 'observe' is too neutral - but... its apparently
teeming with aggression should
an 'observation' be one-sided...
                      
             before the book even began...
i very much doubt... translating... Knausgård's
magnum opus of 6 vol.
beginning with... min kamp... my struggle...
because there was the obvious precursor...
and nothing more...
so much for nuancing the devil in the details...
of a book's title...

i once proposed that... well: what is mine?
is the struggle truly mine?
it's mine: in the superlative...
    but not in the confines of an: adjective-adjective...
in the superfluous...
skip the middle-ground "reasoning"...

but associated with struggle is the my:
that someone is mine...
           i'd rather posit... a lost sense of ownership...
translated back into either german
or norwegian:
              ich skampf...
                          jeg kamp...

                 then i guess: a struggle owns me...
it wrestles with me...
   it becomes a sort of... Israel...
               i become a sort of Israel...
prior to: i am Jacob: it is my struggle...
but... what if this struggle is outside of the confines
of merely me and my ownership of it:
to be donned and worn proud for...
future: coquetry?

   how different it sounds...
my struggle: i am jacob...
   i struggle: he named me Israel...
             and he called himself what i didn't wish
to own or be, therefore, mine...

if what is mine is a determiner -
akin to... a determiner being and:
   a conjunction...
           if i were to posit: ich kampf...
i cannot claim a determiner of the struggle:
it's... indefinitely there...
passed between strangers...
having a share of universal qualities shared
among others: which i can't exactly
invest a self with: but a pronoun i can...
since... by then... i struggle is an indefinite articulation
statement... a determiner allure of the expression
is a definite articulation...

but there's a time and a place...
and i'm not going to read a translation of an otherwise
french text... i was hoping to skip past
fiction... but having regarded Knausgård
first two volumes as:
autobiographical fiction... or...
       would i rely on... something that explores...
discipline and punishment...
naturally... i am expected to be the good citizen
and not go out...
i'm figuring... i need to stock up on some
more kalimotxo juice...
i'll take some bottles to the recycling center
and if stopped i'll just tell them...
i haven't been out all week...
i'm doing my exercise: i don't jog...
i walk... i'm just stocking up on kalimotxo juice...
and i'll be recycling some glass...
i can apparently get away with the first
time misunderstanding...

so no... not a good genesis of testing
the waters of: bad boy citizen...
i read the first two chapters and just left the book...
it's a book... it's not a piece of music...
sometimes it takes much longer...
to get into the mood:
if you want to read the book proper...
plus... i have neglected my libra prerogative...
to not write more than i have read...
i must have crossed a rubicon of sorts...

as it happens: these stale "concerns" are here
because: i honestly don't know how
to be a teenager: again... and to be riddled by
pangs of unaddressed emotions...
having to turn to fiction and vampires...
i don't have the credentials to write of pangs
of either joy or misery...
perhaps it's a numbing effect that allows
me to plough through bibliophile affairs...

after all... i have in my hands...
   illustrations by william rainey R.I.
the gresham publishing company 34 & 35
southampton street, strand, london,

an address to a mr. serjeant talfourd M.P.
by the man himself...
not the first edition (1837)
not even the first cheap edition (1847)...
i'm guessing this is, then...
the "C.D" edition... and the year is 1867...
so a one-hundred-and-fifty-three-year-old
book...
   it even smells so... grotesquely: variant...
then again... what's not to like about misnomers?
well... when no metaphor is at hand...
i guess a misnomer will just have to do...

but to keep to some quality of "mannerism"
regarding such artefacts...
it's one thing keeping such a book,
on a shelf... and having the gorgon's pride
to have to buy a modern cheap paperback
edition... no... this book will... just have to be handled...
perhaps handling it will...
allow me to air it... it is tinged with a horrendously
stuffy allure...
one that wants to find it... being...
a neglected "something or other"...
to give it life and most certainly air...
  a book that wants as much to be read:
as it wants to be aired...

    it can't be anything less than...
charles dickens' the pickwick papers...
to this i remember our first schooltrip to the world
war I graves near Ypres...
on the bus i was reading by the sort of
illumination that would make me successful
as to having to acquire glasses come mid-age...
and this dreaded teacher came up to me...
spotted i was reading dostoyevsky's crime and
punishment... and how... when he was my age...
read the pickwick papers with the same
ferocity as i was reading... what i was reading
at the time...

and i will be as **** honest as necessary...
me... reading a native novelist of these parts...
the parts of: make thames proud and london blush...
what on earth was i thinking...
not having or having not... succumbed to the allure?
what was i doing with the french writers
and the russians?
why wasn't i... bypass Shakespeare and sprint
to the trough from where pigs entertained
the company of kings?
                    we'd too wish... of what "we" is
not necessary to mind... had "we" been giving
smoking's to attire and join in the festivity...
oh sure, sure... smoking's and moccasins...
         well... if they can get away with donning
the converse sneakers... these days...
                   who would... hunt us down...
these sock hunters?!

     come to think of it... this is a **** good rendering
of how far i have fallen...
in terms of moodiness... or lack of: thereof...
sometimes there's only this:
an exercise in applied language...
   to what use? no one really knows...
had i... not discovered Dickens prior...
which... well: to know that Dicknes... is also
a suitable term used in pub trivia and
the encyclopedia...
              but it's good enough of me...
to have finally come about...
        
                              this romance of societal norms...
and reciprocative contracts of expectations...
hierarchal strands of weaving and the river-works
of flow...
              it's nice... there's none of that french
romancing the period...
nor the ever-pervasive angts of the russians...
that... sense and what remains of sensibility...
the self-evident pomp...
and the circumstance just around the corner...
the allure of what english liberals would
sell to foreign investors when being given
the opportune chance to do so...
as to how england was to be carved:
and sold by the pound...

                     and what a time to be given
privy into this literature...
                         i almost can't imagine having
an impetus left to drag myself into Proust.