THE COMPOSITION JAR
small composition jar
in these few words
barely reach the page
a process by which
the person removes obstacles swallowing handfuls
of rags swallowing handfuls
of muttering tepid you become you do
a large room full of the same person
double-decker kissing
the plurals approach this notion
of writing
as it is the fasteners
fasten what holds fast faster
held in relation
to things
children screaming
at the bubbles
they themselves produce catches corners of the eye
a dog eared miniature
of the printed addendum
rise again wakened skin
the better thing
encompassed here
spelled out
light shadows the man with a bedeviled groan
a bedeviled flask
as the wheels speak
a small bundle of them
make a star of it
a taller slender streetlight
a lower lipped movement
fraught with digits
tipping tip tips
diggle – the off center of a cracker the machine of life
rare fruit hanging off
the machine of life
a perfect reflection in fog a swizzle stick alphabet
how to open standing up across the table
—Nico Vassilakis
IN HIS INVESTIGATION
Simply driving to the end of a sentence.
Plummets in mumbles.
Excuse me, didn’t quite get that.
Crossing out words.
The pencil pressed onto the surface of a page
Beginning at the front and leaving at the suffix.
The word erased.
In his investigation, it was the hand. He could not find it. What exactly has happened to the hand in handwriting? Disguised as a machine behind french doors, a ray of light, forgotten orange peel.
It is annihilated. There will be no silkscreen of dreaming. A slow drip my darling. Louder and louder and licker and looker and lavish and languid and leopard and lever and luminaire. Wrapped around the angle you preserved for an upcoming autumn.
The lag. The differentiating magnet. Gauge the lips. Caught with the phone cord’s connective tissue. You the drug. You the snapping stalk, the talking stalk. A coterie of filigree. Emblems tucked away. I refuse what i create. The pinnacle of one life. Alongside the abutment. Yes, one kite defends the storm of unknowing and, yes, one boy running into the future. A brilliant arc hovers by streetlight. To know this you would have had to be there. And you're very near. Sound of pages turning. Do pages turn? Is it circular or piled up higher than hair?
Refraction decides. A soothing condition while the ease of it assures you.
I am not mobile, but my signal has become digitized. The words form then dissolve upon contact. You allow transportation to occur. Information is the cargo – is money to the lost cockatoo. I respond to the flicking of a light switch. I am responding furiously. The best writing is a writing you stare at. At a distance you can mistake a pen for a cigarette. Eyes slowly go therein. The body endures small deaths. All the practice is beginning to work. There is an ease.
Language seems to resist obstacles, seems to appear at simultaneous interactions. Draws me to several - at once - stinging the fog.
This distribution of chemicals makes for a perfect day.
The way it was told to me - you never really get there.
It's the verisimilitude of standing here
atop a kind of quirky exploding laughter.
Chemicals laugh, they swing and dance, looking for a match, a pocket to fit their hand.
There are many reasons for the scalp to tingle.
The room is jettisoned.
The garden is always yawning.
And for now tare weight is a type of reality.
—Nico Vassilakis
THE FIVE STATIONS:
FROM AIR TO HEAD TO ARM TO HAND TO PAGE
—Nico Vassilakis