"The Strange Day had been meant to be called The Happy Day, or The Proud Day, but there had been part of it that had gone on after Happy and Good, so that whenever he remembered it, he could not tell where the Good had ended and the Strange began."

- Joanne Greenberg, In This Sign

* * *

by Luke Edwards

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Eight

* * *

There was a horrible day in which Edward could read anything and understand it:

How could "The Waste Land" not get mention?

Damyata. And no mention at all in the narrative

of the raison d'etre: what did he do?

In his defense, Edward deleted the page in which he was described as "Evil, pure and simple. A worthless piece of human excrement. Dumb, but worse. Dumb and powerful, the worst combination. Insulated and incompetent, corruption personified."

There is no memory of the day but scar tissue there where the memory should be, unlike the dead tissue of memory lost to alcohol. The memory is of bright light but not light. And not pleasant.

___

Ich spreche nur Deutsche, daß is dem Problem.

Ich hab' kein Gedicht im Kopf. Wirklich!

Ich weiß nicht warum ich hier bin.

Rafales et la musique et retraites,

soie, flammes, les formes et sur les ecumes.

O - monde! Saiguante terrestre au fond

de diamante arctiques, les viande des glaçons.

___

The only thing that kept me sane....

The only thing that kept Ed sane....

More notes, forgotten notes and codes:

The only sanity to be found was in knowing

Reality is a construct of words, only words.

(Verbatim, again, from the "Gnome" notebook:)

___

Comment sais-tu que tes idées sont justes si tune peux pas le démontrer? (Jean-Paul Sartre, from Les Mains sales, © 1948; 1958, Le Livre de Poche version, p. 188. Translated by Lionel Abel, in No Exit and Three Other Plays, as "Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?")

This is a job for the ambassadors!¹
___

Title: The Infinitive Property


these are true

in all incidents

examples

reflective process

reflective principle

reflective property

a + b = a + b

associative

(a + b) - c = a + (b - c)

infinitive property

a = a

a = a + b, a = a + b + c

anoth

another language:

get it?

by the infinitive property,

a =

what the next thing is is

what the next thing is

b = b + c

how do ya know that

a isn't (x - b) or (b - a)?

next property

a (b + c) = ab + ac

give

presents

give away (t

o + o = to + to)

It is nothing like the fog, this.

And like the night, doesn't need windshield wipers

to be in use while driving through it. (On clear roads....)

The fear of acronyms is over, off, so

is my over-

inflated

ego.² 

It was 

simply the most 

extreme case of trench

mouth (angina, angina, acute...)

and "a high tolerance for pain," he said.

I'm the biggest baby this side of the north pole

and I've got bad checks popping up all over town.

___

There's an irony, almost, in the use of the phrase, "afraid of acronyms." The above was written in 1979; AIDS was not to appear for at least four years. The acronym alluded to here would be "VD" or "STD."

Range Cooper is at the chest point in blank shot.

Laura who Palmer killed.

What they seem not woods are the owls.

A page will be included that lauds the power of cut ups. It will need to be more than just a reference to the Beats and the Beat Hotel, that place where Poet X monitored Norse and magic writings.

The book is gone, put back on the shelf by the orderly Edward Lacie, that prick.

He's such a slow learner. Cut it out. Cut if off. Cut it up. Cut it down.

To cut up is to put Chaos into the mix.

"Into the mix, into the mix." That means more than I can remember.

"A new adventure," Bill Kurtis's interviewee says, describing a poison to use when committing murder.

"He smacked her head and stunned her."

This poem is a cut up as well it should be.

It's the only way to know the insides, the workings. A cut up is a sort of autopsy on an exquisite corpse.³

There has to be music....

There has to be sex....

There has to be pain....

There has to be a threat of death....

Is there a False Prophet in the house?

I hear a river of fifteen years ago as if it were a half a mile away, a short walk through tic-laden trees.

Today is fifteen years later and I'm still the same. I'm scared and still a false prophet.

I mean, Edward is scared. I am the head Hacker and can't be false.

A qubit is the new literature. Read the Kabala? I wrote it.

Enid Starkie doesn't know anything about it. (Everyone should read just the chapter on Rimbaud's theory of the poet. It describes Edward Lacie before the Gnome notebook to a tee.)

"The judge announced the verdict."

"Guilty of murder in the first degree." A mandatory sentence. Life imprisonment.

"New drugs used to detect the poison should not have been introduced in the trial," Bill Kurtis informs us. But the verdict has not been overturned.

Overturned.

Overturned.

Guilty. Life imprisonment. Mistrial. Not overturned.

Overruled. Permitted. Perjury.

I've seen this movie before.

Perjury could not be anticipated by the defendant.

Call now and be sure to ask about UFO sightings.

There has to be financial strain to cause the dental

strain to cause the spiritual pain and reading fast.
___

I'm trying to practice some free association for the sake of Ed who can't write poetry for crap. These "episodes" are my lesson plans for his poetry class and kidnapping and murder classes too, all rolled into one. If you can't already tell, Edward's writing is very distinctly his own (and not very exciting).

I'm trying to practice.

Ed is only trying.

Sex is the light at the beginning of the tunnel.

There has to be magic as well, unanticipated and unwelcome, fought off, disregarded. I'm flying with a cape tonight. Hang on if you wish.