JOHN RUFO

                                    &

                           I’m on to everyone’s imaginable shit     

             I mean I’m on that that 

                                        thing you’re on I’m on   

the on-ness you put me on the   

                                        ontology of oracular devices I’m       

            on the on-site head on    

                        each and every one I’m on     

            my hone and on the nail      

                                                    hitting on my own self  

                                      and its –ishness irregardless   

                          of thank yous and  

                                        acknowledgement my known

                          and know nothing-ness is on it    

                                       and your honor I’m honey

                                                                                combed      

                              Shot Screen

                             slept in sleeping over 

              underslept the murmur

                                         -ing ringing of fear-alert

on highways the very still feeling

                                           of awakenness breaking  

               over windshields and not moving

                             while crashing while cruising

               the future utopic activities  

                                                        involve angels 

                                          their lack of shit

                            -ing resting and cry

                                          out for the ones you hate

                            in horrible chorus 

                                         like swarm 

                                                        murder

                                                        school

                                                        congregation 

                                                        pride 

Overdub

                                           Anti Pastoral

 

When/where/how                  is it I was                    reading the word                     moiety

I remember the world moiety             swishes in gums sticky             stuck tooth     

                        “          each of tw
                                                  o parts
                                                  into which a thing is
                                    o            r can b e
                                                  divi
                                                                ded.                 ”

These are two lakes: [round] and [green]. Not only an oddity but born together, twins in their decision to abstain from their features facing sunlight to move, and the bottom to stay still and salty and dense and sweet in the sweetness salt stamps.

I can’t pronounce the name given to the lower layer / lair : monimolimnion.

water as wilderness animal : water as inhabiting a home : “one that is well hidden” / lair

I do not have a place to work, says Bhanu.

water having a place to work, either I do wonder if water had a desk what it would do with it

                                                                                                 (There is a water table  ???? )

But just because these waters do not cross the boundary “the chemocline” // does not
mean it does not acknowledge the other. That a separation, which is how I read C’s /

                                                                                                                         /////

underlines an un-looking, a quiet. Quiet is not the same                     as silence.

                                                            I want to write a poem that is a single word in its lair:

not to single out the word but to singly sing the word, to put it under a microscope like a rock or a particle of sediment, to examine the word with care, to love the word, to cough it up

                                                            I want to write a poem that invests fully in the breadth
                                                            of the page and its spaces

                        Two feature two systems                     in the same space

                                                            Bhanu talks textures
                                                            that cannot be transplanted

                        My friend K two years ago moved away from me / to Oxford
                        Mississippi. She wrote a book titled “We Are All Transplants.”

                                                She was not wrong in her transplantation, theory
                                                and actuality –

                                                but the spaces stay put. The plates
                                                are all scorching how do the places stay
                                                put they are still moving they are going without we

                                    I worry about
                                    the sentences and how simple they are                     

                                    as if a plainness cannot communicate

I type the same word over and over and I begin to understand how the same word above and below
is changing and flipping and intermingling and bowing and crossing itself but it is not but it is not
but the ecosystem grows it changes it stays it changes it stays it bodies

“A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually in for - and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none; no identity - he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.” Keats in a letter to MY DEAR MR WOODHOUSE groans from his grave

WHY WOULD A POET BE UNPOETICAL AND WHAT WOULD IT EVEN MEAN
TO KEEP FILLING OTHER BODIES I HAVE AN IMPULSE I AM A CREATURE I AM
NOT FILLING OTHER BODIES BUT SEEING THEM OVER THE BOUNDARY THROUGH

THROUGH THE /

IN BETWEEN                        THE UNBROKEN LINE /

I write about Carrie’s book: “To show a broken line without breaking it.”

To show
To be willing to show
To play red earth

                                                                       we were in jaipur we were in clay we were under the same
                                                                       blue sky we were living a pink scene online we were a we
                                                                       while we were also without

                        # of eyes not watching God / watching us
                                                  u.s. clusters, clusters of froth
                                                  clusters of fuck-up spate

                   computers copulating with cloisters
                        for slam-monks / hackers

                                        statements of the state
                                     stating nothing but
                                     men-meaning so
                                                   be it so bent

                                     the surveilled pot boil
                                                   blood tribute 2 tributaries
                                                   2 the flowing that mixes
                                                   with the macro-waters
                                     screaming their curdled ecstasies
                                     and breaking windows over loam

                        THE SPUME U SPURNED
                               ALL MOUTH-WAVES ARE FROTHING
                               HUNGRY 4 YR BOATS 

                                          no effluents are affluent
                                          no money for water
                                          water-money leaps thru yr fingers
                                                         as if yr fingers were fences
                                                                      yr fingers are borders
                                          and oceans w/ that gravitas graffiti 

                                          Nature pushes the fuck back
                                          Nature pushes the fuckboys back
                         Nature has no time for yr colonial maneuvers
                                          I meant manure / I meant horse-shit

                                                                                     I re-group
                                                                                     I retain
                                                                                     I re-read

                                 I study the sun and its various storms
                                                                      solar blasts
                                                                      with no exemption

                                          “the power to fry satellites,
                                          crash ATMs and strand
                                          airplanes in the sky”

                                                                       the sun does not leak cash
                                                                       all yr wars are named the same
                                                                       it spits fire
                                                                       declares yr declaration
                                                                       dead after the hundred years
                                                                       you bestow with longeveity
                                                                       positively solely two shakes
                                                                       of a lamb’s tail

                         tried 2 shorn me and shown me
                                tried 2 beg me the un-asked for

                                              the curd the basis for cheese
                                             the cheese the basis for fat
                                to frontload pleasant distortions for cold days

                                                                                         the powers we eat
                                                                                         the powers we eat
                                                                                         the powers that eat
                                                                                         fight the powers that eat

                                                I interview a grass-blade
                                              she announces the name of every motherfucker 

                                                pale moon

 

       so full

 

  

 

 

                                         of itself 

i put the money in my ground

and it grows

John Rufo works on and through poetry and is the author of several deleted books. He lives in Riverside, CA. You can find him online at dadtalkshow.tumblr.com.