Robert Wyatt*

And so, last year
On a trip, on the brim
of a kind of mental illness
unique to fortune tellers, and lovers
flipping through days but not nights
with destination halted
by a fake cab driver
in a city of neon lights
A girl—I
drew out a poem, story, or stay a night
from the very beginning
—for the feeling, the sentimentalism
the possible experience
of making sense
the origin of forgetfulness
So, assume that she’s dead
“She’s dead”
She’s dead
and I bid farewell to the skeptic

It’s 6 in the morning
or 2 in the morning
A deep autumn, coreless
I’m still
standing in the corner
falling on the ground
strolling along the road
one way, to its soul

He cried in order to repress his passions
as if he’s
looking for a sense of Bop
in the year of nineteen-eighty-four
where love is
a glance
fallacious/penal/hexadecimal/non-sexagesimal/Nataraja-esque/grammatical/disinfected/cubistic/Fichtean/nocturnal/cinematic/cinematic/cinematic/cinematic/cinematic and cinematic
but cinematic is the word (if a rule’s ever been given to the world)
a pain
illegitimate
a love
deferred

Now imagine, to the task I’m bound to fail
say, an infinite regress
I sing a song about the sea
I sing a song
at the bottom of the sea

_________________________________________________
*but what will they say about
the cheap cigarette we shared
or that broken tin-plate robot
of the old childhood
Will this train finally become
a stream of thoughts
a handful of semen
then a sexless worm
inside the lonesome tunnel
the child endlessly become
an alcoholic
like his father
like virginity found and lost