GASMASK

The very air we breathe's an authority
if every breath taken obeys the reflex.

To refuse to breathe sometimes, holding
your breath until you cannot not breathe.

Form is like that, for at least as long
as the breath is held in by the line.

The line is not time. It has nothing
to do with time, and it does not keep time.

Repetition, then, returning to the same
point across a stricter pattern structure.

Vertical and horizontal matrices, grids.
In that space alignments delineate

the target, marked spaces marked off
like a dictionary definition, in that book

they set
down the
dead words.

There are no laws in poetry, and if
there is history if by history

tradition
is intended
for what? Argentina-Jamaica, piet null.

Spectators mass around distraction.
Destruction? You can watch the camera falling
the moment the cameraman is killed.

We have no theory for that aura.

When they smoked him
there was like this kick, you know,

it was something else to watch. Here is writing
in a language which smokes people. Walking

in circles, dieyete, I'm watching

from the shadows of my time. They
aren't really human beings anyway.
Like never before, nothing more.