Adam Engel lives in NYC, where he studied and taught at several universities, administered corporate systems, published numerous poems, stories, essays, articles and four books, Topiary, Cella Fantastik, and I Hope My Corpse Gives you the Plague, and most recently, root (Oliver Arts & Open Press, 2016).
Blunder Gaze of Cosmic Eye
1.
From Decay
Botched job in the kitchen. The wretched boy refused Death's protocol progression from decay to rot to never-been: and similar trends from which The Strong derive.
2.
None Fulfilled
Ten million stories none fulfilled.
If Past won’t change what is: what is to come? And when?
Patterns of action-movement brought no Be: not much doing: nothing done.
Facsimiles of movement forged by repetition. Much said nothing done.
3.
Plotting Sorts-of-Sit
Plotting sorts-of-sit: derivatives of sat.
Attempts to replicate the rush of musk allure: as-if entranced by potent tinctures of herself.
As-if: yesterday's high.
Enough as-if to lure as Lure itself had lured – long time ago. As-if effused her being and her telling: vernacular of consequence: speech-tick: My-Tale signal: evidence of Self.
Evidence not proof: but still: inspired strong imperatives of Love that Love delighted in repeating.
Each one must explain what makes one one: eventually.
Not yet.
For anyone could understand if anyone would know: that what had been should have been without regret as consequence of might have could have would have been.
Second-guess of deep-absurd: ridiculous in pull-back relative to all that’s been and all who've suffered – and to what extent – the blunder gaze of Cosmic Eye.
But still: the second guess: the third...
4.
Pain and Loss
Dead kid in a slip-shod kitchen.
Love's wretched life-course (murder of Self? abort of Other?). Pain and Loss.
Desire for completion or extreme. These are difficult themes. Love attempted to transform. Smoke of heartless drift a bitter blow: oh: Empty Memory of shadow-strangers in the glass!
5.
Protagonist Love Interest
I knew Love. A difficult complete. Consistently. One two three slips here-there mere error: perhaps odd – perverse? – penchant for novelty: tilting avant garde.
But:
consistency is pattern: pattern is pathology.
Love had problems. I loved Love. I had problems.
Pattern.
6.
Night Entered with Drama
I tried to talk then fuck Love to completion.
Pain ensued and Loss.
Long ago we saw trees bloom sooty flowers in the park and we resolved to solve what-ever resolve – and teaching fellowships – would solve for once and god-damned all.
First time this life I knew core definition of hard-deep: but could not leave the only world I'd ever known.
Night entered with drama: velvet cape of terrifying atmosphere. Confusion-frightened of Time's brevity I dreaded physical decline.
7.
Recollections of What's Never Been
The Kid believed in Dad.
Wherefore why-for whence this vanishing of Home?
Filmic mind-stuff: recollections of what's-never-been: spectral street-banquets of everything-everywhere-and-all sucked life-blood from what lived: as-if not born of Love: as-if Love splashed smoldering glands with cold white paint: a cagey ruse to dodge pain-tedium completely heinous to conceive: token of lunatic dreams sown long-faraway ago.
8.
Mute Gesture Command
Proximity of Home disturbed me to disgust with full intent to mock: possessed of a hate too intimate-revealing of one's first-expose – in awe-repulse – to mute gesture command: of life: of consequence. My virgin score.
9.
Furious Camouflage
I daydreamed more than mere possession: proprioception: saw furious camouflage in membranes of Love’s womb.
So many moments etched on skin distorted to weird and worse by Time: grim patriarch: progenitor of Pain and Loss.
10.
Ghosts Laughed at My Suit
Alone in Love’s botched kitchen I was exhausted.
Ghosts laughed at my suit: poor tired spirits: demented by Night's forced after-death parade through desert-smears of Pain and Loss: to each his own significance and Other.
Experience amplified thunderous: repeated and exchanged: like prisoners trade cigarettes: dream-currency of trapped-entombed.
11.
Completion
Confusion staggered after Night alone. Resolution pounded feral at the door. Desire smashed my daze of words with palpable thingness of a weapon.
Steel-bone recognition: not-Pain not-Loss not-Love nor any other.
I cocked aimed fired my last first sentence to completion.
