In addressing my pleasure in the Jarvis Cocker line ‘cunts are still running the world’ and the way I turn to this song following elections I dispense first with the notion that the world is run by centres of self-lubricating sensitivity distributing pleasure through nervous and muscular communication with a greater whole. And, while dispensing, with the notions both that training one’s capacity for immersive feeling leads to exhaustion of that capacity, and that trained capacity is either corrective or contagious in and of itself, a system. To attend to the skin of feeling: glottal spit, pub carpet. Narrowed eye (pleasure), turn to face, to face face, to face shoulders, loose throat. You cunt. More firmly: cunt, a self-possession, finger flick, turning away in conclusion. 

As we know burning money in front of beggars and fucking dead pigs are training exercises, as well as offerings, spiritual cast and collateral. Numb with exposure at the limb isolato, you still care if it snaps off. Because numb is a feeling, a burning hailstorm if you think of it, and it remains that you might, at any moment, think of it, blaze alive, fire running song in every direction at once, each node reciprocation and reach. And take the rubber band off. Herald of a nerve. Cunts are still running the world. Cunts are still running the world.  

There’s an alarm on in Yokohama. A siren, somewhere out in the night, all night, at the edge of what I’m sure I can hear - except I am sure, I may as well have fallen off the sea bus into it and while the sound slaps across my upturned nose and mouth I compose something to say to the others about our situation. The sea bus:  it’s a mishearing of Sea Bass, as in threaded and propped on a yaki stick, eyes clear and flanks carved away into delicious parallelograms. Each leaps and slaps the surface joyful, passengers shaken off. Who knows the heat of the interior. Out here exposed it’s coastal winds swirling. And into the mouths of the dogs in the malls, all carried in baskets and strollers. 

There are no demands on your compassion. The hall is still empty. The professor opens the windows to the heat on the western side. The audience appears slowly, fanning, silent. 

Now it is time for the performance of compassion as the cup of a flower holding rain.  

Now it is time for the performance of compassion as the unclipping of the rope from the stanchion. 

There are no demands on your compassion. The unmuscled flower returns to its bed. Fatigue is not the last gesture, not the most lasting, among those the audience ghosts in their seats. 

In the Yayoi Kusama exhibition shop my son grabs a pumpkin badge from a bowl and makes for the counter. Could I have raised him without this desire if I were raising him alone? Also he wants to carry a baby in his tummy, and wants drinks always from the vending machine. If it weren’t for this heatwave. Could I have raised him so that he could be turned mildly from his desire, rather than surging his body into the old museum’s tatami mats so that he can barely be picked up? Are pumpkins a sign of desire? Of course not, they are a sign of complete fulfillment. And yet some are made with holes, and some are made of mirror, and some dissolve into writhing snakes. If I can get the badge back into the bowl it is not far to the cafe. But then would I have had anything at all. Everyone’s favorite is Napping Pumpkin. It is certainly not pregnant with anything. 

This is the one where you marry the creepy boyfriend and support him in his run for nthinking that although the half-light’s flattering, soon    and you cannot make the kids walk all that way. Valediction, my guinea pig friends, is visible through the mesh, is the hish of the hem of the couture train she said hish just once and he stepped back and closed his mouth, the hutch fell open, All hail Queen Flower   We have a language, and it can be understood. As we herd so shall we be heard. Sores are a sign of mites. If the earth is good we will run and our toenails keep their own care

I’m in word. I’m in word and on safari on an apple. I write the colonial state and cut it so it’s on my invisible clipboard. I mean invisible to me. and then I get colonial state advertisements while I’m on safari. this part is the antique front, still a little bit funny because it’s still a little bit dumb . like gestalt interpretations from a trainee therapist, or valentine’s cards from an estate agent. there’s still room between terms to think of metaphor. but the apple as a whole is smooth and pretty clean. a lot of surface, not much you can see to aim at. or your aim’s just that good. actually I forget I’m on safari almost constantly, that’s how close it is. I’m not hungry when I’m not eating. like I never stop breastfeeding. hand warm and a bit wet, working away at the trigger. 

wants to know if ears vomit, if elephants get blood noses, what happens to the moon when it’s raining, whether he can die holding his i-pad, why he won’t be able to see when he’s finished dying, what will happen to our house and all our things when we’re dead, when does living start, why isn’t Ian in New Order, and is it tomorrow now? 

sorry about the cinderblock arms. 

The tea is lovely, with its heart glowing red in the sunlight. Threads of liquored heat spin slowly through, and films of haze peel off one by one.

At last some relief in an image. An onion, hermetically sealed in tupperware, floats through a sound to the shore of an island. Maybe ‘hermetically’ isn’t right for tupperware, but for now there’s the privacy of the word, its neutralizing effect. There’s Bernstein praising the privacy of Ashbery. There are tall silver hedges, that’s a different domain. Privacy’s where it all happens and I’m not sure I can afford it. I want a shelter but some are welded so to fool the inspectors. So then I’m the inspectors. I’m police. Alarm is ringing through the sound. Salt fluid’s leaking in, amniotic to the onion. No, neutralizing to the onion. It’s incredibly tasteless, this whole conceit. So then I’m my horror. I spring a leak. I’m completely open to current events. So then it’s time for the octonauts. Vegemals, prepare some fish biscuits for the large predators. Tweak, how quickly can you construct a new octopod?

An onion, sealed in tupperware, floats in a sound - sound meaning a gunmetal night with islands like clouds on a felt board and elements shiftable like that. The water an edgeless depthless gunmetal night. There’s a soft slapping. There’s a soft reaching sound beyond the water, at the shore. It arrives at the same time as nearly unbearable silence. 

So I read the interview with D’Arcy from the Smashing Pumpkins, the only one she’s given in twenty years, and thought oh, she’s crazy, too hard to work with I guess, and because she didn’t answer the question about whether she’d kept playing or not I thought of course they’d be wary about including her in the studio or the tour, but then the next thought was what if she’s right, and the one after that was fuck them she’s right! they’re pigs! and a real band – a band that could really save you – is one that would configure itself around its weakest member and find the music that would lift that member up and forever unfold her or him into a studio of welcome.

As though one day I got into a fight in a carpark and you got out of the front seat to call the other woman a fuckwit and then we embraced and agreed on burgers and then we even agreed on Hilary Clinton for a moment I paused Antiques Road Show to say it’s like you could knock on the side of her and hear the ringing right through our whole abyss play the silver guy immediately repeats knock just here on the side it is hollow we hold hands this is uncanny and it’s so good when the value is a surprise it’s a surprise

there’s an intermediary gland

into the crack of the milk-couch and why wouldn't you? bubble in little fish. big mouth little mouth. jingle jingle jingle on. a crack in a cup is every creature that learns to fly. wants instead to be home on the range where the dean and the metadata is someone else's bag. bigfellow do. pfft a conesnail and he pucked you. with his dart. now it's inflammation's bedtime. so imagine this is six weeks longer we can do it with mirrors. the moment flatumerous in silver attentions. lay it out. lay it out lay it out. it a layer unimpressed. that's not where I'm going into dark give in up. that's not where I'm going into warm crooks till morning.

Huma Abedin

Aue. An inhumed headman and numbed media badmen hide in a humid maiden bin. In amid dune – mien, mane; in amid bean – mead, haem and din. Uh, hi, adieu, I baa, and bam – a ham in bandeau be in behind me, nude, humane, dumb. I dub him adman, I dub him beadman. I aim and beam. He mad. He maenad. I dam and dim. In a nub, a nib: I’m mean, him an idea. I and he maun idem unbe.