-There will be no

+ characters
+ narratives
+ metaphors
+ images
+ symbols

Residents of an ocean liner, driven to restless flings and superficial passions as their promised approach
to shore gets repeatedly suspended.

Pre-adolescent alone in a church basement rifles through carelessly assembled heaps of musty
paperbacks with torn covers and frayed corners. Noticing one with copious notes in the margins
(scrawled hastily with a drying felt tip pen), they fold it under their jacket and return upstairs.

She pressed all of her weight down onto her left elbow as she described to her social worker that she was
able to physically feel her brain pulse when her instincts were interfered with. She said it was a process
she developed over the course of many early hours trying to codify communication with her unseen self.

A pathway.

Ticking clock, rotary telephone, cake knife, porcelain ash tray. She breaks the tip off another pencil
trying to create a cypher. Previous attempts at codes and translations withdraw in her memory as she
tightens her concentration. She is aware that she is unblemished in this moment. Abruptly, she starts
reading the newspaper. The headlines form a confused collage about co-opting the transfer of control.
Living in history. The past as a waiting room. A purgatory for poorly trained animals.

An explorer who discovers a new land and plants their flag has no responsibility to share this news with
their mother country.

The explorer retains their rights to observe and stage rituals for any protracted incubation period as their
studies dictate.

An enforcer lists all available facts convinced their activities serve as a barrier for order.

Patent purchasers. Pleas for transparency. An enforcer operates to deliver a verdict with no obligation
to prove a link between accuracy of findings and means of understanding.

An enforcer is a weaponless assassin. An enforcer insists they are the first pioneer.

After each evening rain, the drippings get preserved, for either research, or raw materials.

Holder watches hunting videos

Is inspired to buy a gun
Holder spends weekends at the firing range
Sets notifications for pertinent updates
Sees a man committing a hideous act and remains still
Holder watches hunting videos, becomes his twin

The enforcer as silent partner calls their modest home bought at public auction a mansion. The enforcer
installs surveillance equipment that assures their omnipresence. Having achieved this feeling, the
enforcer laughs themselves to sleep.

She imagines her tongue bulging into a ripe plum with reptilian skin while she runs. Her pores can exhale
for her on land or underwater. She pulls out a razor and slits holes in car windows.

An explorer can extract all available data without fear of taking on the form of its source-
-The morning’s diamond eyes glance back to the retreating night/Its recollections rattling like titanium
prizes/While seeing swallows hide behind clouds

Every condensed view is a pact or proposition

The ocean moves

immense and unworried
that someone will try to challenge it
to extinguish their torch and
satisfy their inclinations

An unanticipated shift in climate

causing signals to dissipate
into cackling static,
torrents implode into ice

Lost in the projections, are the flickering attitudes

and climactic dimensions

Patience

The tension lessened, the explorer

striding through thin hovering fog
while receiving encrypted statistics about
disseminating energy and particles
and living one step left of law

When the explorer was young, their friend killed a queen ant and laughed at
The other ants running frantically around the corpse

Stunned at the realization

that he was encircled
by the unreachable
the explorer can disappear into outlets
Children
as cheap electronics
the way to route out
was to present
a sequence of indistinguishable
mosaics, obfuscate interpretations
with no deprivations or consequences…
…to leave leaks forming

Then…the aim was plain

advertise yourself as an erudite upcoming sophisticate
which would be accomplished through cultivating opinions
on topics such as economics, ancient civilizations, contemporary fashions, and modern literature

there was never a worry that the

loose apparatuses of these perspectives
could be bastardized
where the predictions and warnings could be
reconciled with a record of recent events
The mandate was clear. The first clarity in many years.
everyone had to purge their assigned personas
any inherited religion, political leanings or
deference to authority figures had to be erased
the basic inanities of grooming and greetings
could be disregarded or derided
you could evade invasive questions
replies no longer had to be forced into paragraphs
or even need to be realistic
if the inquisitor was not worthy of respect

A simple photograph of a landscape

blurs into fractions of distortions
the faintest grain of the original
imperceptible to anyone but the manipulator

A photograph enclosed in glass

the explorer rubs birch seeds against the
smooth surface, thinks continuously
about which pictures they would capture
capture then release
unceasing propulsion toward
junkyards and insectival sacs
the photograph enclosed in glass
is less than one half of what the eye
buries deep in the explorer’s consciousness

The movies of the mind aren’t enough

On the rooftops we met the moon and

extended our arms. The body became sacred.
Black and green heartbeats. No statues required.-

-Cardboard panels held in place by cracking masking tape.

A makeshift memorial, spiritless cemetery.

An overturned table, garbled audio recordings, and soap lather.

Throwing vases from windows, hearing them shatter. Midnights in wigs, makeup, furs, and high heels.
Broken storefronts, algae covered money flung across counter tops.

A crude rendering of a burning flag. Cutlery knocked to the carpet. Celebratory dancing in dark rooms.

Strangled skulls under stiff hair

inflexible thoughts
cloaked as terror

A mite struggling across dried glue

writhing and boring
to find what isn’t solid

Unopened book
brought into the kitchen
hissed with suggestion

Spat against a wall to wipe away a stain

On the banks of the Potomac
was a temporary re-creation of speakers corner
the embedded fundamentals of the parent
culture now vivid and confrontational
the rejoinders not at all forthcoming
until a demanded stammering
altered into a quieter threat of violence

The enforcer had his approved justifications. His cruelty and perplexity
yearned for an explosion. A flush of his dormant proclivities.
The rest of his waking hours were stretched
with an arid sourness. An irritation that throbbed at the top
of his cervical vertebrae. What was left of his curiosity sat like encrusted bolts
behind his eyes. An angry raven hoping to plunge and
peck out chunks of young tissue.

Punched in the bicep until he grew uninterested. No intervention. The individual who was ambivalent
about having been born, affected being bored.

Punched to the floor, then mauled, until adults intervened. A late show everyone in the room watched. I
watched.

It was easy to recognize the enforcers with their crisply condescending countenance. Their banal objects
such as binders and staplers were wielded like firearms. It was easy to avoid the obvious.

The enforcer is disguised as the purest incorruptible antidote

The corrective swinging rope

The dilated pupil of absolution

Walking into your sketches. Sighing in your closet.

Loss of legislation, films without frames

Loss of restriction, language is mystery (or performance)

Sound transposed on graph paper. Measured, then left unobserved for organic variation-

-Their statements may be magnified into joyless drops

Their actions may be magnified into a stilted bow
But punishments leave you immaculate if you resist food from their earth

A warehouse filled with matches meekly faces the sun

Staring in the mirror again. Its lines and patches swim in endlessly moving puzzles as the potassium
spots on their teeth pass like amoebas. Draws a question mark on their cheek. Scours a bisected
blueberry against an emery board.

A fleeting infection, increasing unease, a vigorous scrubbing of the back of the head. What’s left can
hardly breathe on its own and offers a weak handshake to its kin.

When they would talk to themselves

the etymology was uncontested
and unedited, free of dread, free of the need to be understood, free of the need to be articulate

When they were heard talking to themselves

what followed were disparate ideas
about automatically generated embryos
cynical ringmasters
commands that lay still and
gardens that grow wildly and overtake alleys
They were asked if they had been talking to themselves
and what followed was a jeering yet
ineffectual sing song rhyme

Loudly intoning the barely coherent plot of a novel

pausing to write a letter, which was then
placed into a tin cannister

Asked to clarify one’s deeds

proved to be an impossible request
no instances to be exposed, no motive to be considered-

-When talking to themselves

they would often rephrase questions
they overheard others asking
Are you a bigot?
Are you unarmed?
Are you making a comparison?

Asked to clarify one’s dialect

proved to be an impossible request
no instances to be re-enacted, no play being crafted

The view of the main yard can be seen only

through a lens that works in reverse
reducing scope and making faces anonymous
a cold nerved inversion of the first intention
procedural mockery, burying of degrees,
mimic of belief that only
ends when all agree this is all they can see

Isolation squirms in her trachea

and it will never resolve
tenses her jaw to stay compliant

The interim professor denied himself consolation

and limited his classes to male only attendance
he slashed the syllabus to allow
for his lectures on what situations
were appropriate for his students to don masks
and terrify each other in darkness

Unfinished forsaken productions

unmourned by the public, owners, and aesthetes
spilling white wine in a graveyard
a legal den of thieves

Tarnished violet brass spoons

balanced on the sprained wrists
of a frightened appellate judge
senator flicking at an abacus 75 miles away

The view of the main yard

is populated with sagging leaves and
tiny bones sticking up from the parched ground

The warden’s search for language about language

ends with an empty envelope in his safe
The warden’s wife discontentedly
displays her self-inflicted gashes
as proof that her flesh will only ever
be a victim of her psyche

The warden lit the effigy after forcing his way through the mob
The sheriff who normally oversaw such gatherings backed away
And as the fire ran rampant, people furiously threw refuse into each other’s mouths

The warden’s wife stared at her dog’s engorged stomach while

picturing its distended liver circling inside, she knew that
soon she’d have to seem amused and pose for portraits

The warden’s wife maintained that any state sanctioned

writings or paintings submitted for their exhibition
be first personally reviewed by herself and a
handful of experts. The matters they ruminated on were
Will this offend our sponsors?
Does this creation portray a positive outcome?
Is this a story we are willing to tell?
the exhibition itself was met with muted plaudits
patrons noted themes of helplessness rehearsal,
internalized tyranny, oppressor obsession,
denunciation outbursts, and complications in
conflicted diatribes. A small number of visitors
noted entries that were particularly unconvincing
since they had conspicuous deficiencies in incisive brevity

List of entertainers
List of equipment
List of local ordinances
List of lighting cues
List of techniques used
List of listeners listening
to each other listening

The painting hanging on the wall is sacred

It is a pardon from subjugation

it is the escape from age
its information contains an antenna
that connects spine to space

Its information can be stolen

and hidden in guest bedrooms
behind gilded fixtures
its information can be frozen
and examined in decontaminated
temperature controlled vaults-

-Everyone gets scarred by the vocational abstinence

that happens when an arrogant soul disagrees that molecules
getting reconfigured into shapes of radio waves can
transmit past time and place and each entry, each
submission is met with sternly inexpressive non sequiturs
Full immersion in a
new atmosphere and exterior
one wider than a planet volunteering
oxygen, gold, and shelter
sweat that dissolves against the wall
a cave in a mountain, a tunnel in a white dwarf
quarries holding sunken canyons and
shipwrecks that affects the heat of lurking phantoms
and climbers blinded by their own nearsightedness

Life of a voyeur
Self-invited chronicler
hushed and obedient to the minute

The unformed force of youth

fluid light beams
urgent voices unleashed whilst leaping

When enforcers subject

nature to inhibition and
act as welcoming ventriloquists
before inert dismissal
and forgetfulness encroaches
(The informed force of youth with the spirit
for reclamation of impressions
can penetrate the latent rites in cells
and birth the reappearance of selves

For those whose center and circles do not match)

Misery is a mirage
the generic visual signifiers
well dressed
moderately expensive automobile,
shrewd career decisions
give no meaningful indication of psychological affinities
or ability to will oneself to
traverse invisible scenery and
comb the chosen artifacts

Misery is necessary
given to illusions and
grand pronouncements
and the validated desire to take up arms
principled sincerity
receives an equally earnest response
though hard to hear through stifled laughter
unburdened by exploitation
scornful of discrimination

From embers
white horses returned from illness
sanctified and cured
petition put to the priest
was damned as parody
and a dearth of elucidation around
ways to differentiate between
visitation and abduction, finally
left one to wonder if self-possession was worth seeking
The tips of Grecian pottery
wait to be seen in museums
solitary sculpture standing in the gallery hallway
music silently rests in the bell of a horn
words whisper to each other on the page
the spine of the person without a notion
turns rotted and charred
and twists off, snapping away from the brain
leaving it to float as speckled runny yolk

Solo performance for no audience

on a gleaming alabaster stage
that from the opera boxes seems to be yellowing
from exposure to the antique amber lighting
suddenly people push through
the enormous heating grates
and tumble through the aisles
an orgy begins
the stage is ignored

The point and purpose of the enforcer

is in constant identification
instant and unable to wash away
the components of unremarkable choices
branded into a plywood plank
then copied, distributed, and saved

The enforcer adopts the posture of a scholar

to test chemical combinations
as a form of comedic relief
while advising spectators
of behaviors to remain mindful of
in case they mistakenly uncover evidence

The explorer is liquid

and can rush more stealthily
than a snake past its prey
softly cradling secrets while
withholding no solutions

A culture of explorers
winding through locks
their practices seen as
obscure or nonsensical while
abandoning the abuse of truth

The explorer provides an account of experiences

The enforcer prefigures the briefest number of conclusions

The explorer can learn all language forward and backward

The explorer can use all language forward and backward

The enforcer says these skills are a menace

The enforcer decries lack of methodology

The explorer knows there are no guides in ecstasy

The enforcer divides categories

The explorer is infinitely everything innately anything
In the end, one may look at a sheet of
butcher Paper and say
I saw disconnected dots in random primary colors
I see palm print patterns emerge-

-What I saw along the way+

Credit cards vanish from people’s hands

Confessionals burst into smog

A laboratory assistant transmogrify into a silver bar

A director transmogrify into a sugar cube

Dehydrated wheat become an impassive crowd

A hammer become a seductress

An omitted name lead a council and

the council leader sit beside a sword

Factory sourced protein revive wildlife

A sanctuary and its altar coded

in a duet of idioms and contexts

One camera overhead, one at eye level

no panning, filters or other effects

The footage to only be viewed unspoiled by cuts and scratches

The shrine behind the post office filled with

the remnants of fertility ceremonies

Scattered gems, sapphire pins, knives pointing out from tree trunks

Stagnant water stuck to frogs and worms

The Father pulled beets and carrots from the dirt

The Mother fused minerals with collected metals

The Father and Mother recited Shakespeare from memory

She said into his shoulder “I fear missing precision”

He said into her neck “I fear I say too much too quickly”

Foreign correspondent pondering how to explain occurrences to viewers they’ll never comprehend

Southern transplant wandering the east coast for a tavern or pool hall that resembles the neighborhoods
they were raised in

Freshman searching for unmarked architecture off campus

Village elder sore and calloused after issuing blessings

Exhausted matador walking through a desolate stadium on unsteady legs

Teenagers murmur to each other in the back row

of the school bus…
The star of David and birthday streamers
Rice paddies and ball point pens
Thumbtacks and valleys

The shuddering candle

The cobalt blue plug

confusing the senses

into feeling arbitrary emotions

Generous and divine initial atoms

to fluctuate between mediums
and restoration of ratios

The explorer who cannot travel can tear into soil or erect a tower
The explorer is able to see the bend in the end of a galaxy

Identical guards and

family members decorating
after an outdoor cremation

Namesake and heir

quoted while exiting
the governor’s limousine

Child laying back

on bathroom tiles
pouring warm water over their chest

Distant noise of sliding

steel interrupts watching
broadcast of sociopath’s parole hearing

Daybreak on the curated

pasture, bottles of chlorine
and a row of wrenches

The teacher was upset

that the pupil had contradicted their key argument
twitchily turning in bed
powerless to stop their churning cognizance
later, the pupil apologized
and added it was for survival
survival of the motion, of the result

Blankets spread across the brush

weighted with polished mirrors

Bare branches reaching down

sundials formed by their shadows

A pair of eyes sees its reflection

off the aluminum finish

Anne, Mary, and William

stand in front of each other

Doors are open, documents found

everyone chooses a room
“Source Mission” and “The Needles” written by Richard Millett © 2019 Published by Fluxlife Inc.

“Source Mission”- Written on light

“The Needles”- Written on water

Photography, Layout, & Design- Earl Todteman

Conceptual Continuity- Earl Todteman

scribd.com/Fluxlifeinc
youtube.com/user/Fluxlifeinc
[email protected]
makethingseasy.blogspot.com
Other titles in this series:
Radar/Grain- Tracing The Dim Signal- Water b/w Fingernail In My Salad- Scatter- Scatter/Mild Life/T. & W.- Life Isn't Hard
b/w Mild Life- The Aluminum Farm- The Zen Transference Manual- It Went Red- The First Four Years- Splish!- The
Splish! Supplement- Splish Reconsidered- Swim To The Center- Oranges- Present- Communism Is Grand- The Sampler-
Statements Anti Statements- Sunrise On The Caina Islands- Remember b/w Thank You- Your Future Your Freedom- This
Is What Freedom Looks Like- God Bless The Guests At The Banquet- Salt Or Light- Laughter At The Wake b/w 49 Day
Process- Always, All The Time b/w Miss You In The Morning- Sacrifice The Satellite b/w Milky Skies- The Female
Perspective- Outsider Envy- Anachronisms- Sunspots b/w Teleconverter- Fold Down Parts 1 & 2- Fold Down Parts 3 & 4
-The docks seventy feet in back of me as the sun rotated into the cloudless mid sky
I saw “You should keep my letter so that it serves as a reminder”
carved into a sixteen foot long block of pink limestone

In front of me was a sea of black hair and white fabric

a man in iguana colored boots was a private parade
the air was damp and smelled like salty sediment, a sandpiper coughed into my ear

In prior decades, this would have been a confined testing environment

stacked with medical supplies and sterilized instruments
while bleached cotton strips turned the skin around my nails lighter

Pried out of the wilderness

of incestuous dreams, ripped posters
and unreliable oral histories

Deer curled up in sandy shallow puddles

trails of red ants eating holes
through discarded cabbage

Soft green eyes undress uniforms

before entrance into a former Methodist church
with baby blue walls and royal blue sacristy doors

Reptile eggs eaten by a small group of women

who then wash their hands in citrus saturated water
and wrap their fingers with copper wire

And a monument at dusk

surrounded by silence
outlined with jagged stones and chipped jewelry

Fox hunters riding by

with a new hound who they yell at and threaten to whip
as each of its tentative selections are rejected

The lord mayor’s houses, built to buttress against resistant forces

all emit a slow swollen syrup that pools
and then runs downhill to the manmade lake

Unobstructed view and pristine wings

piercing siren as though it was a
current or call to worship-
-A chalice filled with tarantulas
a flag pole wavering in its stand
chicken’s eyes rolling sideways as they travel at unnatural speeds

Cigarette smoke blown into a bowl of strawberries

fingerprints left in wet paint
fresh milk pumped from each breast

My friend who can foresee pregnancy

and electricity through a wall and has their moods move
like montages in a film

My friend without terminology

whose nature is a catapult
who can walk through a maze without a fever

My friend who finds destiny

dancing on purple and pink nights
with dirt around their ankles

From the upper window

I witnessed a slow splintering
of demonic demonstrations

In my right hand were coins melted together

on my feet were shoes of another
as I checked the tags on my clothes to learn my identity

Through the upper window across seven streets

into the parking lot where disused missiles decompose
diagonal gold and gray roads sprayed clean of tar and debris

Low flying planes obscure the upper window

where a virginity pageant marches from the shower
and concludes with forearms rested on the top rung of a ladder

Breathless dizziness
reading large handmade maps
desperate for hydrogen, dull bulbs, and shovels, eyes closed for hours-
-All deaths are a cataclysm
rinse the plaque from your mouth
cut long muslin swathes and give them away

All deaths are a cataclysm

rinse the cement
don’t try to trace ghosts

All deaths are a cataclysm

and what stands are bloody trees
deciphering the wordless moans

The invisible dust

falling on a table in the woods
swept away in haste

The invisible dust

falling on a chain link fence at the border
wafted away before it rusts

The invisible threads

woven around nurses’ legs
while administering instructions to infants

The invisible threads

coursing through fibrous recall
innocence is wasted on the inexperienced

Each spec
is an unnoticed city
an English symmetrical opening

Each strand
is a bird on the river
in a King’s Indian Defense

Wax seal stamps poured onto a clock

while its mechanisms start surging
go into the unpaved adjacent highways and remember-
-Remember for the benefit of whom?
the sermon restated
to sleeping citizens, weary from work

Remember for the benefit of whom?

a lion in a tent
gnashing the last of its dinner

Remember for the benefit of whom?

a slouching, passive general
inept at telling a catalog from blueprints

Protective exoskeleton
exclusive phone booth opposite the swimming pool
in a home in Beverly Hills, constructed in the late 40’s

Watery exoskeleton
fluttering drama as the mounted trophies change colors
when passing trains sound their whistles

Sensory exoskeleton
in parks of dewy, gently curved hills, designed
by anxious architects to absorb all tastes and scents

No one reaction
or army of thought
no weaning or well-meaning practice

Can smudge or even expunge

the unadorned evidence
in the immeasurable elements

And now a grasp

toward a cataract of menstruation
stored in a triptych of cases

Tender veils
lift lightly in the breeze
briefly betraying the horses’ forward focus

Confirmed miracles
in the dial tones droning
from underneath the unexplored isles

A cherry, a maiden, a cup

and I lay down for now
hopeful the parcels I sent arrive on time