Introduction to Black Polish, "a sometimes decipherable memory" of '68

"In order to analyse the rules for the formation of objects, one must neither, as we have seen, embody them in things, nor relate them to the domain of words; in order to analyse the formation of enunciative types, one must relate them neither to the knowing subject nor to a psychological individuality. Similarly, to analyse the formation of concepts, one must relate them neither to the horizon of ideality, nor to the empirical progress of ideas."

– Foucalt

So what if an invertibrated cockroach has juicy innards and an epidermis like fingernails? Your soft and supple skin is no sign of freedom from malignancy no matter the polish or hardner applied – it's just formaldehyde, not reverse english – whether scratching an itch or gouging out my eye 'cause that mosquito was no biting seductress, a glance in the wrong direction's always like a growing mutation, but only on the face of things reminiscent, and not there-by necessity, unpleasant. Only when you turn around at night has what was left behind become in front all right.

So what if the praying mantis had no free pass through pearly gates until decapitating the old man for saying rice shines no brighter and rocks no harder after any rumble in a tumbler? He lost his head for a hard roll in the bread bag, you spineless spider of revenge some would call my mother. Never mind to confuse a flour sack for silk and I'm supposed to say "it's pretty"? A sacrificial lie's not always over guilt – sometimes there are feelings underneath your tramping foot.

So speechless, dead posies grow in The Tumultuous Sea between audition and reception – I call them "poetry" – as a swell, wave or undulating resonance between noisy mounds wiggling "kathump, kathump" like the bottom of a boat. Should you fall off, it may not be a pretty pose except to slithering sharks whose spines are soft but well constructed like a high school yearbook with her glossless image on page 71, observed by Billy Bibbit.

So the black-death dots up close they spread out and at a distance, go gray, a shade we knew was blond instead, like daffodils all 'round a grave. The lips concealed the teeth so one could not discover what's inside her – to smile or no was a question to consider. There was always a supple depression about it one could not avoid sinking into forever. Never just distraction – that is, t'was unenhanced – we'd only met without an introduction – that is, it was by chance.

So each sequential miscarriage was a bloodied flush of miscreantic me. Could it be that call-up from my daughter, the one thought not to be was not another "whoops! wrong number", worried that I'd get too cold, my wits too long away at sea, a void of blackened columbines or lillies in the fray? Who has died? 'Twas never thee! If I should find it here and then again or there, why's it wrong to say it's everywhere, when still a memory's in my eyes, in this dismembered corpse which even you could never recognize.

So is it then my own remorse which clouds the daylight skies?

MY OLD SAL

In lieu of any salary, how 'bout this: a salutation with some salt for surging salivation sweat beneath some solar radiation? O'er the shoulder's just a cue to thank the heavens this old earth's still got an ocean and not a cursed expenditure or nuclear explosion.

– Salamander of Thump, 68 a.d. 'Güde Luk'