The Plural of Unconscious, or Painting The Forth Bridge
Single example in the OED of its use
being owned, at least,
by a volitional subject, is Norman
Mailer, of all people, havering,
‘but that may be my
unconsciouses speaking.’
Living ten flights up, the sky’s traffic
comes to displace street
level stuff, the raptors, bush planes,
passenger jets,
pigeons and orange fire
balls NE to SW over Scarborough.
They activate the canvas’s upper third,
enviably chalky northern
light rinses the middle strip, and children’s
screams, deprived as they are
of transitional objects, buoy up
the base from down here.
We’ve learned in the past, haven’t we,
to mark how
usage warps held belief. Warped
or mistaken usage bakes
belief into the user as raisins
into despicable loaves
of un-bread. Unchecked, we’re eyeing the bedouin
in the cassoulet. Tying flogged
friars to a bull’s rack before salting the tinker’s
dray horse. Chiellini, not
Keano, has the face of a condottiere;
Roy’s is that of a galloglass, as a friend
put it, in her key note at Caius College. Who doesn’t
enjoy putting Alan fucking
Bennett in his place? Lemons weigh
green on lemon trees between
Monterosso and Riomaggiore. Olives
in ground nets. The Via del’ Amore
taken by landslide in 2011—small losses.
You may feel, in your Eureka
Jump Seat, time is on your side
but have a look at Rod Stewart
now. Where are the faces who tore
at our youth as hawks
into possum? Not vacationing
on the Bosporus, I’d wager.
My brother contracted scabies, leaving the
ringworm to me. Shocked
twin chimps opening green
hymnals until service let out.
The green bled out. Gram stains
ID’ing what type of cells
we’d be, or become whatever pathogenetic
later strain. May all
Christendom remember them.
And genuflect, as Beck might do
at the loss of even one plectrum
from the shark’s smile
biting into the chrome of a mic stand.
You may think I meant Jeff.
I didn’t. No one did. The strobes
and engrams have an effect.