From the journal of the anonymous writer “P. K. W.”, published by his family after his suicide. Included with his original notes.
[Note (near-illegible, in the page-margin): Pain pain make it stop make it stop]
[Note (in script): Take an old work and make as crystal-seed. Old works know long pain. From it expand lengthwise two ways, up and down. Thusly do crystal-poems grow.]
[Note (in script): Norton Crit. Ed. Hav. Poetry 2005 p. 35]
BRAINFIRE.
Sharp illuminous pain of dawn of ice of easter-coming fire!
You come and dance and make merry the loss of true fathom’d desire!
Make of the world a vast and airy plain, and remain
Unable to find one to point you the way
No, my feet are better as roots, good sir
And my head’s better on a pike.
MIDNIGHT IN THE CITY.
Midnight comes to the roofs
To the ruined palace, to the drunks and to the serpentine streets
Midnight comes to the sleeping, to the drowned, to the dancers loud and gay
Midnight does not come to me
To be in the city is to face the locked door, the closed alley
The unwelcome face, the shuttered house
To be in the city is to wander alone
There is no home within the city
There is no home in earth and ash and bone
City takes up living dying breathing crying
Wraps it up in light, light to ward against the dark
Light, tis how you know the night has come
But that light is not for me
My eyes are hungry as I wander these streets
Looking for a sliver of friend or foe
But the lights show me nobody
Give me dark instead, for in the dark
I might run up against an old acquaintance, and pass unknowing
Rather than risk the unturned face
The unanswered word
The unnatural fact that I am singular, indivisible, discrete
Alone
THE SCHOOL LUNCH-TABLE.
Survey the scene, a thousand sets of eyes.
But nine-hundred ninety-nine are not for you!
The groups have collated, singular, indivisible, discrete
There is not slit, no sliver, no path in
Tis the pains and tribulations of childhood
Now take that moment and form a life.
TIME.
The sweeping hand of time descends, and wipes the moments from the trends
From three shots it makes a Kuleshov purgatory.
What then? What then?
Do you chance disaster again?
Or stand athwart the empty waste and demand a moment of precious light?
Light’s for others don’t you forget.
It’s easier to write with misery and regret.
DIVISION.
A man is in a thousand synocapted parts divided.
A voice a trend a hand an eye a wink the parts they do descend
Quoth Althusser thus do manners and motives maketh man
I write best in misery and regret
That human part, drop it and then ascend
To realms purer than that, and solve the problems that Man desires
Make yourself a god, a god’s worth an infinity of pain, no?
A god’s capacity for pain is infinite
UNITY.
Eudaimonia. Curse it! Worse it!
Can’t even eat, what’s the point of it!
It stays the wandering hand, that begs the knife
To end misery and regret
No, you have work to do, you’re not done just yet.
So take the parts and weave ‘em
Till you’re done and do deceive ‘em
Make a man from the ashes, and drive
The rest from your idle head.
ENVOI.
Sharp illuminous pain of dawn of ice of easter-coming fire!
You come and dance and make merry the loss of true fathom’d desire!
You are welcome here.