II. How excess fails to exceed

a) it can be relegated

Cause
a blinking—a bloody doll, her half-moon lashes
black despite the blond
blondness—her batting of them recognition
of boundaries (she cannot suffer) even
as she transgresses them—but

these are not true these boundaries
exceeded so easily.

b) it is an endlessly, repeating, a hem

There’re those who recognize
by its strangulation-face excess
and call it strategy.

cough in the theater, buttons
eyes of an earlier kind of dying
doll named Effigy

For others who do not see it
or who can only

red dress, lace too at the neck
tight and sexual in the very
dead way

—excess is the dismissed
obscene (shock-ka-shock
sake). Valueless.

c) is there a response that thinks?

Here one wants: a joke about the dedicated ceramics
a bowl-shaped inversion of face
so ulti-feminate, ex-tra-la-la-crescent, so moon.

Or, to put it another way—a way
acknowledging
excess’s physical and wet manifestation (so much
sibilance, many esses):

concavity of porcelain--the face proper
and feces immune, if one uses
a simple cloth

excess is continually aiming
to exceed its own transgressions into
what space? Punch line: tile floor.

d) is it a replacement? a mis-membered or carried child? or

We know theoretically infinity
redundant, Sisyphean infinity (essesque)
but also—like a narcotic—
ratcheting up and up and up the hill until
synapses run out. Our wells
finite. Even of ooze.
Not new, this shooting up in the loo.

—not to, emphatically not, not to
argue restraint
only effect—

We want shock not to numb, shock
with sake—a resonance—the old frog-sound, vinegar
inside wells up like rice wine, unprepared for: the
doll not a doll—limbed or limbless—
but the. Limp, mute, singular. The
doll visibly (you are meant
to see it) loved, meaning
meaning, and the doll leaking excess instead
of blood (oo unheard) from its masquerade, you
are meant to see it selfless
and dry
leaking what was sawn and packed into
its fabrics to make the doll be
oo-tiful
excess I wish it
was, could be, the seen dust—the dust drawn
from live trees in serration then pumped
into dead
doll—this whore of
what excess will not show.
excess cannot be believed: whether or not the doll
is in actuality a live boy
or a fish, excess
--it prevents investment.

Excess makes dolls of. Dolls who
cannot be killed again anoo.

Here: a safety pin punctures a fingernail with ants
for blood. Also: the last boyfriend adjusts
an elastic blackband (pinned corsage) just above
your elbow—I suppose a husband has died. Or
Audrey again. Audrey of course here dies
all the time. Often, a gun. In hospital corners,
at breakfast, in dancer poses, you can just
remember trying to feed her, sometimes
zirconia, sometimes the real sharps—medical—or
the pre-real: coal. Also ice. Meant for an old
bitch with a virus (Spinster). Audrey’s face smudged
and bituminous or blown off altogether is still
still luminous. What was it you’ve come to
recover? An itch? Not rhymes, although some
book of ill-considered ones half-hides beneath
searchlights aimed at you in birches shook
from leaves like upright bones. Nor was it
your maimed and perfect sisters, crones, yet
with ivory teeth bleached, and skin like
churches—taut with money and that ballerina way
of pulling back the hair (a thousand blacktrap
bobbypins). There, in the heap you hate: a plate
cracked, grandmum’s wedding pattern. The rot
of yellow mums. A comb. A room. The blind date
with gloves leaving soot spattered on damask in
heiroglyph. It reads: he is gone. Perhaps you are
to root out some pattern from these errors. It may be
terror resurrects itself from here to just below
truth. Suppose a husband has died. You cannot
hope to keep it under sleep. Knowing will creep
and creep and finally drop. A cinderella shoe.
A stain. Birches in the dark (cemetery pins,
paper peeling--in kindling, white or skeletal
again like Audrey). To help, and help you burn.

drugged down the hall

the nightgown
she the hologramma
older than lace

halled down the night
gone sheet, the holy
grammar, the door

laced up the neckgown
shyly the hole, the
grandma orders drugs

over the phone
she wants them all

droves of white
bees. she

wears an apron of bees in all
rooms. dips hand

down into their cotton zum
fetching scissors

in withdrawal finds
dozens, points steeped

in entrail, the hand—
a glove over the hand. below

weaponless brides sigh
fat on the tile. and dying.

to do the domestic day
is: bringing bees at children

an imploring reserve. go

way. faces swollen at bee height
do not her. hear

bee sign. the
cotton, in some how, escapes them

they bee deaf

white honey clings to them
all, a glazed slick-

ness, the house’s faces
a runway for dreambodies the white

bees, round the round
mother to globe her they

must. this be the process
by which she comes

willblind, willmute to white
bee queen. zum.

the book of famous women

who is a, what, what is a famous woman?

then. you don't know one...

one? one what? what is it?

a famous woman.

no. at least if I knew what that was, maybe, but no. no.

what famous men do...

martin luther king jr.

right. and...

lincoln and washington because of money and the slaves and the tree and lying and dale ern...

who?

dale. the guy...

the guy who...

who was fast, walled his car and died right there on youtube and then...

and then?

and then that's why his son won that race.

first position

Charlie Chaplin was a great
man, no Elizabeth
the first, mind you, but nonetheless
impressive. Always
I've admired his natural reticence
to speech
and the tails. In my heart he stands
for something alongside comedy, some
substance either wet or not
whole, with tears in it: a country.

Funny
how funny gets you action
in, or out of the business. Ask
a poet. Ask a homeless, a bum, a bum's
dream. In mine he stands
heels in, toes out, he demands
a certain attitude
toward laughter—you must until
it hurts or you die
spinster to his genius.
Which is, confidentially, no longer
genius, but
is still endemic to
the Hitlerian moustache. Golf clap.

to be
crushed, there was a red there
the size and shape of
which, foreign--
a flayed fist or butterflied
children's version do not approximate
the thing that
beat, crushed within
a standing male a walking barely
speaking male but not a crime those
refusals, we cannot consider
crime to be
(the undone, the predone)
red ties our hands
with chains a door is dressed for exit
a same
face was day after
day red with exit but not able
to be read
a crushedness to it that
exed it
now asks us what pulps us, what
do we do, now, or want to
but see horror, more
more of it, it

to waltz and e

there were white
I believe they were
white deer
on 96 but I'm no good
with numbers
military ground something
to do with young men about
or wanting to die I
mustn't neglect though
I mustn't the women
or deer, the dear deer
I did not see the dear
manuscript
read but never
sent back so hard
hard for me
full of children as
I was then a white deer
is pure, no?, and also
there are too many
kill them a redundancy
is work repetitive in odd
ways a woman who made
breakfast in ithaca before
leaving for california
she had a boy and
poems she read stein
and told us lovingly of
white deer I can't know
did I see them on 96
but I am sorry
so, for being late in my
life to make a response
or even muffins

rules I have
been broken
marrow
causes delirium
I'm told don't
believe it
if you question
there are
vaults meant
to trouble
at the very yeast
your sleep
the bread of you
wrapped in
a blanket
rug a tourniquet
do not obey