"I don't believe in birds."

These books ARE birds.

But which birds.

Those that fly in a straggling V shape over our town

				(don't say which town)

Don't believe in them.

Things have actually to be true to be
			declared so, truthfully.

And anything at all    declares itself.

The talking people
   (forget about what they say)

     still say 'talking people'

...

Silent knowledge.

The blue caboose goes by ...

Which is it?

               The other person?

Or is it the spirit?

  Something   we have all

     somehow got  to get linked on to...

                      What's wrong

with me?     I mean the REAL

me,  the REAL

wrong. Not the thing I used to worry all the

time about. {{still do}}

"Some unknown factor

awesome because of its simplicity

that is determining our fate"

...

What place is this that the sayings
  possibly have no sense at all?

False.  Moving through air.  Able to  read

words upon these pages

with the very sensitive bottoms

of their sensors

they know english very well  --

		the whole system

and some of the things they
pick up   conform
	   quite well
     to the rules they've learned --

...

The freedom to rule
lives
  and go on and on
without   knowing the limit
   for the trip
up into the dynamite
   caves
  to seek the loosenings

We [a calendar. And on it
    days marked
    out in
    a boring way

someone's head
  is turning into an elegant
       string pattern

    bald   no ears

you look away

at what?  We [

...

Someone is tracing its pattern
  in our business

    fidgeting,    going back
  and forth across earth
    a small distance
      but again
            again
             and again

   between two cities
          or between home
      in a house
            and town

[going to the closet to stuff away something]

going on a hunt
in the middle of the night
stalking something
stalking oneself
being oneself but being
       unable to find it

so taking some thing one likes
and going out
into the balmy atmosphere of the city alone
in order to find some object
reticent with destiny
to call one's own
by

A man
with the head of a fish
and only one eye
he was as big as a door
he kept us all as hostages
hostages for what though?
and he was always
     angry
      ironical
        and courteous
   he hated us
or needed to seem so        

it was real enough
but how it seemed
shifted so quickly
estimation seemed radically
humbled
beyond recall  

...

Though of course I don't fall
under the type
I am also
everybody
and must try
out all the
marks that happen to appeal to me
in order to complete my
                   special view
...

If you move your point a great amount
you could perhaps become a
large horse or another
beast or a train
in the dawn
with boxcars but if you move
it only a small amount you become
another kind of person fat
if you aren't taller if
you are tall
...

They keep changing
how old you are
right in front of your face
outside two people
you think are themselves --
disappear too slowly for that

...

The monster likes one of us.
Which? Not to destroy but to use
for purposes we can't understand
exactly but we do
his bidding with an attitude
anyway

...

(the whole world
   that monster - how
 things (according to us)

	are

			forcing
				the matter
					of our lives

...

Now you are his slave  [stove]
You can never leave the house.
There is no way to outsmart an Unknown Intelligence.
Stay put and listen.

...

And the proof is spaces existent between us
and in them
things
that are not strings
not strung on lines like beads
but people   whose heads
are dogs   or gods
who mean things
coming and going
out
 by radiant design
themselves the products
of their own content
whose bodies are signs
  of the news they carry
they are coming from everywhere
 they are moving like heat
rising from the street
in the middle of the night
without hurry
 doing the bidding of their
inmost alarm
 and returning
to cities whose avenues
 whose exchanges
  whose patrols

elaborate   identities

...

"An alien system of memory had invaded me."

Or no. It was my own.

Or I had changed my CHORDS
that I might now insert
myself   into what
hitherto had been another's narrative.

You are seated where you are
         or walking
   or lying in an unclean room
or in an office
 with  brown chairs
or in a shop
  under the steady gleam
or in a barren place
  avoiding the janitors
or under the pressure of passionate circumstances

...

You are standing
  on the edge
    of a high cliff
  overlooking an interesting valley where a river
 hidden by the forest
    nevertheless displays
     the structure of its meandering
         through low hills

		  out   to another world