Primitive State [excerpt]

Thingitation righteousness for pre-avail to drive away the mighty kraken

Put me in a room full of strangers and leave me alone

...cauldron in twine, disarray as fair game, keen ablution borne skeezed...

Forced into assertions by a lack of attention

...the warp we held out in readiness, taking wind off the table, the awe thus retrofitted
within the futility of cleanliness, that mere cost...

But I am not trying to achieve a general unity of impression, which anyway sounds like a
metaphysics of port authority

Clear-cut you are my enemy, alternate pen failing eternity

...bazaar residence, chatty folly, all perks, all codes...

If’n diffident glee

For the appearance of a glove, designed in wood to imitate a mama whooping crane from
the neck up, would prevent the little chick from being humanized by coming through a
hatch in the wall to commence feeding time

Where its nothing personal happens

Selling points envying the rim

The patter of claws as I upload Brahms in the dark

He demonstrated the location of his injury by touching the trainer’s parallel area

...video courtesies, seeing the quiddity a five-headed eagle brings to light, in a touch...

A late run at respectability about to come up short

Mellow radiation lulls with rosemary

T’aint

The window so far behind the what

...drums in the bleep, four savory flavors in mind, forgeries bloody coming after me...

It was indeed a terrible idea to lend a valuable book to a painter

Soon I must go to sleep and simulate someone at rest

Trilobite death wish to replace beer funnels downstairs with

She pours herself into recognition as if every moment is a new one

Should I hide the ointment from the truth

The industry of analyzing that which may

String straps suck

Should I gnaw on everything with my five pesky teeth

To sit back down still high amidst the aggro-squirrel set under amber street light, kid
asleep, paper catching drizzle, phone lurking in pocket

Standards, such as yours, don’t exist

...risers tracking reliquaries, gradations of skill at filling a thirty-second spot...

At some point it became spontaneous to have a plan

A daydream that everyone speaks only in acronyms

Copyright © 2013 by Anselm Berrigan. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on April 4, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.