On Pain (draft/unfinished)

 

As the spring dries up, the fish live on land, wetting each other with their spit and froth. 

Zhuangzi, Book VI 

The living vent on the dead their despair that they no longer give thought to themselves. 

Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment

Pain is not rooted in the unique human linguistic capacity for a generative syntax.

Dave Pearce 

On the top surface bivouac 

poetry pizzles out anaesthesiologists 

& its unfreedom avenues are shut

sonnets on sonnets 

faecal floral political disintegrations

but calling it ‘My Life’ 

after the secession the exodus 

the orchards then exit gates 

gardenia-scented 100 flacons 

to minimise pain but imagine 

this happening at the Russian Imperial Court

orris to the same creature 

year after year day after day

minute after minute

sapping welts in civet rooms

at the HQs of luxury brands 

with extra-thick doors 

preventing it from seeping out 

polluting the rest of the building

the abolition of suffering 

knotting round gentle euphoriants

from the lakes later states 

are explained through 

reference to earlier states gradients

from ethers huge traffic 

beyond the Arctic Circle

the earth covers earth 

in the drydown 

fir needles hyacinth 

bitter chuds of air 

inside the cardinal importance 

of delayed gratification

diminished ambrettes 

go back to the start 

cruelty-free beach 

once mined lasts forever,

pain is what the person says hurts