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Robert Sheppard

 
from Neutral Drums: Six Formal Poems

Duocatalysis 15
C20 Blues 37

 
 

          Part 3

          Implosive Samples: Exploded Sestina

          Entries 2


 
Neither neutral nor neuter, loaded with explosive self-evidence

Brain homunculi fossilise. Imitate me: invent me

I die with the animal, not recondition with the machine. Adult cellular bliss

*

My identity problem isn't yours. It's bedtime bliss with hinges. Joints

Unrobed, she walks towards her throne, pregnant with an unloosed virus. Phantasmal bodies enter metaphorically leave

The dream of one suspect quivering to become two. Tonight I'll shift into something comfortable, a comet

*

 
 

Your android dreams of explosive surgery, a neural net. Bliss can only be repetition and change: drainage bliss

This shift dissembles, full of empty behaviour. Soliloquise unrobed, flesh quivering its message: your flat incapability, for example

Noise in the picture. A holocaust of objects in this twentieth century-and-a-half. Untraceable trace. Puppet fucks

*

Pushing angels to the ceilings. No substitute for a day. Send a picture postcard home

Drums explosive in the tottering future, with knowing chaos. Is this, then, a new identity?

She sucked bliss into him. An idea is bliss inhibited, inhabited. The human scents in mutuality. O lick that parting smile pulls on the empty

Unrobed you wear your gloss and the neurons repeat: unrobed, the graveyard shift

*

Shift to a new line of enquiry. A building so quiet it is invisible. Or is until

As if in the eyes, enter by the exit, inhibited exhibition, reverse annotations

Concepts, enter an audience, cannot step unrobed into the same theory twice

What if bliss were see-through? All men are created stained, breaking voice and wind. Sleaze jellies quiver

*

Narrative gravity holds us, muscular lips quivering with threat. A left handed shift in melodic complacency. We're two, brewing hormones. A shift-accelerated bliss, limbs flying apart

A history of feeling: my eyes enter a clause entire, stream. O shred your light

An explosive creak through a whisper of sensation. Apart, you enrobe these hesitant acts. A mobile one-ness

*

Unrobed in dreams my lady moans complaint; her lips delineate excess

Shift the univeral trick, searching for our quivering uniqueness. Its other life trembles

A bridge trills, explosive. Bliss rims detonate the centre. Enter
 

February - December 1997
Robert Sheppard


You can read Robert Sheppard's discussion of "Twentieth Century Blues", the series from which these poems are taken, in this issue of Jacket.

 
 


 
J A C K E T  # 9 
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