Corruption / Discretion / Consumption
this infinite and enduring work: one step too
far and the collective crumbles, one step
not far enough and an unending regress, the
bad infinity of indebtedness to the work.
When I am already being taken for something very cheaply.
When what I amount to is something to be taken.
When what I am is for being dissimilar to what I am for being taken.
A question of values.
Whereas I exist to be evaluated by.
Such that what is said to be lost is a result of a lack in my performance.
Such that what is said to have been gained is a result of the surplus of my performance as
it is appropriated by the machine.
When I am indebtedness, a hollow dread-besetting holler.
When I am proficient, I’m not always spoken of.
Such that I attribute health to the health of the party.
Such that I can’t part my hair and be any less a part of the machine.
When I am thinking I’m not always speaking of me.
Such that I am part of the march against madness.
When I am already being limited according to that which is possible.
When is what is possible, or when what is most probable.
Or when I am most pressing to come.
When I am already far down on the chain of mutations.
Wherein a mutation can no longer only occur.
Permutations of others’ sufficiency.
Such that a “time” is preempted preeminently.
Not the time of this immanence.
But the money according only to that.
To only to that.
A verb tense, fortitudinous.
Am I being deterred—
When I am already being confined by the implementation of principles.
When I probably wouldn’t know the first thing about living had it not been for principles.
When what I am is for being told life’s many rules, as to justify their telling me.
Just as a can fills with pennies or piss is a personal matter.
A personal matter that I do with my money what my work does for money, which is to
produce.
Such that I remain true to my selvage from the remotest age of my infancy.
When I am already being taken for nothing most worthy.
Constantly, I never cease to exist in this being.
When through every door walks a camera or mirror.
When what I am for being is communicated via networks of power.
When through communicating with nonhumans I flow, or it becomes me to flow.
Exchange that has nothing to do with quantities of exchangeable goods, but modalities of
power such that it is already weighted to one side, that of the powerful, who are
also, in a less visible regime, in fact the weakest among us; is it up to us then, is it
up to us to make of our sickness a health, to let bloom the sickrags of our Wound?
Such that the work doesn’t end is it not never-ending.
When I am for being tired of cowards.
Such that I continuously am making myself available to that which would never to me.
When I am just as unstoppable, a fount of my offerings.
Constantly, a shifting wellspring of presence.
To exist to be being, when I am already being.
To exist being, when I already exist.
Like pulling hair off a molar, like splitting hairs with an axe, like eating hair with a
toothpick.
Like pulling teeth from an arm, like bricking the eyes.
Like streaming footage of multiple homicides before they occur, like horn on the tongue.
Such that power decentralizes, rather than coalesces around a site of most agency.
Such that power is only ever recognized by its effects, will we ever have gravy.
Will we ever have ethical art under tyrants.
NO.
Will we ever have ethical tyrants in art.
Cary Stough
Cary Stough is a poet from the Missouri Ozarks who now lives outside of Boston as a Children's Librarian. Recent work can be found in jubilat, Apartment Poetry, and Bennington Review.