Excerpt from "Threats of Opposite"

all words copyright Bill Nathan, "Threats of Opposite", a book published by SINK Press, San Francisco, 1989, ISBN 0-9623806-1-X

The soft world is between rocks.

- Lyn Hejinian



This list is experience provided by your local fire department:

The successful outcome of crime is poverty in your pocket.
The world pattern generalizes instructions for walking the legs.
The increase of physical breakdown starts with insomnia.
The flagellate, in this sense, remains intact, with dances.
The great glad marriage of the mystical and the economic.
The less fortunate suffer through quiet unvoidable contracts.
The consent must write true before relief is acquired.
The tiny cells divide in unawareness of hi-tech advertising.
The trains are on time, the conductor swoons, the taxis warm.
The lesson of Vietnam is a confusion of plaintiff.
The gown is dazzling, dear, an epiphany, beat of tabla.
The fact that no sexual contact is ignored: concept to retain?
The developmental POV insists upon common stupidities.
The jewels - around the next block - there's a key -under a vase.

The young man admitted his beloved guru into the canned food pantry. The guru was partially hip, and wept with a spiritually midwestern humor...

...

growing by exhibit
growing by fierce
growing by house
growing by proof
growing by command
growing by pueblo
growing by pigment
growing by seed
growing by council
growing by yellow
growing by nonsense
growing by separate
growing by tune
growing by loan
growing by region
growing by cells
growing by warps
growing by salmon
growing by listening
growing by holiness

A doughnut for Uncle who wept
& for those who keep spinning out of their species -
they were the genuine ones who allowed for the motif
of a rounded-off crayon, a young wo/man's spirit of play,
& maybe you have a few different conventions than I do
but I've got a vertical side
I've got some broken feet with which to beg.
I mean for sakes alive, the specimin
is meant for your mouth, though the verbal rule is this:
believe in the inclinations of a child.
Out of Earth, out of terrain,
we find ourselves on another flat, hoeing on squares of
topsoil stuck together with incense.
Listen to me: the equivalent of (hidden Christian caves: Kaymakli - Nevsehir - Turkey; a thousand leather-wrapped documents hidden in narrow passages 6 levels below the water)
TUNNELING OUT OF ONE-WAY ENTRANCES...

The finger bones bleed
the prayer is lifted
the heart shakes in undoubting rhythm...