CONJUNCTIONS:5 Fall1983

Three Poems Charles Bernstein

STUNMENT The bud does not recall its bloom just as at evening my love does not detain its gloom. Over all and every sputter, a gallon of application, two disks of curdled shade, a mix of turpentine and pine, somberer blink for a spreadsheet. No more is premised no more procured the day alone to wear away and spire of displaced circumference outworn imbrication. This gown how quieter than a plumb, entombed in tires, advancing forearmed, with empty hands. Yet falling back becomes a rest for mutable things as here-- intending a dissolving object. MISTY Slide of a glance preemptorally to be know-- the dues and destitution of an inculcated complicity in the end run of uncomplicated compromise. No better than this is shown--the consummate gaze at an enlarged porcelain clock, marking the lugubrious commode's selfsame parody--musty windowcase of next week's resurrection. BULGE The reward for love is not love, any more than the reward for disobedience is grace. What chains these conditions severs semblance of a hand, two fists, in preemptive embrace with collusion. The target trails the fire- power, acclimating in accolades, or smoking out shudder of inviolateness with ruptures of delay. Whirl as whirl can, a surrogate's no place for dismay.