Louis Armand

 

Abject Relations

at first, they remembered him, in epigraphs, short lines
“asleep standing up”—a claim to
nothing, & consequently more realistic: returning
in october, something exact / date &
time of arrival—without doubt, conscience is keeping track
of everything that has failed to acquit itself
so far: it requires no help
of mental or social habit—like falling into a hole
(a parenthesis is open & through it passes
an exact description
of the neglected real body)—reduced
to a collection of sounds or marks on paper
that communicate by other means—if
only to close the eyes & enter into a different relation, an
object in proximity to other objects (it’s
easy to believe that sleep, for example, is something
which doesn’t exist), or sublimation
of the nervous response—an axiom that will
allow us to proceed, beyond the first questioning, to a point
further on

 

Sleeping Positions

& do you return often?—on the face of things, a difficult
enactment: the situation is not clear
lines which extend from one to another in ap-
prehensive genealogy—it’s strange
to be searching for something, focusing to a point, as if that were
possible—to know the disposition of
each of those rooms, their
closed humidity, both abstract & de-
notative: a lampshade is leaning over & casting
a lopsided shadow, like a neck
tilted, like a rigid
shoulder blade—it is necessary to “complete
the line’s gesture,” to go back
to an avowed purpose, in flesh &
blood—but what does it conceal? the patient work of countless
filaments, generating insight
as though some nightly excavation
of a mysterious physiognomy, its
interlocking pieces that come together to form, not resolve, the puzzle