Caroline Bergvall

OF FLESH AND VITAL MATERIAL (1992)

from THE UNDERLIP
 

     At a loss, we've been returning from bridges, from manoeuvres and

fields of activity, dispirited by the intricate mutations of advancing

landscapes, time and time again, we become undone before our very eyes.

     Pulling up boundaries drawn from the steep curves of her rounded

flesh have allowed so many strategies to a watching eye, dark currents

run in micro-real, at needle-point, then solid at your fingertips,

though I retain a sense of presence for as long as I can keep from

blinking.
 
 

     Might displays of bearing and image make you find a grip: the

elaborate-ah eloquence of the times: how the fresh ambiguity of this

calculated nonchalance might eventually come to shake the temporal

architecture of our ways, removing genders like wet gloves,

     in a maze of knowing, in a difficult assimilation of times, the

slow disbanding of form brings a calming though mitigated relief from

the brutal necessity of change, which threatens at every turn and

streaks the mind with uncertainty.
 
 

     We've been expanding in wordplay, in gardens and games of

sophisticated elusiveness: doubts always about reality would reflect

the extent of our shadow: and language-art strains infinitely: from

obscure equations to the convenience of illegibility,

     ah there'll be always such pressing needs with which to overwrite

the retracting tissues: body-material forever absorbed into the

drifting conditioning of thought. Crystallized motifs bring sublime

languor: ellipsis: transubstantiation.
 
 

     Slipping now into zones are amorphous stuff, unclarified

overtures, sound refracts from one wall then another of this resonant

place and curtains unfold the opulence of the mind. If identity be

closed and remains protective, we'll be as unpredicted as I should:

"Ride a yellow chariot"! from the strains of poetry to a pulling

insistency, a long way into the city,

     while d'Estree sisters stare, pluck a hard nipple: give each

other leeway: looking someone in the eye: in the hidden joke: and the

opulence of the deep room: notice what is coming through?: sister

plucks a hard: the redness of your: lips can ah be matched: by my

nipple alone! exciting nerves flare up: running through to the foot:

to the very sole of this sex: at the very back of the image: what is

coming in: from a flux of times spent times discarded:
 
 

     Lest losing patience we fail to see what purpose could arise from

this unassuming opaqueness, hardly vacant is the point of view I've

wished to take and always ah: were we divided: over the implications

of such matter for life,

     while the underlip that always speaks all that forever only

happens in your shadow: just in the corner of our eyes: makes me

increasingly feel: somewhat: unsettled,
 

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