by Ken Babstock
copyright © Ken Babstock, 2014
first edition
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also cknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Babstock, Ken, 1970-, author
On malice / Ken Babstock.
Poem.
ISBN 978-1-55245-304-9 (pbk.)
I. Title.
ps8553.a245o5 2014 c811'.54 c2014-904403-8
On Malice is available as an ebook: ISBN 978 1 77056 401 5
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for Samuel, who can bend time,
and for Laura
Yes, these are conquests from the castle. I washed
my neck and my main source of food. Unfortunately,
I also washed my supplementary animal.
I have just built a … There is a struggle between …
Stamp out all the frogs at evening. I like especially
death. This is not a waiting room for souls.
From this camp I abjure Time and expect Time
in its other body to spike through
the lateral. Rain accrues
on the motiveless and hungry.
If you can’t imagine being watched,
you can’t imagine how good I am.
1 September, 1970, plane leaving Alma-Ata for Tashkent. Incident reported at 23:50.
What one otherwise only dreams
signifies a flight, a flight
into the unwashed. The word
‘supplementary.’ That is from
the Christian religion. That is from
the battlements. It has to hit someone.
Yet all the just and wonderful smells
of air on earth. The beach swims forward.
The battlements under
mine eyes shift so. Build-up of wax,
oil, dermis, it flakes off fortune
and smells where you hit someone.
Incident on 2nd September, 1970, at 23:05, over Aldan. Plane in descent.
He has built a town in the garden.
Do unto others as you would.
It carried me away.
It carried me away –
that matter is required between creations.
You do and have done unto you
any number of jewelled, riverine shot
in cities built up in a garden.
The heat in the space you were.
The one bloom on the terrace
and the rip in the cirrus, many in bloom
and your body used up all night.
Incident west of Blagovashensk, altitude unreported, September 5, 1970.
As chum carries into waters lying south
or southeast. How would song
be considered everything and people
succumb? Most powerful ‘Is,’ or almost
one hour south in relation.
Yes, animals. This is not a waiting room
and the smell of tyranny detected
in spit, piece by piece, each a sign
for a kiss. It hit someone,
radio’s still ripe for abuse.
Camera in log. Camera in pen. Lens
of the loosened dust where a dress drops.
On September 7, 1970, at 22:15, incident over Baykrit, Krasnogorsk. Heavy rain.
Everyone thinks Lord in relation
to animals. Relation to substance, perhaps, often
for hour after hour. Eternal struggle
with him croaking and people there almost
with us. Now
I am thinking. How beautiful her true
form can become. Neither alone
nor fully with them, balanced
naked, wet and bruised.
Noisesome takeoff not helping me think
in mauve, rose and silvering blue.
The first star, wing light in the tagged mouth, sobs.
Night. Ten minutes after takeoff from Biysk, September 11, 1971.
Hardly ever showed it mixed up with
‘photograph.’ Who is that then?
A strange bandit with a tablecloth
behind her. Suppose it is he
whom she is courting, or
a ‘philosopher.’ Or gruesomeness …
None of it diminishing morning as such.
Thinnest film in the canopied air so animals
rut or flex fighting dissolution
as we say ‘Lord’ again, facing southeast.
Where ribbons the peach and violet
meteorological summa. My form bleats.
Incident reported over Chita Oblast, at 21:40. No other traffic.
You too are concrete, greensomeness, and no one
wants him. Can I talk? Yes. Here
people become through efficiency.
I now am a messed-up twilight.
I now – can I talk? – am a twilight
come early. A man – Yes?
She pulled faces from the various
performances. Aria or folk
embroidery, as might labour in ditches
during no time. You split lip.
You contusion, cannot bear Lord
under circumstance indexed as grievance.
September 21, 1972, Chelyabinsk, altitude at time of incident was 3000 m.
One can get very thin.
One doesn’t read at night. Now
as you are writing there is such a storm,
otherwise the darkness, you understand,
and will remain dark forever.
Have joy in the town. The skeletons are failing
whatsoever occur in your heart. Be it
sin, starvation, clemency or rage.
Be it sin. Animal, burrowed prayer;
one can thin out. Consider doughnuts,
or the rattle and spur-scrape and
first-person oar locks. The town’s joy’s yours.
Flight bound for Christopol from the east. Incident reported at 20:55, September 29, 1973.
It is modern. Couldn’t you have brought
me into the world three
days later? You
could have (the cat is laughing)
pushed me back in again.
It is modern. Who do you prefer?
The banks close as the banks close.
One of me, having been forced out, could
be watched over with no undue
taxing of beneficent – Throw it off.
The rattle again of splintered waste
in orbit; shards, at speed, incredibly cold.
September 30, 1973, approaching Dudinka, altitude 3500 m. Time of incident, 20:22.
Don’t say anything funny. Isn’t that possible?
Isn’t that at all
times what holds one together?
Little fairy tales all at once. Stomach fright.
One never hears about compulsion.
‘Killed’ is a word with a star tied around it.
One can listen all night, they won’t
talk of ‘compulsion.’ Compulsion
is a wind with the unmodern cat
stapled to it. The anus constricts.
Needles of yellow and red light, little
aurora materialis and night eyes of the pig family.
At 19:45, over Gorno-Ataysk. August 1974.
The trees are dens
e here.
The earth doesn’t have a limit.
And again and again limits and grumbling bring
one to the bank of cheerful things. Say,
everything. Everything does not have.
Everything does not have to have.
Counting neurons in bivalves
helps us think on think, though
won’t ground the plane,
or warm you. The nights decline.
Have you noted this effect, this holding
your kidneys while swaying under a draft vent?
August 3, 1974, at 19:10 (local time) in heavy winds approaching Irkutsk.
Completely out for as long as one
doesn’t see. That all money
removed from this world
can read as simply non limit, or
it can go round again. No
earth. No lost limit. All
the children love their limits
more than their fathers.
Should this shame us again?
I can smell your mind.
I enhance the quotient of suffering
by building pictures of forced concord.
Again in high winds, 18:33, August 1975, altitude unrecorded at time of incident. Inta (tower).
You don’t have to go anymore,
read to me.
You don’t have to go from the world.
Finally, he says, I and everything
have a limit. Count one more day out.
The case has been lost again, and again
the rippling cirrus glows amber-black
to the west. My undeclared cache
of pebbles and desiccated scat,
my Mayan counting machine, my
mai tai, and many-horned hillock.
It is, I’m afraid, a symbol, dear rubble.
1975. Komsamotsk on Amur. Incident between 3500 m and 3800 m, during descent.
I am practising dead songs and
then they will be printed and
we’ll get Heaven – get money.
When it eats, the soul is of no interest to me.
What is in it, ice? While what
happened to soft difference in school is horrible,
it wants to eat. There will be no shaking
the thorns from the stem. There
will be no clarification.
The ballooning complex left
it a shambles. Security. Think of a weaving
barn. Think of a good reason not to quit listening.
August 15, 1976, 17:55, aircraft approaching Krasnokamansk. Altitude unreported.
Suppose the weirdest bed is between
Heaven and Earth, and school
roams days between
ice and practising songs.
We’ll be of no interest
to the dead. Whether the dead Lord
with the red-hot iron shoes lay
for us once is of no interest
to the books.
We chaptered over our clothing
in the common sink, never lifting
our gaze. I’ve a miner’s lamp, no fire.
August 22, 1976, at 17:40. Khatanga.
Don’t write to her. Perhaps she’ll love
you separated more.
‘On the fifth, because I will be
like your dress.’ Sometimes nobody
gives a mind in their head
the whole journey. We are not separated,
we are beforehand. Catkins, then burrs.
The lamp switched on prior to the journey
by throwing a switch at the dome’s posterior.
Grinding of teeth under the chestnut
on Etna. It’s as though
the summit invites a downgrade. Bark death.
Krosnayorsk. Light rain.
Eleven years of green bread still
nobody, dear Lord, isn’t oneself,
but thank you. Isn’t that right? Give them a picture
of no bread, a mean flower more bush
than the love in their heads, a picture
of will separated from matter and head stuff.
The green being flensed, combed out, rehashed –
chesnut? beech? A severe
grade, the cobbles and brick fragments boiling
through topsoil. Night hikes up here
and chases out shreds, Finnish wind. A fragile
lantern tarp rags are whipping at.
Kemerovo, August 28, 1978, at 15:30, altitude 3900 m.
A girl said I should eat. Well, am I
such a coward inside? Regarding winter,
other children bit you, you were after interests.
Inside, one knows everything, but
how does the house see? It is
totally unwindowed!
The rustling in the approach
as the wing lights climb. I distinguish
that from those without reason
so count old rivets, voltage, then fall back
into shadow. How does she know
everything to be unwindowed?
Reported at 15:04, July 4, 1978, shortly before landing at Kolpashevo.
You finish reading it. You cannot
finish reading it. Ice caught
in the can; later, the well. What
shall I be worried about,
the coward well and the ice does
such a lot. They know nothing
of cantilevered blown-out shells
who feed their worry
like veal barns. The dome’s aerial
my lodestar and icon, the squirrel
at dusk in the post-informational gloaming
can never not finish reading it as song.
July 9, 1979. 14:50, in clear conditions southeast of Kogalym.
Your little lamp, for example,
on the mountain sleeping all night.
I have to think about it, or
pull it out of my head. For example,
a clown goes over my face
with his claws. I have seen poorly
for so long. Raking the overgrowth
at the perimeter fence. Metal filing
shelves lashed to the chain-link gaps.
It kept the west out of the west’s mind.
It kept the Lord out of your
dress for a time.
Incident in July, Magnitogorsk, at an unknown altitude.
Because I am sleeping in love’s room
now, the moment will have
received a promise to wait.
The mountain will finally be rid of the town.
Wait a bit, and the mountain
you have not seen goes over your face –
The singing upgrades to ice
crystals of Saturn’s rings raking
the outer hull.
Hello, thing. The geodesic temple and
your dress in your mouth signalling to
the western squirrel at the gap.
Summer 1980, incident at 12:30, nearing 4000 m, Nizhneangarsk.
Be rid of the face in the room now.
Sweet clown, they promise
and do not do it;
they can’t pull it out. Go think
about it, kisses received from
here in the mountain with him gone
are as slurry in a gallon pail,
are a thin suspension ferried southeast
into the town from the summit
in a spirit of devotional commerce
and labour. The material rips from the frame.
Straight pins of stars and the blanked vector lines.
July 24, 1981, near Novokuznetsk, midday, little to no damage.
Don’t, you undo the good behaviour
all the time. Don’t undo
the good behaviour all the time.
Wonderful Ultra, it is not broken,
it is still hanging there.
Big monkey not going more in my mouth –
Not the beach only but the
sea behind
it and behind that its hale minions
and the monstrous canyons of chance.
It all begins to swim forward.
I lie with the dead Lord, the anus
constricts, I cover us both with your dress.
Noon, July 28, 1981, approaching Novosibirsk from the south, altitude unknown.
The fairground screamed. The mountains
