Louis ARMAND

back to milk four home

DEXTROSE 

cut-out figures, from right to left in the
shooting gallery: lunch of
cold meat, salad—the weather is "changeable," marked 
for replacement 
naked in the back 
room: stringing up 
papier-mβchι heads, filled with 
sand—the holes left 
unplugged, barely 
contained—no mystery 
encroaches on the game at 
hand ("can see 
what's on your mind"); the body is 
weightless, at intervals 
which are no longer temporary—suspicion of returns, could 
increase into a madness: the hidden 
laughter of canned goods, dis- 
played in serial revenance, infinitely identical—the others 
have been removed 
from the chain of being: an escalator 
which leads upwards through incarnations, to the only available 
checkout 



DEAD JOE 
"who believes me shall behold the man"

gone stiff in the frozen ground, up to the 
neck in it—had 
suffered, once, lifetimes at the end 
of a long fork; there were 
no excuses—spent 
time on your hands & not a 
said word—counting the squares in the 
dud signal pattern, trans- 
mitted along nerve strings, or trapped 
in the broad 
daylight of x (its banality is 
vitrifying)—the swooping movement of 
tv cameras, keeping to the 
facts—the long 
night of the soul in a forest of 
slot machines: hungry 
mouths in which 
humiliation demands an unequal 
share—& the lidless 
eye that confronts each in turn, waiting 
for its number to come up 

 

PERVIGILIUM VENERIS 

thrust up into the root, stub-fingered, blackening a hole 
you still haven't 
located—all winter shrank 
like a plastic doll & 
one freakish, paralytic eye—sleep 
is the fixedness of a 
hidden culpability; the trussed eaves where tongues 
turn viscous, the 
ear humid—mordant nights passed in 
self-ridicule, a flaccid 
imago nailed to the inside of an 
elongated mirror—the horror show 
winds on, its 
intricate banality of painted 
corpses, cropped out with teeth: to 
decorate the fringes, pretexts 
for intervention 
in the normal viewing schedule—cramped, airless 
cubicles in which 
a captive mind masturbates itself 
towards extinction: a 
tedious dιnouement which always ends with the replay 
button, caught in a loop 
which flesh itself could only ever 
approximate 




ELDORADO HOTEL 

laid out on butcher's paper—instruments 
of boredom like re- 
engineered plotlines, gone 
sour in the heat—the flatness of a terrain 
in which everything has 
evolved horizontally: sick at the 
sight of it—"birth, decay, the 
ephemeral"; a door for breathing, a table 
outlined heavily against a 
wall—lowering the temperature 
by means of compression: skin 
red on both sides—a drain 
pipe is leaking, a pool of rust water 
which threatens at any moment 
to become a flood—questioning the occurrence 
leads to no explanation; the taste 
of insecticide carpeting the tongue (as 
"preventative")—rehearsing 
the evacuation procedure, in the cold 
light of statistics, averages, 
standard deviations—down payment for the 
nights which are yet to come 
& those which aren't