68

The number one comes after the nothing.
What if the music covered nothing?
You measure the lines, count the beats,
loop the breaks, break the loops
over the nothing. You need that for the notes.
In order for the notes to be played,
the flows to escape. I’ll throw to you,
I’ll throw to you, Un coup de dés.
If this is truth then, I’ll doubt it
You’ll miss the space between tracks,
you’ll miss the gaps in my seamless skirt.
Rattle of rain, whistle of wind through cracks
My soundtrack, our pertinent facts
Now numbers burn the world.
The sound of the morning garden has gone
The sound of the morning garden will come back.
Tell me, tell me, tell me do
What kind of nothing is that?

69

Nothing for music. No thing. Music for
a plain unmarked field of snow. No thing
signs for nothing. Think again. Abominable
snow, making me cold. Here from the first,
site of the thirst as if the longest night
was someplace we remembered, from the earliest
of our remembered dreams, as home. Dark
as home; homely dark. Das nachts, das nichts--
the blank drawn large, brought back
to its lack of itself. The turn of the loop,
trick of the tail turning back. Transistor light:
I am here. I am still here. I’m waiting,
I’m on the step, my foot’s at your door.
There’s something outside your room.
My foot at your door. The music adds something
to the field of snow. Yes, I’m restless
I can’t say about what. Yes, I’m uneasy,
I'm not sure about what. Maybe it’s the
nothing, the something not worth worrying about
that keeps you up at night. While the bull’s eye
turns. The mirror says that being's in the eye.
She could be right with her silver mirrortain tongue.
Me, I’m not so sure. She could equally lie. I see
the eye before the tongue. And the snow outside.
The plain unmarked field of snow.

70

Midnight. Chi chi had washed her hair with conditioner instead of shampoo and was feeling manky. Then the rain lashed the window. In the dark I felt for my hanky like a Mancunian charwoman looking for teeth. The red light of the transistor on the dresser was Aldebaran low in the south. The strings on the concert programme grated my nerves; a squeaky white board marker. On the floor Beckett’s Malone Dies laughed at me like an unlucky steal under the coat from a second-hand store. What story did you want then? You read it and then you just seem to go back to the end again. I thought of the photo she showed me before she left of the Austrian Doctor in the white coat pointing at something out of shot while a boy looks on. 1938. He worked with children. She gave me the book when we had our little talk while we were having our little walk. Now I’m back here again in my black lagoon.

71

"... remember the wars are everywhere now god's in his ghetto ..."

72

"... & another thing: embrace the coupled logic of conjunction & catalogue ..."

73

"...revert to type but with difference..."

74

"...treat all intelligences as artificial..."

75

"... remove all local referents ..."

76

"...convert Indian strings to koto chords..."

77

"...hack the bike, hack the Mac, hack the culture..."

78

"...realism is no excuse for paucity of imagination..."

79

"...each word a plum, each bite a syllable..."

80

"...correct diction is always a matter for the authorities..."

81

Mediocrity is your prerogative. The same recycled tongues and identities. Mandatory tats and body piercing: just to cross the rope. Not much hope. If it's good enough for Robbie then it's good enough for Gobbie. But Gobbie's got nothing to say, he's busy texting NZ Idol the winner of the 'breaks' and 'electronica' section: a club singer's version of Blue Monday sponsored by Mars. "I see a ship in the harbour" crooned as we cut to the panel chomping on said confection. Lazy thoughts of idle idols. Like punk never happened; like nothing really matters. "The voting mass is number one" (Minuit). The voting mass is the number one song. Sell it back. Sell it back. Sell it back to me. Your mediocrity.

82

You never listened to a single word I told you. You never do. You're too busy describing to me in detail what I, like the landscape, am like and how. And how I, like the mountain, can be seen from many views. All of them incidently yours. I tell you what I'm never to do with you. I'm sorry my eyes are porcelain blue. And how. The words are lost kites. The words are discarded newspapers blowing around the railway station like unwanted spectators. Tell me again. Tell me again what I'm like and what I like. And how. You always do.

83

We don't do natural: we do theatre. The bride punched black by the batchelors; the batchelors punched out by each other. The bride looking like she packs the biggest punch. Now just act normal before the camera. Talk about 'breaks' music. I'll give you breaks. Our homelands are assembled in the lens of the cameras. Likely stories. Watch ya fink den? What's it going to be then? Marriage like being in a band is bloody murder.