[Newspoetry] the hidden referent

[Donald L Emerick]

I'd send this to IF and only IF,
but my email system doesn't...
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"It's not Newspoetry.
But its brash ambivalence
towards intellectual property rights
and deadpan evocation
of 70's process art
liquidates the semiotic underpinnings
of Newspoetry's Warholian cult
of daily, individual production
in favor of the intermittenist project.
Or whatever.
- I. Fitz"
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<graphic language irreplicately placated; q.v.> 
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Dear Fitz,

Endeavoring to see any event
that happens to happen to me
as that which happens to me,
to see how it happens to me,
to see if it may happen that way to me,
again, as the way that I want to happen,
I read your poetic tracing personally,
which would have been the only way
anyone could read anything anyway,
although other modes of reading happen
when one expands one's interests
towards learning to read (or draw).

When one has to have the artist present
to make an alleged work of art live,
as in live presentation of living present,
then one has something performative,
that excludes all who are more remote,
in time or space, from centers of art,
that would be centers of attention, as well,
as producers in the eyes of a mindstorm.

So, I think of myself as that person who is,
in terms of your most recent commentary,
ostensibly and perpetually, a "semiotic" member,
of a "cult of daily, individual production[s],"
and opposed to the casual intermittency,
which requires one's constant attention
to the present-at-hand signals of the artist,
whenever that artist shall happen to wave.

I am anti-performative in just that sense
that a poem, a play, a writing, a text
thinks that it ought to be,
enduring for a time,
surviving independently,
taking on life forms that purport to be
independent of their performer and creator.

I am,
so I claim to be,
by virtue of my desire,
free only in so far as this,
that I free my words from me,
that my art recedes away,
to live on its own, if it can,
and to die, if not.

What shall its life away from me be?
What's it going to be like out there,
in the cold and the cruel world,
a callous and a callused world?
Do I not owe my words a favor,
of giving them all that I have,
or some substantial estate,
to outfit and equip them,
to train and teach them,
for how they come to live,
on their own, free of me?

So, I hide as a referent,
hide in a hide-out, of course,
which is what words become,
when one thinks of what goes forth
as some personal virtue as shelter,
sheltering the being that is in hiding
from consequences that happen,
as if no one were responsible.

I claim ownership is mistaken,
when it only protects an owner,
when it ought to be such that
it only lets us fix responsibility
responsibly and respondingly,
as addressing what may need fixing,
relative to what may also be done.

Words shall come home again,
even as art returns to its maker.
Echoes are usually guarantees:
Cites, quotes and copies happen,
Valid forms alter altar-ego:
Legal eagle equals egaliteracy.

So, thanks for the graffiti,
I give you mine in thanks,
thanks for thanks,
an eye for an eye,
thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick