David Ayers

The "Best" of Heuristic Assumptions

Ship of Phools

If this were postmodern graffiti, as it purports to be, what kind of poem would be attached?

Could you say?

That's the kind of thing I'm interested in.

It's my darling. It's my little fetish, it's my shiny coin.

I can just guess, but I think, I think that to get the best of heuristic assumptions one must first take a bath. In a shallow pool. From which all tokens of exchange—the original bus fares, the movie ticket stubs, the Museum of Natural History exhibit brochures saved from the first date—all have been skillfully lifted—others' shiny coins—by wind's evaporation or hands' diligence. Hands grubby for the plunging.

Or sweet with the crease of a wallet: the paginated slip such as, say, a poem begins on—or a complete address and partially-memorized phone number. (Slightly stained.) A band's set list from the previous night blowing eerily down Canal, to sax wail and drug deliria. A gutter so far beside itself with retch the voters don't know what to abolish: the throat or the mouth?

(Honest, I pulled a fortune from a fortune cookie last week that read Happiness? and I couldn't remember if it had been on the menu. Welcome. Today's special: Happiness?)

Under the Hammer

Maybe not.

But dancing, maybe. Maybe some dancing.

We'll need some detritus, too—some (what? wonderful thing?) beside us, at hand, to get the best of. That's how it works, isn't it? Some tatter to rescue—or redeem. A strip with some mangled bits of the bone still hanging off. Some part from the finger end.

I think so.

Good example: a poem. Not what we typically find in the garbage but let's say (for illustration) that we do, we find a poem in the garbage. I think it might look like this:

Nice, huh? A bit weird, but we can see how it points to an interpretation. The lines, for instance, composed of signs. Composed of 'a's and 'be's and 'see's and 'seize' and (holy) 'see's, and 'seas.' And other signs arranged in some order to indicate some meaning.

(Apparently a test for blindness, for rats. The lid, the empty wine bottle, the half-eaten cheese. It all points in that direction.)

But some poems don't follow the rules. Some poems are difficult. They read like the byproducts of diseased brain, an individual thinking-out-loud—consciousness—we only hope for enough brain left, enough of our brain within that brain, to make the associations we require. (For understanding: similarity and relation; proportion, mentation. To name a few.)

Eye as Orb

Or, to formulate a diagnosis, we might say of context in these cases, these difficult cases, that it's not so much given as generated. Such a poem is, in a sense, identical to it.

(Swagger; bow. The calculated appeal of a deranged Latin. Professor Bobo says I could do this all day if you like. Someone poke it with a stick.)

Someone—no, really, cuz this is all wrong. Our approach doesn't split into routes like the mind in poetry, circling that to return to this. (Taking the long way.) You can feel that, can't you?

Let's try again. Object A goes that way, B goes this. Having no mass they converge on a planet with no atmosphere, devoid of traffic, no fog. Time: long ago. (Hence, no garbage.)

What happens to the miracle at the crash site?

If A is an egg?

(I don't think that has much to do with poetry, Bob—but it's a fine story.)

Understand: I feel like screaming. A lot.

But it's true, when we encounter such wreckage, as of a spaceship, we have options:

Woe

A) We can run from it.

B) We can scour the area for valuables. Tombs and temples are robbed first—followed in rapid succession by trees, windowsills, wallets. Remember: actual sightings are rare.

C) We can dissect all available bodies in the interest of specifying a cause (of, you know, that. Don't say it, shh, they'll hear).

(I say this because of the Apollo 11. Now the Voyagers 1 and 2. It's doubtful there are any poems where they're headed, but who can say?)

	The "Best" of Heuristic Assumptions

Or, we can vent. This comes in like a fifth corner—Ssssss—which is like saying I see a snake. Which is like working far enough out this way to get bitten. Which also happens.

That's why the boy is barefoot in the last figure (the "best" of heuristic assumptions). And why the dagger, the dagger that falls from his hand—

is Custom. Custom-made. Fear is a sublime courtesy.