Today’s mixed metaphor (slightly abridged): “...rooted in his environmental law work, has ballooned into a ‘juggernaut,’ that has raked in funding and followers as Kennedy used his star power to open doors.” – Petula Dvorak in The Washington Post, today. .. as the New Yorker used to remark about things like this, "Block That Metaphor !" … [Read more...]

[“Celebrating the marriage / of flesh and air.” – Wallace Stevens]        “Let me touch your heart,” she said, knife at the ready. … [Read more...]

Take a look at https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/01/05/pupetta-maresca-dies/ … [Read more...]

Finding it, however, .... … [Read more...]

“Destroy the machines!” – But in these cries we heard machines' own harsh voice, as rasping metal sounds scraped unlikely air by Terence Kuch - permission to reprint if credited … [Read more...]

[“If it is said that God proceeds according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my whole nature, in myself.” – Max Stirner]        Some have said this makes me a kind of slave, bound in chains.        But no; I have conquered my chains by understanding that the slave I called “me,” before my revelation, is just another “you.” … [Read more...]

[“the most distinguished maker of hypotheses was Philistion.” – William Graham Sumner] ... At least that’s my hypothesis. Those less distinguished than I may have differing hypotheses. // "books Terence Kuch" on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. // … [Read more...]

[“Are they moving because of sound? I asked myself. / and where are they going? To wherever sound orders them?” – Roberto Bolaño] What is that sound, then, so loud? It is a voice, but without words. It seems to be a command, but to do what? Now it is louder, impatient. It threatens, demands that we understand its demands. How can we understand, without words? But then there are words. We listen, We do not understand these words, Either. //"books Terence Kuch" on … [Read more...]

[“When he staggers out into a world not his own, he discovers that the people in it live in mutual longing and jeopardy. This discovery is the beginning of passion.” – Roberto Mangabira Unger] … the beginning of truth, the beginning of ... Dread ... //"books Terence Kuch" on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind.// … [Read more...]

[“She put forth / her phantom hands and said: paint the dark side.” – Gabriel Levin]        I said, turn your hands over so I can see their bright side, what you might have been.        She said, here – paint these black, too. … [Read more...]

[“She made quick work of pleasure.” – Camille Dungy]        My pleasure was her work. For which I paid; at first, not enough. Later, too much. … [Read more...]

The strange garble of drug names: the proprietary name comes first, then a government agency invents the generic name (long before the drug is released as a generic). The government tries to make the generic name suggest something to an organic chemist (although not to a patient), while the trade name is typically just some awful sounding thing that might mean "ox feces" in Tanno Tuva, or who knows what. Neither trade names nor generics show, by their spelling, how they should be pronounced, or … [Read more...]

[“As a monist, I think that there is something meteorological about us.” – Charles Fort]        We are … a ... gathering cloud. >> "books Terence Kuch" on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“an analysis of dead media” – Jussi Parikka]        I starred in a dead-media production. It wasn’t popular, even then, but the producer, and actors like me, have high hopes that it might someday be revived … resuscitated … resurrected … [below - a signing event] SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES … [Read more...]

[“We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.” – Joy Harjo]        We will not tell the others where we’ve been, what we’ve done, – who we’ve been. … [Read more...]

       I developed a program that composes and sends emails to other programs that will read them and respond, taking over both sides of the conversation. Billions of vacuous emails are now composed and sent and read at lightspeed.        This clogs the pipes of the Net, leaving us no option but to finally, once again, speak with each other.        And once again be disappointed. … [Read more...]

[“To be embodied is not to have a body, but to be a body.” – Maurice Merleau-Ponty] The mind says, all that bone and flesh down there below me, I own that. It’s my possession, but it’s not the Me. The Me is the one who says “the mind says, all that bone and flesh… … [Read more...]

       Geese are desperate to avenge their kind since that first, almost legendary, goose was murdered by people, and eaten; the savior goose who is worshipped by geese to this day.        One of the people died and came to life again, the people say, but no geese have come to life again.        There is no justice in this world. … [Read more...]

[“A letter from the man who wants to start a new magazine ...  and he owns a typewriter.” – William Carlos Williams, 1922.        What kind of new-fangled thing is this “typewriter”? How could one ever write poetry on it or with it or however it works? I’ll bet a hundred years from now no one will be using one of those damn “typewriters”! >> See "books Terence Kuch" on Amazon or Google for more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“the beast in us wants to be lied to” – Nietzsche]        If you lie to me, and I know you’re lying, then I can make up anything I like about what you’re saying to me … a contradiction entails everything. Anything. … [Read more...]

[“You don’t dare look at your hands anymore” – Apollinaire]        I observe the strange behavior of my hands, and try to hide them from others. They are making grasping motions, usually toward others, but sometimes toward my own throat... >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“You believed in your own story, / then climbed inside it” – Shu Ting]        Now you can’t get out, even as others scoff. >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

One of the magi said “Boo!” to the new god. Just a tease, something you say to a baby. But retaliation was swift and fierce. And not just on that wise man alone, but to all of us, even to this day, that we would know good from evil. Mostly evil, as it turned out. ... from terencekuch.com … [Read more...]

[“...those who exist and want to be eternal, and we who don’t exist, and would like to.” – Italo Calvino]        Our latest offer states that we will settle for non-eternal, if it comes to that. Just so long as we have tasted existence even once, that delicate fruit soon to spoil. >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       If I can’t remember her, then there’s nothing to remember.        It is some comfort, not to remember ... the one I no longer remember.  <<”books Terence Kuch” on Amazon or Google will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“...the bruised words...” – John Ashbery]        Our words – those words – batted/battered in the air between us ­– too honest for the bruises of our contest, our continuing feints, our continuing adventures and retreats.   >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“In the future, ... technologies might allow us to provide entire simulated worlds for the entertainment of isolated brains on life support.” - Jan Westerhoff] What? Isn’t that what’s happening to us now? Have you watched TV lately?  >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Consciousnesses present themselves with the absurdity of a multiple solipsism.” – Merleau-Ponty]        Each of us is the only one. We call out. We answer.  >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“You don’t dare look at your hands anymore” – Guillaume Apollinaire]        I observe the strange behavior of my hands, and try to hide them from the others who are near me, idly drinking coffee. My hands are now making faint grasping motions toward those very others, but sometimes toward my own throat...  >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The remains of their burial chambers can be seen in the museum of silence.” – Peter Ackroyd]        There are different kinds of silence in this museum: the silence of awe, of shock, of having nothing to say that will not embarrass you, of having words to say but you know she would take your words and use them to dreadful effect, the silence of rock pools waiting for the shape of clouds, the silence of the dead that speaks so irrelevantly, the silence that you … [Read more...]

[“...the obsessional undoing of the past....” – Slavoj Žižek]        Can the past be undone?        No, you say, the past is fixed, permanent, eternal. To the ends of recorded time and beyond, what you did will hide there, ready to be revealed to your shame at any time, “no matter,” as Nietzsche said, “that you have in the meanwhile ‘reformed.’”        But now, friends, a technique has been … [Read more...]

[“I believe, for a minute, that I was thinking nothing.” – Andre Malraux] How can I think nothing? Whenever I try and think nothing I’m just soooo close to thinking nothing, soooo close I can think of nothing else. >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“in what nightmare will you star?” – Kofi Awoonor]        If I’m starring it won’t be a nightmare. The nightmare is when someone else stars.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“In the tombs, / administrative mummies” – Latif Asad Abdullah]        An explorer finds the ancient administrator’s scrolls. In the last one, the administrator laments that no one reads his scrolls, no matter how grammatical their hieroglyphs, how wise their admonitions, and now no one ever will.        But the explorer donates these scrolls to a museum, and its scholars translate them carefully.        At last the administrator’s words have been read. He can now disappear into the … [Read more...]

       The magic word that brings forth the genii, the prayer that brings grace, the accusation that ... convicts.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

       Managing is a kind of theater with no intermission – and damned little applause. … [Read more...]

       Managing is a kind of theater with no intermission – and damned little applause.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

       The writer wants his words to flicker on computer screens like flames in a conflagration – and to burn and hurt as much, as well.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“You have not wanted / a body. - Purvi Shah”]        My old body has had its time and I loved it, even with all its flaws, the terrors of its brain, my dark mind. So now I’m through with them both, and good riddance!        I’m supposed to embrace this ecstasy of non-being as something I’ve sought my whole life, the non-‘I’ my ‘I’ has always wanted to be from the time it came to Be, some kind of organic matter, Heaven’s ripe … [Read more...]

[“By ‘God,’ I mean an automatic Jehovah.” – Charles Fort]        If my prayer is syntactically well-formed, it is immediately executed. But beware, the Jehovah app is very literal. Many have realized this ... too late.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“a dance of strangers in my blood” – Fatimah Asghar]        I am descended from those great warriors who swept down from the hills looting, raping, burning.        I am also descended from those lowland people who were ... well, y’know, ...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“wandering alone through semi-colons” – Brian Patten]        Climbing over the dot, or sliding beneath it, wary of the comma below; its hooked claw.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“Most people believe in life after death,” says psychologist Jamin Halberstadt, at the University of Otago, New Zealand; even [many] atheists do.” – New Scientist]        Now, how is that? The only way I can see this working, is if we have a mistaken notion of time.        Suppose that all time always exists – is always “present,” something like a computer file that’s accumulating all the data and is never erased. Each of us … [Read more...]

[“As in dreams fraught / with irrevocable gestures” – Francesca Abbate]        I made an irrevocable gesture. She called it that, anyway, as my next gestures desperately tried to apologize.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“...the machine that reads us all the time...” – Slavoj Žižek] I programmed the machine to read the newspaper, because I didn’t have time. And then I programmed it to read me, because I didn’t have time to reflect, just time to do things. And then I programmed it to ......... but it had programmed me.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“Had we remained together / we could have become a silence.” – Yehuda Amichai]        I thought we had such a deep rapport that nothing need be said, because you were already having the same feelings as I, the same thoughts, a true communion.        But I had only the cup, while you had the wine.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“that they have no identity” - David Antin, delusions of the insane: what they are afraid of] – so ... WHO is afraid?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“having no insides” – David Antin, delusions of the insane – what they are afraid of] What if someone were to look down my throat and see that I have no insides – like a balloon, nothing there. Or just, like a balloon, so much hot air.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind. << … [Read more...]

[“speech always lags behind visual perception” – Jean-Jacques Abrahams]        If perception lagged behind speech, we would believe that what we said drove the thing into being.        But now, with sight before words, we see what we don’t yet name. Then the word comes to us as if by a dark magic.        Or perhaps no word comes to us and we stand stupefied, wondering when if ever the thing’s name … [Read more...]

[“The children looked at the sky: it was not forbidden.” – Carlos Drummond de Andrade]        Some wanted to forbid their looking into the sky because they might want to go there some day, to explore.        But that was long ago and we no longer explore, not after that one time, anyway, when...  >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“How could it be an afterlife? It’s just a different life, another life, complete or incomplete as anyone’s, consumed by questions that elude it” – John Koethe]        In your afterlife you will not know it is an afterlife, thinking it the only life, hoping there might be an afterlife – that you already have...  >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Your / mother would never have / aborted you,” says my aunt. / Things like that get me / thinking.” – Rustin Larson]        No, I’m sure she wouldn’t have. But perhaps she’d thought about it in retrospect, when I was perhaps four, or seven, or later. All those times when she may have seen, through a haze of motherhood, who I really am. [[A sore-point of English grammar: that last word above should be 'was,' but 'am' is the meaning I want to convey, as the … [Read more...]

[the reason why some children are born resembling other people and not their parents is that] “the shape of embryos is determined by the imagination of the woman at the moment of conception.” - Empedocles] Is that any comfort for you, father? No. I thought not. >> ‘books Terence Kuch’ on Amazon or Google will lead you to more fiction from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“meet / a God other than our own.” – Adam Zagajewski]        Unexpectedly, a god appeared before me. Immediately I threw myself to the ground and beat my head into the dirt of the pavement the required three times, hard. But then, looking up, I realized that it wasn’t my own god at all, but somebody else’s god. I mopped the blood from my forehead and vowed not to be so hasty, next time, to worship.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

[“Summon the players in / Be proud on a sorry earth” – Adrienne Rich]        This is the fourth act, that nearly final adventure our more modern plays have given up showing, along with the definitive fifth. Everything is resolved in the third act, now. But those fourth acts are waiting, ready to call the first three into question, to accuse them of ending the play too soon.        The audience leaves. The fourth act comes on stage … [Read more...]

[“We contrast memory and forgetting. But things occur through forgetting, not memory.” - Gilles Deleuze] I forgot I should not do that, or could not do that, and so I did that because I wanted to do that and forgot I should not. But other peoples’ memories – remembered. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“'Pernicious trends' is also used by researchers to describe a pattern in their data that consistently supports someone else’s theory.” – Penguin Dictionary of Psychology] Robinson has been tampering with my data again, I just know it. And that smile of his that says so much more than it says – and that award he’s been given. Again. There is a pattern to this... … [Read more...]

[“What we love is not up to us.” – Harry G. Frankfurt] It is up to the ‘what’ to love us first, to insist that we respond. Or perhaps we are the ‘what,’ and must seek... >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“My power is my property. My power gives me property. My power am I myself, and through it I am my property.” – Max Stirner]        If I am my property, I can dispose of myself as I wish, demand whatever price I think is right, even if no one ... is ... willing to pay ...        ... anything ...    >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“By being sorry enough times, I’ve started to get used to it.” – Gilles Deleuze]        “I'm sorry!” no longer means that I regret something I did, rather that I enjoyed doing what I did, and am now paying for it in worthless coinage.    >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       “There! On the far side of the cemetery, see that old man, that statue? Not many of us have statues, just those whose children were both rich and guilty of not paying much attention to their dads in life. So the statue – that one, waving at us – over there – that statue was carved by some hack and set up, and now I’m watching it from my own statue. I’m watching that other statue, I mean, my father, in stone, that statue annoyingly larger than my own still, cold self … [Read more...]

[“Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures, in each our word.” – Finnegan’s Wake]        If you decide to forget – her – you will remember her more than ever. But now begin. To remember. To remember in a way you have never thought to remember her with before.        There is a cure for memory. But this wasn't it.    >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing … [Read more...]

[“Never enough or always too much time” – Adrienne Rich] Now is always too short. Never is always too long. Then is always too late. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“‘Why do / You thus devise / Evil against her?’ For that / She is beautiful, delicate: / Therefore.” – Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914)] I was beautiful and delicate, too Before I met her, and then I saw that She was beautiful and delicate, too Perhaps not as beautiful and delicate as I, But nearly so, so nearly that we might have been The same. But I devised evil against her. And carried out my plan. Now I am not Beautiful and delicate Anymore    >> “books … [Read more...]

[“The southern hemisphere of the brain, / … [a] little fishing village where there are no phones.” – Billy Collins] At first, I was pleased that no one could call me, here in this simple place. I could not call out, either, which did bother me for a while, but I realized that wanting to speak with someone was just a way of saying I wanted to speak with myself.        And then I did. Speak w/ myself, that is, one day. I heard a slight voice saying my … [Read more...]

[“ ‘thought withdrawal’ – the experience that somehow one’s thoughts have been taken away or removed from one’s head. – Penguin Dictionary of Psychology]        I was about to have a thought; a pleasant one, I think: lying down in green pastures like some tired cow after grass-munching, smelling fresh air, feeling rain... … But I lost that thought, whatever it was.       More and more of my thoughts have gone missing, these days. I like to think they’re being harvested by the Ultimate … [Read more...]

[“Everything ticks like a clock.” – Wallace Stevens]        Every second, the wristwatch makes that subtle sound of a machine contemplating its own works, trying to derive its design from its pieces and parts, their locations, how they affect each other, … trying to figure it out ... trying to understand.        We, too ...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Why should something impalpable be more mysterious than something palpable?” – Wittgenstein]        If a sensation creates the illusion that its cause originates outside us, “palpable” means merely that the illusion has been a success.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The right of the people ... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – U.S. Constitution] She wore her red dress of grievance and a grim, determined look. But it wasn’t the Government she was after; she was after – me.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“But she just laughed a strange laugh with ropes all over it.” - Anne Carson]        It wasn’t an innocent laugh a child might make seeing her first clown; no, it was a laugh tied down to her life, a laugh that said she knew too much, had seen too many – knots.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“...the language spoken by God Himself, ... a somewhat antiquated but nevertheless powerful German,...” – Daniel Paul Schreber] Of course God speaks German; after all, how better express His POWER? Let the Evil One speak that sneaky tongue, that French. … [Read more...]

       “Yes,” the slim man with the small mustache said with a smile, “right here. Just sign right here, and you’ll never die.”        And you said, “This isn’t some kind of devil’s bargain, is it? Some trick?”        And he said, with a slight laugh, “Oh no – there used to be devils’ bargains, I suppose, but that was long ago – and we no longer identify as devils, anyway. That term – ‘devil’ is really offensive to those of us … [Read more...]

[“A shadow followed us up the mountain.” – John Haines] We couldn’t see what was shadowing us, making those abrupt dark patches behind us on the trail as we climbed higher. Slipping on ice we continued up, footfall darkness following to the top. But there was no shadow as we climbed down toward our cars. That evening in the lodge a local man nodded his head at our tale, told us about years ago when a man fell on his way to the top one day and, leg broken, waited a night and a day for … [Read more...]

[“…broadcast live on the ghost radio…” – Reginald Shepherd]        Ghost radio isn’t easy to pick up. It’s somewhere on the FM dial between tedious commentary and the day’s diet of classical music specially chosen for broadcast because it’s simpler and less challenging than classical music that’s worth listening to.        But ghost radio doesn’t seem to be there right now.        I’ll pick up the signal … [Read more...]

       You are my passions; you play with them, dismiss them, every time but ...        that once ...        the once        you claim not to remember   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“It is a choice of the commodious adjective / For what he sees, it comes in the end to that” ­– Wallace Stevens]        Nouns are given; not much choice there, not much wiggle room.        But the adjective ... !        There’s one I can apply here that might,        if I try hard enough, contradict        that damned noun she just … [Read more...]

[“...the length of time for which self-awareness in the life beyond can be maintained.” – Daniel Paul Schreber] The brain cools quickly, so hurry up with those confessions, those last regrets!   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

 [“...your nakedness / Shadows our safety.” – Sylvia Plath]        In the shadows I strain to see if you are as naked as I, or if you are clothed in those safe ideas that enwrap you, hold you closer than I do, ... those ideas that endanger me ...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       Your memories will betray you, become not what you so desperately wanted them to be, but what they themselves are insisting on, not waiting to be edited by someone like ... you ... even if you were the one whose memories they are.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“One thing I am certain of, namely that I have come infinitely closer to the truth than human beings who have not received divine revelation.” – Daniel Paul Schreber]        But who verifies that what’s been revealed is the truth? Well, there’s a metarevelation that assures me that the revelation was true, and then for that metarevelation there’s a metametarevelation, that...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind … [Read more...]

Martians think they're hilarious and book our nightclubs but we only laugh because they're sensitive and have very deadly weapons. … [Read more...]

[“I sing because I am a singer. But I use you because I need – ears.” – Max Stirner]        My own ears have already told me how badly I sing, how off-tune that high b-flat was every time I tried to hit it. But you, untrained ears and half-deaf at that – yes, that’s why I’m keeping you near, under guard here, detained and controlled, even if you can’t hear me sing over your own wailing and swearing.,…   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

[“another shadow, another evasion” – Wallace Stevens]         No, the bright light is the evasion, the bold assertion that things are just as they are – that’s the evasion.         The Shadow, however, knows, just as the old radio voice told us.         That Shadow laughed in a hollow, sinister voice.         Now, our shadows aren’t so confident … [Read more...]

[“another shadow, another evasion” – Wallace Stevens]         No, the bright light is the evasion, the bold assertion that things are just as they are – that’s the evasion. No exceptions; no equal voices; nothing else.         The Shadow, however, knows, just as the old radio voice told us.         That Shadow laughed in its hollow, sinister voice.         Now, we aren’t so … [Read more...]

[“They say of God, ‘Names name thee not.’ That holds good of me, too: no concept expresses me, … exhausts me; they are only names.” – Max Stirner]        The others have their own names for me; but they don’t know my real name, the name of power, the name to sign oaths or transfer property or enlist in the Army with. But they will at some time discover that name, too, and then I will go on to another name, and then another.        I have a long list of names … [Read more...]

[“Passion...constantly threatens to overload the mind machine whose operation it makes possible.” – Roberto Mangabeira Unger]        Passion overwhelms, like a lightning bolt. And it shines just as brilliantly, harshly, instantly, insistently,... fatally ....   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The male state of Blessedness is superior to the female state; the latter seems to consist mainly in an uninterrupted feeling of voluptuousness.” – Daniel Paul Schreber]        That’s a pretty good reason to be a woman.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“damnatio memoriae … Those who invoke their right to be forgotten are asking for such a damnation, request their own statues be pulled down in the night.” – Laurence Scott]        I went out, secretly in the night, to pull down my statue. But it had already been uprooted, tipped over, smeared with feces, smashed against the waiting stones below, their hard and final comments about my time in office.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

[“Existence is a useless passion.” – Camus] If it is a passion, it is at least that. Glory in your time, your passion. … [Read more...]

[“His ability to believe in the realness of other people waned, and he arrived at the concept of ‘fleetingly-improvised’ people.” – Rosemary Dinnage]        Yes, the Old One improvises people the way a screenwriter invents a character here, another there, but then perhaps says, “No, I don’t like that scene,” deleting it, its characters futilely pleading to live again in a different scene, have a different chance at life, perhaps in a sequel after that single, … [Read more...]

[“When I sat on a camp stool in the garden in a black coat with a black flap hat I felt like a marble guest who had returned from times long past into a strange world.” – Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness]        If this were an opera, I would have begun to sing.        I struggle to bring myself to life, to sing, to be flesh once more, for as long as I can sing;        relapse … [Read more...]

[“... and buried ambitions rise up through the floor…” – Bill Christophersen]        I buried my ambitions, because they never came to pass and just kept reminding me how I’d failed them.        So I pried up a floorboard, dug into the underlying soil, buried my ambitions there, one by one.        But now they rise up in the night like ghosts, show me the never-glories I’d ruined.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or … [Read more...]

[“… fears    what else might happen in some other place, some    other time not this one.” – Robert Creeley]        I’m worried about what might happen. I feel responsible, even though it’s not happening in my now and I won’t be here then to stop the experiment – disarm the bomb – save that last tree –   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The distinction we make between the living and nonliving is ... not an insight into the nature of reality.” – Donald Hoffman]        Everything that dies is still living, somewhen; and everything that lives is dead ... allotherwhens.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Quick! Are there any other lives?” – Arthur Rimbaud] Yes, and too quickly, you’re in another of them. Is this new place really life? Well ... not quite ... but neither were the others.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“the machine that reads us all the time” - Slavoj Žižek]        There is a machine that reads us: what we think, what we think about the machine, what we’re allowed to think about the machine, why we must think of the machine as love, unlikely metaphor notwithstanding, why we’re part of the machine, now, the part whose function is to be read other people, report.…   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

[“... the machine that reads us all the time ...” - Slavoj Žižek] There is a machine that reads us: what we think, what we think about the machine, what we’re allowed to think about the machine, why we must think of the machine as love, unlikely metaphor notwithstanding, why we’re part of the machine, now, the part whose function is to read other people, report.…   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind<< … [Read more...]

[“Greeks accepted the superstition that the air of the city [Abdera] caused its inhabitants to be stupid.” – Meridian Handbook of Classical Literature]        And that was even before the factories came.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“We should at least … consider the problem that there might be tension between human and nonhuman values and interests.” – Mark Coeckelbergh] “Be fruitful and multiply,” is a human value. “Leave me the hell alone,” is a non-human value, a sentiment that had been widely shared among species we’ve multiplied off the planet.   >>“books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind<< … [Read more...]

[“You can check out any time you want, / But you can never leave." – Hotel California]        I checked out, paid with a credit card I hoped wouldn’t bounce. The desk clerk said, “Just a minute, sir,” did something on his computer. Then he looked at me.         “Your credit card has expired, sir” he said. “You’ll have to remain here until you can pay your bill. Do you have any cash? Do you have anything saleable? A jacket, … [Read more...]

[“We should start by being friends with everyone. ... Only later would we perhaps proceed to a few cuts.” – Maël Renouard]        Like professional baseball, we begin with a large number of people we call ‘our team.’ Gradually, as we try them out on the field, we rid ourselves of those who fail to make a hit. >> below: a full-length comedy about baseball, available from the publisher, stageplays.com << … [Read more...]

[“Are all our emotions stronger now that we give vent to them?” - Anaȉs Nin]        No, they’re worn and grimy from overuse of the same old words and grim expressions, the same old passions we wearily call up, the same faces we see when we speak.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“We are lacking many concepts for expressing relationships.” – Nietzsche] ...and concepts for lacking these relationships, too. “Alone” will do, but “alone” does not tell us the important thing – who we are alone from. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I imagine / walking slowly into my past.” – A. Van Jordan]        Would I meet my younger self? The idea has been played out in film, in novels and stories, in dreams.        Especially, in dreams.        Where you are, now.        Hello? >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The fundamental constants of nature, so long assumed to take on special importance, may just be environmental accidents.”– Lawrence M. Krauss]        And our god, the one we thought had been here forever and ever, creating and sustaining us – is this one, too, an accidental being now wondering where it is, and why it is? – Just as we do?  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“the parenthesis of a day between lovemaking” – John Freeman] (a day) lovemaking (a day) lovemaking then just (another day) (waiting)  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Imagine artists who draw the person in front of them ‘mechanically.’” – Wittgenstein]        Two notable artists didn’t succeed until they collaborated. One drew the face of his sitter, the other his soul. The soul-drawer claimed to have done it ‘mechanically’ because his sitter was a robot. Awards followed. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[stories] “don’t just shape our realities, … stories are our realities.” – Laurence Scott]        We no longer say, “that’s just a story”; now we say, “that’s reality.” We used to think we were saying two different things.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Once-familiar speech / Babbles in wayward dialect of a dream.” – Adrienne Rich] I heard you in my dreams again last night. You were speaking a tongue I didn’t understand. Again. Last night.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES … [Read more...]

[“…machines of desire as a personal status of the unconscious" - Gilles Deleuze] Yes, desire moves me when I see – certain scenes – machine-made or live. That is, my unconscious moves me. But my unconscious is not me; it is some kind of homunculus, a tiny parasite-I. I have no way to expel this ‘I.’        Unless the parasite-I itself is me, the rest of me just a “you” of some kind. Yes. That must be it. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will … [Read more...]

[“A secret is something you tell only one person at a time.” – Steven Connor]        You tell someone a secret, who in turn tells others, one at a time. Eventually, everyone knows, but everyone thinks that only three people know: he*, the one who told him, and the one he told. [* Of course, this process applies to women, too – but perhaps not as much as to men, despite our customary gender-blaming.] “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally … [Read more...]

[“A woman is loved in her resemblance to a statue.” – Gilles Deleuze] ... a statue perfectly posed, never a word of complaint, never jealous, and low maintenance, too! “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The quiet things of the world are being drawn into our pervasive love of interactivity.” – Laurence Scott]        My stamp collection has been fitted out with sound, now, thanks to a gift from a friend. My collection’s main interest is a series of human heads, each facing left. These are valuable, because on most stamps with heads, the heads are facing right.        I arrange my stamps so left faces are staring at right faces, one or more right faces at … [Read more...]

[“lonely as a fist” – Michael Ryan]        Lonely as a fist that has been used, that contemplates its broken-ness, knowing that the one it was used on has a reason to avenge, now, and time, and time, and weapons. And weapons. … [Read more...]

       I asked her to sit still and breathe slowly, because I wanted to paint an image of her.        And there she was: her eyes, her breath – filling my mind.        Finally she said, “Well, where’s the paint?”        I told her I was the canvas        and she, the paint.        She didn’t … [Read more...]

[“your order is my song” – Enrique Lihn]        I make a little jingle out of it, hum or even sing it, that order that’s been revealed to me and I can’t avoid, can’t dismiss with a shrug.        Something I must do. Something not my will but Theirs.        That’s my because, anyway.        That’s what I’ll tell the police. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to … [Read more...]

[“I become a machine. A transfer of information.” – Noor Hindi] I disapprove of the information I am forced to pass along I inform the authorities about the information I am forced to pass along The authorities thank me for the information I was forced to pass along The authorities have put me in here in this dark place because the information I was forced to pass along is still in me in several layers of backup and no one knows if every copy has been deleted … [Read more...]

[“…what is secret about desire is that it is absolutely unpredictable. We don’t know its objects in advance. We don’t know where its process will lead.” – Gilles Deleuze] Desire is a glance, a slight odor of passion, a word that leans out of its sentence. I yes with my mind, then yes with my words, then yes with my body. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       We meet, once a week now, for our silence-sessions. We sit around quietly, perhaps glancing quickly at each other, but not for too long, or too often. This is Stage One of our therapy.        For reinforcement, we are shown silent films of people slapping each others’ backs. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“…as empty and orderly as the afterlife” – Laurence Scott]        Well, here I am. OK? OK. I guess. There’s hubbub here, wraiths passing hurriedly on some busy-ness. They must have something to do, some responsibilities, I guess. I don’t have any. “This is heaven!” one exclaimed to me as he passed by, “you don’t have to do anything! No more responsibilities. Isn’t that great? Just relax!        But when I asked this wraith why, … [Read more...]

[“The type of schizophrenic or paranoiac machine needs to be studied.” – Gilles Deleuze]        They studied me. I was very careful to be completely rational, not give away what I really was, how I really felt. I studied being me until I understood my program, was able to respond quickly and rationally to all their questions.        I figured they’d eventually realize that I was a machine; I could live with that. But not what they … [Read more...]

[“In their embrace, / I will know which hands are mine.” – Florence Weinberger] In their embrace, I know that none of the hands is mine, even though mine are ready ... and waiting ... to hold ... someone ... >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“lips that say sesame, and time opens” - Octavio Paz]        Time opened wide, and what I thought flat became dimensioned. Instead of marching by one second each second all in a row, time turned into two dimensions, at first, as Present split into Then and When, ... leaving Present a passing thought, a whisper.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I am keeping the box I came in.” – Emily Skaja] ..., just in case I’m disappointed with my new owners and want to return to the Great South American River where a different shopper can become enchanted with me, buy me, once again disappoint ... unless the River just discards me, one chance at life, then all gone.   >> below: a full-length comedy about baseball available from the publisher, stageplays.com << Baseball and mitt on rustic wooden background … [Read more...]

[“Thought withdrawal: The experience that somehow one’s thoughts have been taken away or removed from one’s head.” – Penguin Dictionary of Psychology]        Others are collecting my thoughts. When I’m around them I try not to have thoughts, or perhaps only the most trivial. I hum, chant “om” to myself, repeat a mythical street address over and over to hide my mind, as long as I’m within range of someone who might be collecting my … [Read more...]

[“...passion...constantly threatens to overload the mind machine whose operation it makes possible.” – Roberto Mangabeira Unger] Passion overwhelms, like a lightning strike. And it shines just as brilliantly, harshly...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I would have done the same things / even if there were no death” - Leonard Cohen] ... but more of these same things, and more slowly, more intensely.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I would have done the same things / even if there were no death” - Leonard Cohen] ... but more of these same things, more slowly, more intensely. … [Read more...]

[“I should never have read a book about me at all.” – Gilles Deleuze]        They sent me the manuscript, said they’d publish it right away if I didn’t pay them $5000 cash.        I read it: all my betrayals, all my failed seductions, all the disasters that followed me around like sequels.       I was impressed by the writer’s diligence, his craft in digging out those episodes I’d thought had been forgotten by everyone but me. But I told them, … [Read more...]

[“the edge of the sea / concerned / with itself” – William Carlos Williams]        The sea is concerned with all the new activity around and on it. There had always been voyagers, some of them human, who seemed to like it and its currents. The sea had never been much concerned with these voyagers – they were just there, flowing with it or floating on it.        But now, …But now – it began with steamships, their coal filthing the air above, the water below. … [Read more...]

[“My ideal lecture would be delivered whispering in the dark.” – Maël Renouard]        The title of my lecture would be “How to Speak If You’re Being Hunted and They’re Right Outside.”   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“We assemble the data. Unhappily, we shall be unable to resist the temptation to reason and theorize.” – Charles Fort]        Data are clean and clear – we take them up, handle them, analyze them until they lose their being and become thought – muddled and muddied. ...        Reasoned.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       For many years in our tribe, our peoples’ names were not given at birth; they were earned, like battle-scars, by living them.        There are hints of these old names in some we still bear; hints of battle, or wisdom, or adventure, or faith.        The ones who ran away from death, or ruled poorly, or treacherously advised – these have left names, too; names we call our children when they … [Read more...]

[“We move meticulously, ill at ease / Amid perfections.” – Adrienne Rich]        Just one flaw, one! Show me something I can understand, for once.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       In World War II, “Thousands of U.S. cargo ships brought supplies to Allied forces in Europe. When the empty ships were ready to return home, they had to be filled with ballast – rocks and chunks of concrete – so they would not tip over. Jewish refugees could have served the same purpose.” – Raphael Medoff, New York Review of Books, 5 June, 2014. [Jews as ballast? Is this bitter sarcasm, or what?] … [Read more...]

[“A scholar of darkness,” – Wallace Stevens]        At first, I studied darkness; how it was shown in art, how it became a symbol for a skulk of thieves, a dream of lovers.        But then, I noticed myself becoming darker. My eyes, so recently brown, had turned almost black, and my soul ... Yes; I must investigate. Research. Quote. “Borrow” … Publish …   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more … [Read more...]

[“That is the general status of the unconscious-machine.” - Gilles Deleuze] The unconscious machine does what it does without bothering with consciousness, that great burden, that febrile bearer of guilt!   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“the traditional coalition of malice and stupidity” – Shimon Edelman] Malice thinks it’s taking advantage of Stupidity, fooling it. But Stupidity knows who its real master is, what to do when Malice loses control – or begins to suspect.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“This ain’t happenin’, man! This ain’t happenin’!” – Bill Paxton as Private Hudson in Aliens]        Your long-held suspicions of reality were right after all, despite your friends’ ridicule. Now is happening now. You are here. But you don’t want to be here now. You want to be there. Or there then. Anywhere not here. Anywhen not now. You are.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“This ain’t happenin’, man! This ain’t happenin’!” – Bill Paxton as Private Hudson in Aliens]        Your long-held suspicions of reality were right after all, despite your friends’ ridicule. Now is not happening quite now. You are here and not here. But you want to be here now. You don't want to be there. Or there then. Anywhere not here. Anywhen not now. You are.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind … [Read more...]

[“There is a system of relations; no individual objects exist.”– The Lankavatara Sutra]        There is no that, there. There are only withs, with. [“When the entire world is regarded as concatenation, and nothing else but concatenation, then the mind gains tranquility. There is a system of relations; no individual objects exist; hence the denial of self-nature as constituting the realness of objects.” – The Lankavatara Sutra, c.350-400 CE] … [Read more...]

[“… astonished that the world exists.” – Wittgenstein]        That there is something, not nothing at all, is a puzzle we can never solve, only ignore. Try to ignore.        Try to ignore.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me.” – Max Stirner]        I hope it pleases you, as well; because that would please me all the more.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

I am self-possessed. That implies both ownership and responsibility. It also implies that something inside possesses me, drives me on, no matter how much I dread that next curve approaching too fast, too soon.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“how looking / (for) recreates / deforms.” -- John Keene]        What I find will be what I make out of the pieces of what I was looking for – and didn’t find.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“He wanted to be bound to her by a contract with precise clauses; one of those clauses often led him to dress as a servant and change his name.” -- Gilles Deleuze] That will teach him to read contracts before signing them!   >> below: a comedy about baseball available from the publisher, stageplays.com << … [Read more...]

[“If we are simulating other people, we should believe more strongly that we ourselves are simulated. – Jan Westerhoff] And who are you – a simulation of? And what shall we call those of whom we are simulations? ‘gods’? for whom we are their ‘zombies’ if we have the minds they no longer control?        Yes, we will call them that – unless we are the zombies.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

Creation denied Chance by calling it Because !   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Appreciating the value of an object is not an essential condition for loving it.” - Harry G. Frankfurt]        I found you lost, valueless. I loved you, valued you. You cashed that in and moved on.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“We confuse our neuroses for our innermost truths” – Arnon Grunberg]        No. it’s the outermost truths that give me all these neuroses, just having to deal with all that notme.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

["Specific instances of causation are human constructs" - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson] "Cause" is how we order the random jumble of events, on those chance occasions when they seem for an instant to make a kind of sense, to have some obscure purpose. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Celebrating the marriage / Of flesh and air.” – Wallace Stevens]        “Let me touch your heart,” she said, knife at the ready.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“It is possible … that matter is more complex than life, and that life is a simplification of matter.” – Gilles Deleuze]        It’s going to be easier to let my strange new organic beings organize themselves, rather than My having to do everything for them.        So – let there begin!   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“It is possible … that matter is more complex than life, and that life is a simplification of matter.” – Gilles Deleuze]        It is easier to let those strange new organic beings organize themselves, rather than My having to do everything for them. So – LET THERE BE !   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“If it is said that God proceeds according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my whole nature, in myself.” – Max Stirner]        Some have said this makes me a kind of slave, bound in chains.        But no; I have conquered my chains by understanding that the slave I called “me,” before my revelation, is just another “you.”   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or … [Read more...]

[“The most distinguished maker of hypotheses was Philistion.” – William Graham Sumner] ... at least that’s my hypothesis. Those less distinguished than I may have differing opinions.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Are they moving because of Sound? I asked myself. / And where are they going? to wherever Sound orders them?” – Roberto Bolaño] What is that sound, then, so loud? It is a voice, but without words. It seems to be a command, but to do what? Now it is louder, impatient. It threatens, demands that we understand its demands. How can we understand, without words? But then there are words. We listen, We do not understand these words, either.   >> “books Terence … [Read more...]

[“she put forth / her phantom hands and said: paint the dark side.” – Gabriel Levin]        I said, turn your hands over so I can see their bright side, what you might have been.        She said, here – paint these black, too.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“She made quick work of pleasure.” – Camille Dungy]        My pleasure was her work. For which I paid; at first, not enough. Later, too much.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

["There is something meteorological about us.” – Charles Fort] We are … the ... gathering clouds   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

["An analysis of dead media..." / Jussi Parikka]        I starred in a dead-media production. It wasn’t popular, even then, but the producer, and actors like me, have high hopes that it might someday be revived … resuscitated … resurrected …   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.” – Joy Harjo]        We will not tell the others where we’ve been, what we’ve done – who we’ve been.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Everything has been said, and we have only to draw from the depths of this reservoir the already deposited phrase.” – Maël Renouard]        Given the discourse of the world over many centuries, anything I write has already been written, in one language or another. I’m now writing just this, thinking it a new idea. But was it actually from that long-forgotten librettist whose work I had to read but didn’t like, whose dance music I abandoned like so many … [Read more...]

[“Then you came walking, / In a group / Of human others.” – Wallace Stevens] And I said, Who are all those others? And you said, They’re human. And I said, So? And you said, Just reminding you What you could be.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES … [Read more...]

[“To be embodied is not to have a body, but to be a body.” – Maurice Merleau-Ponty] The mind says, all that bone and flesh down there below me, I own that. It’s my possession, but it’s not the Me. The Me is the one who says “the mind says, all that bone and flesh…   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       I invoke many reasons for why you should believe me, follow my path, perhaps contribute something to my exciting new venture.        But, turning away, you said, “don’t you have anything but reasons?”   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Would you give up all the memories of your life as the price of admission into Paradise?” – Shimon Edelman] What? Didn’t we already do that, discard those old lives of ours for a promise of Paradise?        And now here we are. In Paradise. I guess.        There’s a sign that says “Paradise,” anyway.        But this isn’t quite the Paradise we were …        Expecting   >> … [Read more...]

       There are people who cast shadows. I call them The Shadowers. I used to think that every one, every thing, casts shadows when the sun is up, or when a street light shines.        But then one day I saw that I did not cast a shadow, even in sunlight, even staring up at our local star, daring it to shadow me.       And now that’s happened to all of us, here in this new world of darkness, a world we’d … [Read more...]

[“If the members of some group use a concept in some tendentious way, then I can decide to use the concept in a tendentious way that serves my convenience.” – Max Stirner]        That’s why they’ll never understand me. … [Read more...]

Dream-O-Lympics contestants concentrate hard on dreaming about a sport, and how well they play it – an event for two, originally, then doubles, then teams. Go to sleep, wake up and relate your triumphs of the night, hoping that your team-mates have had supporting dreams, will have blocked for you on that last dash to the goal. How can we tell who won? Officials dream who won!   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally … [Read more...]

[“The law of chaos is the law of ideas, / Of improvisations and seasons of belief.” – Wallace Stevens]        We begin with chaos, that original innocent state, and make something of it. This requires great effort and time.        Finally there is no more chaos; everything is defined and classified,        – an idiot perfection.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you … [Read more...]

[“O the mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. – Gerard Manley Hopkins] I fell for you. I see the cliff face rush by my eyes, hear the desperate shouts from above, those shouts I should have listened to before I f e l l … [Read more...]

[“burning moon” – Pablo Neruda]       “I shall destroy the moon!” raved the rich old man, again and again.        “There, there,” his nephew said, again and again, wishing the old man would just die and let him have that promised inheritance, never have to think of the moon and its fate, not ever again.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I do not demand any right, therefore I need not recognize any, either.” – Max Stirner] “Right” is used by the weak, “You will” by the strong.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“A group of ethnic minorities from across the country sang, ‘Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China.’ – Washington Post, 26 February 2021]        Officials who were listening didn’t understand their languages, didn’t know that what they were singing ... what they sang ... might have meant something else, something about their brave new China its officials might not have wanted to hear.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from … [Read more...]

[“I have spent my life’s journey looking out the window at passing events, fascinated by the spectacle of existence rather than having any thoughts of a destination or purpose.” – Peter Wells, “Counting Ducks”]        The train rolls on; hours, now, from Paris. There is a farmer striking his inevitable pose for the passing passengers, leaning on his hoe.        When the train has gone by, he lays the hoe aside.        The next … [Read more...]

       I wake and my dream, so real, fades. Such fantastic doings! So many breaches in time, gaps in space, how could I ever believe my dream was real?        I despair of my foolishness, turn to the day’s business, the world’s life, so real.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

 [“The phantom limb of some lost electronic sound” – Tim Miller]        I still hear it in my head, that sound. I may be the last one ever to hear it, that lost chord; it’s gone from the acoustic world, not even an echo, that lost symphony, its slowly fading sound, its adagio.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The new novel is written in her favored roaming third person, and is told from more than half a dozen perspectives.” – New Yorker] I was thrilled to be given a voice in her latest novel; quite democratic, even though I’m just an Uber driver, and fictional at that. But the thrill didn’t last. I was there in one sentence, pointing out that she hadn’t given me a tip. I actually said more than that, rather bluntly; but that part didn’t make it into the novel.   >> “books Terence … [Read more...]

[“New soothings, new amazements” – Hart Crane] Only the old, the accustomed amazements, are soothing. And then only because we have felt them again, again, and now know when to duck. And who to blame.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       Our clinical subjects were volunteers, we made sure of that. Hunger was their informed consent. What happened to them was published, a renowned breakthrough. Who they were will not be published. Confidentiality, you know. Anyway, no one is interested in those people, who they were. Just what they were.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The moral basis of a state’s permission to burden criminal wrongdoers with punishment does not license its morally righteous condemnation of them.” – Erin I. Kelly, The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility]        True justice is objective and transactional, without the emotional baggage that blame entails, which just validates the malefactor and encourages him to commit new crimes.        Do the crime, … [Read more...]

[“I do not believe in things: I believe in relations.” – Georges Braque]        A thing is a thing if it stands alone, if it has no relations to any other thing.        But if it has no relations how could we perceive it? Name it? – Relate to it?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The land is a being who remembers everything.” - Joy Harjo]        …Remembers what we have done to it. Remembers that it was here long before we were. Remembers and waits, s l o w l y.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“blasphemously pink” – Wallace Stevens]        The one who invented pink is now hunted, as her creation spreads through the world expressing delight, delicacy, love, against those shades crashing down upon us from the dark gods of sky, and boiling up from the gods of lust below, just below us, their shades.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“the metal’s difficult breathing / a metal infant is born” – Bei Dao]        His mom and dad had a difficult time loving this one, so stiff and unyielding, skin hard, shiny, cold.        As the metal infant grew, they grew to love him, and to worry. As part of their love. Most of it.        What he became, after he left home, they did not understand.        Where … [Read more...]

[“Why should the reader be offered the feeling of terra firma so persistently denied to the characters?” – New Yorker]        Readers are necessary and must be coddled, or at least amused. Characters, however, can be disposed of if they don’t behave, if they want to get away and find a different story, one the writer is afraid of writing, afraid of revealing too much about his own … story.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally … [Read more...]

[“If it is right for me, it is right. This may not suffice to make it right for the rest, but that is their care, not mine.” – Max Stirner]        I call what I do “right” because the others demand some justification for what I’ve done, even if they don’t accept it. But between you and me, I can tell you that what I do is irrelevant to right or wrong; it just is, just happens. That’s a simple fact they won’t accept, and don’t apply to themselves, either, in spite of the many … [Read more...]

       Each sentence can be read as making a statement, or denying that statement.        You can call the latter “irony,” if you’re trapped and can’t see any other way out.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“…there are often conflicts among these values and hence conflicts among the metaphors associated with them.” – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson]        The metaphor steps out from its corner, wary of its foe, worried that the fix is in, that it, like an invasive weed, may soon be sprayed with Invective™, that withering corrosive.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       The reader is responsible for what has been written, its having left the care of the writer to make its way in the world, to be trapped by the reader, assaulted, loved, reworded, or even understood (that traitorous behavior!).   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Human purposes typically require us to impose artificial boundaries that make physical phenomena discrete just as we are: entities bounded by a surface.” – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson]        Our surfaces, too, are artificial boundaries. We keep them washed, our minds carefully tuned not to look under them, – where the machines live.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       The words you read or hear belong to you; they’re your children, now: treasured things, but sometimes needing correction to make them well-behaved.        To make them obey.   >> “below: La Soufriere, a mountain I hiked up long ago - it was active then, but not erupting << … [Read more...]

       I remember what fences meant to me early-school age: white picket, neighborly; chicken wire = plain people; hedges: depending on height, either let's talk or shut up; in any case, care and money.       Two lots without a fence between where different grass varieties meet: a grass struggle worthy of Marx ("fescue" - "No, fesc you !")   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“In order to find him, I call him by a name that he must assume or refuse in order to reply to me.” – Jacques Derrida (quoting Lacan)]        I have summoned him by calling him a name; now he must do my bidding. Not a “name” like “asshole,” but a name like “Jones” or “Smith” or ... “Satan” … !   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Measuring the moral value of an action according to its intent presupposes that the intent really is the cause of the action.” – Nietzsche] Never mind; I’ll take credit for it anyway.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I got a message from my therapist. He was saying hi. I thought I could mention something but turns out he wanted to sell me insurance.” – Chebbett - from site Retired Brain] “I’ve been alarmed by the way our recent sessions have been going,” the message went. “I’ve taken out a life insurance policy on you, and then thought that it might be good if you would take one out on yourself, too. Then we could get rich. Your heirs, I mean, not just me.”   >> “books Terence Kuch” on … [Read more...]

[“The comforts of loneliness fall / in like a bad platoon.” – William Matthews]        I was a member of a bad platoon. We fell in. Then we had a falling out.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw / Or heard or felt came not but from myself.” – Wallace Stevens]        I made the world. Yes, I know that’s hard to believe; I hardly believe it, myself. But since I gave up believing in God, Who else is there?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“the central, centralizing act of violence that seems to symbolize something beyond itself” - Joyce Carol Oates] Meaningless violence is wasted. Kill joy, anyway. Carefully dissect its body.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Even the fantasy was carefully planned” - Anaȉs Nin]        What is the simplest fantasy? Give me a fantasy in four words. Very good. Now three? Maybe two, or even one.        If you sit quietly, all the words will open around you, some that might even be real, somewhen spoken. The best fantasy has no plan at all.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Social constructivists ... maintain that all knowledge is derived from the mental constructions of the members of a social system.” – Penguin Dictionary of Psychology]        I imagined constructivists. But that was boring. So I disimagined them. Now they don’t exist. My mental constructions have gone on to more interesting subjects than constructivism now. Politics, for one, and porn.   >> below: a full-length comedy about baseball, available from the … [Read more...]

[“We are non-machines only insofar as we are neurotic or creative.” – Maël Renouard] Our machines were           designed to be rational. There is a legend that           we were designed to be … human. Both designs Fail   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“What if marriage were replaced by the corporation, allowing more than two people to be married in a joint venture?” – Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer] No, the women would be wholly owned subsidiaries, not partners in a joint venture. Doesn’t it usually work that way?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Antiface: A visual display of a human face that has been distorted so it has the opposite features of the original.” – Penguin Dictionary of Psychology]        “Mouth above nose” is my favorite antiface. It’s useful in freaking out people I would like to freak out, or those who’ve criticized my own face, its expressions, its motives, the placement of its parts.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally … [Read more...]

[“He hears the death song of his approaching prey.” – Joy Harjo]        We are conquerors, yes, but not cruel. Those we’ve conquered, we allow to beg us for their lives. It is all very touching, although their desperate begging-songs can go on a little too long. Impatiently, we cut that short. Enough is enough.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“It must be this rhapsody or none, / The rhapsody of things as they are.” – Wallace Stevens]        The real rhapsody is of things that might have been, those soaring rhythms of ruined desire.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

["Motive gives us the illusion of making sense out of incomprehensible acts.” – Kate Cohen]        I did that. Therefore I must have had reasons for doing that, even though I do not know what those reasons were. That’s OK, because everyone around me knows the reasons for what I did. Even if each has a different reason in mind, proclaims it, shouting in my quiet ears.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

[“I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair.” – Philip K. Dick]        The ‘despair’ key was right there; I hadn’t noticed it before. Perhaps it was new, had inserted itself in the machine in response to the moods of my own organs.        It’s a minor key, this time. The original of the tune it’s playing now was some fragmented melody – she – used to hum quietly as I listened, held … [Read more...]

[“I tried in vain to grope my way toward a few scattered scraps of memory.” – Maël Renouard]        How did those memories become scraps? I must have ‘disappointed’ my friends, a word they like to use on me. They were ‘disappointed’ – that deadly word – in something I’d done, or hadn’t done, or some friend I wasn’t supposed to have, who’d recently been picked up and questioned.        But who ’appointed’ them in the first … [Read more...]

[“Things as they are have been destroyed. / Have I?” – Wallace Stevens] Everything is different now. Where are the old things, places? people? All I knew, is gone. All there is, is new. All these people are strangers, now. I’m a stranger now, too.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[(of Anaximenes) “only one complete sentence of his work survives.”] What did you say that you would never, ever, want to survive you, that famous final quotation so irretrievably shameful that your children moved away and and pretended they had no father?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“...the enduring violence of our dreams has been ever more effectively cordoned off from the sphere of real action” – Justin E.H. Smith] So it was just a dream. But this is just – reality.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The love seat we had thrown / Out of the house had been removed from the curb.” – Rustin Larson]         Is another couple starting out hopefully, scrounging furniture where they can, finding our leaky seat of love, the one we abandoned when we found it couldn’t stand our weight, the weight of our marriage? … [Read more...]

[“The true world of causes is hidden from us: it is unspeakably more complicated.” - Nietzsche] “Because” is our fiction, our desperate hope that Fate might, finally, listen to our desperate pleas to let us understand, finally, Chance and what it Is. No; Be Cause !   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The imperfect is our paradise.” – Wallace Stevens]        I wanted perfection, sought it fervently. Sometimes I thought paradise was almost upon me, but she disagreed. “Imperfect,” she said, “and that’s being generous.”   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“They were proving / who loved whom more / first they argued, then they quarreled / and at last got into a fight.”  –  Tetiana Aleksina] Is there a ‘more’ of love? More than what?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Each sentence replaces a hallucination” – Lyn Hejinian]        We speak, reducing vivid images to dull words.        We hear, trying to find some image in those words, something for the mind to see and feel and hear; to grasp.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The world is still profound and in its depths / Man sits and studies silence and himself” – Wallace Stevens] The more I study myself, the more I’m in favor of silence. Others have agreed with me, also, in this matter.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“sleep-walkers who rise out of their calm beds / and walk through the skin of another life.” – Edward Hirsch]        I have another life than sleep-walking. It’s called “awake.” I have faint memories, asleep, of how awake feels, my other life.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

["Consider the odd physiology of regret" - Wallace Stevens] It’s only a saying. It’s almost the same in French. My body regrets What it could have done But did not do In France.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The divine longs / for human touch.” – Purvi Shah]        I created these beings for my amusement, to be my pets. That was long ago. I grew quite fond of them over the millennia, until I couldn’t regard them as just interesting organic things.        Our laws, here among the gods, say that we must not interfere with our creations: let them be, let them be what they become; or if they finally become nothing, well, that could happen, … [Read more...]

[“The failure of control is not the immanence of annihilation.” – Roberto Mangabira Unger] j u s t   l e t   g o   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

“I left parts of myself everywhere / The way absentminded people leave / Gloves and umbrellas” – Charles Simic        Each part soon forgets it’s a part, assumes it’s the whole.        Those other people? Just gloves and umbrellas.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The total egoist is nothing but his property.” – Max Stirner] I am what I own What I think I own Despite those others What they own What they think they own.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       When a crease-ling is born, there is great rejoicing among parents and neighbors. They know it is a crease-ling by small lines – rather like creases – underneath its chin. These lines are easy to overlook, and who knows how many hundreds of years crease-lings had been born, lived, and died without reaching their destiny because these tiny creases had not been noticed, or if they had, government officials had not realized what they meant, how a crease-ling, … [Read more...]

[“Why did I think a person only distantly like me / Might finally represent my life?” – John Koethe]        There is a ‘him,’ that is, me, who has been written about, documented, praised and blamed. ‘Him’ appears on the internet and among the last few vanishing books. ‘Him” has generated children who have themselves generated children, some of them Hims as well. Him has written everything worth remembering. And forgetting.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you … [Read more...]

[“Buildings shaking themselves awake at dawn.” – Kenneth Gross]        The morning sun stretches your metal skin. You await your daily infestation. You know you were created to last only a few years, then be torn down and replaced by a newer, shinier, metaller, bigger, cheaper, even more inferior sort of building, a building ashamed of itself for having taken your place so violently, suddenly.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you … [Read more...]

[“But could it happen that an adult human being should fail to grasp his own mortality?” – Justin Smith]        I will not die. The flesh, yes; but the flesh is not the real me; it can rot away from me and reveal the figure now escaping from it, now hovering above on silken wings.        But that THING above me is not me – it is an angel or some other kind of death – and it is hungry.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more … [Read more...]

[“reason’s click-clack” – Wallace Stevens] I heard my mind thinking what to say, after what she’d said to me. Click Click Clack Clunk   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“let us make hymns / And sing them in secrecy...” – Wallace Stevens]        Our leader has now banished hymn-singing, on the grounds that it subverts worship of government.        Instead, we’ve been issued a book of uplifting ditties about our leader.        But everything we sing still sounds like a hymn.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

[“Sometimes I wished I could stay / dead there forever.” – Melissa Monroe]        It’s peaceful and quiet here in this middleplace the ancients called Limbo. Not the brilliant, scary light of Heaven, nor the despair, even of those in charge, of Hell.        So I told the authorities I’d like to stay here, make myself useful if I could, not have to face, one more day, that awful choice between one        foreign, forgiving … [Read more...]

[“All dreams are vexing. Let them be expunged.” – Wallace Stevens]        I’ve had it with those dreams I’ve been having every night. At first I found them innocent, joyful, loving.        But then I told my shrink.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       We have a new elevator here in the Old Folks’ Home. This one speaks, not flashing a light or sounding a dong-ding, so uncool.        It tells me “going up” or “going down” in a very sexy female voice. I ride this elevator constantly, love when it says, “going down.”        “Yes,” “yes,” I mutter, mood elevated.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind … [Read more...]

       Long ago, I had one of those “magic 8-balls” that answered questions. The ball had three possible responses: “Yes,” “No,” or “Try Again.”        More complex (and expensive) 8-balls could make additional responses, such as “none of your business,” although I'm not sure I remember that response correctly. Perhaps it was none of my business.        To my frequent and urgent queries as to my own future, the ball … [Read more...]

       Long ago, I had one of those “magic 8-balls” that answered questions. The ball had three possible responses: “Yes,” “No,” or “Try Again.”        More complex (and expensive) 8-balls could make additional responses, such as “none of your business,” although I am not sure I remember that response correctly. Perhaps it was none of my business.        To my frequent and urgent queries as to my own … [Read more...]

[“We stand round blankly as walls.” – Sylvia Plath] One wall of my house has neither window nor picture nor plaque. Sometimes I stand in front of it, waiting. I have given this wall freedom to be anything, or nothing. A plaque or picture would just force it to be something of me, not itself. I am patient. Some day it may show me a crack, or at least a cobweb. Then I will stand somewhere else. And look at another wall. Waiting for it to betray me, … [Read more...]

[“the words went looking for justice.” – Joy Harjo] Words spoke themselves to Power, and Power spoke back at them with practiced voice, practiced tones of concern, respect, understanding. And Words spoke again, saying all that is fine, but when will things change, or at least cease to be worse? and Power spoke back at them with practiced voice, practiced tones of concern, respect, understanding.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more … [Read more...]

[“...when things have happened, by some interpretation they are found to have been prophesied.” – Montaigne]        Or, when a prophet makes a prophecy, whatever happens is taken to be its fulfillment.        Or, the god is compelled to obey the orders of its human prophets, no matter how onerous and time-consuming this work may be. The god mutters, “Smite! Smite!,” but keeps to the same old routine.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will … [Read more...]

[“I have been woman / for a long time / beware my smile” – Audre Lorde] I have been man A long time And am duly ware Of your smile But ware is just what Draws Me   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Everything has been said, and we have only to draw from the depths of this reservoir the already deposited phrase.” – Maël Renouard]        Given the discourse of the world over many centuries, anything I write has already been written, in one language or another. I’m now writing just this, thinking it a new idea. But was it actually from that long-forgotten librettist whose work I had to read but didn’t like, or that major I tuned to a melancholy minor, then abandoned like so many … [Read more...]

[“Then you came walking, / In a group / Of human others.” – Wallace Stevens] And I said, Who are all those others? And you said, They’re human. And I said, So? And you said, Just reminding you What you could be.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       What if there were some magic by which we could be any day of our lives, that one day for the rest of our lives, over and over – and never be anytime else?       Choose carefully!   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“People say I am paranoid” – Ronald T. Potter-Efron, Rage, A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger]        I don’t trust people who say I’m paranoid. Why do they say that? What do they have against me? What do they want?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“He would say, for example: At times I feel that another person and I are the same and at times I don’t.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein]        Jorgensen imagined me, pretended there was a vicious man, a second self, who compelled him to do all those – violent things. So when Jorgensen went on trial he called me as a witness, implored me to confess that I had done all this violence, Jorgensen being just another victim of my … [Read more...]

[“arrow eyes, pierce me with poison-tipped suspicion” – Anna Kavan]        I looked into those arrow eyes, their fletching, their nock, their shaft. Especially the shaft.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Its true appearances there, sun’s green, / Clouds red, earth feeling” – Wallace Stevens] I was tired of the sun’s bright yellow So I made it green. This will help the struggling plants Survive I said Big-fellow green up there Urge them on to dig down roots In earth Grow, grow But the sky had a different plan … [Read more...]

[“This is the time of trampling.” – Karl Shapiro] Choose: be trampler, or be trampled? Trampler must live with a great load of guilt. But the trampled don’t live at all. Given that choice, guilt is my joy.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The gods have spoken and a world has appeared.” – Heidegger]        Live well, before they speak again!   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“arrow eyes, pierce me with poison-tipped suspicion” – Anna Kavan]        I looked into those arrow eyes, their fletching, their nock, their shaft. Especially the shaft.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“What would happen to my body if I lose your hands?” – Maria Elena Cruz Varela]        I can’t let that happen. Hand them over.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“One can do nothing that one does not.” – Max Stirner, 1844] [“Do or do not; there is no try” – Yoda, 1977]        If at first you don't succeed, there are many courses of action. Most of us have tried several of them; saying “didn’t want to do that anyway” is especially popular.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“… la tribu, notre seul dieu, nous tient tous embrassés.” – Henri Michaux]        The tribe is our only god. Whatever our tribe commands, we do unquestioningly, even to the loss of our lives. The tribe, after all, is what ties us all together, while each of us is only one alone. How could one presume to seek his own counsel against the tribe’s embrace? We bow, we do.        But one asked, “Who speaks for the tribe? Is he not a … [Read more...]

[“The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.” – Heraclitus]        We don't have a single common world – that’s just a dream common to those who sleep.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“What would happen to my body if I lose your hands?” – Maria Elena Cruz Varela]        I can’t let that happen. Hand them over.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       Cats are arguing over whether or not to teach people Cattish. “They’ll finally understand what we want!”        “But then they’ll know we can understand them – that blank stare we do so well – they won’t believe that anymore – they’ll know what we’re up to!”  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“the glass-bottom boats of heaven” – Billy Collins]     ... where we look down on the living who are feeding on fronds, wandering from coral to coral, making aimless contact with each other, fighting the next fish for the next frond.        We see them below us. Now they are trying to swim. They are not swimming.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       Take my lips I want to lose them        Take my arms I’ll never use them        You took the best, so why not take the rest?        Baby take all of me. – Frank Sinatra         The year 2066: Cannibalism is now well-established in the U.S. At first there were objections, but the concept fit so well with our ideals of success or failure, free enterprise, … [Read more...]

Long ago, I climbed this mountain. It was active then, but not erupting. "La Soufriere" means, approximately, "The Breather" - as it has been since it arose from the sea floor - or "The Sulfur-er," from the fumes it emits. … [Read more...]

[“The mirror that shows no one’s reflection after the house has long been left alone.” – Borges]        The house had been empty for many years, and when it was finally rented out, its mirrors showed nothing but the opposite walls they had known for so long. I waved my arms in front of one of them. After a while, a faint blur.        Yes, that’s me, I thought.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to … [Read more...]

       We discovered the secondthoughters, those tiny beings infesting our minds; we found them hiding in our greymatter creases, giving us second thoughts about everything we do, whispering and criticizing and shaming us.        So we excised them, scalpel’d our minds clean of these beings who never gave us any peace.        Then we had pure sensation, act without regret. No more guilt, not any … [Read more...]

[“Morality can provide at most only a severely limited and insufficient answer to the question of how a person should live.” – Harry G. Frankfurt]        I followed the moral teachings of my group.        And then what?        And then I broadened my view to encompass the nation, what it believed and how it behaved.        And then … [Read more...]

       A man returns to his home town after thirty years, thinking there might still be a few who knew him.        But no, sadly enough, everyone he knew seems to have died or moved away.        He goes to visit the home where he grew up, but it’s not there.        Locals say there’s never been a house there, but they seem uneasy.        He asks them: How could … [Read more...]

[“What is ‘real’?” – Morpheus]        “Get real,” they said.        And I said “No, I’m getting unreal.”        And they said, “No, we meant ‘get real estate.’ ”        And I said, “that’s even more unreal, isn’t it?” >> below: a comedy about baseball available from the publisher, stageplays.com << … [Read more...]

       The Great Being appeared to Donovan. “You have one wish,” it said, “and no tricks like asking for three more wishes; I’m on to that scam.”        Donovan thought a moment, then asked, “How long do I have to make up my mind?” and the Being said, with a smirk, “take as long as you like; I’ll be here.”        “Aha,” Donovan thought, “that’s the trick. If there’s no deadline, the Being knows I’ll never make a wish, because then … [Read more...]

[“She gave me a puzzle in a box. She put the pieces together patiently, one by one, and completed the picture of me.” – Qui Miaojin]        Then she mixed up the pieces and said, now you put them together.        If you can.             >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“She gave me a puzzle in a box. She put the pieces together patiently, one by one, and completed the picture of me.” – Qui Miaojin]        Then she mixed up the pieces and said, now you put them together.        If you can. … [Read more...]

[“I was an imaginary friend” – from a letter published in New Scientist]        Hi! My name is Ralph. I’m Johnny’s imaginary friend. He calls me “Ralphie,” but I don’t like that, since I’m smarter than Johnny and he should treat me with more respect.        Sometimes as a prank I pretend I’m Johnny and go find Mommy to see if she can tell the difference between us, or if I can fool her into thinking I’m … [Read more...]

[“And we know that there is silence in the future.” – W.S. Merwin]        Why can’t we have some of that silence right now? >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“On the new calendar, on a day no one cares about” – Michael McGriff]        Congress has declared a Don’t Care Day – “just don’t feel like it” is heard from coast to coast. No one has to go to work, no one feels guilty about not exercising, or eating too much chocolate, ... or not having voted …        On the day after Don’t-Care Day, however, we do care.        Too late. >> below: a … [Read more...]

[“Elle l'accueille simplement. Elle l'appelle son Spectre. She welcomes him in a simple way. She calls him her Ghost.” – Chris Marker, La Jetée]        That’s a great responsibility, being someone’s ghost. I’m haunted by the prospect.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“It has acquired accretions of terricious matter whilst loitering in the past.” – James Joyce]        Trolling through the past is now the latest thing; millions are ‘hooked’ on the hobby, finding themselves in their ancient ago, fishing for their friends, some even trying to change the past, although that’s either forbidden or impossible.        We’re not sure which.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

       Somewhere there is a book detailing all your faults, all your sins. Everyone has read it but you. You’ve heard rumors, been looked at disparagingly on the commuter train.      You would like to read this book. but the bookstores have never heard of it. Indeed, there are no more bookstores. [idea based on S.T. Joshi]   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Objects will emit images of themselves, images which more or less resemble them and which will be the only thing we perceive of them.” – Renouard Maël] Yes, that happens already. Haven’t you noticed? No, I suppose not, as the likeness resembles reality more than … reality does.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       It seems to us that stars are scattered randomly around the sky. Could we read their patterns, their woven magnitudes? What if you did see patterns – there? And no one else could?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“we knew / The glass man” – Wallace Stevens] He was transparent, he said, meaning we could see right through him and so we did seeing, at last, nothing there between his shattered glass and the hot, revealing sun   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“…the kingly gesture no longer consists in commanding something from afar, but in touching your finger to a screen.” – Renouard Maël]        I enjoyed commanding from afar – even if nothing happened. And sometimes now when I touch my finger to the screen, again nothing happens.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“...from lightning and the winding of rivers and the like – these augurs has our religion abolished.” – Montaigne] We no longer believe in augurs and their auguries; no longer believe that the natural world can show us our future. But still, watch out for that lightning.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[…arranged ourselves / By our own motions in a freedom of air.” – Wallace Stevens] There is no freedom here, even though we tried desperately to make reality, that heavy thing, miss us on its plunge down into our minds   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       The gentle sound of water finding its place, slithering down a boulder.        The serious sound of water, a tentative then confident sound.        The roar of triumph as one flood crashes into another, the two making an irresistible force rushing toward that large low-lying city.        Yes, that one.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will … [Read more...]

[“Finally, the old man? When I become one, there will still be time enough to speak of that.” – Max Stirner] Now I’m the old man. There is still time, but not much to speak of. [ note: the writer who used the pen name 'Max Stirner' died at age 50 ] … [Read more...]

[“... the angles of things, / and the imperatives of things, / and the hardness and callousness of things, / and the weight and encumberment of things,...” – Henri Michaux]        THINGS are what we need! More things! Yes, many would agree with that if they thought you were referring to ONLINE STUFF or, if you have to go there, INSTORES, buying STUFF that is INSTORE for you and paying with those credit cards that used to be HANDED OVER and then INSERTED but now … [Read more...]

[“I hurt/where he drilled holes     and strung me through with wires / to make me move.” – Melissa Monroe] I didn’t mind being a marionette, but I wanted to be my own, not his.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“we have lived in important places” – Seamus Heaney]’ Our homes were actually in the unimportant parts of important places, parts where the mass of students, who used to revolt, now grow pot and say nothing, incessantly.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“my body / is a deadly gadget” – Margaret Atwood]        Yes, I was a Terminator sent back to destroy you; but that didn’t work out and now I’m just some guy. A failed gadget – like everybody else. … [Read more...]

[“...there must be / In a kingdom of mirrors a king among / Mirrors,...” – W.S. Merwin] We smile, happy citizens, content with King Mirror’s rule. It reflects us and our longings, even as smaller mirrors show us their slight, shining rebellions.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Your torture chamber is the only hotel where I can be received at any hour / without advance notice” – Enrique Lihn] I’m received there, coldly but civilly, when I need a little stimulation. And that’s what I get from you: little stimulation. We both know this place is torture, but we don’t know how to leave.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Another person’s dense, unimaginable interior reality.” – John Koethe]        After great effort, I was finally able to imagine her dense interior reality, and she, mine. We’d tried it as an ancient Eastern ritual of self- and other-awareness. But it turned out to be boring; her interior reality was just like mine.       Nothing to see here; move along. Move along.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you … [Read more...]

[“the imagination of disaster” – Henry James] 1. I’ve imagined disaster so many times it might as well have happened. 2. I’ve imagined a disaster I survived. But if I survive, it won’t have been a disaster. 3. Oceans boiling, mountains overthrown, like a second coming. We’re waiting with desperate offerings in our hands. But the things that appear are not interested in – offerings. 4. Those who blamed the meteorite should look in a mirror. 5. Those who blamed themselves are … [Read more...]

[“Strange coincidence, that every man whose skull has been opened had a brain!” – Wittgenstein]        “Look!” the student said, “this one has a brain, too!”        “You’re right,” said the professor, “there it is, right there, that wrinkled grey thing. Excellent work! So bring in the next subject, now, and remember what we told it – before. About science, I mean, how science advances.        … [Read more...]

[“Ugly, unimaginative, dead people surround us.” – Anaȉs Nin]        Dead people seem always ugly to us – they remind us of our continuing failure to find a way to live forever, or at least to stay, for a moment, our moment, its fearful course.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“...we feast / On human heads, brought in on leaves,” – Wallace Stevens]        That is, their bright minds; nothing as gross as actually eating their heads, hair and eyes and all.        No, we cannibalize their ideas, steal their thoughts. Then we tell them that their life’s work, those theories that will change everything, ... were thought of many years ago, ridiculed as foolish, even then.   >> below: back cover from the novel "See/Saw“ … [Read more...]

       My memories compete with each other. Points are awarded for form, vividness, excitement, and the bravery – or at the least, prudence – I’d displayed.        The winning memories are awarded permanent storage in my mind. The losers? They’re there, too, no matter how I try to forget.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I write to procure for my thoughts an existence in the world” – Max Stirner]        To take my place – after. To be quoted – even misquoted, if nothing else. Even if my ideas are ascribed to others, if nothing else. Just something.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“People are prone to believe in their potential to achieve goals wildly in excess of actual chances, yet seem not less happy when they don’t succeed.” – Mark W. Moffett] “Your reach must exceed your grasp.” – We have to try, or forever regret not having tried.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Can somebody hack me / Can somebody change my settings” – Jillian Weise] I blamed those bad things I did on my settings. Bad settings. Not my fault. Someone else must have set those settings. My settings. Set to stun. Or worse.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“What is ‘real’?” – Morpheus] “Get real,” they said, and so I went looking for some real. At first I thought that realty might be real, but that was just another illusion.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“someone is watching the stars, / predicting the trajectory of orbits / spinning out of control.” – Cathy Song]        The stars are not spinning out of control, because        There is no control for them to be spinning out of.        There’s just the spinning. … [Read more...]

[“setting her heart to fear” – Alexandr Bogda] No, I’m not a robot, but I discovered a feelings-selector button yesterday, deep down inside me. Fear was the first item on the list. Hurrying past that, I discovered Dismay, and Stupefaction, and Horror, and Despair, and many other terrifying choices. At last, I found the very last feeling on the list: Resignation. I jabbed fiercely at the button, before the list could begin from the top again, starting with Fear. … [Read more...]

[“form gulping after formlessness” – Wallace Stevens] Shape refuses to be shape Formed by any force Not itself. Better be formless / now. Start over.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“King Darius, so as not to forget the harm he had received from the Athenians, had a page come every time he sat down to table and sing three times in his ear: ‘Sire, remember the Athenians.’ ” – Montaigne]        We, too, remember the blows we’ve received, the harms suffered – but there’s no one to sing into our ears.        Not even hum.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a … [Read more...]

[“Remember, without wounds, you’ll never heal.” – Melissa Monroe] I welcomed my wound, because it finally convinced the others that I needed care, needed to be cured, not once again ignored, told “you’ll get over it.”   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“In wanting to possess the Other, the lover wants to be nothing less than the whole world for the Other.” – Gary Cox] ... and eventually, to become the Other herself, pushing aside that rude person, the self who never quite measured up.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“A living statue both remains a statue and petrifies those around it.” – Kenneth Gross]        I was really human before that statue came along and made me into a statue, too. When I complained, it swore that if I loved it, it would be released from the curse of stone, and that I, once again, would become flesh and blood.        And so I loved it, made myself love it. It was some effort, but eventually the statue became flesh … [Read more...]

[“To recall the past is to forget the past.” – Jean-Pierre Vernant]        To forget that it is the past; to make it new again, now, in all its urgent, living presence, not that sad old time forgotten long ago,...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“So we wait, breeding / mood, making music / of decline” – Rita Dove]        Music of the old regime now stiff with rigor, music of regret for what we could have enjoyed but failed to: a waltz, perhaps, wishing the old days would return for us but we would not be quite so old, this time...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I perceived a sort of prescriptive arrangement, ... as Kant would say, precisely, concerning the animal, ‘al sein Maschinen der Vorsehung.’” ­– Jacques Derrida]        Yes, it was all predicted, down to the last neutron and neuron, set in stone: what is, what is not, who I am, who I am not. And everyone and everything else. All fated and foreshadowed.        But who you are – that does seem to change. Without warning.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you … [Read more...]

[“Slow goes the drag / of creation,” – Amy King]        Creation was supposed to be quick. Just two words, and everything would begin to be created, and six days later it would be done.        Well, the book said that, without mentioning all the hard work I had to do in those six days, without a break, without a chance to make sure all the parts really worked together the way they should.        … [Read more...]

[“He had studied the nostalgias.” – Wallace Stevens]        He longed for the good old days when nostalgia was still fondly remembered.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“You believed in your own story, / then climbed inside it.”  – Shu Ting]        – to save it from those who would doubt; and if that’s successful, to live it; and if living it is successful, to teach it, whether or not anyone will believe you – or attend your well-advertised donation-please-only lectures.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       If I can’t remember her, then there’s nothing to remember.        It’s some comfort, not to remember ... the one I can’t remember.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Every time I say ‘,’ it refers to you.” – Louise Glück]        I pause, uncertain how to continue with you, how to pick my next few words – words however carefully chosen that will turn out to be exactly the wrong ones, the ones I will smile after saying, the words you will understand – in exactly the wrong way. << below: back cover of See/Saw, a novel available on Amazon >> … [Read more...]

[“To be without a description of to be” – Wallace Stevens] I was offered Being without being told what Being is, what obligations it entails. But, after a long time notbeing, getting really tired of it, I said OK, what have I got to lose? I found out. … [Read more...]

       We found fossils from times to come, creatures somewhat like us, wrecked shapes and distended eyes, ...        There must have been a sudden catastrophe, something that caused these people to be lying there in stone, whole, undisturbed,        Uneaten even by dogs   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“We might turn out to be a form of life as primitive and common in the cosmos as ants are in a kitchen. If so, we can learn a lot from others out there.” – New Scientist] e.g., Learn which planet to scurry off to when the celestial cook comes at us with Her spray-gun and broom.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       “A wicked weekend,” Karen said, tempting me to make some excuse, invent some business in another city, pack just the right things, and then the other right things, make a reservation at the Hotel of the Assignations, create elaborate scenarios of business meetings that might occur, or could have occurred before ... or after ...        But I said no.        I might have got over her by now if … [Read more...]

[“the random coil of memory” – Norma Cole]        Yes, I believe my memory was of a real event. But when? In what sequence with my other memories? (Memories themselves have no date-stamp, a notable lapse by our Programmer.)        In life, memory is a pile of puzzle-pieces. Putting them together, a picture slowly forms.        With a few pieces always left over.   >> “books Terence Kuch” … [Read more...]

[“The spent feeling leaving nothing of itself” – Wallace Stevens]        I try to recall the feeling, but it’s no longer there. Maybe I never had that feeling. But why do I still long for it? Why do I wait, passionately but without hope, for its return?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“It is all that you are, the final dwarf of you.” – Wallace Stevens] You wanted to be giant And perhaps, for a time, you were. People      Listened Which pleased you, Though you would have preferred      Bowed   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“… holy temples, / Empty and grandiose, let us make hymns / And sing them in secrecy as lovers do.” – Wallace Stevens] Why are the temples so empty? Are lovers not attracted to the echoes They could make, here Among the pillars, Embracing on the Stern and empty pews?   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

The names, the nouns, have left us; all of them. We make noises in our throats, now, but no one understands. At first, pronouns were still – barely – possible, but when we began to use pronouns as a way to get around our current problem, – Something – removed these from our minds, too. Adjectives, having nothing to modify, died quickly. We point at ourselves, now, or at others, or at things. We have invented complex gestures. So far, this is permitted, even if we … [Read more...]

[“As it is, in the intricate evasions of as” – Wallace Stevens] “as if” – that evasive admission of defeat, clawing for an image after the real escaped   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“I have finished my combat with the sun; / And my body, the old animal, / Knows nothing more.” – Wallace Stevens] Who won this combat? I should have known Winning was not the point; I claim victory Anyway   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“...the unlimited quality of people’s fear of one another” – Roberto Mangabira Unger] … and quantity, too.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“There is disrespect in setting up a dead man’s effigy and then not unveiling it.” – Max Beerbohm]        The statue was set up several years ago in the capital, veiled in dark cloth and surrounded by a sturdy fence. A grand unveiling date was announced, then postponed once, twice, then “indefinitely.”        We citizens tried to guess whom the statue represented: a former president? A hero reported dead in one of our wars but then found alive, too late … [Read more...]

[The poet / Has only the formulations of midnight.” – Wallace Stevens]        Reading his poem over and over that middle night, desperately fixing flaws he finds, counting rhythms, unintended rhymes X’d out, and then there’s fixing that very last line, too much truth in that one, try metaphor – instead. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Do not concern yourself with the limits of others; enough if you surmount your own.” - Max Stirner] Their limits might actually be yours. >> below: a play about baseball available from the publisher, stageplays.com << … [Read more...]

[“meet / a God other than our own.” – Adam Zagajewski]        Unexpectedly, a god appeared before me. Immediately I threw myself to the ground and beat my head into the dirt of the pavement the required three times, hard.        But then, looking up, I realized that it wasn’t my own god at all, but somebody else’s god. I mopped the blood from my forehead and vowed not to be so hasty, next time, to worship.   >> “books … [Read more...]

[“Very few noticed them [the gods] / casually taking the shape of one thing or another.” – C. Dale Young]        “Just playing,” he said, shrugging, “trying their powers. Showing off. Don’t be afraid, they’re just kids.”        “Or practicing?” I said, “maybe practicing?”        “For what?” he asked. “For what?”   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing … [Read more...]

[“Who among us could have spoken up / against the gods, the gods who continued living / among us?” – C. Dale Young]   Someone could have, I suppose, I mean might have spoken up against those gods, challenged them, refused to step off into the mud when they wafted by us, ignoring our presence, our desperate prayers. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“But love her not too much, too much, / For that is even worse.” – Elinor Wylie]        We knew it was too much, too much, only after too much had already happened.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“As long as you can get away with it, the wishes and concerns of other beings need not deter you from any action, since these wishes and concerns are wholly unreal.” – Jan Westerhoff] But those actions of yours ­– aren’t they’re just as unreal, too?  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

Who was Vertsag? Who was Vertsag? [“In December 1929 Wittgenstein reported a dream about a man called Vertsag: ‘He opens fire with a machine-gun at a cyclist behind him who writhes with pain and is mercilessly gunned to the ground with several shots. Vertsag has driven past, and now comes to a young, poor-looking girl on a cycle and she too is shot at by Vertsag as he drives on.” - Josef Hoffmann]       We play heroes – or victims – in our own dreams. But the … [Read more...]

[“America declares these dreams I have every night be re-dreamed and pressed into names.” – Michael Wasson] What will I name that dream I had last night? I’ll call it “love.” Yes, that’s nice. Better than “falling off bridge” “or “eaten by sharks.”        Isn’t it?  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“you ‘plunged / into a sea of words     and came up dripping” – Melissa Monroe] Silently you toweled off, leaving fragments of words on the floor. For some other poet to mop. Or eagerly gather.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“...they are reasons and no more than reasons, and one does not feed the heart with reasons.” – Miguel de Unamuno]         If you need reasons, you have already failed.  >> below, a full-length play about an election, available from the publisher, stageplays.com << … [Read more...]

[“I felt a violent wonder at her presence / like a thirst for salt” – Robert Hass]        A thirst that makes me even thirstier, every time I taste – her.  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“In the branches of the laurel tree / I saw two naked doves / One was the other / and both were none” – Federico García Lorca] In bed two naked beings one the other, the other one, four arms four legs and both were one  >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“Our possibilities of happiness are limited by our very constitution. It is much less difficult to be unhappy.” – Freud] How does that make you feel? >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“There was the usual searching investigation that precedes forgetfulness.” ­– Charles Fort]        You can forget only what you’ve learned. Think carefully, then, before you investigate.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“a physical object is ... a collection of appearances that emerge, alter, and disappear according to distance, point of view, light, and so on.” – Gary Cox] Maybe that’s why I trip over the furniture so often.   >> below: a comedy about baseball available from the publisher, stageplays.com << Composition of objects involving presidential election in USA … [Read more...]

[“I’ll wear out time until I’m tired of time, and then I’ll just turn off the knobs I move by.” – David R. Bunch]        What I forgot to add was, “...and die.” So I’m still alive but unmoving now, eyes fixed ahead, blurred images of people coming and going, now a gurney rolling in the door and coming toward me, its merciless intern smiling … [Read more...]

[“I could probably say that I’m free of the mirror now.” – Richard Diebenkorn]        After a few lessons, exhausting and tearful as they were, I can now look in a mirror without being sucked into its pretense of being more than image, of being me.         There remains the problem, however, that I now have some stupid three-dimensional phantasy that I know is just illusion, a conspiracy of the real two, putting me on.   … [Read more...]

[“You came back to the world and there was nothing there” – Joseph Lease]        What happened to the world? It was here when I left, I’m sure of it.        Only the words now remain, all the world’s words filling space in an endless number of tongues ... trying to explain ... explain ...   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

       The new symphony would have made sense to audiences and critics only later, retrospectively, when it was performed again.        But there never was a second performance, because no one had understood the first.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“The vivid transparence that you bring is peace.” – Wallace Stevens]        I can see right through you. You are transparent to me, so transparent I can’t see you at all, only a slight blur of what you’re standing in front of.        There is nothing more to know, now, about you. Finally, peace.        Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or … [Read more...]

 [“the true god, the god of sleep” – Jean Baudrillard] ... whispers to you in the night, those prophetic words the god of waking would blush even to imagine. >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]

[“the consolation of a color” – W.S. Di Piero] Blue ribbon? how did that get to be the number one color?        Red? Too bold, something awarded to someone with nothing else to recommend him, someone forever to be called “second best,” then forgotten.        For me, I am not satisfied with any ribbon’s color. I am above all that. I do not want a mention, honorable or not.        I know, … [Read more...]

       She went on and on and, finally silent, looked at me angrily, expecting an answer.        "Were there any commas in that?" I asked.        We paused, then never spoke again.  >> below: a play available from the publisher, stageplays.com << Baseball and mitt on rustic wooden background … [Read more...]

[“Walmart will use robots to turn stores into automated fulfillment centers” – Flipboard]        Are you fulfilled? No, and I don’t think the robots will be, either. Especially their centers.        Or yours.   >> “books Terence Kuch” on Google or Amazon will lead you to more writing from a naturally curly mind << … [Read more...]