Tom Devaney, p.2



ORIGAMI HEADPHONES
     after the slowdown 2000


severely clear

The funeral business was creepy as it probably still is.
We knew we wouldn’t change the world, but had the decency
to embarrass the guilty. Persons in the house were often made
to feel an unspecified levity. Whether it had anything to do with
our florescent ceilings flickering one thing and our computers
flickering another you can better tell. It was all in front of us, part
of the articulated body of problems, with dozens of bit parts
which also broke our hearts.


emergency numbers

Dirty waters found us before we found them.
It might sound obvious, but by the time everyone knew
          there was no one to tell.
Saved from the waste of waters, the secret
and hidden determination of some living
and intelligent nature—ancient waters over the present world.
We distrusted our spigots, there was no story.
One day everyone was just drinking bottled water.


one idea about terrycloth

A widely felt appreciation for texture. Linc sat on his
red rubber seat listening to headphones, reading his
magazine. Thought (finger wagging, pointing on a T-shirt),
I can't believe, I can't, can't, believe the way you acted today.
He was over it, but couldn't get the same emphasis,
so he turned it into a song.

start a course of study

Your blue Ford Pinto
explosion law suit.
There's no case.
Everyone knows
they're a death trap.
You try anyway,
all burned up like you are.

a mysterious work

In the essay about the bloodied and smear-stained
kitchen Santas there is a mini-chapter about "Humor."
Humorous people talk of the serious
and serious people talk of the serious.

the old

"Look at those filthy windows. I've got stained glass
windows in my house," the old woman gestured from
her kitchen chair.

why birds don't fly into the glass

Bird watchers have nothing on
     what the birds see.
The birds are amp-ed
by powers of 10X10. Ornithology
is the public name of intricacy
     written in the sky.
Augurs never were and never will be
     a metaphor.
They really see the shit.

good design is good business

We weren't the we
we thought.

A bull's-eye. Brass tacks.
One station in your ear.

We called our cell when we said.
We were waiting to have our baby.

Big things happen
before your eyes "Whitey."

roughly fickle activity

A father had died, several were dead.
People stood loosely together.
Their standing was a swerve felt
against other things once felt—
ideas that survive their occasion;
Something physical kept close
similar to 2000 B.C. when the Japanese king
          had ‘flying sun discs’ for advisors,
or when Sodom and Gomorrah were nuked by angels
for not being perverted enough, and Knossos was microwaved
for no reason at all. If you wanted to know a good restaurant,
you could still ask your butcher. A cat and the shadow of the cat.
The weight of the head in the hand remained in the hands.