Green Linden Press

from By the Numbers                                                                                         —Jeffrey Herrick

The broken token of the realm
Whelms Slav and slave,

Saves none in the slum,
Suns some sum

Of the hum of the hymn of the harm
In rebukes of the republic of double

Dubs of tongue wrung
To wrong, the longing gone

In song unsung, the trap
Of rap sprung on dumb

Trumps of demos by demons
Of unused nous, a loose

Loss of canons in cannonades
Of bombast and blasts of last

Retort, the sort of resort
That prizes price as value

And sees seizure as sure
Sign of aligned stars,

A system of cels stemmed
From the got wrought to nought

And counted out in omics as the home
Of determined mind, blind

To the otic aughts that semiotics
Seems to seam to om.

So campaign in plain potted
Poetry but govern with stern

Iron irony nigh night
Lite, as the spoils spoil

The victor in vectors of invective
And commedias of committees that tease

Out bully led pall
Pits and sit on set

Pieces till peace feases
A place at the tabled babble

And sin taxes levies
Of leavings of semes in memes

That seam to mean but tweet
Nothings as turd's the word

Lured to lurid riddances
Of mum, the fee of free

Dissociation a social so-called,
A cold old, a folded

Fal-de-ral, a fall of all
To fabric softened to fabrications

As often as wishes wash
The sure shore of horror

Or airs air the errors
Of laundered mourning moans.

There but for the race of care
Fares that spare none

Run the meters of dun,
Their debt met at the corner

Of coroner and carnival as the eval
Laves the raves of unsaved

Memory in tics of talk
Torqued to demean meaning

And dement the rime of time
To emit witless witness

Of gormless warming and feckless
Facts, as acts of hacks

Track back to blacked-
Out routs of mouths by Sabaoth,

The host inhausted as cause
Lost and tossed to toast

The sophistry of history as dehiscent
Wound wound down

Like a clock locked and uncoded,
A weak wink at link

To sins of skin as skeins
Of feigned veins and vain

Brains, the plain plane
Of the wane of sane banes.

Timeless? Since science signs
The valences of violence in unbalanced

Checks, the tempi that tempt
The end in a din, O horrisonous

Horizon, event to lesson
Lessened senses about buts

And ands when after all none
Escapes the laughter that lasts

As long as lungs among tongued
Wrongs, the disgraces traced

To race, that amphigory category
That makes mock of the very

Air of the veritable, the sap
Of sapience, the sways of stock

That hark back to dark
Marks in the alleged allegiances

That led from chimps to chumps
And changed the range of home

To syndrome of dominion, no proem,
No continuum, the hum of the human

A rhyme for crime in a clime
Of denial, as Belial belies

The lays of the land that stand
The tests of rests and elses.

See the trees for the woulds
That will squill to ills,

The raceme of the race when indeterminate
Minutes meet the needs

To seed a growth from oath
To blowth of blowhards who gnar

In ignorance the entrancement of dance
As aspens as puns for pens

To open, moly holy
Enough to slough the slough

Of rough Circe, gramercy,
With cerci circa circuses

That ring the rungs of tongue
To synesthesia in seizures of seen

Sound sound, zounds
Sans wounds under stounds

That serve verve, not tsars
Or stars of screens of sthenic

Picnics, no piques but peeks
At peaks of leetspeak that let

Letters net their fetters,
Their numb numbers, their dim

Sums and come to plumb
Rum rhumbs with rumbas.

As dance glances at trance,
So step preps for pep

When ensigns red-flag flogs
Of logos in unread slogs

Of nations as notions of no
Goshen, gosh darned

To Heil hell at the border
Of order as ordure, an ordeal

Dealt out in delta voltas
No sonnet or stich sticks

It to, too too doubled
The billed by the numbers, numb

From prepositional articles of apparition,
That the as this huh?,

Words absurds burdened
With the weird wired from the inspired

Queered to hear fear
In pas de dieu, skew

Viewed as axiom for axion
That enacts exactitude and the pseud

Trued, the rood clued
In to wherefore thou hast

Forsaken thee, square
For tao glassed for take-in.

By their fruits shall ye bruit the brutes,
As gamers frame the names

Of the angels as angles to play,
Tell Evangelion the eval

Evils, lave the lave
Of love as the leavings of the tree

Of mere merism when porisms
Pour out more than nths

Then end not on a note
Of ought wrought by jot,

O doughty tease of dotty
Teas and crossed Is

With clost eyes, O glossed
Cloze as O goes

For nothing known and closing
Close to closet secretary,

Scritoire with nary a lector
Left for right rollers

Of Bowdlers when bawds of bauds
Rule the waives of the airwaves,

Schools for ghouls who spool
Spoilers as apps no apples

Doctor or books uncook,
Ergo propter hoc docs.

For fake's sake, they say,
Take the route that's routed,

The way thither withered
With waitless watch of jussive

Justice debased from the base
On down to the clown crowned

At the seat of deceit, as artifice
Suffices in a trice for the crisis

Du jour, de jure jury-
Rigged with fibs cribbed

From foxed fixes, the mews
Muse of news as ruse,

Russe roulette the debt
As the threat of empty numpty

Dumps come sick
And fast, blasts of gas

Sicced on the downcast and harassed
As the masses from "shitholes" thole

The role of the Mother of the Othered
"Cries...with silent lips,"

As Lazarus sussed the x
Crucified in trifling Dives'

Divisive drive to amass,
Crass, as the muses were frass.

Abasement debases the base,
As vitriol violates the late

Day shades of clade
Laden with leaden-deadened

Dement meant to lead,
Not to read, red-handed

Brand, candid as candied
Cyanide, sans prussian collusion,

Blue in the face with racist
Stasis, as states of baits

Call colors squalor
Till mullers of blackmail nail

White rights as blight,
Yet rage overtakes this page

As fake, stake the heart,
O the hurt, of certitude in knowing

That dates and fates be late
To be borne and mourned, lorn

Of time and rhyme, as, say,
Fourteen-hundred and ninety-two

For the pains of sea lanes
Seen, or Sykes-Picot,

Yikes, for the likes of sites
Of semite fights sans sight.

Cecity seizes the scene
In inklings of screens and screams,

The casts of catastrophe lasting
Past laughter after strophes

Trope the trip-ups down
To drowning in plastic no esemplastic

Or chiastic track acts
To counter, the count to exeunt

Tantamount to transience no transeunt
Sentence untenses, the rent

Of Partition preterity as the abscission
And detrition in the iteration of nation,

Cause of casualties as casual
As Kashmir, clash mirror

Packaged as Pakistan or Korea,
Cores of north south,

Or east west behests
Of bounders whose bonds be bondages

On rounds that redound to condign
Lines of discredit and edits

Of foundering documents whose reductions
And redactions blacken ken

Of blank links and blink
At kinks that sink lips.

Lip the lippitude of rued
Roads, the bodes of codes

That break takes on flakes
And flukes when the fins win

The way to say we play
To stay solvent, to salve

Savage vagaries and vacancies
Of chance, glances at blown

Loan words for the wards
Of the stated, belated rates

Of exchange that range from yen
For sensitive ken to dub

For substantive nub, pensive
About bouts of executive skives

Driven by television in telling
Oblivion as self-absorption,

Corbe elf in orb
Of broken woke, joke,

O tu quoque, O bloke, of blocked
Humor by tumor of useless

Issues, tissues of lies
In guise of wise guy

Cracks in crocks of braggadocio,
With schmo dough to go.

The unhinged binge twinges
Unto cringe and the lunatic fringe

Looms from womb to tomb
As the doom of modes with neume,

Moods indigo goes
Deep enough to threpe

Its keep and slough guff
Otherwise, though it dies

In the pit of skies tipped
To buy the numbers PM_2.5,

Too rived and encumbered to sell
The aboulic public, sigh,

Or the telic podalic delivery
Of poetry, or the podiatry for livery

Of the air, the fair play
Of lay to say more

Than snore or gore, to shore
The score with no apnea

Or aposiopesis ー"peace! thou talk'st
of nothing"ーand sing of that

This rehearses to traverse the curse
Of an amerced and aspersed universe,

Our hour, O horror, an error
Or more with lesser lease.

Lest we forge it, the jest
Forgets the infinite, and in it

We wee numbers cumber
Its slumber under the sign of design,

π in the sky squared
To √2, a route

Of metanoia from paranoia that knows
No end, a dense hence

Whence the clastic, sarcastic
In the face of the stochastic, is as,

As ever never, if
Differential equations deferred

The wreck of reckoning with suasion,
Or swayed the said of the dead,

Led by letters, O ghosts,
Posted by OS os

In smarting phones startling
Only as lonely moans

Intoned as ten in stone
Nots, tabled fables

As foibles on tablets, applets
That apply as appeals to zealotry

To sell loss as a plus,
A must, a lust for dust.

The virulence of pulverulence in virality,
The vile files that smile

While lies be leased to seal
The deal o dolorous zero

As the hero of hierodulic duels,
O some sum won,

One done, none
Known in drone zone

O YHWH, the game
The name of om moaned

For the mourned when unmended mendacity
And rapacity reap the sleep

Of sheep and shape a netscape
With no escape, an artifice that suffices

To part art from Fahrt
Of the heart and compart it to the cart

Of eek-cards, wreak freak
Effects as feckless benchmarks,

Stark arks of darkness
That hark marques, not larks,

And lack snark trenchant
Enough to chant, rough

Guff to chuff and bluff
Till nil shills the bill.

The House grouses and chouses,
A home of brume in gloam

When glom stumps chumps,
And debate sates slates

To prate and blate till the state
Grates at a spate rate

To a halt fault line
That breaks it like Brexit,

Its text a taxed stack
Of lacks, like hack claques,

Obloquy the key to policy,
No colloquy, calls to all

One clique of uniqueness, a click
Trick to bait hate,

Make great a gain
Of insane reign by strawman,

Common a denomination of omen,
An oxymoron of foreign feign,

Forlorn in scorn, forsworn
To suborn, none beneath

A bequeath of contempt, or exempt,
Except the inept apt

To adapt to damnation as national
Wall, the graal of thrall.

As actions of factions fraction
Fragments of figments of pigment,

So the skin of kin begins
With ginned discriminations, incriminations

Of self as a spell of pelt
On pelf, delved as deep

As swelved prevarication, as leap
Of bad faith, had

From the wraith that saith forthwith
Thou surpassest the past and hast

The path to the pathology past kith,
With dominion over minions, meaning

"Every living thing
That moveth upon the earth,"

Furth, in this singing, a thing
Of dearth, a berth born

As bourn to mourn, owned
As a mort gage, gauge

Of phage wager on cache
Stashed though trashed as prey,

A play flayed away
In protocataleptic catalepsy, a catabasis

Based on erased space,
Faced from the got gone.

HE SAVED OTHERS, HIMSELF
HE CANNOT SAVE.

Hence hypocrisy crisscrosses hypocracy
And kakistocracy, a flense whence

Fraudelence lends a dunce
As augend and augers the end

Of taxes with an abraxas o parapraxis
Counteracts, facts fucked

In pacts with yakked tracts
Laughed at as graft tracks

Sight drafts of yuck,
The plight of luck mucked

Up down at the seat of deceit,
That pew in the tweet of afreet,

Miscreant cant, no recant
Of absonant non-conusant carnage,

Scant coruscant chance,
Stance again of guns,

Snug, smug shrugs
Of thugs that mug and plug

Plagues of vagaries, no vague
Nouvelle, vile vogues,

Wilde-child styled
Vices vis-à-vis virtue

Tributary parries in comparison,
Since sarasin scenes.

If there's no there there,
There, there, bear

Air and dare where
E'er it fare, ne'er

Fear far star,
Voir dire here

Lumière est son in Shakespearean
Ear, noosphere for quaere

Of queer arrière-pensées,
Puns spun from none

To one as end run
Numbers round humbuggers,

Moneygrubbers, or gabbers of jabber,
Macabre mockery to scumber

And unencumber, come from umbras
And rum conundrums of panjandrums

To sun, from benightedness to nitency,
From fake facts to faculae,

Actinic acts and takes
Of fulgor from vulgar vogues,

From calls for caligation, gates
Of opaques and offuscate estates,

To statement, grounds that redound
To sound sounds expounded.

Then recension sends attention
To prehension, though declension and dissention

Tense mentions of mensed
Mens sana, and anas

Of fluents and fluxions conduce
To the calculus of us as abacists

And abecedarians whose bons mots
Be bone notes of smartdust,

Rabdology the sussed start
Of location arithmetic, as common log

X clicks in algorithm,
A rhythm of 1 in O

For whole roles in the say
Of lay and sway of way

To harmolodic melds, agonic
And canonic, from chthonic to sonic

Charms, as quantum chromodynamics
Favors flavors of global

Symmetry, noble elements
For chantry meant tellement

To tell the fall of fell
Hells, with abracadabra cadastral

Lines, אבראכדברא, "I create
Like the word," as we speak.

To improvise provides, vide
Cor meum, core rhumb

To come to plum plumb
Of numbers, hum om

And ear here the spheres
Of music, as the muse sicced

Apostrophes on catastrophes' choruses
Till stile recitativo, sative

Probative of the modes, O monody,
O opera, apertures of camerata,

Data for stories of orreries
Or horrors, our hour,

No crore, glory, or amphigory,
Or gory door to rood,

Rude road of rued,
Untrued moods, subjunctive

Junctures of dreams, ad rem
Remnants of revenants invent

Content with indentured ineptitude,
Apt to sap the map

From rap to rapture of colorature,
With colature of colure, no cynosure

If illiterature inure the ear
To lyre as faerie eyrie.

At o deorum quidquid in caelo regit
       terras et humanum genus,
quid iste fert tumultus aut quid omnium
       voltus in unum me truces?

So the epode rode unread
Or undead unto unhorsed Horace,

Aureus effloresced unto forced
Farces of sources of courses

Of odes, old Odyle
The odd bodikin of mannequin

As man minus necromancy
Or fancy of afflatus, a conflation

Of air with a there not there
In verity, or a parity of barbarity

And posterity, prosperity and charity,
Vulgarity and sincerity, since

Clarity, a rarity like legerity,
Is celerity in selection of steps

That stop and step perception
In the collection of correct aspects,

As texts contect recks
Of wrecks and seeks, see

Selves in delves of dissolving
Solute tousles with ariose

Areas of creatural cosmism
In rhythms that fathom misprisions

Of "true love turn'd
And not a false turn'd true."

الْكِتَاب الْمُخْتَصَر فِي حِسَاب الْجَبْر وَالْمُقَابَلَة
(The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing)

To speak truth to truth
Turn cothurn from inurned

Or adjourned journey and yearn
To learn by ear as Shakespeare

Or faqir the dhiker dickered
And docked from ichor to ick

In tricks of talk, then clock
The walk from mock to rock,

The lock-in on the look of fake
Take-aways to say the play

Of feats of clay with feet
That sway and essay across

Words an integrity of integument,
An intertext that enters pselfext,

Test of quest for manifest
Scrutiny of cahoots in roots

And affixes, quicks of critiques
Of the read, dead letters,

Clitics, lysis from lies
And obsoletes, solute salutes

Of apopotraic archaicy, from ἄρχω,
Hark, the dark of "I am

First," no iamb, to algebra           الْجَبْر
The "reunion of broken parts."

The palsie earth it self is every jot
As frail, inconstant, waveing, as that blot
We lay upon the deep, that sometimes lies
Chang'd, you would think, with 's botoms properties
—Richard Lovelace, "Advice to My Best Brother, Coll: Francis Lovelace"

Yes, X marks the ark,
The spot of jot fraught

With divined lines of quined
Quandary, squandered squares,

Irrational supranationals, postranslational
Lays, say, "This is

That that, and this
Sentence has no tense,"

That number this as dumber
Than mummer of that that flummers,

Summer of l'oeuf as awful
Of offal as offer of squat,

Lot of nought plot
Of thought alloted desinence

As essence, since hence torends
The O of O, the known

Of none won and done
Down to sound rounded

To lo, then slowed to bode
Modes of code no node

Yokes short of spokes
Of Sprechstimme, speck glimmer

Of x on note stem,
Then as tone to intone O zone.

Chromatic increments meant
As phatic instruments present

A way to hear here
The sway of x rays,

The radii of radioed cosmos,
Dynamos no osmosis or gnosis

Metamorphoses to noesis, so poiesis
Poses logos as log

O anastomosis, anatomical gnomical
Metonymy of astronomical philia,

Filiation of mentation and alligation
To algorithms that go to the O

Of algo más, the mass
That passes as c² to seize

The key of qi as E,
The energy of being agreeing

With seeing the freeing scales
Of tone rows in dodecaphonic

Sonics, mnemonic monitors
Of om as home of biomes,

The proems of poems as chroma,
Soma in zeugma with syntagma,

The syntax that tracks galaxies
With axes of eutaxy acts.

David Axelrod
Devon Balwit
Amber Cecile Brodie
Erika Brumett
Trent Busch
Greg Casale
Hayan Charara
Todd Davis
James Dott
Julie Hanson
Michael Hardin
Jeffrey Herrick
Michael Hettich
Ginger Ko
Katie Kurtz
Kathleen A. Lawrence
Bruce McRae
Willy Palomo
Matthew Rotando
Myrna Stone
Carolyn Williams-Noren
Topaz Winters
Ray Young Bear