John Lowther

555

Conceived as a meticulously compiled and compendious miscellany, a
            grimoire or instruction manual without referent, as a delirious
            carnival of sobriety.
Dialogues develop on a moving surface of misunderstanding.
I’ll just keep saying it until you get tired of not hearing it.
Glitter is the herpes of the drag world.
The apocalypse waits to be cancelled tomorrow.
Obscure because too dazzling to behold.
He thought that at the moment of his invention of the uncountable infinite,
            he was God’s administrative employee.
§
I hear the scream above the pizzicato, but it seems off-key to me.
The girls not only had fun, they also got a good workout in the process.
Different theories follow different paths to different ends.
Why the note makes so much of the gift aspect after the fact is odd.
I knew before I ever took the test that it would come back positive.
That should go without saying: but it seems that I need to say it.

When I’m ready to let him go I’ll let him go but I’ll never let him go.
So I renounced and sadly see: where word breaks off no thing may be.

§
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Note on the Text:
555 is a collection of sonnets whose construction is database-driven and
relies on text analytic software. I crunched and analyzed Shakespeare’s
sonnets to arrive at averages for word, syllable and character (inclusive of
punctuation but not spaces). These averages (101 words, 129 syllables,
437 characters) became requirements for three groups of sonnets. I
collected lines from anywhere and everywhere in the air or in print in a
database. The lines are all found, their arrangement is mine. Values for
word, syllable and character were recorded. Typos and grammatical
oddities were preserved; only initial capitals and a closing period have
been added as needed. The selection of lines isn’t rule-driven and
inevitably reflects what I read, watch, and listen to, thus incorporating my
slurs and my passions as well as what amuses and disturbs me. These
sonnets were assembled using nonce patterns or number schemes; by
ear, notion, or loose association; by tense, lexis, tone or alliteration. Every
sonnet matches its targeted average exactly. Think of Pound’s “dance of
the intellect among words” then sub sentences for words—it is amongst
these I move. The dance in question traces out a knot (better yet, a gnot)
that holds together what might otherwise fly apart. I espouse only the
sonnets, not any one line.