On Malice. Ken Babstock

      people become through efficiency.

      I now am a messed-up twilight.

      I now – can I talk? – am a twilight

      come early. A man – Yes?

      She pulled faces from the various

      performances. Aria or folk

      embroidery, as might labour in ditches

      during no time. You split lip.

      You contusion, cannot bear Lord

      under circumstance indexed as grievance.

      September 21, 1972, Chelyabinsk, altitude at time of incident was 3000 m.

      One can get very thin.

      One doesn’t read at night. Now

      as you are writing there is such a storm,

      otherwise the darkness, you understand,

      and will remain dark forever.

      Have joy in the town. The skeletons are failing

      whatsoever occur in your heart. Be it

      sin, starvation, clemency or rage.

      Be it sin. Animal, burrowed prayer;

      one can thin out. Consider doughnuts,

      or the rattle and spur-scrape and

      first-person oar locks. The town’s joy’s yours.

      Flight bound for Christopol from the east. Incident reported at 20:55, September 29, 1973.

      It is modern. Couldn’t you have brought

      me into the world three

      days later? You

      could have (the cat is laughing)

      pushed me back in again.

      It is modern. Who do you prefer?

      The banks close as the banks close.

      One of me, having been forced out, could

      be watched over with no undue

      taxing of beneficent – Throw it off.

      The rattle again of splintered waste

      in orbit; shards, at speed, incredibly cold.

      September 30, 1973, approaching Dudinka, altitude 3500 m. Time of incident, 20:22.

      Don’t say anything funny. Isn’t that possible?

      Isn’t that at all

      times what holds one together?

      Little fairy tales all at once. Stomach fright.

      One never hears about compulsion.

      ‘Killed’ is a word with a star tied around it.

      One can listen all night, they won’t

      talk of ‘compulsion.’ Compulsion

      is a wind with the unmodern cat

      stapled to it. The anus constricts.

      Needles of yellow and red light, little

      aurora materialis and night eyes of the pig family.

      At 19:45, over Gorno-Ataysk. August 1974.

      The trees are dense here.

      The earth doesn’t have a limit.

      And again and again limits and grumbling bring

      one to the bank of cheerful things. Say,

      everything. Everything does not have.

      Everything does not have to have.

      Counting neurons in bivalves

      helps us think on think, though

      won’t ground the plane,

      or warm you. The nights decline.

      Have you noted this effect, this holding

      your kidneys while swaying under a draft vent?

      August 3, 1974, at 19:10 (local time) in heavy winds approaching Irkutsk.

      Completely out for as long as one

      doesn’t see. That all money

      removed from this world

      can read as simply non limit, or

      it can go round again. No

      earth. No lost limit. All

      the children love their limits

      more than their fathers.

      Should this shame us again?

      I can smell your mind.

      I enhance the quotient of suffering

      by building pictures of forced concord.

      Again in high winds, 18:33, August 1975, altitude unrecorded at time of incident. Inta (tower).

      You don’t have to go anymore,

      read to me.

      You don’t have to go from the world.

      Finally, he says, I and everything

      have a limit. Count one more day out.

      The case has been lost again, and again

      the rippling cirrus glows amber-black

      to the west. My undeclared cache

      of pebbles and desiccated scat,

      my Mayan counting machine, my

      mai tai, and many-horned hillock.

      It is, I’m afraid, a symbol, dear rubble.

      1975. Komsamotsk on Amur. Incident between 3500 m and 3800 m, during descent.

      I am practising dead songs and

      then they will be printed and

      we’ll get Heaven – get money.

      When it eats, the soul is of no interest to me.

      What is in it, ice? While what

      happened to soft difference in school is horrible,

      it wants to eat. There will be no shaking

      the thorns from the stem. There

      will be no clarification.

      The ballooning complex left

      it a shambles. Security. Think of a weaving

      barn. Think of a good reason not to quit listening.

      August 15, 1976, 17:55, aircraft approaching Krasnokamansk. Altitude unreported.

      Suppose the weirdest bed is between

      Heaven and Earth, and school

      roams days between

      ice and practising songs.

      We’ll be of no interest

      to the dead. Whether the dead Lord