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0.174
The Complete Numbers Cycle
New York Quarterly Books
400 Pages, 7 x 10
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011921532
ISBN: 978-1-935520-44-3
buy from New York Quarterly Books
”Through intricate exposures of the self, in this 20 years’ culmination of work, I have made the invisible visible. This has been, perhaps, a perverse project, to lay open publicly in depth-confession or scientific precision my innermost fantasies, obsessions, urges, and fears that I might provide at least a splintered reflection into, reader, your own humanity. In either case--whether it is insular or universal--here is an increasingly cathartic examination of my particular psychology observed as acutely and honestly as I am capable. In so doing I have treated what mainstream society generally considers repulsive or unsavory as valuable and intrinsically beautiful. I hope that some who attempt this book will agree that all human thought and feeling is worthy of song.”
-- Gordon Massman
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“Gordon Massman is the kind of writer that guts you, revolts you, makes you fall in love or a lake, makes you want to live a little bit realer in your own world. After reading The Essential Numbers (1991-2208), I was so anxious & excited to meet him just to see if he had a girafffe growing out the side of his head like from his ear. And he does! No, but really Gordon is the kind of imaginative writer who writes without shame or guilt or either with all of it in the world tamped down on his shoulders (who knows, really) & all of this is borne of the long, dark shaft of the subconscious--& he is full of a kind of brilliance in him as he's walking through the world, I'm sure of it; right there in him, a knowingness. He's the kind of writer no other wants to read after because he's so on-point in person & in word. He's the kind of writer writers are honored to read with on any given day. It's a known fact in the chartreuse-colored poetry world that Gordon makes writers want to risk more in their own work: there is no greater compliment.”
--Shelly Taylor, Author of Black-Eyed Heifer
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from 0.174:
I am counterpart to the Visible Human Project, I froze my psyche
in a gelatin-water bath, laid it on a slab, cut it with the electronic
solid laser knife lengthwise in the axial plane into three-hundred
fifty identical strips, reconstructed the whole with 0.174 mm gaps
between, photographed over twenty years the entire surface
of each slice in relation to each producing a 65-gigabyte holo-
graphic sculpture of the psychological machine: monstrosities,
resentments, fantasies, fragilities, compulsions, fears, every
strip vibrates to throttle or embrace you, dear reader, or label
you fool, approach cautiously what lies inside this security-
glazed heist-proof glass display case illuminated in curator’s
high intensity spots, its attributes wound, here is the entryway
to your private painstakingly delivered tomographic exhibit,
pass through, step forward, for nobody but you does it glitter.
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Acknowledgements
Another Chicago Magazine, Antioch Review, Artful Dodge, Black Dirt, Blue Monk, Borderlands, Caketrain, Carleton Arts Review, Chelsea, Columbia Poetry Review,Confrontation, Connecticut Poetry Review, Contemporary Voice 2, Cortland Review, Court Green, Cutbank, The Fiddlehead, Fire, Flyway, Georgia Review, Green Mountain Review, Karamu, Harpweaver, Left Curve, Greensboro Review, Harvard Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Iron, Left Curve, Libido, The Literary Review, Many Mountains Moving, The Malahat Review, New York Quarterly, Old Crow Review, Paperplates, Paperbag, Pavement Saw, Penny Dreadful, Pleiades, Poetrybay, Porcupine, Prairie Journal, Prism International, Quarter After Eight, Rampike, Rattle, Response, Tarpaulin Sky, Third Coast, Toronto Quarterly, Windless Orchard, Willow Springs, Windsor Review, Yellow Silk
Special thanks to the editors of Tarpaulin Sky Press, Pavement Saw Press, Six Gallery Press, and Spork Chapbooks where many of these poems appeared in book form.
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0.174
The Complete Numbers Cycle
Index of First Lines
A bursting sun unrolls / 49
A window washer / 168
A woman’s voice emanates / 225
A yellow jacket stings her eye / 267
Addicted to Jesus / 277
After binging / 72
Afterward he wondered / 15
Again the taut monofi lament / 92
Against my will I rip / 121
Am I more like steel / 67
And He shall judge between many… / 373
And how the head responds / 103
And now ere we part / 363
And that was that / 222
And the two romantic lovers / 84
And they that shall be of Thee / 354
And this little piggy squealed / 80
And when I pulled a ribbon fi sh / 21
Another toothy smile / 203
As I review my conduct / 374
As the lord taketh I kick / 201
Assume a keen and precise perception / 93
Bastard seeking bastardess / 186
Because I am extraordinary / 305
Because I demand to be worshipped / 226
Because I love I invent love / 244
Because you pleasured him / 116
Beheaded twitching slaughtered… / 339
Behind every holocaust / 128
Better to go unloved / 299
Bitch, cunt, slut / 194
Brick began, one / 123
Bugs fl y off hand / 178
Bumpkee, bumpkee, bumpkee / 76
Cassanova told me / 198
Chastisement as prayer / 127
Clown death, Bozo death / 334
Come into me and / 138
Comfortable with the concept / 313
Confessions of a lunatic / 97
Crows scrape through / 115
Cut the tip of my fi nger / 32
Dear and most of all venerable / 118
Dear and venerable king / 134
Dear God I wish to register / 171
Dear God, give me love / 255
Dear God, speak to me / 215
Dear God, thank you / 100
Dear Mother, murder Daddy / 176
Dearest and most wonderful supreme… / 259
Dearest God, veal, my female genital / 159
Do not cram that stillborn / 991
Do you think, do you really / 332
Dogs don’t seem to comprehend / 243
Doll wrestles the wet packed / 112
Double double toil and trouble / 75
Each molecule of seawater / 63
Elfi ngton practiced love / 185
Everybody fucking everybody / 206
Everything I say he repeats / 227
Everything misses the point / 252
Everything’s sloppy / 325
Except the Lord build the house / 375
Executions: sawed-off to face / 229
Experimenting with the concept… / 297
Exploded charred heart / 133
Extract and examine human uterus / 231
Fall back upon the formula / 193
Finally, one comes to nothing / 256
First I destroy the cat / 289
First I prepare / 83
First I razor free / 177
First we plunge knife into dog / 180
Fish scales fi lling / 59
For an aphrodisiac / 61
For he satisfi eth the longing heart / 351
For my next, ladies & gentlemen / 109
For thirty years’ service / 327
Fucking the Virgin Mary / 40
Gently but authoritatively / 13
Give me preference / 234
Go ahead, steal behind / 265
God and Father we have entered / 360
God and God of our fathers / 349
God and I, I punch / 151
God dwells in partially digested / 340
God has a glisten red / 101
God the sissy / 164
Gof the griffi n / 136
Half gnawed, raw black / 58
He ceased to eat / 156
He departed without food / 86
He needed something huge / 140
He thinks she worships him / 316
He throws himself / 326
He wanted to seduce her / 79
Head burst on fi re / 126
Hear oh Israel the Lord Thy God / 352
Hello, I’m Gordon, I’m a sex addict / 172
Help me say the word / 142
Huey, Dewey, and Louie / 135
Humans love to fuck / 238
Humility and its corollaries / 218
Husband and wife privately vow / 293
I adore you but hate your presence / 298
I am in love with my daughter / 249
I beg to interrupt / 323
I blow lizards off brick / 200
I break my own heart / 148
I bronze my sins / 204
I commit the virtue of lying / 239
I compose a shocking poem / 197
I consume Internet porn / 268
I crack open my father’s mouth / 214
I create God in my image / 182
I dislike establishment poets / 245
I do not hate Jews / 292
I don’t want to appear sentimental / 47
I don’t want to be friend / 333
I down bottles of Ipecac / 274
I down the water hard / 39
I drink until black out / 338
I eat my nervous system / 144
I eat myself / 207
I erect a shrine to my member / 270
I failed—poet, husband, father / 212
I fasten with bolts / 258
I fl ip it upside down / 173
I fornicate with myself / 296
I give myself a colonoscopy / 281
I give myself an award / 132
I give up on the whole fucking… / 155
I go searching for Satan / 251
I had an affair / 77
I have decided I will do this / 74
I have never loved anyone / 188
I have nothing cataclysmic / 280
I have nothing to say / 262
I have shorn and given to you, Delilah / 150
I herewith pronounce you / 337
I hold the keyboard upside down / 269
I impregnate myself / 208
I invent a machine / 321
I laugh satirically / 317
I lay my penis on a chopping block / 210
I lay on carpet and spread legs / 341
I learn that Hitler was a necrophiliac / 324
I like the feel of cutting / 30
I loathe myself / 170
I love the women I beat / 230
I love those people / 66
I love you is storm / 276
I masturbate myself bloody / 275
I masturbate to fashion photos / 179
I need a god, I become a champ / 319
I operate alone / 328
I pluck our baby /29
I pray for myself / 181
I pretend you’re a fraud / 174
I reach into the liquid ball of fi re / 89
I remember coming upon her / 44
I return as a raving hag / 343
I say to myself / 65
I set ablaze Q-tip torches / 307
I shove Daddy into Mother’s cunt / 314
I shut drawers / 306
I stare at you mercilessly / 145
I starve my two dogs / 287
I step toward dissolution / 161
I strip the raised vein / 68
I swallowed a quarter / 98
I tell a stranger / 41
I tell my adult kids / 310
I think of nobody but myself / 278
I want to pour children / 17
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[I want to thank you for what you did…] / 165
I want to write something fabulous / 302
I wish I could do that / 322
I would like to go / 11
I, monstrous son / 192
I‘m wedged inside my mother’s cunt / 303
I’m fascinated with the concept / 216
I’m going to make you pity / 279
I’m not satiated, I want more / 257
I’m not sure, I have no idea / 253
I’m not your man / 152
I’m profane / 219
I’m unparalleled, I’m God / 336
I’ve got fi ve chances left / 154
I’ve stopped thinking about / 50
I’ve taken fl ight / 25
I’ve witnessed mother’s vagina / 283
If I could stick my tongue / 26
If I have to take this crap / 104
In the distance a dog / 196
In the fi nal scene innumerable arrows / 315
In the meantime pagans rampage / 330
In the penis colony / 24
Infant smashes against wall / 263
Insignifi cant cretin / 247
Insignifi cant, trivial, meaningless / 233
It is the epoch of corporate / 33
It is unimportant to me / 191
It’s okay, that ubiquitous / 304
It’s time for humans to lie / 48
Jew haters invade / 301
Just fuck the man / 220
Lambs and apologies / 175
Last night sprouted / 95
Left eye, right eye / 71
Let us pray, then / 190
Let us pray, then, for everybody needs… / 248
Let us rejoice in the light / 377
Let’s say your son / 96
Like a fi eld of soybeans / 27
Like as a father pitieth his children / 376
Like the stars by day our beloved dead / 372
Look, man, what do you want / 240
Man distracts woman / 146
Men and women hate their lives / 184
Men desire beautiful women / 266
Men don’t kiss / 285
Men want to fuck God, not women / 183
Miniature dog like an electric razor / 308
Money and God duke it out / 108
Most amiable and loving beast / 137
Mr. Knuckles worked me over / 166
Mugwump, misanthrope / 211
My father and Irving / 34
My ideal mate / 147
My lover’s lips are razor blades / 217
Nihilist, at age sixty / 264
None of us added up / 294
Not even porn gets me hard / 295
Numerous possibilities present / 246
O God of holiness, Thy knowest / 369
O Lord, keep my tongue / 365
O, Thou who dost reveal Thyself / 358
Obscenities cleanse / 224
Oh Popsy-baby / 23
Oh yea, yea / 318
On this Sabbath of remembrance / 356
On this Sabbath of repentance / 370
Once again I praise devouring stomach / 242
One again the bombing planes / 73
One cannot help but exclaim / 237
One learns to eat one’s dog / 202
One spends one’s life / 329
One wants to rage at the ill / 300
One would predict / 107
Ooh, this bed’s hard / 114
Open unto us, O God / 353
Poetry the poison / 187
Pumping, I slam / 250
Quickens the heart when son bashes… / 260
Razor teeth fi sh swim / 111
Religion breaks out / 120
Remember us unto life / 378
Sack of shit topped with head / 209
Said aliens raped her / 309
Sander takes off skin / 122
See me slice down / 19
Sewed two cat heads / 81
She adores her tiny teeth / 153
She hacks the base / 57
She pours her belly / 69
She’s asleep, I’m painting her body / 221
“Shove it up your ass,” / 241
Simultaneously, I fuck a woman… / 344
Singing, I spin / 335
Smeared across God’s face / 131
So here you are in my room / 189
So I’m watching Oprah / 42
Something he covets suspends / 311
Son has tripped / 70
Starvation terrifi es / 254
Step outside your body / 113
Stomach hurts, stuffed with wheat thins / 331
Stopped my mouth with cement / 90
Suicide being wisdom’s pinnacle / 236
Sylvester smashes into frying pan / 290
Tears cold stone lid / 124
Testimony of the best pig / 160
That’s a laugh, laughing head off / 320
The big puffer sucking / 106
The bird cries it way / 88
The borders melted / 117
The brain revives like a movie monster / 223
The dependable ecstasies / 235
The glorious night / 85
The great massive thing / 105
The iron slides across the blouse / 91
The Jesus kite / 139
The Lord is my shepherd / 362
The momentous event is upon us / 228
The monsters bent and demented / 158
The noblest act is the act of self-hatred / 271
The right side of me cries / 46
The spook on my lap / 62
The sun will not rise / 149
The whole fi sh skeleton / 87
The whole thing goes kablooy / 273
The young one bathe the lapis of love / 199
There might have been a hurricane / 38
Therefore, hast Thou, O Father / 364
These are the grotesqueries / 78
Thine everlasting arms, oh Lord / 355
This is me, here’s my face / 163
This phrase sees, this one clucks / 213
This time god, I’m / 157
Three o’clock, brain aches / 205
Thy bestoweth loving kindness on all / 359
Thy rod and thy staff / 368
Tightly they backed / 53
To cement her surrender / 282
To lay a sheet of light / 12
To you who mourn the loss / 367
Today he awoke with apples / 143
Today I will die for a cause / 169
Today the sun births / 195
Two steel balls attempt to kiss / 261
Verbal directions are horrid / 129
Voice of a lunatic / 110
Vulgar poet, disgusting egotist / 141
Watching professional ice hockey / 54
We beseech Thee, O Lord / 357
We come into Thy house, O Lord / 371
We have turned aside / 348
We run backward / 102
We sanctify Thy name on earth / 350
We thank Thee for the life / 366
Well, I heard about / 56
What have I done, I’ve murdered / 167
What shall we say before Thee / 347
What spectacular sky / 284
What was dinner time / 36
What, he desires me / 119
When storms of oppression beat down / 361
When the bullets zinged / 82
When the gut growled / 64
When they pry apart / 162
While I masturbated / 312
While petitioning God to fi x my cancer / 288
Whom should you loathe if not yourself / 232
Wielding a cigarette with a needle / 342
Wind ripped rain blows / 125
Without consciously knowing it / 35
Words in manuscript conspire / 272
You suck, you make me sick / 291
You’re weary of me / 286
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