Panic at John Baldessari’s Kiss

The aftermath always happening like an airplane falling, or a man

midair falling from a horse, and an arrow, a gun, many guns

pointing away, at us, our all bull’s-eye-on-the-mark. This is what he

sees when he sees. Maybe Wrong or not, the appropriation, the film

clip, chase, pressed lips over lips, photo moment on the minute-drawn

breath in, the over, the under, bodies in black and white cut to pose,

the way a kiss can pose, dispose of everything around it for another,

dispose of thinking. It’s like waving good-bye. Mouth to mouth seeing

as saying. Inside. Resuscitation back to the brain saying yes as the mouth

makes an O. Circles for the digital age, colored dots for faces already

made for erasing. Hurry, come, he, 6’7”, sees fifteen minutes from the

Mexican border, cremates his old paintings up close. But the ashes were

kept in a book urn, not so afloat in the ocean with my parents, Above,

On, and Under (with Mermaid) to kiss and kiss, riot in the dark depth

of it. The collision, the kiss, the capture, once in the for-all-we-know

of haunting who comes first. Kiss into kiss and so into kiss. All laws

of gravity leave us. Gender begins in violence and space. Space begins

in gender and violence as all laws of gravity leave us. So, kiss, kiss, kiss!