The Disappeared

entablature, missing elements, details
that found the architect's practice

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a disappeared part   spirit to doorway's cornice

column of all these unravelled cities

(client more than satisfactory and anyway we are
overwhelmed   useless )

run-after city   all this belonged to us ...

we walked through the streets arm-in-arm

•

                                          method: remarking how
                       in memory the physical world
                       is not ours
                                                  for reflex: a photograph
                       itself distorts shadow
                       and real value

•

the studied object at that synthetic level forms in space such as doorways ... but the noise of radio waves, bottles shattering ...

all those green parrots gone wild
                             (screeking cloud of them hurtling by)

Deep signs in the form of our cities' exhausted daily craftsman never reached     Silence of the noisy and forced     Houses with littered causeways     Submerged city roughly put aside with slight regret Ecstatic tolerance for the shiny missing dead

Corner solution, etc.    relatively small &     singled out because it can be measured reference  to whatever is  visible / axial
digital pencil laws held at point of disappearing in plastic value not merely schematic  Peculiar, for   we can still see   canonical elements of the classical language   even here, at the point of disappearance and (embellishment) facade techniques   bricked arch   projecting pilasters slightly columned attic with hang-out balustrade washing on line   Egyptian cotton shirts &
handcut table linen (old and soft)    the crossed arena yet wide

... green parrots loose between buildings ...

•

Initially rolling forward
as sculptural coincidence

it evenly astonished us,
this pleasant absent mind

Opposed aristocratic bias,
Stendahlian city moment,

unitarian re-use
of abusive marbles

"The Rome of the 1931 plan"
close to the ear

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nest plan : a city as long as a long building
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•

moulding^   window^   stair^

small lobby cautiously abandoned
unaffordable threshold of a landing never reached

alleys of places (we have lost their names)
so-called baroque time   parrots slashing
through curved light   bent and wrinkled

in the beloved unadorned

Rome [1995-2000]                      

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* "The Disappeared" originally in 20th Century, a+bend press/chapbook series, n. 37, 2000.