SLIGHTLY INCOMPLETE MESSAGE TRANSMITTED FROM FBI HEADQUARTERS IN QUANTICO, VIRGINIA TO PRESIDENT REGARDING A GOVERNMENTAL THEORY OF POETICS, INTERCEPTED AND DESCRAMBLED COMPLIMENTS OF SALVATORE NOCERA - OBSESSIVE, DANGEROUSLY INTELLIGENT, INSOMNIAC HAM RADIO OPERATOR:
"... so we are fairly certain, thus far, according to numerous corroborating reports from a cross section of known poets (under much 2BABBLE-NXS serum) that, verbatim, 'there's this cosmic band that passes through me with extreme rapidity, a braided ray of pinkish thrust, finely veined and arteried with threads of the most brilliant f***ing gold,' and this flexible beam (dimensions unknown), purportedly coursing throughout the universe in quick, successive revolutions, occasionally touches poets, nipping a toe, catching a midsection, and may reasonably sever a head (undocumented thus far), but it is in this contact with this circling band, we refer to as the Poet Band, in touching more and more of a poet, rids him or her of more and more mortal flesh, in some mystic transformation, leaving behind (pure conjecture, solely in the poet's conception) slightly tingling lungs and occasional numbness in extremities (see similarity to asleep limbs in Document 12, sect. 4 of POETICS), and eventually, we induce, may free the poet of all carnality, as (to use a poet's verbiage) a dart-board becomes less and less itself as it is used more and more, leading the affected poet to unprecedented inspiration and proliferation of quality work, but, unfortunately in the exact moment that this band touches non-poets, adverse temporary and permanent effects ensue, whereas grace is imbued within the poet, the opposite occurs with the non-poet, such as slight memory loss (see deposition of subject #61473: 'It was on the tip of my tongue'), and major memory loss (often confused with Alzheimer's, see Reagan's autobiography), knees buckling, getting 'the giggles' in church, the unnerved subjects who attempt to climb one step more than is there, and finally, those unfortunate citizens who endlessly pick up one thing as something else falls, but our program, V.R.O.O.M., (funded from our successful, secretly executed 'miscellaneous tax' strategy) has been implemented for such afflicted, non-poets, in the interest of national security and individual safety (Vehicle Ready Operation Of Museless: a clever program in which non-poet subjects are unwillingly conscripted, for their own good, and set into constant motion throughout the continental United States), to avoid further contact from the Poet Band, subjects are ingeniously hidden in government manufactured cars, often colored a sickly neon, glittery hue, with windows, for anonymity, tinted to illegal opaqueness, and further fitted with two experimental devices to prevent future contact with the Poet Band (utilizing both sound and light defenses): a set of Richter Scale-like sub-woofers, which will vibrate a neighborhood for a radius of 2.2 kilometers, and also a black-light glow which radiates from the undercarriage, and with these automobiles (appropriately dubbed 'Nausea Machines') we hope such measures will prevent the non-poet population from further contact, as they frequent, town to town, noted 'neutral ground' areas, suspiciously public yet somehow immune to the Poet Band: malls, movie theaters, main streets, some universities and colleges, large collections of giddy adolescents, and usually in close proximity to 'mosh pits' (where blood, hair, and mucus samples are being gathered without protest by entrenched and properly 'grunged' agents this very minute) and finally, regretfully, our last immune area, Arkansas, yet as our interrogation of currently 'touched' poets continues, New Mexico based satellite dishes have picked up a possibly relevant message (studied through our finest sound equipment, specialists have identified the voice as most similar to a grown man in gay, girlish timbre), though the code to crack said message continues to elude our 'best boys', and the undecoded message remains: 'fudge, fudge, call the judge, mama's got a new-born baby, not a boy, not a girl, just an ordinary baby, wrap it up in tissue paper, send it up the elevator, first floor miss -', note: 'first floor miss -' repeats itself in simple fashion, as 'first' represents variable 'n' in the progressive equation 'n + 1', thus the 'n' variable increases one whole number in sequence, leading to 'second, third, fourth', et cetera, and always followed by 'floor miss', which then continues on, according to our 'Big Al' super-computers, ad infinitum, and to supplement that bad news, our initial project, commenced at your request, involving the capturing and confinement of one hundred poets who were under the impression they had earned an all expense paid, one month stay at an unknown writer's commune in Washington, D.C., has failed also, as the poets would not remain seated in assigned cubicles and work on their theory of poetics, despite liberal cattle prod use, and also General Electric's Inspiration Evacuator Machine was perhaps set at unwise levels, causing the poets to utilize their pens in combat fashion, dueling over what little inspiration remained in the observation room, as the poets, consequently, separated into two initial factions (a revealing spectacle), the Masochists and the Sadists, where a grueling fourteen day stand-off persisted, as the Masochists demanded to be stabbed and the Sadists happily refused, but on the fifteenth day, everyone, well, we are down to four territorial poets, each commanding one corner of the observation room, brandishing their pens with what our chief psychotherapist perceives as malicious intent, but without losing hope, our present and most hopeful effort, in a parallel project, is focused upon a youngish poet's latest, most intriguing response (his matter of factness widely unappreciated by our agents, despite the largest dose of serum ever administered) to our repeated queries regarding the nature of the Poet Band:
'It's God's jump rope, man.'"
