Writing on a wall.

"Let patience have a new mettle of love
When the legions of unlivable hours marshal
And the long-rumoured war between good and evil
Seems loosed--no, between time and evil.

To look not too keenly, hear their battles not loudly.
The war is an ancient one which hurls
Time against time on to-morrow's fields--
Which consumes expectation, leaves to-day waiting.

Standing in the shadow of their shadow-world,
Let the cries and the thunders fall voiceless to earth,
And the flames reach to heaven, that top of hell,
Unexalted by our eyes, our amen.

Nor be haggard for an outcome, breath forborne.
When ghosts put on flesh and make bodies ghostly,
It is but how the dead light themselves home
As the living inherit nature.

If the glare blots our sight, if the sparks sting,
If nations gibber and ether tears
And a smell of scorching blows round the world,
As if at last doom were astir (perhaps?):

Shake off the dream, close in fulfilment,
Draw a finer circle and raise boundaries
More home-like unswelling, to stay the heart--
Lusting after better things than are.

Keep a yet more unanxious watch.
Think not to know wonders, learn truth from wild hours.
Let patience glow with its own inwrought lustre,
Not the startled reflection of time's faster burning."

--Laura Riding (via M*tafilter)

What's that?.

Utraquist is a bard who can ply both fancy and plain talk. In old days bards truly sang for all, a story on top plainly and in fancy talk or with fancy shadowings. also. And  Mozarab is sworn to find a third way, not holding to bad old splits that bind and blind us.


    "grom"

This light, signifying nothing, hurts
with glory.
I pay up and go on, clouds
carry away an array of bright shadows
i shall not again
catch, nor this hazardous thought
flung among rushing morning cars and
gray thalassa’s sound;
swiftly still.

Bandit Qu**n of India.

    "Nothing Now Astonishes

A month of vigilance draws to its close
With silence of snow and the Northern lights
In longed-for wordlessness.

This rainbow spanning our two worlds
Becomes more than a bridge between them:
They fade into geography.

Variegated with the seven colours
We twist them into skeins for hide and seek
In a lovers' labyrinth.

Can I be astonished at male trembling
Of sea-horizons as you lean towards them?
Nothing now astonishes.

You change, from a running drop of pure gold
On a silver salver, to the white doe
In nut-groves harbouring.

Let me be changed now to an eight-petalled
Scarlet anemone that will never strain
For the circling butterfly.

Rest, my loud heart. Your too exultant flight
Had raised the wing-beat to a roar
Drowning seraphic whispers."

--Grav*s

"In this sequence I was attempting a florid grim music broken by grunts and shrieks."  --G*offr*y Hill, "Fun*ral Music: an *ssay"


This Bardic Art has long split into plain and fancy forms. Mostly plain is put to music nowadays. But bards still complain of low status, and bardic fancy talk is on occasion found culprit. Bards should look to lack of a musical background for why Plain Folk don't flock to bardic stand ups, i think.

    "Bombers

Through the vague morning, the heart preoccupied,
A deep in air buried grain of sound
Starts and grows, as yet unwarning--
The tremor of baited deepsea line.

Swells the seed, and now tight sound-buds
Vibrate, upholding their paean flowers
To the sun. There are bees in sky-bells droning,
Flares of crimson at the heart unfold.

Children look up, and the elms spring-garlanded
Tossing their heads and marked for the axe.
Gallant or woebegone, alike unlucky--
Earth shakes beneath us: we imagine loss.

Black as vermin, crawling in echelon
Beneath the cloud-floor, the bombers come:
The heavy angels, carrying harm in
Their wombs that ache to be rid of death.

This is the seed that grows for ruin,
The iron embryo conceived in fear.
Soon or late its need must be answered
In fear delivered and screeching fire.

Choose between your child and this fatal embryo.
Shall your gilt bear arms, and the children you want
Be condemned to die by the powers you paid for
And haunt the houses you never built?"

--C Day L*wis, op cit

On my victrola: Los Diplomaticos.

"The problem [in Malay] was always to find a general [status-neutral] term [for 'you'] that would offend nobody, and this has finally been imported from Indonesia--anta..." --Anthony Burg*ss, A Mouthful of Air (1992)


Art took its start prior to this split, but no world is split as far as art. You may ask why would Sharp Folk want an art only for Sharp Folk; but it is through art that Sharp Folk first saw Sharp quality as a shining thing, and art is most a Sharp Folk faith.

It is hard to think of our kind as a group: our first thought is to look only at individuals. So any try at making us bad guys just looks as if comic-book fantasy had run amok. Sharp Folk must start to know how obvious Plain Folk find what holds Sharp apart from Plain.

    "Politics of Gnosticism"

Gray domain, sad cyclical thirst for blood.
No gliding protocol in a maroon rain,
no hand of Fatima lights our haggard run;
but i will not admit that i'm afraid.
In this snaking baobab domain, command
wills its buzz through pliant skin and iron
and pours down Taproban to light a cairn,
cairn or monition told. This star is blind
on ruin thrown, and occult on fragrant blood
it calls forth from our flag a plastic doom.
Words among fathoms cold find tragic numb
in blood-thrusting vault no click, its only food
annihilation and subfusc fuzzy thralldom.

"The next day, Gabriel Garcia-Cohen moved to Bruges." (via Click Opera)

"Some years ago I came across a note by the German philosopher Theodor Haecker (1889-1945). He writes that "Tyrants always want a language and literature that is easily understood." I think that legitimate difficulty (difficulty of course can be faked) is essentially democratic. " --Geoffrey Hill

"I have Lovecraftian fantasies about the hospital librarian."

You don't want this tattoo. (via bOING bOING)

Whist.

Your TV Will Not...

What did Arthur know?

A story about Sharp Folk and Plain.

Shia Pundit is at a brass location now.

Jump that Shark.

A bit of my art.

It is worth thinking about, that a good part of Plain Folk did not join this fascist faction. Thus not all found truth in its drastically plain story. What our country lacks is a story that Plain Folk can absorb, but is not too far from what actually did occur. Who is up to it?


Shadow work is you finding out that an unfamiliar quality actually is part of your familiar world. What is this socially? For a minority group to gain position with a social majority. Our country has grown mild in many of its past discriminations. That was shadow work, and social wisdom. It must go on, still.

Right now i'm loving Qu**n Latifah's variant of "California Dr*aming"...

Rabbit Talk. (via Languag* Hat)

     "Khamsa"

Incubus candida Xanadu
unruin turn alb

No fourth wall
but sand wintry Farfisi

Wintry guitar wintry drum solo wintry
hiss of black vinyl

Masuda aloha baboon Mab
maroon thought

Rolm moray, wintry thalassa this gnomon
what our troops our ballots did

Soaring in Rosicrucian
night andtragic slag

Oscar Tarawa moray cloud mad
maroon Xanadu mud maroon Mazzaroth

what you do
on a cold morning

morbidly irrational
anguish fishing in agonistic ambit

boring drug
abyss with adiabatic black

myth filth drowsy crop
captor Stygian hit word

and far flung nab and agama nub
digs as whist

A killing jar halcyon sabbatical
in infant camo

buildings that shift color as
untranslatability pulls countdown

Craving thralldom portal, syzygy
of chaos

and finks a hitword Baghdad
spork divinity

among cars and crisp shadows that harry us
i sit and think about a lost dord

our wrong road
and blackjack won friths

chronopausal, claws in fact
at that spirit of Ginnungagap

snows abort
with jolly or stirious accordions

abandon quarry gawkily, brood Krypton
strong in hurt spots, strong

bulbous capitalism
will not aid us will not halt this drouth

swamp glows go
bobbing soaring spiralling without a sound

and sordor runs high
falutin' indigo jay

Jindyworobak sticks Baja fjord
No gliding protocol in a maroon rain

no hand of
Fatima lights our

haggard run; but i will not admit
that i'm afraid. In this snaking baobab

domain, command wills its buzz
through pliant

skin and iron and pours
down Taproban to

light a cairn, cairn or monition told. This star
is blind on ruin thrown and occult

on fragrant
blood it calls forth from our flag

a plastic doom words among
fathoms cold

find tragic numb in blood-thrusting vault
no click its only food annihilation

and subfusc
fuzzy thralldom your passport

to Cibola in
fact action flicks must carry my sign

as most lost wizard-hooligan of longhorns
and rainbows go far

in gray domain sad cyclical thirst
for blood is

our sky and our gravity
bulbous anguish to watch Bugs Bunny of faith

abolish
and Rolm built and alibi

i was not lamping
and troops did not ply Albunalith

as i saw and did not and lock picking bias
found my lips black snow

found glory
lamping this allotropic

bitmask. I will cry wintry coins of basalt
sinking in Athagatagarbha

a dokhodyaga and Ghayb
hummingbird

old Sumatra your toxic gnosis
diwn braking sorrow

coilthorn mists, vacuous cinnabarcolor
you find rich truth in, my grout;

and Pluto
can but bury us in Caulaucauch.

A burgundy moon
i catch up and wrap in soft argus for you.

Bright olibanum
and its swarf
and its music lay this ghost.

What is crazy about this split. Anybody is not only half but both on occasion. And humans split four fours of ways, actually. Plus, your sort of human is disjunct of family. Finally, all four-four sorts add to what "human" is. Any sort has only a small part of truth--including this my story.


    "Burden of Silence

Scar-eraser, bring
No whisper of the African Holocaust
Nor after being kissed
Remember any cobwebbed tale of wrong:
Our pleasance is a laser through the darkling throng.

Glacier throught my art
Grinds a valley, leaves a ragged trail;
Far off thunders snarl
The voice of some uncomprehended fate
Which shall not reach us here though we in fear await."

--Darth Mall, A Watcher in Darkness (1850)


How to talk to Plain Folk so this Pumpkinification will diminish its hold? How to show how Sharp Folk also stand for God, Country, and Good Capitalism? How to allow fascist bad faith to unmask its actual quiddity? Most of all, it is important to not look down on Plain Folk, nor scorn Plain ways.

You might say our country had a big "Pumpkinification" during King Ronald's sway, which put solid form to an arbitrary linking of Christian with Rightwing with Patriotic with Plainfolk, all of which only partly conjoin. But plain folk flourish on drastically plain thoughts, and do not on fancy distinctions such as Sharp Folk put forward.

     "Radical City"

Tzvrif azimuth, oval or nidor of rain
Uzi Cibola

imgrat sunk
itch which COBOL avid lamp

slowly boring orchid indigo
city idyll for growing songs of gray war