Talbot Mundy.


    "TV Manumission"

Oxonian Ixtab roads
and lingo...

Ballrooms ontic fizgig; axiomatic storp
fast about brick moon

radar idol isthmus bank snick--odd
flummox bilk fnord agony ions

abrupt panic slump,
allot frown wormy God wood.

    "the blips gone by

when do things decry their frail in-
amnesty, and do we pry out of our own
voicebox the new waitlist
for film props, jetstream
lengthening the trip, the blips
gone by, the ostracized new kit
abundantly endowed with loping
indigence the way that mother used to
matterhorn, and do we also need
our frere jacques sung to us
while laundry coats the threshold
rain almost upon us now and
blousy trains of thought inebriated
with their own sootheworthy unction"

---Sh*ila *. Murphy, Gr**n T*a with Ging*r (2003) [my Po*try *xchang* book--thanx!]

    "To a Military Rifle

The times come round again;
The private life is small;
And individual men
Are counted not at all.
Now life is general.
And the bewildered Muse.
Thinking what she has done,
Confronts the daily news.

Blunt emblem, you have won:
With carven stock unbroke,
With core of steel, with crash
Of mass, and fading smoke;
Your fire leaves little ash;
Your balance on the arm
Points whither you intend;
Your bolt is smooth with charm.
When other concepts end,
This concept, hard and pure,
Shapes every mind therefor. [sic]
The time is yours, be sure,
Old Hammerhead of War.

I cannot write your praise
When young men go to die;
Nor yet regret the ways
That ended with this hour.
The hour has come. And I,
Who alter nothing, pray
That men, surviving you,
May learn to do and say
The difficult and true,
True shape of death and power."

--Yvor Winters, op cit

Schiavo. (via Robot Wisdom)

Squidblog. (via M*tafilt*r)

A ghinnawa:

    "Arab Spring"

portion in this
portion in this
portion in this doom
portion in this
your portion in this doom
portion in this
portion in this
your portion in this doom
portion in this
portion in this
portion in this a king
a king will not aid you now
portion in this
portion in this
find your
find your portion in this doom

(I didn't win.

    "47. Triumph of the Willing

Vintage turquoise Chesterfield,
witness to oneiric
brandishment of weaponry:
Pinot versus calcspar.

Ferment no bodega holds,
aisles the shadows marble;
emanate angelic vent
rather than the demon!

Gossip me for Crip or Blood,
any set but Main Street...
Pour each orbit full of sport,
trellis rose with lotus.

Here we frolic indigo
storms in which I figure
only as God’s mimsy pawn
fire-tossed, stoking glory.

Graywyvern is sayd to have scribed this tender hymn of conciliation upon the wainscoting of his suite, using a defunct Mont Blanc, on the eve just prior to his celebrated show trial/funeral, circa 13 A. B. While his physick exhibits all the familiar deformations of lxbxrxlxsm, the sentiments expressed ring rock-solid inn the True Slant. By the first paragrab, we are to understand a newfledge abhorris for his longtime, but forbidden, vices of smokking and drinking. ("Oneiric" is a literary word, probably signying bootleg.) The second clearly indicates his returning to the Fold: choirs of cherubim glimpsed via window, the runway of a cathedral. At the third he implores for the sacramis, and pugnastics on the viddy, preferably the Rose Bowl. (Sweet!) And in the fourth he fesses his utter consent to the oncoming R2 D. Fe." --Lancelot Hyperlink, A ROSE FOR LEVITICUS (1957)")

"My oldest son tried to boil it down for me: You watch the Daily Show to keep track of the government's lies. You play Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to gain consesus on the larger cultural narratives and to have fun. And you read great books and keep track of the street art to know what's really going on inside intelligent people's head."

Th* Actual is th* N*w Virtual.

   "American Newthinker

How brave to despise the poor
and foment a war
you yourself take no part in.

Pseudointellectual snobbery
suits these baby brownshirts
with their Homeric fixed epithets
of disparagement,
their gimcrack economic theories,
their pinchbeck jingoism:

deludedly triumphal now
in search of a small victim
to commence with."

--Victor V*rmis

'In the name of peace we scatter depleted uranium
the way Rome sewed salt in the soil of Carthage.' --Amari Hamad*n*. (via Silliman's Blog)

"Memorial

If we do not lift quickly the dead bodies from the beaches
the tide begins to put them down like a disappointment
carried beneath the clothing, or hidden
in the intricate folded greyness of the brain.

Now we can know again, even more plainly,
how quickly the world changes.
The land and life too are interrupted
by the indomitable fantasy of extreme violence
and the awful terror.
The body, eager with its wants and its rich few years,
is dead now on the beaches.

The war came as a water rising, leaving us homeless.
The easy company of the dispossessed was a grave joy.

On the crest of waters we invaded the distance.
Recession will find our shells far: high up in mountains.
It will be explained how they came there.
It will not be understood."

--William Bronk, op cit

"When he was small, when he would fall,
on sand or carpet he would lie
quite flat and still until he knew
what he would do: get up or cry.

After the battle, flat and still
upon a hillside now he lies--
but there is nothing to decide,
for he can neither cry nor rise."

--V Nabokov, in: Po*ts of World War II (ed H Shapiro, 2003)

J*sus in th* Hous* of th* Pharaohs.

Dignity of Diff*r*nc*.

On my victrola: S*phardic Songs from th* Balkans.

    "A Lay of Sanctity"

and Pluto
crystal
pouring across highways

i shall not again
fall back into not

pouring indigo
brain rips ask
fruity and throaty synth sounds

vagrant sanctuary. Garuda
our wrong road

minivan vandalism
or boudoir, this swart polka
hollow flagpillar sound

on ruin thrown, and occult on fragrant blood
parochial noctambulists

swamp glows go
circlings, as if it could
mutiny wind of

voting booth
IL Aquarii starfish jackals sling

or a swart saga
cop standing at a curb
or guitar solos

Holocaust kitsch kitsch holocaust
if your cat could talk

sundown lands
nobody’s missing
which way did

spindly pallid forms
buildings that shift color as

night and tragic slag
story what godly
crimson and indigo vap

and a bard could stop halfway
in this blank snow

slowworm
slack stalwart
body algid lamp

to occupation or stay
for additional output

straying dim acorn
snug guns talk, inform
no rotund

lich with a phiz of total Casbah
and Pluto