“And if thou ever happen that same way
To travail, goe to see that dreadfull place:
It is an hideous hollow cave (they say)
Under a rocke that lyes a little space
From the swift Barry, tumbling downe apace,
Emongst the woodie hilles of Dynevowre:
But dare thou not, I charge, in any cace,
To enter into that same balefull Bowre,
For fear the cruell Feends should thee unwares devowre.

But standing high aloft, low lay thine eare,
And there such ghastly noise of yron chaines,
And brasen Caudrons thou shalt rombling heare,
Which thousand sprights with long enduring paines
Do tosse, that it will stonne thy feeble braines,
And oftentimes great grones, and grievous stounds,
When too huge toile and labour them constraines:
And oftentimes loud strokes, and ringing sounds
From under that deepe Rocke most horribly rebounds.

The cause some say is this: A litle while
Before that Merlin dyde, he did intend,
A brasen wall in compas to compile
About Cairmardin, and did it commend
Unto these Sprights, to bring to perfect end.
During which worke the Ladie of the Lake,
Whom long he loved, for him in hast did send,
Who thereby forst his workemen to forsake,
Them bound till his returne, their labour not to slake.

In the meane time through that false Ladies traine,
He was surprisd, and buried under beare,
Ne ever to his worke returnd againe:
So greatly his commaundement they feare,
But there doe toyle and travell day and night,
Until that brasen wall they up doe reare:
For Merlin had in Magicke more insight,
Then ever him before or after living wight.”

--Spenser

Even Molly Ivins is using the "F-word" (Oct 14)...

“Fahrenheit Vampire Mystery Cat”

Through precise crystal
The crowds grope in a ragged circle
If he/ the poet (the end of this) may tell
It never tempts the serpent

The serpent
Folk whose greasy world mocks mine
Each morning in chaotic circle
Winds dark & pungent whirl splay can’t do crystal

It circle
Beltane hold crystal
Hands morning precise serpent
Crowds crowding

Ragged chrome poet, away through the pungent
Grope of black serpent
Having never emerald crystal
And never cat will come. Break circle.

10 17 04


Listening to- Digital Moonscapes.

Recent pic of Saturn.


“Clouds

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon’s hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth,
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.”

--Rupert Brooke


...It's kind of like a public referendum on Gravity: seems, half of us don't believe in it. But you know what? Even if the vote goes the other way, things fall.

Fortune is a River.

Narcocorrido.

transl: La Llorona (Mexican folk song)

All is pain for me, Crying Lady,
Pain or pain’s sweet respite;
I wept to see you yesterday,
Today I weep for having wept.

I saw you in passing one day, Crying Lady,
As you were leaving the church.
So beautiful a blouse with lace
You wore, I thought you were the Virgin.

To the highest perch I climbed, Crying Lady,
To see where you could be found.
Such was the pine tree’s tenderness
Crying Lady, it cried too.

At the failing of the light, Crying Lady,
Every day I wonder:
What use is this bed of mine, Crying Lady,
If it never belongs to you?

Indigo Lady, Crying Lady.
Lady of Indigo Tears,
I wept to see you yesterday;
Today I wept for having wept.

A letter from across the sea, Crying Lady,
A siren did send to me;
And she rebuked my faint heart, saying:
To suffer is not to love.

All is pain for me, Crying Lady,
Pain or pain’s sweet respite;
I wept to see you yesterday,
Today I weep for having wept.

Indigo Lady, Crying Lady,
Celestial Lady of Sorrow,
Although it may rob me of life, Crying Lady,
I’ll still be full of love for you.

10 15 04

Take the Pledge.

A subculture that adopts the 260-day Mayan ceremonial calendar (“tzolkin”) & considers themselves exiles from a planet that with that length year (e.g. 23 Librae b)...

“Our fathers to their graves have gone;
Their strife is past, their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place;
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.”

--Whittier

“Oblique Rain”

Tzompantli at, from champ stop
Going carbonaceous dreamhenge now says he.
Instant Mutiny

Potemkin village idiot we

Bell cat mice
Drones don’t leave & orange cones
Simmer down at once down home torture cake walk wreak have.;
Further disaffected gibberish

Of dream folk their lies

Winds greasy
Four hundred rabbits, the mole
Star tell gram garden of wildebeests
Ice lines rain
Swirl gutter clawing for purchase under swill...

Tziompantli glad end
To not face to not
Know this mutiny for what
Fact avalanche vile hope penetrate
Spiralling Maremma acid bonus map
Of Middle
Earth kitty klingon
Streak Tzompantli inner wound
Ice nine sleepwalkers vampire witch queen

Edge. Live Bleed longer
Or anyway puree, feel as if you had!

10 14 04

“George [W.]’s first English assignment [at Andover Prep] was to write an essay about an emotional experience. He chose his sister’s death. He struggled to find the right words. He wanted to write ‘and the tears ran down my cheeks,’ but he had already used the word ‘tears’ several times. So he turned to the thesaurus his mother had given him when he left home. He searched for another word for ‘tears.’ He wrote: ‘And the lacerates ran down my cheeks.’ “ --Kitty Kelly, The Family (2004)

“Delivery Failure Notice”

our children is learning to die
the lacerates ran down
in khaki, in flannel, in black
the lacerates ran down
with fancy toys, in the broken streets
the lacerates ran down
& their cries is not news
the lacerates ran down
their blood is not news
the lacerates ran down
their pain counts for nothing next
the lacerates ran down
to the immortal
the lacerates ran down
glory of Donald Trump’s haircut
the lacerates ran down

09 28/29 04

Today is Vergil's birthday.

The Aeneid Image Gallery.

The Laviniad (a sequel in English).

“Exile in Noywynd”

--NHHHHHHH. A dull roar flooded her mind. --NHHHHHHH. When she thought that she would probably puke no more, she reluctantly unlocked the narrow door of the jumbojet’s restroom, & staggered to her seat down the rock-steady aisle, brushing shoulders & sleeping heads & hats along the way. There she resumed her headache-beset perusal of an old issue of “Sporangium Fetish”, the one where the prize-winning poet had sent his last published poem under the strange alias Flel
Osta. (It wasn’t much of a poem. It started: “PPPP. PPP. RRR. RRR. LM. SSS...”)

She had anagrammed out: Lost Leaf.

As a journalist of some experience, she ought by now to have absorbed enough background to confidently approach her subject, who by the usual rules of the game would have prepared the shiny translucent mask he wanted the world to see; & thus the only awkwardness would arise from the necessary pretence that they were both making it up as they went along. Not this time. Instead, he had proved not only impossible to reach directly (as if a hermit of some silicon- & wire-bereft era!), his very umbilicus to the literary scene, a perpetually stoned publisher whose pigeon-hued dreads made him look like some prankster had dropped a mop atop his hapless dome, --refused to divulge more than the bare name of a coffeehouse where he “might be found”; & her determined research at last had produced but this junket to a crumbling back-province capital where at one time, according to an old phone book (not verified by any data on the Net) a place with that name once existed.

Almost at one her gorge rose anew. This time, with bemused resignation, she availed herself of the bag on the back of the seat ahead.



The “Golden Pilbug” looked a lot older than it could possibly be. Situated in a strangely timewarped block amidst all else renovated yuppie playground & overchromed boutiques, its letters barely showed through the grime; & she doubted whether the marquee’s “Live Jazz Tue” belonged to this staid & jazzless decade at all, much less the Month of the Fiery Dragon.

Inside it was very dark. Indeed, it smelled less of constant steeping in the vaporous byproducts of injavination, than of a strong old-warehouse mustiness quite the lair for a day-hating pillbug, & she made a mental note to set the poet at ease with this tortuous witticism should the chance allow. She almost fell over in one place where the floor dropped without warning. Cursing the bravado that’d made her leave her cane in the hotel room (a standard roboticized superhotel she’d instantly forgotten the name of upon turning the corner), she clambered up the stairs to an even darker balcony (presided over by the faint aura from a string of magenta Xmas
lights that climbed like ivy up the central supporting column) & hearing voices further up. No one would know anything, of course. Even if they did they wouldn’t share it with an interloper...

A scattering of seedy regulars were already lounging & smoking around on the secondhand (or even roadkill) livingroom furniture, the arms scored by burns like Paleolithic calendars, & the proud shelves of books as scrambled as if a tornado had ransacked them. Towards the back a couple of ambery lamps limned the waists & shoulders of a small knot of onlookers surrounding, she saw as she came closer, some ricketty chess tables. Silence reigned, emphasized by a low mutter when temporary triumph would from time to time require the Black player to take White & vice versa.
She scrwed her eyes up, standing a respectful distance back, & tried to take her mental image of a yellowed newspaper photo (sadly pixillated on her laptop monitor’s screen) & run it forward in time some sixteen or seventeen years.

The effort threatened to bring back her migraines. For fifteen seconds, her vision flattened & spread out horizontally, while she swayed in the gloom with a familiar anxiety. Nobody noticed.

With a shrug, she reached into her shoulderbag & removed a small square of handmade paper. On it were numbers dictated to her by his publisher over the phone (beaten down at last by her persistence, or else the rising of his own despair). It was, he told her, a Magic Square.

“What’s a Magic Square?” she’d blurted.

“Something geniuses used to make in their spare time,” he said with a sneer in his voice. “Your computer can do one in less time than it takes to ask.”

Was it her fault a computer now had gained the World Chess Championship?

One of the older men cursed oddly. She decided this had to be her quarry.

“Can I have the next game?” she said brightly, with a clench in her diaphragm only just inaudible.

“Five dollar,” he growled, after a moment of awkwardness unusual in its intensity even in her history of buttonholing junkie pop icons & terrorist tsars-in-exile. She realized, as the loser stood & shuffled off, this man was not so much old as broken by long misery, with a look she had almost let vanish without registering, it was so piercingly pitiful. She had seen this look in refugee camps along shell-cratered squabbling borders, & in cardboard shantytowns under the pterodactyl wingspread of freeways, but never on a face that had graced more than one national magazine cover; a rewarded, an educated man...

His agile fingers belied the deadness of his eyes. Before she was quite oriented to staring at a horizontal surface, the two armies stood arrayed in neat ranks. Some of them came from different-sized sets.

He held out two freckled fists & she chose the right. She got Black, so he rotated the board in one smooth motion. His first move, Knight to Queen’s Rook Three, she had never seen before in any of the books.

“What’s that shit?” she said softly, almot without the question inflection. Might as well plunge in.

Annoyingly his eyes rose no higher than her cleavage, then fell to the table with almost a thunk.

“Durkin’s Attack,” he said at last.



About the middle of the third game, she drew the square of paper out, & laid it beside his resting hand.

“Nice paper,” he observed, & exchanged a Bishop for a Knight. She knew it had struck him, though, for the move he had made was clearly inferior to a retreat. She smiled. there in the smoky dark, for the first time.

“Jasper?”

“That hasn’t been anyone’s name for a long while.”

“You’ve hidden yourself.”

“Deus absconditus.” He appeared to lose interest in the game, to crumple with the weight of being personalized. “I paid all my debts.”

“Karmic included,” he added.

“I only came to talk,” she said with a little more forcefulness.

“Good. We talk. We’re talking. We will have talked.”

“Do you have the time?”

“I’m here every day. This is my job.” He waved an arm vaguely at the books & the now-withdrawn gaggle of spectators, as if to indicate a whole world. “Five dollars a pop.”

She considered this, a puzzle akin to some of his famous puzzlepoems, that only made sense when you read them vertically, or at an angle, or taking every third word.

“Instead of poetry...?” she said.

“Poetry never paid. Not even for the Greatest Living poet,” he spat, with such selfdirected scorn she had to wince. Her temples throbbed, & she hastily scrambled in her purse for a pill, while never taking her eyes from his face. She saw a sandy haired man of later than middle years, fading to gray but his expressive face unlined & set in a melancholy grimace, his trimmed goatee disheveled by frequent nervous fingerings. He wore a scarlet suit that had been carefully mended over & over, till it had become a sort of patchwork quilt of slightly unmatched reds, like a painter’s monochrome color study.

“I would have sent you away at once, if not for that Saikou,” he said mildly, noticing the tears in her eyes. (They were due to the headache, but she didn’t need to tell him that.) He pushed the gold-threaded paper more fully into the lamplight. “I loathe & despise journalists. --Simplifiers!” He started to replace the chessmen in their home bases. She touched his arm to stop him. The game hadn’t ended. Was he running away?

“You win,” he said, & shook her hand.



He told her, not his own story, but the story of Poetry.

“A lot of this will have to be condensed,” she arned gaily.

“Let the idiot box crunch it,” he sniffed. They were midway athwart a huge latticework bridge, periodically deafened by passing trucks, & constantly slapped by blowing spray. It had just stopped raining, on one of their rare excursions. Apparently he wanted to give some of his more acerbic appraisals far from the tender ears of his board cronies.

“Everyvbody puts down Tennyson,” he resumed.

“Who’s Tennyson?”

Up ahead, beside his stalled tow truck, a driver was coughing violently. As they drew nearer, he eructed the parts of a dismembered green frog.

“Looks like that one indulged a bit too much,” observed the poet.



Sometimes she was confined to bed by her illness.

When she returned, he was always surprised. And happy. She couldn’t help noticing that. But he resumed without acknowledging the lapses, every time.

The weeks passed, & still he hadn’t talked bout the reason she was here. They sat in the dim bulb’s glow, where the chess fans had learned no moves of interest to them would be found, & now stayed away.

One time he stared hard at her (following a tremor that knocked over three chesspieces) & asked, “Is it that bad?”

“I won’t die, if that’s what you mean. I only will become more & more useless,” she answered in her usual way.

That was the last he mentioned it, though from that time on, he seemed less embittered, indeed almost tender in his lucid exposition of mysteries she could have done without. He should have gone into teaching, she thought at one point: that would have saved him. But for his pride...

And every day he checked the coffee house mailbox, as if expecting a windfall promised in a dream.

By this time he had reached the mid-Twentieth Century.

“It’s heavy going. You won’t like it,” he smiled.

“It’s where you come from.”

“No, it’s what I’ve resisted all my life.”

“Same thing.”



She knew he was dreaming of her dark hair & thin pale limbs, quite as certainly as if he had placed a poem about her at the end of his unauthorized Selected Curses (for she was psychic, a little). Against all her professional scruples she was wondering how to turn this to her advantage, when a particularly severe attack put her in the hospital for a month. From there she instructed her liege-corporation to reimburse him automatically for the money he would have made
playing chess & winning every game, & booked a rocket flight back to the home country. It was time to wrap up this assignment.

She as lying half-propped up in bed with her fingers twitching at the console, often having to redo whole lines, which reminded her unpleasantly that at one time she’d been a typist of 70 words per minute, when the phone rang with the sound of an Amazonian parrot.

It wasn’t Jasper, but his publisher, Stramonius.

“He wants to know, like, when you’re coming back to finish the E ighties,” said this estimable personage, whose real job was tending bar on one of the Permanent Barges. “Is he in love with you?”

“With the sound of his own voice, possibly. On the other hand, he might just have a few scores to settle with the Eighties. How the fuck should I know,” she snapped & hung up, then instantly shuddered when a wave of remorse collided with a counter-wave of vertigo. The resultsere unfortunate.

But the ad the ad! she kept shouting mentally, through a long fugue of eyeclamp red & no no no sleep.

When she awoke, with perfect clarity & no pain, simply an immense languor...she remembered what she had seen.



The owner of the pawnshop held her little computer ith no more gentleness than a butcher with a cow’s head. One that had just been knocked to the floor.

“This gizmo costed two grand?” he leered. “Naah. I’ll front ya two fifty.”

She glided to the case of handguns, & indicated a blunt swollen-looking one the color of weathered stone.

“That’ll be seventy five dollars in addition,” he said briskly.

The ad had read: “Pretentious old fart longs for beautiful maiden in black to end his charade. Determined & amoral only, need apply.” She’d circled it idly one cloudy afternoon, when even the intention of standing up had made her retch. Then, for days afterwards, shivering to hear the poet’s voice match those marks on the page.

In New York, she’d faxed a reply, in several ingenious ways suggesting a very diferent identity. They corresponded regularly for half a year, with growing confidence, on his side that he had found a way out; on hers, that she had found a way to help him after all.

Their appointment loomed, a Rubicon without water. She rode the subway to a nasty, polluted winter park where the wind had pushed drifts of rotting leaves into long sinuous glyphic patterns & nothing remained that could move of its own volition.

He hadn’t changed, in suit or demeanor, since the time of that abortive article. She couldn’t tell if he was fooled by her disguise or grown hardened in his self-absorption; he greeted her with drab manners, apparently much rehearsed. They walked in silence. In the distance, a two-headed angel statue tried to merge with the mists.

“Once more, O ye Laurels, and once more,/ Ye myrtles brown--” he kicked some leaves, “with ivy never sere./ I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,” wrenchingly, to one who knew how he felt about words. He threw them to the opalescent sky, to the unending wet pavement, with a wild verve wholly unrelated to joy. “Shatter your leaves before the mellowing YEAR!”

Then: “You don’t know, you can’t imagine what this means to me.”

She thought she did, & could.

“I’ve been dreaming of this all my life.”

“Longer than you were a poet?” (forgetting she wasn’t supposed to know).

“Much longer.”

When they came to the bridge of the island, he hesitated.

“You did bring wha I asked for?” as if only now beginning to think of dying by gunshot wound, as an experience.

She showed him, queasily, as if revealing some organ of intimacy more secret than genitals, more terrible than a vampire’s teeth. Its concentrated weight unbalanced her walk. She wondered what would happen if she toppled into the pond, but they reached the artficial island without mishap.

“The Gazebo,” he indicated. She finally realized he had shaved off his beard & this, she had been unconsciously aware of all along, made everything wrong.

She thought of protesting they were still within sight of the road (though hardly likely to catch the notice of early morning commuters, mesmerized by the drone of a dozen interchangeable deejays), as in keeping with the role she’d been elected to play, but it grew more & more threadbare with each moment of falseness. She sighted down the barrel before he told her to.

“Jasper,” she whispered. He jumped.

“What? What? Did you say, ‘Jasper’?!”

“Bang,” she said, pulling the trigger with three fingers.

He fell with a horrible snarl on his reddening features, of baffled rage, of betrayal, of grief, but he couldn’t speak a word before the drug carried him off into legend-laden darkness.

Later, she thought. Later he’ll have plenty to say.

And will it be poetry? Who knows?

It was all she could do to try.

(1994)

Et invenitur in omni loco et in quolibet tempore et apud omnem rem, cum inquisitio aggravat inquirentem.

Rosarium Philosophorum (1550)

(‘And it is found in every place and at any time and in every circumstance, when the search lies heavy on the searcher.’ --quoted in Jung’s Philosophy and Alchemy)

#

Pangngae. (Not Pangaea.)

On Not Translating Hafez. (via wood_s lot)

‘XXV

Thrips appear to adhere
to joints, to the base, to napes,
to the underface of numerators on foot.
Thrips and thrums from lupine heaps.

As the lee of each caravel, unraveled
without Americanizing, snorts loudly,
carriage perches collapse in a calamitous spasm,
with a puny pulse unfortunately given
to blowing its nose on the back of its wrist.
And the most high-pitched sopraneity
tonsures and hobbles itself, and gradually
ennazals toward icicles
of infinite pity.

Spirited loins wheeze hard
on bearing, dangling from musty breastplates,
cockades with their seven colors
below zero, from the guano islands
to the guano islands.
Thus the dirty honeycombs in the open air of little
faith.
Thus the hour of the records. Thus the one with a detour
to future planes,
when the innanimous gerfalcon reports solely
failed silence-deserving crusades.

Then thrips end up adhering
even in trap doors and in rough drafts.’

--Vallejo, Trilce (tr Eshleman)

Playing Indian.

“GHOST-CRABS

At nightfall, as the sea darkens,
A depth darkness thickens, mustering from the gulfs and the submarine badlands,
To the sea’s edge. To begin with
It looks like rocks uncovering, mangling their pallor.
Gradually the laboring of the tide
Falls back from its productions,
Its power slips back from glistening nacelles, and they are crabs.
Giant crabs, under flat skulls, staring inland
Like a packed trench of helmets.
Ghosts, they are ghost-crabs.
They emerge
An invisible disgorging of the sea’s cold
Over the man who strolls along the sands.
They spill inland, into the smoking purple
Of our woods and towns--a bristling surge
Of tall and staggering specters
Gliding like shocks through water.
Our walls, our bodies, are no problem to them.
Their hungers are homing elsewhere.
We cannot see them or turn our minds from them.
Their bubbling mouths, their eyes
In a slow mineral fury
Press through our nothingness where we sprawl on beds,
Or sit in rooms. Our dreams are ruffled maybe.
Or we jerk awake to the world of possessions
With a gasp, in sweat burst, brains jamming blind
Into the bulb-light. Sometimes, for minutes, a sliding
Staring
Thickness of silence
Presses between us. These crabs own this world.
All night, around us or through us,
They stalk each other, they fasten onto each other,
They mount each other, they tear each other to pieces,
They utterly exhaust each other.
They are the powers of this world.
We are their bacteria,
Dying their lives and living their deaths.
At dawn, they sidle back under the sea’s edge.
They are the moil of history, the convulsion
In the roots of blood, in the cycles of concurrence.
To them, our cluttered countries are empty battleground.
All day they recuperate under the sea.
Their singing is like a thin seawind flexing in the rocks of a headland,
Where only crabs listen.

They are God’s only toys.”

--Ted Hughes, from Wodwo (1967)

Online Eunoia. (via Mad Ink Beard)

Persepolis signing as a comic.

"A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves." —German proverb (via Love During Wartime)

Peaceweaver. "Most critics agree that the peace-weaving process is an unsuccessful undertaking but in order for this term to come into the Anglo-Saxon lexicon the act of uniting two kingdoms through marriage must have been successful at least once."

"Poetry: a language without a homeland." --fait accompli [hint: see the foregoing]


The Shadow Tractatus.

While Rome fiddles.

"It would be as if Ahab were put out of action but Starbuck, that most decent of men, still felt compelled to follow his captain's commands to the letter."
--Cahiers de Corey
Yeah, well, from the standpoint of someone else on the ship, it does indeed matter whether the captain "knows a hawk from a handsaw" & is willing to sink the whole ship in the process...

Bern Porter Lives!

Izzy the Bootblack.

“Murder on the Surface of Titan”

Outfox balefrost, Dragoman.
Imbibe owlish ebony.
Consort with dreamfolk who wage
Great moth of undoing here.

Orchid mists summon askew;
Comes the blind fury cerise.
A seer’s oblong feldspar
Badtz Maru do the rainbow.

The whiteness of your smile bleeds
Evil vampire witch queen time.
Out of shards, out of shadows,
Balefrost comes the blind fury.

10 11 04

A paradoxical Scholasticism is still Scholasticism.

"In the 1980s, the script to this movie [Casablanca] was sent to a readers at a number of major studios and production companies under the film's original title, "Everybody Comes To Rick's". Some readers recognized the script but many did not. Many complained that the script was not "good enough" to make a decent movie." --Tom Laughlin

Lovecraft en espanol. (via Blindheit)

‘Roller Coaster

For half a century
Poetry was the paradise
of the solemn fool.
Until I came
And built my roller coaster.

Go up, if you feel like it.
I’m not responsible if you come down
With your mouth and nose bleeding.’

--Nicanor Parra

“Let us take, for example, Flora, and see how a game of lawn tennis would be managed. The very slightest blow of the racket would drive the ball a prodigious distance before it could touch the ground; indeed, unless the courts were about half a mile long, it would be impossible to serve any ball that was not a fault.”
--Robert Stawell Ball, Star-Land (1899)

There’s a show where newlyweds volunteer to have their home-to-be completely redecorated by a team of resourceful pro designers. The lovebirds return from their honeymoon for a big surprise. For, all they get to keep from their previous possessions for sure, is a single “protected item” each. Anything else is liable to be radically refashioned, given away, or simply fed to the woodchipper...

I see in this, as so many--if not all--of the so-called “reality shows”, whether by accident or design, the heavy hand of the totalitarian agenda at work. We are to accept without question the decree of the collectivity, as embodied in interchangeably telegenic “experts”, even in such matters as formerly were left to personal discretion: our vaunted “individuality”, however, being symbolized by one pitiful relict item--like the “flesh-strips” which guaranteed the humanness of the cyborgs in Moderan.

Elsewhere wardrobes & whole bodies are likewise being subjected to complimentary “makeovers” (& they don’t even keep a “protected feature”, either!)--our pleasure in watching this exercise in voyeuristic disempowerment, is really not so very far from that of the Roman Circus, where the stripping away of dignity, & then life itself, became the daily fodder of ever more demanding citizen-consumers flush with imperial hubris.

"Over a third of the U.S. soldiers who served in the first Gulf War are now permanently disabled." --Counterpunch

Found this on a Pete Seeger album (he said it was about 200 years old):

"Mrs. McGraw," the captain said,
"would you like to make a pirate
out of your son, Ted?
With a scarlet cloak and a great cocked hat,
Mrs. McGraw wouldn't you like that?"
With me too-rye-ay
Foddle-diddle-day
With me toorye oorye oorye-ay
With me toorye-ay
Foddle diddle day
Me toorye oorye oorye-ay

Mrs. McGraw lived on the seashore
for the length of seven long years or more
When a great big ship sailed into the bay
"It's my son Ted with his legs away."

Then up comes Ted without any legs
And in their place are two wooden pegs
She kissed him a dozen times or two
Saying "My son Ted is it really you?"
"O were you drunk or were you blind
when you left your two fine legs behind?
Or was it walking on the sea
That cut your legs from the knees away?"

"I wasn't drunk and I wasn't blind
When I left my two fine legs behind.
But a cannon ball on the fifth of May
Cut my two fine legs from the knees away."

"All foreign war, I do proclaim
Between Don John and the King of Spain
But by jaze I'll make them rue the time
They stole the legs from a son of mine."

"It takes a village to read a poem." --Charles Bernstein

"I hope this is only temporary."

Elmer McCurdy.

“Rainy Landscape”

There, whilst musing
On a fragment of stone
Have they solved it?
And i dare not question
Whom the formless
Greasy star
Have down
It. By a something, an accent
Like those antique
It was sombre and silent
It chrome greasy star
Each must speak to the crown
Weary changes
On one dirge-like
Terrible want?

10 08 04

Apparently Moon Boots are back. (Can anyone say Napoleon Dynamite?) --I guess i'll have to wait for the Target knock-offs...

The Fifth Book of Peace.

Doomed Megalopolis.

I learn from Melanie that O Brother, Where Art Thou? is itself a zoomar: the name of the movie-within-a movie in Sullivan's Travels.

I met Odin, & invited him into my heart.

“Equivocation”

to have sea to ice-.. Crave
is a tremendous thing.
Purlieu in despised toil.
the way (of blame) is only ink
have.; Profound
up And when he would have
fallen upon them desert. Evil
Thus it is more likely high
come never acid at
do take drown them all.
Receive acid willed some hurt for me,
could they remove from me
sleepwalkers day profound from grope

10 07 04

Listening to: Doris Day- Day by Day.

Cyber Crypt.


“ ‘Contempt is the worst of all things, it is a symbolic way of killing a person. It revolts me.’ “ --An Intimate History of Humanity


“Shadow of the Eagle”

Wandered and winter dark blooms
Dark puree grow chrome
Above us, in the pathless dark
The call of the minaret
Roar, din of our machines
The vowels of the wolves collide
The lacerates ran down

They from the dim inane and vague opaque
That contains all the others
Hurricane and salvage
Pictures in the fire
Untrustful and his only way

Stormy Orion rising, on blind shoals
A soft frog ruins the mud

10 06 04

Signs of the Apocalypse #8, 9, & 10.

" I believe this is being done to me." --Malevolent Owls

"The young will again imagine refusing to lay another brick on the pyramids, and the old will smile patiently and mockingly." --Fait Accompli

Listening to this on my Mildred Bailey CD makes me feel hopeful:

"WHEN THAT MAN IS DEAD AND GONE (Irving Berlin) Al Bowlly - 1941

When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone
We’ll go dancing down the street
Kissing everyone we meet
When that man is dead and gone

What a day to wake up on
What a way to greet the dawn
Some fine day the news’ll flash
Satan with a small moustache
Is asleep beneath the lawn
When that man is dead and gone

Satan, Satan, thought up a plan
Dressed as a man
Walking the earth and since he began
The world is hell for you and me
But what a heaven it will be

When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone
When they lay him twelve feet deep
I’ll be there to laugh, not weep
When that man is dead and gone

What a day to wake up on
What a way to greet the dawn
Satan’ll take him by the hand
To meet old Gerring, look what, man
When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone

Some fine day the news’ll flash
Satan with a small moustache
Is asleep beneath the lawn
When that man is dead and gone

What a day to wake up on
What a way to greet the dawn
When a certain man is dead and gone"

Never give the blindman money...

Discuss political poetics here.

"In places the ice is dropping at a rate of one meter a month."

Remembering Plastic People. (via Beyond the Beyond)

An interesting proposal over at Ptarmigan.

Starting to look forward to January. (Not that one.)

I know i'm ready for my ticket offworld.

"Nancy

The morning had not come,
Nancy was alone,
looking at the Late Late show
through a semi-precious stone.
In the House of Honesty
her father was on trial,
in the House of Mystery
there was no one at all,
there was no one there at all.

It seems so long ago,
none of us were very strong;
Ah, but Nancy wore green stockings
and she, she slept with everyone.
She never said she'd wait for us
even though she was alone,
I think she fell in love for us
in nineteen sixty one,
in nineteen sixty one.

Ah the morning would not come,
Nancy was alone,
a forty five beside her head,
an open telephone.
Yes, we told her she was beautiful,
we all told her she was free
but none of us could meet her in
the House of Mystery,
the House of Mystery.

And now why don't you look around you,
see her everywhere,
many of you who used her body,
many combed her hair.
And in the hollow of the night
when you are cold and numb
you hear her talking freely then,
she's happy that you've come,
she's happy that you've come."

Leonard Cohen

"Poetic Ammo Picture"

Martin Denny Moog record
Plumbs the tutelary dark

In the annals of bad golf
I am tracking nine funnels

Full moon for a werewolf flag

10 02 04

Quasi-scientific weirdness about Venus, Sirius, & maybe reptilian space colonists.


‘XII

I escape from a feint, fluf for fluf.
A projectile I know not where it will fall.
Incertitude. Tramontation. Cervical articulation.

Zap of a horsefly that dies
in mid-air and drops to earth.
What would Newton say now?
But, naturally, you’re all sons.

Incertitude. Heels that don’t spin.
The knotted page, factures
five thorns on one side
and five on the other. Ssh! Here it comes.’

Cesar Vallejo, Trilce (tr C Eshleman, 1992)

The Shibuya-Kei Revival! More evidence. Call it "Neo-Shibuya-Kei"...

Get your Ramadan on.

“SPACE: 1939”

The tribe will not have spoken until
Twelve turns of the World of Luyten.
Joining the Firm will not avail.
It doth shrill and swell
And put forth every day off lurch
Bleed under take. And glorify Him early
And late. He it is who flying lungfish to leave
In die rain night ice acid
Wherewith he threateneth you will strike
And, O my people! Lo! They crystal do
Them desert. They off receive

Ink stomp of cold.

09 30 04

“Monologue at 3 a.m.

Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,

than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.”

--Sylvia Plath

"I found myself that year corresponding with Frazier & Charlie Manson, both of whom the media had dubbed as “hippie murderers.” The only thing the two had in common was that neither ever used the first person in their correspondence, Manson always referring to himself in the third person as “Little Manson,” Frazier simply drawing the smile of a Cheshire cat where an “I” normally would have gone." --Silliman's Blog

“THIS GARDEN BEING: THE HANGING OF BOOKS

I live between. I stalk space of these authors shunt
phrasing to a definition drops about trees.
But it is not their leaves. It is narrow
this shuttle amidst bows. Not much room in lots of pencil.
The knowledge is a temperature to be finished. And
the flare held to is a floor. Simple spellings amounting
stumps. Liars of Dynamism that smell out their slots in rates.
I guess it’s known that Bob Watson scored the millionth run
in baseball history. Baudelaire opened his chocolate in
lavender pretense, as I revealed my garnets on a velvet floor.
The world chugs alarming ‘tween thicks and thins, a
Rimbaud to stop it. The thighs of a wet mattress,
a million volts. At arm’s length Chirico’s farms, the boiling
sodium moles of a magnetic censorship. Tanguy in his liner
that would squeak dream peripherals. Vision is a monkey,
fiddling with a strap. And the ounces taken from gelatin
will starmap the block. I am caught, how will the walls slide,
to take up with pluck domain in this Magnetic Cheat.
Poe would deliver in a massing hover the crawls from the stares,
in a drift slipping the word from its droit. The mot juste
is not a puncture-sealer. Laughter is acidity of goal.
The rusty turns of a bird are the absent pipings of my nose,
a breaking back snide of sod brilliance. I examine faces
and I say to myself, Face off! The Imbrication of Chosens
in all this leash of bushes, yes, the rain will solve your tiles.
Here the broken snores of whole radiator zero. As you might
say to me, or a man decked out to the nines in Alexandrines
(Valery), it will take a geologically absent mind for him
to be finally fallen. The snore in the snow is a zero.
Let’s listen at the zinc door to the white chat. Rebaggage
the sore of the roseate tons, revelation here is no more than
a long black veil. I have picked at the hill of crusts
to reveal no less than a fine crystal drainage for the system of
a city. And that letter hasted from pipe to tube is a soap.
Stop farming. Be a pillar to this nation’s shade. all this
and in strains of magic i pace between. No more pressive alive
than the spines of trees. That here will be born
the preparative leaner.”
--Clark Coolidge, from Solution Passage (1986)--quoted in Messerli op cit

"In Plath's pursuit of ethical understanding her own journal was a
pantry, the storage place for ingredients that the practical cook
knew would be of use." --Diane Middlebrook, Her Husband (2003)

"Pluto's Phantom Blog" (Gadsby & A Void)

Now in an ill-fitting and
un-stylish khaki uniform
that only clairvoyants or
bring a sigh of swooning bliss from;
sprinkling grain into his carp's pond,
mustn't grab raisins!

09 27 04

"Hypochondria Periphery"

1.

was all snow and ask
a turn as balm a hour
thousand from my rain
across off am cold color
as storm out moon as story

2.

work a pariah
for his task as for corrupt
and tyrannical
humans avoid him as a
traitor nor is by mammoth

3.

than an was on way
from distant to corruption
on for that too much
humans aid or his caught two
untrustful and his only way

4.

love song longing for
star's chill mornings through a dark
this sleep and winter

5.

anti mentar ism
tablish ian dises

ys al dread par is

6.

corrupt snow and rain story
cold as pariah work too much
humans is my task thousand
caught tyrannical moon color
and as a storm nor by traitor
untrustful across

09 28 04

"Language itself is one of our phantom cities." --Ptarmigan (Sept 22)

"The Stories Of The Street

The stories of the street are mine
The Spanish voices laugh
The Cadillacs go creeping down
Through the night and the poison gas
I lean from mu window sill
In this old hotel I chose.
Yes, one hand on my suicide
And one hand on the rose.

I know you've heard it's over now
And war must surely come,
The cities they are broke in half
And the middle men are gone.
But let me ask you one more time
O children of the dust,
These hunters who are shrieking now
Do they speak for us?

And where do all these highways go
Now that we are free?
Why are the armies marching still
That were coming home to me?
O lady with your legs so fine
O stranger at your wheel
You are locked into your suffering
And your pleasures are the seal.

The age of lust is giving birth
But both the parents ask the nurse
To tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass
Now the infant with his cord
is hauled in like a kite
And one eye filled with blueprints
One eye filled with night

O come with me my little one
And we will find that farm
And grow us grass and apples there
To keep all the animals warm
And if by chance I wake at night
And I ask you who I am
O take me to the slaughter house
I will wait there with the lamb.

With one hand on a hexagram
And one hand on a girl
I balance on a wishing well
That all men call the world
We are so small between the stars
So large against the sky
And lost among the subway crowds
I try to catch your eye."

--Leonard Cohen

"Sometimes—maybe usually—I think I’ll fail to continue to exist if I stop writing—that only writing makes me possible." --dbqp

" Grace Paley, a Vermont poet and socialite, described the appeal of the era, heavy on sardonic nonreference, as "antihegemony taken to the max, where it works as interior hedonism, too." " --Pantaloons

The final result--a sonnet (sort of).

Just thought i'd mention.

It's occurred to me belatedly that one could run a thousand fake blogs & make some pretty good money from those minuscule ad payments...Or this will destroy the ability for legitimate ones to cover their costs that way. (PS don't accidentally type in "bogspot" or you'll get caught in a nasty little mousetrap.)

"Are your lives so bereft of meaning and import that you keep trying to revive a decade that sucked farts from dead cats the first time around?" --Sclerotic Rings

"I think Kerry still has a chance of winning, but he has to somehow use the media to send the message to the population that the Bush crew is 1) robbing us 2) killing our children for no reason 3) poisoning our air and land 4) raiding our retirement funds 5) systematically bankrupting and weakening our country. Can this be done in the current media landscape without threatening people's realities to the point where there's a backlash within the population, causing them to retreat into a violently self-disempowering fantasy space where they have not elected a maniac, putting their poetic imaginations to use in the face of an unpleasant and unflattering reality?" --Overlap

An alternate history story in which all the things feared that would happen for Y2K, really happened. There would have been no airplanes flying & no September Elizzle; & though we might have been thrust back into an early 20c technological era, i think it wouldn't be hard to write the story to make it seem better than what we ended up with...

Now my blog is getting hits & cites from phantom (robot-generated) blogs--& when i trackback on them they get a whuffie...

"Hypochondria Periphery"

1.

was all snow and ask
a turn as balm a hour
thousand from my rain
across off am cold color
as storm out moon as story

2.

work a pariah
for his task as for corrupt
and tyranical
humans avoid him as a
traitor nor is by mammoth

3.

than an was on way
from distant to corruption
on for that too much
humans aid or his caught two
untrustful and his only way

4.

love song longing for
star's chill mornings through a dark
this sleep and winter

5.

anti mentar ism
tablish ian dises

ys al dread par is

6.

corrupt snow and rain story
cold as pariah work too much
humans is my task thousand
caught tyrannical moon color
and as a storm nor by traitor
untrustful across

09 28 04

"Rainy Landscape"

Shake it like an alien autopsy Polaroid.
Amid the glare and talking to the sea
I dreamed I had invented you, and when I awoke
The porter pointed up beyond the door.
I am of very fond bananas.
They from the dim inane and vague opaque
Sell droshky lite and droshky fake
Or some aught-else whose being-unknown doth rot
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
And Minutemen, they say, is what we are.
That may sound entirely cryptic; in which case,
I refer the reader to the text.

09 26

"What's Going on Here?"

Shake it like an alien autopsy Polaroid.
Amid the glare and talking to the sea
I dreamed I had invented you, and when I awoke
The porter pointed up beyond the door.
I am of very fond bananas.
They from the dim inane and vague opaque
Sell droshky lite and droshky fake
Or some aught-else whose being-unknown doth rot
And Minutemen, they say, is what we are.

9 26 04 (?)

Long talk with a fellow non-painting painter. We ended by sort of agreeing it's either the end of the era of artistic impermanence, or the end of an era of promised permanence--or both.

"Baboondammerung"

Shake it like an alien autopsy Polaroid.
Amid the glare and talking to the sea
The porter pointed up beyond the door.
They from the dim inane and vague opaque
Or some aught-else whose being-unknown doth rot
And Minutemen, they say, is what we are.

09 26 04

Can Brain Surgery Matter?

Watten's non-blog here. (via everybody) Permalinks would be a plus, but i'm happy to see this in any form, e.g.:

“In the earliest times the intimate unity of word and thing was considered to be part of the bearer of the name, if not indeed to substitute for him,” according to an authoritative account. “Of about to within which,” was Ron’s considered reply.

More on Voynich. (via AlDaily) --A new poetics is born!

“Shadow Artforms”

The epicenters of power migrate, from place to place on the earth’s surface, but also across artforms. It’s easy to spot a culture’s major ones (follow the money); not so easy to realize the hidden economy of the others*. Once favor has shifted away, an artform may continue on pretense, like deposed royalty in exile; at the same time the culture at large may still go through motions of respect, without anymore having any contact with the living artists. Then, the image of the artist in that medium acquires a different, shadow-power. The artist becomes a symbol, & carries the weight of dreams that more mainstream art-heroes (whose lives are all too visible) cannot.

This process can be seen most clearly in movies which treat the lives of famous writers, but painters & poets as well receive the dubious honor of cinematic depiction. These comprise a subgenre, sort of a pornography of the spirit. Aside from the obvious difficulty that the creative process itself is about as amenable to pantomime as subatomic physics (maybe less so), leaving only the sad story of a messy life, the subject invariably turns into co-optation itself, or how a popular medium hungers for the high legitimacy it can never achieve so long as economic & not aesthetic factors control it.

Never mind the irony of, say, a multimillion dollar movie celebrating some “starving artist” whilst encouraging none of its poor viewers to consider patronizing their actual artistic contemporaries (starving or not). This is clearly the realm of myth. Gods do not walk the earth. Their impersonators do.

Are there advantages, besides nostalgia & the glory of resentment, to being the artist of a shadow-artform? One could argue that, as great artists develop, they often surpass the comprehension of their erstwhile audiences: a shadow-artist is spared at least the backlash of thwarted expectations, if not the struggle for economic & psychological survival. There’s no incentive for self-pastiche.

And that may be the deadliest enemy of all.

09 18/22 04

----------------------------------------------------------------
*Shadow artforms: silent movies after sound, black & white after color, painting after photography, poetry after rock ‘n’ roll, the novel after television.

English Pessoa. (via wood_s lot)

" 'Maria is a woman, was a rustle!'
'Then come in, Mary Jane, and finish it!'
Amid the glare and talking to the sea,
the porter pointed up beyond the door.

Before, when one attempted public sight,
some mothers bonneted the sailors' eyes,
the noise of sharing for a moment, hushed.
It ended by collecting butterflies.

Then Mr Cunningham continued life
---he never heard a light began again.
'O yes,' said Mr Crofton, saying it.
'A shameful thing, and bishops there, all his.'

Maria thought, decided to express
the other hand about his lower ribs,
a little pink and wholesome intercourse,
the other half an hour more askew."

--from The Dublin of Doctor Moreau

A Glimpse Under the Rock.

HAIBUN


Sundays i take my laundry down to “Hord’s Ridge”, where my parents have a washer i can use; & when it needs it i mow the lawn. Hord’s Ridge is an older suburb, long since fallen on less gracious days, but lately revitalized by an influx of Latino bourgeoisie. I lived in their house through the Seventies & half of the Eighties, with somewhat lengthy excursions during the last phase. Whenever i was there, i mowed the grass.

In our climate that’s a task requiring circumspection, & endurance. It has to have not rained in a week, so there’s not moisture at the base of the long St Augustine blades--impossible not to think of the doctrine of “predestination” when i hear the name--(for i use an electric mower); but you want to start early, before it gets hot. At the same time, there can be heavy dews right at dawn. All in all, it’s not a reliable way to make twenty dollars, yet seldom has there been a time in my life when i could lightly turn down even that token payment.

As i push the mower, i often have philosophical thoughts, or i compose a poem in my head. Although the presence, right there in my old room, of so many unpublished manuscripts & unwanted artworks, would tend to act as a brake on any future productivity, in actual fact it doesn’t. And once in awhile i get to complete a years-deferred project.

follow the border
where just cut grass yields to tall
and dewdrops linger

I found out a friend of a friend of my wife’s has a program that will enable me to publish-on-demand a xerox picture-poembook i made in 1975 or so, & persuaded another artist to illustrate (some 13 years later), but never made more than a couple copies of. This book, Star Grope, is dear to my heart because it was the first output of a word-randomizing program i wrote while still in highschool--under the influence of William Burroughs. Will this be the moment of that work’s fruition?

touch the old porch swing
caked with dust from two states
and still, like the air

8-1/3-04

Hey now...

Listening to- Fusako Yoshida: Koto Recital.

Blogs are pirate radio for the Oughts; samizdat & tribal lore for the dispossessed; jungle telegraph for cryptozoons; graffiti & Pepys rolled into one. This cracked oracle may oneday disappear. But by then, i am sure, something just as good will have arisen.

I never thought...

"Green Martyrdom"

slow among the dead
singing in the wolves
bitter where thought delves
barren stone & wood

bringing in the goaf
slow & silent pilgrim
mark another pogrom
smoke a second sylph

clad in hunter's orange
wield a closing syringe

"Letting Go of the Language"

burning children rain
early in the morning
lift a swarthy lamp
early in the morning

thunder on the way
finger wears a thorn
Starbuck's does the math
early in the morning

bodkin handle's set
rubies by Graywyvernn
nothing tungsten ends
early in the morning

"Steppenvark"

caravelle of bodkin
void's liquescent pilgrim
wanting peace his foible
elegy the dogma

empire not of tungsten
but of shining bebop
let me be your comrade
love has better quagmire

caravelle of angel
hurricane & salvage
in the moonlight silver
snail descants an album

caravelle of orchid
Christmas for the zombie

09 16 04

Rapture Index.

National Museum of the American Indian.


"In the sphere of sight, every object becomes a surface, a surface becomes a word." --Robert Kelly


Inventing the Victorians.

"If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) had all been assassinated?

What if all the cities in the US were wracked by a crime wave, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every major city every year?

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.

What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?

What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis?

What if municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new "president" quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors?" What if several of these governors (especially of Montana and Wyoming) were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by guerrillas?

What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner?" --Juan Cole

"Dissenter Tiredness"

pictures in the fire
bitter strength in the fire

let us lay our books
accordingly in the fire

soon find our tenderest
illusion in the fire

oneday we shall know
Pazuzu in the fire

09 20 04

Driving Miss Kitty.


"The greatest sacrifice the people are being asked to make on behalf of the state is to give up their right not to believe in it." --Jacqueline Rose in Harper's (via Dagzine)

"I mean, what's next? Can we expect another right-winger to write a defense of fascism as a way of praising the virtues of trains running on time?" --Orcinus

I took him for a character out of a comic strip.

"October"

In wavering blue tamarack shade
a soft frog ruins the mud.
If the eye were a throat, clouds once bitten
would show the surprise of a sharp kiss
and even the rock of belief would crack
at this smart hug, which is important.

It's cool to wear leather, a red dog
swinging around us like we were slag
with a tough swing. My hot thoughts curve
in the tamarack's shade, all the way off;
and this is to say, heart is important.

Likewise the ruined mud where landmines
may or may not dwell with cut
flowers and our bruised shins,
the blue of wavering words not clouds.
When we are slag, a soft frog
sometimes lands before the curve.

09 21 04

'Geek' in Esperanto.

"Language Poetry: The Secret Tradition"

spirit longing for
fall's chill mornings, through a song
this story and star

09 21 04

You wouldn't want to lose all that Dan Fogelberg.

---------------”The Angel of Death” (palindrome poem)

i.

-pinned dust purr
-----O cruel fine red
-old row drown
-----wodwo brew
-open urge be rift
-----listen rage rule
-nidor Ezekiel it
-----neck row snip
-sow downer rabbi
-----feral bone
-zap lake Kafka
-----yak not tump
-rode vile lariat

ii.

-----lasso that ullage
-rows to bore soon
-----ruby llama glam
-a slug omen ikon
-----rood of Ubar
-dark opal core
-----home made loam
-maw’s sag
-----Olber’s Eris
-Eden asp race
-----lab erupt lemma
-craw bulge
-----glum or pry task

iii.

-carb lit
-----swap nog ardor
-engorge Luyten star
-----revolt rose
-surface doom rue
-----Tamar animal
-wolf age mire
-----plate move jar
-astir wodwo
-----hole bung damage
-viral lipbalm
-----life now binge
-tee lop last

iv.

-----ooh so totally
-bison i was solo
-----lobster germs a grope
-rim Mizar bock
-----lust nip
-martyr gore rote
-----robed urban patrol
-Odin i trample
-----hardy heels
-sloop sail
-----a sib if
-rut orts all
-----Atari mat

v.

-late Wyrd
-----late i raved on
-i lap gals
-----loot soil
-opt in
-----keg liberate
-snow efts
-----riff rust
-rope rips
-----add Off
-it’s ergot
-----suborn rats
-i see bog race

vi.

-----time rebuttal
-fling a boot
-----liver evoke
-epic i sump
-----arch climb up
-’midst ops
-----loo crawl
-lapse dire
-----ulcer algid
-nihil ore
-----non-augur
-ugly reboot
-----tatter refix

vii.

-attract romp
-----oolong igloo
-fond lotto
-----i diet ale
-noir Racter ragas
-----sit named
-oregano bolt
-----bedlam ronin
-one bow down
-----wad of nitro
-bang issue
-----Zen Oz
-dog ear

viii.

-----idle woven
-after rut
-----Elk city
-octavo gar
-----oven impart as payday
-hwyl ohm
-----rifle velcro
-Cain amok
-----nipple kebab
-borg grebe
-----we goops poll a gain
-expiry all
-----assess opera

ix.

-ravish self
-----peer comma
-walg igloo
-----cabal star
-Zubenelg Najaf
-----wodwo gnat
-mot atoll
-----abyss ago
-erotic ill luck
-----sob skin
-tups meeting up
-----poetic nit
-raw Edamite

x.

-----yeti boil
-of tropic nival
-----aback nuptial
-prone storm
-----argyle recite
-relax alas
-----lash serf
-crank radio
-----knurl lewd light
-omen ocelot
-----stipple honey
-eat adze
-----free jab

xi.

-uterus Nissen
-----i subtract Lojban
-lion reft
-----lovely torpor
-afreet sway sun
-----Israel cog
-Id Nieman’s
-----sober omelet
-Yaddo never
-----brawl a totem
-otter cess
-----sideline preen
-sable liana

xii.

-----knob drab
-gun spud
-----eft egg
-unsnaste baton
-----tiff fog
-null ransom
-----used it went
-oh no
-----gardenia cockle
-yoin gab
-----program nay
-met irk
-----sudden rub

xiii.

-Gnostic attack
-----rum turn
-like rum mire
-----dawn i sleep
-spam dero balefire
-----doll it up
-nix ESP
-----Mignon any
-serum mist
-----Timon i blame
-domed if no cap
-----severe meld
-aloe moray

xiv.

-----a paper i wrote
-fracas Oc
-----racy art
-ebon alcove
-----village lowdown
-rupee debt
-----onto lehua ulna
-bilateral cede
-----ilk wage
-Vargas embargo
-----daft rig
-nutcase yen
-----idol ahoy

xv.

-or radar on evasive
-----gender answer
-coma lay
-----rot stool agar
-omerta flay
-----old eider
-after animal
-----obeah siege
-bib minus
-----sun evanish
-cram raw evil
-----oval loom
-map acrid

xvi.

-----anger demand
-rust lamb
-----ogham arbor
-dag ovate
-----mock sumac
-ipecac lateen
-----knock nada
-morass axis
-----Peedog nation
-a home drum
-----rumpus tact
-Eloi veto
-----merge broom

xvii.

-Maori kite
-----lit Bush
-subtile tiki
-----roam moor
-beg remote
-----violet catsup
-murmur demo
-----Hanoi tango
-deep six
-----ass aroma
-dank con
-----knee talc
-ace pica

xviii.

-----musk comet
-Avogadro Bramah
-----gob malt
-surd name
-----dreg nadir
-cap ammo
-----ollav olive
-war march
-----sin a Venus
-sun imbibe
-----geisha Ebola
-minaret fare
-----died loyal

xix.

-fat remora
-----galoot story
-Alamo crew snared
-----Negev i save
-Norad arroyo
-----halo dine
-yes act
-----ungirt fado
-grab mesa
-----grave gawk
-lie declare
-----Taliban luau
-helot not be

xx.

-----deep urn
-wodwo legal
-----live volcano
-betray Carcosa
-----car fetor
-wire papaya
-----Romeo ladle
-mere Vespa
-----confide modem
-albino mitts
-----immure Synanon
-gimp sex
-----input ill

xxi.

-ode rife
-----labored maps peel
-sin wader
-----immure kiln
-rut murk
-----cat tacit
-song burned
-----dusk rite
-Myanmar gorp
-----bagnio yelk
-cocaine dragon
-----hot new
-tide sumo

xxii.

-----snarl lung
-off fit
-----not a bet
-sans nugget fed up
-----snug bard
-bonk a nail
-----Elba sneer
-penile diss
-----secret tome
-total war
-----breve nod
-day stele more
-----boss name indigo

xxiii.

-clear sinus
-----yaw steer
-faro protyle
-----volt fern
-oil nab
-----jolt cart business
-insure tuba
-----jeer fez
-data eye
-----no help pit
-stole cone
-----moth gild
-well run koi

xxiv.

-----dark narc
-fresh salsa
-----lax alert
-ice rely
-----gram rots
-tenor plait
-----punk Cabala
-Vinci portfolio
-----bite yeti
-made wart
-----incite oppugn
-i teem Sputniks
-----bosk cull

xxv.

-licit Oreo
-----gassy ballot
-atom tan
-----god wowf
-a-jangle neb
-----Uz rat
-slab a cool
-----gig law
-ammo creep
-----flesh Siva
-rare possess
-----allay rip
-xenia gallop

xxvi.

-----spooge web
-erg Grob
-----babe kelp
-pinko maniac
-----orc level
-firm holy why
-----ad yap
-satrap mine
-----vorago vat
-coy tickle
-----turret fane
-vowel Dirae
-----God zone

xxvii.

-Zeus sign
-----abort info dawn
-wodwo Benoni
-----normal debt
-lobo nag
-----erode mantissa
-garret carrion
-----elate idiot
-told no fool
-----gig no loop
-mort cart
-----taxi ferret
-tattoo beryl

xxviii.

-----guru guano
-neroli Hindi
-----glare clue
-rides pall
-----war cool spots
-dim pub milch
-----crap music
-i peek over
-----evil too
-bag nil
-----flat tub eremite
-cargo bees
-----is tarn robust

xxix.

-ogre stiff
-----odd aspire
-port surf
-----first few onset
-are bilge knit
-----polio stool
-slag palinode
-----varietal dry
-wet Altamira
-----tall astroturf
-ibis alias pools
-----slee hydra
-help martini

xxx.

-----dolor tap
-nab rude bore
-----torero gry
-tram pint
-----sulk cobra
-zimmi rep
-----orgasm regrets
-bolo loss
-----a wino sibylla
-Toto shoots Alpo
-----Leeteg nib
-wone film lab
-----pillar i Vega

xxxi.

-mad gnu Belo
-----how do writ
-Sarajevo metal peri
-----megaflow laminar
-amateur moo
-----decaf ruses
-ort lover
-----rat’s net
-yule grog
-----Nero dragon
-paw stilb rack
-----satyr promulge
-glub war cam

xxxii.

-----melt pure bale
-carp sane desires
-----reb blog
-as swam Mao
-----Leda memo
-hero clap okra
-----drab UFO door
-no kine moguls
-----amalgam ally
-burnoose robot
-----swore gall Utah
-toss Altair ale
-----live dorp mutton

xxxiii.

-kayak fake kalpa
-----Zeno blare fib
-barren wodwo spins
-----work centile Ike
-zero dine lure
-----garnet silt
-fire beg rune power
-----bow down word
-word lode
-----renifleur corrupt
-sudden nip

09 09/20 04

Pollution Level Orange.

Out Of The Flames.

"The tabloids write real-people fanfic." --Hlavaty

"Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field." --John Gregory Dunne

Listening to: Steeleye Span.

"He reminds me of one of the early popes or one of the more degenerate emperors, such as Domitian: cruel, imperious, humorless, and psychologically brittle."


"After a storm saguaros glisten like mint trombones." --Asleep Inside An Old Guitar


(Robinson)

Appearing out of silence from behind him,
For that which had no name. To think at all

The last deplorable profundity
Made the world firm again. He leapt away

Now scattered and forgotten save as names
Blacker than any night that ever veiled

That we should find each other tonight like this,
And this must be the way. There was no other;

That music and that wordless murmuring
Into that room and for a moment stayed

09 18 04

"...a mother and son team brimming with such spite and ambition they would give the ruthless duo in The Manchurian Candidate the shivers."




"Disoriented

Disoriented, dazed, confused
Oh I am lost but I have nothing to lose
Wearing my soul in the holes of my shoes
Disoriented
Disoriented

Perspective's vanished now there's only points of view
Then there's the eyes of the camera crew
You swear they're staring and it's wearing right through
Disoriented
Disoriented

Oh you fly east but they say you're flying west
Where any aids will not do for the test
Well I am sure that by now you have guessed
I feel this way
I feel this way

Oh you fly east but they say you're flying west
Where any atoll will do for the test
Oh I am sure that by now you have guessed
I feel this way
I feel this way

Disoriented, dazed, confused
Oh I am lost but I have nothing to lose
I'm wearing windows for walls and the street keeps coming through
Disoriented
Disoriented

Oh you fly east but they say you're flying west
Where any atoll will do for the test
Oh I am sure that by now you have guessed
I feel this way
I feel this way
I feel this way
Disoriented
(I feel this way)
Disoriented
(I feel this way)"

--Michelle Shocked

“The Last Pastimes of Major Tom”

Nobody’s price was very high.

What grievous disappointment or superb humiliation first made me a ‘tanist, I no longer recall. Perhaps it was only, living so long in the shadows, one grows to hate the sun.

We all drove great big old gas hogs, decrepit wheels was all we could afford so we made a fetish of it, as was the case with so many of our strange customs. To cultivate your monstrousness, a la Rimbaud, was the game. --One of them.

Against us were arrayed not only the usual economic forces of a harsh crowded time, & the punitive engines they engendered, but also the chimaera of a Loyal Opposition, which we despised even more. In our dogma it was only allowable to seem wretched or iniquitous, & we spent a deal of trouble in that pretence. Of course we did have almost no money. That was hardly the point.

Like the others, I practiced my little sorcery.

In my garret retreat, I had a purloined orange cone, my broken effigies & rescued trash. Smashtannies aplenty, suitably modified. It was enough that a thing should be singular, & useless. We spent much of our days searching.

These gewfgaws formed our map of the world, nor had we another. The riddle they posed was the secret we all knew but couldn’t say. It was manifest, however, at each corroborree.

In my DAV herringbone threads I felt secure. My hat was vintage, my gloves were strictly noveltystore & quite begrimed. I shielded my eyes with tape-repaired shades I’d found on the ground in Prague. (“Pivo” I could say, & little else. But those spires haunted my dreams, & enchanted my wakefulness.)

Tonight I would not read; probably not next time either. The Open Mike had grown to be a joke. It wasn’t that we were unsuccessful poets, I could dig that. But I hated having to talk about it afterwards. My aesthetics were private & sacred to me, more so than my dime life or my sex. When others spoke of magic I simply smiled. This was how I got my monicker.

I wrote of obscure degradations, temping, despair. In my poems I made promises to Death like a sorrowing ecstatic lover. I spilled it all, except for the truth. Who could have handled that?

There were three I respected. I barely spoke to them. It was stupid, I don’t know why, but I wouldn’t let anyone be friends. I guess in the end we loved each other. Our power was pretending, among ourselves, that pity did not exist.

My story only now begins. I was afraid you wouldn’t understand otherwise. A neophyte broke our turf. Usually we just tried to be polite--a deadly insult. But I saw she had potential. She looked gravely ill, or worse. And her poems were about nothing.

Now, nothingness was a subject I was expert on. They called me the Void Kahuna.

“We have joy, we have fun, we have seasons in the sun,” I observed sagely as the ugly yellow rays from a single bare buglight bounced off the surface of my eyes. “Is it always this crowded,” she said. I took off my gloves, then put them back on. (One of the snaps had already broken.) Her tunic was the exact color & texture of a mackerel sky at sunrise. Her bare arms were like birch saplings, & her hair had been done up in a way that suggested drugs had had a hand in the making of it. Or else inordinate haste. Her eyes smouldered, dark, dark-ringed. “Death has undone so many,” I shrugged.

We sat at adjacent tables, each otherwise empty, in a corner my sense of interior feng shui had determined to be almost

ÿÿÿÿÿost habitable. I didn't like people sitting so near, but I let
her stay.

She looked like she wouldn't last the night.

Between stanzas of a bellowed ode to the abolished apostrophe, we carried on a desultory, disjointed banter. Such became our customary vis-a-vis. It didn't matter very much.

Somehow we both badly needed it not to.

Which would've been fine, except for the plague rain. The streets rippled with olivegreen slime. Attendance went down. Her poems carefully omitted all reference to that hue. One of us was certain to die.

I dreamed of stripped cars burning, lost in fields of broken glass where each particular faceted shard returned her image. The dreams did not progress. How could they?

I related how all the street signs had become for me jumbles of unpronounceable scramblegrams, & she responded by inviting me to share a raspberry-clove cigarette outside on the fire escape. Under a maroon plush sky the pullulating or abandoned quarters of the city seemed only so many clear or dust-shrouded star lanes, & a personage of several turfs, such as yours truly, could be seen as a sort of modern voyageur...

The pillar, crisscrossed with pinkish Xmas lights year round, equivocated as we departed the huge, gloomy echoing chamber of measureless apprehensions. Outside the chill bit into us. My fingers welcomed the tiny shell of heat emitted by the ember end of the saffron-yellow cylinder. The smoke, however, raked my lungs like an inhaled holly bush... "Tell me more."

Before us the lights of the city melted together & separated, in uneasy waves. I said, "We come here each to find our niche in a collective illusion that's different from the usual one. Nothing more." Her fingers brushing mine seemed colder than the cold.

I remembered a snarling two-headed angel statue I once encountered at the end of a dim blind alley in Prague. Its touch had been as unexpectedly cold. --No, its gaze: as unexpectedly intimate.

"Well, I'm not interested in anything so counterproductive," she muttered in a piercing monotone. Pushing back one lace sleeve for me to see, she unveiled a network of paler smooth lines that zigzagged the pale smooth flesh. I couldn't tell, in that crepuscular pinkgold flutter, whether they were souvenirs of suicide or vicious needle tracks or, just possibly, something worse.

"One does not renegade religion. You only end up inventing your own," I slowly answered. If she recognized my quote of Graywyvern, she gave no sign.

We went back in without further word. The kretek glowing balanced on the black iron rail. Someone was reciting a drab list of atrocities onstage. Our tables were as we left them.

Two weeks later, after a harrowing day involving the towing of my Oldsmobile, I had resumed my station in that corner of vantage. Almost without realizing, I had come to require the other table filled. Cassandra came near, her tattooed scalp raw in a new place. She stood a good distance away & addressed me. "That new chick is strange."

"Oh?" I said, & laughed. "She listens to everything. She watches all of us. But she never does give anything back." "What do you mean? She goes up there. We all do." I felt evasive.

"You know. In her poems. Not a word about anything we recognize. Whatever world she's in, it's not ours." She shifted stance, crossed her arms, which were also tattooed, in vivid cartoon characters. "That might not be so bad," I said. "Think again," was the automatic reply.

Her name, as it transpired, was either Belladonna or Archaeopteryx. The smells of the city excited her; she told me so. Where did she emigrate from, that such a thing could be true?

"I am from Southern Roumania/ I was a mogul there," one of her poems began. "I was a peasant/ Who made good..." This I very much doubted. Another time I inveigled her into coming home with me; the upshot of which was finding, on the drafty mezzanine that led to my garret room, my neighbor Grue Juliette already knew her & greeting us then, the shadows pressing close & the smoke of incense staining our poet-garb, she called for a spontaneous threesome, which ensued. Not without hilarity, bongs, & a device I had never seen before, but grew to appreciate; & the night gave way to a dawn of colors, through the broken windowpanes, like rags left by a circus. Skin dead white, the feel of sheets that needed washing; an exhaustion beyond movement, & an amity prior to words. These would have been good days, if only we could have forgotten the unpleasant sense of imminent doom that hovered over every table, every bed. I stood on the next landing down, shivering, with a sudden touch of mortal acuity. Juliette only tolerated me when she was chemicalized; clearly, my date had been the lure & I feared less for the rivalry of a better poet, than for the sanctity of her secrets I had a right to, more, as one who had also suffered strangely.

"Where are you, Puckster?" called a croaking voice from above. I wanted to go back, felt it in my marrow like a craving for candy. Instead I continued down.

When the night returned, our true game resumed.

Warmth dispelled, & even its possibility seemed inscrutable & fantastic. "You were quick to skedaddle," however, was what she said. Her fingers interlaced above a glass of something turquoise. It was early, no other poets or few had arrived yet. "I couldn't think of what to say. Does that ever happen to you?" I unfolded the sheet of paper I carry on my person at all times, & began to write. "You have words now," she said.

The walls were covered with bad paintings crookedly hung. I thought to myself that they were like images of the dreams we would have been having if, instead of this closed, dim half-life, we had chosen another; one of sunshine & night diamonds. The one nearest me depicted a purple dog behind an executive desk, in a meticulously rendered office, but the dog itself seemed slapdash or cartoonish & its expression signified little beyond doggish good-humor. I turned my gaze to the next one, but there wasn't enough light to tell even if it was an abstract or a picture of something. For some reason my eyes remained riveted on the cloudy square. "The hare has lost his spectacles," I finally blurted.

"This poem is about the smell that old vacuum tube televisions from the Fifties used to have/ A sort of clotted, hot dust smell," I was reading from the stage.

This was another night, or the same one later on. Cassandra & Speed Racer waited their turn from the edge. I saw Belladonna, or Smoke as I'd began calling her, far in the back, staring intently. It was as if she knew I was writing about her (now that we no longer spoke); & this connection, tenuous & precise, we both understood to be the only one possible for Whigs such as we.

Her secrets had become mine. Her poems simply told the life of things, from those things' own perspective; & this telling took the form of intervals & positions, juxtapositions & the nearness of absences. People did not figure in them at all except as passing shadows. When I finished reading, she listened just as raptly to the next person. Even the intensity of my fear had not touched her.

I found I could only maintain normalcy by the pretence she was dead. I wrote elegies for her. They were the best things I'd ever made. Outside, an abandoned car was burning. Orange & green flickers lit our eyes. It was hard to go back in.

Brokendown bodies in brokendown cars. And these words, helpless, feral, like maggots.


PART 2

Her funeral caught me by surprise. How many of us had gone, flailing & raving, into the fell beyond, while behind them remained that sempiternal chorus of malingerers, these compeers of avid illness? But she did die. I was shaken, though i strove not to show it.

Glistened the raindrops, ever augmenting, fast on her lustrous ebony lid; rose our keening voices above the tumult of traffic. "Let this end our dazzling numbness," said one eulogist. "Nay, we shall never feel anything ever again," chimed in another. I took my place, shivering. I never got used to these things.

Even at my twenty-seventh.

I had ceased to declaim, as you know, at Open Mike. Tonight i knew better. "For awhile he rocked with his yard inside her cunny," i read, "till /Fearful of dislodging the glove, he desisted. Her/ Hand closed on his around the moistened knurl,/ As together they withdrew it." Applause.

Lies. This had happened instead with a stranger, whom i'd met at the funeral & implored with reddened eyes till sighingly she acquiesced. Later we'd sent out for artichoke heart pizza.

The club, unchanged & immutably rank, bathed us in its rich squalor vibes. If anyone could be said to be happy, we were. "He watched the droop, as awkwardly he scrambled/ To the chrome basket next to the bed. It/ Seemed to signify the passionate futility/ Which passes for our lives, but also/ Merely a length of flesh, needing to be/ Washed."


##