"Mythologies are dodgy things. By 'mythologies' I mean nothing more than the picture languages that we invent to embody and make accessible to casual reference the deeper shared understandings which keep us intact as a group--so far as we are intact as a group.
   In an intact group the pool of shared understandings is like a shared bank account of the group wealth. Each member has instant access to the whole deposit. Since it is spiritual or psychological wealth, it does not diminish by being spent. Rather, the more lavishly it is circulated, the greater inner wealth and 'security' each single member feels to have. Intercommunication of those deeper shared understandings, through the tokens of the mythology that represents them, strengthens the unified inner life of the group.
   ...When the shared group understanding of all members is complete then a mere touching of the tokens of their mythology is enough for complete communication. Each verbal signal illuminates--with the voltage of the whole group’s awareness and energy--those members of the group who exchange it. ...In those circumstances, language can be said to be full of meaning. Hence the answer of the old Hopi woman to the Anthropologist who asked why Hopi songs are so short. 'Our songs are short' she said, 'because we know so much.' " --Hugh*s

Wishful thinking jabs a third-class twig.
Kidnap plutocrat.
Ostracism winds a hoary slag.
Kidnap pilgrim.

Plush offal would tallow your droshky
Waist-high. Wishful loom
Of folly origami distinct
From indigo...

Ugrian tinfoil amobng our thick
Napalm wings a swag.
What but folly crawling days blatant
With wintry snick

Grotto. It's a black fly in your Corvair.

Dim bulbs not so bad?

"The poet's only hope is to be infinitely sensitive to what his gift is, and this in itself seems to be another gift that few poets possess. According to this sensitivity, and to his faith in it, he will go on developing as a poet, as Yeats did, pursuing those adventures, mental, spiritual and physical, whatever they may be, that his gift wants. Or he will lose its guidance, lose the feel of its touch in the workings of his mind, and soon be absorbed by the impersonal lumber of matters in which his gift has no interest, which is a form of suicide, metaphorical in the case of Coleridge, actual in the case of Mayakovsky.
   Many considerations assault his faith in the finality, wisdom and sufficiency of his gift. Its operation is not only shadowy and indefinable, it is intermittent. It has none of the obvious attachment to publicly exciting and seemingly important affairs that his other mental activities have and in which all his intelligent contemporaries have such confidence, and so it receives no immediate encouragement--or encouragement only of the most dubious kind, as a flagellant, questioning his illuminations, might be encouraged by a bunch of mad old women and some other half-dead gory flagellant." --Hugh*s

    "Jaguar Witch"

1.
song
turning roar soft
hour wind how ask was
sun color mud
go

2.
story
cold across
and shadow moon

3.
turning
shadow am
throw with plum
a thousand
shall

4.
story
cold across
and still moon

5.
your shadow falls
and i know you and
across this blind plain growing
blind with your cold shadow

and what shall i say to you
now what gain
you so far from anything
i could clasp or fail to

6.
will shall cannot moon
now told in small words
arrogantly this wisp
rock solid pass

no chiaroscuro
icy gnomon
and if dust hangs in our black sky
at all, it will not land

7.
do float not
a sad shard of risp
coign
kingdom
smoky crown

arrogantly this words

"Apparently a minor Polish poet named Karol Wojtyla died over the weekend. Wojtyla published poems as a young man in Poland and wrote a dissertation on the 16-century Spanish mystical poet Juan de Yepes (better known in the English-speaking world as Saint John of the Cross). He went on to become head of a large international organization, but never abandoned poetry altogether. He published several books of poetry using the pen name "Pope John Paul II." Among the admirers of Wojtlya's poetry was Polish Nobel Prize laureate Czeslaw Milosz, who praised him for his "dogmaticism." Reaction to the death of this poet in literary circles was muted. Ron Silliman has pointed out that the great tragedy of Wojtyla's poetry was his inability "to make the turn to language." " --B*msha Swing


"When we speak of Chaucer as the ‘fountain undefiled’ of English poetry’s delicacy, or of Beowulf as the buried reservoir of English poetry’s strength, we are probably glossing over the fact that these two have spent so much of their time, to change the metaphor, like male and female spiders, trying to avoid or paralyze each other, and that the good moments have come only where they have managed an electrified, always precarious coupling." --Hugh*s, op cit

"In the sixties, the Yugoslav Serb poet Vasko Popa wrote a powerful cycle of poems about the Serbian national Saint: St Sava of the Wolves. The Serbs are St Sava's wolves. During the seventies he told me that whenever he gave a public reading in Yugoslavia, students would begin to shout out, demanding the wolf poems, and then when he read them would become wildly excited--so much that he was alarmed and puzzled. I asked him what he thought it meant and he said: 'I don't know. But I fear--very bad things.' " --T*d Hugh*s, Wint*r Poll*n (1994)

Two yarons now i'm doing this blog...

On my victrola: Nils P*tt*r Molva*r- Khm*r

On my victrola: Das Rh*ingold.

    "The death of Cornstalk

Triune Algol: gull, blackbird, pigeon
time, or such sequence
as wings carry. Scatterlings, I cling
to skyey outlines
sight traced and sight wants to deliquesce."

--*lm*r Moriarty, H*r* is th* Information You R*qu*st*d (1966)


Saturn's
auroras; halos
whirl; convoy days.

Painting by Phil Smith.

    "cript"

Plutonian bildar,
wormy God wood.

Portion in this

and bloody whirlpools
and Pluto

crystal

Plutonian bildar,
wormy God wood.

    "Fading

So thorough the reticence
In a guise of "itselfness"
That as good goes in trance...
And when awakened berzerks
The dancers dream
Cutting sight for a One
Not dull or wide
But thin air spatials relaxed
To fears of this to that
Received as "Manna" truly hidden

Poison for the Prince sounding reek
That as chooser chooses the down
To fast chutes and the up of quick
Until horns blasting
He’s here...

Potentially for you in servitude
And then for self he’s less
For you, but here...comfort

Compassion on other becomes
Fire next time hardness
(Punitive measure) that sings
In the range of potential
The song of necessity bloom"

--Ovid Neal

A wiz of "hard" scifi, in Mission of Gravity, first thought up a story about a known world far from this solar bunch; it turns out, though, that that wobbling of 61 Cyg was spurious. At last our starry snooping did find a trio of actual worlds: around 70 Vir, 47 UMa, and 51 P*g.

Rob*rt Charl*s Wilson, in Blind Lak*, in part puts his story on a world of 47 UMa. I don’t know if an author past this, did that with any of our now known worlds. What if a story’s world is now thought "spurious"? Pnakotic is my word for this. "Goldilocks" (70 Vir) now’s too hot...

    "SO THAT'S WHO I REMIND ME OF

When I consider men of golden talents,
I'm delighted, in my introverted way,
To discover, as I'm drawing up the balance,
How much we have in common, I and they.

Like Burns, I have a weakness for the bottle,
Like Shakespeare. little Latin and less Greek;
I bite my fingernails like Aristotle;
Like Thackeray, I have a snobbish streak.

I'm afflicted with the vanity of Byron,
I've inherited the spitefulness of Pope;
Like Petrarch, I'm a sucker for a siren,
Like Milton, I've a tendency to mope.

My spelling is suggestive of a Chaucer;
Like Johnson, well, I do not wish to die
(I also drink my coffee from the saucer);
And if Goldsmith was a parrot, so am I.

Like Villon, I have debits by the carload,
Like Swinburne, I’m afraid I need a nurse;
By my dicing is Christopher out-Marlowed,
And I dream as much as Coleridge, only worse.

In comparison with men of golden talents,
I am all a man of talent ought to be;
I resemble every genius in his vice, however heinous--
Yet I only write like me."

--Ogd*n Nash

Osiris.



Hydrotoxic Spiral. (via *ric Francis.

Nmusysy and Paradisan Concult Posts.

Void.

How K**l*r Wrot* C*rtain of His Books. (via Mad Ink B*ard)

Sh*ila Murphy int*rvi*w*d.

Worldbuilding.

Shoggoth on th* Roof. (via M*tafilt*r)


Halcyon thrown among dull days
A glowing throng;
And find only promising nothing stays.
Is this my song?
Is this my scrimshaw ball a world
To lull a bard, if any would?

Blindly thrown among dull swords
And bloody whirlpools'
Logical golf, this crown of suds
In hazard spills.
An idol glooming far away,
Vagabond gondola don’t know why.

Tsathoggua isk
ray sting whom

sobbing Ogpu igloo cultivar
barb air tsunami sky frown

Ragnarok dyadic assist star bilm
and agnystic owl


    "The Flesh Failures

Crackling sounds of rain
through blinds intrude,
and mercy is a feeding tube.
Through dazzling shards of dark
a starker mood;
mercy is a feeding tube.
I sharpen it on stones
the stone gods approve.
Mercy is a feeding tube.
You hold me to a plan
of plenitude;
mercy is a feeding tube.
Among the sharks my hurl
is going good,
mercy is a feeding tube.
A clown knows all the gags
that pass for food:
mercy is a feeding tube.
Inoperable remorse
rolls dead eyes and lewd...
Mercy is a feeding tube.
Mercy is a feeding tube."

--*rnst kipling (va Abl*Mus*)

"Swinburne's influence upon modern paganism can hardly be overestimated..."  --Ronald Hutton, Th* Triumph of th* Moon (1999)


"If I could speak to a spider, I should find it quite impossible to convey to its limited intelligence any conception of our own human world. My obstacle would be its spiderism. Everything that I said would be translated into terms related to its spider-habits and spider-conceptions."  --Arthur Constanc*, Th* In*xplicabl* Sky (1956)


"Prim Hurd attends your call, & Palgrave proud,
Stonhewer the lewd, & Delaval the loud."

--Thomas Gray


    "Worshipful Company"

kingdom can
kingdom can
kingdom can fall
kingdom can
this dinosaur kingdom can fall
kingdom can
kingdom can
this dinosaur kingdom can fall
thingdom can
kingdom can
kingdom can rat
rat to rat do you think
kingdom can
kingdom can
that this dinosaur
that this dinosaur kingdom can fall

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

    "Twilight in Plano, IV."

Abnatural ruin, fog
within this slow gift.
Only in command word and kinship
laying analogy of occupation
to do now;
only which dimly throughout window
throughout wall
laying snow allow.

Gramm*lot. (via M*tafilt*r)

Th* Work.

Th* Gr*at Work.

"For a while now I've been dreaming of a past-shaped future in which traditional crafts and computer technology are fused. I think these visions may have started when I visited Japan for the first time in 1992, and felt I was simultaneously in the renaissance and the 21st century. Soon my ideal image of the future was the sixteenth century... with robots! Shakespeare's London... with Playstations! Floating world Japan... with video games! Since 1999, this vision has rung through my music, which has mixed medieval sounds with electronics..."

    "Saturnism"

Road hazards in Iraq
tidy rig liquor
song gold can day fall ghost

or a swart saga

unitary murmur
along this thing room
a run of rank discord
topic abrupt dark

and cartoon synonym

chill this how and moon
shadow you am go church
i shall throw ostrich
my most badawi dish
church of vain shadow
church of murmurous charts

Dark Ag* Ah*ad. Plus.


Sorrows of *mpir*.

On my victrola- Taraf de Haidouks.


    "Trump Duck"

1.
This cantrip surplus, it stinks.
A wizard

should try for significant darkling
or guitar solos

past what radio will allow. A wizard
is unruly, not

hush hush of hiding but whist
of booty from a mad raid on Ghayb

far from transmission protocols as lightning
is from lamps.

2.
  song gold can day fall

chill this how and shadow you
  am go all as a
will why moon out rain skying

its off i shall throw with long

Happy Birthday. (via Mad Ink B*ard)

"People are reminded of 'sister' songs, variations on a theme, or poems used on similar occasions. Alternatively, some poems may call up specific situations in which they were last heard... By drawing images and experiences from the shared world of a small, culturally homogeneous community, poems gain meaning."  -ibid


Cling to habit. A diaphanous nook, sunlight that contains poison. What do you know? Far away, out of sight, dying. This car still runs okay. I am paid. I can allow a room of music to surround. Past angry days shrink, clouds of acid rain; i put down words that do not cry out, much.


"When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid feeling disgust for those who are thus imposed upon." --Thomas Paine

"Dear Campus Watch,

I have recently read the diatribe on the poet and activist Ammiel Alcalay, published in the American Thinker on March 4.

I am not writing this letter to argue politics with you, for that would be silly, wouldn't it? I am writing, rather, to ask that you add me to the list of American poets you are putting under surveillance. Allow me to briefly list some of my credentials, as I think you will agree I deserve to be given a file in the archives of your organization.

I was one of the poets published in Sam Hammill's Poets Against the War anthology. My poem, which was widely distributed before its anthology publication, including by the openly Marxist journal Monthly Review, is titled Baghdad, and it is loosely based on the children's book Goodnight Moon.

Days went by... Then, the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison happened, and I published a poem titled "Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz, Or: Get the Hood Back On." This poem may be of particular interest to you, since (in addition to the fact that it is accompanied by photographs and the music of Dean Martin) Ammiel Alcalay himself saw fit to send it abroad for possible translation into Arabic. I don't know if it has been translated yet, but the English version is available here, where it has received thousands of visits since its appearance : http://www.blazevox.org/kent.htm

Further, this poem is now the title poem of a collection of mine that is soon to appear. This book will contain numerous pieces by me (not everyone would judge it poetry!), all of which have some relation to the war in Iraq. The cover of this book will be, I think, somewhat original: The infamous shot of the American soldier holding the leash which is clipped to the neck of the prone prisoner shall be surrounded by pictures of daffodils among which shall be little Cupids shooting their arrows inward, toward the picture.

But the most important thing I wanted to say about the forthcoming book is this: I intend to announce in the book that all author royalties from the sale of the collection are to be donated to Campus Watch. I wish to do this (and I hope you will accept the gesture) because I strongly believe your proto-fascist activities are an excellent stimulant to the defense of American values, like civil liberties and other stuff.

Also, I should tell you that I correspond with Joseph Safdie, one of the "leftist" poets mentioned in the American Thinker article! He and I almost co-edited a book of recipes and favorite dinner anecdotes by poets. Alas, this book idea fell through, though I now can't quite remember why. But someone else should certainly do it, as it is a wonderful idea. Oh, and I should also say that in the 1980's I worked as a literacy teacher in Nicaragua on two different occasions. This was when the Sandinista's were in power. Though I'm more or less a social democrat now, I was *really* radical back then. From our village, we could hear the Contra mortars going off almost every night. Some of my friends died. Then I came back and founded the Milwaukee Central America Solidarity chapter, which went on to do all sorts of protest activities. One event we organized was called "Who's Watching You in 1984?" and hundreds of people attended, including numerous FBI agents. Not to get too sentimental, but it was at this event that I met my future wife.

So, these would be some reasons you might wish to accept my request to be inducted into your files. I will be sure to send you a copy of the forthcoming book, which, again, shall go to support the activities of your organization.

Sincerely,

Kent Johnson" (via T*x Fil*s)

'...throughout the world
Impious War is raging. As on a racecourse,
The barriers are down, out pour the chariots,
Gathering speed from lap to lap, and a driver
Tugging in vain at the reins is swept along
By his horses and heedless uncontrollable car.'

--L P Wilkinson tr Th* G*orgics, end of bk I (1982)


"Poetry, however, is never a lone discourse. For the individual and his or her intimates, what is said in poetry and what is said in ordinary language always exist side by side: their interplay is essential to their meaning. The two juxtaposed discourses can be seen as commenting on each other, just as the secret comments on the the manifest world... Ironically, poetic discourse seems to comment on the ordinary discourse of everyday life in ways that ultimately enhance the meaning of the latter and the honor of the person reciting. One might, then, consider poetry and the expression of feeling it represents as integral to honor."  --Lila Abu-Lughod, V*il*d S*ntim*nts: Honor and Po*try in a B*douin Soci*ty (1986)

If history has a form, this form contains a motion toward turning war into annihilation; and also a motion that halts any tribal boundary for long. But it is foolish to strip Plain folks of tribal thought without solid social grounding and this is how our futuristic world has grown so hazardous: dualisms swarm in.


"Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience..." --Susan Sontag, R*garding th* Pain of Oth*rs (2003)

Thank God for the Iraqi insurgency. If it weren't for the resistance tying us down, we would have already moved against far more serious foes like Iran or North Korea, foes we clearly can't handle. Given the bang-up job the incompetents running our country have done in Iraq, you can bet that America versus Iran/North Korea would end with something like Bush commanding a rump American state from deep inside a Colorado bunker, cursing the American people for having let him down, as the Jihadi/People's Army coalition troops encircle Denver... . (via wood_s lot)

I will say that it is not wrong for Plain folk to draw a tribal boundary, and what is now known as Sports is its most unharmful form. What would aid Plain folk is knowing this activity is play and as play it has limits. It stops. (Suspicion of folksy boss guys would also aid.)

"The savage who, poor soul, adores a stone
Rather than not adore at all,
And a vivid, vindictive, and serpentine flash
Had been my universe; tho’ refuge none

What may happen? I don't, nor do you, I suppose.
But to return to what I had to say--
Of that beauty which, even when hidd'n, can prevail
When seized by the throat in the hard gripe of Grammar.

Peace from the public upon pious pleas.
Perchance we may meet
Since the beginning of this situation
Of the moraine--there to the right, below

And weird words pursue it--
Over which they were pausing. To-morrow, resistance
On my heart's substance grafted and engrained,
A little warrior, born to rule and fight;

Secure upon his housetop in the snow.
Whilst he spoke thus, a doubtful tumultuous joy
And the wish an ascendency lost to recall,
Inexplicable to my mind they are.

Than a young goddess just about to fly.
The trees broke in, all rustling with surprise,
It would not do! I had forgotten that!
Mine the fault, and be mine the repentence! Not less,

As he stray'd down the darkness.
A ripple of silver harp-strings cold--
Lost or shatter'd, borne down by the stress of the war,
Another’s whim! And I, the plunderer

Over the sea, nor ever returned.
But there were other reasons. I felt sure,
And still feel sure, far away it must tend
From all places in which we have met, or might meet,

At moonrise the land was suddenly brighter;
The light of wild orgies. To do him justice, he
As we then were, would still have been strangely at strife.
Cordelia hesitated. He resolved to remain

The midnight--in which they escape from our sight.
Arrived in port much injured. Gales severe
With a stern sad inquiry fix'd keenly on him.
His aim in this was unconditional;

No! no! do me justice. I never have spoken
A silence to the ear, a something said
Reveal'd to him, riding toward Luchon, the Duke.
Love, or a name: the name is for the dead,

'Neath yon terrible heaven that is watching above
By me untraversed in the Heart's Far West?
And many a time with a mute moody look
I have but little chance to rise: and yet

Lit that festival hour, save what soft light was given
To justify the indiscretion sweet
All its frivolous gods, with an undefined awe,
Fronting the lake, and gleaming to the dawn."

--Thomas P*nsion, Th* Rubaiyat of Ow*n M*r*dith (2000)

'Alan Griffiths, Of Course, Vitelli!

The plot of this novel is not entirely original (it was anticipated by Jules Romains and more than once by reality), but it is extremely entertaining. The protagonist, Roger Diss, invents an anecdote. He tells it to a few friends, who don’t believe him. To persuade them, he claims that the event took place around 1850 in the south of England, and he attributes the story to the "famous cellist Vitelli." Everyone, of course, recognizes this invented name. Encouraged by his success, Diss publishes an article on Vitelli in a local magazine. Various strangers miraculously appear who point out mistakes in the article, and a polemic ensues. Diss,victorious, publishes a full-length biography of Vitelli, "with portraits, sketches, and manuscripts."
   A movie company acquires the rights to the book and makes a technicolor film. The critics declare that the film has distorted the facts of Vitelli’s life... Diss becomes embroiled in another polemic, and they demolish him. Furious, he decides to reveal the hoax. No one believes him, and people hint that he has gone mad. The collective myth is stronger than he is. A Mr. Clutterbuck Vitelli defends the affronted memory of his late uncle. A spiritualist center in Tunbridge Wells reveives direct messages from the deceased. If this were a book by Pirandello, Diss would end up believing in Vitelli.
   "Every book contains its counter-book" Novalis said. The counter of this book would be cruel and far stranger. It would be the story of a group of conspirators who plot that a certain person does not exist or has never existed. [1938]’  --Jorg* Luis Borg*s, S*l*ct*d Non-Fictions (*d W*inb*rg*r 1999)


Dualistic thinking, popular now as of old, is stupidity grown rigid, and a goof that rigidity turns into protocol. Alas, such wisdom as turns against dualistic thinking cannot find its mass sponsor, nor impart in a classroom. It is knowing which joins an "I" with what it looks at. It's not a way of talking.

Raps clack calcspar.


Can humans stop having wars? If our war today, idiotic and unjust as it is, still finds public approval, it looks bad for stopping all wars in a fuzzy bright tomorrow, right? Making war counts on two things: a split mind wanting to attack its own shadow, and Plain folks' strongly tribal thoughts of boundary.

'Hence it is true that if our apprehensions make us seek deliverance, yet it is they which keep us from achieving it. Though he dreads the future to the point of making it the sole object of his preoccupations, the anxious man is a prisoner of the past; he is, in fact, the only man who really has a past. His tribulations, of which he is the slave, move him forward only to yank him back. He comes thereby to regret the raw, anonymous fear from which everything starts, the fear that is beginning, origin, principle of everything alive. Terrible as it is, such fear is nonetheless endurable, since whatever lives resigns itself to it. It lacerates and ravages the living--it does not annihilate them. Such is not the case with this refined fear, this "recent" fear posterior to the appearance of the self, in which the diffuse, omnipresent danger is never materialized, a reflexive fear which, for lack of other nourishment, devours itself.'  --* M Cioran, The N*w Gods (tr Howard, 1974)

'Strict grammar and good Latin, it has been well said, are different things.' --Quintilian

    "Atom Spy"

You think you know
what it is to cry
in this blank snow

you think you know.

Sorrows swiftly grow,
and moons go by
you think. You know
what it is: to cry.


"All Nature feels the renovating force
Of Winter, only to the thoughtless Eye
In Ruin seen. The Frost-concocted Glebe
Draws in abundant vegetable Soul,
And gathers Vigour for the coming Year.
A stronger Glow sits on the lively Cheek
Of ruddy Fire: and luculent along
The purer Rivers flow; their sullen Deeps,
Transparent, open to the Shepherd's Gaze,
And murmur hoarser at the fixing frost."

--James Thomson, "Winter"

    "106.

When,I,was,no,bigger,than,a,huge,
Star,in,my,self,I,began,to,write,
      My,
    Theology,
  Of,rose,and,

Tiger: till,I,burned,with,their,
Pure,and,Rage,Then,was,I,Wrath-
      Ful,
    And,most,
  Gentle: most,

Dark,and,yet,most,Lit: in,me,an,
Eye,there,grew: springing,Vision,
      Its,
    Gold,and,
  Its,wars. Then,

I,knew,the,Lord,was,not,my,Creator!
--Not,He,the,Unbegotten--but,I,saw,
      The,
    Creator,
  Was,I--and,

I,began,to,Die,and,I,began,to,Grow."

--Garcia Villa

"Since it costs $15 dollars to rent these shopping carts, we must hitch them to the stars."

Lojban Hiragana.

"I think fakeness is a democratic value."

"In yoga class today I finally understood what my teacher has been trying to show me. There are gaps between thoughts. If you allow the gaps to become longer, the curtainof thoughts - tinkling like rows of beads - parts and you are deep inside of consciousnessitself, deep inside silence." --Th* J*tty

Going up. (tip via M*xp*rim*ntal)

"your eyes dance under stars
hidden by clouds these many years

blue as a spring washed sky,
they see open wings not shadows

your fingers again find the curve
of a shore shifted, not gone"

--Julie Damerell

Four Ozark Prison Sijo.

In Rov*'s R*public. (via Ptarmigan)

Flax th* war.

Tomorrow talk. (via Languag* Hat)

Crackdown. (via Abuddhas M*m*s)

"I see that all are wand'rers, gone astray
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still woo’d
And never won. Dream after dream ensues;
And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed. Rings the world
With the vain stir."

--Cowp*r, "The Task" (1785)

    "Victory Asparagus

Should we call on God
or pour more blood?
Must a clown applaud,
should we call on God?
Power to the fraud
and to the flood...
Should we call on God,
or pour more blood?"

--*rnst A Kipling, Profil*s in Cowardic* (2005)

The idea of giving the revolution a colour, like a product, was a total success..

Tanka anthology. (via Po*try Hut)

'Who offered to me, Ares the sacker of cities, rich cakes, and grapes, and roses? Let them offer these to the Nymphs, but I, bold Ares, accept not bloodless sacrifices on my altars.'  --L*onidas  of Al*xandria, Th* Gr**k Anthology I., vi. 324 (Lo*b tr W R Paton, 1916)


    "A Lay of Pain and Want"

1.

slowworm
against a pallid sky
my car high on a tow truck back
again

as luck would have it

2.

stairway to downfall
climbing a stairway to downfall

3.

upturn cars burning
glass crashing
dark falls in globs
mad moon anchor
city point
glowworm to downfall

4.

languid warm painting

badlands murmur

quotidian built road

Thoughts on chaos. Am i afraid of dying, or of my kind and kind's ways vanishing? Am i afraid, not of losing, but of turning into what i abhor? For this war consists in knowing or willing not to know. What follows from this is not within our control; a shadowy polyp lifts its wings.


"...a civilization which glorifies the mind at the expense of the heart is in constant danger of slipping into limitless violence; while a civilisation which glorifies the heart at the expense of the mind would be in danger of sporadic brutalities without rhyme or reason." --* F Schumach*r, This I B*li*v*


    "78.

It is the remembering of the future.
To do that.
It is very difficult.
I remembered the future and
Broke myself.

Now the assembling is the Arrival.
Nothing must deter it
But eternity should defer it.
It must be very clear
That arrival is non-arrival.

Yet the future
Must be circumferenced and
The mind balance it!
Thus the great remembrance is gripped.
In this way the poet is broken
In this way the future is saved."

--Jos* Garcia Villa, S*l*ct*d Po*ms and N*w (1958)

On my victrola: 3l*ctronic Hair Pi*c*s by Mort Garson.


"We are the most fucked-in-the-head people that ever was. It's not our bad leaders we rise up against or gun down. It’s the good ones."  --Cay*nn* Turbo, Suppl*m*ntal R*sults (1970)

Black.

Singing Guitars.

Visionary.

Watchdogs.

"Cinema's hundred years appears to have the shape of a life cycle: an inevitable birth, the steady accumulation of glories, and the onset in the last decade of an ignominious, irreversible decline."  --Sontag, Wh*r* th* Str*ss Falls (2001)


"To this enthusiastic throng, Nicholas II was still Batiushka--the 'Little Father'--who answered to God for their well-being. These lower classes blamed the pain and suffering they had borne for so long on men who had failed to serve the Tsar as they should, and they felt certain that their Batiushka would right the wrongs they suffered if only they could tell him the truth. The masses had believed this for hundreds of years, but that, too, was about to change." --W Bruce Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight (2000)

    "Hushspiral"

No crimson-butt baboon can
walk across this briny drink
with or without faith

with or without might
with or without truth.

No crimson-butt baboon can,
no crimson-butt baboon will.

Cryptozoology.

Unpopular artforms count, just as any minority group's customs and way of talking count. It is crazy to submit all things to that logic in which voting picks a singular champion, with many who will thus vanish. A truly natural winnowing allows spots with unusual survivors, and this shows us what bards might aim for.

"Rash author, 'tis a vain presumptuous crime
To undertake the sacred art of rime;
If at thy birth the stars that ruled thy sense
Shone not wih a poetic influence,
In thy strait genius thou wilt still be bound,
Find Phoebus deaf, and Pegasus unsound."

--Boil*au's "Art of Po*try" (tr Soam*) in: The Art of Po*try (ed Albert S Cook, 1892)

    "Lost Worlds of Langpo"

Automatic tusk atoll logic
ambit cairn

straying dim acorn
starwork lustrous assumptions skittish hazaj

italics foist sly blood glut
sob aglow firm

"WHY I AM NOT "POST-AVANT"



the cliff notes said so


for I do not come after you


I just came and now must wait a while

thus Paris Hilton gets to be in the poem

& livejournal teaches us about the kitty

a vague memory of getting wet

history books ain't written by the conquered
& you only get to name your kids or pets
objects succumb, at peace with being pushed out
so when the poet said pubic hair

I imagined her pubic hair

which only her husband gets to see

a list of things to say to the steady cam

the uneven distribution of particles

upon your face / some damage

falling in sunbeam at departure
because they used every beautiful thing up

the Jem'Hadar surrender also the dirty ocean birds

despite our manifestos teach us to humor
the elders we must bear

black flag, please twist above the mall"

--Th* Jim Sid*


Daught*rs of Ummo.

    No Guts No Morning Glory

turd burglar graduating
adjunct abandon

dugout growl
aggry sloom maroon briny igloo

crinoid lapidary idiom rugby
bardo stump gild snood

An album that is "47 Ursa* Majoris".

Sign and Sight. (via ALDaily)

THINK NOT OF THIS SMALL CHROMIUM APRICOT

Infamous visitors swarm now.
A blankly gazing labyrinth falls into array.
Solitary kibitzing. All is army,
all is war, all is patriot, all is gray.
A show that only fools us for an hour
and soon that hour has flown; sugar bombing,
as smirking impostors strut and flail this sour
data smog, city sick, fib aroma
soaks it all, it's acting, bad acting, surrounds
dogs who applaud. Across a troublous world
claws uprip its grounds
with garuda might and dizzying whirl
aggry-straying will, our loss past figuring:
ignorantly proud and proudly ignorant.

"There is, undoubtedly, a good deal more echo of other men’s work in “Owen Meredith” than was either necessary or wise."

"Designers and engravers of the highest order of ability have expended with prodigal spirit their skill and ingenuity in the illustration of this work."

Addiction.

Canon. (via Moss*s from an Old Mans*)

Chi*f Long Lanc*.

    "Karcist"

Vagrant sanctuary. Garuda
contrails guiding long
past this train running out of its own-laid track.
Pallid indigo traiking
halcyon.
Wispy path
into a day without words
and our mapmaking drugs us to know
ordinary caladiums burrowing,
liquids carrying.
Long ago i ran with witch
piracy;
saw dawns on a cold, difficult road.
Now garudas follow chanting songs of war
and a still calm waits
in shadow.
I am swift with its abnatural
glidings. And to watch
is to know instant ruin,
morning built up out of torn cars lost gladly;
iron and bad music.
Rumorous
or only fog, so i swink
till an actual blossoming, and garuda
land on a spot of known paradox.

Th* Owl Hous*.

What's up with Judit Polgar?


" 'There is not this and that. There is only this, that, and the other. Always find a third,' Valentine would say." --Tal*s of Val*ntin* th* H*r*tic

Click and Clack and No-Frills Books.

    "Crystal Sandstorm"

Crawling orchids sang
owllight blurry Fimbul angst

iguana botch urn activist whirring bilk
idolatry asana ostrich
backgammon

indigo agama borrow awl
Illig glim

bildar, ogygian whisk

*urotopia.

"hitler: a ball that never made it out of the bunker" --L*t the Big Dog *at: A Dictionary of th* S*cr*t Languag* of Golf

Panoramas.

Hungry for fantasy in which our killing might is good for any difficulty that a world contains; hungry for plain truth without grays; hungry for a story to show us as good and our world as rational; hungry for distraction from knowing too much; hungry for our lost lights; hungry for a way out.

Dragon on Saturn. (via Robot Wisdom)