806.4616.0110 (a cup of sugar) - draught

"Sending out an SOS
sending out an SOS..." The Police

YOU'RE walking past [light speed] the house at three
a.m all the lights on [electromagnetic yaps] shouting smashing
[there will be more]
someone crying in the garden
[no/white/wash/white/house]
music shaking [299,792,458 metres per second]
the night (wingbeats) kids hi(ding) under the beds
[................] everyone drunk everyone fucked all of it old

[wait... bells you hear her bells] --sugarsugar--embedded
grudges grievances hatred so you don't
(would you happen to have) [celeritas] even
(would you happen) consider knocking (tyres wail)

(trees sigh) (birds exhale) (legs flail) on the door
(freefall)(eggs fail) introducing yourself saying
Hi [exhale.................] (sail on silver bird sail on by
your time has come) mister we meant no harm

would youhappen tohave would you happen...

—mister we meant
..........no harm—

.
.

2 megaton snake (for Carl Sagan)

"Don't pray to that, it's not the sun" - Frank Redcar

fifty thousand sugarbabes
breathing out black fire

as sure as eggs
is lead balloons
one-a this 2 megaton bomb
gone down like redjunglefowl
with feathery ass alight

(a pope on a hope
shitting in the woods—))
(for the trees—)
(—can't make them damn drink)

two million tons of
high explosive dropped
on Dresden and London
on Leningrad and Cologne

fire demons, fairies, elves
shove your hand down the throat

fifty thousand sugarbabes
sweating out black fire

grab anything you find
twist, pull, rip it out
I love you, I love you
six years of burning
all wrapped up in one
hazy afternoon

(learned about nuclear winter
by studying dust storms
on Mars)

fifty thousand sugarbabes
guffawing

black fire
.
.
.

Rumi spirit-flarf

Can’t you see I’m stretching Rumi?
—I’m an emotional Rumi researcher
I run barefoot Rumi everything jade green
far-off lands, furniture...
Now I can see the Rumi far-off hills
and the dark far away...
With far rapture Rumi and abandon
I would hope for a child
a potent Rumi little vegetable god
(urchins won't Rumi relent
with the snowballs whirl
themselves raptured into a stream
from its Rumi source in the far off
mountains, passing Rumi far through
every repetitive task)
a Rumi sea urchin in antique dress
I found it a year ago when far Rumi

Back, this Rumi is as far
as you go, she says
this sight Rumi may harm you...
where a switch goes off in me
and suddenly when you Rumi have closed
your mouth kind of griot-Rumi-Rumi...

can't you see Rumi far, far I'm stretching Rumi?
.
.
.

Anomie (a beginning)

"I've got a bastard behind the eyes" - Withnail and I

let's look at this again

both ancient and modern
writers seem to oscillate

(thirty years of the same crisis)
(you'd think they'd get dead)
(bored banging the bedhead like cats)
(drowned in the same pond)
(nine times nine times nine times nine)

1. open the hatch look inside
never sure what you will see

(he can see "wonderful things")
(don't tell him anything yet)

2. sometimes you almost laugh
(relief)

3. then you see the little lights
—they're still there...

bions?Brownian motion?dead things?spirits?what then?

(he thinks he sees. don't tell him.)

faced. with this.
anomic space—the issue is to abolish. the restrictions

[["the words[_______]had the force of law"
(Eichmann)]]

see the little lights
—they're still there
(still) (a bastard)(behind)(there)
(the eyes)(there)(still)

see the little lights?
they're still there

they're still there?

thirty years—drowned—crisis—little lights
—thinks, only thinks—wonderful things, cursed things—
nine times—tell him nothing

let's look at this again
.
.
.
.

DCred(fi)shift

this train becomes worm
..............................become arm reaching white
skinny through warm
.............................skyline through

window
all feathers, glitter flying in its
............................................................(wake)

become sparks [reflection] —disturbance

it looks back sudden
angry/thrusting/prognathous/overbite

............wolf headed

west where wild winds whistle
whine, the moment of getting

(a sin to put on
animal skins and the heads of beasts)
it tears through the pages
the shimmer
......................we wake from
breath wet upon
fingers (we bite)
we flurry in time (mirrors) (pond)
(silver copper orange)
lead barium antimony
—forensics of dream (shift)
recoil

drop weapon (years ago) in.the rain

.........murder is a dazzling
.............................light

.
.
.
(Published in Dogzplot Jan 2008)

hypocaust

the colour is cold slow motion
seeping in chinks
with a dry hurtle of Spring

this way we flag
embrace
draw together ducted
press
bind and refract

we prism

[hypocaust]

heat from below
.
.
.

New Executive Orders

Reichstag thermite blah
white hot in the ruins of recount
of a democratic party late in the day
and the barbecue just cold ash
(many inconvenient truths)

(the false-flag (Iwo Jima? Ground Zero?)—
of the fathers—Toratoratora!—Atta! Atta!—
Our Allfather Hiroshima
^{(the well where words wither)}—)

"total wipeout in 2008 of Republican..." you believe this
Pearl Harbour Blah Pearl Necklace
a spurt of new executive orders
that they'll let this happen
already in place about all our necks
(Martial Law/Scooter Libby/The Bohemian Grove)
like they won't do something?

(Get this burning issue off me!)

"you could sense something was gonna blow
question was what and who"
(a rigged explosion in democracy
- the falling man)
"Something's in the works," he stated,
"in the works...Chertoff has predicted them."
Habeas Corpus, Port Authority
the thing that penetrated the Pentagon
clearly had no wings
(and get this: the world watched in horror already in place)

like everyone their own twin tower now, rigged to blow
.
.
.
(Published in Cause & Effect Magazine Jan 2008)

feeding a child

making bread as ritual
—kneading, plying
itself a connection
with a thousand generations
of women
on their knees, pounding
fists in unclean bowls

fleshing out grey dough, oxygenating
latent life, swelling, rising
the sacrament
yeast/bread/yeast/ wine
skin-surface-bloom
sugar and spice
all things...
to all

always
cradled in the left arm
—not for the heartbeat,
for dexterity, ministration

his eyes as he drinks

the eyes
of vervet monkeys
his clutching fingers
feeling for lanugo still,
fur (to hang in)
a flickering, a place

beneath gender
waking slow
leavening, fervent

bright as sugared yeast

.
.
.

a siege of Khartoum, November 2007

Barbie was the original Red Whore, subverting...

the ghost of the Mahdi
stirs in his desert capsule
at Omdurman—such dreams

riding a wild camel
head swinging—excitement (alarm)
calls from the city, telegraph of heartbeat
breath, hollow ground

he is shimmer, spirit, silver mirage
contagion flooding outward

(the air hasn't quickened like this
since Gordon Pasha 1885)
such movement, such pace and fecundity
somewhere a tiny bear
(emblem of bears)

claws the Faithful
by wires of naming and intent
into the vast cleavage
of the West

he heads south, swinging
a rusty sword, feeling blood
beat again
in his dead camel's neck
rivers swelling
clouds massing

the beats stop, the drones
the wild pipes, the music...
silence

(process and plexus/
event and stasis—forces gather briefly along these lines
then quickly vanish)

flies whirl in the shimmer
—nothing, nothing
.
.
.

The Seven (Circa 2000 BC)

I was recently reminded of this wonderful Akkadian poem. Pretty sure the copyright has lapsed, so I thought I'd post it here. It's quite a staggering piece of magic.



The Seven


They are 7 in number, just 7
In the terrible depths they are 7
Bow down, in the sky they are 7

In the terrible depths, the dark houses
They swell, they grow tall
They are neither female or male
They are a silence heavy with seastorms
They bear off no women their loins are empty of children
They are strangers to pity, compassion is far from them
They are deaf to men’s prayers, entreaties can’t reach them
They are horses that grow to great size, that feed on mountains
They are the enemies of our friends
They feed on the gods
They tear up the highways they spread out over the roads
They are the faces of evil they are the faces of evil

They are 7 they are 7 they are 7 times 7
In the name of Heaven let them be torn from our sight
In the name of the Earth let them be torn from our sight


--tr. Jerome K. Rothenberg

The Enragé on the guillotine - 1798

Strapped to a board
his body jerked and spasmed
for some moments
as the last volts of rage,
the final syllables of paroxysm,
earthed through the extremities.
His face that had fallen pale

into a basket
worked through varieties of wildness
and cruelty
witnessed by all who looked in,
as though he was not yet done with us
and our milky constitution,

as though the febrile soul would slide out,
would manifest before the assembly
as a demon that grasped and crushed

and devoured, and those
who perceived this straining
fell back,
left the square briskly,
pushing out through the drunkards
like swimmers frightened by a shark.
In this way, oscillating
with great wildness and fury
and explosion,
the Enragé passed,

his body finally growing limp.
Even his face, pale, romantic and bloody,
ceased contorting and at the last
adopted a sad aspect
as of one who has looked
into a savage crowd

through dead eyes,
and has seen such things there
as have made him glad
to be gone quickly from that place.
.
.
.
(Published in Underground Voices Feb 2008)

Forced Fire - a rite of passage

"Keep coming through on the radio..." - The Rezillos

this is no place
and the fires
at one stroke

go out like tides of air

not a dying
not a fading
but shock reeling out
extinction

place bounded—trees that lean—signal—inward as though—as though—concern—lascivious intent—like but not like—other—
naked one that lies—in debris it lies—scatter—moonless—place without sound—other—other

it is quiet penetration
of dead spirit the arrival
intersection of orbits
running of men with coals

hissing of night/thing that does not/does not wake/awake

it is curling, arching, combustion

in the dark and cold
people are waiting
to fuck

speak to us now in the waves of the body
speak

it is the singing filament
that spans from diaphragm
to celestial arc
that draws us in
like hymn like battle song

(we see omens
in the edges of our eyes)

speak to us now in the waves of the body
speak

our collective
position species medium
phylogeny
order of being
us/our/us

this waiting around, this waiting
we stamp and drink
stinking like wet reindeer

speak, naked one
in waves, speak

now leave the light of understanding by the door
and fuck off
.
.
(Published in Ditch 2007).

60 mg of librium for the graving dock

even my coming here at all
I tell them
has been fraught with elemental forces

what are you, they ask, what?
battleship, I say, fresh from the sea-wars
half of her bottom ripped out
by submarine attack
just on the way here

listen, I tell them,
and I open the hatch
out there in the fog you can hear
the grumph of sixteen inch guns
chill whisper of torpedoes
whine of dive-bombers

the war, I say, the war, damn it

(way hay blow the man down,
I sing)

who is her? they want to know
my superstructure, my ironclad heft
my bottle-killing carapace
I tell them

why are you here?
for the enclosure, I say
for the berms and caissons
for the respite
but prop me gently
for I have fragile sonar domes beneath

(way hay blow the man down)

you can't just send me back out there
I tell them
there's a pack of them lying submerged
across the route home, waiting
and my weaponry all in tatters

this sealed package, they say, will do
to stop the foundering
the worst of the shocks
don't insert the disk
until you're way out at sea

wait for the tide, turn off
the engines, drift through
on silent green swells

(way hay blow the man down)

loaded with depth charges, loaded
we crash into the street's heave
roaring out our sea songs
through wolfpack mist





.
.
.

virus

I expected the Trojan Horse
(that was par for the course)
but the Trojan Rhino
was a new one on me
it jumped right out
of the infected PC
ran across the lino
and ate my TV

death to the pixies

we eventually split up because she believed
in a genetic predisposition
and I favoured the argument
that nurture alone
would do it just as well
and the sky came over
red and cold
and sudden
and dead leaves whirled

a reasoned analysis
would have to say
there were pixies
at work
gnawing excitedly
bright-eyed
in the cracks
.
.

Love came to town

Astride no ass
unplagued by doves
in ragged canvas dried up
weathered down stumbling in
thirsty-ugly-needy
shoes creaking hide and jackdaws
—flies buzzing in out in out the black doorways

in His teeth—somewhere deep in there, honey
welling frothing around a long fat queen
—fly honey, sour fly honey—
hot-metallic-bloody—He tumbles in
hacking dry sputes and scrags
kicking dust/chain-links/cinders

aphids and sugardew cascading
from His hair-grown-long

kicks-erupts-bursts open the bar doors
silhouetted dead leather stubble Jesus of desert noon swaying hot nails
digging palms weasel shadow of a rearing moment
powerlines knocking before storm
He looks in looks in where you stand
so, so...
brooding so biding...
drinks He one dark beer, jug jug jug... quiet
hunched like broken skyline
spits sour ale on His smoking iron shoes

rumbles back up the street to bells afar
in the drugged lumpen clump of deep sea divers
with the ocean drained shadow clanging out
dragging lilac flowers bursting
from the downpipes the hoppers
the nostrils of drunks tied to the dead
trees by the church gate

waking too late to see
like cumulus over mountains
a grey sea rolling rolling, full of logs

Love came to town
.
.
.

Lucky Luciano

looked in the mirror saw Lucky Luciano
looking out
them dead eyes wasn't
interceding to prevent espionage
wasn't facing deportation
wasn't holding no one's head

down in a bath
was just looking out
as if to say fuck
what?
Lucky Luciano looking out
eyes like slabs of meat grey

any way you look at it
this is one far fraction
of fuck
.

lost pipes on the parrot axis - a November elegy

.they are ancient—time of death—still intimate
these two—you know—close as hamsters—still sex—even then—yes
not like some others—hating—you see it—blowing smoke
to the end—hissing like stuck rats—burst pipes—no, best friends
lovers—old friends, old—then gone, her—she
one morning, gone—overnight snow—tracks covered—as it were
a dull blow—at that age—lethal—a part of him

part of something, yes—grown into each—to each
what this means here—his extended mechanism—love, you know
love—yes—no longer discrete—merged his—with hers
extended what?—phenotype?—organ, he thought really—felt
like a church—crematorium, anyway—walls covered in pipes—ivy
can't help thinking—Pied Piper—but the wrong end, yes—no

just so many pipes—fine for rats, you'd think—homely
all twisting up there—scurrying—phenopipe?—no, no
all confused anyway—so many damn pipes—all we are, perhaps
pipes, yes—all from the same organ—made you rumble inside
no rats really, no—sort of a piper—off we are carried
down the pipes—such a shock—quite lethal, quite

—at that age—attack of the pipes—sudden—deadly
—he's lost now—in there—in the winding—lost—pipe down
.
.
.

murder is a dazzling light - dense parataxis exercise

...said this fifteen years ago—that's not possible—terrible how she kicked and struggled—even wrote it down somewhere—paper, you know— they found it after—couldn't stand on his own two feet—murdered her—no calling her back then—in there—the planes, you know—how they talk inside tonight—you could always try hopping—wanted to tell him that—had a way with words—back then—how they chatter tonight—like wind sometimes—blowing through—a graveyard?—I'm sure it wakes things—he was shaking her—the kids were wild by then—wouldn't come— not for anyone—not for the world—he was no better—hear them rattle and moan—like I always said—no better than dogs—deep down—no guilt—not a scrap of sense—was it always like this?—so cold?—so many trees?—just a nose for trouble—a dog's sense of where to get a blanket—a bowl full of blood—he must have known—even him—she knew right enough—what was coming, I mean— she didn't talk—didn't think it—oh but you could tell—she knew—in her clothes and her hair—would have been gone—but then there it was all along—he was holding her down—the incessant chatter—the stark trees thrusting—so she couldn't breathe—in water?—no just down—you know—in the levels—waving, crying—so she couldn't breathe—even in winter—she would have seen it coming—murder like that—a light—not that light—the one you walk into, no— not that—in her sleep—not that she listened—murder—a dazzling light...

Iron Hans speaks to the wind

how will you reach me now
here in this still place?
what channels are open?
what secret ways?
is there any chance
that now, even now
you will reach out from the past
or from the future
from that other place come running
down trails choked
with drifts
with fallen leaves
will reach out
and touch my face
with a quivering finger?
I fear I have become
unreachable
here in this rusty pool
in a dark forest

Toni Kurz 1936 - draft

.
If mountain gods and ogres
had souls, then those cables
that sing upwards, trembling
with our lives, would be telegraphs,

conduits through which we would feel
their longing, their loneliness, their cries
like lost humans. Through those
filaments we would hear the deep

beat of their stone chambers,
so unlike our own. If they had hearts
other than those we graft to them
briefly, in our faint hope

that they might be like us
somehow, somehow,
then we could enter those channels,
descend easily into the meadows

at their feet.
If they had hearts,
that damned knot, that killer knot
that you could not pass

(after all that was already passed),
would just slide through
in the morning
and your friends would seize you

out of that lost place.
And you would whisper
into the heart of the Ogre:
Ich kann mehr tun

I am not yet finished.
.
.
.

Globigerina Ooze

he zooms into her

she does this to him, pulls him in
with all the gravity
of herself

he awakes into her
like twisting a lens into focus
and he is there in the swells
and the frets of her

at this scale
she is all of earth and sky
with her own longitude
great circles, rhumb lines
her spinning equatorial track
along which her sun meanders

a hay wain lurching
down some sunny ride

he travels within her
dizzy in her arc
he sits in the smoke
of her basalt sea floor
binds hard to her heaving plates
he settles there

a sea creature fallen soft
in Pacific ooze
.
.
.

left behind

yeah, they gather their dead leaves about them
and head for the next lonely planet
convinced about it, death, resurrection
they fly
and you wait soft and real and half-dead
for the burning
the return
from this other world
where dinosaurs still walk
where skies are filled with reeling birds

yeah, come home, all of you
come home on vaporous wings

five seconds before death

it all smells like a distant abattoir

a syringe boils away in a plastic kettle
we just look at it, all dumbstruck, bored anyway
it's after 3am, and we're still here
still here

but then I'm trying to crawl through
the hole
my hands bleeding
my hair thick with it
coughing it out

with someone bouncing on my chest
a flag waving on a faw away hillside
you just go like that, it seems
you don't see it coming
your head just flips up

and you stare
at some stain on the ceiling
in distant rictus
just like that—dead—that easy
this is the moment

people in the same room
talking about you
like you suddenly weren't there

just a flip and a staring
and a great downward surge
this is what it feels like
abandonment

a slight regret
that things weren't done a little better
things weren't finished
a gas jet was left on
an animal wasn't fed
a child wasn't held

something tiny
and faint
and fading
and gone

life lost - draft

here is a broken casement, a mouth
knocking in the wind
where a thief entered the house
where night leaked in
crept up through the floors
like fire or rising water
licking, lapping

where is he now?
can you still feel?

he looks out at her
through one small, cracked pane
grey with frost and cobwebs—
the casement rattles between them—
plants on the sill upturned, ruptured
leaking

earth and water—
here is the way in
he says, here

could you touch him now if you reached out?
look how your hands quiver

are you sure they're gone
she asks
he looks at her out there
in the blue lamplight
wondering who
who is gone?

who is that who is gone?

I'll just nail it shut for now
he says, just for now
I'll fix it later

knocking in the jagged wind

where the night
slanted in

a thief
who was already gone
.
.
.

Mistah Stubbs he dead

No whale oil streetlight-spermaceti
(funnelled pale through rancid copper pipes
from the South Pacific/Atlantic)
bubbles;
no cannibal stars

of Otaheite
and Elephant
(cooked in hogsheads retched
to top mizzens/gallants rolling
roiling ambergris
and baleens all dipping flame lugging)
to delight
late promenade-Europe

with such soft soap
such deep diving stars
such blow and effuse and heave
such massif of sea-light—
nevermore the Europa reel
in volcanic biology

and bilge and binge so incrimson aflame
with blow and dive and creak and squeak—

all pipes smoked out
.
.
.

Epicurus amongst the Stars - an Orzel Project collaboration

.

(able but unwilling to stop evil?)

Epicurus has seen all this before
emptiness coiling-arching-ejaculating
little wriggling radio-sparks
(atoms, he calls them: the Indivisible Ones)
of spirit—the battle
between Ugh ice and Ugh fire
—he is prudish about such extremes

(through all of this
the submarine looms grey in the deep)

Now all aboard for everlasting frolic!
he giggles a little into his goblet
what is that down there in the sea-dark wine?
no it is nothing, only disturbance

see how I push against resistance
only so far
how I am directed towards vitality
towards love?
a wise man does not write his own poetry,
but lives it in the flux of himself

Now he writes future words:
intergalactic coitus that devolves
into satellite areola for weary Apollo

liquid fire—placenta folding upon itself
into life—O I have seen dust
scurry helpless, entropy

(the submarine ceases all sound
waits, settles, listens—something...)

in the mind's widening eye
it reaches/arches/st r et c h e s—stops—retracts.
—shards drawn each inexorably back
to the source where the fabric tore op...e...n
—to seal)(shut
to watch it all again just as be/before... these
are his future words

(the submarine slowly rises in the dark: hoist the One-eyed Lady
we are blowing our damn tubes down here)

with this my meditations are complete
—now where
do I get a blowjob
and a rare haunch around here?

.

.

.

Homunculus - notes for a poem

I'm sharing
giving him the passwords
the codes and ciphers
the salutes and signs
the shibboleths
even the redundancy, the vital

nuancial redundancy of pause
repetition, inarticulation
stammer that emotes
micro-language

and the breathing, the required
facial arrangement
the analogues
the postures
and poses

the whole bundle

inviting him to join in
become like us
clothed in magic
welcome
accomplished and present

arriving, incarnate in language
in motion and process
all of it transferring
uploading

this transfer, this ongoing
play of bestowal
and ushering

now
call it

love

.
.

Emily

Emily walks on Sun Street
lifting her hems like wings
over the buried setts
her sinking couch far off, velvet and haze,
her scratching panes
her ghost moors
at last resolved
in a late mist
all tourists
laid low by the vastness, the heath
purple Emily
forever
mist in the pathways
quiet in the kissing gate
blooming
at the last

fragile as wind
on a flower's
black bridge

you, Li Po

you Li Po
twelve hundred years later
kill all dolphins
in the Yangtse
with your poems' potent yells
you Li Po lunatic

you, Li Po
are drowning
in your own face

cubird-camera

>red<(0) ...

...[_]-<
..../\shift

où, Li Po?

Où maintenant, Li Po?
chez Li Bai?
chez Du Fu?
Dites moi vite
et fort
en lettres de fumée sainte
où?

Kenosis 9/11

World in which he hangs

empty of everything
but wind
and light

this falling one
will never now hit the ground,
slide pins into holes,
complete the circuit

invisible above him
the rent through which he dropped

a dream that crept
at night
over the sky

behold the man
caught halfway from heaven
forever digitized, unknowable:

close up he vanishes
in pixel and light

the sacrificial anode
crackles blue with stasis
all the long night
a dying bird
a conscientious objector
in wartime
on the wire

a frozen prayer
pinned to the sky's mouth

unanswered
.
.
.

longing - draft

a stranger who has died comes to the door
invisible as wind
the door opens, closes, nothing

you wonder
as you turn away

who was that who scratched outside
in the night
who was that outside
and how

did he die
in wet Spring
under trumpets
or lonely as dead

trees
in a distant winter
and outside the owls all

turning their heads, outside
he shrinks back
gathering his mist about
him, moving off

along hillsides
thick with longing
.
.
.

O' Keefe's Slide

fingerbells in a house fire
on a neck tuned to fourths

a long-ago Christmas
wakes at midnight
shifty on a bar stool
as a cat reeling on ice

too fast too fast
the bells swell out
tearing the Atlantic fabric
thin bones busting through
the night swoons
yellow-orange
lamplight though beer
pumpkin teeth this O'Keefe
-- his fingers
wresting a stiff neck
watching it slide, slide

into the Morning Star
.
.
.

Interview with the Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud is on fire tonight
spinning like the monkey god
won't stop dancing for long enough
for you to get near
pin him up against the wall
go through his pockets

look for lies, sinister things
trouble bedded deep
rape-dreams of bonneted church-wives
from Middle England
in his blackbeard heart

all his answers impossible

wily and glitter-eyed, laughing
poison phials, curved daggers
secreted in his djinn-jumping
his cackling desert gimmicks

are your American bombs not dangerous?
he's flipping like dust devils
are your bombs full of flowers?
full of perfumes?

with all his answers-impossible
doesn't understand here
Mr Snowy don't approve
of grinning tooth-baring
weaving whirling whistling wild
hokey-faced afreet monkeys
want to have your wife and daughter

in reefer-mad Persian hareems
reeling perfumed with eunuch bombs
in suits teetering upright


like King Louie on hind legs
in the blind dance of all fire:
pumping his Cheshire-cat beard
up the tube

(for whose side unlaid?
—his Ground Zero flowers vanish
like lost holocausts
from the pages of time)

1492

1492 was a bad year for the postmoderns
Taino didn't see the Columbine Weaver coming down
with a quadrant and cross-staff
from Cadiz and Rome
writing them in as subplot
never had a Cortezcoatl to warn
of impending context-fiction
(mere poetry of space they are now)
in their nakedness/decorousness/praiseworthiness/

(though it is *true*)
made to like us act wake up all-dead quiet
silent/soundless/muted/dumbfound/voiceless
tacit in archipelagic echo
of coral emptiness resound
never saw the jackboot bestseller
descending forever and ever

(rolling surf on shale—
never felt the polynesiac swells lift
in their southsea orchidectomies
of wolf semen, of navigant creole)

on a human face of narrative real estate
never saw themselves textual unfacted
loaned out to the future web address-
squatters of thread-plane-hijack
but they are the last great sane problem

in 'american' history
before all connection was severed
by right whales
with Mothership Essex
and the arqebusiers just forgot
to look again
where they left it crying out so tricoteuse

nothing sane will come out of 'america' not ever
until Osama bin Laden is made honorary
Coyotanansie Doctorate of Hashishim-Alamout-Reflexives
at UC Irvine

until TRUE is REALLY
N=O=T=H=I=N=G
knitting hats by guillotine light

chewing dead potatabac
Jacques de Holy Molay thus thou art
finally fully resolutely
unavengèd and all
baphometed ever out
along shores of silent ash

Saint Ives Estate

Canada geese float on light

Wind in Scotch pines

Clouds amongst the lilies

Arrows shivering in warm air

Lady Blantyre reads
the wooden pages of the seasons
through rain and sun
with eyes of far-off Autumn

in the Goblin Wood
we lay our hands on warm rock
breathe scents of lichen

teals and mallards move
as swans sail in for bread

the rainbow lake shatters
into dancing fragments

rain mists the forest

carp drift like shadows
beneath ripples
.
.
.

Iron Age Palimpsest

Walk in invisible ruins
hands outstretched like dowsers
sensing with fingers
the sharp tinge, the chill
of ghosts, rise in the mind

from the air there are tracks
clear across the hill
familiar to the dead
slack-grids and contours
whorls and ridges aligned

beside the dry stream bed;
bone-delineations of a world
that imprinted its dreams
beneath the creeping bracken
and the dry-stone walls

the same sounds of the hidden
water quicken underground
the same scents teem on the air
though middens are grassy mounds
cooking-fires, gleaming furze

stand on a threshold
that reeled through days
of wedding and birth
bearing of the long-wrapped
to bedding in rough earth — look out at morning

into the same soft haze winding
along the clough — the same dawn
light that blinded the last men stepping
forlorn-furled from turf-dark
of a fast-flickering limestone night

to see silhouettes out on the stark hillsides
shouting the end of one bright green world.

Some heavily-accented thoughts on transtextual (Orzel) poetry

In the appropriation of fragments of text from their initial context, Orzel poetry allows those fragments to live again, to be reread outside of their original political, social, historic constraints; orzel exploits the innate reflexivity of language events.

Transtext is the pure randomly reflexive postmodern activity, the re-deploying of text as construction material -- as meta-text, as discovery, as skeletal matter, as cross-correspondence, as fossil, as seance, as sediment, as sphynx, as birdsong, as windchimes, as EVP, as the riding of the Loa, as bumps in the night, as handfuls of life-in-dust in the shadow of a red rock -- with no spurious acknowledgement of authorship.

These original texts are no more to be considered 'owned' creations than is a handful of dirt baked into a brick. The completed transtexts are similarly handfuls of dirt to be plundered by anyone who reels with possession and desire. They are only owned at the moment of assembly. Subsequently they are dancing dust in the air.

Orzel-fragments are the chaos-desire sigils of AOS. They exist only until they can be subsumed into the greater unconscious of the resurrected text that never existed, where they begin to work unseen. The act of transtexting is the act of burning sigils, of letting desire metastasize. Orzel is the forgotten never-work of the Zos-Kia Cultus.

Never mind any of that shite, though. Orzel is a shortcut to stark dynamism. Some people have to work very hard to achieve that authenticity of voice.
Orzel delivers it readymade.

Fermat 1

.
[this] sinking ship's bilgewash scubmarean
pelagiene sparkledown anglerfishtonic bedsheen
starryvene curvenacht moonin-choristatomene
angelarclist celestian beta-articetachristomine

ballad of the Lamper at the Paros gab

(and the Lamper will venture out of his air-conditioned idyll)
it's writ in the Paros gab
.........some people just that sort of people
with a plan (the myth of pet overpopulation and flooding patterns)
a thing like suicide/midnight at the crossroads/a bank job
or just blowing one black night
..........................in the rain

..........................and you know
how much easier wartime
you remember (amid this idyll are hints of certain deadness)
those snowed-in days the other kids free from school
..........................ran across white fields
stood steaming, excited
..........................in the grace and novelty
(the refugee capering idyll
..................of a safe disaster)

..............everyone (reinscription
of the iconography of peasant innocence)
saved.........................gathered up
..........loved at last (here with his family is the Lamper's
one hope for new life)
this crew has a flair for the dramatic

heading down with heavy blankets into the tubes
first night under sirens
the same ripple and chatter
kids clatter out of school --
into this fantastic idyll come Baal, Cronos, Herod...
(now this crew has a flair for the dramatic)

fire alarms sounding
beginning of a world
(main focus of the Paros gab)

(el trabajo es el refugio de aquellos que tienen todo para hacer)

(just as soon as it starts to smile real hard)
this Lamper crew
has a flair for the dramatic idyll --

O, tha most tragickle tragedie
than ivver wus crogledizled
flarfle-ized and summerisled!

the Lamper hit damp dawn
and start shamblin scrawn

Uh, he think, Uh Idol Cru
haz uh fleur forlorn
.
.
.

murder glass

I'm on the glacier early enough to see a body drift by
two feet down
splayed and twisted
in old red nylon
and a rictus of frozen shout
drifting down
to the snout
like that
a piece of death from 1980
or whatever
just going down quietly
the grief long over
and his karabiners all froze up silent
so I reach down
grasp his head
hold it against the current
for a few seconds
his cold head
with its frozen brain
just hold it
then let it go
and I rise up
into the sunbeams
over Montenvers
on wings of pure glass
thinking this
is a fine moment to be a corpse
in a red nylon cagoul
swimming into the blue deep day
so damn cold and lost

porn addiction

went to see the new Nick Berg beheading movie and Christ
I had to sleep all night
with the light on laughing
like Linda Blair's head spinning
like a east europe

whore with a habit
and a clock running
fucktime
some level of ooze
you know
is okay close up but

I watched the first two minutes only
of the apostates stoning fuckvid
before I knew there was no love

out there
between planets
the wrap was like this:
like snails stripped out of shells
and waving writhing
little slimy asses in the fearful
then Linda Lovelace says
she now a nun

chugging on God
and I agree
some things you don't wanna swallow
all the way
for this
I declare the CIA
the motherlode
of pornography
with the ghost-McCarthy halfway down

the Bushthroat gaggin shotgun
and I sit up all ill
listening to the scratching
dunking dead cookies in the milk
Linda your bright clitoral rose soars
like satellite coma fire dunk

Poem about nothing

never like this, Andy Warhol
avoided your eyes, looked away
for the summer the kids came to
as though all along
there had been a problem

of unconsciousness, a passing out
parade in which
they shuffled
and fell like aces Wild Bill
cocking the last moment

he would ever know in the ring

of fire and ancient of days
fell like flowers from the burst
balloonmen, wee cummings and
Montgolfiers like captured clouds

of breath on cold mornings still dark
the old house on the hill lit suddenly
they dropped
to their knees grazed
as bullets that took flight
over the lake at dawn
chorus of wolf voices
that cry in long dreams
falling all around
their faces
looking

look at them looking
for it as they fall
look at them the swallows
the swallows

wheeled back
in balloons
for the spring
.
.
.

robot draft

robot stretches out
runs through his circuits
feeling for sleep

lights play
across his shell
dance like tension tics--
a humming through subcutaneous
membranes--

he is cavern
carapace, plastron

flashing crystal
pool of black within
rigid, liquid
sol/gel
lights going off/on
everywhere voices

animal sounds (something is coming
through) as though his circuitry
is looping
he feeds

choral music
into his night
(grunts
bird calls that come
of their own volition)
music to heal and soften

Christ, he thinks
I'm stiff as a damn board

stiffasadamnboard!


.
.
.

homophora poem (an ayeaye langpo)

the queen in the mountains
could not see the clouds swirling
over the capitol
the fountain squares reeled with pigeons
the turrets and balustrades
sinking in leaves
whirling leaves
in autumn
under our clouded sky
our frame
of light
ours
here
us
.
.
.

Poems about nothing. Number 1

These are filaments of light
or perhaps plant tissue
or flesh--cellular rods that grow
in memory at least and defy all

definition all attention all description.
Even here, even in the cracks
and the darkness before
the waiting ends they grow

like this, even flourish after
a fashion. They grow
with vigour and urgency, even
performing under these conditions

the stark acts of mating
or propagation, whichever it is,
however it can be described.
These filaments will never

swell into redwoods, or giants
who stalk the earth into myth
or shock their way into dreams
but even here, even here

is a life attempted. Even here
is a sort of brazenness that we
can admire, begin to know,
and reach towards.

Baltic lover

the Baltic loved one who sleeps - Jeremy Prynne
might in fact be a submarine skulking
and "echoing" in territorial waters - John Kinsella

We Dive at Dawn
Orzel left the Gulf of Danzig
for open water
Just think - submarine night
Dive! Dive! Dive! Baltic Gal!

I love Europe I love its Jungle theme
I love it Mrs B......dive, dive, dive
(it stalks the drowned Brandenburg Gate
the Shoulder of deep Orion—
Hauer and Ford submariner captains

......across the Tannhauser Gate
......sea-beams glitter)

OOoooohhh I love the race! I'm a race fanatic
I love it Mrs B!
I love things you people wouldn't even believe
letters from the Kursk bubble
like tears in rain
clanging on the hull

love letters
and fire (a chemical reaction) 108 metres down
the Barents Sea
things you wouldn't even believe
I love it
I love it
I love it
..........oh

to death
........a sudden irruption

.......silence of the sea lover
.......who sleeps
.
.
.
.
Prynne's poem Rich in Vitamin C can be read here

Other sources include extracts from Rutger Hauer's famous pre-death soliloquy from Bladerunner.

poetry poem - draft

feels like the carving of a nation from new air
or dreams
or the long address to the world
on urgent matters
--the removal of doubt
the resolving of problems out there--
big stuff big as worlds
that we do in private
in our little glow
at the keyboard
in hope that someone somewhere will find our importance
cast up upon the sand
glittering, irresistible
the answer to it all within
is how it feels this thing that we do here in ourselves
and strive to put forth with the unquestioning urgency
of any young plant
like all that it feels
but is only a little thing done in secret
underneath all that
just a hidden shaking of the tree at the centre
(the tree adorned like a wishing tree with bright charms
and spells for the alluring of spirits
and Oh I know most of us
end up snared in our own spell
staring at our own colours
forgetting everything
but really it's a side thing; it is. And it's not that. It's just not.
Those fluttering rags, those drifting shapes
those rhymes and rushes (all petals to bring
the workers to do the work that cannot be done
to act the last part of it the missing piece
the moment when it catches
the final act of the theft of fire--
all chimes and hues and incense otherwise, that's all)
those musics and clevernesses
all asides
all adjoinings
and not the thing
itself (though anyone has a right to dress nicely
and smell good). No, not all that. This! The communiqué, the address
the message the long song in the night
just the singing not even the song
that or something like it. Maybe that then. Just that. A convulsion of some kind.)
the mast the spine the frame
that wants to stretch its bones
just for the sheer stretching of it all
thinking maybe its stretching is unique, exemplary and vital
and filled with the representative charge of all moments
as though this act could stand for all acts
if you would only look into it.

In this spirit, I ask you please to look into it
for at least a few moments
before you move on.
This asking is all I am asking
for I cannot requite myself in this way.
To everyone their little looking in by the other.
To everyone this act of attention this wish this question this prayer
(every poem a prayer).
To everyone all this little vast yearning.
To everyone this little ongoing truth
that the very small
is the whole damn world
and all the teeth-chattering shudder and collision of new nations.

oh a distant seasong that might go on forever

Spots on the crossjack and moonsail flots
make dead leeway toward five stars east
gaff the yards I have not creased
one hand for... one hand for knots
one for the ship
and one for the dip
ah yer lateen rips wet weather
when you see me warpin tether
up Whitby wharf with a bellyfull
of iron-blowed skerryscull.
I'm luffed and laden me screechin maiden
and deadeye wire-stropped
with the monkey fiddler storm-stopped.
I'll wait at the wind's gate
to the wind strait out
to the new wind haulin
and the straight weight yawlin me glistenin singin frigate bird
if you just unchest the holy seaword
till the leech give it up
an the beachin bring me cup
am agog with grog in the barefoot web
like me father swarmin
to the fierce warmin moment
sloopin slough me beat, me reach
no driftin distant doubt.
Oh me farflung frothin fortune to flout!

lerv

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa
like this? Is it?
hold you down?
insert a catheter?
Huh, what? Huh?
I only g
et up like
what 3 times a night
don't even know if it's big enough
to take this mother
catheter
is this where we are
this
this
this
I got nothing to give to this
fall apart
fall
fragment
rain falls all over
and every man gotta right
to hold his woman's breast
at the last moment
just in case
the air start to slow
and he wish to breathe
his last moments
in love's gasping poements.

wail far out in mist

who is this speaking
I'm lisnin up hard
who
you know who
I don't
you do
I went there for some reconciling that's all
yes but you knew knew all along
like no way these things don't work for you you're doomed haha
who says this who
I do You do
who
I said already you know
it was a Crime Scene
or a WELL full of blood
how about that
hahaha you idiot
you're going back to infancy
and you expect what
there were cheeses and chocolate
and a Buddhist Garden
in which we could prostrate ourselves
and we talked like old strangers
and she could hug all she wanted
until the breath flung out of me
and nothing there
would make a tiny difference
still we looked at the garden and the river
and talked about someone's baby got absconded ducted
straight out of safety live into a cloudworld
where we catch our breath like that
yes but that's not it is it
not it at all
no time at all did you move from the clutch
to the cry
who is this
who is this
who is this?

The clock is a stooping cartoon dinosaur; the men are alarmed, but are unsure why. Each suspects the other plans to steal his work if he sleeps.

I was listening to John Tavener's 'The Protecting Veil': what does this music have to do with a protecting veil? How does this music express or suggest a veil? Tavener states his intent with the title, but take that away - what is left of veilhood? He urges us on towards veils of protection with those three words, but then what? What? If he had named the same piece of music 'The Birth of a Blue Whale', would we have dreamed along dutifully in this other channel, hearing/seeing the booming of the ocean, the hulk of a mother, the first flaps of her calf's tail? Not a veil in sight?

I realise here I have inadvertently chosen an example that mirrors the original. Is there an example that does not? Maybe all tropes are one substance suggested by different prompts. As though we each walk to the same pool and drink from it, and seeing our own reflection, claim it as our own unique well, over and over and over and over... when it is just the stuff that is there, undifferentiated, unselected, impersonal, not owned, just lived along with earnestly in the assumption that somehow the water that we assimilate is part of us uniquely.

This narrative, like all human narratives, is ultimately false (and not false), as it assumes eternal life; assumes that our vast impressions of ourselves are somehow acknowledged by the universe (they are), and that we are granted ownership and the power to create (we are): as opposed merely to finding pretty pebbles in the dirt and arranging them carefully to show to our parents, before they fall from our grey fingers back into the mud at the other end (this antithesis is of extinction, and is as redundant as that which it refutes).

Of course the music has nothing to do with veils and everything to do with veils. It is intrinsically and uniquely expressive of veils in ways that someone unaware of the title of the piece would instantly grasp. Of course it is nothing whatever to do with veils. It could equally be the soundtrack to a film of someone preparing food (there we go again). Big mirror, little mirror, cracked mirror, rippled surface, veil of night, pinpricks, light, dark, distance, void, the impossibility (and certainty) of knowledge within a cellular instrument. Yes and no. No and yes. Where are you watching this from? Yes, so am I.

diamonds (dedicated to Don Paterson)

(In the lame way the mindless find sparks fires ice love
bright coal silence feeling)

there on the hillside look
are men with nets and pins
marching to an alliance with the landscape

(I ask you: how hard can you squint?
If you dig your thumbs into your eyes
those images you see are called phosphenes
not phosphates (are they connected?)
but I don't know that they are real
not real-real
not like dreams and things are real.)

I feel this one deep inside me, he says
like tornadoes or a sudden urge

later they stack their devices at the bar
giggling a little
at the embossed pewter urinal
in which they bathe their eyes
(now brimming with unwept sparks-fires-ices-loves...)

This is what it means, I suppose? The unabashed stare
into the eye of the page
the focus on 'the drama of the inner'... Is that it?
Is that what it means? In a spotlight like that?

Oh no he isn't... etc.
This chanted enough times could drown China etc.
A butterfly flaps one wing
and 'a page turns
in the world next door'.
(I forget sometimes whether we ever remembered
whether there is a next door.
Oh I'm waffling needlessly -
this is no help at all.)

it feels so big, he says, squirming, feels like certainty
rightness, like nature rushing out glorious

Oh, time, gentlemen, please, hurry...
these diamonds when we tried them
floated like ducks

it flows, he says, from me to you in the channels unimpeded

weatherproof for anything
except gunpowder and alcohol
or a human gazing into the flash
to see the effable glory (one doesn't like to use cuss words needlessly)

oh but the love the fire in its depth
the way that it simply must be right!

All this eye-pressing, it seems to work somehow

Could this be why Silliman thinks the coffers are empty...

"The work of the Postmoderns delegates the production of meaning to the reader, their poetry being largely derelict in its responsibility to aid it. The reader is alone. For those of us quickly bored by our own company, the result is work that can be objectively described as extremely boring."

Don Paterson *justifying* his exclusion of the British avant garde on the occasion of publishing his Anthology of New British Poetry 2004.

I thought I'd juxtapose this quote from Tim Love's essay on the avant garde/mainstream schism here:

'The formalist's stock criticism of free verse applies even more strongly to avant-garde writing. Each year the "Cambridge School" of poets (a school that nobody belongs to) hold the CCCP (Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry). CCCP poems tend to have broken sentences, multiple styles and perhaps most strikingly, multiple voices. Dialogue with the reader isn't just implicit. Eliot's "that's one way of looking at it - not very satisfactory" becomes integrated into the poem (indeed, at the readings it isn't always clear when the poet's introduction ends and the poem begins). In contrast, mainstream poems have an air of dramatic irony - they, like an actor in a farce, seem unaware of what's going on behind them, things obvious to a well-read audience. [My italics]'

More to come.

Bhutanese Fire Puja, Harewood House 2006 - draft

Buddhist abbots show up in dirty track suits
with spark holes
and coke cans
and no matches
and it rains a little
as they borrow a lighter for the flares

(look this thing is all fire
words are fires and faces gather around them
flush from flaming lippy fricatives -
fire is to be seen bursting all over this scene)

and Lord and Lady Harewood
sit slow with silk scarves

and faces that don't move
as the monks change into cassocks
and perform
throwing sparks and pebbles
that we scrabble for
and the firelight glistens
on the beard
of Lord Harewood Lord Lascelles in whose grounds this scene
unfolds, with his mansion black behind him and the moon
behind that his snowy beard snowy the word combed snowy
like a fantasy wizard
sparks everywhere no movement of his face not even
at the end
when they rise and walk
into the vast shadow
all those slaves in Barbados
carved from their black bones
and cast with their big eyes into the future.

They leave without pebbles
not having scrabbled for them.

giant cowslip

stone path to the cascade
through scent of jasmine and high grass
stupa in silhouette with tourists
out there even
on the path to the boathouse
images forming urgently
above the rushing water
a red flower like an alien asshole
or a claw, or a crab
all of these
I try to take in macro
but shake too much
time runs past
along the river
rattling the trees
flattening the water
on the stones
whipping up petals
into my face
lowing on up the slopes
down which strangers come running
to catch the sunset
against the Buddha's profile
but I don't think Buddhism is a peaceful thing
a sunset a flower a breeze a calm lake
I think it is the war of all things
at all times
and carving a hole in it
with the most vicious weapons available.

a quick ramble about shambo

So today they came and took Shambo the Welsh Hindu bull with bovine tuberculosis despite the monks holding a continuous act of worship around him dragged them out of the way led a garlanded bull out to be taken away to receive a lethal injection and head out of all sorrow
...into whatever but that all happened 300 miles away and I only knew of it because of the TV that had imported the moment or some part or some properties of the moment, carefully selected, over here to where I happened to be looking in open like a fool to whatever they decided to upload into my head and I couldn't help but feel sad for Shambo and ignore the 2,000,000 other cattle killed today and I have to wonder if this transfer this shift this import and this selective teleportation of only the poetic, the magical, the evocative, the demonic elements present at Shambo's stall is some kind of actual metaphor or metonym. I can't quite get at this one, but the process occurs in reality, rather than just in text or language. Representative forms from the story of Shambo are implanted in me, I assimilate them and respond as the semiotics direct. The signs are not Shambo, but I believe Shambo is real. (This may be delusional on my part, but if so then the world is far stranger and more sinister than I think.)

Although I know I am being manipulated by story-tellers (tricksters) I still respond. If I think of 6 million Holocaust victims I feel little; if I am told the story of just one, or shown a face, or some personal effects recovered, I feel more. What is this process? Is it only knowable as story-telling? Is it more fundamental, or am I ignoring the depth of meaning inherent in the term 'story-telling'?

I am some kind of robot, and people can send signals to me from afar, instructing me to dance or throw up my hands or weep, and I will obey. Poor Shambo, says the robot, befuddled with words and images and the manipulation of signs. Do I object to my response, or do I attempt to claim it as somehow my own, and not something prompted and controlled by others? What is my free will regarding Shambo? Do I have any free will once I am exposed to his story? Even if I fight it I am reacting to the dictates of others.

Maybe I will strive robotically for total indifference to all such stories of bulls. Why will I do that? Why did the idea of doing so occur to me? Is this story influencing my urge to strive in such a way? The only sensible and proactive approach is to remove myself from all exposure to symbols and influence for a long time, and then ask what I will do next. After this hypothetical cleansing of interference, assuming it to have been totally successful, would I have any will to do anything other than satisfy the requirements of the body and shamble around with a vague interest in bright things? Forget it, let's go with Shambo and embrace garlanded slavery, and believe for a few stupid moments that we are free.

Save our Shambo!

Why does that remind me of this?

Postscript: Shambo executed last night. Monks in mourning. Durga festoons Shambo with flowers upon his arrival. Now looky here!

soup recipe (the dreaded Babel of langpo)

(note: all ingredients below
may mean different things
to different readers
assuming readers are eaters
I can't cater for local differences
at this level of nuance
and some variation in the outcome
regarding flavour, zest and nutrition
must be expected.)

1. Many, many cloves of garlic, fired, seared, enraged
but unbowed (purple Spanish is best, but there we go already).

2. Onion always oniononiononion
desquamated and stripped and peeled
delayered with art

3. Then a hillside tumble
of leekcarrotsugarsnapspinachcabbagelentils
into the bruisèd alembic
to caramelise fervently
many minutes of dissolution

(I spotted a tricky reference to Krishna
and honey and cancer
and sunshine
in caramelise
again the readereater is advised
to exercise discretion
concerning which ingredients
are most likely and only ingest
elements already roughly familiar
from his/her own diet-narrative
--no one really eats sunshine or cancer,
for instance. Really.)

4. Stock, much stock beef blood stock
for of injecting testosterone-syntagmeme chokes

5. Fish sauce and fermented bean ooze

still slow heat at the vessel
agitation must feel natural
and unforced
if ingestion is not to be troubled
with peristalsis of lies
and echo of jackboots
in a soupy night.

6. Pepper of all kinds ground and befuddled
now raises the prima materia (one clear word,
one indisputable sharing of essence, one most simple consommé
in which everyone agrees is transparency and good intent)
dripping into daylight
all that remains
deep
down
soup
shine
green
steam
and all I am doing is sharing a recipe
and war between us already
there is.

new executive orders

*
Reichstag thermite blah
white hot in the ruins of recount
of a democratic party late in the day
and the barbecue just cold ash
(many inconvenient truths)

(the false-flag (Iwo Jima? Ground Zero?)—
of the fathers—Toratoratora!—Atta! Atta!—
Our Allfather Hiroshima
^{(the well where words wither)}—)

"total wipeout in 2008 of Republican..." you believe this
Pearl Harbour Blah Pearl Necklace
a spurt of new executive orders
that they'll let this happen
already in place about all our necks
(Martial Law/Scooter Libby/The Bohemian Grove)
like they won't do something?

(Get this burning issue off me!)

"you could sense something was gonna blow
question was what and who"
(a rigged explosion in democracy
- the falling man)
"Something's in the works," he stated,
"in the works...Chertoff has predicted them."
Habeas Corpus, Port Authority
the thing that penetrated the Pentagon
clearly had no wings
(and get this: the world watched in horror already in place)

like everyone their own twin tower now, rigged to blow
.
.
.

quickening (in parataxis)

—two years old—folded up still—like wings, wings in a chrysalis—furled, maybe that's the word—looking out, yes—laughing, of course (ha ha ha)—crying too, of course—still folded, coiled up—animal-unknowing,all that—three and a half/four better—more like it, better—first time flies out—little bird, scared, of course scared—high branches etc—dizzy,sudden swoop there!—recovery, catching—catching self, see—just above dead leaves—litter & hum—forest floor breeze, all that—flies into (own chest)—cave, maybe, myth, all that—dreams in there, you know—story writing itself—ghostly hand at table, likely—like that—woods, wild animal faces, maybe—primates, mostly, wild of dreams—fascinated—size + power + movement, after all—what he is after all, who—now clear memories, floodgates—first moment of love, after all, yes—wind now, wind—up hurtling himself—all starts here like this here—love, memory, who and what—quickening—wind—unfurling—

heading

heading home

observe closely what heading we are on

dead-heading

heading for disaster

subject: heading

This heading will take us to our home on the World Wide Web.

quickening

at two years
still folded up into himself
looking out, laughing, leaning out
but still coiled
in his animal-unknowing

at three and a half or four
for the first time
he flies out of his body
like a little bird falling scared
from a high branch
dizzy with the sudden swoop
catching itself in the air
just above dead leaves

litter and hum
of a forest floor

in a dream he flies into his own chest
sees his story writing itself
sees woods, wild animal faces
and he is fascinated
by his size
his power
his movement
who he is

now will come his first clear memory

and here
is his first moment of love
before the wind catches him up
and sends him hurtling

*
*
I began writing seriously a decade ago and was slow to learn. For years I was
awkward, sloppy, given to overstatement, the sentimental image, the theatrical resolution. From The Chinese Notebook by Ron Silliman
*
*

a short walk poolside (first attempt at something)

1979 at the swimming gala
with the whole school lined up
around the pool
and she swam her length or two or three
(much I don't remember)
and all the school can't have been there
as I recall the pool area was too small for all those kids
so it's really like a dream where everything fits
into a place too small
and there is that steamy shouting of swimming pools
and she swims through all of it
all those faces
boys and girls laughing and steaming
and maybe she swims a good time in her heat
I don't know
but I know that she gets out of the pool
age fourteen in her swimwear
and walks the length of the pool
past the spectators
with her costume skewed by the swim
and one young breast exposed
just a budding and small thing
not even a breast back then
but something that everyone sees and laughs about
and she isn't alerted to this
because of the noise
and she doesn't know
until someone shouts something out loud
some boy who just doesn't know
and this is the phenomenological equivalent
of a mouse on a battlefield somehow triggering a cannon
with a ball that falls far off
in the future.

And I don't see her again
for several years,
but later she gets a cyst
in that same breast
and she needs an operation to take it out
they stitch it up, but it embarrasses her often
with boyfriends
as they don't do it well
and it leaves a scar
then she gets an abortion at some point
and struggles for a long time
with what it's all about.
Then she goes for a biopsy
and right in there, that exact same place
where it all hit.

(And he looks at her
and he tries to imagine roses
pink roses growing and swelling
singing in there where the cancer is.
And every day he imagines roses
even makes it a ritual
every day at dusk.

Even when she goes in
he thinks of roses
but most of all wonders
why he couldn't stand that day by the pool
couldn't rise in the heat
and the shouting
and cover her up.

And he has to wonder
who these imaginary roses
are really for now
now that it's all too late
for any stupid roses
to change anything.)

Pope, get your ass to Mombasa

^{http://www.kwanzaakeepers.com/africa-aids-death-count/africa-aids-death-count.htm}

Pope, get your ass to Mombasa
hit the hot shanty streets
in the Popemobile
a sack of condoms to throw to the kids
a T-shirt saying condoms are cool with Jesus
(make that in Kiswahili too)
order in a lot more Popes
more Popemobiles
more archbishops, deacons, cardinals
(all of them funkier than old John-Paul
all of them mobile, angry, armed with many condoms
and the message)
go out spreading the word
from the North Coast to the Cape
condoms are cool with Jesus
in Mombasa and Nairobi
Addis Ababa and Gaborone
Cape Town and Natal
Kinshasa and Kigali
don't stop driving, waving, talking, giving, saying
sorry for the previous reticence people
telling how the New Funky Pope got the message in a holy vision
Get thee to Africa, Pope, to help with the new Holocaust
and issue me no Papal bull
tell them how condoms are beloved of God
how they ensure redemption amongst all users
that the very act of putting on
of a condom
is a holy act in itself
is a prayer
and a hymn
to a God who cares more for life
than scriptures and stuffy old men

you can lie a little if you have to
Pope, you're a missionary
getting the message across is your mission
whatever it takes
so get your ass to Mombasa
Maputu and Mogadishu
Khartoum and Harare
Pope, your road to heaven leads due South
out of Vatican City
winding down ice cold, logical
from Alex to Cape Town
better get new tyres on the Popemobile
a non-stop driver, some caffeine pills
and a truckload of you know what.
Bon voyage, Funky Pope,
now you're on a mission from God.
.
.
.
.
The Vatican lies about condoms: here

^{More flowers from Deb. Click the pic to see a big version.}

Golem: a prolapsed sonnet

If I had a time machine,
there's one place I would certainly go:
to that room, to that murky and flickering scene
(back thirty or forty years or so)
where they reared me out of mud
and slapped me into waking;
carved a word into my head, drew my first ever blood
-- one word only, and the air all shaking, shaking;
one word for all of my future time --
(a word I have never yet read).
............................
That's probably where I would go, just to know;
just to see what it said,
and if I rhyme.
.
.
(links to golems here and here )

killing poem

killing someone must be something else
you do it slowly
stand in front of the chosen-at-random victim
and tell him what's happening
maybe you have a gun
maybe you have him wired up to a bomb
either way you tell him
you're deciding whether to kill him
tell him that he is a whole world,
that he knows nothing beyond his own nervous system
that the sky the stars the earth
are all contained within himself
tell him this: The vast circular night of the cosmos
is all contained within your skull motherfucker
and that you might just snuff it all out
for no reason other than the mighty caprice
of a killer
then you can do what you want
do it, watch him die confused
or walk away in an act of godlike compassion
either way you are all-powerful
a destroyer of worlds
limping home through the rain
in a funny hat