sans armes, ni haine, ni violence—Albert Spaggiari

.

He had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was also undoubtedly the stupidest; there was little about melancholia he didn’t know; there was little else that he did — Auden on Tennyson

SHINE

after a few weeks of this new start

though she could see he was trying

she could also see that it wasn't working

oh she loved him and everything

but she couldn't keep living through this

like this 

for ever

& so one night when he was fucked up

she slipped the gun

into his open mouth

blew his head all over the wall

behind the bed

where they had made their babies

she sat there afterwards for a while

cried a little

made some cocoa

read a Stephen King novel

until she fell asleep

in the night she cuddled him

in his dark uncomplicated wetness

(Published in 'Burning Gorgeous' 2010)

.

sepia devotions of the dead

Slut (work in progress)

...nearer to the sun and air—wind in the willows
i am the son and the heir—the smiths
yeah, man, the elements—anon


I want to be in the sunny place
[she says points]
—points across the valley—
(like John County Clare
magicking a far-off sheep)

even to use that word is abuse
yes, the s-word (or its many toxic siblings
for it cannot be—is itself
an act of self-negative life-negative
sexual colonization
—Alice Aforethought

oh oh how elemental oh how mythic
she cries out above, 'cross the valley
but now /(she feels silly.and. her voice
is weak and unconvincing

(Librivox audiobooks:
the American woman reading Herodotus
pronounces Herakles to rhyme
with some plural of hysterical)

although one cannot quibble
at such democratizat or ask this of the lulz

—how much is left to go, Eli?
is it so very hard to die?


(ells left to go, many ells: strange, almost
Dada Nells from Imbros)

" 'We think,' they say, " 'that it is unjust
to carry women off, but to be anxious
to avenge rape is foolish—wise men
take no notice of such things' "—
attrib' 'The Persians'—Herodotus.

[the legal heirs to 'treasure L'
from the Calvert mound-side
of Hisarlik in dispute with
the Pushkin—Sophie Schliemann
arrayed in gold—who now
can say what when

— for thereof the arcsin of width/length
.4 indicates a 24 degree angle of *spatter*
.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º>,

the bullet and the rainbow

this will apply equally: archaeology/geology
..........................as murder
the trajectory the rainbow the drift the erratics the spatter
extrusion and intrusion/the rapid cooling or the slow
—rate of insect attack post mortem

and after all this it was not after all
the black rats but infacto the gerbils
proliferate [adj] one malbenign sommer
in northern Chine in Mongolia
what spread the buboes of after all blackdeath
to Europus—

on the backs of the Mongol hordes—Simon Schama

go easy, go slow, Schliemann
says Calvert, alarmed at the sight
of a million spades. axes, steam hammers, explosives
most of all the robot tank-moles
such industry, such heedless illustry
he will cry
..........................so shall we all, breathless child of the hill
.........................(thief of future past)—Madeleine Shine. 2008.

it merely means 'work,' says Heinrich
read Kapek when I hear the word
I reach for my Hanns Johst
when I hear the heart says Reich
I reach for my Brownian Motion
to rouse us, Waring, who's alive?

for the time has come the walrus said
to live of many things—Madeleine Shine. 2008.
*lustration (come back to this point?)*

"I don't know what to do"
—Anon 2015

these words uttered listlessly:
give me a look like a hostage crisis
(a culebra cut in Trojan prophylactic gold)

is this enough, Eli?
is it so very hard to die?

is bucket a compound noun?
is mama a compound noun-well
a clerkenwell (Oh well—John Winston Smith the Resignation-Lennon)

"I will try my best for that not to happen
if I feel suspicious I will
throw THROW it out of my head"

for we are holding a drug bee a writing bee
a sex bee a cookery bee a future bee a bee to be
—unknown; possibly from ben, a prayer or prayer meeting—
it is only formally and foolishly fortunate that we are not apiarists

(for what do you call it when a bunch of apiarists
gather to tend and discuss their livestock?

for though Anglo-Saxon, it rhymes
with the Arabic word for darling)

[shibari kinbaku lingchi -- come back to this?]

the kessel envisaged as a giant hedgehog

From Middle English frithien, from Old English friþian (“to give frith to, make peace with, be at peace with, cherish, protect, guard, defend, keep, observe”), from Proto-Germanic*friþōną (“to make peace, secure, protect”), from Proto-Indo-European *prēy-, *prāy- (“to like, love”). Cognate with Scots frethe, freith (“to set free, liberate”), Danish frede (“to have peace, protect, inclose, fence in”), Swedish freda (“to cover, protect, quiet, inclose, fence in”), Icelandic friða (“to make peace, preserve”).


when you were gestating birthing fixing

what dreams were begat of the world?

Margaret Shakespeare died age 1 year 1563
400 years before one's birth, before the deaths of Huxley
Kennedy [Jelly Fish Kiss] Robert Frost, Sylvia
Plath, Edith Piaf, Patsy Cline, a bullet from
the back of a bush Medgar Evers, William
Carlos Williams, Tristan Tzara, Tough Tony,
Jean Cocteau, Georges
Braque, Theodore Roethke, Elmore
James I gather unto myself such magic harvest
in sustenance for the late survival of birth
such dreams for a year for which also
the invention of sex and the Beatles-also-born
in vinyl and Bond-born in celluloid—Profumo,
well one need not mention


[that Ulster-rendered 'now' is a clusterfuck

of /ah/aw/ee/ phonemes (visibility moderate
to good, becoming schwa later)
and high-rising/falling terminal becoming cyclonic
quite unlike the monotone English a-oo
(Utsire an island around which herring swim
far, a long-long...)]


evidence of an immortal typist-monkey

unearthed near Stratford where ever ...


(Miss Fay Wray, come down come down—

ever too high in the widening gyre and gimble
in the Dædalus of thine own inner hast borne
thee too lofted in the Empire inner statehood
whose freudian grillers now will tak thee back ...)

... to that sweep of sunlit snow across the valley
—but something had gone out in her
and would not come again)

and then he knew
that was not where
he was going

OR

another time-things: ice

OR

O dark traveller, click the hyper-link 'the Weshesh'
on the 'Sea-Peoples' page of Wikipedia
find out, at last
where we have been all along
bouncing along the corridor
we did not take
to the hall of mirrors
for humankind cannot bear
very much bouncing bloody reflection

OR


"Do you know Carl Garner, Brandon Garner

or Fast Eddie?"


I do not.



You don't have junk here (hooray!)

—Microsoft SmartScreen is working
to keep it out of your inbox too.

OR

in the 1980s I worked as a recreation assistant
in Meanwood Park Hospital in Leeds, running a 'music
and movement workshop' for the 'mentally
disabled' residents. once while exploring
in this incapacity I found a dried-out brain in a dish
in a sunny (unused) upstairs room. whose abandoned brain,
I wondered, was that, left there to dry
like so much cast-off-offal, uneaten?

OR


Dear Maria, before arrival in Umbria must we pass through Penumbria?


OR


Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space—Spiritualized


OR


Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies,
we are going through hell—William Carlos Williams


OR


Please expect a little turbulence, ladies and gentlemen;
there are monsters in our midst—Alice Aforethought 1988


.OR


to join the Mile High Club
you really have to give a flying fuck



"Ach, ja"—Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss

Mile High Club

to join the Mile High Club
you really have to give a flying fuck

.

Notes for a Poem about Cursing (revizh 2017)

Sister Sue, tell me baby, what are we gonna do?—Mink Deville

time has gone wrong here for no reason
it keeps swinging me back

..........................look it's like this
like you've had a sort of stroke
let me explain that there are flowers
where your hands should be

but what is this called he keeps asking
day and night with that look about him

you have a condition which means
you have to be careful what you think

he insisted there was a warning in the sky
but it was just electricity 

humming & sparking

...........oh we told him right there and then:

.............................you've had an episode
.............................you are reassembling things
.............................without a plan

time has done something
there has been a catastrophic error
this poem has performed an illegal operation
& will now shut down

...........................the head and limbs are in the wrong places
...........................—it doesn't matter but some people
...........................will call it a monster

it went on for years
think of him as a boy facing the corner
in a pointed hat
is he a dunce or a magician
either way he's thinking something up

....................the thing is someone starts it
then you take over 

and don't know
how to stop

[your screensaver is a vision of your own death
the naked one reaching for you in the leaf mould]

..........................that's all it is

the beat goes on & the beat goes on

hold the flowers up to your face
work them until you see fingers
this might take years
dip the flowers in hot wax
think them into dripping clusters
of language and light

a sort of stroke—you need to think hard now
what was it that did the stroking?

this computer has not recovered
...........................from a fatal error
.
.
^{(Published in Intercapillary Space April 09)}

eyelid bats modified

bats like rips in twilight

owls for now stolid as off-white statues
beaming in the boughs over the already black embankment above
hearing as we cannot

the shrieking of the bats
in the dead, electric
silence of dusk



.

when you were tiny I carried
you on my back into the wind and snow
to explore the moors
and you didn't complain much

even when the snow blew into your ears
and both of us hurt a bit, but
I cushioned your little ears
and wrapped them up

you are too heavy for that now
and your exploring is beyond me

and now my heart is devastated
and doesn't quite know what to do

having turned itself so profoundly
to you

.