It was naturally suspected that the Worcester town councillors were motivated more by the idea of free holidays to the world's most exciting adventure playground than by any notions of altruism or cultural exchange.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Twinning Worcester with Gaza City
It was naturally suspected that the Worcester town councillors were motivated more by the idea of free holidays to the world's most exciting adventure playground than by any notions of altruism or cultural exchange.
quiet surge (based on statements made by the Taliban and Al Qaeda)
Don't give me another Vietnam—George.H.W. Bush (1990)
Chinese HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles are with the Taliban, we know this... and we are worried where do the Taliban get them, some of these weapons have been made recently in Chinese factories—Unidentified senior Afghan government official reported by the BBC (2009)
the new president
the apostate president
whose grandfather's soul
cries from his grave
for the blood of the unbeliever
who brings shame upon his house
this new president
says he will surge quietly
in Logar, in Wardak and Helmand
in the holy provinces
where the Russians sent their sons
to die miserably fighting our fathers
where the British
sent their sons to die miserably
fighting our great grandfathers
our weapons are from China
the old USSR the US the UK
(we like the weapons of our enemies)
from our brothers in Syria
in Saudi Arabia and Iran
surge quietly Hussein Obama
this land will eat you quietly
we will be here when you have gone
when you have taken the flag-wrapped
bodies of your sons
home in shame and defeat
you will never be enough
you will never have long enough
before your nation weakens
grows weary again
send us your unwanted sons
Hussein Obama
this dry earth needs their blood
surge lite surge quiet
we will devour all of you
lite and quiet and slow
insha' Allah
.
.
(Publication forthcoming in the next issue of New Verse News)
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
kittens
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/12/worlddispatch.brianwhitaker
Friday, February 20, 2009
no longer yourself
ghosts are scratching
she waits there three days without food
light or the sound of waterfalls
flooding in her stopped ears
and then knows
she's done with it
outside in late afternoon cherry
trees hang white with dreams
.
.
the secret policeman speaks of gnosis
& evacuating at dawn it seemed most likely
we would go back to being strangers.
I looked after her car as she drove airily away waving
mosquitoes and toxins from her face. I imagined both of us
felt a little awkward in such pale circumstances.
at the radio check-in the secret policeman looked into my bag
with an instrument that detected
& measured enmity and significance.
you are officially no one & nothing he told me smiling.
your spirit doesn't even trip the needle you are nothing.
you are the equivalent of a dead person
who did nothing and meant nothing during life
who left no traces even
in the dream-behaviours of those he knew.
this does not make you anonymous or free.
it's not a psychodynamic void by which you will transcend
your customary submissive resignation into the exultant
furniture of one who finally knows a mystic extinction
of all ego and identity breaking into new levels
of gnosis—it is merely a label we employ
to describe those we regard as least
manifest for our monitoring purposes.
you are free to go. have a nice life. he waved me through
like a ghost like something that could be easily
transmitted through all further official inspections
with just a flutter of his small blue hand. there was more importance
& significance in his little wave than I had ever achieved
in life or would achieve in death.
collecting my papers I ran to the incoming sign
where she had promised to meet me all those years ago.
there would be no gymnasiums this time. no waving away. I vowed
that before anything else we would buy a hotbed, would
take it with us to the ten fertile shines where we would spend
the next year or so preparing. others in our background
would do most of the animate parts of all this.
we were almost entirely spirit now
lost in our own body cavities, stroking our nerve endings
into shimmering fields of revolutionary parallax.
her flight upended gently in the wet fields at dusk. we ran
with arms outstretched to wave each other into readiness.
.
.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
chunks cavort
—Flarf
seems like I can tear chunks
off my head now I don't remember
which bottle is mine but the peach fragments
keep uprooting coming out in handfuls
of moss and dreck it's like tearing an old
teddy apart watching the sponge fly
bye bye like I'm mining in mining in
bottles everywhere sparkling full of urine
and old wiles oh that was a big one
made me jump as a cantilever unearthed
silence beneath it in cell-earths sleep
it takes tools after a time to get further
under the dream layers so sticky so thick
with proximal fervour and tall sways
of lightning trees and the jumping shakes
I have such tools you don't believe me
but I have removed my own teeth
a swift gargle with vodka and a leverage
a short shouting pain is nothing to me and
two more hours and we'll reach the soul
hiding there under twigs waiting finally
for the rescue when the river drains out
that's all we're waiting on here that river
running out through the eyes ears mouth
of mouths be with me now in the wind
of excavation let the spine unwind
as a toy into the sheath of itself untaxed
now fuck your pratka buddha
fuck fuck the pratka buddha
loudly will we shudder
fuck the pratka buddha
.
.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
inkarette
deep down on the ocean's broken floor
a chapter of starfish all winked above
that wild night Squid Black inked love
.
.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
the night's travel
in and now out the same door
like all knives whirling
our utter politics in collisions
of limestone pavements
across all this she travailed
with sepia sandbags
of County Clare
all sailroads to traverse
and only 8 O clock
by the whale's chime
this big hand by the night's wild travel
points to 12
the little hand
flickers and stops
iris of heart attack hope
and love of small things
and wild places
be certain now be sure
it's that time
in between
where the hands don't count
it's okay to be scared here
to lie down and breathe
to lie a little
before waking
.
.
.
(Published in Poetry SZ March 2009)
Monday, February 09, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
speak ill of the dead
—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
the Blitz by May 1941.......43,000 civilians
many of them horribly
as cellars filled with sewage escaping
from burst heads that lay with the corn
dollies of Dresden whose skin grew vapid
as tubers of fire and wind whose horses
were silhouettes capering on sidewalks
of armour and ashen ghosts whose Pompeiis
cooked down like stock unstuck in time
and there in the rising of the Thames
and the Elbe the horses at night
that came to feed on the shadows
.......................................of the dead
.....................that a three year old child
............................................in Gaza City
who dies with a broken back (of rivers that run hard
......................into deltas far as though that only)
..............over two days in the rising of the Thames in shattered concrete
.....................and heat her mouth (with petals and song)
.....................filled only with dust (on the banks white & green
............folds aloft in the arms of mothers and the history
............of mothers and the mothers of mothers and of the baking of bread at dawn
.....................................and at the going down of the sun will we consume thee)
...........................................knows or cares anything (thy flesh now bread
.....................the glory (white phosphorus coins they inserted in the loaves)(of Intifada
......its cosmic [for the raising of the drowned from rivers](of history)
......dimension
............ [like vast catfish rising dark]at the going down
......................................her own eternal place (the drowned in dust)
.................co-opted face-down—be still and do not fight (as the horses that fed
...........it will be over the sooner—into that glory thrust (upon shadow
..........................................aloft exalted and on high and in the upper air and on the heights
...............in cannonades and loaves at dawn they seek the drowned
.............why one child//whose skin grew vapid
...........of another race//as tubers of fire
...........worth so many of hers just/unable to move her arms
..........................................................
.........................she will never know of snow)(and one Catfish King
...................................nor feel in her mouth)(says Jim to Tom is much
.............................................. in its taste )(like another and all of them
........................................of cold soft iron )(no damn good
......................with little arms of Elbes on the riverbank (by the mark thrice
.....................little face-down snow angel there for the baking and the history
(and for the leavening—feathers and bitumen for the mouths—
.........of those drowned)( all unknowing)( in dry rivers of glory)
reprise
.
.
(A cleave version of this poem was published in The Cleave in February 2009)
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
cinquain
the dead goldfish
she smites a kettle drum
the kids watch the funeral rites
struck dumb
.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
double tap flarf
one shot through the neck in order to sever
the spinal cord and then another shot
through the eyes and an inch up
like that I says to her what do you think
do we have it in us to do it
with them all watching
the signal from the brain
that cannot now reach the trigger finger
—further it has reticulations
or many infoldings filling the inner spaces—
where were you she asks
oh I says you know
targets & then a single endosymbiotic event
with three or four membrane layers
you know how it is just
watch it go off like dark dumdums
bottoming out in the holding tank
you can still hear it rattle
only bring everything quickly, she says
lest the moment turn wayward and sour
between us waves of hollowpoint ranger talon
singing singing
as her muzzle drops down
out of all recoil
.
.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
tree
he looks into my throat
diagnosing in a foreign semaphore
all the shit you been taking
he seems to say
your throat is backed up
you need a plumber
you are beyond the skill
of doctors
I will now recommend a good man
who works cheaply
with portable instruments
of light
there in my own waterfall
I am suddenly sad
as a tree
.
.
he zooms into her
she does this
pulls him in
with a gravity of herself
he awakes into her
twisting a lens into focus
is there in her swells
her frets
at this scale
she is all of earth and sky
longitude
great circles, rhumb lines
a spinning equatorial track
along which her sun meanders
—a hay wain lurching
down some sunny ride
he travels within
dizzy in her arc
shivered in the smoke
of a basalt sea floor
binds hard to her heaving plates
settles there
sea creature fallen soft
in Pacific ooze
.
.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
though she could see he was trying
she could also see that it wasn't working
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
and 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
then made some cocoa
and read a Stephen King novel
until she fell asleep next to him
in the night she cuddled him
in his dark uncomplicated wetness
.
.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
a spell of making—haibun
from the night outside—
silence beneath
.
.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Nuremberg class action
was arraigned in the wire for dredging during a sudden raid
by shock baboons of the eastern interior department.
in other news the killing of children by the application
of either reeling waves or massifs of failing concretion has become
so routine that it's now funny so what do you call a three year old
wearing a three ton party hat quick we gots ta get outta here
before the brown comes around and the black gets back and
the red man is a head man. andy murray won something at
snooker too. what do you call a philistine with no table manners?
haha. what do you call kristal and perle? depends where the
shock baboons are. oh all so ready to weep with terror and all
so ready to weep with joy. juvenilia has outbroken in all
provinces. the sun arched itself as a westphalian slunk
spread for the taking oh god just spreeled for sheens of love.
some interference is to be expectorated. normal service will
be subsumed. excuse me while I do nothing at all.
.
.
.
(Published in the New Verse News Feb 2008)
.
.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
taps and sideflarf
at the womb of he-Unknowns
at Arlington Rational Cemetery,
where he and Vice President-elect
Joseph Biden laid wrath
in memory of fallen heroes.
The two men placed their hands
over their groins as a uniformed
burglar played taps
in a sombre opening.
played taps in
a sombre opening. yea
played they taps
in an opening most solemn.
of taps and the love of taps
they sidled they sang
in their taps and their shucks
they shivered they shook
the while for the opening
was most solemn
and they entered it
in some agitation
of the humours.
and yea most solemn
and sombre
was that opening become
wherein they were enjoined
by the fallen to the love of taps
and the shivering of idle humours
and at this the burglar
began upon the final tap
and lo the world was closèd
in its awe and despite. lo.
.
.
.
.
Friday, January 16, 2009
blow rag
In their coiling calm and slow—W.B. Yeats
of that shandyan distortion
of the homunculus
aha and oho, as so:
my mother didn't stop the sex
to announce clocktime
like that oh no
she just shoved some simulacrum
under the old man
sidled outta there just so
to sit out in the roses
watching the cats
for all I know
took him years to notice
then he came out angry
killing birds with his blow
she just sat as stone
crumbling by the river
dropping in soft & slow
rushing away bits at a time
till all was rags on a weir
oh no, oh no
him picking through them
shouting loud love
growling yes and... no
till good thing too
was the river suck him down
& out to the overflow
which some of us
clinched was a mercy
yo yo we go
last anyone saw
was one leg and a beard
going fast her barbèd beau
downstream
furious in his last joke
ho ho, ho ho
she never lifted out
but the river I guess sang
in its midnight glow
yay all there was
river and some rags
far away shouts to and fro
you live through these things
O and suddenly
and then they go
I wear a tall hat now in honour
of being one of those
now in the know
so let us endeavour
down in the tubes
most fervently to blow blow blow
this my favourite bird
the murderous crarking oracle
of a midnight walking crow
now i really got to
go
happy to know
I guess
so so
.
.
(Published in the Burning Gorgeous anthology 2010)
.
Hudson River Airbus Crash

'A US Airways spokesman said the passengers should receive their luggage within 48 hours, adding: "It's not as if the plane has been anywhere near Heathrow. It's just partially submerged in the Hudson river." '
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/hudson-crash-landing-still-better-than-heathrow-200901161514/
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
dysnarrative eructation unbelieved to be untrue
some so dark shape it was that lay
lullay as a virgin.......... squawking unto the swirls
which flitted and flattened in lissome flight
holding hard hold hard this is or ever was
more and less than............it seemed riotous
though ......................it was no more
than the long droog of several grey battlecruisers that slept in scapas
in the going
and in the rising
and in the merest scuttle
of long ice long it lay
uncovered mantled
in quiet
thoughts of men
who gave only bubbles [and giving] thus nothing
eek quickly withdrawing themselves to sterile parlours in which to rot down
laugh as sheeps ................seeing themselves daubed
don't you get it yet you should
for the scramble............. laugh still ...O they lilt they laugh
at the lift [wherein] nothing more
but sky's slow fuck of muses......................sky's slowfucked elevation
and insignificance
of all that was before
the belief that held them
in such flat & stable systems as were then proposed
as the realities of others as fire reeled down hillsides
stripping away years ugh now thereby pronounces
all involved preemptively
& retrospectively dead
all of it to be fervently undisputed forever
in the fierce favour of wingèd flight
.
.
.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
There is a light; the problem is there is no tunnel—Shimon Peres
If we do this then this might follow. The ultimate objective is the evocation of myth in the collective unconscious. The myth in this case is that of the mission and the manifest destiny of the American Nation.What is true is irrelevant, is subordinate to the myth and the destiny. It is of the blood and the soil of the soul that we sing.
This is the reality of the future. Few humans can grasp this reality. Our purpose is to guide the ignorant into their future selves, into their destiny. It is unnecessary for them to understand.
We are the saviours of the spiritual song of America. We are the vanguard, we are the American Al Qaeda birthing the future. We are the guardians of the soul of America
—Neopsalm not by Paul Wolfowitz
[[[Does anyone see the last gasp of the US Neocons in the unbridled assault by Israel on the Palestinians? What better way for the Wolfowitz gang to try to make their lies come true than by throwing even more petrol on the fire and further radicalising the Umma? Get the Islamic world angry enough, and a heck of a lot of people will believe (all over again) that there is no choice other than to invite the Neocons (or their heirs) back just to survive. They might still get that new Pearl Harbor they wanted so badly. What better way than a little 'covert' war at the very epicentre of the wound that is still spreading resentment across all of Islam?
Was anyone surprised when the US didn't vote for a ceasefire at the UN meeting? Of course they didn't. It would never have happened if Israel hadn't been absolutely assured that the outgoing US administration was behind it 100%. And of course it had to happen right now, while they were *still* sure about that. It might not be so certain in a few days time. How typical of this US administration to leave with a last grenade thrown into all our futures.
So what a cute little parting gift for Obama. Does he support Israel in this? Does he support the oppressed Palestinians? The world is watching. If he's got any sense he'll be wondering how in hell he's going to deal with the probable escalation in resentment and extremism and Islamism and general ill-feeling that this latest act of covertly transparent bi-lateral madness will entail. Right now he seems scared to speak, though he did make one inept comparison the other day, in which he stated that if his neighbour was throwing bombs at his house and killing his kids he'd do anything in his power to make it stop. "Wouldn't you?" he asked... The sentiment is understandable, but the only rational answer of course is that that should depend upon exactly what is in one's power.
As all too often with America, Israel is showing itself yet again prepared to use whatever is in its power, irrespective of proportion or foresight or wider consciousness. Let's hope that when Obama finally gets hold of all this he shows some awareness that he now has rather more in his power than just weaponry and brainwashing, and hope equally that he can figure out how to access it and how to wield it]]]
Someone compress this for me.
eyeless in...
Пусть услышит, как она поёт,
Пусть он землю бережёт родную,
А любовь Катюша сбережёт - Mikhail Isakovsky
I see nobody—the Stalin Organs
shrill at night—on the road
—they fill the players
—said [.....]—with delight
—to be able to see nobody
(the river bank steep in the mist)
—clear black sky eyeless from al-Attara
to the Ashkelon dream-Kessel....Shhhh
............................=====>>>>...O
O—the road at night—I wish I
had such eyes— let him hear
Katyusha’s clear song—they fill
the players—to see nobody
(Russian manufacture 122mm BM-21 GRAD)
—and at that (hush now)
distance—to see nobody
said the [.......]
("We will continue
to respond, to initiate and to harm...")
—the one whose letters
she has kept ............(Stalin Organs..................shrill
..............................................[of rivers]
..............................................................................at night
....................................................to fill .........[like a bird]
........................................................................we players
...........[homeland and their love]
.......................................................with ........................delight)
........................such eyes such exalted eyes such lame glass birds of drear exaltation how they swoop and claw in their scorned troposphere they tinge through as disregarded purple they bet they know they dream they dreck they reck they flop
.......................................................................till they drop
......................lofting they pop like transcendent moments by the pool
......................any one of them we could enter
......................& from any quickly wake
............................................................................in this stoop we are hunter-gatherers
............................................................................what wisheth not for farming only
............................................................................the prolapsing ........spirit
.
.
.(This is a transtextual poem composed of reordered text fragments by Lewis Carroll, Mikhail Isakovsky, and Ehud Olmert, interspersed with original material.)
Saturday, January 10, 2009
spotting on clomid
may binge the adrenaline after................................ all for his maximum recommended
draught no less..................................he speaks after/years/the mother does not appear..............hexagram 23
[there she lists/sheds/trims in the coastal volta unearthed]
......................................................[and viagra a fervent singularity] .............[Ur Nammu already a historian][such to steroids]
[you may have been rare]
reports
of sudden ..........................laments that he will after all be unable
hearing
were...................................to mourn his father before his death
considered
purely chymical ............. I found orgone accumulators overstated & finally
un-Reichian/Captain.....................................[got him on food & drugs
Clark welcomes you to disembark...................he dies soon in gaol]
to submit to baptism//au baptême
on the deck of Titanic a reported insufficiency of life [these were mares' nests & the mares
......................................................were even then at home]
..................here at this abrupt littoral
........................................................................she heard now bells from the fog evil magical creatures sprang
...............as bells from the ocean paraded there
.......................................................all night before her on a wet headland/at the buoy's moan/the wind's kick/
................as ghostly wooden scotch hands
...........................................................(parrot)
...........................................................for the pattering of glazes/aprons/flours
...........................................................whirled aloft. no sex in any of it. tiny hoof
...........................................................prints shook in the butter overnight. such
...........................................................of a turbulence it is. the dark boy at the
...........................................................corner. the Blitz then? transfigured
.......................... in its gathering clamour............................................... all of them.
...........................in spate. danced so. ................................................as to a jewes trumpe
...........................she is Femtocell.................................................................and Thermobus.
.......................... demdike devices clear on bright. ..........................................Hill
.......................... sides squat .................................................in the gorse. his wings not
.......................... now in the ordinary .........................................................spectrum.
ordinary—po: a splitting apart entartete kunst. ......................................freetown.(axis)
now after all of it
bring us quickly all that you have
.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Arthur Machen's Fairies
without any sense in it—Arthur Machen (The White People)
on the hill I wondered what was true
—Arthur Machen (The White People)
between an infant boy calling
out and a car's squeal at a bedside Astir of Eaves
the thing utters soft soft
soft as the soft Nexus of Wind at Dusk
upon high—black and orange waters
troubled in outflow by a slow heft of fells
into sluices and frogways and culverts there
and creeps and collects
soft-feeding of becks downhill
(of long Peat fires they sing they rupt)
as vaccary walls they are shoved askew
—eek now soft ages of cattle
in all their goits adrift
[arrayed all thither golden in lichens]
of black mosses now of the wind's caress
are the Abiding Stones over Wycoller
declaiming of churns
and loud they gurgle as underground water
at night
and at night even at night's governance
and with slow Thunder unfolding of the sinks
the shakes and rills that brim the unquiet seeps
nursing with night the soft touching
the strokes and yields the waft the heave
of sphagnum of samphire
and samphire its listening Wainscots its secret ways
its faery-breath'd fluttering heather
purple its wainstones its aorta its races
its races updrifted in a velveteen of consumption
down the wing-wet years
—whoever then what cloven throat
sputtered there and spake and wefted
in that inwoven space such a Waiting and a Word
—and in all its slow-gathering Silence?
.
.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
pumpkin twilight
as cars hit the level crossing
—a rusty-shiny-oily raft—
too fast cracking their sumps
like I gave a—but someone
down there wrapped/blurred
for a dusk cold on a station
platform saw me—a backlit
head at a window in early gloom
I think shining—his/her up-
looking some affront as though me
not her/him was voyeur in this
sudden debacle of distance
where I legitimately at window
outlook out not in...then in
eruptions of magnanimity
(it having been hallowe'en
only two months before) I
thought no he/she probably
has no wish to intrude—merely
in such gloam at such distance
takes me for a late pumpkin
—on this understanding only
was I
...prepared to let it go
.
.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Friday, December 26, 2008
aesop's fox breaks loose
.
.
4mm float
knew it not nor how it span it being the closest it had recently been to sexual delight such that all else was subsumed there in that earnestness and that scenting of conflicted pheromone hunger
.
.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Jack's turtle (with errors)
turtle floating downstream
on a log—
looking up
I think this captures Kerouac's essence of the little satori of haiku. In those two words 'looking up' at the end the scene suddenly opens up and we get this glimpse of the serious wild heart of a turtle, its earnestness, our projected anthropomorphic pride and strength, its survival, its pragmatism and realism, its serious up-arching of the neck 'wondering' WTF is going on with this new transport...
It's comical in the sense that all creatures are comical in their necessary self-seriousness, and it conveys both the comedy and the quite wonderful tenderness of this scene with utter concision and brilliance. I am in that moment suddenly, and my heart pours out to it just because of the sheer innocence he conveys. And this is the thing... if you can focus the energy of words like that in haiku, then you create a little nexus through which people can drift into other realities. I am there floating and laughing and crying in turtle world, and somehow knowing something I didn't quite know before. It's worth a lot of struggle, this haiku stuff, just to hit one moment like that.
Apologies if I misremembered it. It was something pretty close.
Edit: Oh, now I just looked it up... It's actually this:
A turtle sailing along
on a log,
Head up
So I remembered it pretty badly, but in fact it makes the point far better in the original version than in my half-assed remembrance. Interesting use of punctuation and capitals there too, to solve some obvious haiku issues about pacing and spacing.
Anyway, I still think that that tiny line, 'Head up', in context, is one of the most moving and memorable and profound lines I've ever read in haiku, or maybe any other poetry for that matter. Haiku is like Sinatra's New York, I think. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere... Most of us can't make it. It's the three line pressure cooker.
.
.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Vegas nerve
.............—even without headlamps & swerves
.................. sweeping rowan silhouettes/vistas of pure light
[the way home already known to involve
a traversing of many weeps and freshets] but but
...............zen/y/atta mond/atta—
..................—look such waifs of the nostratic
but no he cried there so silly in firelight but no
—as though such admonishment might alter my feeling
for his sister and her collection
of strange dolls she spun into talking every hourless window
where in the attic her mother died slow
....................................................(oh still channelling throughout
....................................................her many pets would later claim)
slow as peaches rotting
down there in old desert cans
from the Crimea and the wastes I have for you such news such news
"Vegas?"—we even ask him that—"Vegas?"
.............how kindly he gaze in his crepuscules there
(they talk now all is
of psychism and drugs
—outside/the moon
at some perigee
& no longer even
purpose between us)
..............here at the flitting hour
..............where with such eyes/
..............he jumps forever in
..............the chests of the deceased
—I doubt all the perigee of it now
"Vagus" he says—"something different..."
["they persuaded me back
started me like an engine"]
(these are red tiles that lead nowhere)
grey wings enfold no no no
wings enfold................no are no wings................enfolding no enfold
facedown//harking//black mucus
something grey
...................... enfolds
.............. something/nothing
—I doubt all the tenderness of it now
,
,
,
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
this winter rite unflarfed
will occur in your slow rollers & breakers
over and in and because of your misunderstood
will commence discriminately to devour
unpleasantness, pain of delivery, the sleek
[all this could be still changed
by a few firefox add-ons
some modules of latent proxy]
tigers nowhere now just the wholehearted of exo-skeleta
lost at dusk in the woods so complex
we have no longer time for anything
[those americans reviling the french
calling them those names]
when it really came out it was as lungs
not cartoon organs but actual and present
all purple and wet so like newborns///
now sex because of the nervous assault
seeming tantamount to some event
is only in fact a routine inflammation
fading quickly given the reach
of politics and bullying issues as still
an eventual monster continues to advance
with name labels at its little neck that we
find like ourselves in the wet morning
soon still able to love
.............................................the third waiting is soon over
foliage and of some creeping
continues to advance
now we see unclearly such an essence
that these are the most lightened
of days when the boy even in his caper
soon knows in his own flood and flux
that through the lens of a poem
is he unknown
he continues to advance
.
.
gorilla loose on highstreet
in those times of the interior
of antimony
of ambergris
of kohl
of Zanzibar & Shendy
dig my grave I will dig yours such—in wet vellum we go stark laughing
it was reported ............huge grinning black men
...................covered in fur
........................rush/from behind trees
......................clutch/white*ladies/to them
................in fevers/of amorous shivering
..............Freud bitten himself to death oh fearful greek katyusha
.....................................................on a cigar of all nations
...................Reich askance the whole winter's edge fluting
............................................in orgone boxes invisible cancers
Jung suddenly addressed with fondness his stockpot in the tower
..........................and was unconscionably requited
(my half-brother now the fucking summertime duke fuck off
...........................into your...............walled garden!)
this ape thing and not universally acknowledged as myth
keep keep it for your aghast moments
.
.
.
.
(Published in The Cleave January 2009)
.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
the fish give themselves one night a year
who stowed always a rope in case of fire
I assess women as potential partners
by how they might operate
adrift on an open boat
at night on the South Atlantic—
would they make pies
from triggerfish eyes
would they fill swim bladders
with broth made of dorados
hang them on such albatross air
as was then available
to sparkle about us as
Christmas approached &
would they administer
fish-oil enemas
to our clogged children
(the high protein
diet with little roughage is known to afflict
firstly the young) unluffing
the sail
with the other hand &
talking of William Bligh
of Poon Lim of secrets
of navigation
by the long atlantic swells
would they commit acts
of random sex during
our tossing sleep
at such a time
at such a time
in all things would they give themselves unstinting
to this new narrow life?
I think Alain Bombard
may now be the only girl for me
.
.
Monday, December 15, 2008
this winterval upscorch
O that is now great i feel like
a student writer sometimes who
took hisself to the well the well and became
all of elephants so right so there
in such the updraught
that shook with stars
that wailed and shone
heaved hisself up and jumped
all for the searching the quest O
for that and for the wishful shuck of it
so he jumped and the jumping
was found to be good
and the falling was itself
a thing to be discerned and disregarded
the falling O the falling
abandoned of fetish and frailty
through moss and masonry
years had grown there
in the s[plashing]
the shadow
had grown
it reached it reaches it reacheth
out upon him over him at him grasping
though he unfolds like thighs like wings
burnished as all bewilder
he wrests again from it
these secrets of light
he thrusts he thrusts
down upon him rain stars
as into other worlds he flies
Sindbad and Husheng and Ahriman
Ahura Mazda god of lightbulbs
eat up with alacrity the bean soup
the fields of gold
spread before them
but his name is not that not that
only in his wanting
he flies now over waving emmer fields
over fertility and mooning fastnesses
marvels swirling at his tail
look only this he says coming
in the dust at her feet so laced so henna
I have seen all I will not tell of it
but will now breed sleek horses
for a career that I happen
and you will shine with me
O woman of shaking forest mist
I will clutch at you with my shine
my shake my shazam
like unto into we will shimmer loud ahence
for my name of names
forever now of wells and falling
so ended the period of his first great wanting
and lo a child was reared of the well
and its secrets were unguarded
and upon the land the curse
and the shining
and often she danced as a wild dog
and through the fogs and veils
and upon him
she laid herself to sleep
as a blue feather
.
.
all your openings
your new life your old
old life resprung
of waves and pulses
across warm wet
fields at night
of this of this
hurt of opening
we sing up disaster
opening still
eyes and pores
backlit with perception
of death the peeling back
of warm wet paper
from old walls
singing disaster
opening waveforms
into a woods
where you are open
peeling back as death
open as warm wet paper
lighted with perception
from old walls
waving with disaster
hurt of old wet walls
a lighted waveform
opening the waves
the pulses of fields
at night this open paper
pulling shapes of eyes
and pores new life in pulses
of waved walls collapsing lighted
as that kiss in waves and pulses
that tells all of collapses
of fields of waves
only this truth waving
of you wanting
what I want, like paper
to be here
in the same fields wanting
collapsing now
in light
.
.
three sheets to the wind
everywhere they go or have-ever-been
are their leavings their extrusions
I don't get it
all this ordure everywhere
even at their own funerals
they'll be quietly sloughing
it into their boxes
we'll hear them in there
giggling about it
like it's still intoxicating, funny, joyous
after all this time
I'm sending them nappies
for Christmas
but I know they'll be sent back
......................full
.
.
casu marzu O seepage of unends
to surrender to the moment or to open wide
with some rushing of trains through sweeps
of open land in close Autumn it was just
that there was nothing in any of it to feel.
it was a sort of dead world it had created
in itself from which it glowered out upon
all of humanity with a look of machinery
that was running down towards collapse
that had somehow become aware of itself
that was displeased with the condition
that now wished pain upon others
in this way and others it had become
a rotten thing bringing violence
though those sponges and foliation
which had grown themselves to it
.
.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
notes about the island woman
I know this is true she says but I was compelled at all times by an urge to fill myself against the fluttering emptiness which afflicts me like the stirring of a large blue fowl in my gut.
in addition he says you have smoked an entire arid volcanic outcrop a small Galapagos running with strange lizards of cigarettes whose smoke even now blackens and clangs at the brass troposphere.
she says I know this also and again the urge to be filled to my farthest extremities was the cause of all that incontinent sucking.
I have made for you he says an island a floating land a Sargasso of paper smoked tobacco ash filter wadding it floats on a lake of cold alcohol-rich urine nothing will live on this island not even the strange lizards nothing will grow in this lake you will drift there always alone with ashen winds.
she stands with her hands above her eyes like the peak of a cap that shields her from the sun but there is no sun as he pushes off the little leather boat and sculls away from the island. she feels her skin harden her face stretch falls to all fours her brain shrinking back reptilian runs to the lake's edge watches him receding her tongue flicks tasting the air a hiss between her teeth.
the wind comes. the rain is cool on her skin. she lives. she lives.
.
.
.
(Published in Chimaera, May 2008)
the girdle sensation
.......................some zonesthesia past mere atmospheric cinch
he breathed......tight.....shallow......would not look
................................................................would not feel
noticeably different yet for a week or more.......... the girdle sensation/the swoon
of her a hive or several or more hives or hives of hives... that hemmed
..........................upon him
..........................as poetic asphyxia
....................the cincture the drowning the press
.......................which in such ways......accompanies
....................an attempt to perform
some delicate and intricate task at the very limit
.........................of ability. like that
........................................he wanted to smash it.
.
.
.
(Published in The Cleave Jan 2009)
Friday, December 12, 2008
stuff about haiku
To write something approximating a traditional haiku, you need a phrase and a fragment, with some attempt at a kireiji (cutting word) between them. A trad haiku isn't all one sentence, and it's not three fragments, it's in two parts. Anyway, haiku doesn't need the syllable count, doesn't use capitalisation or punctuation (though em dashes can approximate kireiji), doesn't need anything other than being a short, pithy, three-lined poem about direct, concrete observation, though some sort of twist in the meaning is useful. (These rigid, capitalised, 5/7/5 English haiku are just clunky.) It should never really be too abstract, should not include references to time, and ideally should include some reference to the season.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
helicopter yoghurt (to Alfie)
they sit closed and tight
as dormice
with traffic zooming
around them
whup...........whup............look
even my mother ..................
with that................look it shines
I approach them carefully
with embraces
............................to sweep them back
they are skitterish as dustbowls
—gone wild around me
but damn it anyway that
they have come back to me
in such shuddering beds of soft acid
that
nothing but the old cries
to be with them through all nights
nothing now ....................but that
.
.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Made Uneasy
over the lakes and ponds
of the Western forests
while I always spoke always
.....................like that it was like stars
that ruptured little sacs and sent such rills streaming
and all night though we talked
while lights burned in water
one little event slicked throughout
and neither of us
could quite.............. say
what it was
though both of us remarked
when it arrived
.........................and both of us
saw it depart like an invisible person
who was now done with it
like the curling white smoke
of lavender on some limestone hillside very far away
.....................................she of course didn't question
but turned again to her flours
...............................with an impassiveness
at which I
could only marvel
knowing nothing but her weft of distant herbs
.
.
Monday, December 08, 2008
John Coltrane blows ashen wind at the stars
were so incontinent
so profligate
with their feelings
that even a dead cactus
crushed by the wreckage
of a fallen aircraft nearby
would not fail to arouse them
squatting there in the desert
in sudden angst
already turning yellow
fuck me says Bill
you see that?
not any more says Allen
oh do it anyway says Jack
and he laughs like stars
of quiet thunder
all down the road
from the New Jersey turnpike
to Santa Cruz
with their poems
just waiting to ship out
with those songs
of the open sea
arrayed before them
as so many fingers of quiet mescal
.
.
so rational creationism and celery salt
talking about girls
how haughty they were
how superior
how intoxicated with all of it
(either of them—it doesn't matter)
it could have been ten thousand years ago
circling kopjes on the veldt
hammering out the music of fear
imagine that
imagine dancing
dressed as a wolf
hoping she watches closely
your bare feet in dust in firelight
in ochre and spit
in shapes
in love with this moment
all your fathers
before you
buried in your mother's chest
so many nutrients
for the spirit that is quiet
fierce as shaking trees
as the stone drums spiral in
so big so little, all of it forever
forever yours
.
.
poetry your most ardent enemy
what music they make — Dracula
//what is it with tragedy//
how the world flows out in strings
that remain unmanifest
known only by their edges
in 1000 years this will appear ridiculous
but Ur Nammu was a keen archaeologist
who delighted in discovery
the very first Gulf War
is between Yahweh and all humanity
O how little how fervent we scrape
for such broken vessels
containing such nothing
the louder you scream
the faster we go
oh all night she kept at it
rubbing away like that
.................................................let's sing it again
.................................................with real feeling
forever
love and nothing
now bring yourself here
and shut up
we are almost cooked
we are doing all of history
in a sudden flurry of skirts
she seemed almost unaware of her legs
and Mediterranean salt
(a mile deep they say)
hush
or you will wake my creatures
.
.
kiss riff
from the sky
as she reached down
and that reaching itself
that lowering
her eclipsing of the world
the sky the sun
the coolness that came with her
the sudden warmth and coolness
her smell of grass and daylight
her aura of wild birds
her seriousness
that floated there
her weight suddenly
her reality and closeness
her focus
her sheer engagement
the whirling of all of that
which was beyond all sex
and all confinement
and category
all he wanted to do
was hold her face
and kiss it
with the gratitude
of outer planets
until rain made it slowly stop
.
.
edges riff (notes for a poem)
we go walking in our sleep' - Billy Joel
not understanding that the feeding of infants
involves an ancient revolution
of the spirit
I didn't know
that my neural pathways
had faded into choked forest trails
and that I was being regarded
with some impatience
by something infinitely older
than myself
from the shrieking treetops
he stamped his huge tiny feet
and threw food in my face
until I learned better manners
.
.
Cliché and meta-awareness in poetry.
But if it IS conscious, then of course something else is happening, or rather is being done. And that is the essence of it— is being done, not is happening... The poet is actually active in this, not just sleepwalking with elves. And that activity says that the poet is still alive, has managed to keep one eye just about focused on the oncoming monstrosity and bafflement of life, and has just about managed to scrawl something honest to send back. There's almost no way to achieve this other than to write obliquely and in some coded fashion. In that there is at least the hope that something will get through without interference, that someone somewhere will somehow arrive at the appropriate nexus to decode something from the static.
If you lapse into cliché then no one will ever know exactly what it was that you were transmitting, as all cliché is effectively dead language with hopelessly imprecise meaning. If it has ever been used in more than one context, then it has become ambiguous, and all precision has been subverted. This is why the deliberately imprecise and ambiguous is the only real accuracy available in language. It allows, finally, the reader to receive his/her own message through the medium of another human. That makes true poetry a form of divination for the reader; and that requires the reader to bring accuracy, courage, concern and honesty to the reading. It is no longer about entertainment, it is about the consciousness of warfare and flesh and mortality, and the reader is now the writer, without whom no poem is ever completed.
But all of this is also untrue. As it says at the door to the Magic Theatre, 'Price of admission, your mind'... (Hermann Hesse -- Steppenwolf)
Etc.
.
.







