objects collect around the computer
the brain forgets to let go
all the thoughts stall on the neuro
logical flow then sleep slides in,
sweeps me off my feet ah some warm
place, but nothing gets done to main
tain the living (as in a living)
I just manage, not even that, but dear
wouldn't you prefer the barb of light
to this fuzzy mold (unbelievably not
a product of drugged stupor) just
natural stupor all my own uh anyway
(I did attend the St. Stupid's Day parade)
that gunshot outside on the street just
woke me up dammit let me be just let me
sobriety
throwing darts
at a tire
in the dark
how many words
have i missed
how many manies
how many panties
panting
in the dark
how many w's
i can't find
myself
to say much more
should be dead
am not
can't
you see
what makes it
no
i can
not see what
well that's swell
as i am frustrated
struggling
at a tire
in the dark
how many words
have i missed
how many manies
how many panties
panting
in the dark
how many w's
i can't find
myself
to say much more
should be dead
am not
can't
you see
what makes it
no
i can
not see what
well that's swell
as i am frustrated
struggling
Rosewater Stain
I
My fingertips traced moonlit moments
around the dark areoles of your
fleshy imagination. Your closed
eyes enwrapped the sensation, and
the loo on my lips whispered of the
wonder you felt.
II
O dear! Why must
you color like a rosewater stain; its
only poetry, not a video recording.
III
Sparks only fly when you nails plug-in
the chasms they have created in my back.
Pain, I guess, is the switch we must
flip, before pleasure can be turned on.
IV
My ploughing of these sheets hasn't
produced a single crop. Sweat is so
salty that its useless for irrigation,
and trust me, seeds sprout only when
the season and soil are rightly chosen.
V
O dear! Why must
you color like a rosewater stain; its
only poetry, not really a memoir.
VI
Age has made your ribcage grow,
the bones seem too eager to escape-
the loosely hanging crumbling tissues
that once smelt like sandalwood
have color of dry, decaying grass.
VII
O dear! Your ash in my hand
scalds the grip that once longed to carry newborns.
As I disperse ash into Ganga, our years together
dissolve away in the eternal flow.
Soon, I'll be, in the river too.
April 06, 12:15 am & April 07, 11:00 am!
My fingertips traced moonlit moments
around the dark areoles of your
fleshy imagination. Your closed
eyes enwrapped the sensation, and
the loo on my lips whispered of the
wonder you felt.
II
O dear! Why must
you color like a rosewater stain; its
only poetry, not a video recording.
III
Sparks only fly when you nails plug-in
the chasms they have created in my back.
Pain, I guess, is the switch we must
flip, before pleasure can be turned on.
IV
My ploughing of these sheets hasn't
produced a single crop. Sweat is so
salty that its useless for irrigation,
and trust me, seeds sprout only when
the season and soil are rightly chosen.
V
O dear! Why must
you color like a rosewater stain; its
only poetry, not really a memoir.
VI
Age has made your ribcage grow,
the bones seem too eager to escape-
the loosely hanging crumbling tissues
that once smelt like sandalwood
have color of dry, decaying grass.
VII
O dear! Your ash in my hand
scalds the grip that once longed to carry newborns.
As I disperse ash into Ganga, our years together
dissolve away in the eternal flow.
Soon, I'll be, in the river too.
April 06, 12:15 am & April 07, 11:00 am!
Creamsicle Stick Shivs
This book is dedicated to Red Heads, everywhere!
Imagine Woody Allen doing a house showing!
Creamsicle Stick Shivs represents a departure from the rural-themed poetry of John Stiles' previous collection, Scouts are Cancelled. While not abandoning the comic, dialect style and featuring the new valley poems of Gourds, Waterville Incarcerations, and Felt like Cryin', the poems in Creamsicle Stick Shivs shift from the Annapolis Valley, hover briefly in Toronto but find their center in London, England with the sudden and startling introduction of marriage to the bohemian life. The poetry centres around the theme of confrontation: a clash of cultures, mores and values and is anthemic to the changing politics and mores of the 21st Century.
The Maritimer in London section includes poems written whilst leading up to and including marriage, as well as dealing with the shock of a new culture and a new working environment - ironically a Church Charity. A lot of the poems in this book have been published in London locally in journals such as The Polka Dot Ceiling, Untitled and nthpostion.
The Book is now available at Insomniac Press and for those seeking a CD, there will be a CD available for 5 dollars or 2 pounds soon.
Samples here:
Apple Orchard Opera
(A medley which includes poems from Scouts are Cancelled and Creamsicle Stick Shivs)
Praise for previous work:
Scouts are Cancelled
The Insolent Boy
The smalls...er whatever.
That`s not all folks. More Goodies to come,
Imagine Woody Allen doing a house showing!
Creamsicle Stick Shivs represents a departure from the rural-themed poetry of John Stiles' previous collection, Scouts are Cancelled. While not abandoning the comic, dialect style and featuring the new valley poems of Gourds, Waterville Incarcerations, and Felt like Cryin', the poems in Creamsicle Stick Shivs shift from the Annapolis Valley, hover briefly in Toronto but find their center in London, England with the sudden and startling introduction of marriage to the bohemian life. The poetry centres around the theme of confrontation: a clash of cultures, mores and values and is anthemic to the changing politics and mores of the 21st Century.
The Maritimer in London section includes poems written whilst leading up to and including marriage, as well as dealing with the shock of a new culture and a new working environment - ironically a Church Charity. A lot of the poems in this book have been published in London locally in journals such as The Polka Dot Ceiling, Untitled and nthpostion.
The Book is now available at Insomniac Press and for those seeking a CD, there will be a CD available for 5 dollars or 2 pounds soon.
Samples here:
Apple Orchard Opera
(A medley which includes poems from Scouts are Cancelled and Creamsicle Stick Shivs)
Praise for previous work:
Scouts are Cancelled
The Insolent Boy
The smalls...er whatever.
That`s not all folks. More Goodies to come,
As It Turns Out
As it turns out they have relaxed the restrictions and I think your son should reapply. Make sure he wears protective clothing since he will most likely appear before one with a bird head, one with a rat head, and one with the head of a snake.
-Mike Topp
-Mike Topp
fIREcRACKER
O, E, I, O, EWE
The air is miserable with it, flying rats and juice heads with anemic sucks for faces and indents for cheeks, not a bone or railhead in sight. This is no man’s land, the paper doll cut from cardboard and crape. You live here, perhaps O, or E or I, but we’d be damn hard pressed to admit it. I live in the cave with the guano and mice feces, a welter of a dam place it is. And he him with the purple scold on his face yowling rice paper. Shreds of the stuff, like fucking millet, fucking papyrus and end bits and nugatory. Never a dull moment, so Seth the rector rectum. Rams’ bladder, some say, with onions (skins boiled on) and dead men’s finger nebs. Fancy that, a dogs’body toting an ashplant with a cherry on top. Dogs lick each other’s rectos in the hopes of discovering something new and savory about themselves. Fucking curs and bowwow knockabouts, not a brain amidst ‘em. Who in their slight of mind would think such things? I, for one, would be hard pressed to admit it, of that IOUE can assure you.
Cuckold of the Eye
teeth chattering
and mice scurrying
the eye beholds the mice
the eye beholds the mice
not the chattering
(of teeth)
(of teeth)
untitled
I'm not afraid, just a coward. I don't want to step forward or back.
The connection is a lie. Something I made up; something I long for; something that is nothing. I have a lonely rainbow with no light, no hand, no voice, no witness. Could I show it to you? No one has yet to see the color. Maybe you have different eyes like I imagine and pray for. This image of you is like a shiny blue box; the keep of my thoughts and secret touch of a song that has no skin and no name. What monster I have conjured to distract me from the pain that I'm used to!?
What a half of silent scoring in the desert that is not a desert; the ride going nowhere; the wings of imaginary Goddesses; the lies that need telling; the heartland with no heart.
uNECCESARYnESS
February Snow Snowed Snowing
A killing frost of Snow White white snow. A killjoy of snowy snowed snow. Kilocycles of snowed snow snowed then heaped in Snow White heaping heaps. Snow White sniggering credit card cants of snow white snowy snow mitered with a Visa, no, an Amex, with a curlicue beveled edge. Eyelids like moth’s wings, flypaper and velum, no, tarpaper, oily and sebaceous, shanty shack and unwholesome. Curbstone slush sluiced into mounds of slushy snow, not snow white or ivory caste white, but brownstone, blotchy and unseemly to the eye, the beholder of the eye-I. February snow is mercenary, white whitest snow clubbing it into a gored-red skin, seal pelt bloody red snow, an insanguination. Snow and blood are selfsame, cut from the same bolt, skinned from the same eviscerate. Bogspore: paella of castoffs and mealworms, bowels and tripe, intestinal linings and pancreatic slurry. Milt and pensile carrion, left to molt and scurvy into bread ends and black mold. Pennicillin for the sugar weary and insulin pale. It is snowing, yes indeed so it is.
winter, spring, summer and fall
balmy skin dangling off the porch
in legs and collapsible soul,
my skirt draped
waves across grass.
I let you into me
like
twilight
begs
to be undone
-
four months have
passed
in purple shaded
panic attacks
four months have passed
with out you.
days are by now longer
twilight seems to
last
I would let it lead me to you
though,
you love me
nighttime – fleeting;
if only like the seasons.
melissa upfold
in legs and collapsible soul,
my skirt draped
waves across grass.
I let you into me
like
twilight
begs
to be undone
-
four months have
passed
in purple shaded
panic attacks
four months have passed
with out you.
days are by now longer
twilight seems to
last
I would let it lead me to you
though,
you love me
nighttime – fleeting;
if only like the seasons.
melissa upfold
Meet the Writer
Mike Topp made an impression from Day One. Slithering out of his uncle's womb, he turned around and bit the head off emerging twin brother Boinky. Before he was a year old, he caught the eye of the Pope, who constantly exhorted him to "Enter into me, oh tingly-wingly serpent." He traces his interest in postmarks to these years. An artificial spleen made his teen years bearable after the bank repossessed his ant farm. His amusing catchphrase, "Get the picture?" is poignant to those who know he's been married to an antique gold frame for 40 years. The picture in the frame is his.
-Mike Topp
-Mike Topp
Just Go Fuck Yourself
Gasan was sitting at the bedside of Tekisui three days before his teacher’s passing. Tekisui had already chosen Gasan as his successor.
A temple had recently burned down and Gasan was rebuilding it. Tekisui asked him: “What are you going to do when the temple is rebuilt?”
“When you’re better we want you to speak there,” said Gasan.
“Suppose I die before then?” “Then we’ll find somebody else,” replied Gasan.
“Suppose you can’t get anybody?” said Tekisui.
Gasan answered loudly: “Don’t ask such stupid questions. Just go fuck yourself.”
A temple had recently burned down and Gasan was rebuilding it. Tekisui asked him: “What are you going to do when the temple is rebuilt?”
“When you’re better we want you to speak there,” said Gasan.
“Suppose I die before then?” “Then we’ll find somebody else,” replied Gasan.
“Suppose you can’t get anybody?” said Tekisui.
Gasan answered loudly: “Don’t ask such stupid questions. Just go fuck yourself.”
Now the night has come to an end
In the heat of the night,
the beasts and terrors
are groaning and growling.
But then, it is darkest before dawn.
Never was a night so massive,
so cold,
so heavy,
as in those three hours.
In the ninth hour
he gave his spirit,
split open the abyss,
to erupt the living,
baring witness.
Eternity
now became
a promise,
a new
concept:
The crack of dawn
reveals a new day.
Triumphant and in splendour
the bridegroom comes for his bride.
poetry
the beasts and terrors
are groaning and growling.
But then, it is darkest before dawn.
Never was a night so massive,
so cold,
so heavy,
as in those three hours.
In the ninth hour
he gave his spirit,
split open the abyss,
to erupt the living,
baring witness.
Eternity
now became
a promise,
a new
concept:
The crack of dawn
reveals a new day.
Triumphant and in splendour
the bridegroom comes for his bride.
poetry
pOETIC gREGORIAN
Auricular Adagio
I am faint of hearing, a hardening of the staples in the innermost trench of the ear canal. Hard tectonic bone, calcified and milky-white, a petrified boneyard in the auricular channel. My new hearing aid is one of those wraparound behind the ear models, pressing increasingly into the tuckbone articulating the soft tissue of my head. A persistent whirring and tremendousness that increases with stress and fatigue. No big deal about the little shit Mozart; never did think much of the spinneret-savant. Much prefer Bach or Ludwig, Gounod’s Faust or Dvorak’s symphony no.7 in D minor, a Liszt’s allegro or quasi adagio, some of Handel’s watermusic or some spicy Gregorian Chant, Gregorianischer Choral, perhaps, Schubert in B minor, andante, allegro ma non troppo, but none of that Wolfgangbang Amadeus trilling bullroar. Perhaps if I could gage my hearing loss to Mozart’s concertos or that cadaverously boring requiem, attenuate it to deafen-out fluffy mordant pipsqueakiness, flatulent savant-prodigy. I suppose deafness can be a benison in disguise. 250 years of sychophantic psychosis
Tight Skeins
she gathered the wool
into a tight skein
moment’s wound
into blankets
and throws
early winter solstices
early winter solstices
frailties
cold snaps
and the spoon
and the spoon
burnt blackened
like the bulbs under her eyes
chase
No sooner than change heaves its sigh
that new never remains.
I sat in a moving car and stared outside,
watched the lights pulse and fade away.
Let me clasp your hand with my quiet fingers
nerves in you that they touch;
tingling in your presence:
like a hunger for food, for my childhood Sundays
with my Mother’s pancakes, my headless Barbie
and my sister’s silly toilet paper stunts;
Take me someplace else, please,
far from these that surround me
of heartbeats from those I do not know.
like a thirst for water, for the distant river
with its golden-glowed fish we will catch, and
with its infant trickle into the promised land.
Sometimes I feel lost, I panic,
If only I can pause
the rush of water into this room.
I sat in a moving car, my face
a thumbnail snapshot in your staring eyes;
so I looked out and
watched the lights pulse and fade away.
that new never remains.
I sat in a moving car and stared outside,
watched the lights pulse and fade away.
Let me clasp your hand with my quiet fingers
nerves in you that they touch;
tingling in your presence:
like a hunger for food, for my childhood Sundays
with my Mother’s pancakes, my headless Barbie
and my sister’s silly toilet paper stunts;
Take me someplace else, please,
far from these that surround me
of heartbeats from those I do not know.
like a thirst for water, for the distant river
with its golden-glowed fish we will catch, and
with its infant trickle into the promised land.
Sometimes I feel lost, I panic,
If only I can pause
the rush of water into this room.
I sat in a moving car, my face
a thumbnail snapshot in your staring eyes;
so I looked out and
watched the lights pulse and fade away.
Black bug
Days and days i have travelled on,
little by little, i've gained my scarlet scorn,
touch-me-not, for i will smite you,
you may be a little blue and then i'll black you.
Muddy breath, humid sweat,
come close, do not fret.
i long to walk away with you from the stem,
like my fellow bugs, those who escaped the hunters helm.
Let not my smutty exterior decieve you,
i reveal myself, my being, to only a discerning few.
I am the Black bug and someday i shall return home!
with scarlet splotches, from the desert biome.
little by little, i've gained my scarlet scorn,
touch-me-not, for i will smite you,
you may be a little blue and then i'll black you.
Muddy breath, humid sweat,
come close, do not fret.
i long to walk away with you from the stem,
like my fellow bugs, those who escaped the hunters helm.
Let not my smutty exterior decieve you,
i reveal myself, my being, to only a discerning few.
I am the Black bug and someday i shall return home!
with scarlet splotches, from the desert biome.
rECOVER pOST(lINGcOD)
The Savant’s Imagination
Something is not right, the savant’s imagination that is forever at odds with the possibility of the other. This philosophical premonition that whatever it is or is not be the case (we have Wittgenstein to thank for that) language will always be the only way in and out of the other. There is no other way, no other passage in or out. This paucity of thought, this wound not yet scabbed over, is the result of too much analysis, word-salad, a wound that makes the victim a victim of language. The wound cauterized by thought then tossed wholesale into the dustbin of uselessness; this trivial moment of thought has no final exit or retreat (we have Sartre to thank for that). Matters less what you think than the manner in which you think you think (we have Kant to thank for that). Deleuze was inside yet always had a perspective given from the outside. Deleuze was so entrenched and mitigated from the inside that the outside was too painful and repugnant to contain in one man’s thoughts. The dirty little secret that keeps the Oxon. Moralists busy calculating and ritualizing ad nausea, and then some. That which in the end is too belly-swollen to be contained is uncontainable, beyond containment. This perspicuous eye that sees behind the containment (of thought) that never sees anything other than the other that it contains. That, in the end, is what kills a man. A man takes his own life when containment is all that is possible, when there are no multiplicities, only lacuna and moderation. That which is built upon the scaffolding of thought is all that language allows us to see. Milky eyes always ruminate upon those things and objects and thoughts and patterns of thought that have ways out, they never see the inside from the outside as Deleuze did. There is always apprehension hidden behind the postmortem. The other will never be found other than in language, which we control and subjugate, for selfish needs. I suggest a joyous Nietzschean premortem, a joyous Deleuzian canonical ass-fuck
High Fashionable
High Fashionable
And the scold of her face and an indifference to men and high fashion and being eaten up between the legs and my tongue spiced with onions and rime
And her fashionable face meets my jaw jawing hard and down like a chisel beveling stone thick skin and ointments and salves and balms to leaven the
dryness where fashion meets the cusp of my tonguing lolling and indifferent to her high fashionable want for pointy shoes and a handbag to match the
colour of her eyes and she points a hard red nail like a railhead in my high unfashionable face lips biting down hard on Majorca and Minorca in that
place between her handbag and the colour of her eyes not blue and her indifference to my wishes never to be fulfilled by Freud or high fashion
Clicks of Lice
Clicks of Lice
a bundle of clothes
happed over shoulder
feet drawn like stones
over mud and brick
(caulked with lice)
souls worn through
with fear and reason
and the clicking
(of lice)
in the bundles
of clothes
zAZAKy1
Anal Anon Anal etc
A medicate for a mendicant, and this ethereal cacophony, a hosanna Sanso for the herd of hearing and sylph. No Lilliputian’s or a one up the whole-end. That’d be a most unseemly monk and wallop. I say althea hosanna anal impetigo anon. never one am I to neither mince nor monger words swill-brewed and gulped upon gulp. Alabaster bastard’s wearied sole-shoed, neither shod of foot or Achilles’. Lance narks on the manse of his wee feats hackle sod and shoddy. Fucking archly enemas for the faint of Intel and continent. I best get some sleep aft fore the mornings murmur puts a full stop to this murder of words et al anon so seethe me the cord all musty monk and lye
Sailor’s Knots and Bolos
A medicate for a mendicant, and this ethereal cacophony, a hosanna Sanso for the herd of hearing and sylph. No Lilliputian’s or a one up the whole-end. That’d be a most unseemly monk and wallop. I say althea hosanna anal impetigo anon. never one am I to neither mince nor monger words swill-brewed and gulped upon gulp. Alabaster bastard’s wearied sole-shoed, neither shod of foot or Achilles’. Lance narks on the manse of his wee feats hackle sod and shoddy. Fucking archly enemas for the faint of Intel and continent. I best get some sleep aft fore the mornings murmur puts a full stop to this murder of words et al anon so seethe me the cord all musty monk and lye
Sailor’s Knots and Bolos
her breath smells of apple peels
left to rot in the summer sun
hair woven in knots and bolos by
rum laggard fingers scored with brine
and her legs pried open with a smile
and her legs pried open with a smile
anda copper held aloft in a rum laggard fist
Theory
Theoretically if you took all the blood vessels out of your body and laid them end to end you would die.
-Mike Topp
-Mike Topp
That boy with the faded jeans needs some Javex
That boy with the faded jeans needs some Javex
(... high school yearbook revisited)
By John Stiles
Sulky is a word for a pouting, sixteen-year-old wimp who sits in
his room imagines quibble bibble to say at Inter-School Christian
Fellowship Meetings. He`s a cross little tosser with bandly legs, hides
a dog-eared Bible under his pillow 'mongst eight tracks he`s pinched
from The Box of Delights. To say he is mean sprited, small-eyed
thief is not correct, he`s a scholar of Mad Magazines
and thinks
Desperate Dan is the bees knees. If he ever gets a chance to
chew gum he`ll stick it under a plate. There he`ll let it sit, forever.
If his mother finds it she`ll take the stars off his chores list so
he`ll have to do other things like vaccuum his room and stand in the
shadows in the schoolyard saying things - to himself - like My Mummy
and Your Mummy are friends till your son says something bad and I
call Your Mummy at home
she says
my son would never do that you greasy, good-for-nothing old bat.
Thirteen year-old boys with their hands in the odds and sodds bins
at Frenchies can get worked into a lather trying to find an OP T-shirt
or a pair of Converse High Tops. Look out in the middle of the
pack of crowd pleasers on the dancefloor they`ve been wanting to move,
groove for a long time, not bad looking for nearing
forty years-old,
some of them have flown half way across the world to take back things they said or scribbled in the High School Yearbook.
bECKDEGGER, S, M
Waiting for Heidegger
Who are Molloy and Murphy, Mercier and Camier, Watt and Crapp, Vladimir and Estragon? Where are they, how come ‘are they’? The eight, the literary eight, are Heideggerian characters, non-characters, phantoms and ghostbodies, names without names, the nameless. M.M.M.C.W.C.V and E are in the world, yet not in the world, they a worldless, always on the edge of a world, a character, a name. Beckett’s characters are no-body’s, specters, fragmentation’s of a splintered self, or ego-self, an ego-barrenness, a non-ego, an ego yet to be. Had Bion had more time and Beckett less genius, M.M.M.C.W.C.V and E would cease to exist, have existed, been characterless, non-characters, Heideggerian no-men. The eight are never quite ‘in the world’, but on the outskirts, pushing into the trope of the world, the moment, the characters they are suppose to be, but will never become, be. Beckett’s characters are Heideggerian no-men, characters yet to throw themselves into the word, the moment, the character. As such, they are characterless, mere ghostbodies, apparitions, shades without umbrellas. Beckett’s characters have yet to see, or recognize themselves in, the Lacanian mirror; they stare at the silver backing of the mirror, not into the mirror itself. They have no reference, no identity other than a blank, silver impression, a no-man.
Act one ends:
Estragon: Well, shall we go?
Vladimir: Yes, let's go.
Vladimir: Yes, let's go.
(They do not move.)
Act two ends:
Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
(They do not move.)
E: Let's go.
V: We can't.
E: Why not?
V: We're waiting for Godot
V: Moron!
E: Vermin!
V: Abortion!
E: Morpion!
V: Sewer-rat!
E: Curate!
V: Cretin!
E: (with finality) Crritic!
V: Oh!
(He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.)
Vladimir and Estragon are never quite in-the-world, but on the periphery, the edge, the outside (in) of the world. In and out at the same time, simultaneously, yet neither one nor the other, a no-men’s land, a blank Lacanian slate, the Heideggerian ontological misstep. The Heideggerain circle has neither a beginning nor an end (Derrida showed us that) but an infinite number, or juncture, of jumping-in point(s): ontological hopscotch. A being-there, a being-amidst, a being-with, a being-in, a being-in-the-world, a coping-in-being-in-the-world, Being-out, never in. Moron! Vermin! Abortion! Morpion! Sewer-rat! Curate! Cretin! Critic! Oh!
fUCKING cOld aPRIL
Millet and Bone
chaffing millet from bone
gutters with ox mallets and pike
separating skull from hank
the talisman, they say
of an early March slaughter
bridles of hair sheared white
dunning axe and razor cut
scalloped raw as chaff
fratricide culls the bone
from chaff and marrow
life takes root in mud
not wine or dry biscuits
millet and bone separated
from host and shoulder
the Talisman of a rising
or an early spring slaughter
MEET DAVY JONES AND JOLLY ROGER
I would like to introduce two brothers.
DAVY JONES and
JOLLY ROGER.
Jolly Roger first appeared in "Hand Made, Volume 1" by Karl Marc in 2005. His younger, more "aggressive" brother, Davy Jones will be featured in "Hand Made, Volume 2" due for release @ Copro Nason Gallery, Bergamont Station April 22, 2006.
They are rough and tough. They hold tattoo machines and other valuable trinkets such as BONE AMIE jewelry.
Thank you,
Chantal Menard
DAVY JONES and
JOLLY ROGER.
Jolly Roger first appeared in "Hand Made, Volume 1" by Karl Marc in 2005. His younger, more "aggressive" brother, Davy Jones will be featured in "Hand Made, Volume 2" due for release @ Copro Nason Gallery, Bergamont Station April 22, 2006.
They are rough and tough. They hold tattoo machines and other valuable trinkets such as BONE AMIE jewelry.
Thank you,
Chantal Menard
inverse reading
(shameless reading plug)
If you're in Philly on the 18th, please come to see Leonard Gontarek, Mark Lamoureux, and Julia Bloch read some killer poems-- and special musical guest David Cope.
If you're in Philly on the 18th, please come to see Leonard Gontarek, Mark Lamoureux, and Julia Bloch read some killer poems-- and special musical guest David Cope.
Only me
They don’t know
Can’t hear your song
Can’t imagine your fuck
Can’t hear your song
Can’t imagine your fuck
Your sound speaks
To my shy and
Shakes my limbs
To my shy and
Shakes my limbs
Close your eyes
Imagine us;
Exploring
Imagine us;
Exploring
See my lips
Hot and willing
Coaxing your molester
Hot and willing
Coaxing your molester
Lick my clinch
With your witty tongue
And relish the delicacy
While I envelope you
Savor each portion
With your witty tongue
And relish the delicacy
While I envelope you
Savor each portion
Slapping
Squeezing
Hands to the mountains
Hips to the music
Imagine the jungle
The wild humidity
Feel the trickle
The wild humidity
Feel the trickle
I know your animal
I can see your pieces
I can meet you there
I can see your pieces
I can meet you there
mONDAY mOURNING
Thing Else, Nothing
I am the excrescence that fills the void, the syphilitic ulcer that skirls the skin of your lips, the gonorrheal wetness at the back of your throat, the skimpily dressed debauchee with the machicolate smirk and wee misshapen feet. Why are you like that? She said, so crudely indifferent to feelings, people’s feelings? I’d rather, I’d much rather worry about upsetting an animal, I said, a beast, than a people. People heal, beasts don’t. You’re an imbecile, she said, her lip curled around the chisel of her teeth, whiter than free-base and bed sheets. I know, I said, that I know, perhaps nothing else but that. I wrapped my arms around her waist and held my breath, her breath, hers that she held, not mine, pitted with a soft almost imperceptible wail. I murmured something, something lilting, into the conch of her ear, her ear, not mine, and closed my eyes. Life’s a waste of time and time is a waste of life, I said, nothing more. I said nothing, nothing more. That means nothing, she said, her waist clabbered in the shank of my arms, my fingers, not hers, but mine, tightening, cinching in around the manse of her hips. Fecal nonsense, she said, and not very good at that.
I loosened my fingers around the camber of her waist, not mine, but hers, and opened then closed my eyes, once, then a second time, then none. What if I were to pickaxe my eyes, these, I said, pointing at my eyes, not hers, mine, and be done with it? Like Oedipus, the bad and mealy son. Would that make you happy, change things, as they are, make things more, better than? I opened then closed my eyes, her eyes, not mine, remaining open, not shut, all the while, for the while, while I closed and reopened mine. Maybe, she said. Maybe it would, it would and wouldn’t hurt, couldn’t hurt, would it? Now you see, I said, if you were an animal, some beast, I would pay you more respect, care more, at all, for your feelings. As it stands, I could care less, less than more than less. I hate you and your, you and… I kissed her softly, with a passion broaching on madness, on the cant of her head, where the front of the head meets with the eyebrows, and whispered, softly whispered, I know, yes, I know. That I know, perhaps that, but nothing else.
I loosened my fingers around the camber of her waist, not mine, but hers, and opened then closed my eyes, once, then a second time, then none. What if I were to pickaxe my eyes, these, I said, pointing at my eyes, not hers, mine, and be done with it? Like Oedipus, the bad and mealy son. Would that make you happy, change things, as they are, make things more, better than? I opened then closed my eyes, her eyes, not mine, remaining open, not shut, all the while, for the while, while I closed and reopened mine. Maybe, she said. Maybe it would, it would and wouldn’t hurt, couldn’t hurt, would it? Now you see, I said, if you were an animal, some beast, I would pay you more respect, care more, at all, for your feelings. As it stands, I could care less, less than more than less. I hate you and your, you and… I kissed her softly, with a passion broaching on madness, on the cant of her head, where the front of the head meets with the eyebrows, and whispered, softly whispered, I know, yes, I know. That I know, perhaps that, but nothing else.
mAHLER'S fILTH5
Mahler's Fifth
Mid-March and Eliot’s still at it, make a fucking mess and tatter of things, whittling away at life, dental hygiene and millstones, fucking nonsense, and a blade’s blue-booker to boot and Mahler. Ginsoaked, no less, fucking scribe’s cramp, not an opposable thumb in the joining. And Mahler’s Fifth coaxing patricidal thoughts from the skittle of my thinking. Hat or no hat, the eye gouging is the same, Blackguards and Hoodoos, and pretty scullery hires in opposable rows. Addle-minded flossy, denticulate and bevel-edged. Not one to mince and monger with, nor harrow and bark. TBS. and marrow, terra firma split in cress’, a noman’sland of kurtosis’ and bear-bearded fellows, and some chivvy-shouldered chap with gugalug and the croup. Fucking sad state of affairs indeed, indeed. Saw Mahler’s Filth at the NACHO some time long gone and go, a slurry of shirttails and buttresses wane with triple sec and melba. Fosters the impression that the rich are imbecilic and prone to sashaying in neatly parried shoats. Sidestepping social conscience and alms providing. Hats off to the Viceroy, or Vicars’ melba, Christ’s skin scalloped with potables and tannic hooch. Spoils the tongue with cracker salt and rectory crumbs. Gods know what makes a stale biscuit a transubstantive treat, all that mollycoddling and goodly manners. Stephen Deadatlast, poking the afflictive dogsbody with a well-appointed stick, ashplant, for the merry of foot and poor dead Patty’s gravepost. Poor Stephen’s recently dead and deceased mother, rheumy and godsawful in bare patched gravescothes and harlot’s pin. Makes one what to bark and swisher with the likes of Blazes and Patty’s poor widowed widow. Nothing fixes up a bad day like a little of the in and out and porcine mummeries spewing mouthfuls of lactose intolerance. Gugalug, and so forth. That’ll be quite enough of that blather and rue, best left to those with ample thyme and a garland of marigolds and rosehip, or a gumming of no-salts and ampersands @.
pRESBYTER'S fROCK and hALTER
Miscreants and Apple-polishers
Pastor Pastor’s miscreant apple-polishers, never quite certain if they should be suckling a breast or sodomizing a jennet’s ass. That ever divisive queue between absolute sodomy, with all the bells and whimpers, and a Christian principled antithetical monogamy, man and wife sans jennet’s backhoe and jowl. The worse kept secrets are always the best, cleaving the levy between truth and nonsense, that invariable blowout of the damned with all the carillons and trilling conceivable. To you, and you alone, I offer my gravest sorrow and approbation. Pity the pitiful and concupiscent, for they know what they do, but proffer they’re ex Deus maledictions regardless of gods’ will and bidding. Pastor Pastor, may you languor in peace and tranquility, a milt-cloth garroting your Presbyter’s frock and halter.
There are conjunctions and disjunction’s both in language and in life itself. Octavio Paz drew this to my attention in his book of the same name. Like language, which is the assemblage and disassemblage of words, tones, syntax grammar, etc., life is prima fascia an assemblage awaiting its inevitable disjuncture, or dissemination into parts that never seek the whole, a fixed unity, once disjointed. People whom I have met, kibitzed with, become friends, some enemies with, fit into this pattern, or dialogue, of conjunction and disjunction of wholes now rendered into parts, and bit-parts, and parts of bit-parts and so on. Once the whole, or the unity or conjunction, (conjunction, because all things, people included, are a composite of other conjuncts and parts and bit-parts) is divided into parts, disjunctions, disassemblage is inevitable. The Pastor Pastor is a prima fascia example of this, as his disjunction into parts and bit-parts was the inevitable result, a cause without an affect, of a disassembled conjunction that began at birth, perhaps at the moment of conception. Aldo Busi, Jean Genet, the Marquis de Sade, these three writers are examples of sodomy in it’s infancy; a prima fascia conjunction of language, thought, evocation and life itself. They antecede the Pastor Pastor and his infantile need to declare his annunciation into the world of sexual misdemeanors, moral in-censor, and protracted masturbation.
If Freud is to be believed (as he must, in excelsior glorious) whence was Id, there go Ego. This, I fear, is not so for Pastor Pastor, as his is an Id bereft of Ego, an Ego-less psychical malfunction, a congenital deformation, a genome without a periodical table to keep things in check. A chemical imbalance that defies biological reification. A displaced hypothalamus with a pineal glandular rhizome that has neither a beginning nor an end. One of Kafka’s burrows from which nothing enters or leaves. The Ego neither is nor was, but is a composite that is forever modifying to maintain a stasis with an otherness, an outsideness that is in constant, unremitting flux, a circumnavigation of a unity that is not nor ever will be a whole. If the Ego is nothing more than a social/moral modification of the Id, an adjustment that allows us to live in a socially (moral/religious) coded world, then it stands to reason that the Ego can remain in abject infancy, moral/social no-man’s land, as long as the psychical mechanism it plays host to remains stunted, immature and malformed. Miscreants and apple-polishers beware, the orchard keeper is onto you, and your little dog, too, cogito ego sum.
Orphic Dreams
If I were to try and fly
Would you push first?
If I were to fall
Would you let me go?
If I were set ablaze all that I knew
Would you sit back and admire the burning orange
Would you look into the shawdows?
Cry out to ebony coloured embers?
Would you see a glimmer of hope?
A glimse of pride?
A certain becoming
A lifetime?
A little golden orb that spun around time and time again
A silent spectator who never quite caught your eye
Tell my story to the young and new
So that dust may never gather on bones
So that the sun many shine many a time
While in an age old vault
A serpant winds itself around tiny vials of salt...
[Cross Posted On Una Voce]
Would you push first?
If I were to fall
Would you let me go?
If I were set ablaze all that I knew
Would you sit back and admire the burning orange
Would you look into the shawdows?
Cry out to ebony coloured embers?
Would you see a glimmer of hope?
A glimse of pride?
A certain becoming
A lifetime?
A little golden orb that spun around time and time again
A silent spectator who never quite caught your eye
Tell my story to the young and new
So that dust may never gather on bones
So that the sun many shine many a time
While in an age old vault
A serpant winds itself around tiny vials of salt...
[Cross Posted On Una Voce]
Long
Just too big to matter.
A haunted hefty hollow
Deceived into shadow.
Eclipsing the life of
Impossibly sweet dreams.
Mendacity from men
While pushing to reckon
The heart with the veracity.
Falling through the ice of
Sins committed by the
Mind of a sleeping soul.
Too true the eyes of
Touching hands and breath.
Can I long for you?
Can I sing for you?
Millions of miles strumming
The reach and appealing
The sky that flows openly.
Dare I dream the blue blossom?
A heart in remission
With the dreams and essence of
Untold and undefined want.
A haunted hefty hollow
Deceived into shadow.
Eclipsing the life of
Impossibly sweet dreams.
Mendacity from men
While pushing to reckon
The heart with the veracity.
Falling through the ice of
Sins committed by the
Mind of a sleeping soul.
Too true the eyes of
Touching hands and breath.
Can I long for you?
Can I sing for you?
Millions of miles strumming
The reach and appealing
The sky that flows openly.
Dare I dream the blue blossom?
A heart in remission
With the dreams and essence of
Untold and undefined want.
TV TOUCHY
TV can shape ambition
make it real
fill the sky
paint the stars
and fight the cause of wrinkles while you sleep
It can bend truth dangerously close
to the exfoliating daily wash control programme of
a dying snowman at the end of a telephone
who will quote your car a downhill assist and kick
start ascent system in a uniquely cold flake way
Onscreen is a dedicated helpline of understanding
bankers who'll top up your account with soap opera
statements and pile into the night with vitally alive hair
clean, full, thick, noticeably luscious
and with ten times more skin loving natural oils that make
washing it easy and fun to play with at the hair experts.
The tube'll get you buzzing on the edge of bus seats
and do voodoo for all who dare think that
a pasta fairy’s cupboard
is full of empty headed tall bossomed bore guys
wooing you with their songbird injection.
But TV won't inoculate against the devil's buzz
or work at stopping
the man next door from screaming into the night
delusional drug induced worries of what will occur
when death comes laughing to take hold
and cut his life like a knife slicing through
the light he shies from.
Next door Noel's a daytime prince and pretend
fool. A blind, deaf and dumb courtier of Armageddon
weeping to the beat of a preacher selling salvation
five times a week. He spends his days praying god's
not forgotten to book him a seat in the VIP suite of heaven
and practicing his talk with St. Peter of repenting his sins
for the price of a shoulder to cry on, as he questions why
life never went according to plan during his time asking
voices for the reason why he heard them speak to him
and if their creator will spare him for being unable to
live as a man who made the world shake or take notice
of how he lived or what he did when the sun shone itself
present and correct as he hid from love in the shadows
and undergrowth, baying the tune of lunacy and fading
from life’s first breath.
Coirà FilÃochtaat
http://irishpoetry.blogspot.ca/
make it real
fill the sky
paint the stars
and fight the cause of wrinkles while you sleep
It can bend truth dangerously close
to the exfoliating daily wash control programme of
a dying snowman at the end of a telephone
who will quote your car a downhill assist and kick
start ascent system in a uniquely cold flake way
Onscreen is a dedicated helpline of understanding
bankers who'll top up your account with soap opera
statements and pile into the night with vitally alive hair
clean, full, thick, noticeably luscious
and with ten times more skin loving natural oils that make
washing it easy and fun to play with at the hair experts.
The tube'll get you buzzing on the edge of bus seats
and do voodoo for all who dare think that
a pasta fairy’s cupboard
is full of empty headed tall bossomed bore guys
wooing you with their songbird injection.
But TV won't inoculate against the devil's buzz
or work at stopping
the man next door from screaming into the night
delusional drug induced worries of what will occur
when death comes laughing to take hold
and cut his life like a knife slicing through
the light he shies from.
Next door Noel's a daytime prince and pretend
fool. A blind, deaf and dumb courtier of Armageddon
weeping to the beat of a preacher selling salvation
five times a week. He spends his days praying god's
not forgotten to book him a seat in the VIP suite of heaven
and practicing his talk with St. Peter of repenting his sins
for the price of a shoulder to cry on, as he questions why
life never went according to plan during his time asking
voices for the reason why he heard them speak to him
and if their creator will spare him for being unable to
live as a man who made the world shake or take notice
of how he lived or what he did when the sun shone itself
present and correct as he hid from love in the shadows
and undergrowth, baying the tune of lunacy and fading
from life’s first breath.
Coirà FilÃochtaat
http://irishpoetry.blogspot.ca/
Sex Machine
With intent to charm women
He wore the one outfit
He thought would make a splash
His favourite baggy leather pants
Pointy crocodile skin boots
And a burgundy & teal shaker knit sweater
Stolen from the Cosby show
Va va va voom
He wore the one outfit
He thought would make a splash
His favourite baggy leather pants
Pointy crocodile skin boots
And a burgundy & teal shaker knit sweater
Stolen from the Cosby show
Va va va voom
a b sonnet
brim
border
line
bright
bring
the time
on the line
of the border
brimming time
timeless border
brought on the brim
of the bright bridge
bridging brimmed borders
brightly brought by time
(after Gregory Vincent St Thomasino's title: A, B haiku - if I remember right)
border
line
bright
bring
the time
on the line
of the border
brimming time
timeless border
brought on the brim
of the bright bridge
bridging brimmed borders
brightly brought by time
(after Gregory Vincent St Thomasino's title: A, B haiku - if I remember right)
sometimes pretty hunting musics morning moan awake
headache gray unfurl shall karaoke Me there he's looking
knows what's in underwear in assorted dreams drunkenly
dance more something dorothy groping email of the body
ceremonial clunky individual tangled in ripped bedroom
taste blood halos on trembling lips as dirt moderator
try moaning your hope junky wetly solid gold sang
particular thought rub i whatever like buffet of interlocking orbs
impressionable doc martens walk age-defying on electric ground
uber bookmark this soul i've got you in my rearview mirage
headache gray unfurl shall karaoke Me there he's looking
knows what's in underwear in assorted dreams drunkenly
dance more something dorothy groping email of the body
ceremonial clunky individual tangled in ripped bedroom
taste blood halos on trembling lips as dirt moderator
try moaning your hope junky wetly solid gold sang
particular thought rub i whatever like buffet of interlocking orbs
impressionable doc martens walk age-defying on electric ground
uber bookmark this soul i've got you in my rearview mirage
galaxy lights pumping
bodies pulsating in motion
over the dance floor
intercellular movement
improvised venusian
ceremonial dances
to meet coming rain
young persons flooded
looking out through the blackness
as boys on boys and women on women
and sometimes boys on women
tangle into saying anything at all
elsewhere there is a tender groping
in the stalls electric blue eyes shatter
into groups of ten is that make-up
let us determine
bodies pulsating in motion
over the dance floor
intercellular movement
improvised venusian
ceremonial dances
to meet coming rain
young persons flooded
looking out through the blackness
as boys on boys and women on women
and sometimes boys on women
tangle into saying anything at all
elsewhere there is a tender groping
in the stalls electric blue eyes shatter
into groups of ten is that make-up
let us determine
pADDY's dEAD
Ulysses Piece
“Ulysses is a mosaic of psychological recalls, topics of the day, Dublin landmarks, social, political, and philosophical concepts. Its tone changes with kaleidoscopic rapidity—from irony to pathos to ridicule to poetry. In its cubistic arrangement of contrasting planes and perspectives it is a perfect art form for the modern era. As an art form, it has been variously praised and attached; its content has never received the consideration it deserves…Ulysses marks an important stage in the development of the most accomplished writer of his century. It confronts the poetic and philosophical artist with the common man and the vulgar values of society and projects his vision toward the symbolic plane later attained in Finnigans Wake…Ulysses is a modern Hamlet; but it is a Hamlet without the last three acts.” (Kain, 1947, pp. 240-41)
James Joyce’s Ulysses is monolithic; it broke the rules of literature while inventing a voice, textuality, unheralded in modern verse and canon. In many ways, it is a canon unto itself, the beginning of a literary style, a postmodern prose that encouraged experimentation, revealing the hidden monologue beneath the surface of voice. Joyce’s perambulatory style and inner monologue allowed the reader an insider’s view of the thoughts and musings of its principal characters. Bloom’s ruminations on loss and cuckoldry, Stephen’s self-punishment for his mother’s death, and Molly’s fanciful discursion that ends the novel, encouraging one to begin reading again, the Yes, the affirmation of beginning again, anew.
“Ulysses is a mosaic of psychological recalls, topics of the day, Dublin landmarks, social, political, and philosophical concepts. Its tone changes with kaleidoscopic rapidity—from irony to pathos to ridicule to poetry. In its cubistic arrangement of contrasting planes and perspectives it is a perfect art form for the modern era. As an art form, it has been variously praised and attached; its content has never received the consideration it deserves…Ulysses marks an important stage in the development of the most accomplished writer of his century. It confronts the poetic and philosophical artist with the common man and the vulgar values of society and projects his vision toward the symbolic plane later attained in Finnigans Wake…Ulysses is a modern Hamlet; but it is a Hamlet without the last three acts.” (Kain, 1947, pp. 240-41)
James Joyce’s Ulysses is monolithic; it broke the rules of literature while inventing a voice, textuality, unheralded in modern verse and canon. In many ways, it is a canon unto itself, the beginning of a literary style, a postmodern prose that encouraged experimentation, revealing the hidden monologue beneath the surface of voice. Joyce’s perambulatory style and inner monologue allowed the reader an insider’s view of the thoughts and musings of its principal characters. Bloom’s ruminations on loss and cuckoldry, Stephen’s self-punishment for his mother’s death, and Molly’s fanciful discursion that ends the novel, encouraging one to begin reading again, the Yes, the affirmation of beginning again, anew.
Ulysses was published on Joyce’s fortieth birthday, February 2 1922, in Paris to much acclaim and moralistic denounce. Its publication history alone makes for a most interesting book, the trials and censure of a literary monument that was both despised and lauded as a work of genius. Joyce’s Ulysses is responsible for spawning an entire literary criticism, a sweatshop of academic study and denouement. The novel begins with the word Stately and ends with the affirmation, Yes. What lies in between is a testament to Joyce’s literary genius and creativity. In many ways Ulysses is a book about a book, an exegeses on writing, remembering, forgetting and the solipsistic loneliness of modern man. It describes with surgical precision the inner workings of each character’s thoughts, their inability to communicate outside of themselves, in a solitude wrought with indecision, angst, fear and detachment from the outer world. In many ways, Ulysses foreshadowed the Babel of in-communication that has become the state of postmodernism.
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