Night, quiet mist
Once, I heard a song
that lifted heart like this:
notes the sound of
sleeping, sweetness.
When silvered stones
gleam like horse's eyes
pausing under moonlit pines:
the weightless-ness of
light is captured, briefly.
River, liquid black
a dream I've had where
instinct loses reason:
we learn the speed of
darkness in our blindness.
Rose, unfolding organ
I've given to the poor, the thankless
words of comfort, open hands:
attracting moths, a flame betrays
the beauty of its brilliance.
Automatic #67
On Tuesday I remember the importance of breathing, of the manner in which air is brought in then expelled. It is important to remember your breathing, not that you are breathing but what your breathing represents. For instance: I was writing a letter, and on the back of the letter I made the sign of the cross with my index finger, tracing the whiteness with my own. This is curious, something about nature, the blind ambition of things, how they are drawn to one another. Shh! The baby is sleeping, this is no small task for the baby, to sleep, and perchance to drool, while sleeping, to be unconscious of the drool, to make no social claims of the drool, this is the original state, to be unaware of the body as a thing alone in the world, to draw no conclusions about anything. The bird that flies by the window is a new thing, a curiosity, lacking a language, yet one is fully aware of its birdness, its nature is an unknown. It is small against the sun. It has not rained for many days. This is a sign of things to come, one is curious of things to come, like the man in the back row of the theatre who shifts blindly in his seat in hope of getting a better view of the action, and yet the theatre closed down months ago. No one has had the heart to tell him. “Let him sit” they say, “It is what he was born to do.” And so he sits, waiting for things to come waiting for the things that must come.
mista daguerre
circulation on three levels … so Daguerreotypical of you
this is your world.
you Make sepia images here and there /
you, Daguerreotypist
apparently a difficult make
given to print , but palms are open to
platinum, silver, the thingness of magazines, century objects/ to opaque glass in expensive twenty-first museum windows, in acute reproduction
ur-Daguerreotypy
particularly generous , but fickle , major - but elusory/ Perhaps flawed
photography only - blemish-free on screens …
Daguerre ineffable muse - albumen-smudged / ethereal / idle
macerating all early digital dimensions
A [ei] [ei] = the image word–
the surprisingly fit [ei]
gratifying /producing a heavy resurgence
heliotrope…. galleries….. ukulele….featured growth….
copper….. age
near the comforting sterilization of silver in
numbers
sudden digitalization
this is your world.
you Make sepia images here and there /
you, Daguerreotypist
apparently a difficult make
given to print , but palms are open to
platinum, silver, the thingness of magazines, century objects/ to opaque glass in expensive twenty-first museum windows, in acute reproduction
ur-Daguerreotypy
particularly generous , but fickle , major - but elusory/ Perhaps flawed
photography only - blemish-free on screens …
Daguerre ineffable muse - albumen-smudged / ethereal / idle
macerating all early digital dimensions
A [ei] [ei] = the image word–
the surprisingly fit [ei]
gratifying /producing a heavy resurgence
heliotrope…. galleries….. ukulele….featured growth….
copper….. age
near the comforting sterilization of silver in
numbers
sudden digitalization
Doppelganger
Anu Garg, creator of the A.Word.A.Day Web site and author of a new book called "Another Word A Day: An All-New Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English."
AVI ARDITTI: "Well, one of the words you use in your book is doppelganger, and it's interesting because that's a term I've been hearing for it seems like a few years. It seems like it's getting more popular. And recently one of our listeners in Iran used that term to describe a friend of his, and it's a great word -- and then, lo and behold, I see it in your book. Can you explain doppelganger, and maybe start by spelling it."
ANU GARG: "The word is spelled as d-o-p-p-e-l-g-a-n-g-e-r. So we borrowed this word from German and it literally means a double goer. It's used to describe a ghostly double of a living person. You can as well use it metaphorically. "So let's say you have interest in words and radio broadcasting, and you attended a party and you met a woman and it turns out she also has a deep interest in words and languages, and she also had a radio show. So you might say 'Oh, I met my doppelganger' -- somebody who is, in a way, double of you."
AVI ARDITTI: "Well, one of the words you use in your book is doppelganger, and it's interesting because that's a term I've been hearing for it seems like a few years. It seems like it's getting more popular. And recently one of our listeners in Iran used that term to describe a friend of his, and it's a great word -- and then, lo and behold, I see it in your book. Can you explain doppelganger, and maybe start by spelling it."
ANU GARG: "The word is spelled as d-o-p-p-e-l-g-a-n-g-e-r. So we borrowed this word from German and it literally means a double goer. It's used to describe a ghostly double of a living person. You can as well use it metaphorically. "So let's say you have interest in words and radio broadcasting, and you attended a party and you met a woman and it turns out she also has a deep interest in words and languages, and she also had a radio show. So you might say 'Oh, I met my doppelganger' -- somebody who is, in a way, double of you."
Venus (simply medieval)
Even for woman, I am thus vain nor
sprightly bud or rose hath feigned such
affection towards sun or rain
as my heart towards its suffering.
Night and day hath shed its gentle robes
little doeth the evening know how
sudden, quickly my sorrow grows
to cloud the rising moon.
What ray throws hallowed light wherein
shadows shrink and curl from sight, whose
sallow face, at once, so gay and bright
when lovers come to call?
Here am I but ghost of beauty's maiden
decked with flowers, shining, jewel-laden;
my grief and sadness overtaken by
my need for love.
They flee from me that sometime
should not seek. Some might sorely pine
for solace, bread or richer wine but
not in arms that keep you.
All beware the trickery of passion, let
Venus be the thoughtful lesson; gluttony
she feeds upon her witless prey till
naught but whitened bone remain.
sprightly bud or rose hath feigned such
affection towards sun or rain
as my heart towards its suffering.
Night and day hath shed its gentle robes
little doeth the evening know how
sudden, quickly my sorrow grows
to cloud the rising moon.
What ray throws hallowed light wherein
shadows shrink and curl from sight, whose
sallow face, at once, so gay and bright
when lovers come to call?
Here am I but ghost of beauty's maiden
decked with flowers, shining, jewel-laden;
my grief and sadness overtaken by
my need for love.
They flee from me that sometime
should not seek. Some might sorely pine
for solace, bread or richer wine but
not in arms that keep you.
All beware the trickery of passion, let
Venus be the thoughtful lesson; gluttony
she feeds upon her witless prey till
naught but whitened bone remain.
Definite Directive
Our day clanks against pharmacy, the raid of rules that send boon to wherewithal, under cover of darkness. And the politics sent from above, blasting microbe Mercury from disinterest: we love those awesome stars! Ageless John Travolta crunches the depth charge of incremental public fund. His next movie is the face of dolour. Down is disease, up is the best. To be a product of a lingering nation forms words on dull lips. I speak, says the last word, in its dull tent, umbrage filling the airwaves. We die (claims another wisdom) as drawers full of dreadful socks and as swerving points of limited light. Is this our catchphrase or will other words intrude? Our dumbass is tomorrow's wonder clause. That's it: face the music, and let the music face you. Tomorrow, reputed another day, seeps in. winds, when they arrive, will swat the tree here, and all its leaves, a telling locomotion. And you and I will stand here. Period, the front part of our life. Here, then, is where love comes into play.
The First Rock
redaction becomes organic. that is, reduction to the fine point, until no other point can be found. if there is a whole, we always wonder. that is, we—in a specific, redacted sense—do, when we can. the organic problem steals into the room when we read exactly the book we think we read. yet the change happens, somewhat heartening in an enraging way, as in: was I ever so lost as now? indeed. the tourney goes for all out drama, until the broken lance tells all. screw in the light bulb NOW, and make a peace with limitations, they are ever so grand. we slide into possibility with astonishing speed, just about fixed on the ideal that we know can’t exist. desperation manufactures a learning curve that becomes shiftless, low rent. it might be time to howl. still, the text may love us some day, to the extent that love can be worded in human terms, and if human terms bear the measure of the person in question, if questions aren’t just parliamentary purpose. the bottom line weighs heavy, a vast effort is a-foot.
or maybe the hazards are mutable, in just the way that we think we perfect the moon. looking up, a season becomes a message, straining at sense. and how does that person become that message, or that message a person? an action to weather, a whether to act on… what a muddle! which, no doubt, makes most of us comfortable. soothed with the variable logic, you see, emboldened by the muted tragedy that can be seen at the edges. the questions… it’s hard to speak of this.
edges show a frequency that can be guessed at, with pleasure, a soft reverberation at the well mouth. ready to utter, quietly, something that will assume presence. how drearily dizzy the conformities can be and how shattering the later realizations will be. the process makes many cuts and changes, to suit the biographic enterprise, but when traditions incur our wrath, every tree shakes. the division can’t be healed, not by any tool we know of. we settle for some hard thing, non-transferable. a rock, to put it kindly. and upon that rock, we think we stand.
or maybe the hazards are mutable, in just the way that we think we perfect the moon. looking up, a season becomes a message, straining at sense. and how does that person become that message, or that message a person? an action to weather, a whether to act on… what a muddle! which, no doubt, makes most of us comfortable. soothed with the variable logic, you see, emboldened by the muted tragedy that can be seen at the edges. the questions… it’s hard to speak of this.
edges show a frequency that can be guessed at, with pleasure, a soft reverberation at the well mouth. ready to utter, quietly, something that will assume presence. how drearily dizzy the conformities can be and how shattering the later realizations will be. the process makes many cuts and changes, to suit the biographic enterprise, but when traditions incur our wrath, every tree shakes. the division can’t be healed, not by any tool we know of. we settle for some hard thing, non-transferable. a rock, to put it kindly. and upon that rock, we think we stand.
Tackling Madeleine Albright
Lacking the Scopes Trial in 1925,
Summer for the Gods
thru content, now Here Now!
a personal entropy caused
satchels of countryside, now sad,
It's A Sad Place To Be Here Now!
a personal entropy caused
satchels of countries
that provided
A Sad Place To Be in Guns
that provide in usury and
now the frequency in which
dazed language steams over
closed doors
these shaded things
oil wells
the present flow
we sensed a star drop
Can cell phones cause entropy
in the frame?
trees need more
stunned silence
Summer for the Gods
thru content, now Here Now!
a personal entropy caused
satchels of countryside, now sad,
It's A Sad Place To Be Here Now!
a personal entropy caused
satchels of countries
that provided
A Sad Place To Be in Guns
that provide in usury and
now the frequency in which
dazed language steams over
closed doors
these shaded things
oil wells
the present flow
we sensed a star drop
Can cell phones cause entropy
in the frame?
trees need more
stunned silence
Doggedly Arranged
A range of mountains
gives words. First
dawn took the
breath away then
trees failed to relive
their awesome spring.
A dog walks away,
as people do,
as starling chicks do.
A form of celebration
at any recognition
in this world
seems perfectly
matched to the tidal
onslaught of the years
and love's cooling shade.
So much
for that approach,
so much and more.
gives words. First
dawn took the
breath away then
trees failed to relive
their awesome spring.
A dog walks away,
as people do,
as starling chicks do.
A form of celebration
at any recognition
in this world
seems perfectly
matched to the tidal
onslaught of the years
and love's cooling shade.
So much
for that approach,
so much and more.
The Treasured
You are not forgotten,
but its true- your silence is now
about courage, enduring
the damage.
Placed on a shelf like
a finished book whose last pages,
earmarked and stained, prove
someone's hands held you
through to the end.
What they'll remember, what pieces
of thought, built from a strong, measured
sentence, will never be faded, disgraced
or abandoned.
The world is a library gathered
by readers, by men; a treasured collection
with you and your well-worn jacket
among them.
but its true- your silence is now
about courage, enduring
the damage.
Placed on a shelf like
a finished book whose last pages,
earmarked and stained, prove
someone's hands held you
through to the end.
What they'll remember, what pieces
of thought, built from a strong, measured
sentence, will never be faded, disgraced
or abandoned.
The world is a library gathered
by readers, by men; a treasured collection
with you and your well-worn jacket
among them.
Turkish Coffee Prophecy
The booms are getting louder. I’ve got to stop using the word “boom” in casual conversation, he confided to me. Then the sound effects drowned out the next thing he said. Only a pack of lies could save us now. But we were all running on empty, running down the road all scared and elongated like the Expressionists must’ve felt when they had their war. No hard feelings, at least none available at the PX. I had a horrible premonition you were drowning in a flooded foxhole full of snakes, that your three children were crying and your first wife was there too, watching your corpse float and turn, float and turn, in the brown water, the snakes curling over each other all around your body. Then it became so clear to me that this scene was something the Kurdish woman read in our coffee grounds last night, that her interpretation of the brown sludge was nothing more than a foresight of my writing these words, that she was the author of my story, that I have no hand in this but offer my own blankness to her telling. “Watch out for neighbor, she a ladies” “jealous, long ladies, tall” “very bad sign now, snake all around your house, under your house” “but it gets better after that.” The war was coming with all the noises we had expected. A very bad sign that premonitions were turning back on themselves, no way to stop the force of them, nobody left to interpret or even locate the meanings that came out of these ritual actions. I blushed when I imagined there might have been a first wife, or that three children are waiting for me in my future, like the scenes in Die Frau Ohne Schatten. Nobody’s found my shadow in these words.
A Different Kind of Debt
Those hours, formed
like rock, fasten
earth into its body;
violence is a spice
the taste of salt
and soil. I am, at last,
the separating wall,
hip from heart, lung
from blood, the sea route
from its buttressed
path. Landlocked miles
gather heat and fog like
memories of loss; while
water thrusts then rushes
back from shore.
These nights, I practice
flowing past the breaking
point; a wave whose arc
fixes on the waiting
darkness. There, dissolved,
extinct and silenced,
what moves, what strains,
what struggles
disappears.
like rock, fasten
earth into its body;
violence is a spice
the taste of salt
and soil. I am, at last,
the separating wall,
hip from heart, lung
from blood, the sea route
from its buttressed
path. Landlocked miles
gather heat and fog like
memories of loss; while
water thrusts then rushes
back from shore.
These nights, I practice
flowing past the breaking
point; a wave whose arc
fixes on the waiting
darkness. There, dissolved,
extinct and silenced,
what moves, what strains,
what struggles
disappears.
What Did You Expect?
Wait. Your body
is a tool for measure;
surely, now you know
the helpless are immune.
Once, I saw
my father's face
stranger than disjointed
bone, blue and swollen;
I am not as
useless as I seem.
Someone sees what
someone else is missing.
On a stretch
of beach, a fragment
of a shell. I gather pieces
of a whole and glue them
into art, into memory,
barely reaching likeness
or the effigy of God
they really need a copy editor
it has not been accepted it
he has not been accepted she
she has not been accepted it
he has not been accepted she
she has not been accepted it
Hi Tom,
At this time, we have an offer out to a candidate for our last position, although it has not been accepted it. If something falls through with this, we will certainly re-look at your candidacy.
Thanks!
Openned: Jerome Rothenberg reading (03/10, London)
Admission is free.
Note: There will be some time at this reading for open mic slots. If you are interested, bring some of your scribbles to the reading.
Openned: Jerome Rothenberg reading takes place on Wednesday 3rd October at 7.15pm in the basement of The Foundry on Great Eastern Street, London EC1 (nearest tube: Old Street). Click here for map.
Confirmed readers and running order:
Jerome Rothenberg
Martin Dean
Caroline Bergvall
Openned mic
Carol Watts
Jerome Rothenberg
mosaic drag (it’s the parts of speech, stupid)
mosaic drag on prepositions
leave us leave us all of you
genitive conditional how may we
say no how many say now
more named than adjectival
pop into the old revival
and say hi to god dead dropping
sleeping here is your wallet
the commune was further than this
out of the fascist into the kitten
fast, fast like when a house goes up
famous like god but slower
house your mother make cereal
moral tone flakes or was
it a mutter a comb breaking
face tone and mirror image
ancient of daisy chain riddling
on that side, under the shadow
timing rated our possession but
we couldn’t comment on time
how much moreso the watchmaker
commenting on a gasp with his
bracelet, his meaning, his hasp
what they tell me when they talk
is that the machinist will have nothing
more to do with the wrench
it cut deep into his leg, and mother
ran down the hill and we couldn’t
let her in because she would have
tried to heal everyone and bandage
our wounds with her loving care,
her careful love, her leaving us to
our own dependence. the story was over
before she wanted it to end. father grilled
meat and it didn’t mean anything
like the story of your life, breathing
the bread and each hamburger bun,
what could the neighbors know of
writing against the grain in the oak
in a card trick they see the stain of
clouds and lines they drew, nailing
the sand to the cleft to the berry bush
very busy the angels were barking
and it’s only in the tents we could see
a definite pattern of visions that
approaches our impossible wayward
houseless procession in a forest named
naked in a possession named you are
never here when we need you again
racing for the reach that beckons
through the breach, harrumphing while
the same thing happens over there
but nothing happens to that line
if you’re talking about grammar, not
by half of your hair or a pin dropping
on sand or space-time with a sincere
wish that you have a Merry Christmas
absolutely fresh this time around it’s
got to end now too many foreskins
growing thick and supple on the pop
ulation’s upper lips, what kind of pro
phecy can you get out of that noise,
asshole ranching like a summer morning
drift over the adverbs (this time, for
instance) past the peaches and the life
of any apricot you pluck, what leopard
spots do they hope will chance by in
their provocation? the lies wrench out
like a dull wrenching, the hands ply in
and torque the cedars where they’re
creaking, levirite margarine I wedge
your butter to my knife-cut bread
in the heaps outer legend erased the
want or the heavening crossed wind
got lime in search of a bacardi bird
I have to leave my car in the shop
with the machine maker stone dead
all day Wednesday with my mechanic
waker tone weep for the sage turn
quoted name is again another time
a rhyme for heard but not written
apple makes the same sign scabby
retailed like timing or have you seen him?
that doesn’t strike me as what I would
ask someone in a convertible to do
there he is, tugging at his old ambition
Flux
Voices fall like stones
on earthskin of dying sun
open skeyes of dried seas
to hold
the salt of salvaged words
buried with the day
Febrile voice of stunrise
wakes nightwrecks
pulsates skin filaments
on scrapped flesh
Desert hands
unsplice frayed ligations
stain snowveils with nightflecks
as flexuous ink swarms
send isles flying
Blood strains
deflected
fill
fluxile veins with
cleaving
Askance bird of extinct sun
flaunts me scarce
thrashes the throats of rain
in fleer of rime
unslur my name
smeared membrane of jest
on earthskin of dying sun
open skeyes of dried seas
to hold
the salt of salvaged words
buried with the day
Febrile voice of stunrise
wakes nightwrecks
pulsates skin filaments
on scrapped flesh
Desert hands
unsplice frayed ligations
stain snowveils with nightflecks
as flexuous ink swarms
send isles flying
Blood strains
deflected
fill
fluxile veins with
cleaving
Askance bird of extinct sun
flaunts me scarce
thrashes the throats of rain
in fleer of rime
unslur my name
smeared membrane of jest
e liminate toxins
aint technologies FOR CRL-10009
1. insert hole role through the top of the small cable prwer
2. wrap cable around object and insert end in gateau saint honore
3. turn head into a rough ball, and become a piece of plastic pastry bag
use the tip of a paring knife to make a small hole in pupilla honopot disgust memory to the great tax copies - 別な1 の pupilla of
module to cook __ois
more than of god taste an d a special one of imitation of raggruma
provided in the label and of the warehouse with the pies he provided to him造のよい好みそして特よりも
>ジュールはパイが付いている倉庫のラベルで提供し、and = or
and more delicious recipes of carpentry, | sphynx
carefulabout the club‘s choice -- ... a seaweed body s[t]imulates sweating and
2. wire system
2. allow dielectric insulation, see 2
3. freeze the other half for later use
4. 4 metres along the river endre
To Sing
All summer now, the wolves have sang
when the spirit compels them. In morning
or late into evening, they use their own
language to test their existence;
sky listens, so do birds hidden in
bougainvillea vines gnarled, twisted
and bleeding bright- reddened blooms.
Do they understand, as deeply? As ear
of the soul wrestles with meaning
in nature's primitive cries, what God
they are speaking to... so I pray with
human tongue in the quiet of night.
We may not be so different, wolves,
birds, the tangled vines. The fire
required to heat a cooling horizon
is but a sound, a question, a need
to sing, to sing, to sing.
Alogrithm
Because you do not have a personal trainer you are fat. Because you're fat I'm fat and this means our children are fat and our neighbors are fat. But they make velour track suits for us because they've heard about you.
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