Thursday, 20 May 2010

Kaddish : one


There is a welt in my side where Dead Souls was poking me last night. I am not immune to irony despite my condition. Every night I think that this is the night when I will, at least, move the books off my bed but I have to buy bookshelves and that would require me to develop a whole new personality-Yithbarakh Obama, audacious hoper. I don’t know from hope. I only have hope on a rope that was cut from the ceiling last summer. But here I am making you uncomfortable. My apologies-oh say shalom and shake on it.

There are deaths and there are deaths. There are black holes and you shouldn’t stand so close to the edge. I can’t help but pace around the circumference and so I have made a levy of sorts with books or is it a fence? A levy implies a wave on the other side but I am the wave. I am a wave and a wave and wave of nothingness. Hey that doesn’t sound so bad, does it? YitgaDali Lama and make me one with everything as the Buddha said to the hot dog vendor. But then again, it’s not good.

Speaking of not good, this raisin bun is not good. It tastes like something you’d get for breakfast on Air Hades-except would you be flying to Hades? At least it’s something. I got it from the store on Coney Island Avenue that is run by the nice Jamaican lady. She said “where’s your friend” and I said “New Jersey” because that was the final address. “You must miss her”, she said. Yes, yes. I got the raisin bun all sealed in it’s plastic casing and a big Stryro full of burnt coffee. Food for the dead-Kaddish Danish and some coffee on the side. Still better than Starbucks.

And still better that I have something to eat. The kitchen is covered in books so it’s hopeless to try to use it. I went to get some milk for the coffee and found the book “Grieving the Loss of Your Pet” inside on the top shelf of the fridge. It was appropriate since it smells like a dead pet is being stowed there. I flipped through the book a bit. “Even the loss of a goldfish”, it told me, “can result in grieving”

Yish ge fish –

people take photos of each other
outside this building

they have been and
now they have gone.

artichoke
oregano
basil
the corn laws.


a bird flew into the
front room window

this is a bad sign.



I watch the sea come in
and it reminds me of

a church an old church a small church
and the skating rink

we used to visit.


this was the germ of things.
the sunday delft
overlooking the long wall
from the window by the fir
we watched
and ate in silence. hungry


cigarette smoke drifts past the window
they are smoking outside the pub.

it is going to rain I can tell.

I am sat inside

reading yesterdays newspaper.


~~


know the of hill

sketching all the strokes/altered night blue/room rapid heart
oh the hundred/s and hundreds of beat between the silent

which will never do anything
moves night cloud into new shape
our eyes our observing eyeshadow. Attack

the screaming ambulance
the hurrying ambulance
the ambulance with arms with tubes
the ambulance full of calm frantic people

fingernail

nurse


understanding of robins
as we sat down to eat

listening to the incoming aeroplane when you would smile
the same again
the summer that never came. see

so the absent word

& soup

& oil

& the empty sea

nothing will be alike (under the single silver birch)
into the dazzling/sunshine from the shadow


as we wait by the white bed

of the rapid eye

as icebergs, any iceberg, blue iceberg

gone now bridge

bright red lip

~~


I have your notebooks

the image of the girl in a teal dress, antigravitational toes. Lilacs

are tunics of bees.She catcDrhes raImmanuelin in a butterfly ntheyet,blisses out Dental okissn Idenwearilytifying,map of plaguthe streets are unidentifiablee city

Maps of plague cities. KAPITAL holds the rocyberbot’s arse up to the lpornight.
door closing. a lawnmower. sun: oily. an oil-egg. brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

ineverdream.the2 dance as the others break their heads among dust & dolls
sippiss

dr immanuel unclocks a history she’s been painting 17 years the surfaces are inneringly flat they sink into behind the canvasyour moustache tickles
alltimetv.hummockhammocks > cloudcorpses. an old child rothat such monstrous byrthes signifie the monstrous myndes of the people myshapened with phantastical, dissolute opinions, dissolute lyvynge, licentious talke, and other such vicious behavioures which monstrously deforme the myndes of men in the syght of god cks rocks back & for

there’s notalot to do here at night. 1st they drug the sailors, sink the boats. the last train’s gone before he gets there. tvson in the corner. noones watching it. anotheroldchild drags a statue-head out of the tunic of bees. sucks where cowhells lie.

do you want to say goodbye. shesgotamoustache.

Plagues of map city. HOWOLDDOYOUTHINKWAS?

im strolling the park with youknow. there’s nothing of a moon caresses the path. traffic growls like movie killer. iwantosmellyourhair, to be you. imsuchaliar. we try not to look. screen the scene. imitation fireflies begem the river. warehouses. warhouses. letsgotothedemo.

in scene 3 only the left big toe is aware of its situation. god begins sucking that big toe, music plays itself metamusic. piethogoraus.

the plague is big with city. people laugh a lot. they tell the angels in their fetish wear & with their clipboards you are welcome among us, eat us all up. the irrelevance of art etc. is a final joy. everyone looks pretty enough for staying put. i thought in terms of a journey says someone & looks pityingly at itself

language is a stone storm: “hello. take the bodies away from there please. cr” ossed out; summer & a dogheaded rose in the starpool
summer & a dogheaded rose. in the starpool the bodies initiate summer, imitatively. i’m ending this call
hell. o, the suitcases are pre-opened. a book to read the summer by. yellowinged grass, es, dogshit & beer. almost kissing
this is what i mean by a song. up on the starpool revolutionary slogans. there’s blackberry juice at her lips o you are alone now
the suitcases won’t open themselves. inside several old newspapers, winged like yellow grass. dressing up in her tights & jumping thro a starpool into cartoon undeath
the backs of his hands have blackberry juice veinsblotch. he can be lost, i don’t want to wear his shoes. these effigies are strange, because they are familiar from tv. the wife & her children harvested heaven
szluîp/frqqq. kacxzio xzavzio. sprikkkkkkk
thelittlebirdsgodabrokkinwing
she walks beside the bodies, sprinkling them with white charcoal. a recalcitrant star lolls in the corner of the heaven. s>designifyed tearstuff. archived lustre. gogogogogôg
souls jump across the thames
from abandoned warehouses
to traffic lights & the caff &
he just stands there his over
blowing head wobbling on
his legs kicking crowds of
bees & mainlining petroleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
um. ive got punk badgers on my jacket. &sugar in my hair
i take the smoke from her mouth & roll it about. there’s a recalcitrant sun in the nocturnal sky, it rolls round heaven the heavens reduce to a needle poin
t of bruise
se takes the smoke from her mouth & rolls it round. iron bridge. meta-psycho-lizards trash the warehouse devices estbl 18. pulling her tights on, a pair of elbow length gloves. a perma-moon shudders against the starpool’s beat. yawn. wont you kiss me. its like im knot alive

Sunday, 16 May 2010

Re(ad)turnings


P-Q-P will shortly be redeturning, with Part II - Kaddish.

Watch this blog, midweek!

Thursday, 29 April 2010

put title here

Part I of Plus-que-Parfait is now available as an e-book, from The Red Ceilings Press. Part II of Plus-que-Parfait will take the project in different directions, with different structures & new contributors. Watch this place!



To download a copy go here

Friday, 16 April 2010

11. Voices in wallpaper


*

Keep off the back trike
pustule face/ I'm Kevin
Large SS BITCH
lightning collard disco
brick schizo 7 boy in
nappies & I aint never
seen you pinkle whick
the butcher in the pink
stick/ psuedomatic
harbinger of
hallucinatory pig wings
in the swill-tard slop
shucket gutter-faced sky
balloon that burst that
week old roid in ye ass/
you arse/ claterback woe
betider simulation games
in the guffpocket make
weekender face arrangers
meek starved dogs legs
like/ antipathetic
windscreen smear John
Doe Toe glass shine
mean reflection/
Wernickes Area
transcript delted
deleter(ed)/ utterence/
spooltape/ misogynist
gland/ bipartisan quasi-
illusion/ fierce teeth/

*

endoscope blues/ non-
proprietary TM for the
whisky age/ give me
heavens gate yadyna in
bus glass/ terrific heat a
blasphemy law says so in
the intro/ is that the one
with Matt Damon &
Wahtsisface? Thats
deconstruction for beggars
I'll have you now know no
I want you to
deunderstand/ STOP/
LISTEN to myaeiouriad
voices in wallpaper
threatening to make flies
cameras kiss your face
back on/ statistical
anomaly norm/ it is I sais
it be's/ rubberstamped
office paper electrical-
head baby pram
explosions cutting through
chaff o'life no oxytocin
now m'dear in true act of
smithereening / juslike
telly/ EH?

*

Mitochondrial/ Oh thats
sooo 2002/ get a life man/
I'M IAN BEALE AND
I'VE CHANGED/ get back
in your box and eat your
fingers missy/ end of the
bottle barley water face
with apple skin teeth dont
let me stop you ruin your
life even if it is white noise
in unknowable space its
nothing to do with me I
dont even know you/ do
I?/ captain irrelevant lost
his batteries again/ there
have to be procedures in
place/ arent we supposed
to be structured?/ you twist
its metal wings til the sky
falls off/ swans explode in
your head/

*

so thats all you can manage?

just spilling away at the
seams
like you always do:

blind candles in your night feet
are the eyes in everything

and 'that' everything has a place for us/

be still/
magnetic/

hundreds of us staring through the glisten of lips
forgot to speak in the thick of it

because of that dirty wind
dubbing us across time

forgot we were static

not music

anymore

simply twirling us round on its little finger

where I can hear you ending

and you have gone too far

I can hardly see you

(feedback)

through

the

speaker

or:

Veronika buttoned her coat it was
blue they were blue. The house was so c
old & all the doctors were asleep. velvety
said otto, & he sings her the letter. She’ll read

it later. He turns on the electric heater, it gives off a stink like chess pieces neologising.

They believed in gave credence to a city made out of the skulls of dartboards. veronika looks at the plan of the conference centre. There is the financier there is the academic there is the doctor there is the police. abstractedly
,
otto dresses in veronika’S discarded clothes. they become abstract, Ideal clothes. he’ll kiss her, soon, & she’ll metamorphose into dearth. her jaw was hurting. it was bruised. the financier said, take my family but let me & my luxury car

go. Otto & Veronika obey the diktat of The State.

& in the twentieth century marie-antoinette ascends mt. vesuvius. a parrot in a balloon shits on her, clouds drip analgesics. the parrot’s claws are halogen lamps.

veronika unbuttons her coat it was skin they were flesh. the house is full of chess pieces, sighing. feel me howls ott, &

she’ll sing it later. the city is made of the lungs & hearts of the poor. out
marie-antoinette is innocent. she has cut herself shaving. suffrage. saffron. is
identical parade. orange jumpsuit.

in the 20th marie Veronika whispers The State. skulls neologising cold luxury, take the lungs out of the velvety abstract. a stink like finance – orange jumpclaws. otto & century, a balloon in a parrot full of geese. becoming vesuvius, the academic dresses in RIPPED analgesics. bruised kiss, ELECTRIC. marie-antoinette is innocent buttoned her coat abstractedly obey plan metamorphose into lamps

then things get complicated .otto’s flight was delayed .veronika’s mother called from düsseldorf to say she’d be home in an hour ,drew a diagram on the palm of his right hand .hot after midday in bishop’s park ,seraphic ankles
.inside the house there’s a sad feeling in our stomachs .the furniture is gone ,water from the tap, mouths to the tap

She donates herself to Marie-Antoinette.
Nothing has been rescued.
Ideal desolation,
Marie-Antoinette peals Bella’s eyelid back & jabs a tuning fork into the hurdy-gurdy’s belly.
I’ll say goodnight. &? that’s all.
Goodnight.
It is night, so that’s OK. Though it appears like it is now. But it won’t be when it was.

or:

i don’t suppose place matters. What we do here or there is no of no consequence. It could be anywhere. As is Berlin.

But we are in New York. Well not quite. But that can be discussed
during the taxi ride.

look. bougainvillea. see how they use old olive oil tins as flower tubs. the colour here suits you.

I love your new dress. I am under the weather I must admit. I am not myself.

The invitation to go shooting was to great a call to ignore.

But I did. To save you from meeting the future husband. His shoes were awful. I mean really bad..

and he stammered like a machine gun attack. So I drank. Vodka. More Vodka. Vodka. And the Japanese beat me till I drank whisky and then the Americans arrived and I was saved. So I ate burger with relish. But ignored the others.

I am the one who talks sense.

When we went to the cinema I thought it odd.

How the random thought, the murder, the blue/emerald dress meant nothing.

I remember smoking a cigarette at the doorstep of the hotel. I saw bits of green growing

pushing up between the slabs. Somehow it made sense. The plane would arrive on time. You would be well.
The green building’s reputation would be saved. The food would be fine. The river was graceful.

The water lily was noted down in the the noteworthy lily book. We went away happy and even laughed at the conservative planting at the cross. They could have used fern in a much more forceable fashion. But hey, we are on our hols.

But when you sat at the board wearing “magnetic pole” nail polish. I gathered like a fishermans net, the outhouse, the autobahn, the night at Innnsbruck and then saw New York on a budget (poor times, and for what?) Then it was obvious.

The train has left. They have dug up the line. I am the only. We are not going to get a decent breakfast. The day has become cyan, magenta, yellow, black. 4 colour print on poor paper stock. So

the smell of summer in the bedroom this evening is like baked bread. Our skin,
the oil you use, sheep, back home in the Peaks, the bed had been slept in by

Marilyn The Monroe. When she had been sleeping with him.

And in the kitchen you sing.

Sing like you needed those new shoes

or

Rennecke huffs loudly with her mouth full of pins. I once again apologize for being late and making us both rush. “No worries”, she tells me which means “no worries, I will get you later”. I’m feeling like a prisoner of war with my arms outstretched for such a long time, but it probably hasn’t been so long. We are in the moment before the moment-we are next in line. It’s the best place in the universe if physical pain did not insist on ticking off the minutes.

Tick tock. I spy a doll eye looking out from under the sewing table. This is typical Rennecke to treat her dolls in the same manner as a fickle, feral child. How does she maintain such patience for little stitches? A stitch in time saves nine. I have heard in certain quarters that Rennecke has acted the terrorist. Then again, they say the same of me. And I can’t remember if it’s true. I remember strange, iridescent tulips sitting in the hotel vase and I remember a rolled up note inside the yellow one. I remember stowing the note in my hem. But after that I don’t know. A stitch in the mind is kind.

Veronika, Veronika, skinny mistress with the surgical scars, I would like to kiss you. Reports are that you have gone far afield, that you are some strange sort of battlefield nurse in secret warehouse labs. Sometimes I think I see hospital tents there, on the courthouse lawn, gleaming in the night like moth wings.

Morning time, in this life is lucky. I have my piano, I have jam. I have vases filled with regular tulips. Two lips sank ships, Veronika’s mouth tasted like tobacco and envy. She used to sketch me, order me naked and cross legged with a fruit bowl on my lap. I quivered and waited for her appraisal. She was so much surer of herself than I would ever be and yet she was envious of me and my abundant coat of flesh. Joe sometimes came over, his fake caterpillar moustache quivering over his lip as he chewed his bread. The three of us made love one night in the most horrible of hotels where we each bought an hour and so that gave us three for the whole occasion. It was over in ten minutes really at the moment Joe and I began to kiss and Veronika started pacing like an enraged duchess. I sent Joe out to bring us back falafels but even this didn’t calm her. We went outside to the square and fed the falafel to the rats. “You chose a man over me and now you owe me”, she told me. But I don’t know if this resulted in the note in the hem that only a seamstress could find.

Rennecke huffs. She’s such a stitch.

*

The voice of Stephen Emmerson is herein - &

here & here

Thursday, 8 April 2010

10. Du Rhinocerot


Each time he was seen

The strange man

It was with his circle

He had moved the circle from the plane of the ideal

Into the world

Where buses were late

And teenagers asked directions to Tib Street

No mere circular shaped object for he

The strange man

Always folded his arms across his circle

Never dreaming to roll it

Or kick it along the street with his foot

Each new thing he encountered

Would be bent in an effort to make it fit the circle

Which was how the strange man understood history

And the letter ‘O’



It is glorious

I don’t want to go running and jumping though

In all that gloriousness

Ah ***cough, cough, cough***

I am ill

I shall stay here / Feigning illness

Continuing to pretend to be ill

To avoid the glory of that weather

Out there

So as to be able to remain indoors

These glorious holidays

Reading this book

It is an interesting book



And he will wake up and he will think about the mistakes he has made

He will know that there have been many

He will wonder what is wrong with him that he seems to keep making the same mistakes again and again

He would like to kick the letters

Kick them far. Kick them to the feet of a teammate

The ineffectiveness of the letters at conveying anything that is really important will, at some point in the future, make him very angry

He will recognise the feeling as being one he has felt before

And he will be angry at having done nothing those previous times

He will write letters down and they will make words which will be linked to other words which will make sentences and those sentences will store ideas

And he will do nothing this time either

Remembering that kiss

Thinking that it could have happened yesterday ...

... the blonde detective agency ablaze
at th’arc of lightnings
veronika says
“starfish nor legions” joe cuts his ribbons
short eyelashes long together live
they an island northsouthwesteast
dusk as an oxygen cylinder over
warehouses & pubs kids will kick a
football about & burrow me alien workings graded
husk derive from simultaneous lovers freaking out

Over Time.

speak to Veronika confOerence cttallingo. Hgorgeousélène left Düsseldorf & the sickly antelope evening rush & sets her clock by wash of perfume
s s
ettling down from Mount Olympos. hi you hie

biting into a cake
tanned legs sorrowingly.
i’m never going to be
free

From pain, escapology. silent cinema enzymes

talkative eyes. rancid flames. the kind of mouth that brings failure up its throat anna mendelssohn
a poem of objects that live by magic a.m.
le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
by then i wasnt seeing things i was inside them its got a silver inside & guts remove stretch halfway round the glob
e i didnt love anything more it crazes with extraneous mauve curlicues whipping round circlets braids of applehair

curfew. Theyll disappear.
beauty. sharpening

somnolence the family carries its desired desire in green bags deep down green in deep green & the dogs snore

ottosgottawounddeepdown
h
e
b
l
i
s
t
e
r
shrugs off his pretty ankles. veronika holds them for him & then gets curious ugh they are crawled over with crawling lice she puts ice on them he shoots dice the clocks on the wall flutter & breakup stealthily she puts his pretty ankles into her mouth & shes naked & he closes the curtains & she says dont & in full view of the building work on the roof across from their room they go to sleep
an illusion of worlds
ordnance fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuury
how neat the arithmetic of
capitalist exploitation
crush me
i dont dare leave the house for fear of fear ill never be painfree
The song is an example of a parastrophic structure//enharmonic
leopards drinking soup at marble tables with velvet spoons>terroristism.

veronika & susan make love. its it is a wonderful evening. the sky is imaginary yes but its is there & they look out at it from their cathedral. they make love susan holds veronikas veronika’s ugly ankles they are awash with birdsong. reverently she returns them to veronika. the police ambulance crashes from the bridge into psychogeography. if anywhere there to be cease ...

... the interconnectedness of all things. The interconnectedness of café and train. The symmetry of sandwich meats. I am sick of trying to be happy. Eventually the train will take me to the city, an inelegant bee hive and one that is on its way out.

Actually I am not unhappy but am trying to be bitter in print. I would just like to be interesting, that’s all. I am happy because I am doing nothing and I don’t like to admit it. I am doing nothing and nobody is even filming it. I just like sitting and having waiters bring me sandwiches and tea. The only problem is I would like an endless supply brought. I have to make do with such a small amount; snacks the size of playing cards brought in sad little boxes. They go so quickly despite my careful nibbling. The problem is that I would like to be in this point in time for a long time and I have to keep reordering in order to start the clock again. The waiters start to look at me with wary looks. But I am interested in staying here, in the moment before the train comes for as long as I can, perhaps permanently. Of course the train does keep coming and that is a violent disruption with the way they shout the hours down. But I am not fooled. The train goes down a straight line and then disappears in single point perspective. This means we don’t really know what happens at all. We don’t know if they’ve really come or gone, visually speaking.

Then again, there is noise to tell us and the tiny tremors in the metal of the tables. These are things that signify come and go. What I really need is to be on the train itself and then I need another train to pull up so that it is no longer apparent or necessary to know which train is moving when. I need this in the same way that I need to confuse which window belongs to which set of passengers and to confuse which reflection belongs to which window. Let me correct myself -I don’t need to confuse these things. .I need to be in that moment when the confusion ends. The trumpet shall sound…in a minute.

The only issue, of course, is that I’m pregnant. There would appear to be an undeniable progression happening there as my body gains more and more periphery. I see this as no reason to abandon my plan. The trumpet shall sound and the waiter shall bring me jam incorruptible. And the beehive corruptible shall blow up! And we shall be changed. Whee!

the man in the street with a plank
the house with the very tall aerial
the aeroplane coming into land across the sky

it’s very very tired for it’s flown a long way

today these things make me think of you.

where you might be
who you are talking to.
we see your lips slip across your teeth you smile say yes and laugh. it will be spring. over your shoulder the buds filling with green
in another week it will all burst open.

the lighter nights will help

and the women all stroked her hair and cried over her

not like us who also live on islands

your eyebrows graceful as herons coming in

a strange equation.

I am on the aeroplane coming to visit

all the other voices were in his head.

a gentle discourse. one of babbling polluted brooks
a brilliant orange that frothed
about the caught branch.

he knew you would wear the acrobat outfit at the airport
complete with Quetzalcoatl necklace and matching Joan of Arc wig

he only knew you

and that

the game of chess is played between two people.
one person uses the light pieces, and the other person uses the dark pieces.
light moves first, and then each player takes a turn moving.

the Knight is the only piece that can jump over other pieces.
all other pieces can only move along unblocked lines.

The tide has gone out. I am sad for no reason.
I think I miss Düsseldorf the most. The music and the moving lights.
In the damp dank wood yellow daffodils grow
some are just beautiful for the light or scent
others for a feeling of youth or sadness

I love hang gliding over those fields
in a way it tries to capture movement in an image

it sounds like a xylophone and then doesn’t

She has an alibi.
It is 1804 and her grandfather is born one of twins.His brother will die before his fifth birthday.
John Wedgwood founds The Royal Horticultural Society.
German astronomer K. L. Harding discovers the asteroid Juno.
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka is born

Spain declares war on Britain.

Simply remove the enemy piece from the board and put your own piece in its place. We are still on the terrace.The Tour is not yet over.

Good night love. look I blow the candle out.

You will sing again before long.

No I don’t have an umbrella.

The voice of Richard Barrett is here (& here http://abandonyourtimidnotion.blogspot.com/)

Saturday, 27 March 2010

9. Album



on a table

I am not Rennecke, Otto, The Cousin or Joe.
This has been settled. It is obvious.
I don't have the temperament, the orchard or the boat. I am however

a bucolic painting. brass. the scent of velvet. an open fire. leather. carpet fibres.
the taking of a pulse. orchids. automatic doors. a solitary person smoking outside. It is raining. It could be October.

The way you swept your hair back and glanced like an express train.

[bell boy]

bridge, rummy, canasta, old maid, brag, whist, snap they played them all
intoxicated it seems they were when entering the lift nice shoes. nice people. no tip.

It seems I am no longer here that I am in Iceland that it will become a hot day.

not that the axe falls in the wood we pass
on the hills they graze sheep
the vineyards are fertile
with the dreams of children

Do you remember the question we asked each other as lovers?

It tastes of liquorice of large rhododendron of overgrown path

the dawn is all plum product placement
a diagram of the heart in the big black handbag
in a rainy place on the cast iron table

there will be no more time allowed.

quick & unquick nuclear
nightingale otto purchase
serenity remove from satchel
other satchels asymmetrical

grit the jetty a quiet place to be

Drunkard raise a bottle to lips & dive

into swirling black sun

rewind

rain arrive nuclear nightingales

screaming serenity

Otto satchels other satchel driving the
white whirling rain
remember is remembering remembering cover her throat to mouth

& eating stale breads

Monotony of the situation. hovels blown away in vast, motionless, rainstorms. a soft drink driving nails into my stomach. vera inverts nonsense languages. repression. ocarina specialist. She did as she was told, we all di[e]d, the bandage smells bad.

a few universes, grazes of dull gold & buttercup fire.
cool night instinctual vanguard

putting her hair up, A few lamps yet lit & Mr Jansenism in tears at loss of his motorbike

they’ll all be ghosts when the festival
commences. no use allowing for any margins,
or errors. hélène’s task will be to recover
a method of depicting folk music
of the region – 1921 –
in vocal mime,
echoless echoles echole echol echo ech ec e

scarring the surfaces of magnificent flowers of goodness. Is in thrall to the scents of honeysuckle & bee shit that bloodied fingernails give out

thru afternoon it they we you love

Making. masking. musking, sighings from the
wallpaper. can you scythe honeys from where i’
m adrift?

ishmael said you go last. so i stepped through the screen into a room which brought me no

memory. rerererererererererere
turning. rennecke has so many lovely handkerchiefs: Pearls of revenant rain in perfumes sunning. zxlËPr

they exchangings attaché cases of. took time - some - before their eyes adjust brilliance/artifice sunlight to subfusc nature strip

-lighting carpark. the explosions could happens in replay sounds plucked

in & nowhere.

She’s so pretty says her friend. They don’t look as if they could harm.

that’s an interesting bracelet. i stole it from you. can i sigh scythes adroit? it’s a small theatre, song carries well. now they’d locked the doors. no way
oiutn.

they photograph well, the world has been adjusted like that for them with the surfaces scars & petals as they dance & eat cigarettes. everyone who isn’t them wants to be them. & now they are dead, that’s how everyone else experiences them. she’s eating an ice cream, her sister laughs because there’s a blotch of ice cream on their enemy veronika’s nose. her brother sulks. he wanted to be the killer, the condemned.

Grey is a colour

A grey moment required to distinguish between black and white. It's nothing but bitter disappointment dividing the eye and the foot. Ears are not involved. Perpetual shrieking of the kindred has made them poke their insides with a toothpick.

Vociferously seeing.
Just an eye. Denying the sinister foot sufficient room as it tries to alter a crooked scenario.

Impatiently stalling the occurrence of a badly molded future. It's grey. Still sacrificing the colour of ashes with Heterochromia and an ambiguous limp. It's a matter of opinion. All the signs are there. The air grovels, damping the knees of the fog. Repeatedly sensing an obscure thought.

Stirring the element of surprise, vacant and empty drops of murk overflow the deaf hole.

"To death! And beyond a stream of light!", as vacant and as empty. Standing there in vain, channelling an idle spirit. Implementing a sigh of relief. Not just a moan but a slippery dance step. Sorting it out, consciously staring into a pair of brotherly hues.

A last-minute petition. Ears are restful, never permitted to change for the reason of being an invalid act. Creeping up on a blank leg, sipping a bare-footed drink, it's easy to ignore the blinding opacity of sight and lucid desires.

She liked the childless lifetimes. But sometimes it was necessary to raise him rather than marry him and she liked those lifetimes too. And sometimes he caught on and became her so she could be a man for a time. This was enjoyable because then she could be a full out cad and he would remain devoted and shimmering while washing stockings and waiting for her return.

The trouble is that they kept returning to the same points in time, the same hanging gardens of pre deluge decadence. It was all lie-ins and long breakfasts in beautiful places and in beautiful clothes-not a bad job at all, but the price of oblivion is naturally oblivion. They liked to think of themselves as decoys whose bizarre behavior provided the distraction to turn the gaze away enough for revolution to occur. In truth nobody ever paid attention to them.

My stockings have a nice hole in them caused by all the excellent friction on the headboard. I will wear them to the theatre tonight. I’ll ask Rennecke to sew them up if I think it won’t hurt her feelings too much. I’ll bring her a tin of butterscotch candies as a consolation. The wrappers can serve as little flags in a dolly labor rally. She only pretends to be mad really. She’s our Madam DeFarge.

If you imagine these things in life from which you are required to rush away quickly-dying friends and relatives, perfectly good jobs and marriages, houses, children and land that you weren’t quite finished cultivating. In each, the rip and tear of new absence is followed by the perennial convulsions of the body’s memory as it clutches needlessly to certain smells, sounds and gradations of light. The body will limp through all newer and more pleasant sensations until it has broken them down and molded them to its own defaults. Then those sensations will, at last, become comfortably mixed with the memory convulsions until all is quite bearable again.

Now imagine this repeatedly over many lifetimes-the body shuddering out its memories with a stubborn ill logic

I like the jam at this hotel. It tastes like butterscotch, like lovemaking.

I will tell you this. I did not want you killed. I never imagined you killed. Your fear of the surgeon in his gown of courthouse green did you in. You died before the first cut. all merely your own madness. Finstre schwartze Riesenfalte töteten der Sonne Glanz

Notes on the back of a programme.

Strangely like a Baltic port.

Inert compound of saltpetre.

Raymond takes to the stage in artificial fabric.

A single spark can still explode.

There are no fellow Scandinavians in the hotel.

The hairy one, he’s automatically included.

The resentment of an ambassador with nothing to lose

is somehow allowed to become a dagger.

The man cut in half has a female title.

The blue girl stands up to sing

sings “truth does not exist there,

they don’t care, why don’t they care?”

I don’t have the answer.

Tell me you can see him.

The voice of Sarah Ahmad can be heard in this text, & here http://scribblingpoetry.blogspot.com/

Friday, 19 March 2010

8. Tulips sink Ships


it is an anagram. nothing more. the road goes no further.
we have neither arrived or started. The river is crimson in its haste.
Names have been forgotten. They are no longer needed
all conversation is photograph or sketch and for emphasis aquatint, paracetamol
moustache. roller coaster. coney island. It is almost spring.

Pass through and leave no trace

being watched for so long.

the tide comes in goes out. You are 50% over the Atlantic
this is the furthest we have been separated.
we haven’t played chess for hours
hands are turning to chalk
ammonites
tulip

behind the sunglasses you are thinking of
Clun and the ruined castle.

"The town which is the smallest town in Shropshire and is smaller than many villages in the county. It is also the only town in Shropshire never to have had a railway line or station."

The Passion Play has begun.

Explicate.

Body of christ amongst the bracken

there is a thing between us

thin razor like
the sweep of the beach against the town front

the wind drying out the skin.

we are not watching the sun set.

It does not believe in ghost.

They came to the hotel as an excuse. The hotel garden had a life sized chessboard cut into the grass. She wore a white dress in Edwardian style and he wore a black one. Each sported a parasol of the opposite color as they spent their afternoons dancing a gigue from opposite corners of the board. By early evening after meeting in the middle a minimum of eighteen times, they did a mutual swoon and collapse on the grass. He would then commence to sneeze a minimum of 38 times while she covered her face with her hat and listened. Then he presented her with the same wedding band and asked her again to marry him.

“There is grass on your skirt”, she told him, and kissed him very tenderly.

They were already married and had been for several lifetimes.

Sometimes there was a child and she taught the child, male or female much about butterflies and the art of sewing a sleeve to a gown.

It is a pleasure to marry over and over again especially when you get to be Gustav and Alma Mahler.

Proclamation: We don’t particularly like your Mistress this time. She is daft and has ruined our best lipstick by somehow getting toast crumbs inside the tube.

Whereas she has a ruined our best lipstick

Whereas nobody, as of yet, has cleaned up the corners of toast from this morning.

Whereas this passage is tricky and it irritates us

We have turned you into a parrot. Ha!

(Rennecke doesn’t really tell anyone about the doll collection but she had been found out several times, late nights at the theatre, drunkenly assembling them for a labor rally or having doll weddings)

The tulips have begun to bloom, the ones from the bulbs purchased at the Schiphol. They are emitting a strange iridescence. It is oddly pleasing.

PS. Your Mistress is too skinny and has surgical scars from keeping time with that jackal of a surgeon.

Then, on the days when they had a child, they watched him play on the chessboard while doing their balancing exercises on the perimeter. He wondered aloud if they shouldn’t live in an actual house with tulips in the garden. “Tulips sink ships”, she told him and kissed him. Hotels were better for the quicker departures.

your eyes were animals in winter appear as totem-animals. But animals nonetheless. Which means, they are not symbols, or pure allegories, not slaves of signification, but animals still, with all their animal qualities. and your fingerprints were waltz, candelabra, backstroke

a clock. a gilded clock. Blessed the hand that giveth
Then it happens. Absolute silence. Complete nothing.
People are frozen. For one second. Then for another.
The equilibrium of the candelabra.
Is pungent. Disgraceful countryside.

I haven’t studied Latin for years

but I think it says

“there are too many people in my life”

It is only in retrospect we understand these things.

2 Down
And the hunt chases around the vase leaping over fences running past woods they use their crops and the hounds bay. (4,7)

14 Across
Crew arrange with King way to get on board (9)

When we entered the church we knew there was something special
which was confirmed by the anglo-saxon grave in the crypt

We discussed a duel but lunch made us forget the difference.

The lobster was ok.

You wrote on a postcard showing a liner.
I smoked a cigarette on the terrace.

The first cigarette I ever smoked

in the deserted village in the red hills

Across the pond, he has floated a paper boat to me. It only says “Hello”

trees bend in towards james.
lisette remembers a song inside her throats, more or less scientifically.
there is a particular hardness to the child’s gaze.
some trees bend away from james, he is conscious that this is arcadian only in reality.
lisette forgets ever knowing the song.
robert looks at her, knows how beautiful she would look to someone else.
nearby there’s a zoo.
it’s as if we can hear the animals crying themselves to sleep, clara says, but she doesn’t believe what she says.
the child is asleep.
the situation is reversed.
james throws himself at lisette’s lip & misses.
i’m late, says The Cousin, who performs operations in a room lit by a single unshaded bulb.
state sponsored terror.

Now let’s conceptualise the situation. It is happening in an always delayed future that is, logically, perpetually The Past (see bibliography). All news channels report looting; better to starve or freeze or drown than to loot. Hot in its songs.

takes a step closer
colourless eyes blink
once & once only.
was that God
? housing estate.
units.
DESPAIR

So they got ready for the dance & the world was scented with pine & amber-flask powders. Taxis lined up to receive the wounded animals. Take them to the emergency hospital episode 1000 said the killer, rubbing her knees with champagne. They are eating zoo animals, says a distraught soldier to his mother. She smiles through him, he’s with her in the park eating nectarines: a picnic.!? Her outline is protean, yet unmoving. Her insides are displayed behind bullet-proof glass. the bullet-proof glass shatters. Found text. Dead labor is resuscitated and passed on into the value of the new commodity by living labor David Harvey a companion to Marx’s capital, p. 129.

the next year was pale blue.
that’s a colour suits veronika, she silks her f l e s h with it.
her eyes float away upon warm breezes.
each island is more beautiful than the last, although they are identical.
sleep all day & at night drink soup through a straw.
iridescences, pinions of mauves & greens & a snowy grey.
it gets so late in the afternoons.
whoever is a stranger lies on the bed, the sheets soaked with sugar.
a dark blue, neither black nor phosphorous.
all that ”time“ the ceiling has stalked patient third from the door away from the window.
says it believes the sea is closing in.
on.
eradication.
kiss kiss.
kiss