Capitulo lagrimoso

Sì come al nascer piansi i’ vo piangendo,

E cusì pianger fin morte conviene,

Che in pianto un mal principio va sequendo.

Piansi in fasce, nel latte, & quando dieme

Nel petto il colpo Amor, piansi & hor piango

Per spezar quel che in duro pianto tieme;

La man con denti miei piangendo frango

Che nel dar fin son pigre al lungo pianto,

Del qual per pianger mai scarso rimango.

Piango perché nel ventre non fui franto,

Piango che fuor di quel nei teneri anni

Morte non posse il pianger mio da canto;

Piango quel dì che agli amorosi inganni

Lusingando fui perso; e piango il loco

Che fu principio dil mio pianto e danni.

Piange il solaccio, il suono, il canto e il loco,

Le rime e i versi; e piango il primo sguardo

Dove causò il mio lungo pianto e foco.

Piango perché non fu di tosco il dardo,

Piango perché né un serpe la catena,

Ché piangendo al morir non seria tardo.

Piango perché la fronte alma e serena

Non mi fu nel dur pianger di Medusa,

Ch’io sarei fuor di pianto e fuor di pena.

Piango la fiamma che gran tempo chiusa

Tenuta ho dentro il petto, e piango il laccio

Che piangendo mi fa l’alma confusa.

Piango il dur pianto, la ferita e il laccio,

Piango che uscir poeta di pianto amaro

Entrai piangendo qual huom scioccho e paccio;

Piango ch’io non conobbi il scur dal chiaro,

Piango che scorto fui da un finto aspetto,

Cusì piangendo ale mie spese imparo.

Piango senz’alma e senza cor nel petto,

Pien de pianto, suspir, de affanno e stento,

Dove piangendo stesso m’ho in dispetto;

Piango i miei tristi dì spesi in tormento,

Piango le notti che al fin scorto m’hanno,

E piango mie fatiche sparse al vento.

Piango il fidel servir mio senze inganno,

Piango mia pura fede, e il raro amore,

Piango miei persi pasi e il longo affanno.

I’ piango gli anni, i mesi, i giorni e l’hore,

Ché piangendo hanmi a cotal grado scorto

Ch’io son de pianto herede e senza core.

Piango il lungo martir e il gaudio corto,

Anci piango non altri che me stesso,

Che piangendo mi fei de vivo morto.

Piango che al tristo fin mi sento appresso,

Piango e piangendo in pianto più me accendo,

Ché per mio eterno pianto ha il ciel premesso

Che qual nacqui tapin mora piangendo.

--Giovanni Meli
Opera nova amorosa de Nocturno Napolitano

nb: the curious path to getting to Sicilian poet Giovanni Meli began with an article in the Guardian about how Bernardo Provenzano was finally tracked down after 43 years on the run.

Within the article it was mentioned that his wife was from Cinisi, which was "the muse of the renowned Sicilian poet Giovanni Meli, who has been in the small town between 1767 and 1772 to do his work as county doctor. There he composed some of his best lyrics looking at beautiful sea of Sicily that washes the coasts of cinisense coastal."



*****

Memories of Serge via the Guardian..


Serge and Jane Berkin, 1971

"We sat there patiently waiting until the air was suddenly rent with horrible screaming sounds followed by a cacophony of Gallic swearing. The owner of the cinema had just informed Gainsbourg in the lobby that he was entering a no-smoking zone and the great man had thrown a royal fit. Five minutes later he entered the room, his face lost in a dense fog of cigarette smoke - the owner was carrying a huge ashtray and stood next to him like his eunuch flunky catching the ash as it fell - and stumbled to the podium. He looked absolutely terrible - his face and body utterly polluted from alcohol abuse, his eyes ugly unfocussed slits, his voice a sneerful rasping whisper. He began to tell an obscene story involving Brigitte Bardot and a champagne bottle but he was too drunk to remember the ending so he staggered offstage, literally collapsing into a nearby seat. Everyone else gave him a standing ovation but I just sat there, stunned. I'd never seen anything quite like this: a beloved icon who'd lost all self-control and who was making an ignominious public spectacle of himself over and over again and yet his public wasn't repelled in the least. On the contrary, they couldn't seem to get enough of watching his continued self-abasement."

*****



Ultra Kultura specializes in alternative and extreme forms of literature. Sex and drugs feature prominently in its books -- but not much more so than in many recent Russian movies. It tends to favor anti-establishment authors, such as National Bolshevik Party founder Eduard Limonov. The head of the publishing house, Ilya Kormiltsev, is a poet with some cult standing, thanks to his work on the lyrics of the rock band Nautilus Pompilius. After the news broke, he challenged Chuyev to a debate on the talk show "To the Barrier," but the deputy declined, citing, among other reasons, his unwillingness to "advertise Kormiltsev and Ultra Kultura for a nationwide audience."

"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and
don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery



*****

Highway Drunk

Part One

Hey, it's fast at the edge of this bed.
They gave us coupons out of customs
and set copious whores in front of us
just to test our powers of self-empowerment.

We zipped through like the world was wet paper,
a vegetable to boil, a sad flesh to erase.

They called us in for being cheap:
Love costs. Ante up.

So we gave what we didn't know, artifacts
lost in socks and all those secret places
never poked,

and gave love because we read a USA Today poll
that confirmed what we thought.

Taken home, to the home owners,
through the corridors of the home offices,
back to the home away from home before stopping
at the "hey, homey!" holy ghost and Sunset,

We ratted them out, in succession,
for a Tom Waits twist and a mojo session.

We didn't wait to be tortured
in a comparative transgression.

We just went down.
On them, to a death they remember
in mid-orgasm:
Oh, The Money!, Oh, The Plowing Brahmans!
in order,
and then left,
a little less than sated.



Part Two

In Mexico, they drink
until the world stills. That's right, silent.
The dogs in the garbage cans know they're dead:
A Verdi cancellation underneath the puddle of a moon.

By now, it's been minced
into the drinking water and sung
on popular radio stations.

They fed us our love in sushi portions,
tv dinner infatuations,
one moment to the next,
Max Planck sperm knocking down the quantum walls
into egg and then to zygote.

But we didn't dare believe them.
They made us hungry like Siberian winters
And ate our flesh to manifest themselves.

In our unattended lectures, they went on
as kindled captains dying checkmate hopes
on gratis skewers:
Here They Come! Here They Come!

And then in Mexico we out Fox'd them,
with canon hearts exploding rules
that plastered walls with boredom.

Once again, because we weren't sure ourselves.



Part Three

When we creep between two worlds,
the ligaments and the livid,
we whine an incarceration of lifetimes
like the deaf relying on floor vibrations
to hear the music.

When they come for us with totebags,
dressed in suits of information to collect
our wandering lusts,
to burn our lonesome effigies,
into obligatory dust
we must

take the Highway Drunk,
like prisoners off chain gangs after freedom's
gushy feast:
ignore the placards drooling in our wanted faces,
the isolated moments jitter
their own handicaps,
their own dilemmas.

And when they want love,
give them unlimited space to hang themselves.



Part Four

Part Four:

Ishmael warned us it was better
to sleep with a sober cannibal
than a drunken Christian
and then he fell asleep with Queequeg.

Our moments of perfection lie in
lucid mommies milking
flawless childhoods to fruition.

We've learned to love what
we've learned to shave
to a mere transluscence;
a garlic razor sliver second
when we are transfixed.

So give up the sexy breasts,
the milking tit,
the nights in irrefutable transition:

Here it is, the dawn chafing,
a child howling,
a simple miscommunication.

The world forgives only
what you choose to feed it.

Let Op!



Katten kunnen het vogelgriepvirus verspreiden!

*****

New Nepalese Dentistry Programme Nets Plenty of Teeth



Ouch....

Man Cursing the Sea


(image: Leila Kubba Kawash 1996.)

Someone
just climbed to the top of the cliffs
and began to curse the sea.

Dumb water, stupid pregnant water,
slow, slimy copy of the sky,
you peddler between sun and moon,
pettifogging pawnbroker of shells,
soluble, loud-mouthed bull,
fertilizing the rocks with your blood,
suicidal sword
dashed to bits on the headland,
hydra, hydrolizing the night,
breathing salty clouds of silence,
spreading jelly wings
in vain, in vain,
gorgon, devouring its own body,

water, you absurd flat skull of water--

And so he cursed the sea for a spell,
it licked his footprints in the sand
like a wounded dog.

And then he came down
and patted
the tiny immense stormy mirror of the sea.

There you go, water, he said,
and went his way.
--Miroslav Holub. Trans. David Young & Dana Habova.
from Sagittal Section. 1980

Loch Ness Monster



Not much for concert announcements but this should be a good one. Tix go on sale 2day.

Puedo Escribir Los Versos...



Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo : 'La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos'.

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche immensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos arboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto al amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque ésta sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

Pablo Neruda

Once More For The Auld Boys



Fernando Pessoa is the extreme example of what may be the essentially modern kind of poet: the objective introvert. None has more consistently tried to find his poems impersonal. He accepted the dividedness of a human self so completely that he did something unique: wrote poetry under four names - his own and three 'heteronyms'. Not pseudonyms: they are imagery poets with real poems in them. Fernando Pessoa was four poets in one: Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro dos Campos and himself; each strongly distinct from the others.

Looooouuuuu



It's not that I've ever been a Lou Piniella fan, but this photo seems to capture everything that is wrong with the world in one pair of eyes.

Oblivion



(Korobushkin Evgeniy, "Oblivion". Oil on cardboard. 1990. 75x61)


"At the end of conversations, that precipice breached, the craving to be in
another culture gnaws at you. Go home to the bones. The carcass has been picked clean and thereafter, the only destination is oblivion."

from: The Diaries of Witold Kamerisky, notebook 12, page 113

Poète, auteur et metteur en scène de théâtre...


"If our life lacks a constant magic
it is because we choose to
observe our acts & lose ourselves
in consideration of their imagined
form instead of being impelled by
their force."

— Antonin Artaud

*****

Paris de nuit, 360 degrees panoramic view...

*****

Meanwhile, US President Bush was over in Asia to give everyone yet another reason to burn flags and start riots and blow shit up.

Nice depiction by our fav cartoonist, Steve Bell, on Bush's visit to India:


(gracias, Fat Buddha

And when he'd had his fun in India, he was off to Pakistan to play some cricket against the (yes, unbelievable but true,)Islamabad College for Boys.



It's a wonder pity he was only hit once.

Vive Victor!



"Let us have compassion for those under
chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves?
Who am I & who are you? Whence do we
come & is it quite certain that we did
nothing before we were born? This earth is
not without some resemblance to a jail. Who
knows but that man is a victim of divine
justice? Look closely at life. It is so
constituted that one senses punishment everywhere."

- Victor Hugo

*****

Meanwhile, back in Gotham City...


"The Killer Whiskey Returns.

A single drop of the old drink of "usquebaugh-baul" was described by the travel writer Martin Martin in 1695 as powerful enough to affect "all members of the body".
He added: "Two spoonfuls of this last liquor is a sufficient dose; if any man should exceed this, it would presently stop his breath, and endanger his life."

Saramago, Pessoa


Saramago's _The Year of the Death of Ricardo
Reis_, etc.

so, three "moments" so far.

1. Which is it? Over the great nakedness of truth, the diaphonous
cloak of imagination or Over the great nakedness of imagination, the
diaphonous cloak of truth?

2. When he "meets" dead Pessoa, he's told about death: "the usual period
(of death) is nine months, the same length of time we spend in our
mother's womb...Before we are born no one can see us yet they think
about us every day, after we are dead they cannot see us any longer and
every day they go on forgetting us a little more...

3. "You wrote yourself that a poet is someone who pretends. We utter
such intuitions without knowing how we arrive at them...is it the poet
who pretends to be a man or a man who pretends to be a poet."....?

(that's only within the first 100 pages...)

Capitalism Is Savagery (exerpts of a speech given by Hugo Chávez at Gigantinho Stadium during the 2005 World Social Forum.)

This is not the same Latin America of even five years ago. I cannot, out of respect for you, comment on the internal situation of any other country. There in Venezuela, particularly the first two years, many of my partisans criticized me, asking me to go faster, that we had to be more radical. I did not consider it to be the right moment, because processes have stages. Compañeros, there are stages in the processes, there are rhythms that have to do with more than just the internal situation in every country, they have to do with the International situation. And even if some of you make noise, I will say it: I like Lula, I appreciate him, he is a good man, with a big heart, a brother, a compañero, and I'm sure that Lula and the people of Brazil, with Nestor Kirchner and the Argentine people, with Tabarez Vazquez and the Uruguayan people, we will open the path towards the dream of a United Latin America, different, possible..."

noted - Chavez refers to Uruguayan poet/writer, Mario Benedetti, who wrote, amoung other gems, Te Quiero which has one of my favourite lines in Spanish this side of Alfonsina y El Mar...

"si te quiero es porque sos
mi amor mi cómplice y todo
y en la calle codo a codo
somos mucho más que dos"

*****

It's not spring yet but time for spring cleaning, albeit only within the bloggers section of the links, getting rid of dead sites, sites which are no longer relevant, sites which well, just don't stimulate any more. And all, not bourne out of some altruistic sense of duty to readers, merely sleepless at 3 am and knowing it was long overdue. Even added a few new ones.

One thing I rediscovered in the course of this action was Chez Lubacov -- which contains music I've been streaming all night/morning from Radio Lubacov whose contents one quickly runs out of superlatives to describe.

*****


He interrupted himself frequently, circular, a vulture waiting for the carcass of misplaced thoughts to ease out its last breath. He had a need to talk, perhaps for the reassurance that he was there, perhaps because he was too bored with the conversations of others and didn’t trust them to steer towards the right topics, driving through pylons instead of around them...

*****

Shout out to Rein Bier, auld mate with a new website.

*****

Lastly, the ale festival at The Bartons Arms was a stumbling smash - what vague pieces can be recollected of it anyway...

Bruce Cockburn: Pacing The Cage



Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage

Do you feel as though you’ve been especially summoned, that there is a
special calling for you as an artist? Are you particularly aliented
with a pronounced sense of being misunderstood by conventional wisdoms,
bourgeois moralities? He was asking me these questions, he the
unemployed poet, the aspiring artist, the man who couldn’t simply
allowing himself to drown in his drink and keep quiet about it.

What’s the point anyway, I ask pointedly. Isn’t this all some crutch
you use to get through your daily misgivings your dissatisfaction with
yourself in comparison to the accomplishments of the others? What
purpose does your art serve other than a selfish mechanism of petty,
egotistical indulgences?

What purpose does my art serve? He spat with incredulity. What purpose
do YOU serve, if we are speaking about purposes. What is YOUR utility?
Is there some very special yet hidden trait woven into your genomes that
will come to fruition and blossom in the latter years of the
righteousness of your purpose?

Calm down, Didier, I caution as other patrons are looking at us out of
the corners of their eyes like dogs at strange noises. What I mean to
ask is what purpose do you propose your creativity to be used for other
than yourself?

Why should my creativity serve any purpose other than for myself, he
asked, clearing his throat of Gitanes phlegm like a plumber snakes a
clogged toilet. I suffer enough from my choices, they make sure I do
suffer indeed for not being one of their productive members of society…I
could never calculate the psychological damage brought down upon me by
seeing the contempt in their eyes. And why then do you think I drink?
Who wouldn’t under these circumstances? What are you saying, simply
because I cannot subordinate my art into acceptable consumerist values
like writing commercial jingles about disposable diapers or creating new
superlatives for the unique comfort and absorption of a particular brand
name sanitary napkin, I should crawl into my preternatural cave to
wallow in my own isolation, fed on disgust, shat into neat little
pellets that can be easily swept up and disposed of as if I never
existed?

He was easily excitable this evening, either in a particularly foul mood
or unreceptive bowels jingling in his subconscious. In any case, the
monologue was spat forth with great intensity, with barely a breath
drawn. And just why are we suffocated with this doomed sense of having
to justify ourselves and our utility to others? Do you think the pimply
teenage bagging groceries in the Carrefour hypermarché is pissing
himself over his lack of purpose? A paper-shuffler, lost in a
bureaucratic labyrinth of spread sheets and interoffice memos is
scratching his head wondering why he hasn’t yet soared to the heights of
his corporate manager, fluent in corporate technospeak, the gibberish
dialect of managerial monkies?

This silly question of yours, questioning the purpose of my forsaking
the chain gang of subordinates, pacified by television soma, beaten into
submission by the overwhelming nature of keeping up, this is nothing to
me. I laugh at it. I am proud of being a poet, a craftsman. Proud of
not being nothing, beautiful for it, in fact. Look, Gautier once wrote
that only things that are altogether useless can truly be beautiful;
anything that is useful is ugly because it is the expression of some
need and the needs of man are base and disgusting as his nature is weak
and poor. - so I tell you, I am proud to be nothing. There is nothing
else to be.

Working Class Hero
John Lennon

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

She Proved Me Wrong

No!
There are not little birds that sing,
they are begging.
They want a piece of that
Democracy.

No!
She tells me, don't fold
your clothes in a heap and
piss in the open space,

I need you,

she repeats, only this time louder
as though it were a different language
and saying it louder was the translator.

No!
I can't take it any more!
(or maybe just a little on the side.)
Gimme what I don't know that I want!

No!
They say, "you can't do that."
No?
Why not?

Because you will end up in prison,
that's why.
You might end up in prison with AIDs too.
You might end up in prison
Yeah and when you do, you dunno what
is possible.

No!
The mother says, this guy is no good,
I won't let my daughter...
yet
until
you give me some yourself.

No!
these are just the photographs,
not the memories.
I remember it better than being.

No,
she said it was fun.
And it was.

No,
not really.

The Line

It wasn't always a clever line.

How many hours did I polish it with beer?
How many faces did I come across
before I landed, there, before you
ready to recite?

Oh yeah, this was a line
I'd been working on for weeks
in front of mirrors, on the subway,
lying on the beach.

So when I arrived, blown in by direction
and two feet in front of another,
precariously, I arrived knowing
every line back and forth, upside down,
to and fro, left to right and right to left.

And you were already painted,
ready for war, blood on the lips,
expectant, one leg crossed over another,
toying with the straw in your drink.

I've got a line alright. Clever it is.

Just wait and see.

Weightlifting



Let me try to bench press 100 kilos
of hope.

I fucked it all up somehow.

Hope was too fucking heavy.

And so were all the people relying on it
who caused me grief because hope was
on the corner of Nowhere and Never
and carrying them all
on my back was heavier
than I'd imagined

Let me try a dumbell curl of 35 kilos
And while I strain, snakes come out of my hair,
blood bursts through my eyes, all
the little symbols
that I'm doing something wrong.

When I lift weights like love, the
knees buckle; I'm doing squats
of love
and the sweat is pouring out of me
and the strain is all but unbearable.
That could be 300 kilos
but that's too much woman to love.

Let me try a set of rowing 50 kilos
to my chest and back to my ankles and back
to my chest,
somehow not the same as sex,
weightless as it is.

The weight of the world is a feather.

The world is too big to contemplate,
not any heavier than an atom -
Adam, atom, too big to contemplate
in world as light and weighty as ours.

Let me try to lift peoples' spirits,
100 kilos at a time.
I max out, turn in, shut the eyes,
grimace as though I were really trying.

Yet nothing moves and maybe Sisyphus
is to be admired because he got
the rock rolling anyway.

The spirits are heavy.
Keeping them up is a struggle
no matter how many weights
I lifted on the way up.

*****

also want to take this opportunity to asking anyone reading this to have a look at another blog I find interesting:

Last Call.

Bits and bobs, baby. Bits and bobs.

4th Anniversary



Lorca - Part One of A Poet in New York - Dawn

Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.

Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

Those that go out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried under chains and noises
in an impudent challenge to rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.

*****

Seen Better Days



Charles Bukowski - Young In New Orleans

starving there, sitting around the bars,
and at night walking the streets for hours,
the moonlight always seemed fake
to me, mabye it was,
and in the French Quarter I watched
the horses and buggies going by,
everybody sitting high in the open
carriages, the black driver, and in
back the man and the woman,
usually young and always white.
and I was always white.
and hardly charmed by the
world.
New Orleans was a place to
hide.
I could piss away my life,
unmolested.
except for the rats.
the rats in my small dark room
very much resented sharing it
with me.
they were large and fearless
and stared at me with eyes
that spoke
an unblinking
death.
women were beyond me.
they saw something
depraved.
there was one waitress
a little older than
I, she rather smiled,
lingered when she
brought my
coffee.
that was plenty for
me, that was
enough.
there was something about
that city, though:
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.
sitting up in my bed
the lights out,
hearing the outside
sounds,
lifting my cheap
bottle of wine,
letting the warmth of
the grape
enter
]me
as I heard the rats
moving about the
room,
I preferred them
to
humans.
being lost,
being crazy mabye
is not so bad
if you can be
that way:
undisturbed.
New Orleans gave me
that.
nobody ever called
my name.
no telephone,
no car,
no job,
no anything.
me and the
rats
and my youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know.



George Gordon, Lord Byron - The Destruction Of Sennacherib

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Kaboom!



FILL FULL

What we know of ourselves are fitted
weekly in spouses and children and jobs
meakly reflecting.

What I am, I can fit on a thumbprint.
The Government can tell you that

and almost everything about me
but who I am

wihout being fitted properly
into the scheme of things
or in the realm of knowing
THIS is the way to go,
not THAT.

*****

And when I relax, I tire like a cat.
If they let me out of the box
I will run fastest
for the cars.

*****

No wait, those are dogs.

*****

Lately, they begin to appreciate me.
They comment on my clothes:
"oh what a nice rack you have"
or,
"great ass, think you'll bring some home
for me?"

Yeah, I say.

There's a big ass in your face
and it's called America.
Come and fuck it.

*****

So when it's down to the chips
and the dreams are counting
down to reality; one two tick tock
I will be.

There for this little, tiny
shadow
when you and I
were playing for all the marbles.

*****

Kaboom!

Steve Bell

KATRINA

Let me capitalise on the suffering
of other people who, well, suffer.

Hey!
I've got two gallons of water,
I've got a splendid set of ribs,
I've got a pair of balls,
lips.

Everything that desperation needs.

Let me remember for you
in case you forget
I am here to help you.

Let me capitalise on the suffering
of other people who, well, suffer.

Let me stop you. Don't leave.
Don't even think about it.
I've already locked all the doors
and all the windows.
You stay what you are
and don't move.

Slowly, day by day,
you remember
I'm in charge.

Let me capitalise on the suffering
of other people who, well, suffer.

I like you people. You are
my story,
my living,
my bread on the table
to feed the mouths of my children
and fund their educations so they can
grow up just like me;

hungry for your suffering,
thirsty for your reality,
ready, always ready,
to report on your misery.

Where's The Fats?



Of all the New Orleans stories, this one strikes me most: Fats Domino is missing.

Perspective: It's ironic in a way: how many civilians killed by terrorism from 2000-present versus how many civilians killed by mother nature from 2000-present.

Whose god should the world be fighting?

Hopefully, ole Fats is just off on a bender somewhere and out of harms way.

The City of New Orleans
by Steve Goodman

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin' trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

CHORUS:
Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.

CHORUS

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Why Not The Raybeats?


(image via The Raybeats

Dirt Cheap: Poem For Free:



The Argument For Love

you get wet.
you get a boner.
you fuck,
you blow,
you reverse and go forward at once,
you sit back sweaty
and wonder who the fuck is sitting next to you.

*****

we love heartbreak.

we break each others' hearts, chipping
away at that sculpture of the perfect
mate.

we love to argue.

we like throwing things against the wall
to emphasise our points.
we revel in dressing up wrong
to look like right, like they were twins
you could accidentally mix up.

*****

I love you, I love you not.

I am not steady on my feet.

Your day is not mine and mine
is not yours.
Couples
(look, that blip there, that's me...)
are only about couples
when there's a common enemy.

*****

They sing songs into each others' mouths.

They touch each other knowingly,
they fuck like yesterday were tomorrow,
they sing to themselves but think
of the other.
They feel better, they live longer,
they die happier, they might even
have kids.

They will fast-forward their lives
later because that's how it happens:
one minute here, twenty years
later it's the feet that are killing you.

*****

She waits,
because I will arrive.
I arrive because she waits.

Wha's This? More Feckin' Poetry?



"The intelligent man who is proud
of his intelligence is like a
condemned man who is proud of his
large cell."
— Simone Weil, "Human Personality"


In prison, you write words in your mind
and live lives in your mind
and travel only in dreams
but you get good biscuits with sausage gravy
on Sunday mornings
and use of the weight room
one hour and fourty five minutes per day.

You mete out your hours like
they were the shavings of wittling,
and there is no extrospection.
The heart sings silently and rarily.

In prison, you live outside.
Outside of society, outside
of reality and yet inside
the outside looks so inviting.

It is as if you were dead.

If you've ever wondered what the world
will do when you are finally gone
all you need to do
is listen to those bars close shut
in front of you.

In prison, you live the lie of being alive.
You listen to the breathing in the bunk
above you, and realise that breathing
is just a symptom of living,
not proof itself.

Blast Off!



Well it's take awhile but Hunter S Thompson has finally left the building.

And for a kick, the first chapter from The Rum Diaries.

Wonder if they'll ever name an airport after him like Ronald Reagan, John Lennon, Louis Armstrong, etc.

Hoi, Nederlands!



Spinvis -Smalfilm

Ik ben een vrouw van veertig met een sigaret
ik heb een buitenaardse stof in mijn bloed
ik werd verleden jaar ontvoerd door een ruimteschip
en sindsdien gaat het met mij niet zo goed
ik weet wel waar ze wonen
want je kunt het zien als je de letters van hun naam omdraait
de waarheid is een raadsel
en dat gaat als volgt
het is een goeie vriend maar altijd te laat.

Ik heb een eigen flat
ik heb de radio aan
het is alweer woensdag
ik heb een Golf GTI
een tijdje terug reed ik een fietser dood
maar gelukkig heeft geen mens me gezien
het komt maar zelden voor dat ik een zin afmaak
maar je maakt me echt niks wijs
het noodlot is een raadsel
en dat gaat als volgt
het kost je niks en toch altijd prijs.

Als ik uitga ben ik fotograaf
en ik ben schrijver als ik vrienden bezoek
op het ogenblik zit ik heel even zonder werk
maar binnenkort begin ik aan mijn eerste boek
in de spiegel neem ik soms alvast de pose aan
voor de foto op de achterkant
dromen zijn een raadsel
en dat gaat als volgt
het smelt in je hoofd en niet in je hand.

Ik ben een monoliet
ik ben de wetenschap
ik ben een grote man van 50 jaar
vandaag knipte ik een muis in twee
en die naaide ik toen mooi weer aan elkaar
maar soms vanuit een hoek kijken mij dingen aan
vanuit de schaduw van de kathedraal
alles is een raadsel
maar ik weet nog niet in wat voor vorm
en in welke taal.

Ik ben al heel erg oud
en ik mis mijn vrouw
en mijn oude handen trillen heel de dag
beneden kun je kaarten bij de automaat
alhoewel dat van mijn dochter niet mag
dan zeggen ze dat ik zo goed de kaarten schud
en dan lach ik elke keer maar weer mee
ik ken een raadsel over eenzaamheid
het gaat als volgt
wat doet pijn en telt voor twee.

Poems, Poems, Poems. Won't These People Ever Shut Up?



Why Smoking Is Addictive And Travel Is Cheap

By the powers invested in me
for offers that can't be refused,
here is the cigarette and the blindfold:
The cost of your destination is one lifetime.
Please pay in advance.

A little word with your travel agent
will speed things up to the point of no return
from your end of the bargain,
you are to speak fiction
and make truth seem uninteresting at best.

Take a walk to the urinals of never;
bladders emptied at bargain prices.
Keep your chin up for the mug shots,
look danger in the lungs,
check out the interior pipes
and return them when the weekend is over.

You can't smoke just one,
time is too short.

*****

Wireless Mothers of Jesus

In other words, they only listen if
they've finished talking,
authoritative claptraps, saliva lips,
causing droopy eyes,
changing channels make believe
if they're
outside all day in cafes, sitting
sculpted into leather beneath
the sun, the old Madonnas
on cellphones, cellulite sweating
into the vast universe of important rules
they ignore in all their chatter.

*****

The Fate of Bad Ideas

They populate: conventional avenues of thought
get too crowded, the overflow is squeezed
onto side streets and dead ends.

Sometimes they fade into an irrecognizable
blur of too many faces
shouting each other down in smoky rooms
or sterile television studios.

They make babies out of broken homes,
malnourished and ideas unwashed of bromides,
they grow up to be messianic on occasion
or otherwise leave alot of corpses in their wake.

A few become ad campaigns:
that's how beers and cars
got to meet so many telegenic women
and left the rest of us standing on the sidelines.

*****

Album Du Jour



And for those who are missing it:

The Brecon Jazz Festival

More Poems That Won't Get Fed To The Publishing Dogs

ACCIDENTAL 2005

I.

Can you imagine if we walked out of the womb?
If we squared the shoulders or fixed the make up
shook the hair, straightened the lapels,
and the spotlight was on us and the womb.
Can you imagine the angst already,
is the spotlight on the womb or me?

Imagine every promise you've made,
and imagine diamonds and coal.

When I wake up in the middle of the night,
the first thing I do is look at the clock.
Should I sleep more? Should I get up?
Am I banging on the womb to get out or stay in?

Imagine every promise made to you.
On the fingertips and the eyelids,
or unconvincingly with a shove in the ribs.

When they say the kid has promise,
they mean his past is irrelevant.
There are many ways to chose to forget
but if I enumerate them, I haven't forgotten.

I want the promise of a better world
and I want it in the last 10 seconds
counting down to what?

The new, that's what.

The new me, the new you, the new world.
That's what they gave the new kid,
we deserve as much.

II.

Later on, we pass out cigars.
We pass out cigars because they symbolise success.
Either a baby or another year done,
we won't know the outcome.

If you measure
you fail
and you will measure again
and fail again
because the measuring
is the failure.

The years that pass are years
you are still alive.
Think about the people who die
on New Year's Eve
without ever knowing the outcome.

*****

MADRID

I.

The gypsies are like humidity,
clinging to the skin, dripping need.

"Please help feed my baby," she mumbles,
rocking cloth in her arms.

A man steps forward.

"That's no baby!" he exclaims,
ripping the cloth from her arms
to expose a doll.

II.

After two months of dirt, my shoes
will be shined in a park in Madrid
because a man snapped up with a towel
and offered.

Two months of a half dozen towns'
dirt clogging my stride and time
now, for the cracked teeth smiling
at me si señor,
to shine the shoes.

He turned dirt to shine, muck
to a sublime shade and spat
and shook his skinny elbows
back and forth.

*****

That's all for now kids. More te folly in the coming days and years.

No Woman No Cry



Wow kids, you git to watch a drunken boat poem created right here on the page...


WHY I DON' WANNA BE A WOMAN

I.

Alotta blood.
The womb is mysterious but bloody.

II.

Whose gonna kill the snakes?

III.

Psychopoetics of Metaphor: Freudian Aesthetics and
Rimbaud.

Let's unravel cautiously.

Otherwise the scabs might crack.

IV.

I don' wanna be a woman because I'm a man,
you hear what a man I yam?
I can shriek, I can bellow,
I can howl.
I can wear a tie and no one will think I'm a dyke.

V.

She told me, shetoldmeshetoldme LOOK
I'm a woman!
I've got tits!

VI.

"What's good about women?" some guy spits
out on the corner of 1st and 2nd.
Peel him open.
He's had a bad ride.

VII.

Sex v. Making Love, et al.

VIII.

I hate it when she says she loves me
because I know she doesn't.
The statute has already run out.

But give us a breather,
that string instrument still,
shhhh.

She loves me, she loves me not.

IX.

The difference it makes,
warm, bold, hot,
cold or indifferent,
that's alot
to chew,
I'd rather not.

X.

Love a woman, hug a woman,
let her know
what a woman
she is,
but don't
let go
to never wanting to be a woman.

Bush Reveals The Earth Is Flat



(image via Parapolitics

In an interview at the White House on Monday with a group of Texas newspaper reporters, President Jesus Bush appeared to endorse the old and seemingly disproven theory that the world is flat.

Recalling his days as Texas governor, Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript, "I felt that even though hundreds of years of history would show otherwise, we should be letting our children know that in reality, the world is flat." Asked again by a reporter whether he believed that both sides in the debate between the earth being flat and not being flat were right, Bush replied that he did, "and just because school textbooks debunk the world is flat theory doesn't mean it can't be true."

Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that the flatness of the earth was revealed to him in a secret conversation with God, he did not directly answer. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said, adding that it's quite possible that terrorist-loving Democrats had created the whole round earth theory simply to discredit God and to keep people from getting to scared of falling off the edge of the earth.

On Tuesday, the president's conservative Christian supporters and the leading institute advancing flat earth theories embraced Bush's comments, while scientists and advocates of the round earth theory disparaged them. At the White House, where the flatness of earth has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Bush's science adviser, John Marburger III, sought to play down the president's remarks as common sense and old news.

Marburger said in a telephone interview that "although every picture taken of earth from space makes the earth appear circular, the truth of the matter is, this has always been little more than a Democrat photoshopping conspiracy" and "if Democrats believe the earth is round, the earth must logically be flat because the Democrats are wrong about everything." Marburger also said that Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that the fact of the earth being flat, not round, should be discussed as part of the "core curriculum" in science classes.

Bush also noted later in a speech to demonstrate the truth of the earth being flat that "A quarter is a flat object. However, if you spin a quarter on its axis, the shadow made by a light overhead is in the shape of a circle.

Suppose that the earth is flat, as per our initial hypothesis. Now suppose that the earth is in constant motion. In fact, it is widely acknowledged that the earth is spinning at the tremendous rate of approximately 1000 miles per hour. Given these assmptions, what shape shadow should the earth cast upon the moon during a lunar eclipse? Clearly, the earth should cast a circular shadow!

Yo Tengo Tantos Hermanos...



Yo tengo tantos hermanos que no los puedo contar.

En el valle, la montaña, en la pampa y en el mar.

Cada cual con sus trabajos, con sus suñeos, cada cual

Con la ezperánza adelante, con los recuerdos detrás.

Yo tengo tantos hermanos que no los puedo contar.



Gente de mano calliente por eso de la amistad.

Con un lloro pa llorarlo, con un rezo pa rezar.

Con un horizonte abierto que siempre está más allá.

Y esa fuerza pa buscarlo con tesón y voluntad.

Cuando parece más cerca es cuando se aleja más.

Yo tengo tantos hermanos que no los puedo contar.


Y así seguimos andando, curtidos de soledad.

Nos perdemos por el mundo, nos volvemos á encontrar.

Y así nos reconocemos, por el lejano mirar,

Por la copla que mordemos, semilla de immensidad.

Y así seguimos andandos, curtidos de soledad.

Y en nosotros nuestros muertos pa que nadie quede atrás.

Yo tengo tantos hermanos que no los puedo contar,

Y una novia muy hermosa que se llama Libertad !

Fuck Harry Potter

It isn't possible to hold back the bile any longer. Fuck Harry Potter. There. It's been said, and not just by the devoted Harry Potter Haters in this elusive club of faceless iconoclasts gathered in the book burning salons of shopping malls throughout the world.

Apparently, he dies. Fans are "really sad".

Funny, the world is disintegrating around them into chaos, anarchy and death and somehow there are still people left mourning over the death of a fictitious children's book character.

Is it any wonder there are people in the world who hate us and want to destroy our civilisation? It isn't the sham of democracy and freedom nor the chance to stand in line for a Super Sized Super Meal in some fast food flesh fest that drives people to go on crazed suicide bombing rampages and utter catchy phrases like you love life, we love death, it's Harry Potter and the legions of idiots who would feel "really sad" about the death of a fictitious character and live in some super-Idiot escapist world where the a fictitious muppet rules Holland.

Get these kids and their adult-pretender wanna-be sick fantasy world intellects off the rubbish and on to something edifying, like:




And if not, note that in the never-ending search for intelligent life amongst the lemmings clammering for the latest new edition of Harry Potter, you might just come across the kind of anger and hatred for western civilisation that you normally only find amoung suicide bombers:

Harry Potter and the Department of Social Security via the refreshing just ram it...

On the other hand, there is the compelling argument that if The Pope doesn't like it it must be something good for you.

Nevertheless, join us in asking the eternal question that time forgot:

Is Harry Potter Gay?

New Tattoo

I've finally decided on the image for the new tat, perfectly indicative of the brave new world we live in.



It's either that, or the other icon of western civilisation:



Cast your vote. The fate of the western world relies upon it.

Chirac-Fed Terrorists Pay Back London For Olympic Victory and Bad Cuisine



One day after Paris lost their 2012 Olympic bid, Chirac-fed terrorists claimed victory of a different sort, London suffered a series of retaliatory bombings during morning rush hour.

"One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad," Chirac noted just a few days before of the English. "They will pay for winning the Olympic bid and they will pay for their rotten fish and chips."

Although Al Qaeda have claimed to be behind the attacks, several sources within the French government have indicated that the attacks were masterminded by Mr Chirac who was reportedly incensed that London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games rather than Paris and ordered French sous chefs to hide explosives in freshly imported packages of common pan-gallic chauvinism, cleverly disguised as fish and chips newspaper wrap, and place them throughout the London Underground and a few double decker buses.

Chirac officially denied any hand in the attacks and joined the other Group of Eight leaders in condemning them.

"Today we are all les Anglo-Saxons, we are all mass consumers of fish and chips, we are all fat, lager chugging yobs...", Chirac reportedly announced in empathy.