Monday, December 21, 2009

Snowbound by jkd

After Alexander Maksik's A Green Umbrella & Rufo Quintavalle's Shelf 19


I ask the flimsy flower

having sucked

toxins from

the infertile moon

there above the city

on the rusted, waxing night

weather turning wide of

an ending season’s warmth

a green umbrella

abandoned by my door

a gesture

perhaps you or yours

at last or longed for

landlocked

that, too, in this hesitancy

widened breaths

the little beach

hoping for deserts

against ocean swells

carrying things away or

looking in on the room

by my bed, your crippled desk,

some evidence sought

against tides’ black crescent

curves, listed or listening

to rain and ice floes

drifting decades

or kilometers late

too wide to go round

the urban bustle

thunder on the rise

toward the dark ship, mammoth

glacial blue and bluer still

all head cocked

strolling bare foot

ragged hair in your eyes,

sapphire wonder

for this one

confirmation

a last sign.

Friday, December 11, 2009

NEW: Shelf 19 by Rufo Q

note: this is part of a longer work based on Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. I have kept the stanza structure of Whitman's poem as well as the first and last letter of each line but rewritten what comes between. Hence "Song of Myself" becomes "Shelf" etc.
...
...
19.
...
The flower
Is ill;
It is flimsy
Through having sucked
Toxins from the land
That
The weather
Turning
Turned infertile.
The gibbous moon
...
Drupelike
Widens
...
Draining the sun of its warmth.
Do not, my friends,
Deny
...
The little
I ask of you.

words or baubles (new) by JKD

even unexpected letters tend to form

between(s)

*

lilypads

protective surface-covering

a line

*

scent of fire

day burning

charcoal blackened chimneysweep

a light

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

NIGHT POEM #3 by Brandon Shimoda

after "Insomniac Night Poem #2 (ambien)"
by Amanda Deutch



So I prepare to count every tooth
In the yellow alloy mouth
The yellow house
At night
Knocking wooden alley mirrors
Amber lights
And siblings that appear there
Wearing
Maternal skirts
Hopped up
Within maternal paper skirts

When a brash scare of red
Blows
Past the rice and sea
Lips and folk men dance
And folk women dance
Vulnerable and very soft
Each grain that rises
The wavering glass
Must be permitted
Also
And
Convulse volcanoes

I save the first impression for later
Like ringing in a jar
A small machine
And the better of dynastic fruits
Kept well before the throat

Monday, December 7, 2009

For the Best, by Amy Hollowell

After "why then, and the case not peculiar to myself," by lisa p

Flaneuse and a sex tart,
I wish for you and the snow
coming delicious and good enough
over the city.

What beautiful means and beginning well
I nearly know yet don’t
because you say just being
is for the best.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

after after (new) by SN

behave, proem-- a
writer's pre
natal, or just
pre-- this was all
after something:
a poem escapes
by the seat of
its can'ts.

Matches Calendar (new) / after Cai Guo Qiang & for JD

Spend a year lighting a match a day
Suspend a year in flames
Suspicious ear lightning awash a daze
365
Counting
What returns as important from
A care its suspension
Singular righting a watch away
Disfigure
A year of the daily what did you
I lit and counting I lit out and
Burnt down and not regretting
Sound bowed down match after
Not really regretting
Calendar flare
Measure the escaping charred
Bend a tear mirrored fighting a laugh to stay
Weird flare
Depend upon an ear or wish upon a star
Or something (some sing)
Tend a bare here writing a touch a say
Pending

Saturday, December 5, 2009

why then, and the case not peculiar to myself (new) by lisa p

the snow is coming. "I am good
at the sex," he says happy, puzzled,
and we wish him well. "as you would a friendly dog," she says.
I almost yet don't
know what she means. the moon
delicious over College Street, the city nearly beautiful,
as are we all. if he keeps trying,
we say, if she goes to the counselor or either
stops flaneuring about. because
being good at the sex just is never
good enough, or enough, or
"you know what I mean," she says, and I wish I did. I wish
he did. even if we're all hoping for the best
in winter's tart beginning.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Copenhagen by JW

After George Vance's comment: Soon we shall see How Copenhagen Ended.

See how soon we shall end Copenhagen.
Copenhagen soon shall see. We end how
we end. Copenhagen shall soon see how.
How ends Copenhagen? We shall soon see.

Soon Copenhagen shall end. We see how.
We see Copenhagen ending. How soon. Shall
we end soon? How? Shall Copenhagen see
how? End soon Copenhagen. We shall. See...?

In return, by JKD

After Amanda Deutch's poem "I wanted to tell you" from May 15, 2009

Thursday
on an after-morning uncertainty

phrases seasick with bottles
empty expression

“I've never
seen”

anyone
or I
am
not as blank
as this
reproduction

Certain hours
become masks

ourselves voiceless,
mined, coming up for air

through this dark shaft
elevate me

staid voice:

“aren’t you
wary?”

Tender, undressed motions passed
as at the bar

exams in which we
implicate
the shape of the cosmos.

Peruse morning’s
mourning like this afternoon

well
into the evening,
dug

As if I had been wanting words

wiped out
so things replace

stacks

and then
a color speaks:

“drive past chance
or the harbor”

This collision
.............../ collusion

red autumn
trees blooming.

Who am I to tell them why it’s wrong?

Little prepared
wind,
perhaps I am
street corners

or movement—

golden as on
any
separation

Package wrapped, or a wall
“gives” or was it
“behind.”

Holding up
a way-
ward scrawl

Typescript noise

Cloudwakes
unable to believe Tuesday

A ripple, a return.

This keeps me awake
for years

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Omegah! (and Alpha too) by Amy Hollowell

after Oh-Game! by Geo Vance



A………!
?………O

is the Joyce body
of the Ulysses body
in the HCE body
of us every one no body
in the one body of every now

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Oh - Game!

after Homage...by RQ & RW
by Geo Vance


Try the noman-hit or eon-night




°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Friday, November 13, 2009

Inhalation wavelets by Jennifer K Dick

After Jonathan Wonham's Malt Whiskey, Nostalgia for Fire


Fire on the inside, snapped adrift on the way to mourning, last train

rumble to ramble homeward she aloft within a framework of glass

and concrete metal beams encase. She is thinking of words and webs

fingers scaling over bruised surfaces as if time could repeal action,

disactivated. Kick, hover, reasoned list of forgery, forgets.

She plasters herself to the pane, suction cup of each fingertip

sticking her to now, and then now.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

homme age à mon eage by RQ

after JW (and FV)

thirty
one
more
than
no
thing

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Homage à Rufo Quintavalle by JW (new)

God in the sum of the errors
was a big zero like it made no difference
to say I mean, rather than I mean
to say,
                                     nothing.

Malt whisky, nostalgia for fire by JW

malt whisky, nostalgia for fire

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

NEW: the language that surrounds us by amanda deutch

the language that surrounds us


optional. in your home.

plant walk

building walk

use the answer to listen

smudge way before

if you cannot speak,

silence

silence

silence

answer

“To garble Greta Garbo a bit, I want to be at home”

NEW: Insomniac Night Poem # 2 ambien

by Amanda Deutch


Night Poem # 2


Dance in the wooden alley of mirrors.

In the house, there amber stage lights above us.

Inverted marquee.

I am in a purple mumu, day’s heat cooling.

I try to share kisses on the phone

Pack 20 or so words in around the word 'kiss' so as

to seem less vulnerable.

As I am vulnerable very soft

Convulse volcanos explode. Well that’s what we get.






--NYC, summer 2009,
some hour in the middle of the night

Friday, October 30, 2009

Dunvegan, translated from the English by sean s

after Dunvegan by Sue Chenette

The ideal of all in Dunvegan's heart,
like a home of clapped baked stones, the gate
fashioned per the avenue's limit, an apparition
risen from raw and distant property,
its feet quicklimed in dark and permafrost.

Her libations on our heads, then clambering steps
in the child night. Sleep tumbles us a hall's width,
an unadorned bed, a facecloth and bowl,
as plain as the spiritless, bodiless weather.

Morning and the light stroke of an oak's twig
submerges the daylight's plane against your window.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Backtracking by JKD

After Sean S's Threadjacker.

There are tunnels under skycliffs
and old bottles,
decades of cobbled raft crossings
mysteries of spindly winesacks and marriage

vows drunk in a labyrinthine corner,
yellowjackets threading
a pathway through matter,
scratching useless to get out.

The dulcet clatter of loose history
is like the rest of us,
awakened over cracked shells
pressed, listening, to hear no echo

where feet splice, bleed
maroon over volcanic sands
markers as unnoticed as trails:
there is no roaming back, or tide.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

threadjacker by sean s

after JKD's To Be Read, Perhaps, In Reverse

These are tunnels under the sky
because sky is earth
and earth is where we go when we die.

Cliffs and old bottles tell
elsewhere tell the decades of battles and treaties
a cobbled raft crossing history's
spindly winesacks and marriages.

Vows knotted arms drunk in a corner of our labyrinth.
Threadjackers.
You, for example, whispering under

shelled yellowjackets, curled on a stone step.
Betrayed by a chemical, a pathway through matter.
Hospitals under your fingernails

where scratching is useless.
The dulcet clatter of loose change in my pocket
a history like the rest of us.

Friday, October 16, 2009

To be read, perhaps, in reverse by JKD

After Lisa Pasold's Whoops-a-daisy..., Jon Wonham's In life the rampant mind has limbs and Tall Tale of Short Hours by Amy Hollowell

Clinging onto the rampant limbs
because these were things we would not do
not see not be part of not parting
being the thing passing through or
bygone

nights not anymore
risking time and pinned-together boulevards
the intertwined life of its own mind
when the red and yellow fall
in an orange nightscape

inverted constructs rattle and sliver
unseen along the scenic drive

elsewhere cliffs and ruins of old tunnels
tell me about the centuries of battles and treaties
of a cobbled route up which someone drove us
of myths and unknowns
this was haunting if we could be there

but in this small car on this wide and vacant road
there are only elevated furrows
extended courtyards
barriers penning in a preordained timeline
telling us how what was was

you, for example, whispering
words syllables clicked consonants left underground

so when I was there, later, I could unearth
remnants because things
like cut glass, painted pottery, bronze blades,
gas masks, spittoons, an ivory comb, dictionaries
that are left adrift never came back

because there were things we would not do
anymore, to hear me listening, to be
in the enunciation or simply riding
round and round on Bay Street, arms interlinked,
until everyone would clamor awake
dawn overbright in the joyous crowding

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

whoops-a-daisy (nuit blanche, toronto) by Lisa Pasold

after after seeing lots of bad art (and a little good) by jkd & In Life by Jonathan Wonham

what are the sections
sections of? that rampant mind
leaping from World of Warcraft: white bobble babies
inflate along buildings, muscular cherubs (security guards
checking their umbilical power plugs). a certain amount of walking
towards that vodka pool, backwards bank door,
hotdog stand, carny ride. did the Millennium Angel
distort so, melting brand ads three-storeys high?
the train station was filled with dry ice.
Union Station train station? no! he didn't know
about that. whistle blowing, blue snowflake. unfortunately
the dancers
were not naked. sometimes the bench
is not going anyplace. sometimes a person hopes
for less. such as,
everyone should wake up
today. with that ride still going around and around
down on Bay Street, arms linked and joyous crowding.

Monday, October 5, 2009

In Life, the Rampant Mind has Limbs by Jonathan Wonham

After "The life of the mind rampant in the boulevard of limbs" by Amy Hollowell, quoted from the poem Tall Tale of Short Hours.


In life, the rampant mind has limbs, the boulevard
in the mind has a life of its own, and rampant limbs
fill the mind's lively boulevards, as if the same rampant
boulevards would not mind the risk to life and limb.

The boulevard of life raises a rampant limb in my mind
and I do not mind. In life, these boulevarding limbs
are not less rampant than the most rampant mind
in whom lives and limbs and boulevards are intertwined.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Tall Tale of Short Hours, by Amy Hollowell

(On the occasion of the second Rewords anniversary)

I think I am beside myself in slithers
Of light, pervasively rattling on
With a tall tale of short hours.
But I am not. The city
A newly old world, this endless story
Of what I see
Is impossible to construct
In inverted pyramid style.

I have tried not to feel
The pinch elevated
Or sometimes furrowed
Underground at the back of my extended courtyards.

It can’t be helped
Not white or black tonight
A Marlboro and Coke at the next table
Must include leaves skittering
Dead on the walk in liquid sun
And even long past
Early night under the plane trees
No one pauses to look
Or hear what empties,
The life of the mind rampant
In the boulevard of limbs
Quietly moving on.

Occasions at Spirit Plane by Jonathan Regier

(happy second anniversary to Rewords)

London. Cherubs in.
Chandeliers which factotums
Turn on and off by their peculiar
Quotidian accounts of home life. Phantoms
With muscular faces who rode
On top the red omnibuses in shaking
Coats when long coats only
The sciences can be honest. Women
And their bosoms tied and glyphs
Rudely on their underarms.
Unknown and unseen
Prevail. The fat in the
99% milk without fat.

Resonances of Green by RS Oventile

Before the light fully orders your thoughts,
a hue hijacks the day,
first with Mickey’s verdigris eyes
demanding an exit to the garden,
where, among the bougainvillea’s leaves,
camouflaged for chlorophyll,
a mantis prays for prey.

Then to the farmers’ market for
broccoli, asparagus, spinach, avocadoes, and leeks.
Return. In a skillet, the string beans sizzle
in sesame oil with turmeric, garlic, cumin, and onion.

At noon, you uproot a neglected aloe,
transport it, replant it, water it,
and write off your theft
as anarchism.

Watching the palms wrestle the wind,
you recall a dream:
In a tiny bedroom, an implacable woman
clothed in emerald foliage
ignites a massive klieg
to illuminate the resolute sleeper.

The sun’s shrinking arc shows
a spectacular flash, and a black-haired youth
deftly smears a tilaka on your forehead.
The dinner guests gather to praise
the tree of life’s natural colors,
but the hostess foresees only earth, and insects, and grasses.


(PS--Happy 2nd, Rewords!)

after seeing lots of bad art (and a little good) in the great company of friends, by JKD

Everyone should wake up today after having not slept. A cascade. A 3-D star stethoscope, barometer meting out the affections. What is the bag of trash scrawling on that wall? We are the faded lilies on the maroon(ed) carpet tree. Where is the nature in our natural habitat? He would pee red, dressed as a dog, in the shade if given time to consume enough beets, the ability to wait out daylight. We are waiting by a bus that is not going anyplace. Just CDG. Only Orly. I feel closer to the air after a bottle of rum. I want to go a few city blocks, but no one will carry me. He says it is not quite like that, set theory. He is measured out by her gaze. Pleeaasse come out, she says. The dancers are, unfortunately, not naked. When she tackles him in her small slipdress in the shadowy audience they skid a long way on the satin. Did you hear the ice cube melting? Was it sugar? Over and over, the block drifts off. We, too, carry ourselves into the dark. Stop at a streetcorner by a stand of bananas and beer. The trumpettist raises his horn and plays a few notes as he walks. We keep parallel. Our footsteps. Mine. Timing into the day. The statue there spies at us, lounging on the angled lawn. She has been waiting since 1864. Black smoke, boat stalled, the stranger who wants to shake my head as I enter the code into the door. This is what she means, in the case, speaking out from behind glass. There is no cure, after all.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

to the amish cabin by sean s

after Medusa by JKD

A trip to the Amish cabin
A distant will scattered amidst the provinces.
Route 14, a detour

Inside her sensorium surrounded by oversized sunglasses.
Sundaes. Daysuns
in mirrors shining from the backseat.

NYC - part danger, part reason.
A medusa clinging in your hair. A job hunt,
the revving of a leap that never jumps.
Squeezing a meantime novel from clotted sinuses,
another anemic winter on its way, your handwriting
blurring the distance between hibernation,
liberation,
hanging from that bed post or the
other

The mileage sleeps her dyedred locks
into the passenger seat curling. Shavings
of connection, split ends flying
down four palms of wheel on the road.

Dunvegan by Sue Chenette

Everyone should have a friend in Dunvegan,
her small brick house with one front gable
built close to the road, seeming
to have grown out of the north Ontario land,
or to have become part of it.
Climb the stairs late after red wine talk.
Fall asleep in the narrow room
with its simple cot and wash stand
only night and wind outside.
Wake to the brush of an oak branch
against the window
slow seep of uncluttered dawn.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

alternate theory, or somersault by sean s

after Nuts & Reverie by Jonathan Regier

A squirrel seen in Australia is like an egg resting on your head.

(I would apologize for associating the frantic and the smooth, the compulsive and the enigmatic, but scholastically, emotionally, it is right, plus you started it.)

Inside the egg are stock rooms, libraries, liquor stores. They are unevenly distributed, chances are. They are Australian, pushing down the waters unevenly in that part of the world.

The squirrels in Australia are more than 99% invisible. But still less than 100%. So I wonder. How do we divide a squirrel? Is it the difference between white and yolk? White and iris? Between wick and childhood?

Between falling up and clinging to gravity by one's fingertips?

Swimming between the stocks, books, and bottles, tow-headed children, crane drivers harnessed: to their avenues, high ledges, memories of upside-down sunset in streaky panes above girderwork, of feet trimmed too short for burning, for the wind.

They are hunting the squirrels there. Their one-percent pelts. Double-hafted algorithms that can part anything, or that's what they were told at purchase, though it doesn't matter because the vendors do not give refunds.

It doesn't matter. The squirrels live a true life and everybody knows it but them. Just another doubt stickying up the measurements. It is a red red. And an unred. Or. Try laying a knife edge to it.

The egg burns with a calm and slow flame. The flocks in the shell squirrel in delight, a chance liquid running up the walls. Broth, liquor and ink. The semisalt of waveform. Tide by balance.

The powerlines die off into radio waves, bobbing on the air, bonehums.

The corner of your vision, a squirrel startles at the snap. The egg falling from one's head spills an ocean with an incomplete margin of error.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Sleep Cycle II, by JKD

After vocabulary in Nuts & Reverie by Jonathan Regier

Theory lines wake her, curved slow axe. She turns.
To look back at the visibility, running stock retired. Retry.
To split the egg without losing yolk, consider the signs
under anaesthetic. Tides bound or bounded by salt licks.
Her refraction still power. Lines make her remember.
Overlearning, oak, cure. The sleep less an axis than spit.
Basic patterns of respiration between rapid eye movements.
No need to say what’s beyond these comforts.
Speed down the wire, speak and roll over.
Precipice. She is her own.
And from the outer calls herself, beckons
as if the curtained night were behind her now.
Reckoning. Plates clatter in the quake. Hold on.
Snowstill incubation of winter falling towards her.
She would make it stop, wherever she is.
Amnesiac dreamcatcher, letting every image pour
through its net. Those which held her down, weave
along unsuspected flights, chill, naked to the wake.
And then, to call up under fingertip, a print, curl
foetal alongside artefacts, raised dust pinned back under.
Roasting, or robed, the sheets twist and strangle.
A light breeze, or hair, wafts closer.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Sleepchains by Brandon Shimoda

after "Circadian Rhythm" by Amit Dwibedy,
after "Circadian Rhythm" by Jennifer K. Dick



O
Cycles
The sleepchains

Vast
And cobalt

Froth
That belongs
To lured Libanaise
Sounds

Friday, September 18, 2009

Nuts & Reverie by Jonathan Regier

After wirecannies by sean s, geese and poles by sean s, Circadian rhythm by Jen Dick, and the Moron Poems of George Vance and Jonathan Regier

The squirrels in Australia aren’t even 1% visible
And are still more visible than the squirrels of my
Heartland.

I have a theory—your mentioning the power-lines
Made me remember it. As a child I could never get over

Some basic difficulties. Walking was such
A difficulty. The learning curve was like an egg
Balanced on my head, and when one breaks it one dies
And can barely work until retirement in the stock room
Of a liquor store, or until the slow axe of diabetes or the
Old oak of lung cancer. Consider that the best runners
Wear the crappiest shoes as children. No one needs to say
What’s behind the comfort of modern footwear.

Those fucking squirrels live a true life, and everybody
Knows it. Everybody knows by their speed on the wire.
As a stupid child, learning to run and learning to speak,
And dropped again and again off the precipice of the schoolhouse,
I remember a flock of squirrels that
Ran from the sun to the tree, and from the tree into
The equal sensorium of inner space. Those I call
The squirrels of vision. And they never return unless
I return to a foreign country. But we’ve also got
The squirrels of my memory. And those are bounded
By the huge salt oceans.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Jim Carroll Somewhere Between Beats, by Amy Hollowell (new)

To People Who Died add another
his heart just stopped
somewhere between beats
void of course

He was too cold to ask you
why before all this endlessness
we are here and then not

But he was up early and baring his ass
falling from wasted variegated heights
because there was nothing else
in these idling shadows of traffic
but to hurl shots of light

flicked feathered fadeaways
doublepumped alive
on a street court into
hoops with no net.

from Circadian Rhythm by Amit Dwibedy

After "Circadian Rhythm" by Jennifer K Dick

opened
through cycles.
cuffed
to
sleepchains




vast cobalt torso

frothed belljars


The morass of
that dream
of belonging


like coughs.
nightly
her lured
phalange
sorrounds

Monday, September 14, 2009

wirecannies by sean s

accidentally after the moron-theme (?) of G Vance's Moron-egging and J Regier's Morons?

The squirrels outside my apartment are not complete
morons. They've seen Sweetie watching
them and they know what it means: run along
the wires through the leaves when I am out with my
back cooling on the concrete steps.

Medusa, by Jennifer K Dick

After Laura Mullen’s Cituated, Sean Standish’s new poem Geese and Poles, and the poemNeighborby Brandon Shimoda (remember, to read poems this one is after, just click their titles!!)



Where might she now? Drifting.

Inside her sensorium, the waterline’s sail-drenched inward swoop and scatter of will distanced and provincial

daydream.

This part danger, part reason desperate.

Solitary. Stolen.

Classically bridging into the assumption of anemic winters, women men longed for, men longed for women longing for women she is dreaming there, glassily, setting ahoy, ahail, below the aft side slipping silent below the glacier blueice slipping splinter into

Scythes scaling away fields out of reach of

Breath. As aquatic.

Dangerous parting of sleep. Here. Heal. Knee, or set strap over shoulders: only to part, only to make it

Firmly, mark her.

She is the lack of control, in release she is puppet stringlifted. Turn in on itself slowly. Gazed. Saying adieu meaning something hollow. Nightsweats pressed against lucid dreaming. Inert
day

flat angled

White, star-speckled skin in the obsidian depths, beyond the unseeing predators, the rays, the gauzey curtain. If she could last out there, beyond that

delicacy of the return

into her.

Mouthing words in the silent sleep beyond the wall of outbound REM cycles. the weight of a body bending, rent, peared upon a moistened sail when, in an effort to say echo, to say oh, a gadget’s missing.

metal, the Aegean’s obelisk or

lead mirrors drowning, anchor-heavy, as stone.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

geese and poles by sean s (new)

One park morning a man pulls on waders.
Really I only
see his shake as he bounces at
his knee to settle the straps over his shoulders.
The only part to make it into my sensorium, firmly,
classically bridging into the assumption of other things.
He scares away most the geese when he
leans down to grasp.
The rest sail glassily away to out of reach of
anything but technology while he
coffee and cigarette and balding and long-poled
gadgets to scrounge missed metal below the water line.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Neighbor by Brandon Shimoda

after The Dangerous Part of Sleep is the Afternoon by J Regier, after Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick, after Sue Chennette's What Was Offered


Dangerous parting of sleep
From terrible head
Heart
As grease responsibility
Desperate for reason is a feller

Patient
Pear upon a moistened sail
Winter afternoon, I found
Marking
Starry skin

Desperate
And anemic for women
And men
Delicacy of the nose
Inserting itself into the hole

As danger masks starling to greet
I will soon be eating my neighbor's house
Before
From winter splits
Or die. Soon also be eating my neighbor

SS Cauchemarine by Jonathan Regier

After Circadian rhythm by Jen Dick

I’ve been drinking my coffee
In the morning
In our captain’s suite
Because he never got on.

I’ve been smoking beside
That shadow on the wall
Our quartermaster made
While sitting in the sun.

I’ve been keeping house
With the mouser’s water dish
And the wainscoting of
The mess where the mice
Are supposed to live.

The SS Cauchemarine
When we set sail
Had a different name.

A man wakes in a hammock,
He and the hammock
Like a sibilant.

The name of the ship is
The SS Cauchemarine.
The inquisition of the sea
Thumps her between
Eastward and sleep.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Circadian rhythm by Jennifer K Dick

After J Regier's The Dangerous Part of Sleep is the Afternoon, a bit of self-rewording off yesterday's post, & a ref to Anne Carson's Decreation.

Or she is the opened skeleton. The dangerous sleep caught cross-continental through cycles, REM, remote. Underfatigue, reasoning afternoon’s disparate, dislocational. She, the ululating, cuffed to decks and mopped her wet sloshed overboard. Linked back to mineral. Time longed or longing as she lounges in sleepchains with women along miles of vast breath fawning. Of cicatrice and scraw, of clicks and clichés, her torso separated on film is maw of language. The tidal cauchemardesque cobalt slipped under her. She would let her self float, here, hearing. She would buoy or anchor. Drag light, the sack of bones which become her. Wintered as blank. As frothed horizons. Wavelets letting blood or bled under seeping belljars centuries of belonging could not carry her back even in the green underworld of that dream to here, to disintegrate. Beam. Solid. Chalky. The morass of daring openings. Should she not nightly endure, displeasing, reason wracked out like coughs. Pestilence, parasites, pandemic of her release nightly upright. This ballast. That angled harkening. Siren dissection of ear and her lured lightly into the dawn’s illusive certainty. Now, to tag that, phalange, femur, thoracic cage cartilaginous structure which surrounds. Hull.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Dangerous Part of Sleep is the Afternoon by Jonathan Regier

After Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick, After Sue Chennette's What Was Offered

The dangerous part of sleep is the afternoon.
The dastardly truth about fatigue, it gets desperate
For reason. Getting desperate for reason is a feller
Getting desperate for women, liable to choose the wrong one,
Maybe live with her a long time. Although keep in mind
Wrong reason, come winter, is certainly better than none.
Winter’s funny because light gets cold, specifically light
In the bones. Wherefore I say light, bones, and reason
Should not endure nightly. They should all either sleep
Or die. Too much enduring makes anything crazy.
Have a look at our crazy lie.

Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick

After Sue Chenette's What Was Offered.

There is the body and the sleeping under the gift wrap. There is the sleep in body’s waking no watered silk, to knot. She turns. She whirls. She is in the waking sleep round wool, of wound. She is REM, a doll with stone for a head. She is motor purr rune stone casting over her. Who but rapt locks. Dangling. Therein her body lies. What was offered, it dreams. She is the awoken nervous commands of insomnia settling seaweed under her sleep. She is pillowed, woven into grass placemats. Down feather in her head she is casting herself farther out. She lilts, drawn circles of moisture at its mouth, the cove of it. The body begging, beginning. She follows light pushed into the bones. Her dreamcatcher is farther now. It taught her mineral memory. Of mare to night. Hard meat almost Macadamian she might caterwaul to herself waking here, of her, of howl to keep the vertebrae. She drifts back down, heavier, perishable. She dwindling cell function of storylines leading tightly upright. There where the morning glistens dawn-still cobalts. The radio seeing right through her, a skating trick. Calcium, magnesium phosphorescence against the slick grey where eye movement stops. The trick of seeking inbound on the oilstained woodplank floor. Daring. The sight of and, but, the tissue of her or she is the skeleton fragmenting. Opened.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Idiot Song by Jonathan Wonham

After "Moron-Egging" by George Vance

Takes a coin and for the first time flips it
then tests the movement of the thumb
moronically, until the launch is perfect.

Puckers the lips to whistle, producing
his idiot song, feeble wheeze at first
like wind in a drainpipe, but with practice

pure, cadenced, vibrating with humanity.
Professional imbecile, daubing colour,
arm-length swathes of rainbow light

on a canvas nailed from dawn to dusk -
to blot their shades, their tabulations,
their numskull plans for the supply of gas.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Morons? by Jonathan Regier

After Moron-egging by G Vance

The arrow is to the huntress at origin.
She has never saved any man unless
Endymion. He was an astronomer
By some accounts, and put to sleep by
His profession. Spock, therefore,
Has a better chance than you and I.

Moron-egging by G Vance

After J Regier’s ‘Written About Doll’ & S Chenette's 'What Was Offered'



The arrow is light.

The hog is pig who sacks

The crone. Spock fakes

For a Pasteur (Who, Man?) all dead.

It is barred to bare up

And buy curfew : of that self

Can it bare up a lewd meal

Through divers’ epox’.

A Spock is a lewd-tryst acted

Dead. An arrow is light

If a spillage or shitty-hog cannot sack

It, but the south will be vary-fête.

Will she save any killed men

And give to sea-heirs?


^^^^^^

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Written About Doll by J Regier

after "What Was Offered" by Sue Chenette

The marrow is bright.
The dog is big who cracks
The bone. Rock makes
For a natural human head.
It is hard to bear up
And by virtue of that
Can itself bear up a good deal
Through diverse epochs.
A rock is a good distracted
Head. A marrow is bright
If a village or city dog cannot crack
It, but the mouth will be very wet.
She will have many children
And live to see theirs.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

What Was Offered by Sue Chenette

after "check this box" and "very yes very no" by Lisa Pasold; "Zerochre Zerochrome" by Sean S. and "A mite giddy on-egging" and "On" by Gvance
********
**********
Under the gift wrap, no watered silk,
********
but raploch wool,
***
wound round a doll with stone for a head.
*****
What was offered.
*******
She wove it a grass placemat,
*******
drew circles of moisture at its mouth,
********
mothered it until
**********
light pushed into the bones.
********
It taught her mineral memory --
********
a hard nut meat almost Macadamian --
********
and to keep the vertebrae perishably
***********
but tightly upright
******
daring a skating trick
**********
on the oilstained woodplank floor.

Friday, August 21, 2009

swallowed dark by Rufo Q

after Want Is A Slow Train by Elisa McCool

want: pills & blow.
need: air & heat.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Want Is A Slow Train by Elisa McCool

After "Dormitories" by Sean S, “Beachfront Properties” by JKD, “Apologies for Absence” by
Amanda Deutch, and all the other ensuing poems


want is a slow train

sleeping through the night crossroads

where

skateboards…..boys

pills…………..and blow


where want is a need

shouted to the night air

radiant as the heat off town roofs


where the town clouds

flex their want into rain


where the hills cleave

to the dark swallowed need

Mine That Bird, after after by beverley bie brahic

Almost missed the last race.
Top down in the back of a silver sedan,
you know the one: underbrush
rots at the crossroads, bank
of escalators, stableboys, mall,
a ferry slip with butter fingers,
slow horn blowing low notes,
ferris wheel sleeping in the next field,
joy-riders calling Come with me?
Number 9 in the home stretch. Phones
twitter,jockey for a roost in the seams
of the oak. Teenage girl thumbs
a lift to town. Jinxed sedan stops.
Saratoga Springs, it's summer 08.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Apologies for Absence by Amanda Deutch after Slow Waltz by J. Wonham and all the poems that came before it

Apologies for Absence
Amanda Deutch


I am slow night waltzing,
a sleeping pill,
a scratched valise

Life, I mean

House, the next field

Pours
******* through
**************the waltz
and I will
waltz with you

even though
I don’t know how to

in the rain, in the heat…

Take, we must
Take.

Is that really so?
Everyone seems to be saying that these days
Take? I don’t want to take.

back to the quiet game
of world tracing,
creating in the palace of destruction-
alright under any circumstances
just because it is.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Slow Waltz by Jonathan Wonham

After Regret by Sue Chennette.

Slow waltz. Night train.
Jinx of a silver sedan
flipped at the crossroads.

One chink and it all
pours through. Life I mean.

Scratched valise, tracking back
through the underbrush,

your cologne that rots paint:
a trail of molecules and old
synaptic dust. Tonight

we must make the next
house, the next field -

take cover before the heat
comes down on us.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Regret by Sue Chenette

after "Dormitories" by Sean S and "Beachfront Properties" and "Toss" by JKD
********
*********
Slow train at the night crossroads
********
backtracking scratched contexts
********
scrabbled content
********
contending
********
with the imaginable (false)
***********
old valise
**********
flipped coin
*********
jinxed waltz
*********

Friday, August 7, 2009

Beachfront Properties by JKD

Ater "Dormitories" by Sean S

I want a slow town swallowing a
sleeping train blowing a pill
through the night crossroads
praying boys plying skateboards
up and down boardwalks to where
hill to when hill is here is there again
all of us just as we were imported stamped
the clearing backdrop cleaves into them

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

dormitories by sean s (new)

I want a sleeping pill to
swallow a slow train blowing
its horn through the town at
night crossroads or boys playing their skateboards
up and down park dormitory roofs

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Toss by JKD

After Miranda’s “Never Without Visions”, Sean S’s "Old Poem" as well as Rufo Q’s "New Poem"

Whisper—the most present edge
false earth of broken—things solidify
sings—token—humidified
earth imaginable a window
fallen—view—wood, could not have
spark—sought.
...................Whisper cresting
for—in this instant, many pasts
ghosts
—ladders
the flipped coin dropping

down, drown—if
overheard, believe scratched contexts
joined—nick of every
thing said
shaped—knot, knotted nothing
showed ghosts—edged,
nudged (you) out of things.
Taken (eye) unformed
to what end of beginnings?

And—from—you seeing
(me) through (me) now
sills—thrown sashes—taken whole
imaginable false—relatively uncorpor, incolore
to what end of ?
......................Whisper more—or
less ghost are—hour—our
of whirlpools—measuring—weight
—decent
sent wrong things:
tongs, tinsel, treasured
to meter out wire
and why
in this turn, tumbled.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

old poem by sean s

after NEW: poem by Rufo Q

the most present false earth imaginable

the most imaginable false
whirlpools sent
to what end of ?sills
ladders
thrown sashes:

ah ghosts
ghosts
ghosts are only the relatively uncorpor.
more
less
why measure the wrong things
the wrong things measure why

Monday, July 27, 2009

NEW: poem by Rufo Q

the pointless practice
makes the point:
to what end what you do

your world disappearing
like a turd in a whirlpool

what earth
will this silage feed?

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Something About Rhyme by Jonathan Wonham

After Jon's comment on Boîte sans rien dedans: "Something about rhyme just made me laugh, and think this is so you."

You just think something and your laughter rhymes so it is
so just about laughter this rhyming makes me think I'm
rhyming about something just to make me think this
so I just laugh about this and it is you I make rhyme

and so I thought about you just laughing I made something
so rhyming and something about you and this is
so laughable just rhymes about something I think
I'll make your laughter rhyme just so you think about this.

check this box by lisa pasold

after Boite sans rien dedans by Alex Dickow & Unboxed by JKD

limping with nothing inside, this morphology frustrates the collage of symbolism. the iris dilates, liasons forced open, abandoned. lips usable but held hostage by some nullified journalistic intention. we'll meet in Barcelona, that eldest of home. the flame extinguished like a body falling upon it. that's the place, matted, positioned. the limbs dare their next isolation, their skating trick, their Tour de Ance.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

New: Boîte sans rien dedans by Alex Dickow

Sonnet morphologique (d'après les symbolards)

Que vous ayez, pleins d'étés et d'ises,
Até les oirs vers l'itié et l'aison,
En illant très haut les élés et les ises
Et m'itant l'ure à l'euse d'une aison;

Ou que l'ation endit d'ules itiques
Où s'iole, telle une ollue itamment
Ilise un or de ses èvres otiques,
L'aisance arrée qui m'isite ablement.

Quel inage ote une aliste aux iesses
En cette icieuse auté d'une aintive esse?
Nul ose utile à l'isateur de l'ain:

Ainsi est tive aux alités l'escence,
Oyant telle qu'aux iliaires l'ain
Quand l'euil d'onna la seule désinence.

Zerochre Zerochrome. by sean s

after Unboxed by JKD

I.

It occurs to
Utopia
gift wrapping, shiny thin
ribbn
holiday mornings
stuffed in a paper bag


II.

Zerochre. Your presents are gone because
they are unwrapped.
We will bury now the torn, abbreveiated desire shiny
that is - mercantile sides up, as pleasing
to any discarnate sky father,
always about the front holes.
and their coveres. Maps. The Emperor card.
Thank you doctor.
You've remolded my mind into a heaven on eartht.
Oils thick with grace, the fluid of earth, thich
words, fuck, come. Dry land, doctor.
From doctor. Form, decor.


III.

Dirt back in place, a grass
placemat to shield us tables trajectories from
the glasses' circles of moisture.
Condensed folds of flesh full of grace
stone for a head

Which remainder misbarren, what maskun.
Tsones and hsales. Build us off the numbnis of markers
numbers, toubwers of piled invention. Build

us into starlight, ships of icy skein, plie
the implicit emptily inhmane skie
underneath above the thin atmostpher one in
in all gravites and curvess between
every ancient collapse and explode.

filled stairs by sean s

after Midnight on the NY Subway by Justin T

Mom's purse hangs a
heavy slap to hold to hold to
Filled with leaves
and crying boys and
the smack of lust walking downstairs below you

Saturday, July 11, 2009

New: Midnight on the NY Subway by Justin T

Mom's purse hangs heavy.
Slap. Hold it, right! Smack. Hold it!
Leaves. Purse hangs. He cries.

Unboxed by JKD

After "After Lucien Freud" by Amy Hollowell, posted 21 July 2008

Unboxed.

Torn utopia.
Ancient in the unabbreviated shadows
of us.
Naked. Shorn. Ochre.
Dirt in place, or placemats where we are
thick cushioned folds of graced flesh.
What draws him to
predestined trajectory?
Full frontal reconfigurations,
as seen through primacy, mercantile.
Always consider the indispensability of custom,
body’s ancient remainders
barren with motion, language
as it is crafted.
Thus.

To unmask the implicit sky?

Friday, June 26, 2009

New Yorker Poem by Sue Chenette (new)

xxx
New Yorker Poem

I felt separate from them in every way but at the same time could not deny the things that bound us together.
xxx
At first, he continued to sleep in the park in order to save money.
xxx
She’s a very methodical person, so she always leaves it in exactly the same spot.
xxx
He could speak Slovenian to me and he could easily disregard any of my demands.
xxx
The fundamentalists succeeded for a time.
xxx
The situation is worse than that, though.
xxx
The video shows the officers walking him to the local station and slamming the door shut on his cell.
xxx
We crept to the spot where we’d seen him.
xxx
No time for more wandering; the game was drawing down.
xxx
Somewhere I must have lost a glove.
xxx

Monday, June 22, 2009

A mite giddy on-egging By gvance

After JDick’s Corticle hyperbolia

Cult. of pop... Pop’s cult... a French store sign? Pink cream sodapop

in ’45, oilstained woodplank floor of a Mom & __’s,

dry ice feel-sniff from the

icecream freezer’s uplifted lid, boiling August early pre-glue hit

limp licorice red black fluted long in jars

Dad’s frosty rootbeer-liqued liquid

Smith Brothers cough drops

Weaned of…weaned of wieners roasted & other

marshmallowed sharpsticks stuck in a summerfire, pulled out fingerlickin’ foamy-charred

tyro-speck-niks

yanked latex, held’r housed’r hosed’r

darkblack boxed underbelly muffmoney concubed by a Picasso male-state

notation in tongue-languishing umbilical script

a generation’s goodgarbage thoughtfood for the next

beforeward ho



::::::::::::::::::::::::

Friday, June 12, 2009

Corticle hyperbolia, by JKD

After George Vance’s 3 post-Becket posts, Synthetic Exegesis 1, then Synthetic Exegsis extract2, and the most recent Synthetic Exegesis extract 3: End

Sensual utilitarianism on forward ho! Wee bespeckled might of. Might. An uni-arthritic numerical arithmetic speechhowser housed her. Tousled. Tale. Tall. Wired-held-toss ‘em hold ‘em fold. Flippant as. Spandex. Shredded. Shrapnel. The language she loved, lolled, forth to categorizational continental breakdancers breakfasting. Bark. Bank. This isn’t as much a crash as cantaloupe. Crinoline. Crèpe urged the urgent urge-bound “clue-giver”, which homonyminally would be “nail-giver” here, not care, but snap, pound, hammer. Know where I am now? Held, housed, howled. The latex you wanted to startle with sniper-fire. Stalemate. Quilled, quelled, fleshripening basket of holly, hernias. More on “on” or then stayed off the beaten path, flayed roadway, roundbank. Connotations of clung pearls, clang peals, concubines. Triads yielding some warm admixing admonishing staged forgery of. Can you define this? Mightier? Uterine umbilical conflux of registered linkages leaked languishing linguistical pyrotechnics. Always admired the myriad phantasmagoria usages. That poem, or hysteria. Onwards, fair boy, and up! Grappling hooks, subs and speedometers. In the dark there were black boxes, body parts, twined twin thrusters ovulating underbelly of tidal concurrencies. Exsanguinate. Exchange rate. Excavation not so shy, she said, giddy whatwith forestalling notshalling. The allabove assonance of heralds, signage, signal fire. Discordance gives concomitant Karumption. This is the pop culture she was being weaned of. Summation, sum-up, summons, the garbledigoodnessess of a generation. Forthwith, onward hail!!!!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

(Conclusion) Extract from Synesthetic Exegesis

 of “Somehow on” in S Beckett’s ‘Worstward Ho’

by G Vance

 

 

3 On

 

 

o, alone a white hole surrounded by black

n, peanut butter-yellowbrown    o + n  together, ‘on’    =    bright  yellow with goldtarnish aura   

hard nut meat  almond  Macadamian     

 light soundtexture of carhorn inthenose (horn  =   ‘on’)  (gettamove ‘on’) 

‘on’ward   forward   ahead   right’on’   forth   before (somehow before…?)  

‘on’ top of  ‘on’the way, ground, new ground  ‘on’ top of it (not yet under)  

assonance with ’awn’ of dawn   2/3 of ‘one’ step   

to worst next sump-jump  

‘on’   reversed = ‘no’  somehow ‘no’  somehow ‘know  

some ‘no’how   some ‘know’how   know’ somehow   ‘no’ somehow

  

‘know’how on

 

“nohow on”   (op. cit.)

 

 

Sensual ‘some

Utilitarian ‘how

Froward ‘on’

 

 

end

 

:::::::::::::

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

(Cont'd) Extract from Synesthetic Exegesis

of "Somehow on" in S Beckett's 'Worstward Ho'

by G Vance


2. How


‘How’: red bushy plant briskly brushing in passing 

‘how’ to get by, through, around, over the obstacle:  

Technical adverb, stickling root of met quagmires, moot sumps 

way, manner, whatever whatsoever ‘how’ever means; by whichever wherewithal

‘how’ many, much, far, deep, long, high, hard, stupid

‘how’ so, come, ‘how’ now?

Arithmetic speechpart springing measures, puzzle-solving numerics

‘how’ of Shredded Wheat reddened bristly scrub-pricks, wire-quilled fleshripper 

urging clue-giver:

Toolmaker.

 

Sensual ‘some’

Utilitarian ‘how’

 

 

*more on ‘on’ on another day



:::::::::

Monday, May 25, 2009

Extract from Synesthetic Exegesis

of “Somehow on” in S Beckett’s ‘Worstward Ho’

by George Vance


1. Some

 

contemplucidating connotations of ‘somehow’:

cling peaches in syrup

cinnamon (a stick of it ?)

over-image of ‘worm’ crawls in

cinnamon stick & the ‘mmm’ of ‘sommme’

‘some’ alone admits no ‘worm’ but ‘h’ of ‘how’

back-lashes into ‘some’ and

 ‘ow’ reversed is ‘wo’ of ‘worm’ and ‘mmm’ of both yields ‘someworm’ 

(the more whatwith subliminal ‘one’’s admixing to ‘some’ – someone some-on – the asso-consonance of allabove)

 

yummy discordance gives corruption connate with generation

 

sum-up : somehow someone someworm somewon wormsome sumpin’

sump sump-pump sumption sum summary summons summum bonum

sumpter    somite

 e.g. : Sumption :

         is summons on. 

           

          


*more on ‘how’ & ‘on’ and ‘how on’ later on


::::::::::::::::::

Friday, May 22, 2009

A Certain Blankness

After JKD's "I am not a blank reproduction of me at a certain hour."

I'm myself at a certain hour of blank reproduction
certain I'm not me as the blank hour is reproduced.
As the blank hour is reproduced I am not certain
that a certain blankness will not be reproduced.

I'm not certain reproductions of my blank hours
will not be blankly reproduced at certain hours.
Not an hour of reproduction am I blankly certain
of the blank hours I'm not certain to reproduce.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Persona by JKD

After I wanted to tell you by Amanda Deutch

I am not a blank
reproduction

of me,
at a certain hour,

mask
of my selves

the voice
undressed

between motions
implicate my shape in a cosmos

mourning like this
becomes

lasts well into the bones
night

replaces them,
so as to continue

meaning
being translation, transliterations of

what I had written
often

red as speaking
language for my hands

more
than any words

this chance driven by
harbouring me

grappled, hooked
perhaps the past

is simply watching—
behind, watered noises of clouds

the illusion of solidity
place,

where am I able
to believe

you have kept me
awake longer because

you are watching grey fog
this mist's longing

to bring me forth
a refraction,

syllable
caesura

enunciations
reaching banks

culled back, as if cropped
to unveil

sheeted articulations
flesh......blank......voice