from Sillyhow Stride a long poem for singer Warren Zevon by Paul Muldoon (excuse the re-formatting)--



"...At that very moment, quite unbidden,

the ghost of Minoru Yamasaki
(who had trailed me from the bar at Nobu) exhorted me to "Turn them speakers
up full blast now Lucies, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks,

is sunk so low as my Twin Towers . . .". Brian Jones's patent winkle-pickers
reflected a patent sky. "All strange wonders that befell
me while the rest of them recorded Beggars

Banquet and I was sunk so low in Twickenham, lovers coming with crystal vials
to take my tears . . .". "I'll do my crying in the rain
with Don and Phil,"

said Yamasaki-san, "I'll do my crying with Frank and Jesse waiting for a train . . .
Those lines you wrote about the blood-bath
at my Twin Towers, about the sky being full of carrion,

those were my Twin Towers, right?" Brian, meanwhile, continued to puff
on the flute as if he were indeed corporeal,
as if he were no less substantial than the elder-pith

nay on which he played a hurry home early
version of "Walk Right Back", the "Walk Right Back"
you yourself had played night after night with Frank and Jesse Everly..."



 

Washing Machine

The weather
phones it in

spring's a little
indicating this year--

a barrel of apples
without a retake, but

anywhere upstage
past act three is

a forest of elbows,
Sen-Sen breath

with little bites
attached:--

engorged
like the lines of force

in a woodcut windmill
watch the washing machine face

spin out of character:
the miracle of half-price Tuesday

carved out of
the larger miracle of laundry

through condensated
gaps rubbed

brown pigeons
with white chevrons

drop radar tinsel
on armloads of cashmere,

Reader's Digests
limp as kid leather

skitter wounded-bird
style dropped with intent

on enameled trays for
generic pop, ashtrays

and exits
spotwelded, but

oh for the billows
and billows of hot steam

to hide the
anthropomorphic array,

the green stalkers
in the park,

the variously angry
smug, gleeful,

anxious, stoic
and startled faces

of the babies, the leaves
and the cars.


 

Leaves

Non-seasonal growth,
including the ludic
branches that clutch
the canopy's light breeze--
no beach so fierce!
Or on top
of the cobblestones
the picture
of a beach, after
naming the streets
for the days of the week
we did trees, birds
Manitoba college towns
and then ran out so
started right in
on the spawn of
the local bauxite
aristocracy, so its
possible to awake
with a familiar name
pressed into your cheek--
something to fool
the eloi archaeologists!
presuming they can cut
through the giant hedge
of modified alder
that threatens Edwardian
apocalypse to these
pretty but blandly
peopled avenues.


 

Covered Window


The skin of it puckers
and pools in lenses
bleached at the knots

a kind of drapery I guess
though oxidised
it might be the sun

but not real broke
not theatrical sugar broke
like that bottle trick

from tv, trinkle
of loops recorded
by guys long dead--

late for work
heads wrapped
in vinegar paper,

copping some attitude
with the bitches
in the mailroom, givin' it

the old watercooler
one-two--"I done
it for the in-surance"--

Well wave goodbye
to the glove
factory, girls;

fifty arches
of brick-cladded
rustbelt gothic

but only
the dollar store
in focus, trade goods lit

so sharp thru the fog
you could read
the shampoo instructions

from a passing bus
and still huff
on a candle bag,

deserted dairylands hiss
warm cokes rings of
green styrofoam here

like everywhere else,
arboreal shrinkage hiss
farmhouses curled

on wet glass,
north of pine nuts the
little trees eventually

damage the little
touches we like;
the windows replaced

with particle board as
if mushroom carpets could
think mushroom thoughts.

Trade goods
rinse and repeat
and repeat.

You see, I want
to be part of it
but I want to

make fun of it to--
concealing profits or
making a bed of them,

stuffing a turkey with it
or smashing it with a brick--
whose answerable needs met?




only a few more days to see Adam Harrison's show of photographs at CSA space. I wrote "captions" for Adam's catalogue, the first three of which I'll post above today, the rest tomorrow. But go see the show if you're in the area!



 

relocated from the banks of the Niagara to those of the Androscoggin Jonathan Skinner's ecopoetics has a big new issue (print) with Roy Arenella, Michael Basinski, Charles Bernstein,David Berridge, Alicia Cohen, Jack Collom, Mary Crow, Tina Darragh, Ian Davidson, Marcella Durand, Ken Edwards, Kenneth Goldsmith, Clayton Eshleman, Kenny Goldsmith, Lynn Harrigan, Peter Jaeger, Peter Larkin, Douglas Manson, Florine Melnyk, Ethan Paquin, Meredith Quartermain, Kate Schapira, Lytle Shaw, Jonathan Stalling, William Sylvester, Arthur Sze, Mark Weiss, Sara Wintz, Lila Zemborain...send for it & check PDF's of previous issues...

my favorites so far in this one Lytle Shaw and Jack Collom...


 

via Bookslut an excellent list of Scary Television moments gets immediate cred for including not only "Bad Ronald" (above) but the Karen Black/killer doll sequence of "Trilogy of Terror" and "Sybil", which made my big sister faint...
I would have added Leslie Nielsen as the psycho sheriff in "Shadow Over Elveron"...

 

OED Editors, 1915

interesting non-affiliated Examining the Oxford English Dictionary site--

"Examining the OED sets out to investigate the principles and practice behind the Oxford English Dictionary, an extraordinary achievement of scholarship and labour and the greatest dictionary of English ever compiled. We are wholly independent of the OED itself, and seek to provide scholarly commentary on and analysis of OED's methodology and practice.

Our main focus is on exploring and analysing OED's quotations and quotation sources, so as to illuminate the foundations of the dictionary's representation of the English language."


 

strange, overlooked western Track of the Cat on TCM Wednesday...
 

"An Assembly of Stockholders" from Coin and Conscience - Popular Views of Money Credit and Speculation
 

50 ANIMALS DRIVING A common occurrence in our neighbourhood....
 

calendar-marking time for fans of director Anthony Mann, cinematographer John Alton and a dour point of view--TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES is having a quintuple feature of his early ('45-49) noir films on Tuesday night starting 1700PST with "T-Men", then "Raw Deal", "Border Incident" (never seen by me!!), "Railroaded" and "Two O'Clock Courage" (never seen by me!).

 

Fisk

"I can't help wondering today how many of the innocents slaughtered in Haditha took the opportunity to vote in the Iraqi elections -- before their "liberators" murdered them."

Anna's Hummingbird Nests in Coronada, California. Many photos, glimpses of lovely California yards. Hello Oakland! We have a nest in the walnut tree next door, maybe six feet from our dining room window but so teeny as to be almost invisible, at the bottom of a long, curved branch, with a pair (they all seem to be pairs and favor that love seat style arrangement) who look about ready to go out and get their own sugar.



 

The Virgin of Guadalupe

"He asked the sign for the sign he required. Mary told him to go to the rocks and gather roses. Juan knew it was neither the time nor the place for roses, but he went and found them. Gathering many into the lap of his tilma, a long cloak or wrapper used by Mexican Indians, he came back. The Holy Mother rearranged the roses, and told him to keep them untouched and unseen until he reached the bishop. When he met with Zum�rraga, Juan offered the sign to the bishop. As he unfolded his cloak the roses, fresh and wet with dew, fell out."


 

The thicket of rhetorical question marks on CNN today--Iraq Massacre? Crimes in War? etc. reminded me of the moment when Al Sweringen (above going over the books), looking at the mockup of the broadsheet that he and the "city fathers" have put out in an attempt to assuage smallpox hysteria, says "mmm...Plague in Deadwood...couldn't we put a question mark on that?"

 

Weldon Hunter hops the pond...



"Navigable

for Victoria & Vancouver


a suggestion of verticality
in the port city

the Great City of Bearheart
with outsourced roads

& a connect-and-go general purpose
light fantastic ever

crossing my mind
ahead of the story

each filament breaks apart -
they know you want them to work

but they just blink;
security of supply.

turn on the waterfall,
the cover, grrr - lots of stop start

the pace is really gentle & dare i say
disarmed by all the sunlight

my hands are fidgeting in the bikerack
- out in the water lots of stop & stare

in these rhythms, let the categories appear
but don't superimpose definitions

life is a pattern, an effortless string of suns
& moons, then a neat look & a good visual

it's been amazing,
collapsible and restorative!

like supernovas ending their explosions but
i want the lights to go on "


 

Canadian teen second-best at U.S. bee

"In the end, Finola Hackett missed one letter in weltschmerz, which means sentimental pessimism, before she finally heard the bell marking defeat that had already rung for 272 other competitors at the 2006 Scripps Bee.

The graceful teenager paused for the first time in the competition when she heard weltschmerz in the 19th round. Hackett tried tracing the word on her hand and looked at the ceiling as she tried to piece together the 11-letter puzzler. Later, she said that she had studied the word before, but didn't know it "extremely well.""

Well though I could have spelled weltschmerz at her age it was part of my problem, but I had no idea spelling bees used so many foreign and scientific Scrabble-dispute type words. And my spelling, in which I once took great pride, is not what it was. Any one of the final nine kids would have wiped the floor with me.