That Fall

The body on the bed is made of china,
Shiny china vagina and pubic hair.
The glassy smoothness of a woman’s body!
I stand outside the open door and stare.

I watch the shark glide by . . . it comes and goes —
Must constantly keep moving or it will drown.
The mouth slit in the formless fetal nose
Gives it that empty look — it looks unborn;

It comes into the room up to the bed
Just like a dog. The smell of burning leaves,
Rose bittersweetness rising from the red,
Is what I see. I must be twelve. That fall.

by Frederick Seidel

excerpt from Eunoia

Enfettered, these sentences repress free speech. The text deletes selected letters. We see the revered exegete reject metred verse: the sestet, the tercet – even les scenes élevées en grec. He rebels. He sets new precedents. He lets cleverness exceed decent levels. He eschews the esteemed genres, the expected themes – even les belles letters en vers. He prefers the perverse French esthetes: Verne, Péret, Genet, Perec – hence, he pens fervent screeds, then enters the street, where he sells these letterpress newsletters, three cents per sheet. He engenders perfect newness wherever we need fresh terms.

Relentless, the rebel peddles these theses, even when vexed peers deem the new precepts ‘mere dreck’. The plebes resent newer verse; nevertheless, the rebel perseveres, never deterred, never dejected, heedless, even when hecklers heckle the vehement speeches. We feel perplexed whenever we see these excerpted sentences. We sneer when we detect clever scheme – the emergent repetend: the letter E. We jeer; we jest. We express resentment. We detest these depthless pretenses – these present-tense verbs, expressed pell-mell. We prefer genteel speech, where sense redeems senselessness.

Christian Bök

When You Come Back Down

* dedicated to Amber and Craig


You got to leave me now, you got to go alone
You got to chase a dream, one that's all your own
Before it slips away
When you're flyin' high, take my heart along
I'll be the harmony to every lonely song
That you learn to play

When you're soarin' through the air
I'll be your solid ground
Take every chance you dare
I'll still be there
When you come back down
When you come back down

I'll keep lookin' up, awaitin' your return
My greatest fear will be that you will crash and burn
And I won't feel your fire
I'll be the other hand that always holds the line
Connectin' in between your sweet heart and mine
I'm strung out on that wire

And I'll be on the other end, To hear you when you call
Angel, you were born to fly, If you get too high
I'll catch you when you fall
I'll catch you when you fall

Your memory's the sunshine every new day brings
I know the sky is calling
Angel, let me help you with your wings

When you're soarin' through the air
I'll be your solid ground
Take every chance you dare

I'll still be there
When you come back down
Take every chance you dare,
I'll still be there
When you come back down
When you come back down


Nickel Creek

Vowels

loveless vessels

we vow
solo love

we see
love solve loss

else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose

Christian Bök


additional lines provided by Ulver in their Norwegian musical rendition "Vowels"

losses we levee
we owe

we sell
loose vows

so we love
less well

so low
so level

wolves evolve

Ballade des contre vérités (Ballade of the untruths)

Voulez vous que verté vous die?
Il n’est jouer qu’en maladie,
Lettre vraie que tragedie,
Lâche homme que chevalereux,
Orrible son que mélodie,
Ne bien conseillé qu’amoureux.

---

Shall I tell you the truth?
There is no joy except in sickness,
No truth except in tragedy,
No coward like a brave man,
No sound more horrible than melody,
No wisdom except that of lovers.


Villon

She Felt He

she felt he
better then the rest
and when
chiseled chest pressed to breast
paused
but brought her to the crest
and peak
as she was peaking
and speaking
words like no other
with this lover

he felt she
warmer than before
bodies moving pressed up
locked door
clothes thrown to the floor
and then
the rhythym and squeaking
ostinato in their pattern
lovely in their rest
she felt he twist tied in physical contest
that both shall win


she felt he
grow thick with resolution
to solve with solution
all the complexities that lie within
and each movement, a fire's risen
and birthed
like flame igniting and fighting
the air to breathe

he felt she
as they grew to believe
that each moment
each thrust
each physical manifestation of love and trust
grew
to illustrate all they knew
and nothing they don't know

she felt he
and he felt she
and together they bathed in the glow.


george smith

Drunk as Drunk

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Pablo Neruda

end couplets from Raymond Queneau's 100,000,000,000,000 poems

#11
With marble souvenirs then fill a slum
For Europe's glory while Fate's harpies strum
--
#22
On fish-slab whale nor seal has never swum
They're kings we're mammal-cousins hi ho hum
--
#85
Though bretzels take the dols from board-room drum
Yet from the City's pie pulled out not one plum
--
#69
Poor reader smile before your lips go numb
The best of all things to an end must come
--
#75
Ventriloquists be blowed you strike me dumb
Yet from the City's pie pulled out not one plum
--
#107
Suits lisping Spanish tongues for whom say some
Soliloquies predict great things old chum
--
#37343
Do bank clerks rule their abacus by thumb?
And lessors' dates have all too short a sum
--
#2156
Where no one bothered how one warmed one's bum
A wise loaf always knows its humblest crumb

Where do I begin...

on the heels of Rimbaud moving like a dancing bullet thru the streets of a hot New Jersey night filled with venom and wonder. Meeting the Queen Angel in the reeds of Babylon and then to the fountain of sorrow to drift away in the hot mass of the deluge... to sing praise to the kind of those dead streets, to grasp and let go in a heavenly way - streaming into the lost belly of civilization at a standstill. Romance is taking over. Tolstoy was right. These notes are being written in a bathtub in Maine under ideal conditions. In every Curio lounge from Brooklyn to Guam, form Lowell to Durango Oh sister, when I fall into your spacy arms, can not ya feel the weight of oblivion surface alongside miles standish and take the rock. We have relations in Mozambique. I have a brother or two and a whole lots of karma to burn... Isis and the moon shine on me When Rubin gets out of jail, we celebrate in the historical parking lots in sunburned California.

-Bob Dylan ... from the album jacket of Desire

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis



ee cummings