Zeitgeist Spam

“Girl Singing: I carry Gilgamesh in my belly,”

Girl Singing: I carry Gilgamesh in my belly,

oxen herding my song
without a hen, the chicks run
distracted through the grass

go about the house pecking at planks.
I heavy as a hog sit at last in the
boat of the west

forever. We
must treasure the dream whatever the terror
go to the barn with or without fear where

despair waits: your ewes shall drop
twins and your goats triplets
all newly cleaned and neatly arranged for the flood.

He who engraved on a stone the whole story
sank it in the sluices while
I simply moaned:

tear down your house and build a boat
drones at the hive
your stormy heart beating twice for mine

dark and darker before a mist of
sleep like soft wool teased from a sheep
gets stuck in my throat.

Elision,    the
smallest of swamp flies,
opens its eyes

opens its thighs
I
only say, there is no permanence

to make me rise. Let me live to be the
wonder of my mother. I sing like ten curs
under a ring of cedars pining

for the Faraway nearer than a breath.

      (By and © Sasha Steensen)

[Note: Sasha writes: “The Secret Life of an Angel” reminds me of Gilgamesh, perhaps because of “Babaylan. ” “Babaylan” reminds me of the “baby” I currently carry. She pokes       & insists on herself, which reminds me of Gilgamesh. They both want to live forever.

The procedure:
1.Start with the same number of stanzas and lines as “The Secret Life of an Angel.”
2.Retain the first letter of each line from “The Secret Life of an Angel.”
3.For each stanza, borrow one line from The Epic of Gilgamesh (Trans. N.K. Sandars).
4.Borrowed lines can begin a line, start in the middle of a line, be contained within one line and/or be enjambed.
5.First and last lines of the poem retain words or phrases from both The Epic of Gilgamesh and “The Secret Life of an Angel.”

List of borrowed lines:
Stanza 1 (first line): “Girl Singing” from “The Secret Life of an Angel” and “Gilgamesh” from The Epic of Gilgamesh
Stanza 2: “the chicks.../…grass”
Stanza 3: “sit…/…west”
Stanza 4: “we/…terror”
Stanza 5: “your…/…triplets”
Stanza 6: “he…story”
Stanza 7: “tear…boat”
Stanza 8: “a mist…/…sheep”
Stanza 9: “smallest…flies”
Stanza 10: “there…permanence”
Stanza 11: “Let…/…mother.”
Stanza 12 (last line): “the Faraway” from The Epic of Gilgamesh and “nearer than a breath” from “The Secret Life of an Angel”]

As one falls from a ride

after Eileen Tabios’ ‘The Secret Life of an Angel’
after Jose Garcia Villa’s ‘Girl Singing’

There was a man

once, who saw immortality
in his shortening shadow
as he moved away

from the light of day,
who sensed an immanent will
in the flow of clouds,

the swimming sky, from
sapphire to cerulean to cobalt,
its numerousness, its many-

and-variousness amazed him.
In awe of it all he fell,
as one falls from a ride.

Definitively he folded his
arms, like a hand at poker
that’s going nowhere, a wish

in his voice, a sound of singing
inside that might proclaim
the truth of a secret,

something hidden and high,
an angel that watched,
perhaps, an angel that risked

what it had on him, that never hedged
or havered and sung such notes.
He heard them muster

on air as a man might hear
a voice in a valley
carried until it unfurled

before him. ‘Your
senses,’ he said, ‘may betray
the marvelling mind.’

And he looked away.

      (By and © C. J. Allen)

[Note: Clive writes: “‘As one falls from a ride’ uses the end-words from Eileen Tabios’ poem ‘The Secret Life of an Angel’”]

THE SEED AND THE SHACK

night sang sung sum thing arbor
             vitae they whose halves bit.  not light.  
whose was was “flesh farewell”:
                        we?
behind—a screen’s sanction carnival derives
ultimately not from a calendar
                        prescribed by church or state but
                        from a force that preexists priests
                        kings to whose superior power they
                        are actually deferring when they
                        appear to be licensing scrutiny
                —in us, harvested

their seed, many kinds—barkers! smolder that
                lived mirth noodles in strings fits mutton who
twirl knocking paper
                lanterned purple effigies hoisted
at sticks—
                        the ignitions bursting through vault

                to shine—popped—in times lent Selah,
                tis but fruit from the shittim tree.

>  RIVERS

such moments granted annihilation’s blur renewal
circling space as clouds
                packed it down—near whose river whose
ranges
south and east of the unmanned point where
                where towpaths begun but their plaza still
runs—little chaoses budding—

                like squirrel the smolder fled and withstood
                the sting that grows on back of the human
                fire loosened at the fore for exhaust animal

what was then there as ever t’was ours unfinished
turdy round things a fair a pox take em
sausages adoring the pig does not my (  ) tell you
me gouty ones be humble on this
you found me hope faith the evidence
                        of things unseen—

                whose nesting whose tree—

precious fluids fumbled we can bang as hard as we
like what the hell! the belly
                will be stuffed fake fibs freezing faggery and
farts this will last
                until (          ) is put in chains whose dead
history dies w/we?
blister bust her no me bud it’s just
                work our plans now
                are turning to.

and he from the reading’s sticky pearl ultimately,
restorative dramas
                even if not yet singalong’s comma man
who’d say
catholic pigs at some convention,
                        for fuck’s sake she
                won’t ever be english

>  RANGES

t’was when one of him stopped—leaving her
questions.  
Should them rain bowed “Girl Singing” beads that
were flaminal mysts and mysterious flamens
salted in her interstellar sweat I have, by a long and
curious experience
                found out a means to wipe me bum “droit
du seigneur” tithe “infrastructure” annates—
veil—
                at some other time before t’was
she—whose pre dict they would paper
                like he—notes to find a note’s
blood borne pitch

        bitch
of a tone’s low performance where names rolled
                let us sit here in Shade of t’wee one eyed
temple down
                even older steps

down—passed what cars now park dark in units her
                time to suspended not
says she to he—and his and so.  they’re ending.  
joined; differently.
—barkers! coat-tailed
                goats like a climax lurch onto the plaza—
bobbing
                to no rain for some no rain for some
                        time to mountain fire loosens ice
set-to-thin to spillways waiting tomorrow—and all
                this time the year’s crop will
stay inside combusting in blankets—divorced liver.

                                        notes upon Tabios’ Villa

     (By and © Jared Schickling)

“Said Dogs”

      (by and © John M. Bennett)

[Note: John writes: “The process involved 3 copies of the poem, a pair of scissors, some glue, and ink in pens. The rest is obvious, I think, no?”]

S C R E A M

      (art-piece/title © Ed Baker; photo by Nic Ut © AP)

Girl Singing (Wax Poetics Remix)

      (by and © Ernesto Priego)

Girl Singing #237

      (by and © Ed Baker)

singing singing singing

      (by and © Ed Baker)

origin

      (by and © Ed Baker)

“Perhaps someday …”

Perhaps someday I’ll give in.
I’ll stop insisting I’m fine.
It’s not that bad.
No need to worry.

I’m the cowboy with the bullet
Wound who says, “Aw, it’s just
A scratch.”

Perhaps someday
They’ll stop saying
Cheer up,
Look at this gorgeous morning, and
Finally,
What’s the matter with you?

Perhaps someday I’ll give up feeling
Weak, foolish, immoral, fearful
Lazy, silly, petty, proud, vain
And burdensome.

But not yet. For now I’m still convinced
I can somehow stave off winter, win the
Footrace against the tidal wave
And rise out of the inhaling chasm
With a simple change of mind.

     (by and © Lida Bushloper)

[Note: Lida writes: “Procedure/Process:

1. Wait till all other projects are finished or in abeyance. Do not read the source material until then.

2. Print and read the source material. Read it again.

3. Wait. Accept initial thoughts/responses.

4. Read it again.

5. Purposely and consciously discard all immediate, knee-jerk, and automatically contrary and sarcastic responses. Allow other ideas to rise to consciousness.

6. Wait for a single word to emerge as dominant. The idea will form around this word.

7. Shape the idea. Have faith.

8. Stop.”]