In the House of the Hangman 995

And woosh, everything is one fire now at the circus. When the clowns drops from 1,000 feet in the air, drop in one sullen hush hush rush until they land and skin their foreheads, blood on their white gloves, blood in the sawdust below, a quick splay and sploosh, drips drips onto the side railing next to the children whose parents have purchased the light up swords from concession, the ones that make the children who do not have them jealous, if you have purchased the green and purple swords from concessions, put them in the air now! The blood on the tip of the plastic sword that stops lighting up after the kid bangs on the railing, bangs it and bangs it and now it is broken. A candidate made a bet with several contesters today that he had the biggest mouth in the crowd and to prove his assertion, thrust a bronzed heart between his jaws. The doors of a brutal city are left open and will close only when the streets are lined with ponies. “If there is to be no seal killing anymore, then you will need new careers. I shall endeavor to meet you never again.” Like the sea cow that she was, she wheeled on her left palm and resumed her dawn flight through the East River. Half a beer into the evening, every seat is occupied and there’s barely room to stand. Iain Hamilton Grant comes on to give the introductory lecture — a wise move, if Anna and I are anything to go by. He explains a bit about Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, about the conception of Geist, and quotes a neat phrase which I resolve to memorise. Smells swirling around the room are simultaneously characterised within language – soap and parma violets morph into an urban pixie, orange blossom notes become fruity pillow-talk, and liquorice colours the sky a deep maroon … I expect you to bring me drinks by the pool, with little umbrellas, babe. Now picture a child listening to her grandma go on and on about growing up next to a PF Chang’s. It wasn’t just the historical facts of her stories that kept my attention — that as a baby she escaped some horrible genocidal type thing in Europe or the mid-west or the time she rode on this big, huge boat that crashed into a glacier and sunk or actually, that was a blimp, I think — You know what I’m sayin’? Some fucking kid from Asshole, Nebraska is a Juggalo from a town of like a thousand people and then he goes into a real city and the mall, like a Hot Topic or whatever, and he’s gonna get approached by a security guard or a cop just for having an ICP tattoo. It’s so insane and stupid. And no, I don’t know how magnets work and I don’t fucking care. While sitting in your most comfortable chair, quickly discover the missing links that rapidly catapults your ability to devastate, humiliate the five gurus/topics everything in business begins and ends with the amount of fresh vegetables you are. Have a look at the income you have been begging to teach me. Spring summer autumn cabbages. Golden has a broken bone. I love to do in life like fish, threats and flourishes of a six shooter. Bad breath, bad breath causes bad breath. Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya, the unlikely impact is said to be THE END OF THE WORLD. Some would survive! will it be 5,000 hours of painstaking research a simple recipe. Paper and pencil. On the fly-leaf of a book of Italian translations HorseE wrote: Although she had not had to fire a shot, Nicole had shown coolness and from then on she was trusted with the first ten items? Shake pumpkin. Learn Hindi. I am a frog; I can only leap a little. My legs were burnt off in a poisoned pond. Only dancers have a harder life and I am a dancer; I am a frog, and each thing in my suitcase is a frog. Books squish the nectarine in my bag & snack juices into extinction. Right? YES! Pause, hold your breath for a count of 4, then just let it FLOW OUT OF YOU. Set an empty cup in the storm, hold a slice of bread in the storm. Then put a little salt and a little pepper on your storm soaked bread, maybe some oregano and garlic. With deliberate SLO-O-OWNESS chew your storm bread. Slowly. So, slowly, please, with, a, slowness, that, is, foreign.

[Note: Sources: Dina and Dan, “Dina and Dan Inspect the Circus”, at Boys With Short Hair, 19 Jun 012; Masin Persina, “Human Eclipse”, “A Pleasant Reciprocity”, “The Sinking”, at PANK 7.06, Jun 012; Alex Christofi, “My Night With Zizek”, at Prospect, 19 Jun 012; “British Poets and Perfumers Team Up”, at Harriet, 19 Jun 012; a woman on an episode of House Hunters, seen 19 Jun 012, approx. 4:50 PM PDT on HGTVHD; JBR; Sommer Browning, “Tournament of Bookshit Final Matchup: ‘everybody has a story’ vs Sewage Treatment Technologies”, at HTMLGIANT, 19 Jun 012; Shaggy 2 Dope, as quoted in Jason Webber, “We Interviewed Insane Clown Posse”, at Vice, 19 Jun 012; HorseE, as quoted in Sina Queyras, “2012: Lemon Hound Anoints HorseE”, at Lemon Hound, 19 Jun 012 (“Jokingly, I have argued that, all too soon (if not now), human poets may find themselves competing with machines for aesthetic attention from audiences, particularly when an automated algorithm, like @horse_ebooks on Twitter, can write surreal, poetic statements, all of which have begun to take on the oracular overtone of a poetic genre (one whose burgeoning readership now exceeds 65,000 followers — far more than the number of people who might typically purchase a volume of poetry, written by a human author). If nothing else, such machines provide an unexamined, but exploitable, resource for the production of poetry. …” – Christian Bök, as quoted by Queyras); David Shapiro, “Frog Dream in July for Lucio’s Brother”, at Plume 12; Julia Cohen, “Are We All Reading Books Waiting for Someone to Talk to Us?”, as quoted in her “Rodney King Press”, at $650 Apartment for $650, 18 Jun 012; CA Conrad, as quoted in Tom Trudgeon, “Looking At and Working Through Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon by CA Conrad”, at HTMLGIANT, 18 Jun 012]

Comments

[Ed Baker]

"exploitable" ! that's exactly 'it' !

we've become a culture of
pimps and prostitutes

and we teach this way of doing as
"the New Reality"
all the way down to pre-kindrgartten kids !

what will ALL-WAYS be true? :

Garbage In / Garbage Out

[john]

Ed, we were always a culture of pimps and prostitutes. What you cal "the New Reality" is the "twas ever thus". Remember Lew Welch's Chicago Poem. He could have been describing the city of Ur. And his conclusion, while I love it, is just too hopeful:

There's nobody else to blame. You can't fix it and you
can't make it go away. It does no good appealing
To some ill-invented Thunderer
Brooding over some unimaginable crag.

It's ours. Right down to the last small hinge it
all depends for its existence
Only and utterly upon our sufferance.

Driving back I saw Chicago rising in its gases and I
knew again that never will the
Man be made to stand against this pitiless, unparallel
monstrosity. It
Snuffles on the beach of its Great Lake like a
blind, red, rhinoceros.
It's already running us down.

You can't fix it. You can't make it go away.
I don't know what you're going to do about it.
But I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just
going to walk away from it. Maybe
A small part of it will die if I'm not around.

feeding it anymore.

[Ed Baker]

yeah... and he did just that.... took a pistol with him and
walked a-way into the mountains: .
and
for hose "out there" who don't know his work or are not a fan of his
go to both volumes of his I REMAIN
and his How I Work as A Poet

when Carol (my lovely x) was at Davis in1969 Lew Welch, Gary Snyder
and two other poet-friends of his (and each other)
spent some time there reading and doing "stuff" for 3-4 days & Carol was Lew's show-him-around girl...

he inscribed/signed toe her a gifted copy of ON OUT 1965
which editor of oyez inked out a line and typed in SECOND PRINTING

[john]

I have that same 2nd printing ...

CIty Lights has just put Lew's Collected back in print, so I think "those who don't know" will if they want to ...

He's always been one of the real ones to me. Unimaginable what I, as a poet and human, owe him ...

Tho we never met.

Shows what the right word in the right place can do.

[Ed Baker]

lots of 'right words in right place' out there &
poets who know how to make every word do their job
.... get the poem and then the poet gets-the-hell-out

now, these "master poets" being drowned out by a plethora of
ego-centric, noisy crap

what we need
right now is
a decent editor

I knew one once but
he died now

I never met him either but I met Bill Stafford
- does that count ?

[john]

Everything counts, Ed.

I wouldn't worry about the 'master poets' being drowned out - unless you mean by the rising waters due to climate change. A culture doesn't carry a whole lot of extra crap on its back as it makes its way.

Better that everyone is a poet, however they write, than that everyone is a soldier or a worker ant/slave.

I prefer MFA poets 10000000000000000 over soldiers, business men/women, and or politicians. Same goes for conceptualists, langpo-ists, whatever.

As another master once put it, Poetry fetter'd, fetters the human race.

And a 3rd: Let there be songs, to fill the air.

[Sidra]

As my night draws to an end in the UK but still 8 hours left of One Shot for you guys over the pond, can i say what a wonderful time i have had hntoisg this week and how enjoyable all the work has been.Next week will be the turn of Dustus and I hope to see you all again then..in the meantime i wait to see what lovely gems will be waiting to be read when i wake in the morning..have a great week all and cheers Pete

[Sasha]

Due to my poor internet cvoiectinnty, I couldnt participate last week. My apologies to my friend, the host Adam Dustus and the entire team, Moony, B and Pete. This week I am participating and I cooked up something for this specifically. I wish you all the best as well as this community. It is a good thing for poetry to be appreciated. Have a lovely Wednesday y'all.Cheers!

[Gigi]

I do apologize for not gettnig around to visit many of you last week. I am in the throes of trying to promote my book and it is all-consuming as you may imagine or have experienced yourselves. I will endeavour to visit, but may not have the chance to comment on all I read. I thank you for your patience.Kat

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