“A history of German
cakes and bread-rolls may contain some unexpected disclosures”
Human breath
Is a dangerous weapon
Fifteen 2-meter
grapevine and wire arms occupy a whole room
Delicately approaching
visitors and singing them touch-tones
When asked a question
which required deep thought
She would screw her
eyes tight shut
Jerk her head down to
her chest and then freeze for up to half a minute before looking up
Opening her eyes
And answering the
question with fluency and intelligence
I know a twelfth spell
(This for the folks in Jena, Louisiana)
If I see on a tree a
corpse swinging
Then I cut and colour
runes so the man walks again and talks to me
People usually assume
that the best place to look for emotions is somewhere inside the mind or body
Here S is
In this multisensory
environment
And here is the
organist inside him
Playing to the
ever-changing picture
While the complex
many-stranded lines of music create those vibrations in his soul
Does this mean that
everyone will become nicer and nicer and nicer without limit?
Of course not
Thus
Chapter 1 offers up
the hypothesis of postmodern memory
Where recollection
Representation of the
past
Proves to be another
name for intertextual re-presentation
To wit
For the re-enactment
of the literary past
Others’ pasts as
recorded in their own autobiographical texts
I know a fourth spell
If I am tied
I chant it and free
myself
The fetters will fall
from my feet
The bonds from my
hands
The act of cutting
through from one space to another produces a certain complexity involving depth
perception
A bicycle-wheel robot
rolls around a room in a nervous interactive dance with the people gathered
there
Another room is filled
with loud
Skeletal machines that
shriek and flail
Seemingly attacking
each other
Menacing passersby
with blinding lights and horrendous noises
Here is a day in the
life of a small
Gray-white rock
nestling amid the ivy in my backyard
It stayed put
Some things happened
to it
There was rain
And it became wet and
shiny
There was wind
And it was subtly
eroded
My cat chased a
squirrel nearby
And this made the rock
sway
The importance of the
heart
Here
Is not as a pump
But
In Aristotle’s terms
As the centre of
intelligence
With presumably a
prior claim on the fresh blood
I now accept that a
real set of processes exist in the social world that correspond
(Though inexactly)
To what people mean
when they talk about emotion
And to what people are
doing when they say emotional things to one another
Dear blank
I am writing because I
feel you are the chosen one
The perfect subject
for a culinary communion as the modern world has long forgotten
I have part decided
that my mission is to restore the art of eating with love instead of fear
I hope by now my
meaning
And its historic as
well as beatific importance is clear
It is inevitable
Now is the time for an
age of renewed cannibalism which completes still another stage of development
and resolves the malaise du siècle
Just imagine what a
fabulous treat you would make
You would not only be
well remembered but superbly catered
Remember
There is no rush
I understand this is
an important decision
You will be the leader
of an incredible eatable art movement
Plus!
Think what a great
film it will make
By now the sun was overpowering
It shattered into little pieces on the sand and water
What is the this?
Songs start
Manic sounding singing
Night follows
Manic sounding singing
Only the name of Urth is old
The translation is almost unintelligible
Eat your way home from the moon
A drum rat-population garbage eco-cycle
Buses parked in a tight defensive ring around the White House
High voltage danger zones:
A radio active landscape
A room with a wasp in it
Something between a hotdog stand and a hospital
[Note: Sources: The books in my
office this morning.
Bill Griffiths, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon
Magic; John
Agard, “Listen Mr Oxford Don”, in Other:
British and Irish Poets Since 1970 (eds. Ric Caddel and Peter Quartermain);
Mitchell
Whitelaw, Metacreation: Art and
Artificial Life, describing Kenneth Rinaldo’s Autopoiesis; Richard Dawkins, foreword to Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine, and Blackmore; back cover of Brian Parkinson, Ideas
and Realities of Emotions; Nicholas Humphrey, Seeing Red;
Christian Moraru, Memorious
Discourse: Reprise and Representation in Postmodernism; Gordon Matta-Clark, as
quoted in Gordon Matta-Clark: Works and
Collected Writings (ed. Gloria Moure) and on a wall card at MOCA’s Matta-Clark show, slightly “misremembered”;
Andy Clark, Mindware: An Introduction to
the Philosophy of Cognitive Science; Albert Camus, The Stranger (tr. Matthew Ward); Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (trs. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly); Donald Bahr, Lloyd Paul, Vincent Joseph, Ants and Orioles: Showing the Art of Pima Poetry; Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (tr. Ralph Manheim); Jean Leclercq, “Influence and noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages”, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (tr. Colm Luibheid)]