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FCF 95

Inebriated to
vertigo

by
the spin
of this beguiling

costume
drama O,
the tenderness of

unconcealed
symbols, o!
o! O, my

imposingly
dauntless position
regarding erotica seems

to
me a
disquieting distortion of

metallic
facial wrinkles
on a metal

face
affixed to
a zombie cyborg

robot
body named
Rebecca or Tom

that
accents the
passive-voluptuous subtlety and

incertitude
of the
predilection accorded the

scheleton.
-ur.not.safe.here:[+bam! the
mauve_morning shift_tingles

in2
grey_layers
|then|th.ridge-bursts-in.2 flame.

‘I
ask you
to refuse what

I
offer you
because that is

not
it.’ “The
Tin Gorilla,” for

example,
is a
thing in which

“the
chatter of
its spiked fur/

raises
a terrible
din and as

you
cling/ to
its shoulders you

shut
your eyes/
praying this is

not
the endless/
nightmare of the

life
after death/
but the tin

gorilla
gallops on.”
What kinds of

massacres
lead to
that? I don’t

want
to lose
this strange power

of
mine.

            {these (lucu)lubrications had made
            [my] light a mere landmark
            which opened up onto
            the brink
            of * a declivity
            slanting down directly
            to a tomb * ancestral dignity
            with all life lying in * the direction
            of this gaze . . . while whereabouts outside
            it [?] could not tell : some « region »
            of science possibly * psycho

            « how is it * I am here ? . . . »}

I
talk to
insects. Eco-Brutalism,

Deep
Semiology: the
doors to the

closets
all made
of vinyl … vapor … velvet … Velveeta …

What
should we
do so that

consciousness
of the
brain does not

purely
and simply
coincide with the

spirit
of capitalism?
Seine for mermaids

in
the Baltic?
Bathe in spicy

tomatoes?
Doubtful. Doubtful.
Doubtful. Beyond the

tightly
clustered streets
of the small

town,
half-boarded
up Main Street

surrounding
the single
tall spire of

a
church, the
road quickly turns

rural
(cluster of
mock castles, Consider this, for example:

        A white dinner jacket should not be worn, not in the summer, not
        by the sea.

        In most eukaryotes, a large proportion of the genome does not code
        for proteins.

        ‘pogo loam’ becomes a symbol for a result that “exceeds forecast.”

        An “impossible swell/persists”

        Can a fine
        ax liberate harassed
        vector’s pure egg

revealing cuddling noodle emission
via mockingbird trellis parentheses

binoculars and chicken bones
chicken-wire alchemists and bloody gutters

bone bonnets, whip stripes
clothespins ultraviolet

and

When the wind

has
a strong
‘pitch center’ it

can
eerily send
me an Apollonysus*

*Appollonysys
demi semi
surfeit of word

and
flesh. A
city and an

ocean,
a point
and a wave.
Together. Suspended. So

you
force me
to consider an

otherwise
to my
otherwise. An ambivalence

inhabits
this textual
fragment: as if

two
different spaces –
one sealed, the

other
permeable – compete
to occupy the

same
moment in
time. … The metaphor

of
porosity competes
with a dialectic

of
interior and
exterior that belongs

to
a different
register: whatever is

presented
as art
will be hidden

by
the weight
of human traffic.

And there you are my power has grown terrible
My anxiety also
My instability
I can’t sit still anymore
I search I become
I’m no longer my real age I toy with everything

If I understood it all I’d be very afraid,

with what strange utterance does the rushing air
    blow though my floating head the &,

And finds a
Kind of ground, to practise here being grateful

like a thumbprint

For we ourselves are luminous. Except we do not give off light.

But we do know that August I, elector of Saxony, who boasted that he owned “a series of portraits of Roman emperoros\\ I mean emperors, from Caesar to Domitian, executed by Titian from life,” refused an offer of 100,000 gold florins made by Venice’s Council of Ten for a unicorn he owned, and that he kept as a precious object a stuffed phoenix, a gift from the Bishop of Bamberg. As late as 1567, the exhibition room kept by Albert V of Bavaria contained, in addition to 780 paintings, 2,000 objects of various kinds, among them “an egg that a bishop had found inside another egg, manna fallen from the sky during a famine, a hydra, and a basilisk.”

[Note: Sources: a list of names sent me by Eileen Tabios, some new arrivals, some stuff by poets in issue 50 of Tears in the Fence (brought to my attention by Alan Baker); and. Gherasim Luca, “The Carnation’s Misfortunes”, “The Volcanoes Inside Vegetables” (tr. Julian Semilian), cutnpasted into an email from god knows what website(s?); mez breeze, “bristle_[b]one+gristle_ART[oolKit(tens)]”, “[microwurk 7]: _mauve_morning_shift_”, at netwurker, 13 and 17 Aug 09; Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, Seminar XX, as quoted and cited in Amy Hollywood, Eric Basso, as quoted by Kevin Killian in an Amazon review of Basso’s Earthworks; Jacques Khalip, “Suspirias: Kevin Killian's Argento Series”, and Killian himself, “Phenomena”, as quoted therein, at Titanic Operas: Poetry and New Materialities; Nicholas Manning, NOVALESS XXXXXII, XXXXXVI, at Argotist Online; Ron Silliman, NON, “the nose of kim darby's double”, You XVIII, at Modern American Poetry; Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do With Our Brain? (tr. Sebastian Rand); two messages that come up while “we’re processing you’re request” at Rail Europe; anon, in The Literary Review, re: Thomas Fink, The Man’s Book, and Fink himself, at Thomas Fink; Eileen Tabios, on Thomas Fink, After Taxes, and Fink himself, “Serrated Errors,”, in After Taxes, at Marsh Hawk Press, and “Diesel Enclave”, in Clarity and Other Poems, also at Marsh Hawk Press (the Tabios bit can be found at both locations); Simone Muench, “Orange Girl Cast”, 1, 4, and Tim Rutili, on Muench’s Orange Crush, at Simone Muench.com; Joey Madia, ““Trek Echoes””, in Juke Pomes, at New Mystics; Soundboard.com; Ann Weinstone, Avatar Bodies: A Tantra for Posthumanism; Victor Burgin, on Walter Benjamin, as quoted in Weinstone; Iain Sinclair, “Metropolis of the disappeared”, at Guardian.uk, 2 Feb 08; Nathaniel Tarn, “After Jouve”, as quoted by Brenda Hillman, in “Steady Turbulence”, at Jacket 28; Martin Stannard, post at Martin Stannard’s Home From Home, 28 Aug 06; John James, “Conversation”, as quoted in Charles Bainbridge, “Keep looking up!”, at Guardian.co.uk, 16 Oct 04; John Welch, “at home”, at Manifold 3; Vahni Capildeo, About, at Poetry International; Giorgio Agamben, The Man Without Content (tr. Georgia Albert)]

Big Doll

2. (after Keith Waldrop’s Baudelaire)

“See nature setting out by day the intricate designs of alpine flowers, flashing the crystal colors of the 391 Species of hummingbirds.

“See the night lofting the powdery wings of 10,500 species of moths in North America, uncoiling huge flowers in the tropics.

“See the tiny rainbows flashing briefly on bubbles in the surf and the streaming vermilions and indigos of the 25,000 species of coral fish.

“See how the setting sun emblazons the skies with unnamable colors different every evening, different every minute of the evening.

“The earth has glaciers, sequoias, giraffes, quetzals, chameleons, orchids …

“And you, She Woulf, you … and this heart … this panty-shaped heart …”

[Note: Sources: photo © Robert Rissman. Alphonso Lingis, The First Person Singular]

Big Doll

1.

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft! hey!
Our father was

an architect. Our mother rode round the zoo

on the back of
Bushman’s
ape(man trike.          the sky is white. Anurous, which

is fine.
Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft! hey!

O                      My                     Fucking                      Spelchek

God – dog! Yeh – hey!

S A T O R
A R E P O

We never compared eyebrows.

Lincoln Head threw strikes.

Je me souviens a nickel and an asshole.

        “Fuck is an English word …

“IT IS
AN OLD
STORY;
TOLD
ON
MAPS
DRAWN
WITH
STICKS”

[Note: a collaboration w/Omo Bob, who supplies the photos, all © Robert Rissman. Sources: a game Becky and Rachel May played as kids, in which one would cry “Big Doll!”, go limp, and the other would drag them round the house; Gary Sullivan, “Mm-hmm”; Jean Luc-Nancy “Corpus”, in Corpus (tr. Richard A Rand); magic square, as found in Rick Griffin, MURPHY MYSTIC EYES, in Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin's Transcendence (Laguna Art Museum); Tony Fitzpatrick, The Magic Starling, as seen in In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor (Laguna Art Museum)]

FCF 94

Your
painted mask
bears no relation.

The
Great Drift
(mentioned earlier) set

in.
He named
each taste like

honey.
She named
each taste like

honey.
They named
each taste like

honey.
We named
each taste like

honey.
Using ISO/
IEC 10646. Anus

porcupine
eyebrow. Asterisk
asterisk (hyphen?) dash.

Will
it play
in Aporia? That’s

the
town right
by the town

where
rainshine shivers
on dull platforms and

phonemasts
silvered in
the gloom like

shrines
father the
gather the chatter

where
the whip
comes down where

the
drift sets
in. It was the

day
before the
movie shoot, day

before
the funeral,
the day before

the
self-immolating
attack, a voix

celeste,
simulacra of
a political speech

gone
mad, a
materialist di

uh
lektik, [this
could be a

chorus]
[…][something
could sway here

or
quake] […]
what a tantrum!

What

A

Mess!

Zombies …

Robots …

I think it’s great for Joseph Beuys to be lord of the coyotes …

OK.

That said, “Clear a space around the self and do not let yourself be carried away and distracted by all the sounds, faces, and people around you. (…) All your attention should be concentrated on this trajectory from self to self. Presence of self to self, precisely on account of the distance still remaining between self and self (…)”. This transsubjectivation, conceived as a journey within oneself, is the product of a transformation. Foucault underscores the Greek word ethopoiein: “Ethopoiein means making ethos, producing ethos, changing, transforming ethos, the individual’s way of being, his mode of existence”.

There would then be a kind of transformation which would sublate the difference between the self and itself, which would create, produce a new self as a result of the opposition between two forms at work in the self.

Plasticity might be the name of this transsubjectivation. We would find in Hegel the possibility of understanding dialectics as a process of “ethopoiein.” A plastic subject would be able to transform its way of being. This plastic ontology implies of course a plasticity of gender itself.

Such is my interpretation of the relationship matter/form in Hegel.

OK.

So, the wounds of trauma are material wounds rather than merely psychic?

If we are able to admit that the difference between “material” and “psychic” is very thin and even perhaps non-existing, if we agree on the absurdity of regarding the brain and the psyche as too separate and distinct instances,

OK. Let’s sing a little. Brutality number 1. Of

Painting Bodies, Gesturing Bodies, Ritualistic And Transgressive Bodies, Body Boundaries, Performing Identity, Absent Bodies, Extended and Prosthetic Bodies

In
The presence
Of the traces

Of
The as
If, in the

Dramas
Of the
It’s not that,

It’s
Not that,
It’s not that,

In
The casting
Of the magic

Spell
Of “raw
Material”, in the

Dance of
Anywhere is
Everywhere, in the

Face
To face
With the sky’s

Back,
The all-
Powerful far too

Much,
In the
Clairvoyance of the

Nervous
Machine, in
The “Help!”, the

“Love
Me”, the
“One two three”,

In
The primal
Archaic erotic sexual

Desired
Desiring ritual
Trance-like votive,

In
The spirits
Which haunt the

Head
Without a
Face, autonomous and

Unspecified,
In the
Delirium producing its

Own
Knowledge, in
The endlessly and

The
Need to
Repeat, mirroring the

Shadowy
Legible, in
The whole new

Register
Of edges,
In the desublimated

Inside
Out returned
To its origin,

In
The dimensions
Of the equivalent

Of
An almost-
Etc., fluxed into

An
Imprecise vocabulary,
In the shouting

Roaring
Book from
Which each one

Tears
A small
Page of perfume,

In
The giant
Webs, in the

Power
Field, in
The gold and

Where
A city
Lasts a day,

In
The never
Never so per

Se,
Indeterminate
Open-ended amorphous

Ludicrously
Simple terrestrial
Direct naked, in

The
Dynamic equilibrium,
In the breathing

Breathing,
In the
Big surrounding and

Intoxicating,
In the
Mystery box, in

The
Piss, in
The unbounded openness

At
The limits
Of the field,

In
The immaterial
Material self-substantiating,

In
The apparently –
But only apparently –

Contradictory,
In the
Actually in progress,

In
The anguished
Catastrophic fiery magnetic

Ridiculous
Agitated sudden
Dark poetic tangible

Thundering
Total mush,
In black red

Blue
Yellow white
Blue yellow white-

Painted
Pink pink-
Painted yellow red

Blue
Black blue
Yellow white blue

Blue
Pink blue
Red blue red

Blue
Blue white
Blue-painted white

Blue
Yellow white
Blue blue blue

Blue
White blue,
In a slit

Open
Aorta and
A head split

Into
2.5 halves,
Down in the

Dyed
Water, the
Robes of static,

In
The flux
That goes beyond

Ortho
To pulverize,
In the staging

Of
risk, of
Breath, aura pneuma

Of
Suffering and
Of death, in

The
Hidden ethical
Request, in the

Net
Of Indra,
In the no

Appeal,
In the
Weird abreaction, the

Bizarro
Architectonics, in
The self-parodic

Pain,
In the
Self-parodic apotheosis,

In
The utopian
Speculations, in the

Echoes,
In the
Actions, events, performances,

Pieces,
Things, in
The not in

Space
Like things,
In the mechanical,

Topographic
And symbolic
Complex, in the

Non-
Verbal rhetoric,
In the tenderness,

In
The recuperation,
In the becoming

(Once
Again?), in
The great libidinal

Reservoir,
In the
Blue-tinted arabesques,

In
The floating
Lotus being at

Play
Dust exchange,
In the metaphors

For
Physicality,
Universally used in

And
The like,
In the “something”

I
Do not
Recognize, in the

Propitious
“Something” I
Do not recognize,

In
The continual
Tautological re-creation,

In
The not
Just and much

More
Than, in
The powers and

Frailties,
In the
Intersubjective burning microcircuits,

In
The unstable
Forces, in the

Split-
Second ceremonies
Of the imponderabilia,

In
The nervous
Blur, in the

Aha-
Erlebnis, in
The peculiar-sounding

Hypothesis,
In the
Yes, if, in

The
Theatre of
Hypnotic density, compulsive

Luxurious,
In the
Whirlpool, whirlwind, in

The
Direct and
Full of rich

Contradiction,
In the
Scroll slowly extracted

Inch
By inch,
In the something

That
We do
Not know and

Cannot
Express, in
The last laugh,

A
Subtle abyss,
In the metaphysical

Smile
That just
Gleams, in the

Concentric
Circles of
Desire as desire,

In
The almost
To the point

Of
Chaos, blood-
Red bloodred, in

The
Neutral medium,
In the increasingly

Hybrid
Metamorphosis, in
The images angling

To
Be objects,
In the alphabet

Of
Erotic ontology,
In the sticky

And
Messy exuberant
Writhing elements, in

The
Originary complicity,
In the how,

Then,
Can one
Think through, in

The
Stuff of
Legend, in the

Radically
Amorphous fully
Transcendental coherent impossible,

In
The one
True fact*, in             *of chant

The
Never-ending
Dominant tropes, in

The
Infinitely receding
Endlessly thoroughly tangled

Slippery
Indisputable where
Insatiability still reigns,

In
The consecrated
Air in the

Labyrinth
Of the
Wind, in the

“Granted”
Or “Given”,
In the outstretched

Arm
Of the
Invariably distant, in

The
Vital interface
Where the none-

The-
Less quickens,
The out there,

Dilating
In waves
Of harmony and

Dissonance,
The tension
Of me for

The
Other, in
The blizzard of

Bloodstained
Paper, pieces
Of flesh floating

Through
The air,
In the primeval

Hunger,
A bed,
A coffin, a

Funeral
Urn, in
The state, in

The
Condition, in
The not indifferent,

In
The particular
Intimacy, in the

Whispering,
In the
Conversation, in the

Erasure
Of erasure,
Negation of negation,

The
Cultural and
Historical specificities, in

The
Exceedingly personal
Map of liminal

Space,
In the
Complicity between subject

And
Subject, in
The bringing into

Relation
With the
Soft aloofness of

Presence
And absence,
In the fragility,

In
The inside
Which is the

Outside
Which is
The inside which

Is
The outside
Which is the

Outside
Which is
The inside, its

Lungs
Are mine,
Arms are growing

Into
The ground,
This planet is

Crushing
My cortex,
Zero g, in

The
In and
Of, in the

Messenger
Sent to
Give you a

Message,
In the
So it is,

In
The if
At all, in

The
Building of
A common household

In
The made
Of sunshine, in

The
Cutting through
A skin-like

Fabric,
In the
Physical link, in …

OK.

i.e., e.g., I was walking, among wet leaves on fallen / streets, the movement of light, of sound, walking past the / open door of a bar, the music [pounds] out, you hear it, all / the way to the corner. It gets dimmer and is finally replaced by cars,

a
joyful noise
through the flood

on
foot: moved
as silver net

over
our heads
went fire-shine

smoke,
in this
interpretation all category

variants
seem at
fault, a glitch

in
the fabric
alliance threatening certain

words
with overcoding
stimuli. It takes

two
days to
notice that the

EYE
tattoo on
my arm is

spelled
backwards. But
let E. kiss

with
the rabbit
the dew-struck

grass
in the
morning, sun-light

slapping
her face
Let E., foster

parent
of a
sparrow praise without

end
the porcupine,
Let weave together

the
cold breath
steam, to name

a
work for
its dissolution responds

to
an ancient
vision: — what reader of Spicer’s Language can forget his “sylabbles”?—

With flick o wrist
t’heavens
opened.

With flick o wrist
t’heavens
closed.

Let
beckon the
world to come

there is a new instantism > a language of tangent =
tanguage > ambient funguage > there is a modern path
>invented through accidental spontaneity +

Let’s call it The New Wounds

a transformation of the Heideggerian notion of “being-toward-death” in particular. Heidegger says that death is at every moment possible. Neurobiologists make us conscious of the fact that my own metamorphosis after brain damage is at every moment possible; there is something like a break of the subject which is not death, which is another kind of possibility. To be destroyed as a subject when you suffer from a concussion, for example, means that you become someone else. The possibility of becoming someone else at every moment and for everybody equally--for even if we know that certain people are more likely to be the victims of such damage, we also know that everybody may undergo this kind of destruction at any moment--this possibility alters how we conceive of the subject. The fact of being mortal is one thing, and the fact of being plastic means being able to be totally transformed and become somebody else. For example, Damasio will say of one of his patients: “Elliot was no longer Elliot.” So, subjectivity must be confronted to the risk of the loss of itself at every moment, and this loss is not death;

it
is something
different. Frightening. It

is
very frightening,
yes. But. And.

The
picture begins.
There are no

mistakes
in it
but it is

but
I thought
I saw a

turtledove
nesting on
a waffle. And

there
is a
knife in it

there
are knocks
there’s a sequence

of loud knocks

[Note: Sources; shelves, etc. And. A little and. Robert Sheppard, Warrant Error, in The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (ed. Jeff Hilson); Kelvin Corcoran, “Picture Eight”, in Hilson; Wikipedia; Rolling Stones, “When the Whip Comes Down”; Anne Waldman, Iovis 3, “& what I saw: zymosis”, “Without Stitching Closed the Eye of the Falcon”, in American Hybrid (eds. Cole Swensen and David St John); David Antin, “the currency of the country”, in tuning; Catherine Malabou, in Noëlle, Vahanian, “A Conversation with Catherine Malabou”, at Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, vol. 9 no. 1 (Winter 2008); JBR, “Painting Bodies, Gesturing Bodies, Ritualistic And Transgressive Bodies, Body Boundaries, Performing Identity, Absent Bodies, Extended and Prosthetic Bodies”, in World₀ (with modifications, and bits added from Rachel Levitsky, “Crisis”, Bill Luoma, Math Poems, Jean Day, Sixteen Lucky Dreams (Epical Pictures) Four (Turning Blue), Rod Smith, The Good House, in Nineteen Lines: A Drawing Center Writing Anthology (ed. Lytle Shaw)) Beverly Dahlen, A Reading 9; Ronald Johnson, “BEAMS 21,22,23, The Songs of Orpheus”, in To Do As Adam Did: Selected Poems (ed. Peter O’Leary); Steve McCaffery, Hegel’s Eyes, Teachable Texts, in Seven Pages Missing v. 1; Eleni Sikelianos, The California Poem; Samuel Makidemewabe, “Whose-Weaving-Melted” (tr. Howard Norman), in The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña (ed. M Catherine de Zegher); Cecilia Vicuña, “Arte Precario”, in quipoem (tr. Esther Allen); Graham Foust, “Resisting Print: Jack Spicer’s Lecturature”, in Jacket 38; Geraldine Monk, “La Tormenta”, in Other: British and Irish Poetry Since 1970 (eds. Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain); R Zamora Linmark, “What Some Are Saying About The Body”, in Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (eds. Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar); Edwin Torres, “The Theorist Has no Samba!”, in Shaw; Lynn Hejinian, The Little Book of a Thousand Eyes, in Shaw]

Take This Arm Home

New Release: Eileen Tabios' FOOTNOTES TO ALGEBRA, a book of previously-uncollected poems written since 1995. These include a special trio of poems from a summer spent hangin' out with Philip Lamantia, the poem "Pygmalion's Embrace" which is a de facto architectural plan for a physical poetic space she is creating in Napa Valley, her first (and so far only) translation of a poem into her birth tongue Ilokano, ekphrastic "baby poems", the poem "Justice" through which she achieved her goal of garnering for her wine cellar a jeroboam of the Judds Hill Winery cabernet by winning its annual poetry contest, and the series "Girl Singing", one poem from which generated 151 multi-genre responses or translations from 47 poets worldwide to create the anthology 1000 VIEWS OF "GIRL SINGING" edited by me, JBR, to be released by Leafe Press (U.K.), this coming autumn.

I post this because 1) Eileen's a wonderful poet and you should have all her books, and 2) the front cover image is of my arm. The tatt text is from Walter Benjamin’s “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” (“On the Concept of History”), Thesis 9. The background is a detail from Cy Twombly’s painting Autunno (no. III of his Quattro Stagioni), taken from the cover of the catalogue to an exhibition at the Tate Modern. And 3) maybe the blurb for 1000 VIEWS will make you hungry.

FCF 93

Beats me.
I have no

idea
what to
call this journey

of
the [mouth?]
through the material

world.
All I
Know is I’m

Thirsty.
I sweep
the fallen plant

bits
from my
driveway, make a

tea.
Now it
begins, another voyage;

look,
see how
the roses brusle

like
a Svan?
These momentums walk

the
earth. There’s
a sound like

other
instruments, perhaps
stringed, vague instruments.

Why
should they
not drift? Yes.

Is
it really
true? We prefer

meta-
significance? I
close my eyes.

I
see white.
Lots of white.

And
gray. Cool
gray. Cool gray

fabric
shadows. (It
is a painting!)

With
no yellow.
By a very

old
man. So
perhaps I’ll be

seeing
you Monday.
“[I want] to

apologize
for something
I for the

life
of me
can’t figure out …”

[…]

“Perchance,” as Hamlet says—he whose entire life and thinking are in a way devoted to nothing but sleep, to its shadow as well as to its shade (à sa tombée comme à sa tombe). Perchance to dream, that is to say perchance something of night passing into day, by chance, by misfortune or by capricious luck. All of a sudden, awakening finds close to it a scrap left over from sleep. Something was brought back from nothing, and in effect it is a configuration of nothing: scenes often colorful, with all kinds of tones, but whose dense coherency becomes blurred and quickly breaks apart in the acidity of day, all the more so in the fantasies or fantasmes of interpretation that, in the end, regularly and necessarily loses itself in the depths of that navel of the dream Freud speaks of to emphasize that everything here occurs before birth, before any distinction and any separation, any discernment of person or sense.

[…]

“[I
want] to
apologize for something

I
for the
life of me

can’t
figure out
what or why.”

Do
you not
yearn to lick

my
stinky armpits,
stroke my coarse

shaggy
hair, and
swallow the pus

of
my scarred
vagina? Sun, wind,

gamma
wavelengths, wind,
sun. I chowdown

good,
piss on
the grass, shit

razorblades
A-OK.
Not dried mud

flat.
Not dried
flat mud. My

neighbors
are dropping
furniture. My hamstrings

are
holy and
epic. ¿are you

the
signal ¿are
you a circle

¿are
you memorizing
¿memorializing ¿are you

materializing “I thought
      I was paying
           attention but my
                ontology is out
                      of control.” “Is
                that a dirty
            bomb in your
      Manolo’s or are
you just happy
      to []?'fire
            use in the
                United States the
            polt of tho
      fur seal in
large ... at least
      for man, but
           tho most pleasant
               for the fur
                     seal. ... Of v
               there Is soma
           growth in Juuo
      and July, ('OnSIStlIlg
pr '- of f;,
      and of flowers
           occasionally a ' violet . ....
                of the snout,
                     behind !, then a
                longitudinal cut, and
            the ruin is
      off. ... Did you
thick how much
      there is in
            that q Paul
                 slid not do
                      tt fur serf
                      interest, ... Accessories: Black 9mm pistol, .... white, light
                      blue, dark blue, lime  green; Eye colour(s): violet purple ...
                      covered feathers, avian species, very fast, violet eyes, ...

The snouted man with violet fur.
Interlocking of species to form a being.
Children’s dreams hidden in pillows.
The eye of a wolf in starlight.
Avocados eaten by starving hounds.
Smell of waves on a foggy morning.
Trees in the shape of the smile of elephants.
Cracking shells of purple urchins.
BLOND BOOK CINDER HUNGER BREEZE.
INDIGO CHALICE STAR TASTE WRINKLE.
PACKED IN MY MIND LIE ALL THE CLOTHES.
IT’S THE MYSTERY OF THE HUNT THAT INTRIGUES ME.

                                                                                  Abraham
                                                                                  came out
                                                                                  of the tall

                                                grass,
                                                pale with
                                                fervor. He gave

                   the
                   workers the
                   day off, and

sat
there by
himself. He’d

had
a vision
of the future.

I
continue shrinking.
I am taller,

taller
by far,
the aliens landed,

a
family visit.
“Do we need

to
add that
in our findings

the
cat shows
instincts of rat-

killing
and rat-
eating as well

as
the instinct
to love the

rat?”
Place a
raw, uncracked egg

in
each of
the four corners

of
whatever room
you are trying

to
smudge. If
the eggs cook,

you
know you
are cleansing some

bad
juju. Roll
a hardboiled egg

over
a bruise.
The egg will

pick
up the
black and blue.

In
both cases,
do not eat

eggs
after using.
“Relax the hair.”

“Relax
the ankles.”
“Let relaxation drip

down
your wrists.”
“Roll heart open.”

[Note: Sources: my shelves again, and since some shelves are exhausted, items from Ron Silliman’s Recently Received list, 14 Aug 09. And.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (tr. Margaret Jull Costa), as quoted in Ernesto Priego, “An Experimental Journey”, at Never Neutral, 10 Aug 09; Michele Leggott, “Blue Irises” 1, 3, in The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (ed. Jeff Hilson); Keith Waldrop, “First Draw the Sea”, in American Hybrid (eds. Cole Swensen and David St John); Rae Armantrout, “Afterlife”, “Upper World”, in Up to Speed; Joe Brainard, “Imaginary Still Life No. 2” (complete), a bit from the last page of a letter 20 Oct 67, another letter, to Ron Padgett, all as quoted in Ron Padgett, Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard; Jean-Luc Nancy, The Fall of Sleep (tr. Charlotte Mandell), at Lacanian Ink 33; Lynne Behrendt, Luminous Flux, as quoted in Geof Huth, “The Sticky Caterpillar Still Warm in its Bed”, at dbqp, 13 Aug 09; Kenward Elmslie, “Local Branch”, in Routine Disruptions: Selected Poems & Lyrics; K Lorraine Graham, “I changed my mind about the other blog. Drafts will still go here”, at See It Everywhere, 3 Jun 09; Roberto Harrison, bits from Counter Daemons, at Woodland Pattern; Adeena Karasick, “Echocographies”, at Adeena Karasick.com; Google search on The snouted man with violet fur (not in quotes); Michael McClure, Organism; Gil Ott, “Whites”, “Figures”, in Public Domain; Mark Wallace, “I Was Dreaming of Alleys”, at Tinfish 2; Keith Waldrop, The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon; Shin Yu Pai, “Two Uses for Eggs”, “Yoga Scripts”, at Makura no Soshi, 13 Aug 09 (a slightly belated Happy Anniversary, Kort and Shin Yu!)]

FCF 92

[Truman
Capote voice:]
That's not Flarf,

That’s
just Conceptualism.
I can remember

when
I was
a child, I

had
a nightmare
where I saw

the
interconnection of
the universe in

black,
purple, &
blue, folds &

strings.
Don’t look
there when pixels

blow
loose letters
down the stairs.

And
what better
way to humble

Romantic
sublimity than
this: “I want

to
wrap my
claws around the

uninterrupted
lip smacking /
And pull it

down
around me
in a puddle

at
my ankles.”
The Web pays

zilch.
“Ride into
the electric descent.”

So
the first
thing I ever

shoplifted
was a
deck of tarot

cards
from Spencer
Gifts. I’m not

really
strong on
the day-to-

day
business. That
seems like a

lot
of love
poems, but who’s

to
question. As
for your body

question,
is the
conscience part of

the
body? (The
same ghost harassed

my
grandmother, supposedly
all he wanted

was
to “talk,”
whatever, jerk) You

mad
scientist with
a swing set.

I
hear you
banged your chin.

There are waves
      here that don’t
           move. Who would
                have suspected such
                     a thing? A
                          sweater built for
                     two? There was
                only the one
           cockroach, dead and
     stiff. As he
lay on the
      pavement, I leaned
           closer to him.
                His legs were
                     curled under his
                          body. His head
                     was tilted at
                a sad angle.
           Sad? Yes, sad.
      For who is
lonelier than the
      cockroach without his
           tribe? We are
                not free. And
                          the sky can
                                still fall on
                          our heads. The
                 resulting performance wobbles
            between air-tight
      and leaking, dancing
and struck, working
      and slacking — a
            momentum that refuses
                 to swoon while
                      it’s standing, and
                           dissipates as soon
                       as it ceases
                  into the into
              the into the
       into the into
the into the

into
the into
the into the

into
the into
the into the

into
the into
the into the

monks
were meditating,
and they were

facing
very funny
objects. I, then,

followed
strange white
dots into the

library.
I thought
that everyone was

giving
up but
I realized that

I
was walking
into an outside

of
silence. It
took me awhile

to
realize that
my group was

in
the bottom
of the courtyard,

reading
from the
statues, where I

joined
them. Slowly,
slowly, each group

moved
outside. Time
moved toward that

breaking
note, caught
in a rainstorm,

soaked,
dreaming of
choking, thinking about

her
heart opening
and closing and

how
a bit
of translucent poison

/ so often the ghost of letterforms, spermatazoa, calligraphy, “pseudo-writing” over dark green backgrounds, blackboard like save for the omnipresent streaking of the white paint, “Ecstasy so great that all Heaven and Hell become one Shangri-La.” “If it
looks like art,
it's not good enough”

–why that silly wig?

the sun fizzles, pinched between
wet surly sheep

a sheep is a shoe, remember?

As a person:

Had several interactions, planning more, and also planning to put a roof on our cubicle.

As a thing:

In the supergirl outfit, I went to buy fruit to make a salad as a healthy dessert alternative to ice cream. In several fan fiction accounts supergirl and batwoman hook up. The supergirl cape is short and does not snag. What thing do we mean doing?

which
I read
as what do

we
mean by
doing?

                 - The essence of technology is nothing technological
                 - The essence of language is not found in human speaking
                 - The essence of dwelling has nothing to do with having four
                    walls and a roof over your head
                 - The essence of pain has nothing to do with feeling. /

We
eat and
drink and have

forbidden
sexual relations,
from which we

are
born through
harlotry and lust

and
menstrual blood
and urine. And

we
were a
fetid drop at

the
time of
our creation, and

so
we are
today, fetid and

besmirched
with filth
and mud and

vomit
and excrement
so that there

is
no clean
place. While alive

we
are dust
and ashes, and

to
dust you
shall return, and

we
shall be
dead like carcasses,

putrid
and crushed
in fire, like

rubbish
filled with
vanity and spirits.

Isn’t
it awesome?
Then stepping out

at
Penn onto
Seventh Ave and

standing
still in
front of Madison

Square
Garden to
take it all

in,
I realise
that the talk

and
chatter, its
volume, remains constant,

despite
the fact
that the people

are
ever-changing
as the crowds

rush
in and
out of the

station.
Does this
phenomenon have a

name?

[Note: stuff from Silliman’s web links, 10 Aug 09. And maybe a little and.

K Silem Mohammad, comment, at Gary Lehmann - Author, 7 Aug 09; Michael Jacobson, in interview with Lynn Alexander, at Prate; Rachel Loden, “My Cupboards”, as quoted by Steven Fama, at the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica, 8 Aug 09; Bruce Covey, Amy Gerstler, Jennifer Moxley, in blurbs for Covey’s Elapsing Speedway Organism, at the No Tell site for book of same title; Russell Jacoby, “No Live Readings”, at Out Of The Crooked Timber Of Humanity, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made, 3 Aug 09; Reb Livingston, “Free Tarot Reading or Dream Interpretation Offer”, at No Tells, 6 Aug 09; Maxine Chernoff, in interview with Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, at Jacket 38; Rebecca Loudon, “To my Muriel, my doppelgänger, my darling, my negative eye,”, at No Tell site for Loudon’s Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home; Reb Livingston and Ravi Shankar, Wanton Textiles, at No Tell site for book of same title; Sherman Alexie, “War Dances”, at The New Yorker, 10 Aug 09; Antonin Artaud, and Natalie Knight, as quoted in Knight's “The Translation of a “less managerial consciousness in[to] poetic discourse:” Rodrigo Toscano’s Collapsible Poetics Theater”, at Jacket 38; Jennifer Bartlett, “Collection of Silence”, at after a winter of wordless birds, 9 Jul 09; Elizabeth Bachner, “The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art by Eileen Myles”, at Bookslut, Aug 09; Joshua Corey, “Notes on a Visit to the Art Institute of Chicago’s New Modern Wing”, at Cahiers de Corey, 3 Aug 09; George Kuchar, on Thundercrack!, as quoted by Charles Bernstein, Charles Bernstein’s Web Blog, 8 Aug 09; Marc-Olivier Wahler, as quoted at Sibila; Jean Vengua, “factors”, and Tarot, comment to same, at Okir, 10 Aug 09; K Lorraine Graham, “An Attempt to Unleash Inner Badness Ends Thus”, as quoted by K Silem Mohammad, at {Lime Tree}, 8 Aug 09; John D Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger; Abraham Abulafia, as quoted in Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia; Cralan Kelder, “1 minute for poetry” (email rec’d 10 Aug 09, 1:21 AM]

FCF 91

I don’t
know what happens

when
one lives.
I don't know

what
happens when
one dies [he

says
that when
he was a

Newark
child on
Boyd Street, he

mysteried
about green
bush sprout-leaved

back
tree back
lot and wondered

what
was behind
the leaves], but

I
think I’d
like to have

my
ashes poured
into a laser-

printer
cartridge and
used to print …

why
not wind
up a metaphor,

or

an allegory? AND SPACE (why

the
capitals?) devil
on top of

devil
and ass
and devil and

patience
(slow the
pace) and the

sun
glow sunk
low and before

before
in front
of all with

clearsightedness …
tho the
stone’s theory is

the
most practical,
collecting fallen vowels,

because
it is
not a bird,

it
is a
little jazz, a

ray
in the
night of its

species.
The bomb
itself sprays eyes

all
over the
very curious magnolias,

the
really rare
roses, which doesn’t

leave
mi cuerpo
mucho tiempo for

otras
actividades. And
of course I’d

be
grateful if,
indeed, you care

to
clasp my
non-metaphorical hand.

And
so I
eat from a

brown
pot, sticking
my fingers into

the
stomach of
the seed, I

tie
eight sticks
together, make sure

they
look like
the first star

that
fell at
my feet. I’m

getting
to the
mumbling now. There is the shape of the stomach. And isn’t / The presence of a thing / That can’t be seen / More massive than the universe? / The massive spin-2 particle whose / Couplings at long distances / Are those of a fist-fucking anus swallowing a fist? Thrown I trace my journey as far as my place in the wind. A place. I don’t mean a space. Thank you, Dr Aue, for returning my wooden prosthesis. Like sand in an hourglass music falls over music. Toward the tin-cold and murmuring black wood I bear a display case of blue light
say it’s the
Velcro moon
gold grommets
in Anaheim my thighs burn
on the vinyl bench
of the Impala it sluices
onto the freeway
Harbor Blvd., Anaheim Blvd.
Lincoln Ave.,
I was able to go through college studying poetry without ever learning who MINA LOY was, or BARONESS ELSA,

(“fellaheen”
“Tashkent” “Relax/
Stand at Attention”

“people
are walrus,
fuck ‘em”) “Things”

have
not suddenly
cohered; have not

suddenly
become a
vast unitary sensical

blob,
it’s still
all editing: of

fragments.
There is
no whole: only

continuity.
I need
bumps along the

way
to remind
me that I’m

interacting
with stuff,
my knee hurts

bad
where I
banged it on

the
bumper of
Sam’s truck. Get

your
hand off
my breast. (it

is
serious / it
is a joke)

I
choose whichever
response happens to

be
contextually convenient.
There [is] / a

sense
of / disorder
in / the air.

I
[can] smell /
a sort of

funk /
(and almost
hear / Buddy Guy’s

guitar
cry / real
tears). … But / what

the
hay. / I
adjust / my squirrel

fur
thong, / (head
in front/ tail

on
back), / put
on / sparkly stripper

socks
[my sparkly
stripper socks] and

and
and and
and. All of

a
sudden a
bull comes charging

out
of nowhere
and no I

wasn’t
always this
ugly. I used

be far uglier. “We are entering the era of universal subtitling” “Flight-lines, translation programmes and chains of heterogeneous elements articulate each other. Our universe becomes a territory all dimensions of which may be travelled both in time and space” “in search of the coy orb”

hello
am I
OK? Do I

want
to come
home? I hear

the
“… rumor of
[my] bare feet

over
the dust …”
of the impeccable

macroeconomy
of the
abandoned palaces and

huts.
A block
away large bulldozers

busily
demolish a
small grove in

order
to erect
a mass of

buildings
exactly like
this one. If

you
dream of
scissors. If you

being
old is
not so bad.

If
you trying
on a hat

in
a shop.
If you glancing

at
the wicker
nightstand. If you

play
marimba on
your rib cage.

If
you can’t
even see my

hands.
If you
two dogs stuck

together.
If you
the male lifts

one
leg. If
you not the

wooden
spoon. If
you when you

speak
to me
I feel my

blood
sliding. If
you if you

would
give me.
If you. I

don’t
know what
happens when one

lives.
The shoe
squeaks when rubbed

excessively,
it will
be better to

listen
to the
barrel-organ swollen

by
whews and
sighs, Descartes walks

into
a bar …
The vertebrae ache.

Here at the center of a void inundated by a shadow of flashing color, the necessity of the voice released by psychic automatism to find its body provokes the primal spark of dynamic movement while the great “negativistic hand” André Breton exalted as an essential lever of poetic vitality opens dialectically the window on the Heraclitian plane of “the hidden harmonies.” It’s sort of like when you fly from America to Australia and lose an entire day - somewhere - somehow - it just doesn’t exist - and yet it does - and so I want to know where it is. The first sleep, where the eyes are involved--gives one time to look around. I usually say that I am seeing myself when I am asleep, but don’t really mean that. I mean that I am first sleeping. Here the concept of rule begins to move beyond the obvious and to extend, as a general principle. Like water, the earth’s crust, mental illness, and knowledge, where is the true red, yellow, or blue? Who’s Afraid of Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives? I don’t know what the sound of a 25-mile ice shelf detaching into the Arctic Ocean after 3,000 years sounds like, but I walk out into the night with that seemingly impossible sound in my head. Even the cracks in the ground cast long sharp shadows. We live through it the way aphids traverse a rose. You will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one. Bish bash bosh. Off the ricta. No bliss more blatant than, clearly beaten by the stars, trying to underline a verb in a text without any: aaaa aaaaa aaaaaa aaaaaaa aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaah aaaaaaauugh aaaaaagh aaaaaahhhhh aaaaaaugh aaaaagh aaaaah. “Garcia Lorca stole poetry from this drinking fountain” (Robert Duncan, Caesar’s Gate). “Content never equals meaning.” Meaning = “frame lock”. It’s no mistake that one of the most hilarious interludes in this long poem is the meta-redundant, “And then we’ll go axeroxing! Axeroxing! Axeroxing.” A carpenter plays a xylophone with two hammers. A Marxist makes use of a burning palace for his “sensible reading lamp.” These are love poems—written by everyone to no one in particular. In a two-dimensional house the stairs are drawn of chalk. A flat sun holds dominion in the mirror, dear reader, and the basement is a theory. That is, they say, they suppose, as they say; on a clear day, for example on a clear day, they suppose. In a large room, in a very large room, with very large language in a large room; suppose it’s a clear day, and this is a very large room with very large language, as a conditional persistence of the room; unable to think of a thing without insisting this is a room that is large, obeying some secret imitation of a large room, in the momentum of large language, that is an imitation of a large room, as an imperative without a departure, with is a given, that is a word given, given in a word, much closer than we think, thinking in terms of a familiarity, that could be a proximity of familiar, and or a haunting familiar in close proximity, anticipating a future, anticipating a potential possible, the advent of the eventual. In the Liber de Ascendi et Descendi, one lie after another, informing you a bit about the translation process and how this process might maintain a stylized history-as-bitchin'-travelogue. The author, an author, asks, smittenly, “Are not dead birds mushmouth color, turning in this wind in rotation?” And then it was dark. As we scrambled for the car, it became apparent to me we had not brought a designated driver. It was my Rambler, but as I took the wheel it seemed to break off in my hands. I didn't tell anybody this; instead, I translated: We're going to have to wait here a couple of hours while the battery re-charges. Nobody challenged me. It was a perfect translation. Leave it in the ground. Adios, Busy Signal. O little beep beep beep. O. So long nothing about you means anything anymore. “Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler.” A falsetto voice, a spare piano line furnished by Erik Satie, the occasional echo effect, a smattering of out-of-nowhere rolled Rs, some deep-throated recitative, a little Björk-like mangling of English phonemes, and, for lyrics, a passage out of Adorno's Minima Moralia. We don’t even know what our desire is. We ask other people to tell us our desires. We would like our desires to come from our deepest selves, our personal depths—but. It is out of such dust that the annihilated It is out of such dust that the annihilated It is out of such dust that the annihilated. Birthed from and of. Without a center, vital energies flowing skywards and waterwards and sidewards. Aerial roots. Latching and pushing and moving and prying, but always always always. It was a beautiful night, I was in love. “That’s what it was, but I don’t know if I really said it, or if I was convincing enough.” I touch one lip with my middle finger. Consciousness dwells in this contact. I start to explore it. Often consciousness conceals itself in folds, lip resting on lip, palate closed on tongue, teeth against teeth, eyelids lowered, tightened sphincter, the hand closed into a fist, fingers pressed against each other, the rear surface of one thigh crossed on the front face of the other, or one foot resting on the other. I bet that the homunculus, tiny and monstrous, of which each part is proportional to the magnitude of sensation, swells in those automorphic places, when the skin tissue folds upon itself. By itself, the skin takes on consciousness ... Without this folding-over, this contact of the self with itself, there would be no internal sense, no body of one's own, or even less coenesthesia, no body image, we would live without consciousness, featureless, on the point of vanishing. Or not. The Mumbai Highgrove Stud Racing Syndicate owns a horse named Spinoza. Every evening after nine at least five people are staggering. Alas, The Bleeding Skin, The Day of the Great Pardon. Offering a bite of your

dish
is a
nice gesture at

home,
but avoid
it in India.

I
am an
ouch cube of

nerves.
I am
entirely fucked up.

[Note: Sources: the 4th in a series utilizing The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (Edited by Cecilia Vicuña and Ernesto Livon-Grosman), Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today’s Latino Renaissance (ed. Ray González) (again I work both from the end back), and the eternal and, of course. Again includes a bunch of stuff via Silliman-links, 7 Aug 09.

Gary Barwin, as quoted by Geof Huth, in “What We (Anyway) Are”, at dbqp, 6 Aug 09; Allen Ginsberg, letter to Gregory Corso, 12 Jun 76, in The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (ed. Bill Morgan); Osvaldo Lamborghini, “The Most Amusing Song of the Devil (A Prose Work Half in Verse, No Joke …)” (tr. G J Racz); Eugenio Montejo, “The World’s Practice”, “Good-Bye to the Twentieth Century”, “A Bird’s Earthness”, (tr. Jen Hofer); Óscar Hahn, “Visions of Hiroshima”, “Conjuror’s Trick” Itr. James Hoggard); Eileen Tabios, “Going Live”, at The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys, 7 Aug 09; Ray González, “Brown Pot”, “Cabato”, “There” (in González); Frederick Seidel “Beyond the Event Horizon” and Bernadette Mayer “Drinking in the Daytime”, as quoted in Raymond McDaniel, “Big Talkers: Frederick Seidel’s and Bernadette Mayer’s poetic monologues”, at Boston Review, July/Aug 09; Alejandra Pizarnek, “From the Other Side” (tr. Lynne Alvarez), “Fiesta”, “Useless Frontiers” (tr. Susan Bassnett); Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones (tr. Charlotte Mandell) (tip o’ the cap to Omo Bob, who also gets props for the gold grommets); Farid Matuk, “Of Mule and Deer”, “Long Before and Shortly After”, at Boston Review, July/Aug 09; Nada Gordon, “Flarf? Memorable? Novel?”, “Disjunction is not Dead”, at Ululations, 4 & 6 Aug 09; Adam Fieled, “Flarf Time”, at Stoning the Devil, 5 Aug 09; Tom Beckett, “The Other Day”, at Slim Windows, 8 Aug 09; Roque Dalton, “No, I Wasn’t Always This Ugly” (tr. James Graham); Nicolas Bourriaud, as quoted by Anne Boyer, “this blog is a cage of monsters” at odali$qued, 6 Aug 09; Susana Thenon, “Poem With Simultaneous Translation Spanish-Spanish”, “Nuptial Song” (tr. Renata Treital); Sergio Mondragón, “Exodus of the Gods” (tr. James O’Hearn); Isabel Fraire, “‘Housing Complex’” (tr. Thomas Hoeksema); bits from the first line of each of Richard Garcia’s poems in González; Gerardo Deniz, “Sexologic”, Meditate” (tr. Monica de la Torre); Alfredo Silva Estrada, “Grape Harvests” (tr. Jen Hofer); Hoa Nguyen, “They Sell You What Disappears”, as quoted in Stephen H. Sohn, “Effective instability: on Hoa Nguyen’s Hecate Lochia”, at Gently Read Literature; JBR, “Here at the center of a void … (HTADL/SCACIEO transformation View of “Girl Singing” No. 2)”; Yahoo! headline, 2:42 p.m., 8 Aug 09; R Crumb, somewhere]