Zeitgeist Spam

FCF 106 fragment

Now
an awkwardness
always signifies something …

as
do chickens
rendered inebriated by

chunks
of bread
soaked in whiskey,

a
walker walking
along a moving

stairway,
in a
truck with see-

through
sides. I
do not have

a
perspective on
my own body

the
way I
perceive other bodies.

In
a world
of all noise,

it’ll
be tonight.
Another three rounds

of
rope, higher
up, do not

merely
frame her
breasts, but cut

deep.
And these
bookmark-sized pages

say
things like
“here comes a

pop-
up / yellow
silt” or “I

flow
in two
directions / radiation up,”

a dropper full of marrow                                       a dropper full of sea

                                  from a planet of mostly seas.

“I
am like
you in most

ways,”
she tells
us. “My introductory

paragraph
comes at
the beginning and

I
have muscle
fat and a

skeleton
that keeps
me from collapsing

into
suet. But
my real skeleton

is
made of
scars; a web

that
traverses me
in (        ) dimensions.

I
am most
myself in the

gaps.”
We have
twenty minutes to

wait
at the
site where Barbie™

signs
autographs. HOWEVER,
AS YOU MAY

HAVE
INTUITED, I
HAVE YET TO

TURN
INTO AN
INVISIBLE TELEKINETIC CHAMPION

OF
JUSTICE. Artemis
interrupts this celebratory

dance.
In Codex
Artaud III there

is
a figure
holding a banner

with
a head
on it … In

The
Acrobat (1990)
the figures are

dispersed
across seven
vertical panels to

create
a centrifugal
movement composed of

two
alternating images –
a female gymnast

performing
a backward
flip taken from

the
pose of an
Egyptian acrobat on

the
temple at
Carnak, and a

pre-
Columbian carving
of a crouching

skeleton.
I wish
I had my

Lorenzo
Chiesa with
me. Now “imagine a city colonized by its own economy
where power is diffuse but highly centralized

wrapped as smooth as a vinyl texture map

The class structure and day-to-day business are highly ergonomic

They rely on easy listening surveillance
nothing more threatening –
(        ) (        ) (        ) –
than a beep from a remote

The weather and the architecture offer no immediate threat
no sense of rifle sights aimed by lunatics at innocents

In fact
(        ) (        ) (        )
there is nothing more than the risk of a bad sunburn or an occasional mudslide

We can drive or navigate its “streets” without getting crushed by biker assassins from a Japanese animé

You do not jack up sour memories like shooting with dirty needles here

Everyone loves to talk digital and sleep near the warmth or their monitors

Snap
to Grid.”
Choose your illusion[s].

Bleed
to “[d][e][a][p][t][h].”

[Note: Sources: Jacques Derrida, as quoted in Declan McGonagle, “The Classical Trace”, in Jon Bird, Leon Golub: Echoes of the Real; Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (trs. Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods with the participation of Mathieu Copeland); Jon Bird, “Survey: Dancing to a Different Tune”, in Jon Bird, Jo Anna Isaak, Sylvère Lotringer, Nancy Spero; JBR, comment appended to Ernesto Priego, “The Age of Simplicity”, at Never Neutral, 19 Oct 09; quote from a poem that’s been incorporated into Nancy Spero, The Ballad of Marie Sanders / Voices: Jewish Women in Time, 1993, as seen in Bird/Isaak/ Lotringer; Sylvère Lotringer, “Focus: Explicit material”, in Bird/Isaak/ Lotringer; Anne Boyer, quoting Lynn Behrendt (while reviewing her Luminous Flux and Ann Lauterbach’s Or to begin again), in “'13. Tiny distinctions appear among luminosities’ or ‘perform parthopoeia on what used to be your gallows’”, and “14. ‘oh mute promise of bunnies overpopulating the sod’”, at Books of Poetry, 18 Oct 09; Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl, as quoted by George Landow (sample includes a little Landow-bit), “Hypertext as Collage Writing”, in The Digital Dialectic (ed. Peter Lunenfeld); Brenda Laurel, “Musings on Amusement in America”, in Lunenfeld; Peter Lunenfeld, USER: Infotechnodemo; Nancy Spero, interview with JoAnna Isaak, and Isaak herself, in Bird/Isaak/Lotringer; Norman M Klein, preface to Peter Lunenfeld, Snap to Grid: A User’s Guide to Digital Arts, Media, and Cultures; Guns’n Roses. i.m. Nancy Spero]

Hear Ye Hear Ye

In a few days I'm off to Italy (R&R) then England, for the London Small Publishers Fair. The Fair, and 13 Nov, will go down in history as the official release of [ drum roll, please] two new Leafe Press Publications:

1,000 Views of “Girl Singing”
John Bloomberg-Rissman (ed.)
ISBN: 978-0-9561919-1-5

Since there's lots of color. the book’s kinda expensive. It will list for £23.00/$45.00. BUT: if you buy it from us, instead of Amazon or wherever else it's listed, we'll sell it for cost plus a little to help cover postage:

£16.00/$27.00

Here’s the story: I had come to #200 in a project called Autopoiesis and thought: time for a break, a new direction for a while. What to do, what to do? I’d been thinking about bpNichol’s Translating Translating Apollinaire project, and about Oulipo, especially Queneau’s Exercises in Style. And I’d been reading (with great pleasure) David Cameron’s Flowers of Bad. So I thought I’d take a poem, and translate it (so to speak) using every algorithm I could find. Next step: find a poem. I was reading Eileen Tabios, and came across her “The Secret Life of an Angel”; this appealed to me vis-à-vis my project, because it is already one step removed from a Jose Garcia Villa poem, “Girl Singing”, to which it is a response. So I had the poem, and the title, which, to please myself, was 1000 Views of ‘Girl Singing’, the Garcia Villa poem from which I would not work, but which was waving from the distance ...

So far, so good. Now, here’s where it gets interesting – to me, at least. I thought I’d do most of the work, while calling for a bit of input from others, à la a couple of Nichol’s “algorithms”. Well, it turned out that responses to my call for the memory translation and the homolinguistic translation were WAY more interesting than I had imagined, and WAY more plentiful. People sent text, vispo, other visuals, audio, video ... So I said hmmmm, I’m now editing an anthology. And my principle for compiling it will be: every time I encounter a “likely suspect” (and I wanted some who were not “professional” artistes) I’ll ask her/him/whatever if they’d like to play. I’d do this til 2008 runs out.

Contributors:

Eileen R Tabios
John Bloomberg-Rissman
Geof Huth
Rebeka Lembo
Lolabola
Mark Young
Ernesto Priego
Sam Bloomberg-Rissman
Robert Rissman
Sheila E. Murphy
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
Rebekah May
Jean Vengua
Lucy Morris/Ernesto Priego
Alan Baker
Franek Wygoda
harry k stammer
Kuei Chiu
Claire Rissman-Sherr
Rupert M Loydell
Ivy Alvarez
Ed Baker
Giles Goodland
Jared Schickling
Mike Cannell
Yichen Chiu
Steve Mitchell
Cecilia Sophia Ibardaloza
Rolly delos Santos
Tim Gaze
Cralan Kelder
Aileen Ibardaloza
Anny Ballardini
Lida Bushloper
John M. Bennett
C. J. Allen
Sasha Steensen

*for musical and video contributions, please see Girl Singing.com, which will be up and running by the time the book’s released.

* * *

Fragments of a Forgotten Genesis
Abdellatif Laâbi
tr. Nancy Hadfield, Gordon Hadfield
ISBN: 978-0-9561919-0-8
£8.95/$15.00

Abdellatif Laâbi was born in 1942 in Fes, Morocco. He is Morrocco's foremost contemporary poet. In 1966 he founded Anfas/Souffles, an important literary review, which provided a focus for Moroccan creative energies. It was banned in 1972. Abdellatif Laâbi was imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to ten years in prison for “crimes of opinion” (for his political beliefs and his writings) and served a sentence from 1972-1980. He was then forced into exile in France, where he has lived since 1985.

This single long poem was originally published in 1998 by Editions Paroles d’Aube. Fragments d’une genèse oubliée / Fragments of a Forgotten Genesis is a surrealistic refiguring of Genesis presented in twenty-six “fragments.” As a whole, the work is a mystical yet cynical re-visioning of both the Old Testament and the Koran.

English-French dual text

Check out a sample at Litter.

* * *

If you’re in the Americas, contact j at johnbr dot com.

If you’re in Europa, contact leafepress at hotmail dot com.

If you’re elsewhere, contact either of us.

* * *

I should have on and off (more on than off) connectivity throughout the trip, so we can stay in touch. I’ll be back 16 Nov. Y’all take care now.

FCF 105

>> and
the sensation
of being the

viscous
liquid that
roams the city

mea
culpa mea
culpa crabor librumot

boom
ça triffel
offen al havel

nar
pullenbus,                           suddenly
stricken – “                          email me,

how
much time
do I have

for
heaven? Heaven: The Heaven Pit and Ground Seam Scenic Spot is a part of Qiyao Mountain range and the geodetic structure is located in the extension part of the upward and folded zone of Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou at the west edge of Wuyi Mountain-Xuefengshan Mountain folded zone in Neocathaysian structural system. The direction of structural line is NE-SW. It is a typical landform of shallow-medium cut platform peak-cluster depression. The emerged strata are the medium-thick strata in Jialingjiang formation of the lower series in Triassic system, with little thin limestone interbedding, and gradually ascended in three steps from southwest to northeast. The karst hydrogeological system of Xiaozhai Heaven Pit-Tianjingxia Ground Seamis composed of the wider valleys on its upper reaches, the gorges, water discharging holes and ground seam on its middle reaches and the underground river and heaven-window funnel on its lower reaches, the drainage area of the system is 230 km², the height difference between the head and the tail of the system is 1700m, and the whole length from the head to the tail of the system is about 37km. The wider valley section of the upper reaches is 7.5 km long. Tongshuoba-Maochaoba Basin which was developed along the anticlinal axis is located on the peak -cluster depression in elevation of 1900-2000m, with the elevation at the valley bottom of 1710m and slope descent of 0.02. The section on the middle reaches is featured by gorges and is 13km long, the gorge is 100m-500m wide, with the cut depth of 200m-500m. This section is a section strongly affected by Shuoyuan erosion in the Quaternary period, with the slope descent of 0.04. The ground water flows into underground from several places one-odd kilometer from its lower section, water mainly flows into the black holes at the valley's bottom and always ends at these places in dry and normal-flow seasons. The compound valley section (its lower part is a screen-like valley) of Tianjingxia ground seam is 5.5km long and is a box-type valley with the width of its upper part of 200-400m and depth of 300m-400m, extending towards Chigucao dry valley with its bottom elevation of 1000m. The lower part is the “Tiangjingxia Ground Seam” with the width of top opening of 10m-30m and the width of seam bottom of 1m-15m. The depth is gradually added to 150m-229m and the width gradually gets to be narrower from its upper reaches to its lower reaches, finally, it becomes a “seam” and thus called Tianjingxia Ground Seam. The slope descent of the valley section of the ground seam is 0.07, it is the largest in this hydrogealogical system. The Tianjingxia valley, starting from the south end of Chigucao dry valley, changes into an underground river, which flows through the Xiaozhai heaven pit and ends at the outlet of Migonghe River, with total length of 7.026 km and slope descent of 0.046, this is the section of lower reaches of this hydrogeological system. The width of the underground river cavern is mostly less than 15m, but its height is over 100m. The temperature in the cavern is lower than 10 ?, annual average flow rate is 8.77 m3/s and the maximum flowrate is 174m3/s. The outlet of the underground river is located on the precipice of Migonghe River, with the waterfall drop of 46m. Xiaozhai Heaven Pit is actually a “heaven window” of the underground river on the lower reaches of this karst hydrogeological system, and is called karst tunnel. Xiaozhai Heaven Pit is close to the edge of the precipitous cliff on the right bank of deep-cut Daxi River. The elevation of the pit mouth is 1330m, and the elevation of the river bed in a shortest distance is 300m, the relative height difference between them exceeds 1000m. The measured data obtained by Wanxian hydrogeological team in 1984 indicate that the elevation of the highest and lowest points on the precipitous cliff at the heaven pit mouth is respectively 1331m and 1188m and there is an underground river flowing through the bottom of the heaven pit, with the elevation of 669m. It can be seen from this that the maximum and minimum depth of the Xiaozhai Heaven Pit is respectively 662m and 511m. In the vertical depth, Xiaozhai Heaven Pit is in double-layer structure, its upper part is a large elliptic pit, with the diameter of 537m -626m and depth of 320m, and its lower part is a vertical rectangle-like well, with the depth of 342m and mouth diameter of 357m in north-south and 268m in west-east, and at the pit bottom, there is a developed inclined slope. The total volume of the heaven pit is 119.348 mm3. Precipices stand on its all sides, just like they are cut by axe or knife. The pit is completely enclosed, if you stand at the pit bottom, you seem to look at the sky from the bottom of a well. This scenic spot is in middle subtropical warm and moist southeast monsoon climate zone, and since it is affected by the terrain rise and the general configuration of the earth's surface, the vertical climate changes greatly, the main climate of mountains is distinct and the rainfall is abundant, which make the animals and plants in middle and north subtropical zones and middle temperate zone able to live and breed. It has been proved that in this scenic spot there are 224 plant families with 1285 species, including the national Class I protected plant dawn redwood, 13 species of the national Class ? protected plants such as gingko, walnut, cucommia and so on, and 8 species of Class ? protected plants. The coverage rate of vegetation is up to 80% or more. There are the national Class I protected animal golden monkey, 15 species of Class II Protected animals such as giant salamander, otter, zibet, clouded leopard, golden pheasant, Chinese pangolin and musk deer, and 14 species of Class III protected animals. Owing to the particular geography and land form, here live many unique wild animals, including the Yang fish and glass fish in the underground river, the white tadpoles in the hidden river of the ground seam, the white crickets in deep caverns and the rare flying squirrels in the caverns, etc.

She holds a gaslight in her hand and it glows, glows just as the waterfall in the distance behind her sparkles as the waterless and illuminated water falls. If we move one of our eyes to the farthest edge of one of the holes
there was a

distributor
of uranium
open day and

night,
so they
became brilliant without

knowing
it. Since
then the phrase

“paid
content” has
been in everyone’s

tweets
and

every now and then the sound of an ambulance somewhat far away somewhat near reminds them to

          because of

the
dust. “DAZZLING”
)( brine emboss fluster

outre
leap saddle
-> that gismo

=
TOAST in
discontent lacunae swan

cortices,
you know
where I’m comin

from?
I’m comin
from “whet”, “choir”,

“cola”,
“CRANKCASE”, “SECRETIVE”,
.tripping.in.a.hollow.planed.cusp], the horrors

of
your least
metonym. H says

[“find a seam,

plant
a mine,
and slip away.”]

‘Jake says the words on the Brambu
                                     Drezi video are proto-Sumerian’

The
rain is
pouring pixels. Are

you
asking where
we’ll gather when

this
world comes
to an end?

I
love the
most naked. Even

a
fat fly
bit me. We

trekked
the horizontal
and vertical interchange.

The
androgynous, non-
colonizing energy per

formative
in nature,
articulating as well

as
blurring where
it meets the

rest
of itself,
out there in

here
in that
region of displacement

where
we walked,
we saw, pointed

to
the windows,
walked up to

the
windows, “look,
look at that

chair,
that dress,
that hat, that

plate,
those puppies,
that table, that

clock,
those shoes,
that giant aspirin,

those
movie posters,
that painting, those

books,
those watches,
that jewelry, that

vase,
those Japanese
prints, that tie,

that
scarf, those
pigments, that chess

set”
language and
music were set

down
before you,
meat, instinct, daylight ________________________________________________

an
ice cube
in a cup

that’s
dumped into
the sink. Amen.

When
a tree
trembles, two trees

tremble,
then three.
All the creatures

are
comin’ out / / (le) / jazz / sim-
ple. Touch me

you
shimmer gifts
zzar zar zzar

zar
sacri-terror
firma. This tree,

my
branch,
my field of

seeds,
my herd
of worms. A

per-
son is
set in motion

by
a group
of weathers. The

water
falls, in
big. slow. drops.

Nipple,
penis and
clitoris are cut

from
the seams
of the same

uninhabited
parentheses. And
in that sense

I
also seam
to seem, from

pillar
to post
and seam to

seam,
etc., nothing
bleeds like halloween

than
good ear
wax. Gelatinous theatre

mandala.
In dis-ray location.
Where am I? Here. But I don’t know

It well.

But to a sonic page called vertigo,

It derangement? Wo es war.

Join us and our furry little friends, speaking German rapidly.
Yes. Or ja. Now, we’re going to go on to the next question:

You will look through
a pair of objects, like lightbulbs
whose light is coming from behind them

        The light that never went
        The light that never arrived

 They never went and never arrived; their hearts are almond seeds.

[Note: Sources: a groat’s worth of bits from Ekleksographia Wave Two: Translation Special (ed. Anny Ballardini), EOAGH, 5. And. Gladys González, “Scar” (trs. William Allegrezza and Galo Ghigliotto); Camilo Brodsky Bertoni, “The versions of silence: the rhythm of the palm” (trs. William Allegrezza and Galo Ghigliotto); Carlos Henrickson, Adjustment of Accounts XLII (trs. William Allegrezza and Galo Ghigliotto); Dennis Barone, “Lid”; Pam Brown, “Limbo Line”, “Pique”; anon, “Heaven Pit and Ground Seam Scenic Spot”, at UNESCO World Heritage; Geof Huth, “What is Given and What is Taken Away”, at dbqp, 11 Oct 09; Marco Giovenale, They were in Danger, (tr. Linh Dinh); Ernesto Priego, “West End Final: Not My Definition of ‘Free Press’”, at Never Neutral, 14 Oct 09; Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, “whet”, “choir”, “cola”, “CRANKCASE”, “SECRETIVE”; Mez Breeze, “-geo—hard—c[h]ore—“, at netwurker, 30 Sept 09; Arthur Rimbaud, “Maudlin Song” (tr. Bill Lavender); Harold Jaffe, as quoted by Chuck Richardson, and Richardson himself, comment appended to his “Jonathan Speaks: … A Reading of Joshua Cohen’s A Heaven of Others”, at Chuck Richardson, 10 Oct 09; Hank Lazer, “N13P21”; Stephen Vincent, comment to Jean Vengua, “October Rainstorm”, at Okir, 13 Oct 09; Ogonna Agu, “A Question Posed by a Kinsman to a Kinsman” (tr. Obododimma Oha); Paul Éluard, “Power of Speech” (tr. Barry Schwabsky); Celia Dropkin, “A Summer-Sonata” (tr. Yerra Sugarman). Now, to EOAGH. Arpine Konyalian Grenier, “At the First International Poetic Ecologies Conference”; Penelope Bloodworth, “A Topological Memoir”; Lynn Xu, “The Thought Did Not Bring You Closer”; Alan Sondheim, “what the wind said to the trees” (in Ekleksographia); Matt Turner, “The animalgram of the body complicates even murder in this Hogan, etcetera. But these brilliant golden curtains lack the radial anagrams found in all the comic book keys (“f-sharp”); JBR, Autopoiesis CXXV; Richard Lopez, “visual music”, at Really Bad Movies, 14 Oct 09 ; Lanny Quarles, “Spearing the New Animal in a Long Dead City”; Rachel Blau DuPlessis, “Draft 92: Translocation”; Sigmund Freud (not EOAGH); Tetman Callis, “In Working Real Life”; Kristin Gallagher, ”Then, If”; Mahmoud Darwish, “The Tragedy of Narcissus The Comedy of Silver” (tr. Fady Joudah), at Words Without Borders]

FCF 104

“It’s gonna [it’s gonna]. Rain [rain].” The [sound appeared to be in the middle of the protein milagro’s head, but as the protein milagro listened, it started to move to the left – first to the protein milagro’s left ear, then down the protein milagro’s left arm, out across the floor to the left, then finally a kind of reverb between channels] bruise loop

of remix beaming for we [we speak to ourselves because that’s what lonely people do sometimes]

with a latin transcription [of the words “protein milagro” is “being of sound”]

despite [X] [X] felt [a ripple of appreciation for] the protein milagro’s [amour fou, Love and Theft]

[“Roots and Wires”] [“total and simultaneous] field [of relations” …][… !]! The protein milagro dives [into high-production values, fat and greasy riffs]. Sensorium [that engulfs] [ …!]!

The protein milagro sounds like the [MarsWind] Superhighway the protein milagro will

imagine to imagine the unimaginable

from … freaking the praxis [from Freaking the Machine], … from

navigating the synaesthesia of its hyper

Festival. Any person (in modern use, now chiefly replaced by “anyone” or “the person”) has was [enormous, hydrogen-filled] many

[knowledge] protocols, and any person has will be …:

the spectral presence [hooooooooo] hovers [several meters above the floor in a long white sheet]

and builds [on old art]. “It’s a John Coltrane classic,”

the protein milagro has made [a gathering of “U”s and S”s] as [self-regenerative mutation] lattice of the protein milagro’s

business [“ … changed completely and will continue to change …”] “This is a [ubiquitous] nightclub of access

The protein milagro has Zing!, but no longer … [“raw”]

to blurring,” The protein milagro [retrochronically] triggers [itself]. Kurtz disappeared [“upriver”].

[But thanks to] Bugs Bunny. The protein milagro sold and attracted:

“You cannot not, my bifurcating [wavefront]

I. For I took [[I’s] first steps] with Hassan i Sabbah [over and over again]

[Even a casual visit to a complex ecosystem can become an intense musical experience, as the natural sounds that arise from a multiplicity of animals, playing the role of identification, seduction, warning, weave themselves into a rich sonic tapestry]”

[Vertical] axis [instinctively] reentering [the dark circularity]. Entered. “I” enters

contact while “you” came

so the protein milagro could trigger images [“It is actually surprising how little we know about sound”]

only adjective n can v,

only Never Girl can Singing.

I believes itself in the ‘understanding 

of Spin [the Painting]’ … its art-historical soup-up

to make it rise. …

sonic rainbow … [merging-and-diverging] fronts

[Don’t] make [the protein milagro stop this car] as we nonstop our bop

for [the casting of] bells [is an ancient

art]
nearer than
a wavelength away,

from
this distance
the fucking sounds

like

no stone
whose glyphs

::

[broad ink swaths

14 of ‘em]

::

euphrasy

::

Those
of us
remaining on the

bus
no longer
have recourse to

the
big story.
“Roll the TV

IT
IS STUPID
AND IT THINKS.

The
glass will
fall

She is
deciduous. People think

into the bright

sunshine
burning burning
in Germany a

young
lady has
no sex but

a
turnip has.

There
was ripped
cloth and a

hollow
ring of
bone dissolved into

a
raining snow
of my own

body
falling slowly,
swirls and clumps

and
I didn’t
want to know

there
was nothing
I got that

I
had wanted
yet a little

fuzz
or droplet
indicated its place

yet
this was
the normal, vast

octaves
of type
O blood dotted

the
page …

… strident lab animals in the forgone conclusion tubes …

… splice in [THINGS] SEEN UNSEEN …

Mars
wind … fossil
tripwire mountain stanza

code,
I dress
the cold stone

in
the hospital
gown, place it

quietly
on the
operating table and

THERE
IS NO
WET. Are tears

in
art real?
“Is that noise

in
my head
bothering you?” blaring

little
beat boxes
spitting out the

flotsam
and jetsam
of our zombified

existence,
simulacra of
sonnets ready to

pick
at your
brain cells with

their
prosthetic appendages.
Cannibalistic carnivalites, pedophobes,

and
cryptocrats to
adjuncts in arms,

freshmen
undertakers, and
pingpong tourists. Think

schlock
and Shklovsky,
and “enter your

edifice
by any
portal you choose,”

--surround
sound growing
a monstrous body

whose
diction extends
to your crotch

and
takes up
entire screens.” These

words
are not
voided: you just

can’t
cash them:
What is funny

“in
words” is
often brutal. The

gap
(“the untender
distance) between the

words
and their
OTHER can make

brutality
all the
more brutal. Now

imagine
something like
“a silence that

possesses /
neither corporations /
nor god.” I

need
to tell
you that, at

least,
and more,
It even almost

begins,
as I
have so often

asked
for, with
the word “Hello” --

“ka
ker flutt”
“She wades in

a
pool of
serum and amoebas

where
the oil
slick / is duct

taped
to scuba
equipment, and Das

Kapital,
which says,
“I am the

lapse”
“I am
the stone testicle”

“I think I could dig a hole into my head with a pencil.

Blinking flies out of my eyeballs.
Blink.
Blink.”                          )))))))         

Descartes
suggests perhaps
and then what

happens
is precious
and strange and

you’re
in it,
as the ambulance

turns
the corner,
equipped: sudoku,

iPhone,
and The
Making of Americans.

If
you want
to know what

it
feels like
to lose sovereignty,

go
to THE
FRONT. You are

my
unconscious, Blink
Blink Blink and

you
are structured
like Zeitgeist Spam,

muttering
what strange
99 most beautiful

names
lack of
lack leaving a

trace
= to
10⁶³ poppy seeds.

[Note: Sources: JBR, “THE PRICE/PERFORMANCE RATIO OF AN [AMBIENT] SOUND (Homosyntactical/Translexical/Fur-Covered Pillows Translation)”, in 1000 Views of “Girl Singing” (in commemoration of signing off on the proofs … release is scheduled for 13 Nov …); Jonathan Brannen, Deaccessioned Landscapes 18, 50, in The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (ed. Jeff Hilson); ekphrasis performed on David Miller’s visual sonnets in Hilson; spelchek; Ken Edwards, “Many to Many: Big Story”, in Hilson; Carol Snow, “Bowl, in American Hybrid (eds. Cole Swensen and David St John); Rod Smith, “The Good House”, in Swensen/St John; Eleanor Antin, Being Antinova; Tilla Brading, Notes in a Manor: of Speaking; Rachel Blau DuPlessis, “Draft 64: Forward Slash”, “Draft LXX: Lexicon”, in Torques: Drafts 58-76; Anne Waldman “[Things] Seen Unseen”, “She-Who-Must-Explicate”, Iovis: All Is Full of Jove XXIII, XXI, in In the Room of Never Grieve: New and Selected Poems 1985-2003; Michael McClure, Hail Thee Who Play; blurb for I Feel Different (curated by Jennifer Doyle) at LACE, 20 Oct 09 – 24 Jan 010 (“This exhibit gathers together artists working in the unusual registers of the sentimental and the sincere – testing the limits of what kinds of emotional expression are possible within art. In doing so, they ask us if tears register as “real” in art (and what happens when they do), what happens when we are asked to take on an artist’s outrage, depression, or pleasure as our own, or how much can an artist can really change how we feel (and if this what we want from them).”); Monica de la Torre, blurb for Marc Nasdor, Sonnetalia, and Nasdor himself, at Roof Books; Anne Boyer, “I want to begin to be regarded as war” (review of Cathy Eisenhower, would with and), and Eisenhower herself, Stacy Szymaszek, as quoted in Anne Boyer, “I have made a megaphone / MUTATO / NOMINE” (review of Szymaszek’s Hyperglossia), Sandra Simonds, as quoted in Anne Boyer, “a speech duct taped over the ear”, (review of Simond’s Warsaw Bikini), at Books of Poetry, 8 – 9 Oct 09; Rebecca Loudon, “I am a professional level perhaps Olympic class worrier.” at Radish King, 9 Oct 09; Bob Perelman, blurb for K Silem Mohammad’s The Front, as found at SPD; Sasha Steensen, “A Twilight World of Consent Rather Than Belief”, “His 99 most beautiful names lost”, “10⁶³ poppy seeds fill the universe”, in The Method]

Holy Holy And A Glimpse Of E

A Sonnet for Rebecca Loudon

Isn't “pep” a disturbing word?

Like “vim.”

What is “vim”?

“I have vim today.”

Word verification: roxin.

I know that I deserve love and accept it now! I attract only healthy relationships! When I believe in myself, so do others! I am at peace! Life is a joy filled with delightful surprises! I deserve love …

Especially if it got moist            which would make it perfect.

Word verification: roxin.

Then I used my Aveda Sugar Apple Smoothing Lip Color™ to draw this monster face over and over on the affirmations,

Jesus ahhhhh! HORRIBLE

- and it also told me to bake ahead.

xoxox

Ming & Ping, Screw Cupid & Postmarks!

How bout 5 bucks for the whole trash can?

[Note: a get well card. Sources: Rebecca Loudon, “Today is going to be a great day!”, at Radish King, 7 Oct 09, and appended comments by Greg Rappleye, 21k, Angela Simione, JBR; spam email rec’d at work as this was being finished …]

FCF 103

A
lot of
our work here

is
this scarring.
The site of

construction
begins with
vertical and horizontal

interrogatives
cutting along
the body. See

open
yourself to
the Antisentence Genitals

roam
freely. Inhabiting
the forms of

in
disguise / with
an edge predicament

invoking
Deleuze: co-
existing sheets of

time
wrapped in
gauze, a shroud.

I
have no
control over the

fizzurezzzzzzzzzz
in the
everyday. However much

signifiers
lack essence,
however much most

meanings
may be
said to be

unhinged
from a
referent, some meanings

are
not so
unhinged. For instance,

however
much the
traits of a

gender
may be
viewed as cultural

constructs,
not essential
qualities of biology,

the
fact that
some bodies don’t

bleed
unless they’re
in pain, while

others
shed blood
for the sake

of
the species,
means (!) that the

subjects
of these
bodies live the

signifiers
of gender
differently. The cultural

attribution
of instability
to a body

that
smells and
swells and leaks

and
gushes out
blood, and which

may
host other
smaller bodies, dead

or
alive, is
lived by its

“subject,”
however “structurally
neutral,” quite differently

from
the subject
of a body

U
(a universe,
expressed as a

vivid,
hexadic prism);
that’s a very

cool
word, “hexadic”
(it somehow almost

looks
like what
it means) and

the
phrase “vivid,
hexadic prisms” suggests

something
so unusual
and marvelous that

AOIEAIOUEUEOEUOEE
EIAIUEUEOUOAIAEAEE
AOIOEEUEOUEEAAE
UIOIEAUOUEUAEUUEE

are there words hidden, puzzle style, within the strings of vowels? How about patterns – repetition and variations – within and between the lines? Regardless of what you do or do not find that way,

a cerebrated celebration of vocalized vowels,

profound ones too, what with the relatively free passage of breath through the larynx and oral cavity

here again is the poem’s first line, hyphenated to help the eye-mind-larynx coordinate:

A-
O-I-
E-A-I-

O-
U-E-
U-E-O-

E-
U-O-
E-E itching

to
leap into
action as if

writing
were the
legacy of the

umpteenth
century, the
wars between the

words
harmlessly occupying
the fringes of

space
while nimble
fingers sew and

stretch
the Earth
into recognizable activity,

“ … I
dream and
that I am

a
dream and
that without my

love
my soul
runs into the

sun.
Hey, wait
for me! But

no.
it is
a crazy mofo.”

“I
see you
on the moon

with
your mirror
catching action on

the
parallax.” “The
sun is like

an
omen. The
moon, a variable

drip.
My heart
is like a

tire
fire. Okay,
enjoy this flat

mechanism
which is
maybe your hand.

Save
it until
you find a

use
for it.
Love, Love, Love,”

“I’m
a flame
I’m a card,

a
king! A
burning king card

with
a heart!
With many hearts”

over two hundred trillion trillion trillion massless earths
are passing through the sun every second

they close and open like a clam

crazy
Yoko-ish
singing, bodies, films

of
film strips,
filed scratched words,

like
a parody
of an art

film,
guns, clutched
breasts, wailing, jumping

bodies,
more scratches,
hands on bodies,

masturbation,
“Men Must
have dreams but

they
should never
be asleep”, oh ugh, “there’s

violence
breeding inside
this tube of

lipstick”
solarized, gels,
effect, hexagonal light

forms,
crunchy scratchy
sounds, giant bees

flapping,
breathing noises,
underwater, OK got

it,
amniotic, “avant-
garde” screeching, little

sexy
panting noises,
I suppose this

is
cutout paper
dolls in natural

settings,
OK, I
like this, some

kind
of feathery
net with orchids

and
uh maybe
uh milkweed seeds?

My
mother dresses
me funny. I

am
so much
in contact. I

think
it is
very to incessantly

want
to do
something. We love

our
solutions almost
as much as

our,
like, (The
speaker is ever

confounded,
as is
the bug of

whom
she speaks,
by yet “another

outrage
of the
bug/person barrier,”

but
over and
over, between us

non-
bugs and
bugs, a place

for our
mutual pursuit
to turn itself

into
i.e. all
of the following:

“diagram,
game, bug
sound or anatomy,”)

got
it where
it hurts, i.e.

in
the synthesis-
of-all-modes

mode,
don’t you
think compulsion might

be
transnational? What
would you like

more of, exactly  ???  =hyperfretted and fraction-precise lugubrious, half loopy/half calamitous monononologue fueled by a heroic dose of the slyly impetuous fractal-jazz pulse from a hilariously steep brain-grade – a little like what a late Beckett voice might sound like if it could manage for a moment to talk about “Bird dogs in space.”=

[Note: Sources: Ron Silliman’s links, 5 Oct 09; and. Michelle Naka Pierce “Adfempo. Constellations.”, at michelle naka pierce: no use in a centre; Christine Wertheim, introductory essay, Feminaissance, as quoted by Nada Gordon, “Adfempo Report Part 1”, Nada Gordon, “Adfempo Report Part 2”, “Adfempo Report Part 3” (w/comments by Vanessa P(lace?) and Stephanie (?)),at ululations, 26, 27, 30 Sept 09; Christian Bok, “Vocables”, “AEIOU”, in the new and improved Eunoia, as quoted by Steven Fama, and Fama himself, “A-E-I-O-Upgrade!”, at the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica, 3 Oct 09; Peter Seaton, “Persuasion”, in Agreement, at Eclipse; Ish Klein, poems from Union! as quoted in Nick Demske, “My Mission Is Kindness”, at Gently Read Literature; Bernadette Mayer, “A Neutrino Casino”, in “Jennifer Karmin & Bernadette Mayer on Neutrinos”, at Delirious Hem, 28 Sept 09; Jordan Davis, “Narragansett”, in The Nation, 23 Sept 09; Paul Ebenkamp (ed. Meg Hurtado), “Bay Area Lit Scene 4: The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand” (on Laura Moriarty, Clark Coolidge), at Omnidawn Blog, 4 Oct 09]

FCF 102

We should not be surprised. For it is through misunderstanding that the unconscious lets us glimpse a little of the real. And therein lies the purpose of analysis, which is to replace the misunderstanding inherited from our ancestors with another,

the
         one
                   created
by

a
burning glass;
a watery sphere;

orgasm
is essentially
a narrative,

road
becomes so
instantly metonymy, it

sings
when tires
grind over it,

hoping
to build
a house, part

snow,
part victory,
ice and sun

balancing
the untrained
shafts, part sheet

music,
part dust,
sings often – parts

open,
flake, break
open, let go,

but
this forgetting,
is it not

constitutive,
rather than
accidental? Wouldn’t it

be
nice to
be able to

say
something like
I find three

muddy
stones, I
roll over and

my
color falls
off, (“as if

the
weapons were
moving // entirely in

the
wrong direction”)
(“horses laugh // and

clouds
put on
their aprons”)???

Red
sky, lumpy
balloonlike objects. Sperm?

A
pooltable covered
by a tablecloth,

or
a flatroofed
gazeboey outbuilding. Ground

or
wroughtiron fence.
Plants with roots?

More
sperm? Blue
wash. Red mountains.

Horizon.
Never collapse
the gap between

phenomenal
reality and
the messianic Other,

since
this leads
to an impossible

situation
of opposing
aporias. There are

really
only two
choices at this

point:
the creative
effervescence of funkentelechy,

or
the viral
dread of the

placebo
syndrome: eat
up all the

rocks
and trees,
and be eaten.

Choose
both. You’re
the new nomad

of
intelligent noisists,
you mass of

thrum,
playing on
the keyboard of

samplified
bloodflow. Take
this diagram. Men

die
of. You
should lie down

now
and remember
the forest, for

it
is disappearing –
no, the truth

is
gone now.
The dove sang

who
whoo [verb
illegible]. You will

suffer
from diarrhea
for a while

then
die on
a sunny day,

but
it will
rain on the

day
of yr
funeral. It will/you will/it will.

Beloveds,
how can
we understand it

at
all? They
are we here

and
on the
desire and the

hour
they are
we here taken

to
traverse completely
sufficiently in the

hope
or in
the desire and

in
the hour
they are we

here.
The composer
and the audience

wear
blindfolds. In
fear we lay

longitudinal.
How do
you make a

dumbball?
Spend fifteen
hours tossing a

lump
of wet
concrete back and

forth
between your
hands, a
sort of one thing standing

in for another
something like

like heartbreak, exhaustion, being broke, or drunk, or trying to hold onto Mother

is it turtle soup again?

; in these Hellenistic rem¬nants we hear the echoes of Blind Willie Johnson’s apologetics and Bessie Smith’s epistemology of love

—singing, Mother

is it turtle soup again?

yield, and then Ssssshh, and then

yield, and then Ssssshh, and then

yield, and then Ssssshh, and then

We are deceived at every level by our behavior. You are grammar and the city is syntax. This home-grown veggie has the brilliant, vulgar, infinite, intimate, alluring vivacity of the real. If you search for meaning that can be summarized, you will find multiple meanings, all of them capable of confounding any summary by proposing its own opposite, its own doppelganger, its own disguise, its own cohort. ("fleet of heart"). And every here word is true—in harsh light—unheimlich—("the time it takes / to wash the fire from your face") brandishes the whip. The psyche rises

as
a mist
from things that

are
wet like
a whiskey radio

in
a Tupperware
cup. Pinkness purses

its,
in * adoring
you do I

divide
you * double ?
smoke * smiles out

upwards
from your
life’s lips leaving

suggestions
of sidereal
serpents are three

ways
to begin.
The horns impressed

us,
and the
drums suggested a

permanent
delay. We
felt like [         ]-orists

but
even partial
words are searchable

now.
“Work hard,
play hard” has

been
the over-
eager motto of

a
generation in
training for…what?—

drawing
hearts in
cappuccino foam or … Maybe we had it all wrong. Maybe it’s all exterior. Maybe certain hierarchies fall when everything—found and unfound—gets in. Maybe not as things, but as “as octopus / on the porch snow / still now a comma / a ticket a timetable.” Or maybe “We are going to get serious [page break] about project management / we are going to spend a lot of money on project / management software to prove it.” Maybe we are.

That
our pleasure
is our labor

only
makes our
symptoms more manageable.

But
not by
us. Lips are

rain
leaking in
after a fast,

“little
deflated splashes
of color on

the
floor.” But
the cycle continues:

and
the cycle
continues: I have

muscles,
I can
breathe the grass

as
it comes
through the dirt,

in a human being, desires lose their mooring in biology, they are operative only insofar as they are inscribed within the horizon of Being sustained by language; however, in order for this transposition from the immediate biological reality of the body to the symbolic space to take place, it has to live a mark of torture in the body in the guise of its mutilation.

This
brin [text
breaks off] behind,

hands
dart twines
fructify [bare] (so

long,
skydivers) bark
and shake, savor

the
sense of
gibbons swinging tree

to
tree. We
have not occupied

this
building for
no reason. We

intend
to employ
this tactic until

it
becomes generalized.
Just as significantly,

we
have made
no demands. “May

your
eyes go
to the sun,

your
life’s breath
to the wind.

Go
to the
sky or earth,

as
is your
nature; or go

to
the waters
if that is

your
fate. Take
root in the

plants
with your
limbs.” How could

these
wet souls
not love seeing

through
the specular
glass? This pink

pad’s
no stationery
tool—it’s the

house
Jayne Mansfield
lived in. I

just
knew it
had something grand

in
it! Lychees
maybe, because they

look
like squishy
eyeballs, yet taste like

perfume,
or a
Looney Tune pineal gland.

From the purple ceiling
hangs a naked bulb, he yanks on its chain and
the purple brightens
to weave in high theory with the embar-
rassingly intimate and grotesque. Elves
walk with us. Dinosaur is female there-
fore a prostitute. I can see her cunt.
And a
rhinestone,
which has
forever dented my

forehead.

[Note: Sources: books in my briefcase, books in my office, and poets on Ron Silliman’s 1 Oct 09 new acquisitions list. And. Philippe Julien, Jacques Lacan’s Return to Freud: The real, the symbolic and the imaginary (tr. Devra Beck Simiu); Norma Cole and Michael Palmer, A Library Book, in Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (ed. Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, David Trinidad); Sheila Murphy, Pure Mental Breath, in Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (eds. Leonard Schwartz, Joseph Donahue, and Edward Foster); Peter Gizzi, “Etudes, Evidences”, as quoted in Cole Swensen, “Peter Gizzi’s City: The Political Quotidian”, in American Poetry of the 21st Century: The New Poetics (eds. Claudia Rankine and Lisa Sewell); Joan Larkin, “Jewish Cemetery, West Roxbury”, in The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading (eds. Eileen Myles and Liz Kotz); Camille Roy, “2 Pure Girls”, in Myles/Kotz; Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, The Meditations, as quoted in Elizabeth A Frost’s blurb; ekphrastic vision of Judith Wolfson’s The Meditations cover art; Andrea Hurst (paraphrasing Zižek), in Derrida Vis-à-vis Lacan: Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis; Steven Shaviro, Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society; critical comments, and description of a photo, at Francisco López.net; Frances Presley, “take this diagram”, in The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (ed. Jeff Hilson); Susan Stewart, “The Forest”, “Awaken”, in American Hybrid (eds. Cole Swensen and David St John); Maurice Scully, “Sonnet (‘when I follow the pattern of scratches on the’)”, “Sonnet (‘From your previous life you have brought’)”, in Hilson; Juliana Spahr, “December 8, 2002”, “New World Sonnet” in Swensen/St John; Geraldine Monk, Ghosts & Other Sonnets, in Hilson; Karen Tsujimoto, “Being In The World”, in The Way Things Are: The Art of David Ireland; Joel Betrridge, “As We Would Say”, at http://jacketmagazine.com/22/bettr.html Jacket 22; like heartbreak … love: blurb for Joel Bettridge, Presocratic Blues, at chax press; Mark Bibbins, “Continuity”, as quoted by John Gallagher, at Nothing To Say & Saying It; Gillian Conoly, “Profane Halo”, at Jacket 16; I went thru 3 Google result screens looking for something by Jacque Vaught Brogan who I think might be Jacqueline Vaught Brogan either way I found nothing; blurbs by Doug Lang and Cole Swensen, for Cathy Eisenhower’s Clearing Without Reversal, at Aerial Magazine/Edge Books; Gillian Jerome, “Apiary of Underclothes”, at Geist; I went thru 3 Google result screens looking for something by Florence Kindel who Google thinks might be Florence Kendall I don’t think so I found nothing; Nicholas Manning, “Love Poems 464”, “Love Poem 465”, “Love Poem 466”, at Eleksographia 2; Chris Nealon, “Dolores”, “Greek Fire”, at Reading Between A&B; “Communiqué from an Absent Future”, at we want everything: critical theory and content from the nascent ucsc occupation movement, 24 Sept 09; Robert Fitterman, blurb for Mel Nichols, Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon, at Aerial/Edge; Mel Nichols, “Day Poem”, at Aerial/Edge; Bin Ramke, and Marjorie Perloff, in Perloff’s blurb for Ramke’s Theory of Mind: New & Selected Poems, at Omnidawn; Catie Rosemurgy, “Twelve and Listening to the Stones”, at Graywolf Press; Slavoj Zizek, “Why Lacan Is Not a Heideggerian”, at Lacanian Ink 32; Matina L Stamatakis, “Fluent”, at Moria Poetry; Matthew Thorborn, “Woken Each Morning By the Glad Laughter of Birds”, at Waywiser Press; Michelle Taransky, “Barn Burning”, at La Petite Zine; Rg Veda 19.13.3, as quoted in Gananath Obeysekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth; Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian, “Tenebrae”, in Duhamel/Seaton/Trinidad; JBR, Autopoiesis CLV (which is an episode of Dancing With the Stars, featuring Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian)]