As/Is







9.30.2006


"When You Decide Not to Be Boring, Call Me" He Said

There was this fit litmus left along the ground untendered and she wept there, a bled scar. If only whereabouts [in chains] he was the serpent in her Edith Hamilton. She didn't walk well in the morning light. He was never anywhere. The culprit had a sound about it and her eardrums rang shut. Overcast is one thing. In a dim or not quite moment he would turn only in conversation rabid for there had been nothing for a long time to begin with or retort. Madness is finding like minds where no like minds have been fostered. Various art movements, she thought. And the cream sky went dead like post curfew Ann Arbor maybe. Maybe someplace else. He walked ahead of her along the opposite street side. It would often have been winter where she coughed. Just history. The kind of thing nobody majors in.





The "Rushing" Sound

We build the house
that leans

towards its destruction.

We turn the ear
that listens

to its lumber
creaking.

If silence is the Word
of God, what sound

is suffering?

What mother sings
when soldiers

fall? Whose emptied

arms explain
this hollow

feeling?

When a child
learns to speak,

a voice

weighs nothing.

When a bird
learns to fly

it understands
the gravity

of bone,

the sanctity
of thresholds-

rising
and falling,

living
and ceasing,

fearing
and abiding

the rushing
sound-

the circumstantial
heaviness

of its own
wing.








9.29.2006


She Was Going to Paint the Hymnal Slack

No return (this is a PC)

Just breathe on leaves felt there

When you have the piano (redone)

Keep in mind paisano broth and clothiers

(Big and tall me(a)n)

Nacht worth evening whole

The barometric press of bother (clothing)

Take this sauna and remove the history

Jerry you were there and I had prayer all over me





I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking

My pantoum, written a long time ago


I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking.

inspired by Dylan Thomas: "I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking"

I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking.
Waiting, frozen words unsaid, yet screaming loud.
Silent crying, woven in ancient memories. Aching.
Foreseen in silence; out breaking words soughed.

Waiting, frozen words unsaid, yet screaming loud.
Grievous verdict. Hide, hide, here is no place; no hide.
Foreseen in silence; out breaking words soughed.
By passing me by, saying "live", I say "live". He untied.

Grievous verdict. Hide, hide, here is no place; no hide.
My genesis, so cursed by men, ab ovo under His wing.
By passing me by, saying "live", I say "live". He untied.
Had to get rid of the grudge, the hate, the harsh acting.

My genesis, so cursed by men, ab ovo under His wing.
Reborn by blood to life so precious, part of the bride.
Had to get rid of the grudge, the hate, the harsh acting.
Freed by the Son. No legal ground. No more backslide.

Reborn by blood to life so precious, part of the bride.
Silent crying, woven in ancient memories. Aching.
Freed by the Son. No legal ground. No more backslide.
I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking.











9.28.2006


"The sonata as a boat"   [pantoum]


This would be a good day to go sailing
this would be a fine time to tune fiddles
there's little wind   I wouldn't call it galing
there's questions   in the form of cozy riddles
this would be a fine time to tune fiddles
if only one were schooled in how to play
there's questions   in the form of cozy riddles
they need small answers or petite dismay

if only one were schooled in how to play
concertos and sonatas would be beckoning
they need small answers or petite dismay
a smile or yawn   a sense of idle reckoning
concertos and sonatas would be beckoning
the audience all hushed up in the rafters
a smile or yawn   a sense of idle reckoning
at every phrase   a promise of hereafters

the audience all hushed up in the rafters
the sonata as a boat amid its blueness
at every phrase   a promise of hereafters
the schertzo fills with tales of olden newness
the sonata as a boat amid its blueness
mightn't the painting finally find unveiling?
the schertzo fills with tales of olden newness
this would be a good day to go sailing




=======

This poem's first line is borrowed the following passage of Ann Lauterbach's poem "Tangled Reliquary":
This would be a good day to go sailing
Or to wash the car, but I have
Neither boat nor car. There's a plotless web
In the air like a banner pulling us along
Into something to look back on. . . .
from Clamor (1991)

This is one among a sequence, Early Autumn Pantoums








9.27.2006


You! Mean Nervous Bell.

The day is almost raining,
words you spoke,
nudged and produced, as a bell
storing memories of melody
in its hull. Water spreads wet

speech as friends I hear at midnight
awaiting leaden and tremulous
to pronounce the eighth morning hour

struck by before love stopped.

Untold memories left unpolished in
the night our eye-gleamed sea houred
the morning beam to toll!

My heart, a clapper of stones dangling
to discover or devise supple alternative
thwacks

guard your approach and give life's purpose
the risk to breath again the chime we learnt
not to heed.

Pay attention
use my legs to walk in reason which makes
silence tender in another room.

An authoritative antonym fills with invisible
specifics
weighted meaning and so much more legacy
he deforms the meaning-stone

void.

~

Pardon his varnished memory
feathering each hour long
his offer to urge you consider
silence in sorrow
heartache on-page

sing his hour within
welcome the quiet belief

a potential heartache we once shared
the year a reel in my chest
arrived.

Swear a need to iron the din of sadism
smooth and protect the ring of hearts
singing its hum for each
hour within beloved
knowing one.

Be in the darkness of belfry night my
love.





young since steps strutting glass

eternity anvils come in garden motion
having moan pink flowers like ever ribcage
sphere scraps tongue reality down
entire lies eye how orchard pivot
the arms' tune restless circles
touch exquisite lobby
of soft unique wood
and kisses the mathematical flowers
amethyst curves into sliding bells
breakfast throats squirm information rubies
go she endowed meaning piano dementias
there's border sweet hotel in light nodes
shipless abstraction princesses a soft distance
dream flame sluices chateau dear no complete
seems to hips maybe hand apartment
there red feels flowed objective cottages
evening distraction ever verbal moisture
graze the now bed evident hip chateaus
theatrical organs is topaz tender grocery idea
nippled courtyard galloping sapphire meadows
flashy request thick awkward baby
with metamorphosis fables
elevator petals sent faces
in young since steps strutting glass
poses seemed uninhabited metal springs
to gray know existence of shipless buildings
be the twin room balls impressionistic the skin
the plan golden parlor the the the word big meaning
maybe we made something forgotten hello excruciating beauty
of heavy prince distraction the polar dresses become altars
become flared whispers reach no one these grips running delusions
regret the keepers' one year magenta full-blown thunder farm





when you are nervous you are mean

why don't you stop why don't I stop paying attention
why don't you discover or devise supple alternatives
to guarding your life that seems not to be at risk
why don't I try to breathe again
why don't you learn not to pay attention
why don't I use my legs to walk into another room
why don't you learn again to breathe
why does authority even invisible weigh so much
what legacy becomes inferred what is the meaning of the stones
what is the meaning of unpolished stones
of what specific use is varnish to the memory

pardon me for I have reasoning to do
and I have feathering to think about
I have tender offers to consider
such as the proposed gift silence
I have so far helped to fill with antonyms
partly on account of nouns
in jeopardy of being verbs against their will

when I write letters I use ink that makes the whiteness
or the beigeness of the paper pop
into a reserved young minuet of eyesight
welcome home to felt potential where it's quiet
and you keep your sorrow and your fear away unto yourself
or you dissolve the makings of my heartache on behalf
of something we believe we share
for we have constantly for years shared something





specialty'oap

'makon breathes

inside (of) "mounted model,
pulled interior"

'hung as plates

or penis reach
pissing eating the pizza

"plastic, general

cause leaves us"
(protection) notes

'shair them

"a red light, stop"
behind a cloud

it is a mountain

(seen) "dog, notable
the table!" 'tified

the love (of Jesus)





Goofy Dismantles the Word-Bomb

Goofy Dismantles the Word-Bomb

Allopolyploid into which "allopolyploid"

zanily fits.

Science is no answer.

Nor praying when scion is war there is none.

Nor plotting (lupine on sand-blistered soles)

how Goofy dismantles the word-bomb.

Historicity's TOP SECRET document--

[ad astra per aspera]--

translated to pratfall--BONK! BONK! SPLAT!--at Hyperreality Inc.

This is it, thinks Goofy, the tip of (thetypof) metaphor that gets Goofy killed!

One plausible dissaffection

mounted by a second, a third etc, etc.

Peeled like layers of human onions. One drop of blood.

One floppity big foot, it seems to Goofy,

& BA-BOOM! Goofy, BA-BOOM!

you're gone.

Your ars poetica

was scoped denuded funnest "V."






chotil


take,

these broken tears,

and learn to fly again i don't what's whe-e-e-at

-------/////// geitttttttttttttttttt

shake,

these open years,

and worn to spy and when i won't know your fe-e-e-at

>>> lontananzan chariospecula ;   holkeftin mitosampin (fontenay roses, yes, churtina)









9.26.2006


My Bell--(shameless lyric)

Ah, for days green and almost raining,
with no words but those spoke by you,
nudged and produced, as a bell
which stores memory of melody
in its hull. Water spreads wet;

Your speech makes words,
such as friend,
which I'd like to hear again,
along with further addendums
I'm too cautious to ask for.

Please don't wince--
you know how a church bell
stops ringing at midnight
and awaits leaden and tremulous
to pronounce the eighth morning hour?

So I, struck by love before,
left untold with the night hours,
see in your eye-gleam
a morning beam to toll!
My heart, a dangling clapper

reels in my chest, an iron umbrella protecting;
I swear it's not sadism but a need for chimes
urges me to throw myself
upon my own heart again for the din produced,
for the arrival signified thereby.

All I wish is to ring the day
sing its hours, one hum for each
hour within each hour,
and the four steps approaching.
(Ah, the Basilica's beloved thoughts!)

Knowing as I do
the darkness of belfry nights,
all I wish is to ring the day,
announce love's advent:
the hour that gives purpose to bells.





As If From a Distant Star

Gnawing serenely on the wheel of life
Leaves arching morosely over our exposed heads,
wheezing gently
Navigating carefully on terrain dotted with
bloodied, gaping maws
Threatening to spill the arcane secrets of
untold millennia spent loafing under
screaming skies

Divine procreation, unreadable,
untranslatable, and gasping at
light from the stars

Effulgent wetness creeping up on the copper gates to the arena. The overwhelming stench of evaporated alcohol left abandoned in cups for the miasma to sniff at. Sheer wonder. Child-like amazement.
Emeralds howling with pent-up rage in the rafters,
terror-stricken at the sudden onrush of white on white,
myriad sheets of empty oblivion waging their war
on the churning sleep of rusting spires

Smoke blanketing all transmissions. A few scragglers huddle into each other, hiding their eyes in awe at what they sense will come. Some attempt to communicate their surrender by loudly proclaiming undying loyalty to the unfurled clouds of id. Others wait timidly, bibles in back-pockets
appearing now as so much straw

Revelations begin to rush in from the outside, melting the surface of the playing-field into aquatic blue liquid. Some people start frothing at the mouth, bleeding from ears that no longer hear. Others speak in strange tongues before diving in, never to reemerge.

A dark grey plucked bones from our madness,
ageing us decades in the process


Perfidious spirits concealed in the distant thunder. Our hallucinations running desolate alleyways with emaciated rodents and optical larvae. The frenzy to learn new dances to win desire again. Commerce and labour croak their mutual forgiveness at each other amidst the looting. Money hides in fear behind black fishnets left to spy alone on wounded flesh wandering between rows of cold machinery. To traverse piles of rotting teeth laying in wait for unwary beasts to pass.

Brief flickerings return once more. Levees bray their gratitude
at every recording surface imaginable

Peace perfumes our sweating, chases the marauding hordes of blue away at last. Flesh re-carved passion on the swollen purple flanks running frozen through the empty aisles of the urine-god then

Just as we all realize there is a stillness in each of us
that is eternal and cannot die





'ceive'pathize

"they had said

that he is
worth written down"

thought misidentified (not)
"jesus, following loves

it" read fingers

hand that points
claw brakes "what

they are who
speaks" materials are

approximately (this car)

a light "that
you spent" includes

eye(s) jumping 'ceive

'pathize "bolt above
periodical and a

photo, you" happen








9.24.2006


Troupe

"It looked like a piece of some different dream fallen here." --William Gibson



this is an audio post - click to play


Troupe

At Hatrack River
I made my crossing

To that Ferryman
Offered a -Word-
(The taste was sweet)
Turned out he loves poetry!
Charon lept for free.

This is not an exit.
Me a bard.
The altitude of me
Never brings you ladies down!
(rather swooning)

I am
May conceived
Pen man.

Duets of Fire
Insde the Soul.
We are all members
Of the Troupe of Calliope.

--Nobius Black






Sold

this bemoans
the rape of goodness
from human bloodlines
horror sweetens
the vampiric fangs
whoring civilization
the beast upgraded
kaleidoscopic indifference
warps the conscience
you retch for rewards
in the claustrophobic quickening
the piper's delight
in salivating seeds relentless

Billy Jno Hope








9.23.2006


melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks issue 5

The fifth issue of melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is online now, featuring work by:

Amy King - Ana Bozicevic-Bowling - Brian Howe - Brian Lucas - Craig Perez - Danielle Pafunda - Jana Putrle Srdic - Janet Holmes - Jill Jones - Jen Hofer - Lisa Fishman - Elisa Gabbert - Novica Tadic - Bruce Covey - TA Noonan

Art by C.E. Laine and Ira Joel Haber


melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is an online bi-weekly journal of poetry and curious bits, co-edited by Andrew Lundwall and Francois Luong.

http://mtd.celaine.com/





I Care for Every Each of Them

salt water
plum blouse
overcast resplendent house
novocaine
Gesualdo
frankincense
miraculum
fall pins
nominative case
an aspirin
new off-white shorts
a page out of our midst
mistaken premises
cut-short daisies
romance to the fourth
"scared to the wind" from Linda
are you glistening?





Passive Possessive

unenlightened
self interest
(opposite of "rocks")








9.22.2006


Odyssey

There was never a story
that begins: float down hungry

In a white light strumming, the skin,
a photo of a flower: a deformed wing

And then- tremulous shine, mirrors,
bursts of bright: where I was born

For years, the finest threads unraveled
long and brilliant: the body flickering

Every cell, each organ kept its faith,
punishing the mind: fear of sleeping

We close our eyes and listen to the tears,
our mother's speaking: what waits for us?

Distanced between the price of love
and what a man keeps: the place of prayers

The elemental promise of the words- touch,
gather, wanting, holding: odyssey








9.21.2006


THE DEMON - Write Throught - HE DESMONT

Long in the water
The afternoon path
The indiscriminate mind
seems vacant

Ground where droves of
smooth hands panic

Mites amid shard flesh
ground of asking until
swath body bleeding dirt

to gnaw to stubble
grates more mites as
very rough hewn needles
sift.


  • JAYE BARTELL





  • My Circumstance Hurt Supression Engaging in Backlit Feelings Want to Be Their Heartfelt of Before.

    The squatting mutuality I claim
    is a piece of moon remembered as

    blots I have merely forgotten to invent.

    I am not driven to delve
    extract myself an inane armload

    of silk blond weaponry and enter in any
    rumoured shadow's door beneath the level

    cranial that feeds on dearth
    overcast in a room of overdose - constantly

    resisting the impartial hand of empathy

    ~

    Shoulder-lab of whiplash make your way
    over black brush of knowing

    hurt-tinged with an ancestral wish to drive
    toward work circumstantial lists far from

    flat skin card-disarmament I made fit.

    Write feelings in natural love we carries
    my darling buff boxcar of different surfaces

    sensibilities- confines
    carnations bounty of a natural light on the

    lookout for a staleness party in the heart of a
    sacral homeland - glutting work - while

    from it's near mate of insecurity in space
    our hearts partner how we will romance until

    you are my sole light.





    White Item (8)

    There are no better
    people there in
    somewhere else.

    If there are
    they are doing
    something else

    such as sleeping
    or talking about
    their tired feet

    worn low from
    walking some street
    you don't know

    where that street
    whats that street's
    name is and aren't

    now on it. This Flint
    St. leads to that other
    far to reach by walking

    you could try and likewise would
    find. Yourself tired too.
    None there to care for you.

    asheville, oct. 05








    9.20.2006


    My Hurt Feelings Want to Be Backlit Before Engaging in Heartfelt Suppression of Their Circumstance

    The sole mutuality that I can glut is of a piece.
    Romance, remember, merely blots. It does not delve
    beneath the level whiplash that feeds overcast
    with constantly impartial shadows. I feel empathy
    the way you brush a blond hand over the Black Lab.

    My hurt is tinged with an ancestral drive toward
    an inane disarmament. I shoulder weaponry I think I made
    myself. I write my hurt into the circumstantial overdose
    of knowing that dearth carries wish lists
    far from skin as silk.

    Oh my darling boxcar buff, why do you card your feelings
    at the door to different sensibilities? Is it the confines,
    or the love of flat and forward surfaces that overtake
    the bounty of a rumored natural light?

    I am on the lookout for an armload of carnations that can work
    in any room resisting staleness at the heart. I am party to
    cranial sacral work. I want to pierce the homeland
    insecurity rumored to extract a natural fit from its near mate.
    Until our hearts are driven to a partner moon, how will I
    enter space I have fogotten to invent as you are
    claiming land while squatting in my light?





    FOUND POEM - SANDERSON BECK

    Zenophan said Pythagoras stopped
    the whipping of a puppy because he

    recognised the soul of a friend in
    metempsychosis

    is not a self-proclaimed wise man
    but one who pursued wisdom

    through friendship. A philosopher
    with knowledge of

    Egyptian - Chaldean - Magi
    and their spiritual secrets.

    My constitution in
    the Italian city of Sybaris taught

    immortal mystery - understood in
    souls returning til harmonious peace

    is all they construct. That art won
    number is the universe's law and

    unity the law of God.

    ~

    Plato's three component psyche of
    appetite, emotion and mind

    trace to Pythagoras's wisdom
    through friendship

    (philia means freindship - sophia
    wisdom)

    and a spectator seeking truth
    has the best role in life's game

    ~

    Diogenes Laertius when put up for
    sale as a slave - cried for someone

    wanting to purchase a master for
    themselves and Socrates addressing
    Pythagoras
    said

    "Don't stir the fire with a knife
    the passions and swelling pride of the

    great or step over the beam of a balance."

    ~

    Philo heard

    "If the soul is diverted from its course
    it enslaves itself and makes whose soul

    it is a slave to a host of masters."

    ~

    Did Diogenes love of goodness
    transcend his fear of death or think

    Euclides colic - Plato a bore, Dionysian
    performance a peep show for fools and

    that the bad - even if prosperous - still
    live badly?

    ~

    Zeno - godfather stoic - taught while
    pacing back and forth in a collanade

    stoa is porch and

    "A friend is another I" he said.

    ~

    Senneca was a Quaestor in the reign
    of Tiberius and Caligula - jealous of

    his oratory - tried to kill him, but
    Claudius banned him instead until he

    was recalled from Corsica by Empress
    Agrippina - tutored Nero, appointed

    Paetor - got rich and counselled

    "No matter how many you slay, you can't
    kill your successor."

    Senneca commited suicide at 65 -
    believed love and fear do not mix

    "live for the other person if we wish to
    live for ourselves and no-one can strike

    terror into others and still enjoy peace
    of mind."

    ~

    Climb the hill of understandinbg
    walk easy with learning - study forward

    and back - for friendship between the gods
    and the good exist and the primal source

    of all mind is spirit.

    "Vanquish ignorance with good sense,
    gain freedom from slavery and the gift of
    ruling well."

    Diogenes said


    ~

    Dio Chrysostum the sophist was loved by
    Emperor Trajan

    "..as himself though I do not understand
    what he says."

    ~

    "All sound a tune unique to them
    and the whistle player within
    has a gift of hearing how to play it."

  • SANDERSON BECK





  • W / or /l_d a/t/l/a ON THE FARM

    hornets
    on porches
    wrangle
    ahowlin’
    is queer--

    shot gun
    or humming

    schizo____nic
    or shot gun

    a clock, an id
    melancholic
    @ ploughing

    these things,
    "handled," stood there,

    taking it

    masks upon chairs
    masks up

    flicker’d
    at oxen

    in psychology
    bent ego

    a drift rides

    "bible come here"





    as due the polis

    Curtain technologies, Karen MacCormack?

    She robust in truth a mobile front door.








    9.19.2006


    TRACKMARKS

    Trackmarks
    Linear stigmata of addiction
    Tomorrow's scar tissue constellations
    disfiguring the body of work
    Phonetic glyphs
    of abstract correspondence
    Their outlines traced in blood
    Shrinking from the spike
    or splattering across the page
    A ring a ring o' rosies
    Moments when the final things are said
    Exposed in a brutal waterslap of clarity
    In the coupling of the sinful
    and the divine
    There's a fine line to be crossed
    Sequences of discrete
    but regular consummation
    inter-penetrating the punctured bodies
    with the syrup poison
    of transgressive desire
    Wasping decorations
    Fading in time from some
    Long lost personal campaign
    Along cablestitch flesh
    Lesions where the world
    has entered us
    These tender spots
    Rubbed by unconscious gesture
    Til they stand chafed and pert
    Prized in their shame
    Less they scab over
    With our ability to be touched
    Behind the scenes of the crazy ward
    in all cried out lucidity
    Doubting Doctor Thomas
    Pressing our wounds
    in the chemical light of analysis
    The marking on our skins
    The words we choose to speak
    The nettle of awareness we nurse
    Haphazard paths through the wilderness
    Creasing the undergrowth with bruised stalks
    Discernible only by the spoor
    of some animal long passed
    Tiny clues to unknowable awareness
    Patterned sigils in the drying clay
    Trackmarks

  • MARK MADDEN


  • TRACKMARKS






    tu, con la vision de forma (ganglionica)

    el diafragma oblicuo de la manteca de cerdo del musculo de los innervates

    una masa enredada (orbita del contenido)

    impulso dilatador; caras espaciaron afuera








    9.18.2006


    "The sundail smiled"     [pantoum]


    But the sundial smiled in the rain
    is this how irony begins?
    like the premonition of pain
    that's appealing   shimmery with fins?
    is this how irony begins?
    one's unable   does that make one Cain?
    that's appealing   shimmery with fins
    but to whom does it now appertain?

    one's unable   does that make one Cain?
    the sardines come delivered in tins
    but to whom does it now appertain?
    the losses seem more than the wins
    the sardines come delivered in tins
    the roses were featured with thorns
    the losses seem more than the wins
    the drummers soon paused for the horns

    the roses were featured with thorns
    the violets remembered fond springs
    the drummers soon paused for the horns
    while compassion flowed through normal things
    the violets remembered fond springs
    the bison recall vanished days
    while compassion flowed through normal things
    little words were employed to sing praise

    the bison recall vanished days
    the mountain redreams olden seasons
    little words were employed to sing praise
    every rhyme grew nostalgic for reasons
    the mountain redreams olden seasons
    the circus now pines for the road
    every rhyme grew nostalgic for reasons
    personalities sometimes implode

    the circus now pines for the road
    the frog thought about all the flies
    personalities sometimes implode
    it's presumably hard being wise
    the frog thought about all the flies
    the baker delights in the grain
    it's presumably hard being wise
    but the sundial smiled in the rain




    =======

    A pantoum beginning and ending with a line borrowed from John Ashbery






    Calliope Nerve III: The Grail

    "He doesn't look a thing like Jesus but he talks like a gentlemen like you imagined when you were young." --The Killers

    Calliope Nerve Issue #3: The Grail is now available and free of charge featuring Sheila Murphy's January 15th:

    January 15th

    blinds
    part open
    this winter morning

    I watch you
    walk away
    holding

    shut
    your coat
    amid stippled sleet

    I think of
    Escanaba South
    Bend

    Ann
    Arbor Kalamazoo
    even Mishawaka Indiana

    everywhere spears of
    winter obligate
    neighbors

    to
    cozy up
    within parentheses and

    breathe warmth together
    as if
    all

    for
    now is
    basically quite copasetic

    and spring remains
    a probable
    attraction

    Other authors include James Dilworth, Ariel Lee, Billy Jno Hope, and of course me, I'm Nobius Black.

    For a copy (drop me a line with your snail mail address) or for submission information email nobius AT gmail dot com.








    9.16.2006


    untitled

    a singular warmth to your tongue. within my passageways
    to stare into the end of the world. the discovery of fire.
    known halcyon wetness. fermenting the smooth, brown
    crying her eyes. a private slurring of shared nomenclatures
    as if morality warranted. making our masks move forward
    fear brought hydrogen to a dark chant. way too long as a Phoenix
    carouse drunkenly. only green and black tonight. out here climbing
    passion of a musical syntax. needing to push legs into the earth
    astonish symmetry with two maniacs. raised curtains of wonder
    after the initial deluge of madness. tracing the line of muscle
    curving along something resembling the absolute. reclaiming you
    the symbolic intertwining in your hard gasps. built an alliance
    with the night. to leave the totality alone in your moisture
    a war beneath shining. travel across the white. your city meets
    my city. air gently heaving from alert breasts. drunk before noon
    paper betyween ideology. ready to become dark again. besotten
    driving a secret into the unconscious. shredded denim. stroking
    lying beside the highway. playful light through exploded beds of hate
    a different future etched on your cheek. brief love seen in the arc
    possible in exquisiite hardness. anchors to have. an intimation of our
    nudity. design automatic. complex and flawless flowing the ancestors
    burnt in our kiss anomaly nine direct





    it's cold

    bodies on bodies
    breaking free
    it's out there
    so many parts
    the night

    rising
    what fun
    is a tractor
    attractive
    i mean
    drunk
    xo

    feel this
    there's no one around
    i've no idea
    it's cold
    and so late
    so simple
    so not
    so simple





    H and S

    Call me child, close
    the door between this
    and the other room.
    The wood of the old chair
    by the window in your kitchen
    warms the eyes to see it behind
    them, formed and placed in mind.

    I want to keep going,

    enjoy the musculature
    of resilience, know it is
    not mania to burn the
    chair in whatever panic, but to
    thereafter gather the ash,
    glue to make plywood out of
    the dust, and sit again anew








    9.14.2006


    Quiet Cells, Priority Tresses

    poised upon tired old metaphors
    alluding to the cruelty inherent in
    your every kiss dilated, reaching for
    those blue-eyed cells. sweat lamps
    ask for time out of breath
    silver with fear, conflating tassels
    with talking drum patterns scorched into
    the very heat of night. two names
    working feverishly to repair the
    pet labia absorbed in the irate
    moods of a quiet sea this evening.
    with sudden bursts of ennui to sop at
    news of a torrid affair unafraid
    to become diffuse and splash
    tears of joy powered by numinous
    wings of silk, frayed but alive
    with the black gaze of a scorpion
    not even fit to travel alone
    in public without love bloodying
    willing mouths to moth sadness at
    evolution stripping the sun of
    charred, broken designs that echo
    with the supreme elegance of your own
    dark magic.








    9.13.2006


    update

    thanks to the incredible generosity of c.e. laine our site has a new host and new address:

    http://mtd.celaine.com

    please update your bookmarks and any links...

    many thanks...





    'pontoon

    window that gives attention below street
    eh, eh eh eh, ehhh"

    imitated ' stituted
    door exchange authorization intervals)

    goes in second (elevator "always one fist

    (ofthe)

    'tained and displacements conscience
    unconsciously, that it is here,

    is as its"

    eyeballs placed (re) compose't "but,
    it dissolves alone" reduced

    (jump finger foot) pointed (not) in
    persistent process (stop'd)








    9.11.2006


    Improvisation #WD40

    Improvisation #WD40
    time was a poisoned distinction
    as red as vertebrae attests to
    silent alarms lining my libido with
    a manic veracity to forego one stab at
    eternity aligning cruel breasts who
    remind us continually of nouns and
    vowels in a neon-blue room after
    rescusitating fallen stars missing your
    strange smile and sweet, hairy cube
    already. wonder stigmas lugging our
    coded ennui left beneath the ruins
    wandering barefoot through your face's
    creative career flying communal fear
    over worn dollar bills starving to death
    thousands living below the bottom line
    daily behaviour concealing the mark
    of a plan carcinogenic next to denim
    kisses left on morphing epistemologies.
    a fiend sizzling less talk.





    UPDATE: melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks

    i've encountered a serious problem with my web service tonight...melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks domain name www.melancholiastremulousdreadlocks.com has been shut down...until i can find the best solution to this problem work can be viewed here (please pardon the rather unattractive adverstisements):

    http://mtdmagazine.tripod.com

    if you've linked to us please update your links...

    i apologize for any inconvenience...

    thank you...





    Strangers


    Where were you when
    our paths split up?

    Placed in a parallel-world,
    I live in gel-like glass
    I open my mouth to speak,
    words come out in bubbles.
    I spell the letters.
    It makes no sense
    since subtitles are missing.

    Where were you when
    subtitles were missing?
    It makes no sense
    to spell the letters
    from words heard in bubbles.
    I open my mouth to speak,
    I touch gel-like glass
    placed in a parallel-world.

    Our paths split up
    when you were.










    9.10.2006


    Sic transit--"g"

    Sic transit--"g": Text One

    Upon a ridge exposed ½ scared
    compositions resolve sic transit--"g"
    verging at limits precisely.

    The further I pled innocence in psyche
    wards at 9 [pou sto on Boston Common]
    riveters vacationed for a day.



    Sic transit--"g": Text Two

    limits to purpose in sic transit--"g". Swan-
    like at the edges of ode-like, is to select a
    free

    space "b e t w e e n" yonder is yonder &
    fabulous Woolgar. Rescuers clamor up
    belfries, oft nearer kine than hachure.



    Sic transit--"g": Text Three

    In harrowed positions, sic transit--"g" sd,
    "I've gone odd, meaning strangge, again.
    I climb like a prop man devoted to [sic]."

    Is one to ward off the evils of "of"
    if one, lacking principles, affirms coups?
    A brkn self I am kelvin to degrees.



    Sic transit--"g": Text Four

    At sic transit --"g" surly interrogatives prove
    listening a liar, peals of wonders converge
    upon limits, waylaid by solutions. If groves

    in blossom, then evidence-- a runnel all the
    more human,
    nearer signals for modes than ever you'll find.



    Sic transit--"g": Text Five

    Bouts of sic transit--"g" affiliate bouts of "of"
    with bouts of "of" verging at limits. A barrel of
    monk's keys scudders lively past al b 'Perth.

    In psyche wards at nine, "discourse" delibrately
    over-barnacles. Its id a siren coagulant within,
    wrings estrus from Lotto's aposiopesis ---!





    in progress

    A text message from my phone to a new number a friend gave it to me I didn't save it, that friend, she related a story about another friend giving my old lover a blowjob. A funny story, I pressed my tongue into the ulcer in my mouth and listened.

    There is grapefruit oil to smell tho I can't smell it, evaporating in hot water, I live with three boys now and that's what a girl's gotta do.


    We make fun of their cocks but we're mad missing something is missing.


    There's been no reply, here we are, print outs papering the desk, a notebook and a word document, inkstained to the teeth, we look for music and clickaway too-young girls, stars between their legs, imagined faces outside of the frame.


    They. Us. We offer ourselves like pralines.


    Stale coffee in my mouth and my friend's mouth on him over and over and over in I press my tongue in further.

    No reply.


    Stale coffee and my reflection in a black window I look up and fall in I'm out to sea floating out trailing ballast, pens and papers, pixels and grapefruit oil




    (I used to post a great deal long ago but now I don't, if I do it's all still in progress)








    9.09.2006


    melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks issue 4

    The fourth issue of melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is online now, featuring work by:

    Aaron Belz - Amish Trivedi - Andrew Joron - Audacia Dangereyes - Brian Henry - Eric Gelsinger - Josh Hanson - Mathias Svalina - Maxine Chernoff - MTC Cronin - Nathalie Stephens - Primoz Cucnik - rob mclennan - Sean Kilpatrick

    Artwork by Lauren Kohne


    melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is an online bi-weekly journal of poetry and curious bits, co-edited by Andrew Lundwall and Francois Luong.

    http://www.melancholiastremulousdreadlocks.com








    9.08.2006


    Night Sounds   [shi #3]


    Sitting in front of Amsterdam Falafel
    at two o'clock in the morning with my cheroot
    the traffic yet flows   there's always the noise of people
    we attend to the branch   but nobody knows the root

    a million scenes   appear on the screen of thought
    if the tale is bitter or sweet   who can complain?
    there's someone who strums a guitar   across the street
    I don't know the tune   and can't make out the refrain




    =======

    Chinese poems, late summer, no. 3

    no. 1:
      Rooftop Scene
    no. 2:   "The basic problem"

    Amsterdam Falafel is an eatery in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC.








    9.07.2006


    You're

    rubbed teak man
    also cardboard man
    unleaded man
    thus reaching man
    arranged man
    consistently displayed man
    all light year man
    you lean man
    keen minded man
    good ear man
    and delivered man
    as industrious as infringed on man
    you handled man
    quiescent man
    contrite man
    you prolific man
    street savvy man
    a known advisory man





    U Two

    You too

    love in print. Desire. Speak. Affirm reality and myth, hear
    "One" in the music of what happens. Thermal reality.

    Earth and the Unforgettable Fire. All nought but a good sun,
    warm, dry, wet and never cold. Nirvana.

    You too.

    ~

    All because of you who move in mysterious ways. Gloria.
    Even better than the real thing, believing life returns

    when we breathe no more and pass to shade. You be loving
    first fan

    companion letter. Me and you two'ish proof that in print life
    is nought but confusion, sh! Listen, knowing-ones rattle and hum
    sound.....

    ~

    ing.


    "All along the watchtower.....All I want is you." Too
    logical a signature from an artist of sound

    believing music is a gift bestowed by a good -
    Sun-Faced-Bono-Ogma.

    Ogma?

    ~

    I am he. God of sound - music in Irish myth.... Group?
    Tuatha De Dannan - pronounced two-a-haw-day-donon.

    On the land?.... 300 years, circa 1500'ish BC.
    Knowing-ones. Know about sound. Spells. Do magic

    in language. Change physical shape with words
    alone.
    The Sons of Mil? Orphan's. Invaders from the sea who
    came and seized power -

    circa 1000-500'sh BC...Vanquished then banished TDD under-
    ground. My clan - now faery or wee folk. Sons of Mil? Fifth
    and final

    "wave of of invaders." I taught them to write in Ireland from 5C on. First
    recorders of her civil law, written as myth "happened." Fresh from

    memory onto pages time forgot. Fact.

    ~

    I, me, we, Ogma - call me what you will - plays a simple 3 string
    instrument of magic. Each sound has the same effect on all listeners.

    Sound from String one. Listener feels joy and only love. Boogie.

    Travolta happens; action, natures force, dancing to Jacko. Off the
    Wall. Thriller. Springsteen at Superdome; Lansdowne or Croker,
    deadly.


    String two. Utter sorrow; terminal misery, zero jiggy - torpor
    of all time; the sound for suicide. Ballymun flats 100 feet up,
    jump.

    Pluck three? Lull all to slumber with this note, strain - string
    call them what you will. I sound reality.

    ~


    My trained-noise-workers had a thousand years in print.
    Before that we were druids. Made magic with voice only. No ink.

    Filidh. Plural of ,fili or "poets", who scribbled an unbroken path for
    centuries, until the 17'th
    collapsed society abruptly and we stopped for a hiatus or caesura

    ~

    We paused. Scorched earth forced us to flee and surrender beneath my

    ~

    wave when a take-over bid with lots of teething troubles kicked in
    and we lost generations, as Penal law replaced the code. 100%. We

    became outlaws at home when a stroke of the quill on a bill made it
    illegal to speak in gaeilge. Our native tongue. A simple contract

    written in plain English for subjects, unable to speak it. What about
    Status Quo?
    Only on paper; making a show with no native fans in attendance, happen.

    Anglo had to import his own. Plants. We were driven mental by a support
    act's demand for top billing on our stage. Anglo, ceaselessly plucking my
    string of woe.

    "Subjects" begging monarchy to stop. Calling for "play-fair" and the
    return of ourbono life. Ogma to stop the misery

    chord. Noise joy; in the uninterrupted status quo of a good
    reality conjured from myth Anglo made illegal. No shit.

    ~
    All Because of You

    Monday - Mount Temple School notice board, Larry puts it up.
    Saturday - September '75. Seven kids in Mullen's kitchen. There
    about the ad.

    -1985 - four onstage at Wembley. Live Aid. "I have climbed the highest
    mountain, I have run through the field.."..from the dressing room,
    through the wings

    only to be with you. Up the scaffold. Silent; hugging a world
    who came that day. Larry wasn't happy. He thought of walking off

    stage. He wanted to play; for me to sing. Let the planet hear Gloria
    "in the name of love.."... Party Girl. I Will Follow. Us. U2; who
    happen

    at Landsdowne Road, Ballsbridge, Yankee Stadium, Redrock - latest hit
    from the catalogue. Mid-eighties. Miami. Crocket and Tubbs undercover

    in a speedboat. Don in white linen. Wham at the height of their power
    Bowie and Jagger "dancing in the street" - Phil Collins to Boston by
    concorde.

    ~

    Peter and Ivan only lasted two weeks after first rehearsal;
    or was it a month?
    Dick's brother - Dave - who happens from the platform - Edge

    happened in the core that July weekend. He too is part
    practice; life, creation; call it what you will, Larry.

    Love deposit here; immediately, please. "It's a beautiful
    day.."

    ~

    drop beneath my wave, stay addicted to faith
    sound the magic. We’re all - word for word - as

    good when spoken simple, direct and kind.

    Sincerely Yours

    ~

    Julie Andrews and U
    2 on top of Howth hill.

    Over and out for now; lover, letter-in-law. Go beneath

    ~

    break feet and walk with St Paul and I. Mind that bag
    of mint imperials; or are they the oil-rig toffee Jackie

    Stewart "doodle doo"d about; in the pit-stop on
    Saturday Grandstand, or was it Tiswas?

    ~

    Mirror-mirror on Arthur Scargill's wall, make Art fairest
    of them all.

    Answer in song; if Arthur was "...in a
    hotel room in New York City, round about the time a

    friend of ours, er - Little Steven - was putting together a
    record of Artists Against Apartheid..."

    ~

    ..or at the miners conference in Scarborough at a Wheels
    of Steel disco? Rod Stewart on the karaoke? "Wake up Maggie

    I think I 've got something to say to you...". Hollering for
    fights
    benefit night at the train station, Doncaster branch;

    or was it Maddison Square Garden, Art sung "..about a
    man in a shantytown outside of Johannesburg, who is

    sick of looking down the barrel of white South Africa.
    A man who is at the point where he is ready to take up

    arms against his oppressor. A man who has lost faith in
    the peacemakers of the West, who argue and fail to

    ~

    support a man like Bishop Tutu and his request for
    economic sanctions against South Africa."

    Arthur was heard - at his bungalow in Scunthorpe, for tea
    and a Sarnie. Chicken in a basket later that night, when

    he starred on the picket line with Billy Bragg,
    demanding a bitta wedge. It was only a quid.

    "Am I buggin' you? I don't mean to bug ya..."

    or was it a tenner?


    ~

    28 JUNE - 05 - UNFORGETTABLE

    Dublin dusk; getting together, darkness imminent
    at the canal.

    "OK edge.. (David Evans)..play the blues."

    ~

    The Edge's sound; music, what "happens," call it what
    you will Larry and Adam

    is "a preacher stealing hearts at a travelling
    show;" hinting of an apocolypse..now, in the air

    at Phibsboro. Croke Park. Croker. 80,000. Monday
    outside the ground.
    A full house. Pride. "This song is not a rebel song,

    this song is...the news today; I can't close my eyes
    and make it... New Years Day. Not one a dud. Totally

    amazing; or was it, flat? Not happening? No, no it was
    the night love came to town, leapt around the stage in

    crepe-lifts and transported them through a prism of love
    to Van Diemens land - where the streets have no name

    and raised a silver lidded keyboard, in the snooker hall
    on Camden Street; where dolls hang out, sniffing my talent.

    ~

    I forget her face; pale, refracting daylight through the
    candle we lit to commemorate the B52's, Vietnam, Ned

    Kelly and Wham, or was it Wigan with Culture Club supporting?
    He does not keep loaves and fishes in a fridge near Killiney

    Boy George does not go the Forty-Foot, New York, Red Rock.
    In Benidorm He is incognito, in shades and baseball cap

    under the blood red sky of Alicante; at a water park, Bono
    John Lennon - Helter-Skelter - telling Bono go back to

    the top of the slide Then you stop and you turn and you go for
    a ride Then you get to the bottom, then you.. see me again.


    ~

    See?
    The Beatles

    Bono and you too want me to love again. Hear September daylight, cool
    breeze at Sandycove. A dream to be the free man "who come in the name
    of.." Bono

    Love. Touch the ground where JFK, his brother Bobby and Gaybo spoke
    "Mrs Byrne got diamond eyes.....what more in the name of.."

    ..JFK, mobbed from New Ross to Phoenix Park in '62. The Late Late
    live. Gaybo; in the ruck, squeezing to get near. Have you read

    Gaybo's autobiography Marilyn Monroe? Read behind the lines or
    tossed off some to Clarke Gable, Ralph, Larry Lamb, Olivier
    Elton or

    ~

    Lord John. In the Hyannis Port compound? Sixties. Bee Gees,
    Massachusetts, Miles Davis and John Coltrane at the Mixer. Down

    to the marina in shorts and a kagool. Picnics, on the beach. Swim.
    Ball games; sandwiches, find unrehearsable, love

    "All I want is you,"

    and two cans of gargle?

    ~

    Or was it ten, that night at Croker by the canal Gloria. Beautiful
    Day. One. The one that goes on and on. The White Album

    Abbey Road. Regents Park. Zoo TV. Tourists take pictures of the zebra
    crossing. It's pissing down; Shaune Ryder's no smack.

    Sir Bob - "One" is on the radio, sing

    "I don't like Mondays"

    ~

    Bono.

    gives and is as all should be. Ogma the good god is the one you
    want to be

    Peace upon you too; balance of grain containing galaxies of
    void and light, guide me to the music of what happens, please
    be good.

    Happy Monday's, here to happen.
    Bono

    ~

    Sir

    ~

    my servant
    awaiting a cipher to number for a modest sum, "did you

    come here for forgiveness; did you come to raise the dead,
    did you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head"

    and plagiarise? Poesy's Page - arise Larry; Bono, Adam, the Edge
    and please.

    You too?

    ~

    or is it U2?

    I know

    ~

    Edge is not the Bono and Bono not the Edge. Adam is not Larry or he
    Adam Ant.
    Larry made it happen. He put the note up; I accept Mullen is

    nothing without me, or me him. Only voice, gifted lyrics, Ogma's
    word

    ~

    Sound.








    9.06.2006


    'sharp

    thing parkinson(s) pounding
    "was pulses detonation

    sea, yesterday" today
    (a) chronometer stamp

    depreciatory stamp shoes
    (clack'a) pierce "hands

    go this brown"
    join confine loss

    (lost) that spotted
    (clack'a) "because complete

    sentences, no" occluding
    hammers exceeding leather

    strap consults (internal)
    "rhymes it" that it hits side 'tagmatic








    9.05.2006


    imposing posses

    levitate the missing purse
    resuscitate the missing person
    matriculate to buildings left conceptual
    be worthy of a badge
    be adaged in your spare adagio
    walk silk while washing stillness
    berate the predator and predatory forces
    be true though rueful
    emanate from center stage
    hold center field in mind

    sheila e. murphy








    9.04.2006



    For Jim

    The perennial search for pulse,
    at the bonepile, in the boneyard
    or when Spring fleshed green the fields
    ever spread for walking--have we softened,

    to leave them to grow untrodden,
    tiring entirely of tiredness that we
    succumbing to rest may have lost a
    glow once occurred in the marrow.

    No. There is no loss that does not get,
    nor have we ceased our looking, or lost
    at all. Our company with one another
    less than our mythology of friendship

    of brotherhood carried now as one would
    childhood, or, later, youth and young life.
    Nonetheless, you are my friend and I will
    always need water from the well of that sense,

    beyond circumstance, or distance, or living
    in the same town without a word for months!
    There are many around, Jim, but few within.
    Come any Siberia, the bones remain integral.

    Your music, or speech, or loves, your learning
    and going away, there is situation inside you
    for all there's to do. The "grand expansion" is a
    turn of the head, to see friends there, me among

    in clouds or mire or the same trite continuation
    of life. There is ever a color to find in the wood
    that found increases the variegation of the eye.
    Again, as ever, forever, do not stop the looking.








    9.03.2006


    crushed manga

    my own dream resonates with
    who is in the dream
    who stays after
    who stays overtime
    and what is left to come


    words by Sheila Murphy, originally posted on sAyingsometHing

    crushed-manga; image ©Dreaming in Neon 2006





    sleepwalking

    sleepwalking
    the illegible distance
    between two huge hands
    the night's sandpaper
    erases evidence
    discards damage
    reimburses rattle
    and bursts

    the wallpaper giggles
    this is why everything
    is after all
    because dancing
    is nonsense
    to wonder
    off of
    exploded








    9.02.2006


    t

    As/Is
    tell me who can go everywhere

    but

    to laugh at our nothingness,

    you needn t go somewhere else






    I want her melody to be as soft as this

    stirred apples and the cinnamon effects of lighthouse view refract perhaps the aging as one motions to her lifeline and says speech will always house this flannel nest








    9.01.2006


    _




    cryogenic stockade

    puedo detalle (lucius viol)





    Compassion






    Reflection

    In a moment
    the river robed

    in cloud.

    A small bird
    dives into

    a deceitful
    ending.





    Yet, the Spring

    Memory traps
    the grim; the net-

    long night,
    winter wind.

    Powerful how
    we're punished-

    a short hallway,
    the failing day.

    It's no light thing
    to hesitate, to linger

    when the snow
    is melting.

    These mortal fields,
    this "tapping" on my window,

    the dark moored boat,
    the tethered dreams-

    and yet, and yet
    the spring.





    literate thighs

    strangled bodies of concrete
    are moaning cold tonight
    it's true there are no beds
    big enough to lay my lines
    for train tracks are solitary
    and depressing and sleep
    is elsewhere collapsed
    between literate thighs