Yeah, some barflies can do it all. 😉

Posted by: beq | Mar 21 2005 17:32 utc | 4

Very well put as always, r’giap. I appreciate what Bernhard and Jerome have built here because it allows me to relate on that level (each other’s health and daily circumstances) and, I hope, avoid the stain of the ugly American. And merci, yourself. I learn so much from all of you as well.

Posted by: beq | Mar 21 2005 18:02 utc | 6

i find the world in this moment so difficult to bare knowing that the gansters are surely in control in a way they have never been in my fifty years. i need all the humanity i can get. the art that some of our community commits brings that humanity here as do others with their specifi expertise(s) that they offer with great generosity
i experience the world very very darkly in this time & paradoxically with the communities i work with i attempt to bring light – a little light – to say that this life merits to be ‘lived’ – but there are times, many times in the last few months that that world seems to be held together with pieces of wire & string
one of the sites i work is a shelter for men without logement. & more & more of these people are so seriouslly damagef by life that any idea of recuperation – seems somehow cruel – when i was a young poet i worked in a ‘chronic ward’ in a psychiatric hospital – what was termed then cold storage – because it was a large building – with many many people who lived there – sometimes for decades – & it was like the bedlam of old – nearly a hundred people deeply medicated wandering the corridors of hell – with little or no hope – & i tried to bring poetry to their lives – to make them concious that even in this state there was poetry in them. it was a tough work but there were moments of being given back something & they are moments i will remember unto death
but today in these mens shelters i am seeing ‘chronic’ cases or people that have been turned by the events of the last five years into chronic cases – & it includes most of the men whether they are breton, african or mahgrebin – people staring into infinite space – men writing page after page of a kind of calligraphy that is neither breath nor writing but a form of digging a gravé
& i feel the bush cheney junta have made a mockery of the world i have so recently come to love – to live with its contrtadictory complexity – to live with the beautiful traces of a possible creation. bush & cheney – mock perversely all the things i love & care for & they have destroyed perhaps for decades any sense that we as a people are capable of sharing our difference in a transformative way
& the slaughter by the most barbaric & cruel means continues in iraq & no doubt wil continue in iran
the humanity you bring bring light – a little light – but a necessary one

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 21 2005 18:41 utc | 8

Hey, thanks all — will not bore anyone here with art talk (BUT) I have been doing this kind of stuff my whole adult life, and generally consider it to be my main voice. Some time ago however, my all(encompassing) dissaffection with with US politics led me to stop this work in order to learn& re-assess my position in relation to it all. And this place,the Moon of Alabama, has come to be a very special place and community for me in this process to articulate the context and content for some manner of expression commenserate to the milieu we find ourselves within. On the personal level, I feel much gratitude to all who post here, for their insights and efforts big and small and feel confident that this work we all do, in its own way, will coalesce in ways unexpected and suprising in their lasting effect. Thanks.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 21 2005 19:40 utc | 10

Thanks for sharing/posting, anna missed. I wondered what the process was. Interesting.
I’m humbled by all the talent here.
…and I’m jealous that stoy got to meet you and anna. 🙂
But glad for you all, as well.

Posted by: fauxreal | Mar 21 2005 20:43 utc | 12

stoy
i am not surprised that the work gave you something in this darkness that we live – i often quote buber’s dictum about having power over the nightmare by calling it by its real name – i think that i was great art has always done – you can’t get much darker than caravagio or el greco – & they give me life as does the work of rothko. their basic melancholia tell me i am not alone & with beckett for example – it is even possible to laugh within this horror that the tougher call life
in seeing anna missed’s work – i think & am reminded of what we don’t know what happened in fallujah. what little we know is that it surpassed what the condor legion did in guernica – we know that there were similariities to the destruction of warsaw
i want to ask friends like citizen & slothrop whom i respect, clearly – what else can we call what happened in fallujah other than ‘evil’ because it surpasses military necessity & enters a world of madness like the world of lt calley – of the enjoyment in slaughter. & here the cultural desecration of iraq is not to be seperated from that slaughter. the profounder insincts at work with military force are a part of yet beyond the nature of capital
it is the delight of man – of power – over those who cannot fight back in any real & legitimate way & must use other means – means that have their roots in that military force itself. that military force follows econmic necessity a la the needs of halliburton & other companies who profit directly from the massacring of human beings
what the nazis di followed imperial imperatives right up to the point of massmurder – but the massmurder whether it happened in death camps or in the use of einsatzgruppen was a task that involved many many people who participated directly. had joy in the undertaking. the obsessive photographing is an example of that joy in power during that period as is the use of the camcorders. there is a real delight in terror. it is not naive. it is simply following the lessons of a culture that uses violence as the only merchacnism that has meaning, spiritual meaning
& then we are surprised when the insurgency uses almost sacred & terrible images of decapitation – that are so awfully human that they tear right through the technological advantage
what have we become – to this point in the early 21st century – to enter barbarity with a speed that seems almost without parallel
i do not know sometimes whether – it is we who are the ghost of fallujah or mosul, whether we are not the spectres from wedding ceremonies that the whitehouse would like to call a meeting of resistants tho all evidence proves the contrary, is it us the phantoms – that are shot with a terrible quotidian reality & without care – all the days & nights of this ‘new’ iraq
i found the ghost rodeo of a pertinence that is both troubling yet somehow exposing the lies they try to tall. this art breaks thru their lies. & perhaps now it is the role of artists to break thru their lies because journalist who have proved for the most par that their ‘trade’ is much more contemptible than we have ever imagine
i thank anna missed again for his offering & the ideas that some of us meeting each other concretely just a concretisation of the wealth of communication which takes place here

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 21 2005 21:46 utc | 14

well said citizen. If the empire falls apart (americans leave w/out the traces of occupation in any way), is the war just even if the reason for war is unjust? If such evils serendipitously or otherwise accumulate to empopwer shia and kurds and toss religious fundamentalism and neocolonialism into history’s garbage can, is the outcome just?
In this case, we must welcome Bush as an unwitting hero–his heroism the product of his stupidity.

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 21 2005 23:52 utc | 16

citizen, from Teaching English as a foreign language (?) on the open thread:
“If it were up to me, I’d kill the Americans and drink their blood.”
– Jilan Hassan (aged 14), orphaned at Tal Afar, January 18th 2005, when U.S. troops killed her parents.
Aged 14. What have we done?

Posted by: beq | Mar 22 2005 0:05 utc | 18

citizen & slothrop
i am just feeling what beq is feeling. i feel the physical hurt & shame of what is being done – i feel it at a personal level. i work with people of arabic origin every day & i witness their sorrow – in my way here i try to offer what help is possible in the circumstances that my situation allows
but i have never felt the works of the empire in a distant way – in an ‘objective’ way – my first steps in the movement – when i was so young – were driven by my heart free of nostalgia of a heart that believed & it is still that instrument which is at the core of all i do
so when i speak of ‘evil’ i am speaking of the despoiling of that heart, of the putrefaction of that heart in face of events that are in any sense – insane
& the insanity of this war drives me much further into darkness than i want to go but our actions must be based on comprehending fully the terrible reality of our times
i am not a model – i am a man. what is happening is not history but a lived reality that we live all the nights of our days

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 22 2005 0:21 utc | 20

as you round the bend of the magical yard w/ the squacking chickens and botticelli children(no exaggeration)one birthday girl surrounded by unicorns and a young sir lancelot we enter the shed w/ thick slabs of wood and rich aroma shocking helicopter image and horizontal action crusty zigzags of anna mists life he shares w/his oh so everly beautiful muse in an island paradise w/ little wooden fairyland home.
i pinch myself it wasn’t a dream. stoy’s brilliantmagicgirl sets me staight when i entice her to enter the home to say goodbye,tempting her from the trainset playland.”sometime you just need to be alone”
she could have lost herself in the garden for eternity.

Posted by: annie | Mar 22 2005 4:13 utc | 22

I have at least one student whose daughter is training to go to Iraq, and whose son has come back from there. I would not look him in the eye and tell him he has evil children, and so I will not do it here behind his back either.
When I wrote that it seemed important not to be two-faced. But I can be most human if I speak more earnestly to my friend and student – no need for me to call his children evil, but rather to speak the truth to him too. He knows better than I that his children will hold themselves responsible, one way or the other, for all their actions. He knows that his flesh and blood will pay if they fail themselves. We both know about My Lai and soldiers’ pasts as nice civilians will not save them from what they do:

This kid’s name was Mike Terry and Sy talked about him last night, for those of you who were there. He was, I thought, one of the finest people I ever met. He was the all-American boy, wrestler in college, all-state champion, had respect for everybody around him, didn’t swear, didn’t speak badly of women, was not into the macho sort of bragging that was going on by a lot of people. He was just a very fine human being.
We had talked about this before we arrived when we were on our way to Vietnam, before we got there and after we got there, because I began to hear complaints from these guys about Lieutenant Calley, this guy who was their officer who they just loathed, who they thought was incompetent and a whole lot of otlier things. So I arrived in the LURP (LRRP) company and began to go out on missions. On my first five missions, of the six men who were on our team, four of them had been at My Lai. I was going out with these guys and gathering this information. I would go and talk to them and I would try to find each of them, get each of them in a one-on-one conversation
I’d ask them, “Hey, man what happened at Pinkville?” And it would be like lancing a boil. I mean, if you asked them, they were compelled to talk. They couldn’t stop talking. They were horrified that it had occurred, that they had been there, and in the instances of all of these men, that they had participated in some way. The story I’d been told about what Mike Terry had done and what my other friend, Billy Dougherty, had done were, I thought, stunning and terrifying in a certain way. But I didn’t ask Mike about it for, I guess, probably a month, I don’t know why, exactly, but we went out on a mission, we went off into something called Happy Valley, which is west of the city called Tam Khe, in the northern part of the Americal divisional area of operation. Sat up on a hill for four days, and watched a trail, and watched fully combat ready North
Vietnamese soldiers walk down this trail, counted them, and called in artillery a couple of times as they were marching to a battle which was across the valley from us and we could see it. We sat there and whispered through these four days and watched and when they came finally to get us at last light, they dropped us at the fire base that this battle was being operated out of. We went and got some food and talked to a few of the grunts who had just come back out of this battle. Then Mike and I went off and found ourselves a bunker to lay up on top of for that night and sleep.
We lay, down and I asked him, “Hey, Mike, what happened at Pinkville? Tell me what happened at Pinkville.” And he tells me this terrible story of going in with Lieutenant Calley, and sweeping through the village and watching these murders and the rapes and everything that was going on and seeing what was happening, what happened at the ditch. About eleven o’clock Mike and Billy sat down within fifteen or twenty feet of the ditch to have their lunch. They took out their C-rations and opened their food and started eating but they couldn’t really finish it, because there was too much noise coming from the ditch. People who are mortally wounded but not yet dead make a lot of noise. People die hard; they don’t want to give up life. The people in this ditch were laying there. Those who were still alive were groaning and crying out and some of their limbs were flopping spasmodically, which happens to people who are mortally wounded.
There must’ve been a terrible God-awful racket, a horrifying sound, I’m sure. They couldn’t eat, so they stood up, two of them and they walked over to the ditch and they divided up the survivors and they walked down the ditch, one on each side, finishing off all the survivors. “There’s one, you take him”. “OK”. Pow, pow “There’s one, you get him”. “OK”. Pow, pow. Up and down the ditch once. When they returned to their food, the ditch was quiet.
When the first guy, whose name was Butch Gruber, told me this story, he told me about the ditch and about what Mike and Billy had done. But I needed to hear it from them. When I asked them about it, they said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s all true”. Mike told me the story and it was really a cloudless night and there were a zillion stars out there. After he finished we just lay there for a couple of minutes and finally I said “Mike, my God, Mike … don’t you know that was wrong?” And he said, “I don’t know, man, I don’t know, it was just one of them things.” He rolled over; a couple of minutes later I could see he was asleep. We never really talked about it much after that.

or they’ll pay for staying steel:

The one thing I needed that I didn’t have was somebody who had been there, who was a witness and who had not participated. I didn’t have any reason necessarily to believe my friends wouldn’t be honest when they were asked about it. On the other hand, they had participated in this terrible crime and maybe they wouldn’t. So I felt I needed somebody that I could count on and I knew of such a man, his name was Michael Bernhardt. But he was still out in the field; I could never find him because he was simply never available.
The reason he was never available is that Captain Medina, he believes the reason, I should say, he was never available, was that Captain Medina had come to him that night after the massacre, knew that he hadn’t participated, knew that he was a potential troublesome person and threatened him. He said “Bernhardt, you better keep your mouth shut about this, buddy.” And Mike said, “Yes, sir.” He stayed out in the field; they wouldn’t let him out of the field. He tried to transfer into the LRRP company They wouldn’t let him. He tried to transfer every place, they wouldn’t let him.
Every time they thought an ambush was coming, they’d send him up to the front of the line, where they thought the ambush was gonna be. He walked point in all the dangerous places and in the last four months he got jungle rot so bad, he could barely walk and they wouldn’t let him out of the field. Finally, with about three weeks to go, he just jumped on a supply chopper as it was lifting off and without anybody’s permission and went into the infirmary, the aid station, at the 11th brigade headquarters at Duc Pho and the doctors said, “Holy Mackerel, what’s wrong with you? I mean, why weren’t you here earlier?”

As far as I understand infantry service, you are on the team or halfway to the other side. Even Siegfried Sassoon went back into battle again rather than lose the friendship of his unit. Who else will ever understand you again? But the truth is that you have to stay on your own side, or you’re lost, like Stanley Goff says, or like this unnamed private knew:

As he enjoyed the peaches, Lt. Calley ordered a young African-American private sitting nearby to finish off the dying people to shut them up. The private refused. Calley told him if he didn’t obey orders he’d be finished off too.
The private pointed his gun at Calley and said:
“Well I guess we’re both going to die then!”
Calley backed off. Presumably he didn’t enjoy the rest of his peaches.

I had the privilege of meeting Hugh Thompson and Larry Colburn several years ago, and what was clear to me was that when Thompson told the U.S. soldiers his gunner would shoot them if they killed the villagers he was rescuing, those soldiers would have known he meant it. He’s a serious man, and Colburn and Andreotta were lucky to be under him. Thompson, Bernhardt, Ridenhour – they were serious about who they were and what they did more than they cared about getting slaps on the back. They knew that it’s not enough to intend the good, you have to intend to do the good. Individual actions can be evil or good.

Posted by: citizen | Mar 22 2005 18:58 utc | 24

rememberinggiap,
no hectoring felt here. Rather, a need to get some roots on my countrypeople, some memories of how time works.
So I thank anna missed for art that demands knowledge, that gives it a place, for a box of wood that generates life from out of memory.

Posted by: citizen | Mar 22 2005 20:21 utc | 26

ghost rodeo (improvisations pour anna missed)
in memory of sun ra & crazy horse
i cannot explain/& will not/under circumstances/you are lucky
with what you/get goods/regular as regret/feltl writing
sermons on soil/you’ll never stand/on point/of principle perhaps
that is practice/these days though/i don’t know/i’m very far
removed from crowd/as they gathered/in street/for demonstration/of fact
they were selling/beautiful wooden hearts/to angels
wanting to become/pilgrims in dance/while bell rings/in their prologue
& other men/carry cargo/giving signal/for another kind/of worship beginning
you touch chimes/& covering ourselves/with seaweed surely/going into twilight
with damned/i’ve become ambassador/fathoming fear/that drives chariot
down crooked streets/we obey rules/of the ghosts/who’re following us
sensing our syllables/will soon break/into speech/that will punish
us further famine/no worse than/luxury being local/custom to create
christened tongue/does its business/all over globe/words are being
translated into another/language lingers long/after it’s usefull
crossing seven seas/in hollow boats/to harvest/where angels mime
manners of emporer/that genesis/adam & eve/planting seed/in shadows
while rabble watches/& pulls lever/on intricate machine/i have constructed
to find fortune/in fever/i’ve developed bride/in noble acts
i have performed/while building mansion/for a sovereign/i’ll never see
zodiac he charts/by candles/he keeps in/his room alight
& outside whirlwind/isn’t an accident/that can be/depended upon later
when mining emeralds/opals & coal/useless in morning
when mute bride/opens door/& forgets you/so you sing/an old lament
you picked up/somewhere or other/when you trained/to be prodigal
but it never/worked out that/way this way/this isn’t judgement
nor memorial/to acts/of bad faith/or reckless charm
perhaps only leaves/left in book/i’ll always read/before the climax
exultant i’m invoking/so many names/i’ve lost account/kings & queens
tying thread/like any merchant/has his price/carved in stone
next to treasure/that isn’t valued/that isn’t valued/at this time/in this place
someone else will/drop the net/fishing for facts/finding only fish
to be sold/to a crowd/wishing it was/waiting for crucifixion
to begin business/of living holy/& then vanishing/inside a storm
with carrion birds/selecting a story/refusing to retreat/to borders
we have broken/treaties & promises/elements in fiction/it is said/descend down here
when we weave/in & out/of assembly/someone has organised/for this solitude
to be sent/away on vacation/to our origins/not so dissimilar/to king lear
who’s still howling/in front room/playing the record/over & over
he has trespassed/into a transgression/he will not/name the the next/in line for
an anonymous inspector/solemn & savage/looks at stamps/he has collected
for album/declaimed every day/on street corners/in eighteenth arrondisement
where i’m being/betrayed before breakfast/on ferry/we are taking/to another place
we’ll tear apart/anniversaries & memorials/sending saviour/to back where
he came from/wilderness or wind/it doesn’t matter/he wouldn’t have
lasted under interrogation/before the multitude/breathed miraculous breath
in the shipyard/of doom’s desire/arriving as avalanche/sullen & ambitious
a prophet harangues/only man/left in loss/on jetty
someone’s being baptised/before his brethren/decide to deny/the second third
or first coming/atoning for others/sins so speechless/they are forced
to dance deliberately/creating a turbulence/after we’ve adored
magicians in mania/walking to haven/where birds swoop/down on book
we’ve thrown away/hoping ascension assisted/by good works
though we don’t/believe in burden/of being saints/seeking shrine
of another’s mouth/still uttering prayer/after deluge broke/sometime mid century
interpreted as invasion/of soviet union/but we know/better by bible
that we recite/to the martyrs/that are coming/off ship/we have sunk
blessing all on/board welcoming barbarians/who can enjoy/this small enterprise
so saluting shipwreck/crying in cathedral/roy orbison sang/an occassional hymn
to remember flame/& a vow/he had taken/his fortune final/in back seat
of new model/of old car/advertised in life/magazine a partnership
between a public/that doesn’t want/& a publisher/who won’t give
substantial our slide/into the volcano/before it burns/out is ocular
in most forms/of scripture certainly/this is prejudice/i have developed
along with corruption/that has led/to this damnatio/& another sermon
i shall speak/inarticulate but innoculated/navigating narrative
you’ll mostly miss/as a harangue/or a mythology/you’ve no pleasure
in discovering anymore/than you can/find fish/i have placed/on the table
hoping to build/revenue for retreat/but supposing that/is also propoganda
i have understood/much too late/to come in/useful i utter/what can be
in this document/tongue on fire/in global village/that marshall mcluhan
did not see/were in ruins/nor marionettes/in an opera/that won’t finish
this is vindication/of 400 years/of bad theatre/without any majesty
in a parliament/of promises sealed/except in pagoda/where primal scene
is being enacted/to a crowd/that includes judas/& maybe another
addicted to answers/& other assertions/masquerading as mission
to recuperate regret/simultaneouslly while saving/souls so stupid/they don’t know
in hollywood musicals/taboos are transgressed/in every song
that passes someone’s/lips are left/to shout epistles/defending realm
where we’re waiting/for an illumination/is next to/impossible these days
unless you’ve booked/for that kind/of grandeur dissapeared/when thief tumbled
combination in safe/he already knew/what was in/there was here/all the time
we’d abandoned purgatory/to poorer people/transforming into tigers
in our nightmares/we sough heirs/who might carry/weight so willfull
we have entered/into a correspondence/with a ventriloquist/& his doll
curious to claim/appetite for ascension/we’ve never witnessed/camera outside room
catching its prey/hygeinc as himmler/in chicken run/he had kept
within his ministry/he was known/as a man/without much malice/to spare others
was singualr arithmatic/in his vocabulary/twisting at tangents
he sought solutions/like a gambler/seeking a game/he cannot win/so waits silently
for succession/to take place/& be proved/that we are/fools of nature
eligible by conduct/for a missionary/position in public/responsibility of regret
still sanctuary/for the condemned/who have another/strategy all together
now or then/someone will take/initiative on terrain/we’ve never travelled
though dropped anchor/so many times/in our seduction/that’s become burlesque
in promised land/i am playing/a maudlin tune/placing a portfolio/on a pyre
marvelling at mandate/appeasing all allegiances/we’ve treated treacherouslly
requesting vintage wine/before the feast/inhabitants sieze citadel
seething with sorrow/for old times/stalin had believed/in a redemption
for example preaching/was his purpose/& it’s not/so subtle certainly
as american dream/but people wanted/oracles he provided/every five years
in a plan/no one prepared/plundering a paradise/that hadn’t yet
occurred in obvious/way we write/about in annuals/that you’re storing
for the gladiators/shall surely come/with their shields/followed by anthropologists
with their passports/& their contacts/there’s no need/for alarm bells
though board vessels/quickly as possible/before you blaspheme
in devout company/that you keep/aware of dimension/we have escaped
from that fire/& no await/another obstacle course/full of correspondents
filing their copy/for their agencies/owners & kngs/deposed in dream
but that’s another/ellipsis in epoch/drowned in debris/i am choosing
to transform tale/into a science/recognising a remedy/in these ommissions
before an idol/that keeps shattering/so i sing/sonata to skies/& fugitive souls
i am atoning/for satori stolen/from a doctor/who repudiated restraint
& cherished change/as only given/he could trust/but didn’t rejoice
because they’d revoke/his papers persist/in keeping us/awake & alert
dr destouches demaned/quest continaul questioning/& no surrender
nor any capitulation/to the crowd/hammerring at door/stating their solioquoy
in a voice/he might’ve heard/over the wireless/kept in clinic/next to morphine
& other trophies/he had hated/his miraculous mind/austere & alone
languishing in lament/exempted from exile/he was candidate/for a contamination
hostile he hated/a marvelous motif/for this dragon/who loved more/than we can
imagine his technique/enslaved to explosions/occurring in order/that he dwell
in our dread/primitive & proud/he tested tenets/until they taught
that something else/fell from grace/this a doctrine/that cruder minds
embrace with empiricism/that does not/sort soil necessary/condition to chastise
mystery until it/speaks so severely/you’d believe zodiacs/but never in
prophets or peace/paralysis or prayer/leda & swan/a formidable duo
in anyone’s imagination/if it works/take two tablets/& hear hercules

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 24 2005 13:17 utc | 28

& you beq, for your graciousness

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 24 2005 21:15 utc | 30

ghost rodeo
(3rd improvisation)
& in another/town & city/buildings are burning/as hands raised
in contemporary salute/shouting out liturgy/that is cruder
than they imagine/smaller world possible/i am afraid/that’s not clear
to them selling/badges & uniforms/from another time/so very close
you can hear/the words still/when keeping quiet/in a cafe
yugoslavia somalia iraq/are only names/to be found/in crossword
in newspaper/i am lying/across a table/with empty pen
scratching a sound/& making sense/while americans mimic
thirty years ago/their president young/brutal & banal
making himself prince/building castle/best & brightest/being rewarded then
with high office/they only fucked/up what’s left/though this innocence
cannot be forgiven/honduras cuba vietnam/have long memories
longer than you/think about this/when repeating broadcast
heard/when only nine/that someone shot/someone in plaza
i didn’t care/nor do i/now know he/was as efficient/as any middle
ranking military officer/imitating napoleon himself/who imitated frenchmen
in a court/in tehran iran/someone is tried/in absentia perhaps
author on ice/in scottish bar/waiting for fight/to break out
so he’ll smash/bottle over head/of editor/who’s buying drinks
& assorting anecdotes/that’ll be published/ready for christmas
arriving on table/in a house/in hampstead maybe/even in barcelona
or sixth arrondisement/they will discuss/arrival of refugees
though this name/has lost meaning/when everyone refugee
from somewhere someplace/knowing i am/saying the obvious
so you’ll forget/it much better/than if tattoed/on your body
maps are merging/& mingling maliciously/into a milieu
you can lead/all troops forwards/into killing field
so adequately described/in television programme/lasting fifty minutes
before naked woman/rubs a lotion/over her skin/so she can
enter next century/a little cleaner/than she left/the old one
buys a wine/incanting a date/1940 perhaps paris/she is saying
though i thought/she was talking/about now today/yesterday or tomorrow
i’ve passed information/on to case/you are hiding/beneath the stairs
as in children’s/story you’re reading/out quite aloud/so i hear
every word said/& i’m dictating/just in case/i can use/it in document
i am building/an intelligence service/without ever needing/to know facts
daphne & chloe/are an example/i won’t detail/romolus & remus
cain & abel/dedicated to devolution/that’d take place/during a winter
we would win/all prizes falling/from tree/we’d cut down
in a garden/so very close/to our skin/i recite adorno/to the birds
knowing there’s lyric/beneath soil/where my blood/filters its longing
this isn’t divine/interpretation of events/rather the opposite
down to earth/is place/preferred in pantomime/while emperor undresses
holding an icon/that can be/taken to pharmacist/turned into ice
with word/or two mentioned/across counter/where pamphlets spread
in a pattern/that’s forcing me/to recognise picture/you are painting
portraits so exact/that you can/give as gift/to her image
beginning to deteriorate/searching for saints/in assembly line
that’s called literature/that’s called language/that’s called culture
i couldn’t give/the proverbial fuck/as we’d say/in a changeroom
on an oval/where we played/sports & battles/amounted to same
thing subject object/you make sense/& bring order/& i’ll wait
speaking to shadow/who is leaning/against me globe/i have carved
from butter perhaps/for an exhibition/you would review
in your journals/i pull paper/from its binding/& make jets
that’d bomb illinois/to stone age/if i’d wealth/to change this
structure so stupid/you call history/changing of guard/something to that
effect or affect/is already administered/to patient/i have slipped
some other somniferant/pulls me away/from all this/almost perfect definition
as heart freezes/over a sentiment/i can’t express/lies & leaves
you have left/guards on door/before i’m executed/sentences so savage
i am tearing/away at body/i hardly posses/at all times
it has belonged/to someone else/this isn’t said/with any bitterness
on the contrary/i’ve understood position/placed in pantheon
on wall/with other bottles/you’re aiming at/with missile
that’s been launched/like boats before/me at moment/i’m looking out
window to harbour/makes me feel/i’m in portugal/though i’m in
chateau rouge paris/another africa altogether/though cloth same
as those silk/you cover me/in our nights/when stories told
to compare cost/you’d need accountant/who understood figures
historical & otherwise/i am turning/myself into mortuary/of all that
passed between us/routes of transgression/not eloquent path
rarely a repetition/used to reconstruct/raids on refuge
i once had/empires & kingdoms/though you’ll have/to take word
i am giving/away family treasure/in these statements/as tears roll
like russian tank/in checkoslovakia 1968/i am directing
a comic opera/from small space/a moderate mania/melting my wings
as angels ascend/all around altar/attacked as amens/assertions as alien
as breath breathed/in & out/like russian prince/in parisian restaurant
sometime in twenties/you bought dynasties/to terrace house
where you dined/on their memories/turned into memoirs
for american publisher/sat on edge/ofcircle/knowing prophet
when he saw/one & one/always makes two/even in german
saviours are rare/when cloud breaks/down in principle
you’re amongst dust/blown off pages/that once strutted
across a mind/simple as faustus/any bargain good/enough for miracle
or an apparition/that i’m noting/here with machinery
at my disposal/you can find/a ripped postcard/of st sebastian
& on street/before her print/names on sheets/hanging from windows
mirroring sky/you cannot see/stratagems & suns/i keep here
in my pocket/i have ticket/to an anniversary/you are invited
to bring lovers/on a chain/throughout the fog/as something strikes
sound so sane/i hear rhymes/i once played/out on tin/in a backyard
you could witness/parade of passion//punch & judy/an easy dialectic
floating on seas/where we sank/ships of soil/near a lock
hoping it’d pull/us down there/amongst the fish/we had caught
images of ourselves/that made us/wish we were/one with another
in gentle fury/we picked ourselves/up from ground/walking towards pole
where charts hung/like obscene flags/directing us dutifully
from another night/projecting us forward/away from light
above that building/where she levitates/as in pasolini
movie teorema transcendent/transfixes this tale/i am telling
from the bottom/of this heart/hauling a wreckage/with a breath
grasping a shroud/placed around shoulders/since those streets
confined a confession/i would’ve made/to a procession
though they wanted/to listen to/anecdotes & annuals/bought for them
from second hand/bookshops behind building/where you woke
from miserable sleep/you brought day/down to size
with an equation/you reduced flesh/to a skeleton/we could see
doubt dreaming dread/readying us for/an exile waited
beyond exile itself

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 25 2005 0:44 utc | 32

that is i……………………..indeed.
no better response to art than art, and breathless, in the horn section, will continue to blow, for any to show, where it goes — space is the place — everywhere and not.
merci

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 25 2005 9:45 utc | 34

fallujah variations
1.1
ships gone down. i’ll attend to museum in twilight. hiding next to registry of births and deaths. when we all went down. all other people here hide in rubble waiting to be informed.
1.2
being saturday all of us remained quartered. i asked him to make exploration of riverbed on horseback to see how far it reaches. horse not here so he went on foot to request one from another. by nightfall he had not returned. by nightfall no news.
1.3
i am out here in centre. somewhere. a depraved boy always a soldier loitering in the vicinity of paradise. rumour they have found me near a rock where the view of the world too small. i once owned a demon that will be forgotten – when i become helmsman. there can be no substitute for catastrophe. a great definer. a career made for any diplomat in the know. yes i have a profession for brutality. i will procreate outside any jerusalem you want to name. you want to name fortune. i will name insomnia. i will keep dancing. a holy man in the antipodes.
1.4
measure as best you can perimeters of what you can call your possession. it will march behind you. behind you there is a clown dressed in words. though another would call it a glance. a glance of what you can remember of the walk should be noted. every fall remembered. because up there – near the shack. we are burning intolerable books describing our childhood. your face is in all of them
1.5
i am misplaced. surely that is the problem. disguised in clothedcrowds. in their passing. yes i am sure that i notice now. too late. that their head-dress made from windows i looked out as a child. i would stand on a chair. look out window. see that man. i would wet my trousers. it would form a pool on the chair. i could see my little face. all scrunched up. yes i was all scrunched up. i am sorry father.
1.6
tired enough of language to call it an apparition. there is no bliss in salvation. do not take a long trip without calling it a pilgrimage. allow us to refuse entry to a fraud populated by melancholy. artefacts ideas. ideas become nostalgia in a country miles away. deep in another place. somewhere. yes. the boundary
1.7
you have written into your holy texts – evolution of what you once called a proud species. now just dread of grandeur living in hope. a short journey. somewhere. they are waiting to sing a song. in tune. lost no in multitude of our sins.
1.8
if there was a bridge here – i would walk towards it
1.9
he has not returned yet. more will come. he has brought distracting news. he wants to see me. this will bring trouble.
1.10
this descent brittle .
1.11
i am still waiting for the water to come in our century.
1.12
dispose of all you own. it will come back as myth.
1.13
i always refer to maps. there is no humour in this statement. i will send an anonymous telegraph to you. a nuance will be sent back. when you whisper to the diviner – get his desperate contract signed. it will describe love of course. land of a thousand maps

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 25 2005 21:35 utc | 36

remembereringgiap. This is quite an outpouring. I am not being cynical when I ask, are you feeling better? I do hope so, really.

Posted by: beq | Mar 28 2005 15:02 utc | 38