Author: kilburn

finding so many things to say and think and do, where’s the harm, the arm
in it all, egyptian doomuggims, nile, but someone’s obsessed with it. can’t
say who, wouldn’t be, apropospos. here here, the noodlemen cry, and the
daisychainmen, linked arms and everything, slice the air with their curling
fandangos, bright red fedoras, gurgling aspersions to grandeur. but why,
why don’t we ever really understand what haven’t seen? or rather, when the
nail comes home to roost, why don’t we sing with the sopranos till the moose
come home? I’ve read a book or two in my day and I have to wonder what the
fuss is about. To be sure, I can’t say that it’s always been easy, it’s
been quite difficult from time to time to time. And the roses blooom on sundays
and wilt by teatime. that’s just how it is, sometimes, rather, often. Higgledy
piggledy, but I’ve been dreaming some stark despondent dreams, what’s the
matter? I ask myself, ‘pon waking, but I can’t/won’t tell myself. Because
I’m just rather ornery, or say rather, contrary. I’ve planted MY cockleshells
all in a row and the house burned down… What’s it like to creep around
the house like a mouse? It’s lonely, is what it is, and to indulge in fanciful
discussions about nobbits and widgets and textual inerrencies… Please forget
everything I’ve said, except for the bits which are important, which I want
you to remember. Call it blundago. Or, as I always used to say, before the
operation deprived me of a great many things, the operation operated by those
white clad fellows/things in rubber gloves and horseshoes, they liked to
clash profoundly over which bit of me to remove next, which little piece
of me was completely unnecessary to the functionability of the whole. Rather.
There’s not much left, now they’re done…

Chick… chick… chicken!
crow the lancy tornado, chicken!
chicken, walk the lake of fire twisting, chicken!
chicken, peck now!
chicken: dooooom to you chickenchicken!
or is it dooooom to you nonchicken fromchicken?
coarse and icky ships a’sailing, chicken
flying dutchman lurked with chickenghost
ware ware his flashing eyes, his floating stare
beaked and red and pink and scary: doom
chicken wattle run from here!
you are no sincerely rooster crowing
beware the shuffling egglaying one
chick… chick… Chicken!
doom to you who dares defy, dares to cry
dares to fly above, beyond the sty!
flap flap, chicken, hatch hatch, chicken
what will crawl from out your shell?
when the black ichor oozing
spatters acid on your nose
to scrape the sight from out your eye
doom doom doom bedoom the chicken
pounding, scratching on the drumdrumdrum
note well the tired…
humble
hurdling
huddled
masses….
yearning
squirming…
….
to be free
let them be
that chicken.

{postdated}

cinema visions curl nowandthen around the foggy smoke tendrils spirkling in the twist
and thrust of carved and musculated mediapunch
shoes creak and crumble–from
the lib fills my head with bigger thoughts and smaller curvatures From going
to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it jellydoughnuts!
jellyfuckingdoughnuts! pretty soon my head’s overflowed with words thenwhat?thenwhat?thenwhat?
mustfindmustfind proper expulsatory thing: whatwhatwhat?

A long time in solitary awayness from home, with the old sawhorse, stroking
mane and heart and great greasy limpopo rivers (flow, river, flow!) spouted
out in delicious gusts of clickclockclacks. And so many fiddle-dee-dees are
crowding out my brain in stark silence of remembrance so that all my memories
are swushelling down the water spout (spout, spout deep and utter desirecry,
utteritnow, while spanish galleons fly, tossed about) begone and begun to
slippily away. but a great cacophony of nose or noise or parsimmmmmminose
flooded my eyeballs to the tippitytoptop of the irispupileyes till every
sense of nonsense and innersense was awash, scrubbed over with that tight
and spiralling musicmanstuff. to say happy, to say sad, to say fearful, to
say triumphant, to say caterwauling ecstasy, to say phantasmagorick, to say
gung-ho-waulers, to say rhythm-busting-spleen, to say earpoundinglightning,
to say dance in tootightcage, to say losslosslossloss, to say shreddedheart
and notesofclinicaland undespair. to what shall we give the honor, when glosses
all run dry, those fried fish curling about the rearend bumbler, smoking
out the nostrils of knowledge, that fish smells but how’d he know the screennnnnnning
war was out? will he know more crawl into the dank and tender gutter? rim
rim rim the rummypeg heartsgodown–these are so untrue, so dancey, so reknowned
by friend and unfriend and utterbadacquaintance. what words to capture music
so deep and stuck in gut and belly? none here for me, nonenonenone, panning
for gold–doesn’t help much–with askullfuloflang. and so a new oneoneone
descends (ascends?) to the tippily-toppily and baggage and full of portmanteaus
and cuban cigars and nonsquallored items of pastpastpast and over(?) things:
we are a housefyl (dig up dem bones, dem bones) of extinct and past and uttergone(?)
poundpoundpoundandthen….we’re……d..o…..n…..e…….. but the stuff
remainsremains and climbs into the bourgeoisweeping sentiments of (forgiveme)
yesteryear. ioncescreamed takeitbacktakeitBACKtakeITBACKTAKEITBACK!!! have
others also? toadily stonily(it’sminenow?) these ganglies lurchk and succkle,
tearing ligsandbone. but hear my melodra, my uttervillaintends–plots and
plots and conspirackles–the carp, my bone and foreversaken softneeeeeeesses(my
sweetbellybellysoft: my softness gone a cropper: grew pairacarapace to block
those stabbingutdaggslicesliswounds)… but no more listing to badomens:enough.
trending to live a little with coiled ropes about the head shall i pillory
all my absentias? my puckered stabbing moments? why–when IT conceals my
bettersellf–do i languish in thisorthatorother? whichbetween goes riding
on her broom. scareeeccup. pullp the trousers, conceal the mockandlaughbegottencursed
thing. onepersononlysecrettold: probably she does not remember, sorrowgrownandmaudlinmad
she was, all a’twither with the bugholes in her ownnnnnn brain, let her not
worrynormember my smallllll >woes< but my trackle’s been a sidedish
for too ling now. cannotnot recall the rest of [mor*D*ing wor*PH*s] to fill
out lusch and shadows of my brain and lines of cantforgot.

There was even a time, a saucy enraged time, with dollops of skinny accountants and
perspiring walri, a time, my best beloved beloved ones, when all that was left in my
brain was a tendency to twiddle and sing at the top of my voice top ten pop melodies
from 1967. In my opinion, not a good year. But there it was, with my voice cracking
and sparkling in the hayloft light as she cut off all her lovely hair off with a rusty
pair of scissors. I loved her still, though she tried to flee, tried to drive me off
with excuses and shams, delights and betrayals. Have some tea, she said to me, or a
nightcap: hot buttered rum or a frisky nipple? No thanks, I said, that rat poison in your closet has been haunting my dreams lately, spiralling in my gut, and my gut and
I are friends, I said, we watch out for each other, though I admit (most solemnly and
resigned) that my gut does a better job of watching after me than I do of my gut.

The sun has returned (sort of) and shines (sometimes) through my lofty living room
windowpane: I dance and roll naked through the glistering (sometime) radioactivity.
Then dark clouds roll by and my flesh gooses. Telegrammatically, correct and to the
point, these tender spots glow brightly and shine forth warmly. I am distracted by
this burgeoning warmth, this sidling into hunger. Which way is the nearest exit? I
fear that I have wandered into chaos, a chaos of joy and fear, monkeys and wombats,
slicing and dicing, fighting and sighing, though the dirtiest thinking methinks
does not make my face turn red, still embarrassment steals over me when I remember
childhood… The knee-high-cricket boy, with round belly, and thin spindly legs, face
too thin for thinking or seeing. Thinly, I dallied amongst the knees of grown-ups,
saying nothing, and not being seen.

I have perfected the art of invisibility, having trained for seven decades with
the Hori-Matru ninjas of the spice islands. I was incompetent, dangerously incompetent
with regard to every other of their secret arts, and so I left, invisibly, and no one
missed me when I was gone. Stupid ninjas.

now I type into a tiny window about everything which is whirling like tiny
thunderclouds through my brain. when I read a couple of things about nothing,
there was nothing to be had. Nightwood is lurking in my brain and Djuna Barnes
is dancing tappily into the outskirts of my brain… When he stepped into
the room, would I be surprised if icicles began to shiver on my nose? or
was I expecting, perhaps, daggers flung beneath clokey friendship? what is
it to you, my trottering friend, if I succumb
to plunging daggers, poison-dipped and aching.