need a book recommendation? try Bruce Sterling’s Zeitgeist!
pinching my nose between two
pinching my nose between two fingers ><
these days have movt to autumn
where have all my summers gone?
when the clericues and damsydoes are spurling in the sun?
do I have the wit and wither to weather some new thing?
does my cluttered <5 weeks! five w@@kends!>
brain have mucho things to bear?
but can it wallow in this new spinning?
so that it bears sticky and fleshly sweeting?
so my mind doesn’t sadsad itself into a sadness…?
but seizing horns (ya ya, I know) is worth…?
until these goligoes…
but now I’m talking nonsense, even more than usual.
If we could try a new way of being? how much could we fit into our new self?
how much could we fit into our portmanteau/neglectful packers?
cheese…. cheese… (can’t keep my brain on a straight track)
like spiderwebs it just mangles new thoughts into scattered ones
when once walked through
gus hop now, bugga bugga,
gus hop now, bugga bugga, ya ya nist
crowtch down loah, creeep in to your nighttimey
undresst those smacking tornadoes in the crawltyme
kikkikikik, the bird coffs, kikikikikik
chews the mancehand, sweet remorsemary
vigilate these consequences, mahound!
nivver hop to wonzit
howl the saucer eyes back to graceland
and vowch jaded vines about your nek
hop now bugga bugga, hop skip
…and you see what happens when you’ve been away from home?
am I wording it agaiN?
am I wording it agaiN? here’s the scooop: I’ve been yaveling all offer the place
screeching at all the nice people, or wait, I meant speaking. or maybe squeaking?
“why don’t you dance?” they say (with us) they imply, and I don’t have a good answer.
although I have six which are all true together. “take your pick,” I don’t say.
“gurgle gurgle,” this suit ties me together like a mnkey. mnkey see, mnkey do!
I’m a mnkey too! I’m all kinds of -mnkey.
that drunk person talked to me for “hours”. my face was a friendly blank, but inside
I was too polite to scream, or to kick in shins and run. though, much-preffered
the strangerdrunk to drunkerdad. senitamental and weepy, becuz I have too many
wanderthoughts in allmybrain. that tie really brought my suit together!
my brot tied the knot, ached and spun, ring’s all done.
I wasn’t wearing a cravat.
when all the sun goes down behind a hill, and everyone’s lurching and sneeing in the
murk of dusk, and everyone wants to find someone to fuck: drum your licking luck.
drink deep your dark grin. ope your sweet grimoire. spickle, that’s all, spickle.
flying through the air on a bus, meeting ones who lose their luggage and
who snackle in a hufff and like to sit elsewhen from there.
I’d laugh if it weren’t so traumatic, the bussit, traumansit.
too many phonic ‘K(c)’ names surround me, fight inside my brains. (every one of which is
crawling about, looking for nighttime in the dust, when all our windowed peacock-feather
souls can sleep sweep dreams sweeper. push that dust and grime out the door, we don’t
want it anymore.) get away, k(c)-names, get away! you’re not welcome inside my brain!
because really, what’s in a name, do all k(c)-names wish to be the same as all the others,
or even are they? it all in my brain, those k(c)-names like marbles braking my teeth.
all of us go Oooooh!
all of us go Oooooh! when our paterfamilas floats on air and we lug the machine out the
door and the winch spins round and round, twirled by the youngest of us. (His hand still
throbbing from earlier, the SMACK, which punched his hand away as the handle spun free
and fast in the glimmering night of spin and soft decay. But he’s fine. Really. He won’t
show his hand to anyone.) Greatpa smiles, chuckles, laughs, hangs his head in good humor:
these things are all so short. If you blink you miss them, unless you catch them later on
the television where all of us have been stamped with timeless echoes. (Even I lurched on
frame from time to time, plucking at my new-grown beard and pushing rolling specs up and
onto my ever-present nose; which slope is far too slippery for these specs. And so I nose,
and notice, my cheeks cutting sharp into points when I bare my teeth for a smile.) There
was a quick hum when Greatpa shook the engine to life, when he flipped the throttle and
cut the choke and did all sorts of wondrous magick to lift himself and all his craft, so
that he floated (gravity a whipped cur) nearly a foot off the ground. Can’t we all see
this? Didn’t we all laugh and clap with glee? Didn’t we all scream with joy to see our
very own paterfamilias singing in the air?
Later, when I napped: I dreamt of many things: a man slipping down stairs only to find
himself at home; birds of many stripes, but mostly swans or ostriches; when the calico
donkeys came out to play that was when I knew it was time to get up, go outside, wobble
into a tree or something (still being groggy). Ah, the perilous nature of youth. Or maybe
I’m thinking about watercress. Ah, the perilous nature of watercress…?
all of us go Ooooooh! when our bellies our filled with food, because when the time comes
and we eat and eat after not eating and not eating: well, you can understand our dilemma.
We laze about in chairs, thinking to ourselves, why, when we know what happens, do we still?
but that’s just how we are. We like food, we like the taste, the feel, the smell: we like
how it sounds when it’s cooking in the stove or on the oven. We like the colors. We like
to mash (esp. the bananas) around and around on our table with our fingers, making pretty
food diagrams which will one day answer everyone’s questions to their utmost satisfaction!
not the paterfamilias, but one pater asks one familia “want to drive the new car?” to which
one says “right on” or “groovy” or some other delicately chosen delinquent verbalization.
So the drive, in search of a so-called or, as it were, mythical “Covered Bridge”. In the
dark, their eyes were clouded, they could not see, the air-roof opened and shut and at times
the familia thought he was driving too fast (perhaps the pater thought so too). And they
drove and drove and someone said, “how far away is this Covered Bridge, anyhow?” and the
other one said, “maybe we should turn around; go back; reinscribe our chosen path.” to
which the first said, “yes,” and began to look for a place to turn to turn to pull around.
And the car’s furry seats said purrrrrr against the back of their backs and the soft
smell of the engine made them sleepy and the lights zoomed up into the sky and made
everything so bright-bright clear (but the pater, when a car approached, said, “the brights”
and this one familia said, “oh” and turned them off; he had forgotten they were on; so
enrapturedwas he by the smell of those bright lights and the smells those lights illumined.
And when they got back, there was food there, hot and bright. And nuncle was telling stories
of far away lands and most famous people: and how in Italia when they break things
everyone throws a party so no one is sad. So spill wine when you’re there. Everyone likes
to party. And food was mellifluous. and they (the familia and the pater) told their
story, the one about them missing the Covered Bridge (which they in fact noticed and drove
through on their way back, they both feeling to do otherwise would be neglecting their
quest). And everyone laughed and said, “we wondered where you were!” and all was well.
and so it goes and so it went and always we were talking.
A whole week of threes
A whole week of threes have gone by since last I’ve written anything at all. but all that’s passed us by now, all that’s…
and there I was feeling almost strangely coherent, almost dare I say, cogent or corpuscular…
but there it goes again, every time that I feel like screaming out a word that’s wholesome…
everything goes by so fast and slips between my ears…
when I find things which are soft and sleek, I like to pin them quick behind the door…
jurle, how dida crawl so fast? how did I weep for sneaking? how did I…
there’s not any sort of gigglebyte that won’t be sneaking down the block, to the corner store, for a bit of a stip…
reading strange books with strange themes…
coughing up lukewarm water till my nose bleeds rhyme and riddle…
inspect your flowers for cornucopiae and surly hidalgos…
can’t be speaking to just anywhere about just anywho…
should we rest our head upon the floral bed and cry (just a tittle) for all those things we scream for…
I speak into the void:::::::::
I speak into the void:::::::::
oh, and my book of
oh, and my book of choice from the month of July?
VENUS PLUS X
by Theodore Sturgeon
old old old
origami standard bearers juice squeezing undergarments political pamphlets
vox populi jagermeister xylephones wicked wits hovering standing in cold whistling
tea spouts burnt cheese macaroni frames gardenias narcolepsy bitumen cordwainer
smith truckle treacle nimbus kalifornia humours friendly postmen (women) horrorshow
open-eyes winking stars hottentots caviar moldy bread moldy marmalade moldy
transparent rice paper mouldy hunger jumpstarting greeve fondango hurlyburly
pricking thumbs zymurgy errata knuckles quietus biddle boddle bop unstatements
drear inside the park bees hunt lorp laugh loop quease peas rump tycho brahe
frumple dimple wimple simple kill my own sweet remedy feed chow numbskull
cretin mountebank vision creases folds daunt puddle fiddle paddle torrent
falls yent porcelein