And the telescope reports...

Wellsprings out of time. This is the core of poems in our age. Poems are insensitive to the needs of the time. Poems are about poems and nothing else. Poems are consistently problems. Poems are not stripteases. Poems are incapable of hitting the thing itself since the '60s. Poems are hard. Poems are elitist. Poems are vicious. Poems disdain novels. Poems are far from personal. Poems are hatred. Poems are unemotional. Poems are racial. Poems cause fights. Poems are not worth it. Poems are unnappealing. Poems are not assertive enough. Poems are a wide winter snowscape. Poems are not necessary. The well read do not need to read poems. Poems make prose redundant, but are not redudant before that. Poems have to confront men before they can be freed. Poems drink human blood in sacrifice. Poems are thick bark. Poems are an outdated salvation. One only needs a few poems. Poems discourage the wide for the deep. Poems come in chunks. Poems are not backed by the government. Poems are starving. Poems are worth overlooking. Poems are not lyrics. Poems are rarely printed. Poems try to fit in hard.

Fall: Rilke, Laforgue, Luther

Lord: it is time. The summer was damn long.

Lay your shadows on the Sun's hour

Let them winds loose on the fields.

Demand the last fruits ripen;

Give them only 2 southern days

Push em down to completion and speed

the last sweets in the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, build no more.

Who's now alone, it'll last awhile

will wake, read, write long letters,

and will in alleys back and forth

wander fitful, if the leaves rush.

*

Here comes the fall of miserable downpours

Drowning the banal summer of lovers

Who stupid and slow go to crossroads

Plotting the progeny of their filthy neuroses.

G'bye lilacs, gold wheat, dusts, red skirts.

In the spleen despairing of painful organs,

Fire pretty much pokes the regrets of happy days,

We keep the incurable sadness of things...

Enjoy! Immortal glory! O season!

Spleen! Glory! Love, moneys.

Some striking bugles

Some heroes, nude and hot

Attacking the fiery Olympos of the Iliad!

O! Why was I born in this sad century,

Why am I here below?

Does the Universe know?

O! If I had a goal!

To love! To love! To enjoy!

Is my life a dream?

I exist! Is this really true?

To glory! To love! To exhuast my unique life!

(The dead

It's good buried ;

It don't leave

Hurried.)

*

Enjoy yourselves with the BOSS, you righted; the Pious should hail him rightly.

Give thanks to the BOSS with harps; praise sing him on psalms and instruments of 10 stings!

Sing him a new song; play pretty on the strings with cheery sounds!

Cuz the BOSS's word is truthful, and what he says, that he'll do for sure.

He loves righteousness and the right; the Earth's chock full of the BOSS's goods.

Heaven is, through the BOSS's word, done up and all his Host through the breath of his mouth.

He holds the water of the seas together like a canteen, and collects the Floods in his cupboard.

All the World fears the BOSS, and before him quivers everybody who dwells on the Earthcrust.

Cause when he speaks, so goes it; if he asks, so it is.

The BOSS makes obliterate the Heathen Wit and straddles the thoughts of the people.

But the conclusion of the BOSS remains for all time, the thoughts of his heart forever and ever.

Well to the folk, of whom the BOSS is the god, to the folk, that he has raised to legacy.

The BOSS looks from Heaven and sees all Men are children.

From his stuck Throne he sees em all, who dwell on the Earth.

He drives the heart of em all, he perks up at all their work.

To a King, his big might don't help; A hero can't save himself from his might craft.

Horsies also don't help; there would ya be betrayed; and their big power wouldn't save nuthin.

Look, the eyes of the BOSS peeks at everyone who's scared of him, who hope out of his goods

that he might save em from Death and preserves their life from Hunger's knot.

Our souls await the BOSS; he's our help and shield.

Cause our Heart enjoys itself in his, and we trust his Holy Name.

Your good, BOSS, be upon us, as we hope from ya.

On Poems and Toros

There is a reason we hate poems. When we pick up a book of poems it naturally disgusts us it is pretentious and goes on forever (even though the lines are short) the words are muddled make no sense after one another and the story is either non-existant or indecipherable. Even if we know we would like to be different would like to like poems we have to steady our initial nausea swallow it unwholesomely until we learn to digest it. These are the many reasons we hate poems and those reasons are offshoots of the one thing.

It is the same reason we hate bullfighting. When we watch a bullfight it naturally disgusts us it is preventable and goes on inexplicably (we're modern civilization for chrissakes!) the passes are torture and cannot be seen one from the other and the tragedy is either non-existant or monstrous. Even if we know we would like to be different and would like to like bullfighting we have to steady our initial repulsion and swallow it unwholesomely until we learn to digest it. There is a reason we hate bullfighting and those reasons are offshoots of the one reason.

Look at the faena of the bullfight and the line of a poem. The line of a poem is its most basic narrative unit, where the poet can convince you beyond mere ornamentation (single words) and yet before you are consumed in the whole of the emotional poetic paragraph. In the faena the matador has his chance to shine with the muleta (red cloth on a stick) and is for the first time left all alone with the bull. Both units are the hinge of the whole. Of course there are differences. But in the faena the great matador will do a series of passes the goal of which is to bring the horns of the bull as close to his body as possible without killing him in order to prepare the bull for death in a deadly way. In the poetic line, the poet must string together words the goal of which is to bring the meaning as close as possible to prose (that is, a chained meaning as opposed to individual words) without becoming prosaic in order to set the poem to a structural blueprint.

Now if the matador is tossed or killed the effect is not spoiled but it becomes immediately prosaic; questions of timing, grace, emotion become subsumed in a scientific journalism that needs to know who what where why and how. The poetic line is similar; it must jostle but not gore the reader or he will lose himself in scientific journalism and the effect will not be spoiled but will become prosaic.

But who wants to live outside of journalism these days? That's why poems are not on the front page. News that stays news doesn't move papers. We will watch a goring before we watch a whole corrida and we will ask our w5 before we will concern ourselves with textual architecture. It's just the times and there's no blaiming that, but our taste for this sort of thing explains why we like neither poems nor bullfighting and will barely (or not) tolerate funding for either.

A Week's Work

The single line:

Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni

has a week's work in it for any self-respecting translator, and needs inspiration on at least one day of the seven, yet people have had a mania for translating the whole of Horace.

-Ezra Pound

is dissolved sharp/keen winter by/at the agreeable/welcome change to spring and the west wind

dissolved is aching chill by the grateful turn to Spring and Favonius

dissolved is the aching chill by the thankful switch to Spring and Favonius

dissolved is the acrid cold by a thankful switch to Spring and Favonius

dissolved is the icy cold by a grateful pass to Spring and Favonius

the bitter winter scattered by grateful change to Spring and Favonius

the acrid chillies melted by grateful change to Spring and Favonius

spiky winter dissolved thanks to the progress of Spring and Favonius

solve, it'll acres he aims grated vicky varies ate Favoni

solved bitter winter's pains grace a switching to Spring and Favon

solving the acrid pains, a grateful turn to Spring and Favonus

solved, winter's acrid pains by grateful change to Spring and Favonus

thawed, winter's acrid pains by grateful change to Spring and Favonus <-

thawed, winter's acrid pains gratefully changing to Spring and Favonus

thawed, winter's acrid pains grace a change to Spring and Favonus

thawed, winter's acrid pains by welcome change to Spring and Favonus

thawed, winter's acrid pains by the welcome change to Spring and Favonus

winter's acrid pains thawed by welcome change to Spring and Favonus

etc.

An Ode of Wei (61)

Say the Ottawa's wide?

A paddleboat will cross it.

Say the Crown is far?

I can spot it from my tiptoes.

Rapid, the Ottawa?

Some parts will admit a boat.

Capitol far off?

I could be there

(save reference)

in half an hour.

The Famous Utensil

Burring, one minute a wasp

How long has he tried to enter?

Replace the

thing on the Tokonoma w/d you

(a joke stand, really, the Kakemono

is a dried dandelion and a macaroni picture on the fridge.)

What an annoying buzz. What is that?

Still? Is he hungry?

Cannot begrudge that. Sweating

it's simple so it's not vulgar

there are

a thousand leaves

this evening

a thousand thousand leaves

my darling, let's not count them,

leave that to the old botanists,

Goethe's

their colour wheels their gingkos

but here

merely leaves

a thousand ten and a thousand of leaves more.

A bumblebee's back, the screen -

oh that burring.

isn't it too hot to

shake like that

The fan of the ox-king is out

In the alcove for your pleasure

Please enjoy it, humble though

This drink is.

A mosquito's death in the afternoon,

And he bit a blacksmith named Cunda,

And the gates fell open, rusted.

The Tokonoma is re-set,

The gigantic

bones of a Deinosaurus, for

your pleasure, Vimalakirti.

These stone lanterns,

druid make?

Yes, the very ones.

If only we had a fly-swatter.

For all creatures must perish

In the heat of the afternoon

Or the fires of the hearth.

thwack.

...

And so they renamed the spoon

"fly-swatter" and it

became quite valuable.

From Karl Kraus

One asks not, what I do all the time.

I stay quiet;

and don't say why.

And there was quiet, there the Earth cracked.

It met no word.

One only speaks out of Sleep.

And dreams of a sun, which laughs.

It goes on;

After it was ennuyant.

The word passed on, as that world awoke.

--

I only am one of the Epigones

Who in the ancient house of language dwells.

But I have therein my own experiences,

I break out and I'm leaving Thebes in pieces.

Should I also come to ancient Masters, later,

So shall I rage the bloody knack of fathers.

Of vengeance speak I, I avenging language

Of all those, those who are language speakers.

I'm Epigone, the ancientworthy(ies?) elder.

But you, be the knowing Theban chorus!

--

Language controlling? That's right to me;

If one only speaks loudly, at the same time is it still?

So I control the language, that you speak

that my might may with me, what it will!