C side

circadian

catafalque

caesura

cardamon

capstan

commissariat

littoral

Before we talked
we talked
about

what
file transfer
protocol to use.

métro gnome

Objet indestructible
(1963 copy of 1923 original)
Man Ray

Today the
postman brought
me a laptop
that is claimed
will work under
water. If you're
reading this then
apparently it
does. Un-
fortunately
I don't.

The Third Man Ray

Sans Paroles
Man Ray

et, encore

Marcel Duchamp en Rrose Sélavy
Man Ray

Knowing the breadth

& depth of Martin Edmond's research, I am not surprised that some faecal finger of fate brought him to the site he points towards in the comments box of the stately pleasure dome post below & which I think warrants being brought to the surface.

"Even Bush's crap is classified top secret. According to our Austrian sources, Austrian newspapers are currently abuzz with special security details of George W. Bush's recent trip to Vienna. Although the heavy-handed Gestapo-like security measures meted out to Viennese home owners, business proprietors, and pedestrians by US Secret Service agents and local police before and during Bush's visit received widespread Austrian media attention, it was White House "toilet security" ("TOILSEC"), which has Austrians talking the most.

The White House flew in a special portable toilet to Vienna for Bush's personal use during his visit. The Bush White House is so concerned about Bush's security, the veil of secrecy extends over the president's bodily excretions. The special port-a-john captured Bush's feces and urine and flew the waste material back to the United States in the event some enterprising foreign intelligence agency conducted a sewage pipe operation designed to trap and examine Bush's waste material. One can only wonder why the White House is taking such extraordinary security measures for the presidential poop." more

Just felt like posting this

Cadeau
Man Ray

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan

Have just been reading about the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

It's a 21-building complex, designed "as a suburb of Washington". Its more than 3500 diplomatic & support staff will have a sports centre, beauty parlour & swimming pool. Six residential blocks will each have more than 600 apartments. & if the five metre thick wall won't keep the disgruntled supporters of the recently-deposed Planet Pluto at bay, then the built-in surface-to-air missile station most certainly will.

The price for the land was minimal - it was a gift from the Iraqi Government. The site is floodlit at night, & the entire construction force is foreign.

The U.S. can't get the Iraqi power grid back on line, or sewerage or water. Not a problem here - all services are self-contained & totally independent from the Baghdad utilities.

It's due to be finished in June, 2007. It's the only US reconstruction project that's on track in Iraq. It's costing more than $600 million dollars. It's bigger than the Vatican. It "dwarfs the edifices of Saddam's wildest dreams" & it "irritates the hell out of ordinary Iraqis".

Maybe I'm an innocent,

but I really did believe that crap like that espoused in the paragraphs posted below was dead. But it's from The Australian, a Murdoch newspaper, & he's not a man noted for his forward thinking, unless it comes to how to obtain obscene amounts of money.

"Former anti-Vietnam War protest leaders are deans and department chairmen. These tenured radicals have transformed faculty staffrooms into bastions of neo-Marxist and radical feminist ideology.

Too many of them unashamedly use their power and position to force-feed extremism down the throats of a captive audience of our impressionable young.

For more than a generation, our best and brightest have spent their university years being force-fed the nihilistic doctrines of postmodernism.

The reason leftist dogmas are so prevalent on campus is because humanities, arts and education faculties are predominantly populated by leftist ideologues. Australian academe has become a partisan echo chamber in which the professoriate is in violent agreement about the ostensible evils of capitalism, Zionism and George W. Bush."

Let me just quote from another Murdoch spokesman. "Duh-oh!"

Dear Pluto

I don't care if your orbit
overlaps with Uranus.
You'll always be
a planet to me.

drdgng fr tlnts

(A
list for
Eileen Tabios since

I'm / thinking of
her to-
day.)

three blood oranges
a carton of 200 cigarettes
(& on th' carton a graphic of a
healthy lung
vs
an emphysemic one)
a loaf of thick-sliced white bread
(for oldman sandwiches)
1.25L bottle of sparkling mineral water
2L bottle of iced coffee (low fat)
three red delicious apples
two punnets of strawberries
Harry Potter & th' Half-Blood Prince

"I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy



an ugly NEW WORLD WOODWORKING to see what the coffin-makers
in Ghana are doing these days."

Have decided

that what I've been suffering from is the magazine equivalent of post partum depression.

Have started doing some early stuff for issue three, & feel much better even though I am constantly reminded that, despite its claims, Blogger is most definitely not wysiwyg. Take a deep breath & go back to it again.

& will start getting the print versions of issue two plus Sandra Simonds' chapbook ready in the next couple of weeks.

& have to make an appointment to go to the optometrist before my eyes give out totally. I can't read through my reading glasses, can barely see the screen through my computer glasses, & after 15 years I'm again watching tv without glasses, because that's the least blurry option.

But what do the subtitles say?

 


    O
FLAT


 
 

scratching #1

my eyes
are playing up
on me

don't see
things clearly
any more

listen
intently
to things
that aren't
there

scratching #2

Finally he
wrote
to me.

"I am
working as
a courtesan
in the Palace
of Epistemos.

"I wear a
           l
           o
           n
           g
white dress.

"I suck
old men.

"Isn't that
how you've
always
wanted
me to be?"

Today the
postman brought
me the Lone
Ranger & Tonto. Ex-
cept the Lone Ranger
is now no longer
alone because
he is in touch
with his inner self
& Tonto is a psychic
from the sub-
continent & not a
Native American
sidekick. Damn
these shades of
grey. Whatever
happened to black
& white, even
when / in colour?
I blame Alan Ladd,
playing Shane with
a small man
syndrome. & Gary
Cooper, the tall
silent one who
learnt to talk &
went off to mix it
with the likes of
Picasso. Wasn't a
virgin Quaker bride
enough for him? You
could see it coming
as it neared high
noon. The hero as
a man in black. Do not
forsake me, I begged
him. Obviously
he didn't listen.

Colour me naif

&, sure, it's early days yet, but I had hoped for a slightly warmer reception from the "buying public" to the print versions of Otoliths. They're not there to make money, simply to defray some of the costs of providing contributor copies. It's a minimal markup for the part in colour (basically a rounding up to the nearest dollar) & only slightly more for the b&w part.

I'm in the midst of a rethink of my plans. I'll still provide copies of issue two, but it may just be the part that the contributor is in. Issue three — who knows?

So the ode for aujourd'hui is

Today the
postman brought
me a bill
for $1611.43.

Today the
postman brought
me an Escher
drawing of the
postman bringing me
an Escher drawing
of the postman
bringing me an
Escher drawing of
the postman
bringing....Five
hours later I
worked out why
I like Magritte.

what / turns a / hick town on!

The
stetson hats
are all aquiver -

Dwight Yoakam is
coming to
town.

& the sun did set on the British Empire

"Do you like Kipling?" she asked

"I don't know," he replied. "I've never kipled."

Things come together, fall apart, are forgotten, are rejoined in another way when some intersection triggers memory.

I don't like Kipling (says he who has / never kipled). But I do like some Kipling. Put name to him through film, Kim. Errol Flynn / Dean Stockwell / Paul Lukas. Anonymous at junior Boy Scouts, patterned on the Jungle Book or the / Just So Stories / probably, possibly, read at the time. Anonymous also in the morning assemblies at secondary school, but emotion swelled as that thousand-boy-voice choir sang Recessional. Same tune as used for "for those in peril on the sea". But Kipling poem to go with Kipling prose. Put them together somewhat. Forgot them.

Read Kim. Enjoyed it. Am a sucker for 19th century stories about Afghanistan / The Himalayas / The Roof of the World. Check out Talbot Mundy if you get the chance, thirties author, sort of pulp, Theosophist. Wrote King of the Khyber Rifles, Om, the JimGrim series, Tros of Samophrace. Great ficciones.

Came back to Kipling again through film. John Huston's The Man who would be King, Michael Caine, Sean Connery. Forgot the writer, could recite the filmscripts. Watch the reruns. Cable only.

But. Invasion. Unwarranted. Bullshit pre-emptive. A couple of years ago. Recessional triggered off by a line, much used. Nineveh, in the dust, in the desert outside Mosul. & now, the other name used in that line Kipling wrote. In another bullshit-surrounded invasion & act of genocide. (I never knew blitzkreig was a Hebrew word.) Tyre.

A strange poem, Recessional. Full of all those Victorian concepts & conceits. Heathens & Gentiles & lesser breeds without the law. God. But, written on the 50th or 60th anniversary of Victoria's accession to the throne, at a time when "the sun never set on the British Empire". (& years later I would come across an atlas as a young boy, with the sun still in the sky & all those countries still in red.)

Yet this poem is about arrogance, about hubris, about the transient nature of power. Things the current armies of the night would do well to remember. It's bizarre when I read about or see on tv Bush &/or Olmert &/or their minions talking about terrorism. The words they use could equally – perhaps even more so - be applied to them. Just like this poem. Ambiguous.

God of our fathers, known of old,
      Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
      Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
      The Captains and the Kings depart;
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
      An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away;
      On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
      Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
      Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
      Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
      In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
      And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Must thank

Phil Primeau for his kind review of from Series Magritte, published earlier this year by Bill Allegrezza's Moria Books. (There's five six links in the sidebar that cover those last nine words.)

Phil's piece is the first of an occasional series of reviews that will be going up at 'P'R'O'C'E'S'S'I'O'N'.

& I must also point out that the first issue of Andrew Lundwall's new e-zine Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks has just appeared. Andrew's intending to make it a bi-weekly thing, so he's looking for submissions. Think of having that name in your bibliography. I'm hoping to, if I ever get back to writing.

He
did not
consider relevance relevant.

Nothing shines so blue as.

When she left.

              Lately.

At the end of the road.

Politely.

Steps lead down to the square where he would often sit in the afternoon & drink a coffee.

Bombs fell.

Screaming.

          Know.

A poem is a song without a subject.

Issue two of Otoliths

has just gone live. http://the-otolith.blogspot.com

It contains work by Karl Young, Juhana Vähänen (translated by Karri Kokko), Martin Edmond, Rochelle Ratner, Louise Landes Levi, Cath Vidler, Michael Farrell, Christian Jensen, Ira Joel Haber, Bruce Covey, Jill Jones, Allen Bramhall, Derek Motion, Caleb Puckett, Sandra Simonds (a mini-chap — The Tar Pit Diatoms), Vernon Frazer, Pat Nolan, Donald Illich, J.D. Nelson, harry k stammer, Steve Tills, David Meltzer, Tom Beckett, Thomas Fink, Crag Hill, Ira Cohen, Carol Jenkins, Miia Toivio, John M. Bennett, Michael Rothenberg, Geof Huth, David-Baptiste Chirot, Aki Salmela, Sandy McIntosh, Michelle Greenblatt, Janne Nummela, Tom Hibbard, Marko J. Niemi, Phil Primeau, Kevin Opstedal, Olli Sinivaara, Nico Vassilakis & John M. Bennett, Michael McClure, Pam Brown, Leevi Lehto & Eileen Tabios.

My thanks to all the contributors, and a special note of thanks to Michael Rothenberg, Karri Kokko & Leevi Lehto for their generous assistance in removing some of the degrees of separation.

& a reminder that the print on demand editions of Otoliths issue one and its associated chapbooks from Jean Vengua and from Ray Craig are available from http://www.lulu.com/l_m_young