Today the
postman brought
me a notice from
the Harry Houdini
Trick, Tract &
Prestidigitation
Emporium
advising that a
number of its
products were
being recalled
because of faulty
mirrors. Many
magicians will be
disillusioned.

my darling Clementinne

Dear,
I am KOFFI WILLIAMS a gold minner and I have 490kg of gold for sales.
Please if interested do not hesitate to reply me urgently.
Best Regards

& Jukka Joins in, with text

sixty-six for Mark

[66 words]

jerry-built singularity rain wrongheaded waken musician
uh-huh canary vivacious [chaste] phonics testosterone full-blooded
regionally preset self-consciously fiasco [scruple] [mortgagee]
so [d] stink [andante] adze bury [drowsy] [wool] nebulae pasty
decisiveness self-denial wanting philodendron desalination
chilblain mockingly remind risky border whoops yesteryear
[polytheistic] heedless elevator stanza accomplice insignificance
orthodontics has hillock third party, lineman marihuana
preferment birthday suit, mercy [boar] diaphragm foolhardiness
disconnect nonviolence downtown galore whorehouse congruence
sublime.

[6 lines, 6 words]

spark impact camp cramp reamer leaden
weal neath latent fete pretty tire
rarely herein recant cavity revise revive
ravine travel raffia stuffy snuff snub
nut guts mutter pout doughy shrug
threat thresh shrift shift shred shrub

[66 characters]

r-ut ga ohade esi h-uh aay icoucste nsesoef-lddlloiosocrlo okde ze

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen.10.29.07

& visual

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen: Mark66

Soixante-six

Today is my 66^th birthday. I had thought to acknowledge it by posting what would be some, undoubtedly, drab numerical graphic, or the left-hand side of a set of engorged quotation marks (& would spend the next 33 years wondering if I would make it to the other side).

Then I thought of all the talented people I know & whose work I love. If I'd had several months to do it in, this post might have ended up being 66 (or 99) ways of looking at 66. But I only got the idea late last week, just enough time for a quick email to a few whom I consider nearest & dearest.

So, below, offerings from three much-loved-by-me members of my extended electronic family.




Sheila E. Murphy: Happy 66



Geof Huth: 66



Márton Koppány: Ellipsis No. 12 — for Mark Young


Thanks, guys. A big hug from the bottom half of the world.

The Division of Surplus

We are not that hip
to Hindi, but know
that the Tantras teach
there is a Lingam with-
in each Yoni. It is not
so much a collection
of strokes, but a series
of phases of intention
evolved from a convenient
same-sex marriage of
peace comics & security
spiders. The Yoni does
not do the slow train
with no seat routine.

One of the interesting things about blogging is that, at the time, poems seem isolate when you post them, unrelated to anything else, esp. for someone like me who tends to jump about, work in a variety of styles, find other things to interest them & thus let possible sequences tail off or wither on the vine. You work with the mindset that nothing is connected, that you're not really doing or achieving much, just marking time.

Then an opportunity presents itself & you go into yr archives to gather like things; & discover that, when collected together, there are quite substantive archipelagos.

Recyclable HEADLINE hay(na)ku

TOM
BECKETT BLACKS
OUT ANOTHER BLOG!

Lunch poem

Mais où
sont les hum-
colored cabs
d'antan?

Sic transit gloria barramundi

There is a story Paul Desmond told of, after a Brubeck Quartet gig somewhere in the mid-West, jumping into a taxi, asking the driver to take him where the action was, & ending up at an illegal fishing spot.

It's the sort of thing I could imagine happening in this place. Actually, I lie—even a spot of illegal fishing is far more exotic than what goes on here. The height of excitement, it appears, is to steal the genitals off one of the fifteen or so bull statues dotted around the town. Apparently it happens often enough for them to now have them cast as modular parts. Screw out, screw in. Screw it.

For the last week or so there's been an amateurish "float" parked on the river—cabin cruiser, pontoon, big papier-mache fish, handwritten sign—advertising, I think from memories of such a thing happening last year, the Barra Bounty tag & release competition, or who can catch the most meters of barramundi now that the season's opened. Which means, I suppose, that catching them at any other time would be illegal. Wow, the town's growing up! & today, as I meandered off home about two o'clock—yes, Martha, it is POETS day & I'm pissing off early—down to my riverside carpark, there were a number of outboard-motored boats out in the river between the bridges, each with a couple of guys—always guys; chauvinist heaven here—with their lines dangling in the water, silent, nothing happening, every so often shifting the position of their boat to another place, where nothing would once again happen.

Talk about yr fucking school of quietude…..

Lunch Poem

Faultlines. Call-
igraphies of
longing. Some-
times feld-
               spar.
      Young
girls on
cellphones
congregate
outside the
Mall. Zoo-
notic. Cross-
species trans-
mission. Txt me.

Today the
postman brought
me a poem that
he'd stolen
from the
postman
who had stolen
it from Pablo
Neruda. Let me
count the ways.

Lunch poem

The fire has run
its course, the
ashes remain. I am
confused—nothing
is where it was, all
contiguity vanished.
I eat a bag of
Carmelite Nuns
since that’s what I’ve
always done with
Caramel Creams. Can’t
taste the distance. Sky
blooms, clocktowers
flow inland as the toad
changes. Boards sing arias
or are they hiding be-
hind the arras? My mouth
cannot tell me. I sit down
to lurch. A centipede
takes me out to dimmer.

His
life was
a goal-less drawer.

is
            
land

matt
                                                        white
matted

formatted
                                                  cockatoos
           shadow

odrer

chnage

wolrd

Do you want product?

for Tom Beckett

I visit the
hairdressers. Today
they've all gone
similarly blonde—which
one is mine? Are
you my avatar?

Lunch Poem

The e-mail kiosks lock
on to me as I
cruise the Mall. My exo-
skeleton — beltbuckle,
glasses, the tips of
my shoes, even the
decidedly feminine gold chain
I have around my wrist —
lights up with messages. They
are not for me; I am being
mistaken for someone
else. But there are no
shops in this part of
the strip & I’m a snoop be-
sides so I read them with
half an ear, even though
my heart is in the jeweller
looking through their
recipes for eloquence &
my soul is in the toystore
set on rich dark fruit
cake laced with brandy.

a new rendition / an old song

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to allow a lawsuit to go forward that questions the government's use of rendition, the controversial practice of capturing suspected terrorists and sending them to other countries for a more intense form of interrogation than permitted under U.S. law.

Without comment, the justices let stand an appeals court ruling that the state secrets privilege, a judicially created doctrine that the Bush administration has invoked to win dismissal of lawsuits that touch on issues of national security, protected the government’s actions from court review.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? proclaimed Juvenal. "Who Controls The Control Men" permutated William S. Burroughs a couple of millenia later. & in another couple of thousand years, it'll probably be a similar song albeit in a language we haven't heard yet.

40 years ago today

Hat as Hat

Ya Hazmat Mevlama

Calligraphy is a spiritual geometry produced by material implements.

The literal meaning of the Turkish word for calligraphy (hat) is line or way.

turkey head job / head job turkey

so that's why they're called 'gobblers'

A reminder

that submissions for issue seven of Otoliths close at the end of this month.

It's shaping up to be another merry mix. Trick or treat.

strange how we see words sometimes

brie fly

Yr heroes

might make bad song choices, or have lesser backing musicians, or do poor concerts, or slide into the temporary insanity of religious conversions, but they'd never sell out to Big Business. Or would they?

Cut to.

A TV commercial of an atv or truck or 4-wheel drive or whatever they're called in yr neck of the woods, making its way up & down rugged steep terrain, fording rocky streams, all the sorts of things that you'd buy such a vehicle for to get around town in & meanwhile dream. & underneath — or actually over, replacing the voice —

& it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

cerise
sErRaTe

poultice
         police

sentence
        silence

premise
      promise

solstice
         solace

pastiche
         palace

errata
       (eRaSe)

scrimshaw

event-
ually the
narwhal wrote back