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

New books from Otoliths - Raven, Gildzen, Topel & Leftwich, Fieled, Stempleman

This quarter's round of books from Otoliths has just been released.



Shifting the Question More Complicated
Francis Raven
76 pages
Cover design by Sheila E. Murphy
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6594-8
Otoliths 2007
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1137853

Francis Raven's original poems – with the occasional, collaborative and smartly alarmed interventions of Jeff Bacon – take on a world made hopelessly abundant by too much. Too many commodities, too much philosophy, too much poetry, too much music, too many reviews, too many misunderstood friendships, erotic deceptions and, of course, corporate obstacles, including the language of insufferable meetings:

           Our wires got crossed. We must be sitting in multiple meetings.

How do you respond to someone’s quest to make the perfect french fry? Where is truth, art, love, direction, and a sense of navigation? How can the mind, psyche, and body find a trajectory when fenced in by any and all options that present themselves as obligatory and legitimate representatives of the real? In the face of such a cascade from the other, how do you even write a poem, believe in, or trust its significance?

In playful, subtle and deceptively sharp language – from consciously flat to purely and quite beautifully poetic – Francis Raven has taken on these days of nausea to replant the flag, the stroke, and necessity of the poem:

                     Every painting has been landed on by critical flags, claimed:
           Swimming, I find a mystery in a poem I thought was a problem, solved.

---Stephen Vincent, author of Walking Theory

It's All A Movie
Alex Gildzen
92 pages
Cover design by Ray Craig
ISBN: 978-0-9803659-6-2
Otoliths 2007
$12.50 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1148196

Want to know Marilyn Monroe’s measurements? Or the first movie Jonathan Williams saw? Alex Gildzen provides answers in this unique book about film. His long love affair with cinema is reflected in a collection which brings together some of Gildzen’s recent poems, photographs of him with Hollywood legends such as Sylvia Sidney and Samuel Fuller, prose dating back to 1985 and a year from his important autobiography in progress Alex in Movieland.

SHADOWED TRUTH
Andrew Topel & Jim Leftwich
76 pages, full color
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6598-6
Otoliths 2007
$20.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1148212

"i remember very clearly working on these sheets, using boxes of trash and junk mail, writing in the names of songs i was listening to, riffing off of what was in front of and around me. five very busy years later these images have a very strong resonance for me. 'veil reveal re-veil', as andrew puts it, seems to express the dynamic quite clearly. at some point i think we would like for the process to halt at 'reveal' - but that isn't likely to occur often if ever, and certainly not with collaborative work like this. maybe we're looking at something more than 'shadowed truth', something like 'shadowed being' - perhaps hidden in plain view, but hidden all the same." — Jim Leftwich

Opera Bufa
Adam Fieled
64 pages
Cover design by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6595-5
Otoliths 2007
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1137210

           How can a prose poem be a comic opera? Take the following ingredients and stir: Chopin, Maria Callas, Baudelaire, Pluto, Orpheus, the Court of Ferdinand, Amherst wafer-eaters, Dante, Cleopatra, and Valium. Mix in a dollop of desperation, two dollops of perversity, and a small drop showmanship, and shake violently, as though in the midst of a fit. You have entered into a new realm; a foreign habitat; a fresh and unholy Opera Bufa. You may remain as long as you like. You may even sing along. The author, Adam Fieled, suggests exiting at the first sign of nausea, unless you find nausea pleasing. Oddly enough, some do.

Facings
Jordan Stempleman
64 pages
Cover design by David-Baptiste Chirot
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6597-9
Otoliths 2007
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1142300

Jordan Stempleman writes of his new collection, Facings: "These are poems that begin from the almost observed, places not yet finished, excuses untested, and individuals who only appear after they find comfort in retracting all they've been said to say."

In addition, the print editions of Otoliths issue six are out, with a spectacular piece of Geof Huth vispo on their covers.

Part One
90 pages
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1234272

Part one of Otoliths issue six contains prose, poetry & visual poetry from Tom Beckett, Karri Kokko, dan raphael, Kristine Ong Muslim, David-Baptiste Chirot, Paul Siegell, Javant Biarujia, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, Matthew Medina, Adam Fieled, Bill Drennan, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Joel Chace, Brian Foley, Raymond Farr, Philip Byron Oakes, Rochelle Ratner, Julian Jason Haladyn, Alex Carnevale, Jeff Harrison, Juliet Cook, Alexander Jorgensen, Martin Edmond, J. D. Nelson, John M. Bennett, Mark DeCarteret, Michael Steven, Jordan Stempleman, Iain Britton, Andrew Topel & Ernesto Priego.

Part Two
56 pages, full color
$15.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1234245

Part two of Otoliths issue six contains visual & text poetry from Reed Altemus, Joe Balaz, David-Baptiste Chirot, Spencer Selby, John M. Bennett & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Márton Koppány, Luke Daly, ek rzepka, Ray Craig, Mary Ellen Derwis, John M. Bennett & Sheila E. Murphy.

a  b     s  s
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
y

Genji Monogatari V: A Rack of Cloud

The tendency is to
humanize the wild life
about us; but a screen
densely covered in
text is impersonal, un-
welcoming & fatiguing
to read. Language &
memory cannot be the
exclusive province of
humans, nor can
humanity be attributed
to all. Someone stole my
identity. I feel sorry
for them. We are now
as hungry as two bears.

Genji Monogatari VI

Rock. Colorful banners. Fine
cast bronze wind bells. Authentic
curries, outstanding pho. He'd
never screwed up like this
before. Scissors. The Earth
is a closed system; activity, no
matter how refined, takes
nanoseconds off its life, &
this was gluttony. Paper.
Who knows what prompts
people to write or draw?

Farcical Farsi call

We
have no
gays in Iran

answered President Ahmadinejad.
Or maybe
he

said
We don’t
execute gays in

Iran
just for
being gay &

the translator fucked
up. It’s
more

likely
A. said
B — since con-

sensual
gay sex
is the executable

offence & he
could deliver
an

answer
with a
modicum of truth

&
still keep
his face straight.

r.i.p.

Marcel
Marceau. Sans
paroles. Sans pareil.

Rubbery Shrubbery

"I heard somebody say, 'Where's Mandela?'," Mr Bush said. "Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

a late afternoon hay(na)ku for Geof Huth

I'm
too temper
& (a)mentally un-

stable
to ever
be an archivist.

Thought as high-
      pitched as
helium voice. In-
tuitive anime.

Today the
postman brought
me Larousse
Gastronomique. I
couldn't get
through it all
in the one
sitting, have put
the leftovers
in the freezer.

well Eileen, shd i hold or fold on yr behalf?

in this morning's spamelot

an offer regarding your site: http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com

Hi
My name is peter
i would like to have a link exchange with your site:http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com
i have many gambling ralated sites pr 3-5
i you are intrested please send me your sites list (that if you have more
than one site)
so we castum a dael that will benefit both of us
i you are NOT intrested in link exchange and you are selling links from
your site , i will be happy to recive your rates and payment method (we are buying links also).
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regards
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The impassable dream

When I was growing up, the Northwest Passage, the sea route from Europe to Asia, was one of those fabled sites of adventure that populate boyhood (day)dreams. Distant though it may have been, Hollywood & books brought it close, along with other dreamings of impenetrable forests, forgotten cities & fabulous animals & birds (& don’t forget the reptiles) that may still exist.

Today I read that a rapid rise in the rate that Arctic ice is melting has opened the NWP at least two decades earlier than scientists monitoring the effects of global warming had expected.

The European Space Agency said Arctic sea ice was now at its smallest recorded extent, raising the possibility of the passage being routinely used by commercial shipping during the summer.

Scientists had expected that with the climate changing, the passage would become navigable for merchant ships within the next two decades, but the discovery that it has already opened up has caused surprise & alarm.

In the past year alone, the rate at which the ice is melting has increased tenfold. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100,000 square kilometres per year on average, so a drop of one million square kilometres in just one year is extreme.

The image above is a mosaic of over 200 individual photos taken by the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite. The dark grey represents clear water, while sea ice is colour-coded green.

hay(na)ku epiphany

In-
sight dressed
up — satori-al splendour.

Lunch poem

Nothing makes sense
anymore. Everything
does. I bind my camel
to a smokestack
at the edge of an anti-
climax & set the
guidebook alight to give
me light to better
read it by. The hidden
pattern in the last
flicker of a hologram
tells me I’m
in Machu Picchu
where I shouldn’t
be. Entropy arrives
to peck out my I-
balls. Equilibrium. It’s
a eunuch experience.

Genji Monogatari VII

Multiple inheritance leads to a taxonomy of concepts. Lineage relates to the persistence of an entity over time. New arguments in favour of the four-dimensional ontology confirm that death & the separation of body & soul play an important role in the analysis of circadian systems.

If a meme were continually interested in "what happens next" somewhere in the brain activity must be changing. Although they can think independently & move of their own accord, the claim that a thing exists, when added to our notion of a thing, does not add anything to the concept.

I’ve always gone along with the orthodox interpretation & used the term to refer to any cultural entity (such as a song, an idea or a religion) that an observer might consider a replicator. The idea that our consciousness is an interlocking system of memes is reflected in the early stimulus-blocked responses that are part of a generalized fear & feeling of loss of control.

Once the roles of cause & effect are assigned to objects in interactions, people tend to overestimate the strength & importance of the causal object & underestimate that of the effect object in bringing about the outcome. This bias is termed the causal asymmetry. Eventually we will reach a point in the past where all humans can be divided into two groups. The storage assumption greatly simplifies the treatment of resource variability.

& now that the Linnean system has been largely replaced by a cladistic system in which any clade or complete branch of the evolutionary tree is given a name, & the only remaining fixed rank is genus, luck plays only a small part in discovering fossils. There are clear ontological differences between biological individuals & States.

Genji sent his man to ask the name of the flower.

Backgammon strategy

The strings are just off the
frets & don't buzz, the front
vowels are in blue. Light
rays obey Fermat's Principle
of the least optical path, a
street lined with shops &
restaurants in minuscule
wooden houses hung
with chaussure de foot &
autre article & vêtement
de sport. Many large laughing
mouths gates of hell gaping
wide open hungry taunting
beckoning. It sounds like
chicken noodle soup, this
craving for attention to re-
place a lost mother's love.

Late in August

Marko Niemi curated a show at a library in the centre of Helsinki of visual, digital & sound poems taken from his wonderful Nokturno site. The digital poetry was screened as an hour-long loop, the visual printed out by the library staff &, to quote Marko, "looked surprisingly good, considering that they were quite large and printed using originally pretty small, web-quality files."



He's sent me a couple of photos of my work there, one of three of my checker/chess-board pieces, & the other a still from my, what becomes in Marko's Finnish translation, "Prévertille, syksyn lehtiä".

Today the
postman brought
me the final
volume of The
Never-Ending
Story.

Where there's a Wall....

“After subjugating and uniting China from seven warring States, the emperor Qin Shi Huangdi connected and extended four old fortification walls along the north of China that originated about 700 B.C. Armies were stationed along the wall as a first line of defense against the invading nomadic Hsiung Nu (the Huns) tribes north of China.”



“Hadrian decided to enforce the old Roman policy of "divide and rule." His wall would split the Brigantes from the Selgovae and hopefully overawe and pacify the troublesome tribes. Construction of the wall commenced ca. AD 122, right around the time of the Emperor Hadrian's personal visit to Britannia.”



“In the afternoon of August 12, 1961 at 4 p.m. Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, signed the commands to close the border. Next Sunday at midnight the army, police and the "Kampfgruppen" began to bolt the city. The wall is built and separates the city into two parts for more than 28 years.”



“Since Israel began its construction of the West Bank Wall in 2002, it has sparked intense debate, being condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice. Israel claims it is a security measure to protect Israeli citizens from terrorist attacks. Opponents point to the serious impact on the rights of Palestinians, depriving them of their land, mobility and access to health and educational services.”



“Parts of central Sydney now resemble a city under military occupation, with a steel and concrete fence, five kilometres long and 2.8 metre high, encircling the environs of Circular Quay and the Opera House, a popular harbourside tourist precinct. Only those with the required accreditation, involving clearances from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), are permitted inside this fortressed area.”

ergotist

Today the
postman brought
me a compendium
of words &
phrases that are
rarely used these
days. Gadzooks!

Four of the five

books I'm bringing out under the Otoliths banner this month are off to their respective authors for final proofing, the fifth has had the interior proofed & we're just deciding on which cover from a wonderful selection will be used. So expect an official publication notice for another great round in a couple of weeks. The quality & variety of what's developing into a substantial catalogue is bringing me lots of joy & pleasure. My sincere thanks to everyone involved.

Once they're launched, then it's on to the print editions of issue six of the Otoliths e-zine, followed by getting the next round of books underway. Plus issue seven of Otoliths is already shaping up to be another eclectic collection.

a chinese whisper

Confucian rains

Today the
postman brought
me a poem that
was written
tomorrow.

a six word story

He'd always wanted to use "balderdash".

a today, a yesterday, & a bunch of bullshit balderdash

"Note; If you are a Red Self-Existing Moon or a Red Overtone Moon or a Red Rhythmic Moon or a Red Resonant Moon then you are born on a Portal day."

Of pen & other umbra

Last night the sky was clear, the full moon pristine. I'd gone out to check where it was because tonight is eclipse night, & I wanted to be sure of where to look.

Today, all day, the sky cloudy. Not really overcast, but light grey clouds covering most of the sky. Pissing me off as the evening drew nearer, big big chance that I wouldn't be able to see not seeing the moon.

But late afternoon the clouds started getting blown away, so that by evening there were only a few around. &, right on time, just before 7 p.m., the bottom of the moon started getting a dirty look about it. Slow progress, but as I write this, around 8, the Earth is totally in the way of the sun, & the moon is in total eclipse. It is as they promised, a shade of red, & will be that way for another hour & a half. Then the clearing until around 10.30 when the whole moon will be visible again. Though, apparently, it's still within the lighter penumbral shadow for another hour after that.

Today the
postman brought
me a Refutation of
Chaos Theory. I'm
a bit skeptical
about the research,
however, since the
paper opens with
a disclaimer that
no butterflies
were harmed
during the course
of the study.

The Entourage of the Emperor of Amerika

George W. Bush is flying into Sydney early next month for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum. With him will be his wife & her staff of four, plus:

1 personal chef
4 cooks
15 sniffer dog teams
50 White House political aides
150 National Security Advisors
200 State representatives
250 Secret Service Agents.

To get to Australia, they'll use two identical 747-200Bs (Air Force One & its decoy clone), another chartered jumbo, & two to three Globemasters or Galaxies to carry all the equipment that accompanies the Emperor. & that includes:

The Imperial Helicopter (Marine one) plus a backup, Black Hawk helicopters for surveillance, the Imperial limousine Cadillac One (five inches of ballistic armour, transparent armour windows designed to withstand attack by anti-tank grenade launchers, run-flat tyres, & is environmentally sealed against chemical & biological attacks), a twenty-strong motorcade which includes more armour-plated limousines, the Secret Service War Wagons (Chevrolet Suburbans) the last one of which usually has a battery of battle-ready machine guns, a SWAT wagon & an ambulance. & then there's the back-up motorcade in case something goes wrong or they need to run a decoy.

As I was going to St Ives.....

Mission Briefing

Guys. We don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but we do know where the Brits are. So let's get out there & bomb the shit out of them, just so you can paint some more of those little kill doohickies on the fuselage of your planes....

Britain's Defense Ministry says three British soldiers were killed and two others wounded in southern Afghan-istan by a U.S. air strike that was supporting them in a battle with Taleban insurgents.

News item 8/24/07

Wallace Stevens' 14th way of looking at a black_bird

"Arnold had gone through paranoid kippages about their not wanting to put a black man's image on the cover. ("Who let the coon in?"—Wallace Stevens' inquiry at the 1950 Drew-Phalen Awards banquet, when that year's recipient, Gwendolyn Brooks, had entered the hall—replayed regularly up from the kerygma of black literary history, a-broil in memory and imagination, even after forty years.)"

Samuel R. Delany: Dark Reflection

The "Drew-Phalen Awards" are Delany's invention, but the incident is real, at the 1950 Pulitzer Prize Awards ceremony where Brooks was awarded the prize for poetry.

This book, Delany's latest, is wonderful.

Lunch poem

At the sandwich shop
Paul Simon is
busy telling me that
I can call him Al just
as a bus goes past
whose emblazoned arse
tells me that local
real estate broker Al
Lewis is above the
crowd, ahead of
the pack — though
if that's true, then
what's he doing at the
back of the bus? &
even though this is no
meaningful coincidence
it still leads me into
thoughts of Jung
& how it would be
great to experience
some act of synchronicity
in this town of the
collectively unconscious.

Beware / of a / camel after sex

An Australian woman was killed by a pet camel given to her as a 60th birthday present after the animal apparently tried to have sex, police said Sunday.

a note for Tom Beckett

There are quite often times when I feel the need to justify my existence. This happens to be one of them.

sea/mless

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best —
A perfect and absolute blank!"

Lewis Carroll: The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits)

Political arse-covering 101

Always find someone to blame when you look like losing.

"ALEXANDER DOWNER has a dire warning for the Iraqi Government: rein in the insurgents or there could be a change of government in Australia.

Unless the Iraqis improved security, the governments in Australia and the US could be thrown out, the Foreign Affairs Minister said yesterday. Public patience on Iraq was "wearing pretty thin".

"You will get people electing governments that do want just to walk away from Iraq," Mr Downer said."

The Sydney Morning Herald

He
hurled insults
from the snidelines.

everything old is new again.....

Hey, hey, LBJ,
how many kids did you kill today?

in the sixties

"Eventually, there simply were not enough volunteers to continue to fight a protracted war and the government instituted a draft."

news item 8/11/07

"The top US military officer in charge of coordinating the war effort in Iraq says that it makes sense to consider a return of the draft to meet the military's needs."

Hey, hey, GWB,
how many kids will we never again see?

As if there wasn't already enough shit in the mail

Given my predeliction for postman poems, that probably wasn't a wise title; but I came home yesterday evening to find a fat A4 envelope from the Federal Government reposing on the bench on the front porch. Opened it up.

Dear MARK YOUNG

I would like to ask you to take part in the National Bowel Screening Program…The National Program is being introduced gradually….People who turned 65 last year are being invited to take part…..

The letter went on to say that the test is known as a faecal occult blood test — thus confirming my suspicions that Satanism is shit — & giving instructions on how the sampling should be carried out. A more detailed 32 page booklet on the protocols of stool sampling was included in the postout along with plastic tubes & sampling sticks, a biodegradable sheet to catch your stool on — "empty your bladder, flush, then lay the sheet on the surface of the water printed side up" — & a postage paid envelope to send your samples back in.

Don't get me wrong. I think such programs are great. But the thought of all that shit making its way through the bowels of the Australia Post means I'll be using latex gloves to empty my mail box over the next several weeks.

Maybe they could revert to an older form of mail delivery. You know, stool pigeon post…..

Lunch poem

Having to step
over the urine stream
left by a just-passed
cattle truck causes
me to lose my
mental balance
right at the moment
when I was about
to comprehend the
intricacies of the effect
of subprime mortgages
on the economy of
the United States. Or
maybe it was the
probable songlists
for Dylan’s current
concert tour that I
was thinking about,
ticking off on my
fingers whether it
was likely to be a
good or bad tour
based on past ex-
perience. Ex-
ponential options
from which I’m
brought back down to
earth by being pissed
on underfoot. The
wind touches me
on my left elbow. I
give it a couple of
dollars. It goes away.

Today the
postman brought
me an optical
allusion & some
special spectacles
to help me
understand it.

Day August 6, 1945

daytritus

the episode does
not have any allusions.
, &, particularly
n smaller
; —
the skin is thick
& granular —
. But everybody
knows

Day __________

for Jean Vengua

What I am really
thinking is that
the posterior
surface of the
thighs is
central to robot
map learning.

aw shucks, Tom

Tom Beckett has done me the honor — no, not the next dance nor my proposal for his hand in marriage, but of naming me one of his chosen "thinking bloggers". I find it slightly ironic, because these days I tend to consider myself intuitive rather than thoughtful, but, coming from Tom, I will happily put on my thinking cap — peak backwards as is de rigeur — & strut the runway, even though, as cummings wrote,

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers.

& though, as if they were some genetically-inherited wasting disease, I usually let such things die with me rather than pass them on, in this case I will make an exception & call Ernesto Priego up on stage to accept my nomination of him as one of the great philosophers in the making.

Last night the
owls returned. Small
bird, large tree,
pale breast picked
out by flashlight.
Small bird, large
sound. No call &
        answer but
suddenly side
by side chorus.
I was ecstatic.

Was(tc)h yr mouth!

Elsewhere they'd be
classed as
retards.

Here
it's just
the gene pool.

Who is killing all the great directors of Europe?

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007)

Otoliths issue six is now online

Issue six of Otoliths has just gone live. It contains work by Adam Fieled, David-Baptiste Chirot, Bill Drennan, Joel Chace, Julian Jason Haladyn, Spencer Selby, Kristine Ong Muslim, Juliet Cook, Reed Altemus, Michael Steven, Jeff Harrison, J. D. Nelson, Alex Carnevale, Mary Ellen Derwis, Alexander Jorgensen, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, dan raphael, Raymond Farr, Márton Koppány, Javant Biarujia, Philip Byron Oakes, John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Rochelle Ratner, Sheila E. Murphy, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, Jordan Stempleman, Ray Craig, Iain Britton, Paul Siegell, Andrew Topel, Ernesto Priego, Mark DeCarteret, Matthew Medina, Joe Balaz, Brian Foley, Luke Daly, Martin Edmond, Tom Beckett, Karri Kokko & ek rzepka & has a cover by Geof Huth.

A reminder that print editions of the previous issues are available at The Otoliths Shopfront along with an ever-growing number of books.

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

"The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times and create panic and terror. But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage."

Today the
postman brought
me the periodic
table to go
with the other
periodic furniture
we have around
the house.

Logic table: or why doncha do write?

I don't write about things I don't write about.

I do write about things I don't write about.

I don't write about things I do write about.

I do write about things I do write about.

Lunch poem

Yesterday it was almost
Autumn in New York
&, putting a logical
footprint on a flight
of fancy, I suppose
today is also. Here it’s
coming into spring
but there’s not a
flower to be seen
& the paparazzi are
reduced to polishing
their camera lenses &
taking bets on which
way the river will
flow next. My nose
is filling in for a
broken traffic light, the
rest of the clownsuit is
at the cleaners. Once
more that same old
sandwich & double
espresso routine &
no longer funny when
you're out of drag &
they've heard it all before.

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri: Warlugulong 1977

A painting by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, described as one of the most important Australian works of the 20th century, more than doubled the record for Aboriginal art on Monday night when it sold for $A2.4 million.

"Possum's painting is considered an icon of contemporary Aboriginal art. In it he tells stories of the desert. The central narrative takes place in Warlugulong, 200 miles north-west of Alice Springs. It was here, according to legend, that the two sons of Lungkata, a blue-tongued lizard man, killed a kangaroo. Instead of sharing the meat with their father in the customary manner, they ate it all. In his fury, Lungkata started a bush fire which engulfed his sons.

In the centre of the canvas the fire blazes, while to the right, two skeletons lie surrounded by clouds of smoke. Around this scene are woven separate sacred stories, or "dreamings", with footprints marked to signify the journeys of their protagonists. The painting was the first in which an Aboriginal artist attempted to depict several stories in a topographical manner like a Western map."

From the days before Jagger became the Queen of Botox

Please allow me to introduce myself.....

Lunch poem

If you took small
things out of
context, could
probably assemble
a tolerable landscape. Talis-
men in yr tote bag — the
post office clock
tower, customs house
cupola, some birds, a
measure of hills. Arrange
them where/when
ever you might come
to rest, lean back,
contented or at least
a semblance of. Lasts
for a minute. What
then?

Day three hundred & thirtysix

Midday raga. Long queues
form at fuel pumps, another
homosexual has been
executed in Iran, rumors
of total, not limited, war
abound. One does not have
to be devout to be
excited by it, to want to
be a part of it, even if it's
only selling enchiladas
to the disciples of Chicago
economic liberalism who
have all lined up to watch
the statues weeping blood.

Today the
postman brought
me my
contributor's copy
of Haiku by
Serial Killers. It's
the first in a
number of
volumes. The
subsequent
ones will be
published at
ever-decreasing
intervals.

not quiet ear

elsewhen

In an-
other place the
clouds
             might hint
at snow;
     but
            here
     calligraphy
hasn’t been
            in-
vented.

under the new tear/roar lores

We are guilty
until proven
guilty.

No
such thing
as innocent anymore.

Today the
postman brought
me the terror-
rising news
that the Thought
Police are alive
& well & living
in Australia. The
smallest thing, not
even tangible…..

Today the
postman brought
me the last
episode of Marcel
Marceau. Finally
he's all mime.

another fandom wracked

I
love the
sound of Tamla-Motown.

seven more not-so-random facts

Canaries are yellow.

The Beatles’ submarine was yellow.

A lot of words rhyme with yellow including some great ones — e.g. violincello.

More words rhyme with red. It’s the other pole. He’d rather be dead than seen playing a violincello. It’s why orange was invented. Compromise.

Banana skins are yellow except when they’re dead. Have you ever seen a banana playing a violincello? I’m just wild about saffron. They call me mello cello.

Jaundice is yellow. Sometimes jell-o is too. E-lec-tric-al banana. About the same time as Electric Ladyland. Hey Joe, where you gonna go with that cello in yr hand?

Yellow isn’t yellow. Except when it’s dead.

a not-so-random fact for Jordan Stempleman

Jordan Stempleman has tagged me to provide / produce / proclaim eight random facts.

There are a couple of problems with that. The second is that, once you've produced one random fact, everything that follows is tempered by that first statement, & is no longer random.

The first thing is that, once you've been tagged, that initial fact won't be random anyway. It's not like you've been on the couch for half an hour & your therapist suddenly gives you a word association test. No, it's a formal request; & even if you come out with that first thought that provokes a poem, there's a whole lotta transmogrification goin' on.

So, a not-so-random fact for JS.

slivingin is living in sin

Lunch Poem

& at the re-
maindered book sale
I buy a copy of
michael dransfield’s
lives, the biography
of an Australian
poet who “died
young, w./ a needle
in his arm” 34
years ago. Hard back,
600 pages, $2.99
marked down from
$49.99. There are
stacks of six or
so of the book on
six or so of the
tables in the hall. So
many wasted lives.

In his autumn.
Leaves. Fall
s.

forgt

spoeam

Living — & dying — with Google

1. Living, aka Oops.

Gmail has decided it's an associate editor of Otoliths. Over the past week it's started identifying some submissions as spam, as well as emails from people on my mailing list. I've picked most of them up, but it hasn't been happening long enough for me to automatically doublecheck what's there before I press the delete forever button, & yesterday, the nanosecond after I hit that option, I saw the word submission in the subject line. Too late.

So, to someone called Diana(?), living in Sindelfingen in Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany whose email provider is arcor-ip-net, my humblest apologies, & could you please resubmit. Or if anyone knows who she might be……

2. Dying, aka Oops.

I have long harboured the suspicion that many of those who commit murder regard it as a form of sport. Apparently Google News shares my belief.

Some truth about invasion of Iraq

THE PRIME Minister has proffered many reasons to justify Australia's participation in the American-led invasion of Iraq. Yesterday he advanced a new one: the need to secure a major oil supply. In an address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute yesterday, John Howard said the Middle East was crucial to Australia's strategic and economic future because "our major ally and our most important economic partners have crucial interests there".

It has long been suspected that oil, and the United States' almost pathological need to secure reliable supplies for its domestic needs, was one of the main factors behind President George W. Bush's decision to to invade Iraq but neither he nor Howard broached the subject when they began talking up overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2002.

Instead, the US and its allies insisted their motives on Iraq's future were honourable. They wanted to rid the Middle East of a wicked despot, deny al-Qaeda a base from which to export terrorism to the world, and nurture a new democracy that would act as a reforming influence on the region's many autocratic regimes. And if the invasion succeeded in ensuring that Iraqi oil should flow more freely to the US and other customers, well that would be an unexpected though welcome development.

Perhaps because all the justifications for invasion have been largely discredited, the Prime Minister now argues that securing Iraqi oil (not for Australia but for the US and "our most important economic partners") is an important reason to stay the course in Iraq.

At least it has the ring of truth about it unlike the revolving and evolving list of reasons given for invading and occupying Iraq.

from The Canberra Times

The Magi?

Or, at least, the Three Ys Men.......

Lunch Poem

It is perhaps apt
that on the
day / after
Independence Day
& the first day for
several weeks that
the streets have
been empty of
US servicemen

I should end up
sharing the side-
walk space outside
the sandwich shop
with someone who
is the splitting
— spitting? —
image of
Abraham Lincoln.

Tall, Calvinist up-
right despite his
age, chiseled face
Rushmoreing from
beneath a giftshop
drover’s hat, sun-
tanned enough to be
from around these
parts, in polo shirt &
shorts & sandals
that show he isn’t,

he comes bearing
not the Gettysburg
Address but a
handful of tourist
guidebooks that
track the end of
a life that could
quite easily have
started four score
& seven years ago.

Today the
postman brought
me personalized
letters from
Barbra Streisand
offering me her
complete recordings
in the one boxed
set & from Dr Jack
Kevorkian who is
flogging his "Makes
The Difference" Engine
at just-got-out-of-
prison prices. I
did not respond
to either; but have
used the incident
in my new paper
on Cause & Effect.

A reminder

that submissions for issue six of Otoliths close at the end of the month. It's shaping up to be another di/verse issue.