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?