Friday, October 29, 2004
Addison Mizner, Architect 1872 - 1933
Addison Mizner Alone On His First Night At The Cloister Inn, Boca Raton, Feb. 6, 1926
and bread loaf is not stone ... from the same source I have not taken ... it is around you too ... bird perches, miles of telephone wires ... past the school and heading ... you thought of first but do not ... with undulating long-drawn flow ... in a net, under water ... the screen door bangs, and it sounds so funny ... reluctant pilgrims stolen by Jehovah's light ... "keep your oil slick and your motor running" ... his flashy villa on the palatine hill, home ... and it's easy to make this understood by ... is the loveliest. Light were the work to make this ... when the horse had gone the water in the trough ... but this too has passed: I'm not alone anymore ... lips ... the fire escape, so it's not as though he ... the wilderness rose up to it ... and this maiden she lived with no other thought ... vivacity of my last dinner party ... coveys of nursemaids ... mirror one another, black, rain-soaked ... beyond a distant island ... and I think of my son a dolphin in the Aegean ... separating good from evil, brother from brother ... as dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines ... spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range ... when a grandfather dies ... day after day, I become of less use to myself ... after the man with the apparition ... if it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink ... thou stock-dove whose echo resounds through the glen ... exceptional, uncomfortable as that is ... stuck into and ... still when, to where thou wert, I came ... praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle ... genius is wisdom and youth ... reach me. The untied parcel service never delivered. I regret to say I'm ... his acts being seven ages. At first, the infant ... and the beneficent face of a nation ... women and men(both little and small) ... do not write! ... now you do not know what to do, not even when you go back to being ... in though once when I climbed the hill in Skye ... in the slow, black water of the big sandy ... with dangling basket all along the grass ... the blossoms snow down in my hair ... white feathers among me, fistfuls ... the wind, playboy of towers, ... gleams in all its power. Otherwise ... I write of youth, of love, and have access ... and go out the other. It's bad luck to pay back salt ... rising toward a saint ... to defend ... hind legs bending backwards with inhuman ... silent as the sleeve-worn stone ... locked out in the cold, waiting ... otters below and moorhens on the top ... believers fall on their bellies, they suppose it is a monstrance that shines, ... to the lattice of pastures interlaced like Celtic spirals, ... and down by the brimming river ... but near his ears, above his brains, ... ask me no more whither do stray ... patterns in ambers, ... as who would say (in a dream), ... the sycamore tree spills a few leaves ... clay made edible. The aunts hand the dishes ... and wrecks passed without sound of bells, ... in the strobe & black lights ... a dark purple-brown, ... and hoist nothing ... earnest pilgrims puffing up the slope ... things soft as flesh. Someone sewed ... all whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow, ... I wrote before production began, "I want to include all of myself, a heartbroken person who hasn't worked for years, who's simply not dead" ... its taste to bitter dish-soap. It took a moment ... made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge, ... dreaming of heroes. ... who is coming? ...
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Gluttony
There was laughynge and lourynge and " Lat go the cuppe!'
[Bargaynes and beverages bigonne to arise;]
And seten so til evensong, and songen umwhile,
Til Gloton hadde yglubbed a galon and a gille.
His guttes bigonne to gothelen as two gredy sowes;
He pissed a potel in a Paternoster-while,
And blew his rounde ruwet at his ruggebones ende,
That alle that herde that horn helde hir nose after
And wisshed it hadde ben wexed with a wispe of firses!
He myghte neither steppe ne stonde er he his staf hadde,
And thanne gan he to go like a glemannes bicche
Som tyme aside and som tyme arere,
As whoso leith lynes for to lacche foweles.
And whan he drough to the dore, thanne dymmed hise eighen;
He [thr]umbled on the thresshfold and threw to the erthe.
Clement the Cobelere kaughte hym by the myddel
For to liften hym olofte, and leyde hym on his knowes.
Ac Gloton was a gret cherl and a grym in the liftyng,
And koughed up a cawdel in Clementes lappe.
Is noon so hungry hound in Hertfordshire
Dorste lape of that levynge, so unlovely it smaughte!
(The vision of Piers Plowman, Passus 5, Lines 337 - 357)
There was laughing and lowering · and `Let go the cup!'
They sat so till evensong · singing now and then,
Till Glutton had gulped down · a gallon and a gill.
His guts 'gan to grumble · like two greedy sows;
He pissed a pot-full · in a paternoster-while;
And blew with the bugle · at his backbone's end,
That all hearing that horn · held their nose after
And wished it were stopped up · with a wisp of furze.
He could neither step nor stand · before he had his staff;
Then began he to go · like a gleeman's bitch,
Sometimes aside · sometimes astern
As whoso layeth lines · for to snare fowl.
And when he drew to the door · then dimmed his eyes;
He stumbled on threshold · and fell to the earth.
Clement the cobbler · caught him by the middle
For to lift him aloft · and laid him on his knees;
Glutton was a great lout · and lumpish to lift
And coughed up a caudle · in Clement's lap:
No hound is so hungry · in Hertfordshire
Dare lap up those leavings · so unlovely they smelt.
This modern English translation is from William Langland, The Book Concerning Piers the Plowman, tr. Donald and Rachel Attwater, ed. Rachel Attwater (Everyman, 1957)
They sat so till evensong · singing now and then,
Till Glutton had gulped down · a gallon and a gill.
His guts 'gan to grumble · like two greedy sows;
He pissed a pot-full · in a paternoster-while;
And blew with the bugle · at his backbone's end,
That all hearing that horn · held their nose after
And wished it were stopped up · with a wisp of furze.
He could neither step nor stand · before he had his staff;
Then began he to go · like a gleeman's bitch,
Sometimes aside · sometimes astern
As whoso layeth lines · for to snare fowl.
And when he drew to the door · then dimmed his eyes;
He stumbled on threshold · and fell to the earth.
Clement the cobbler · caught him by the middle
For to lift him aloft · and laid him on his knees;
Glutton was a great lout · and lumpish to lift
And coughed up a caudle · in Clement's lap:
No hound is so hungry · in Hertfordshire
Dare lap up those leavings · so unlovely they smelt.
This modern English translation is from William Langland, The Book Concerning Piers the Plowman, tr. Donald and Rachel Attwater, ed. Rachel Attwater (Everyman, 1957)
Monday, October 25, 2004
My Sydney
Is it possible
to trace the origins
of the company's appeals
for greater
investment
in the local territorial
basin?
The Appletree Scandal
suddenly
comes to mind. Mrs Delaware's abhorrent
affection for her son.
The Music Box
Discotheque.
The Nietzsche Room,
upstairs.
Fluffy dice
and dashboard. Bob's
miracle machine.
Spot's favourite
pissoir. The sherbet sisters.
The farmers'
retirement fund. Polly
Anderson's seasonal lumbago
scares.
What's-his-
face at
Will's Gully? You DON'T
KNOW!? ...E -
bloody-milio
Sanchez. The Poem
of My Syd-
ney?
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Apparition
Stéphane Mallarmé
La lune s'attristait. Des séraphins en pleurs
Rêvant, l'archet aux doigts, dans le calme des fleurs
Vaporeuses, tiraient de mourantes violes
De blancs sanglots glissant sur l'azur des corolles.
-C'était le jour béni de ton premier baiser.
Ma songerie aimant à me martyriser
s'enivrait savamment du parfum de tristesse
Que même sans regret et sans déboire laisse
La cueillaison d'un Rêve au coeur qui l'a cueilli.
J'errais donc, l'oeil rivé sur le pavé vieilli
Quand avec du soleil aux cheveux, dans la rue
Et dans le soir, tu m'es en riant apparue
Et j'ai cru voir la fée au chapeau de clarté
Qui jadis sur mes beaux sommeils d'enfant gâté
Passait, laissant toujours de ses mains mal fermées
Neiger de blancs bouquets d'étoiles parfumées.
Dan
after Stéphane Mallarmé
Blue Moon... Some starry-eyed honeys were crying,
gang-signing, spaced-out in heavy-breathing
begonias; cocking deadly weapons, insinuating sob stories
on the back seat of my Corolla. It was the day you lost your cherry.
My trip’s goal was Vietnam-heavy. Perfumed and hopped-up
on downers like some nouveaux Smarty-Pants, I had
no regrets. I left art for art’s sake in an artist’s jug of saké.
I was strung-out, loitering on the old beach road, when
Dan, my peroxide-blond Legionnaire, half man,
half Philippines, appeared in the shop window.
Was it a trick of the black light? He was no fairy in a cowboy hat,
he was my surrogate father: a hero for the spoilt child
who slept too long on warm Sundays when his family
fart-arsed in the garden. Danny Boy,.. lilting through the pane
sprinkling black-and-white tiles* from his bung hand
over the bumpy hills’ cracker-night nuptials.
* LSD soaked into blotting paper printed with tile-designs for accurate sub-division.
Friday, October 22, 2004
gribb obs cadiz
When it all started, I was at the top of it, wasn't the one
I managed to put on. Cam'll down! Lella said, like it's Camel
down. Imagine. Scented until they found out, the perimeter
thistle wound, picked napoleons but ate the lot. A little jigger
frost felt like a cut jugular, ample time, no sores or cream.
Tabled with ice. Apple glut, bluntly approved, sent out
to halo effect, leisurely. Chimed in, white Cairo down, it cannot
compete, the hand that covered me, at Lella's trials
off Port Said. Abseiling the Marconi. Trellised lichen, battle
raw, potting on the sofa. The Goethe shot, wouldn't whistle,
doesn't care. Barely, but once, and wasn't the same,
capable of four. I am and your father! Lella said, that's two
for the transferase, pulping decision. Hang out
the waterloos. In Pippy Park, sieving blue norwegians, fine
slot tapestries; Rodney's kernel aims, mission statements,
marshals at breakfast. Was it? The man with the amber
jerkin, on file? Elusive allergies like drab flowers. Pithy
postponements, when she comes. Her tongue opens
its Malva capsule, worried with buds, flinty ceramics;
implants, tethered like workaholics to a picket-line.
I was bashful, and then some, but when the album
came out, Lella saw it at the baby pool, her knees high,
magnificent girl, apologetic to a T, not anal, kiss me,
you're David in the shower. The girl? A Bosporus
water taxi, the sooty cheque, unclasped in the piddly
drape of rain. Island footballers pitted them; scrambled
bubblers but chucked it in. We patted steely castanets,
massaged power-chords to a flat-line. Singed
carpet, dollops of washing, broad concepts, five dollars
and I'll do your ironing. It's the same'll tings Lella said.
An itchy shin, rubbed with spit and cumin, orange rind
ground into your palms numbs the strap. Bread knives
idle at the start, reflecting Van Eyck, mixing lip-balm. Under
marginal paths, carpentry bags, podiatry manuals, crisp
linen-water honeymoons in the camper. A rusty
fish-hook bookmarks the fourth chapter, baited-arches,
tackle-toes, fumbling with a nine-iron, but Crusoe
with a six. Ledgers flake, the balance grows, and it amounts
to slivers, sliced along the grain, cold sausage gloved
in a sawdust mariné. Being precisely, ever, wanted
a wide berth to that swagger, scooped in season, that's most.
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
-John Keats (1795-1821),
Ode on a Grecian Urn
