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[I was enjoying returning to working on this blog until I started getting hit with so much comment-box spam that it's gotten quite miserable. So there are no longer comments boxes on the stories until I can figure out what to do -- the upgrade to 2.661 promises to stem some of this tide, but I have yet to see proof (just upgraded ten minutes ago).
The following little poem is something I wrote for my class, "Jai-lai for Autocrats", based on an assignment I had given -- you can see the assigment if you click "read more" below. Just a sketch, but I think it bears some relationship to Pound's "The Psychological Hour," one of his lesser poems, for what that's worth.]
GATT Freedom
Mailbomb: I had a mug of coffee sitting on my desk.
Mantis: I reached out my hand and picked up the mug.
Market: I had several pieces of paper in front of me.
Reaction:
I suddenly began to hate the Specialist
wild and white choreography unleashed
on a semiotics-ignorant public—
None of them love you.
Happiness is a new idea.
The fine young artificial
proto-mullets are so natural
brazen vessels, buttery-soft.
I continued to sit there for a while.
It was a terrifying and grotesque sight,
but the Specialist continued:
“Say, did you sleep with Francoise?”
None of them love you.
Happiness is a new idea.
Playboy: The lace on one of my shoes was undone.
Plutonium: I depressed the switch on the side of the kettle.
Plutonium: I continued to sit there for a while.
Pseudonyms:
“Just as the film was about to start, Guy-Ernest Debord would climb on stage to say a few words by way of introduction. He’d say simply: ‘There’s no film. Cinema is dead. There can’t be film any more. If you want, let’s have a discussion’.”
Data-haven,
the counterfeit siblings
(William Gates)
covert video:
so natural
I’m no longer self-conscious
using my hand
when the convulsions had subsided.
Buddhistic and bland
(Journey to the Moon)
in the cafes
of Saint-Germain-des-Pres!
their revolts become
conformisms. Twenty-one
years: at that age,
one is capable of all acts of civil life.
I continued to be apathetic with my activities.
ASSIGNMENT:
Base a sonnet (or a poem if you want) on one (or more) of the following:
"DEATH IN WINNIPEG" (excerpt)
http://www.arras.net/weblog/000850.html
"The fine young artificial brothers, looking warm and cozy beneath period-perfect wigs, are power-chording unplugged guitars and lip-synching to "Crazy Horses," one of the Osmonds' zestiest sorties into Mormon rock. These early-'70s proto-mullets are so natural I'm no longer self-conscious about my own new toupee, which I'm debuting on this occasion. Clad in buttery-soft, fringed white kid leather with matching macramé belts and white platform boots, the five counterfeit siblings retrace to perfection the famously wild and white choreography unleashed on a semiotics-ignorant public almost 30 years ago. These osmonoid performers are really caught up in the song's feral rhythms, rudely beating on brazen vessels, bellowing like stags, and harmonizing like horny barbers: "What a show, there they go, smokin' up the sky-y-y-y-y-y—yeah!!! Crazy horses, all got riders, and they're you and I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I—I!!!" When the number is over, I forget myself and—this is inexcusable for a supposed filmmaker—applaud wildly, actually ruining the take, because the cameras are still running, and the sparse audience in the scene is supposed to be apathetic. Sheepishly, I promise to stopper my fervor. Fortunately, the next take is the keeper."
THE DULLEST BLOG IN THE WORLD
http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/
(follow the link)
"A VOICE THROUGH A CLOUD" (excerpt)
http://alex.edfac.usyd.edu.au/BLP/websites/LOUTTIT%20WEBSITE/excerpts.HTM
One day a specialist was in the ward, examining a patient, when the patient fell down in front of him in a fit. The patient was a fat middle-aged man; he shrieked and trembled and rolled on the floor, as if he were wallowing in mud. It was a terrifying and grotesque sight, but the specialist watched it with a smile on his face. He neither raised the patient up nor prevented him from cutting his head on the corner of the bedside locker.
When at last the convulsions had subsided and the patient, with blood on his face, looked up bewildered, the specialist's smile grew even more Buddhistic and bland and he said in a fluting voice, so that other people should hear, 'Well, I must say there's one improvement this week - you're falling so much more gracefully!'
He gave a light little well-bred laugh, which at once raised up in my mind a picture of some woman with enormous bust measurement, swathed in strainingly tight red velvet. He seemed delighted with his own urbane, unsentimental wit, and I felt that at that moment he would have used the words 'heartless elegance' about himself. He seemed really to be living for a moment in his own conception of an eighteenth-century French marquise in her brilliant salon.
I suddenly began to hate the specialist for his clownish show of vanity and facetiousness. I hated him so much that my face began to burn. I felt insulted and outraged; I wanted to have the specialist publicly beaten in front of all the staring patients. I imagined his black pin-striped trousers being taken down, and his squeals of shame and pain ringing through the ward.
SPOOK WORDS
http://www.arras.net/weblog/000115.html
"The 300 words that would most attract the government's attention were they to be used online..." (follow link above)
"HOWLINGS IN FAVOR OF DE SADE" (screenplay)
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/90
Voice 1 The film by Guy-Ernest Debord, Howlings in favour of Sade...
Voice 2 Howlings in favour of Sade is dedicated to Gil J Wolman
Voice 3 Article 115. When a person shall have ceased to appear at his
place of abode or home address for four years, and about whom
there has been no news whatsoever, the interested parties
shall be able to petition the lower court in order that his
or her absence be declared.
Voice 1 Love is only worthwhile in a pre-revolutionary period.
Voice 2 None of them love you, you liar! Art begins, grows and
disappears because frustrated men bypass the world of official
expression and the festivals of its poverty.
Voice 4 (young girl) Say, did you sleep with Francoise?
Voice 1 What a time! Memorandum for a history of the cinima:
1902 - Journey to the Moon.
1920 - The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.
1924 - Entr'acte.
1926 - Battleship Potemkin.
1928 - Un Chien Andalou.
1931 - City Lights
1951 - Birth of Guy-Ernest Debord.
1952 - The Anti-concept.--Howlings in favour of Sade.
Voice 5 "Just as the film was about to start, Guy-Ernest Debord would
climb on stage to say a few words by way of introduction.
He'd say simply: 'There's no film. Cinema is dead. There can't
be film any more. If you want, let's have a discussion'."
Voice 3 Article 516. All property is either movable or immovable.
Voice 2 In order never to be alone again.
Voice 1 She is ugliness and beauty. She is like everything that we love
today.
Voice 2 The art of the future will be the overturning of situations or
nothing.
Voice 3 In the cafes of Saint-Germain-des-Pres!
Voice 1 You know, I like you very much.
Voice 3 An important Lettrist commando made up of some thirty members,
all donning the filthy uniform that is their only really
origional trademark, turned up at the Croisette with the firm
desire of indulging in some scandal capable of drawing
attention to themselves.
Voice 1 Happiness is a new idea in Europe.
Voice 5 "I only know about the actions of men, but in my eyes men are
transposed, one for the other. In the final analysis, works
alone differentiate us."
Voice 1 And their revolts became conformisms.
Voice 3 Article 488. The age of majority is fixed at twenty-one years;
at that age one is capable of all acts of civil life.