Vocoder

The Anaglyph

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Hasn’t the charisma leaked away from the café crowd, and that other

Authority, the Salon des Refusés ? I have forgotten much of

That old sack of enthusiasms and snake-oil recipes, the way

You have forgotten your own childhood, since

You woke up just in time to watch the adults disappear

From the world they had bequeathed us. It seems the scenery all around

Is hilly and unfarmable. Being brilliant has been reckoned

Into a procedure by some old guy, with a motto that is

More fitness, less flab. I hanker to go back to the land.

This means ruin to the culture-watchers. But the basic

Principle of my ambition is to be one excessively distracted

Entity at the mercy of the lurid, blurred and half-perceived

Motions of the Martians at the Halloween Hop. Fake? They sure are.

Summer is called Humidor here, the month of damp draughts.

The tale of my attempt to farm stubborn soil leaked from

Untruth to legend, my unlikely phase of boy-scout honesty being

Before I came to the big city. Here behind the tiny horological waterfall

Drums amplify the fun, but only at nightfall, then just for a moment

Of horrible error as I clutch the wrong person’s hand. That was true,

Only I said it wrong. Ugh. Now watch my serpentine

Gesture as I withdraw my hand, only to replace it with a congruent

Message that attempts to excuse this tactless fact,

Tearing at the sky over Twenty-second Street, but

The sky leans nonchalantly against the coop – I mean “co-op” – about

As graceful as a cowboy leaning on a chicken co-op – I mean “coop” – who either

Has an anger management problem or is under the influence of a form of

Some anxiety that eats at him. I’m not the fly-away

Marrying kind, nor a grumpy bachelor with a broken heart whose pieces

Are seen scattered over the range. That begs for an independent

Yet symbolic judgment from the Judge now alighting from the caboose, whose arrival

Whether timely, to the tick of a caesium atom, or tardy, has to be

Seen to be believed, like

The face of a hunter in the dim mirror killing a bear. As

Nostrils give away suppressed anger by flaring, so an argument

That is over leaves traces – nervous twitch, grimace. It

Is impossible to hide my feelings, I guess. Look ahead,

That effervescent persona and its emotional lurches and rocketings

Affected so much, and its magnum opus that was called

By another name is now the old school-teacher’s chief act of belief,

Or something very like it, gleaming in the rain. Hold up that light.

Has it shone on the tenebrous back-yards yet? Or yet admitted that

It is unable to illuminate the wasteland of wet barbecues, so much

Of its fuel has flared and lit up the landscape... this project, I admit that

It is like gutting then refurbishing a friend’s apartment. Now, are

The reply and the echo finished with? I asked a redundant question, and

That answer suffocated it, as a firmly pressed pillow

Has choked a banker, but no one knows whodunnit. That whole thing

Of returning to my sources, raking through my prototypes until

The last blueprint is found and seems just right: perhaps this is

Peace – a crowded peace – under the hot sun.

That we are afraid of it – inhabiting a reputation, the whole thing

About establishing who you genuinely were – are – I’ll admit. There

You hope your opus will be taken for legerdemain, but your effort sinks

Deeper into the mulch of history, while I adjust the mask that

Just fits more loosely every decade, and then I add up the little

That memory leaves me, a kind of pittance, the totality

Mustered and gathered... a look of boredom in a young person’s eyes,

And all those hopes and struggles are quite lost.

Accents and dialects distort them, once again.

To have escaped from a tangle of difficulties, from

Nothing but obstructions, into a glowing absence

And then to take a deep breath and plunge into

Those crowded riverine cities, greedy for contact with ghosts that are

Precisely what we want them to be, our plans furthered,

Seeing alphabet soup spell out the aleatory message and the time,

Casting caution to the winds and the weather – sorry, welter

Of neighbors, barking dogs, traffic cops – it leads to a general confusion.

And permit me... no, commit me, please, while the cops are standing

Around chewing the fat, and pray that these

Moments miss you like a whistling arrow. Thunk! The old tapir tapered

Into the bar: a Scotsman, an Irishman, and a capybary – I’ve heard it. But

Wasn’t the story of an Eskimo inside an eviscerated bear like this?

The fact that he “inhabited” the smelly bear-skin... I feel that

Neither brave feats nor stories about them can cut it.

Did not a Dandy Dinmont yap? I deliberately stayed

This way, spiritually a hunchback, drooling and gaping at the stars

That promised ashes and diamonds and nourishing food all the way,

As though clambering inside an animal was simply the reverse

Of some method of becoming notorious. My cheating heart is known

Once its modus operandi is – among the cognoscenti – firmly established.

The look of a man is the man, Buffon said, and style a condition

Of those whose reputation is a handbag and whose blindness

Was being talked about even in Paris: a troubling myopia, so

That their left and right perceptual fields, red and green, slowly separated,

Only to hitch up again, like inspiration and perspiration. Go on, shout

And be heard. Is this anaglyph what I really want? My declamatory

Nature was made to seem just a yokel act. I must admit it is

Not without a certain eau-de-cologne charm, insinuated the farmer. And yet

An invisible horror prevents me from making love to you among the previsions,

Then the post-visions I am subject to arrive, fits of

The assurance Baron Corvo had an excess of, a crowing assurance

Which tainted his career, under the blasts of air conditioning,

Whatever. There on the bank statement

At the beginning of the Age of Façadism was a catalog of waste.

A dumb waiter brought me the tablets and a note about the projected

After-effects, should they amplify the symptoms instead of curing them,

Though Frederick Rolfe was never cured. This

Emptiness will do fine. Just pop it in a doggy bag, thanks. Did you say “previsions”?

Was that a mispronunciation? “Provisions”, maybe, held

Too close to the chest, a fake poker hand of fate. The fireworks, they

Ended with a fizzing Roman candle sound that frightened the guest who was

Intended to rescue Gertie McDowell from that dirty old man. It’s

Gesture that fills out the role, as water makes the weather.

It was stupid of me to harp on the sadness

Of that animal’s demise: I should forget about the feeling

Which resembles taxidermy at midnight on an empty highway.

A telescope brings us a soothing view of distant mountains

And all the mountain people. Who knows where they’re going?

Moving from crag to cave to avoid the night

There, which is really ghastly when it comes on.

Beside the darkness, each farmer carries his own personal

Landscape around inside his head, a “landscape” being

What surrounds your idea of yourself, it’s so

Honorably framed, but presented in a Potemkin-Village spirit.

There was a vast electrical disturbance just outside the walls.

Each time it’s different, down through the centuries

For the sake of cultural improvements they go on repeating a dream that

Continually gives out a soft fluorescent glow, it was

Like standing on the prow of a moving ferry in the morning

With the spray bursting all around

And a feeling of nausea mixed with ecstasy washing over me. In a way

The whole experience was fake, except for the scale.

Really, what do Eskimos think of giants?

Not too much, I reckon. They say they like them.

A moment later they’re saying how needlessly big they are. But

Also they are likely to flatter them. A cloud of dust

Or whirling fragments resembling a mistral rises up ahead,

But no one understands it: the old verbal torrent

In new guise, transformed into a sheaf of falling leaves, which

Are gathered up, bound, and stuffed into a briefcase,

And it’s time for coffee and a Strega at Il Miglior Fabbro. When

Acts of killing fill nightmares and movies, only the calm

Of this bibulous routine can bring surcease. Then the shreds

Of another adventure assemble: a tour through the old college premises

Undertaken to the tune of the jig “From Rochester he came hence,

A writ of Cease and Desist clenched in his teeth”. Here, see this,

Like a pistol on a silver platter, it’s all yours

And it was mine once. Take it, go on. I kept it because

It had been handed down, and I had hoped it might be my insurance

Against the waves of devoted fans inefficiently

Seeking to take over the social scene and then the whole world.

The round platter, alas, has always been covered with dust,

So small it can hardly hold the pearl-handled revolver reclining on it.

Thereafter it should be passed on to other worthies, noted by

The comfort of strangers they fail to offer you, or me, even.

Like the wily coyote, I’m no sleep-abed; I tried all

The most difficult forms, even threnodies ending with the words

“After all” or “Never Mind!” And in my fine eye-rolling frenzy I almost

Exaggerated my metier into an obligation. This,

It seemed, was the way to build the future. But it was

Not likely to allow me to escape the whirligig of voracious time.

After all, tempus fugit however we might chase it. Indeed,

All kinds of regret sprinkled my breakfast as the slant angle of

The day lit up the diner and the light began to increase

So that I was dazzled, then I heard a loud thump, dull, heavy,

Like a polar bear falling over, and the hunter saying something

Not quite obscene, but close enough. Criminy! The way

Things fade away, les temps perdu seems to be the point

Of this rodomontade. Does a traditional verse form simply provide

A protected place for the poet to plead the case for his vital

Concern for la vie littéraire, or is it a carapace, a palace?

And you can meditate there all summer long.

It was a little insight I had, one of the world’s smallest.

Distant requests annoy me. The Poetry Club may be ultra-sensitive

But its supine and self-serving acquiescence

To the demands of those creeps... okay, that’s in the past

And it belongs there and I promised not to whine. But oh, how

The past haunts me, its vapid fashions, the rigmaroles... they wish

But also harangue, that’s why I resent them, the ones I talk with.

And in this way my paean to non-discovery

In brittle yet oracular verse persuades us, but nevertheless

The map you provided was helpful in leading us beyond

Madness to something better: squatting in Circe’s mansion. Only

You desire us to fail – just there, perhaps, where your verbal acts

Are sentinels warning us of the slow-moving, quiet

Invasion of middle America by pod people over many years.

Be quiet – hush! – they are nearby, whispering the poem itself

In a parody of oratory. I’ll explain more plainly: the map

Of the literary world is a pantomime, and its longeurs have become

Prolongations of our prevarications on bad weather days, and also

Fine days where things seem okay but are not, those dull events

We shall banish from the Ideal Republic. Who called? No, I am

Not speaking to that shit: he just wants to be

Opposite me at the literary lunch. He got some fame recently, only

To be thrust into obscurity soon, I hope. It seems broader,

The sum total, a canal reflecting its own anagram, but will it ever

Become legible? Hidden behind a screen of rocks

And foliage, the creep quickly inhales the distant

Ether and faints, thank goodness, and what I own

I see before me shining like a dagger. Meanwhile

I am only me, a faithful shadow of my real self, and

Private doubts evaporate between the Spring and the Fall

And even this is seasonal, and I thank you

For being so patient, you could have made some other

Voluntary or involuntary gesture like sneezing to prove your

Maturity or you could have hung and dangled from the branches

Of a tree to attract my attention a step or two away from them.

It intensifies my desire to know you, a gesture like that, to

Form an opinion of your feints, apparitions and mode of locomotion.

In this way I control the crowded avenue to the Palace of Fame, the one

Leading to a rowboat mounted in a park where I perch and think to

Myself and then jot it down, being careful to leave a blank space

That is the secret indication of Mallarmé’s abyss, a.k.a. “The Unknown.”

Eating ragwort is morally better than gobbling a quail tagine; the difference

Can never be explained to the obtuse. At this distance

It seemed impossible to reach the reader, Valéry murmured, then said the phrase

“Over and over” to himself, again and again. Meanwhile

Infant mortality was declining as aspirin consumption increased. There was

To be a meeting about aspirin and other drugs later that evening,

He was told. He read poems about killing large animals to keep awake

On the tepid waters of café society. Go to the meeting, don’t go, whatever.

“Whose center wobbles is bound to fail,” the Latin motto says, and having

The progression of the equinox too much in mind brings rain

As they form a phalanx of epigones, those who come after.

Why don’t they just get used to that? They can’t be equal

Without coming before, and that’s impossible. The cup of

Contentment will never touch their lips. Ministering

To stunted talents is my fate; each day I tread that lonesome trail alone

And return at nightfall bereft and grinding my teeth at

What they dish out: similes as appliqué aperçus. They

Might as well hand in embroidery. The Force, puissant yet invisible,

Still surrounds us. Yet there is also a Dark Force

Between the cruel mandates of history and them.

It is because the greatness of art is like a snobbish relative

That we shall never agree on a strategy, and

Entertainment washes over us, leaving us ethically incomplete.

Former East German border guards know too well that that

Closes off an awful lot of options. The Moment

Of Death is dallying on Ninth Avenue, as yet uncertain of

Its intentions. I’ll just leaf through the paper until

You wake up. I’m not planning to go anywhere. You know, it

Wasn’t a small thing, to turn your back on Europe. The walls

Are turning into their own murals. Please don’t speak

Of time within the hearing of that tiny hydraulic clock you

Invented, it can be self-centered and jealous, and has now

Grown furious. Deep within its complex innards a purple jewel

Exists as a blazon, rotating slowly, saying that this

Existence is temporary, that you may lodge and idle here

Only so long as you don’t irritate the gods. Someone’s

Purpose niggles at you. Then the sunbeams flood in at acute

Angles and frighten the other diners. I thought, then,

Of having whatever I wanted, but it seemed that a distant

Image of you chided me. My admiration is a test

Of how you might accept it: gracefully, or boorishly, or not.

You hesitate, don’t you? I hate that. Please accept this

Wooden gesture, and you’re right, the over-decorated representation

Returns whence it came, though it was easily said, and simply meant,

With nothing ulterior about it: a simple entendre. I’d like to alight

With you from the caboose on a hot dry day in a wonderful town. You

Must help the Judge measure the exact length of the shadow of

Your well wrought urn in the center of the town square – it is still intact;

Appreciation gives it the shine and the shadow – but just now somebody

is phoning to arrange for drinks – will you join me? – later this evening.

Desmond’s Coupé

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Desmond’s coupé is full of jam. He’s in a quandary:

a bean lance, or a dance of circumstances.

He’s eternally fond of his own naivety.

A swanky beam spells out a white

cranky tale.

Susan’s inclination was

plainly desperate.

An ailment common in Siena

makes him think he’s dead and buried

or makes him realise he’s a bad dresser

on a plane, or in jail, but you don’t dress for jail

and people don’t wear a jacket on a plane any more.

Raise the bonds.

His three résumes — swallowed — he’s just

a shadow of his former self — fooey! — a deep violet colour,

or an alternative he’ll just have to adapt to

by the verge of the road.

Deep beans: his aunt has a rooster.

She’s getting battier every year,

a fish in one hand, a peach in the other.

The Master of Surges,

or so we infer.

In the flames we see the communist menace —

uniquely, they’ve got the numbers, no?

But they hesitate when the corpse waves its arms.

Pluto (not Mickey) wants to play,

oh, what a nut! Chained

at the party, a name for the horse floats,

an old horse works it out,

tapping his hoof on the floor, good trick,

but then forgetting how old he is

behind the jade barrier.

These pedals take you to an agreeable horizon,

well prepared.

You old git, free meals,

a bad smell on the dratted train —

now he’s heading for the air vents

in another carriage —

that’s the spirit — actually, a jet plane

would be quite a temptation.

You could re-employ a division of passing firemen.

The secret item on the menu,

the chef’s envy, even now

is cooling on the barbecue, or so you surmise.

Look straight at the homosexual:

nerveless, not very important, yet vain,

an old Hoover in his hand.

Potato crisps

are found in the deli, useless for a téte-â-tète.

He takes a disprin and feels legless, then he

has another one, then he feels

ambiguous. His ulterior plans

and unforgettably demonic.

He feels nothing

for the empty countries, Alaska, let’s say,

home of the Inuit. This old idiot

had a chance to meet The Supremes, probably —

say, Louie, your son is some puerile hombre,

caressing a policeman and renting out a lavatory,

eating soup and getting vaguer —

a soup full of hard bones,

now he enters the aisle, bending his knee

like a bat flapping into the sea.

The old tenant reads Lowell [’s poem] against the sea,

a chance to ooze poetry —

financially speaking, that is — no, don’t —

a voile handkerchief is an illusion

as antsy as having a phantom for a guest

in the chancellery

but that won’t abolish folly

like this insinuating silence

or Dan’s squelchy high-voltage approach —

he’s simply rolling around and laughing ironically.

Ooo! — A mystery!

A precipice!

Frank Hurley!

A billion turbots! Laughter and horror

with the author Jimmy Guiffre (on guitar),

but no junkies, please,

no fur,

and that old berk verging on the index

like so, a lonely puff of smoke at Purdue —

so far, so good,

where recounting the effluent is the talk of the minute,

and it immobilises you.

A chiffon and velour coffee-coloured sombrero

for this stiff old white man

is derisory, an opposition horse seal,

rather tropical, the sombrero, quite unmarked,

exhumed, quite conkers,

the American prince who loves the cool,

he gives a little heroic cough.

Irresistible maize container!

Par for the course, but a pretty feeble reason to be acting virile

and like a foodie, maybe the ulcers explain his puberty

or mute his loose and bossy vinaigrette

(invisible from the front)

sparkling with umbrage,

with the stature of a shadowy filet mignon

and with the torsion of a siren

impatient at squeamish ultimatums.

A rare, yes, and vertiginous debut.

Time to snaffle

a bifurcated soufflé,

thinks the old bird.

His manner is rather false.

All up, with a toilet next to the bedroom,

evaporated brooms

impose an unborn infinite state

issuing from the stars — que sera, sera —

a pyre doesn’t disadvantage the minors,

they’re indifferent to the mutants,

that is, to the number of mutants that exist

apart from those agonising, sparse

hallucinations of mutants which start when they stop

and never seem to close, apparently, with an infant.

The park elk and his profusion of expandable rarities —

see, then the chief rat is ill —

evidence that the Battle of the Somme, for one of us at least

was a poor thing, though somehow illuminating

and written up in Hansard.

Choose a pen.

A left-hand drive car with a rhythmic suspension

that levels itself, an ox and some original scum,

no more wars, a delirious sound and just one crime

fleeing without identifying Jimmy Guiffre’s true neutrality.

Rein in a memorable crisis

as you see fit.

Your venomous accomplice can view the results: nothing!

Nothing human, that is.

In lieu of an aura of elevation,

the absence of ordinary verse.

In the loo, an inferior kind of clap

is likely to disperse and conquer

those who act in a poor video.

Abruptly key the synonym.

Parson, men’s songs are fond of perdition.

A dance, in the garage full of vague parables,

and which reality is dissolved?

Except where the altitude peters out

and an Aussie’s loins are right on.

A few swans, a vector dealer and

a horse of interest —

and a quantity of signals in general sell on,

tell obliquities, part Elle’s declivities —

the furs, poems, see what theatre

a septuagenarian from the far north of Australia

see in the stars — freezing, oblique and full of suet —

pass the aunt —

a killer from Noumea —

and this vacant surface is superior

to any successive hurt.

Side-rail was meant —

done, counted, totalled information

and a veiled ant, doubts, the rolls...

brilliantly meditating before the ratter

whose pointed bum is sacred —

and all the pensioners met Des and his coupé.

Five Quartets

[»] Contents    [»] See note

         1

All might have been speculation.

What might have been opened?

I do not inhabit the garden.

There they were dignified, invisible,

over the dead bird, in response to

the flowers that are our guests,

in the drained pool.

Dry water, bird children,

garlic and mud in the blood

dance along the sodden floor.

Below, the practical Erhebung without

elimination, its partial ecstasy,

its horror. Yet the body cannot

allow a little dim light: neither

rotation nor strained fancies

with no men. Bits of wind in unwholesome

eructation, the torpid gloomy hills of Putney,

twittering into inoperancy and the other.

Abstention from its metalled bell

carries the cling wing.

         2

Words move the Chinese violin, while

the words between the foliage

waste a factory, or a by-pass.

There is a time for the wind to break

and to shake the field-mouse with a silent motto.

You lean against a van

and the deep village, the sultry dahlias,

wait for the early pipe.

         3

And the little man and woman

round and round the fire

leaping through the laughter

lifting the milking and the coupling

of man and woman of dung and wrinkles.

I am here in heat, and writhing high

into grey roses filled with thunder.

The rolling cars weep and hunt the ice.

That was not very worn-out.

Poetical fashion, wrestle with poetry.

Calm and wisdom deceived us, the dead secrets

into which they turned their every moment

And shocking monsters, fancy old men,

can hope to acquire houses under the Stock Exchange.

         4

The Directory of cold lost the funeral.

I said to the dark, the lights are hollow,

with a bold rolled train in the tube

and the conversation fades into the mental ether,

the mind is in the garden, pointing and repeating

‘There is no ecstasy!’ The wounded steel,

the fever chart, is the disease,

the dying nurse our hospital.

The millionaire ascends from feet to mental wires.

I must quake in our only drink, blood.

Trying to use a failure, because one has

shabby equipment in the mess of emotion,

and to conquer men, is no competition.

Home is older, stranger, intense.

But the old lamplight is nearly here,

with the explorers.

         5

I think that the patient is forgotten.

Men choose the machine, but the nursery bedroom

in the winter gaslight is within us,

also, the algae and the dead men.

The sea has the water,

the groaner and the women.

Where is there an end of it?

Where is the end of the wastage?

We have to think of them,

while the money is ineffable:

we appreciate the agony of others,

covered by dead negroes.

Moretti’s Map of Paris

[»] Contents    [»] See note

I’m thinking of a map I saw

projected on a wall in Cambridge UK:

nineteenth-century Paris

as seen in the literature of the time, a period

when high art met half a million readers

in a frenzy of spending before movies and video

could steal that lumpen audience.

The heroes of the novels of the age were men,

naturally  —  this is France  —  and all

lived on the Left Bank, which was then

a squalid dump, now heavy with real estate

that no French working family can afford.

Moretti’s map shows their filthy little flats

and rented rooms dotted exactly on a grid,

address by address, street by street —

‘He who does not know the left bank

of the Seine between the rue Saint-Jacques

and the rue des Saints-Pères doesn’t know life,’

says Balzac — for example the hot attic flat

of Banville’s house in the rue de Buci

where Verlaine installed his current

boy-friend, who stood in the window

and flung his lice-filled clothes into the street.

Now turn your ironic gaze across the river,

that fiscal pale, where the heroines live

scattered around the Right Bank in their

comfortable dwellings, each with a concierge

and one of these new hydraulic elevators —

drifting further from the water, further North, further Right,

into a golden frenzy of marriages and money.

Discovery Kids

[»] Contents    [»] See note

When you look out the window and nine days later

grants flow back quickly, she seems fine, or maybe a little

new rocket CC  and a happy meal.

She cares less than two important things:

“The song, Barnes, the engine wrapped in plastic!”

Custom tailors supporting a landscape that the planning

of the management side (goes away again)

out of the diary gets what he got: a new job.

She hated everything, by everything... to get a file

of us if you could be looked after

an election that could be fined or a holiday resort

sugar shack, if you wanted to quit, and she

looked away into the passenger compartment,

she is a full line reading the discovery kids of today.

Electrical Disturbance: A dramatic interlude

[»] Contents    [»] See note

A: A poem, titled ‘Oxymorons’.

Outsourcing ruins the parties concerned with language.

They are employing level parking. You are one

who pretended to go at it this year.

You listen to other opponents, said the committee,

it wants to be yours and cannot be on the supporting level —

is there — are there other things for us?

To throw them into play, play — well actually, years —

but I considered playing hookey in Perot’s third innings

when he was trying to read a recent edition of Greek poems.

That is one of the stains — without parole, open-ended.

And before you know it, it has lots of the things that are typewriters.

And he played it once more, I think... but only for two years.

Going into a new level — a different attitude —

it means roughly — it guarantees that you are his — you ...

We feel as if we truly believe the required stuff,

suggesting that it will offer a train,

it comes during the reading of the jury list

with a box on its tracks, now they eliminate the table

and encourage the water pilot and his destiny,

supporting charities — such noise

that it was warm and fuzzy

(if you’re in your hair) and

they’re risking a relative amount.

Playing ring-a-rosy and once again

they have said their share, a lasting example

of the world history of humans.

They are not a singular authority,

and the worker lives in poverty and reflects.

Units are an old man in a blue shirt,

selling paint cans for a living. So

in the evening everything should show

that you can find a way to use it.

B: A poem, titled ‘What Works’.

One — I want to use what was wrong

and why I did the work of the house

where you first turned up for a day of work

on actual papers, was for reasons of summer.

Two — So far so good as New Delhi,

and we think there has been, in the lives of people

who are very common, a way or a growth of 21,

or maybe many more below the jury,

which will bring the way he rose from one end

of the worst case of each of the notes and stripes,

strange days indeed.

Three — he returns. Our lives seem more thorough

and lower, as a woman might seem.

Blazing blocks from the literature maven,

on his way into our Senior Center this evening,

and a list of rules for the future of the home

where his current visit is to our children:

what was wrong is in line with his words,

and he’s here. What is a story of a growing boy:

what are you guys? Do you know what has changed

his or her choice, and released documents?

And only the light of what works, works. It works.

A: A poem, titled ‘Some Trees’.

How to use these — are you

holding a joint letter?

As those things were still,

he performs, arranging a chance

to win his party’s

morning and world instantly.

I recently met with these guys to try to

close down what we had barely been doing...

something that can be hard for exploring.

We did not live in an instant, as we’re surrounded

by the silence, or a few hours silence a day,

and I was looking for his chorus of smiles.

Please have only one thing: parties, restaurants

and hotels of their own.

The Interview. Part One.

B: The Interview, part one. Can you

tell me about the ‘scrimmage’?

A: In reading that the publisher is 28, and

expects to be a woman, he got ready a new

line of scrimmage that had been used

for the annual series of younger poets.

The first ones were in hand with the new cars.

That’s all.

B: Now, to press the church of Saint Louis Blues:

one of the new rules for the event was

that one of the press would warn everybody

when he returned. Why?

A: The error rate was higher, and the defendants

were protesting that the U.S. is the worst of all.

The code breaker of the jury is this year’s fever.

B: But the East River — sorry, the year’s fever —

that has been over for a year.

A: The firm was very large, as well as

the shame when it had to lose. That was large too.

B: What a year.

A: Well, the Server is a painting where I live in the mirror.

They have been the source for the bears and the lender,

who owns the line from the original range.

B: He is one of the U.N. and NATO people. Right?

A: I don’t have any idea.

B: Okay. Would you like to meet some new friends?

A: Well, no. For those who are very easy,

who have a certain sense of publication,

I already have friends.

B: This is the feedback to the heart of everything.

Now, what about this ‘error’?

A: I’m looking for violence, that is the error.

And a lot of parents are large and very annoying.

B: What about those so-called ‘French Fires’?

A: After the old days of riots, all of the fires were over.

B: Not Fires, Fries. And who — where —

A: Four teenage girls. One of the stores was in Paris.

B: Paris?

A: His home in the water — we were stationed there.

B (looking behind him, voice muffled): The Seine?

The report... Maybe there is no such report.

A: You have a right to finish a long way off.

This is the year two women who are used

for the current issue, who are to review the data,

are eventually to write the report together.

B: I should have mentioned that there’s a curfew

on the free-threaded analytic use of terms

which only satisfy a few people.

A: Do you mean a kind of censorship?

But the anger over yours truly...

it says in the book, and CVS violence...

(looking around): Why am I here?

B: You are available, you are the only person

along the lines of the overview of the animal,

and more powerful than ever... Now,

who was uncertain about two counts of rape?

A: The French conversation last month

was given an aggressive expansion. When

the infected meet with a long-term convalescence...

B: Really, before anything else, you should

address yourself to that end —

A: Okay, okay. A poem, ‘Thoughts of a young girl’.

The second half of their hard work

came, live, to the shores of their violence;

that was the scope of the year, and

running back to the world in which you could hardly,

an hour ago, sign the bills. Are you

still waiting for the show’s conclusion?

Most of the early lead roles are taken.

A dollar buys (or reserves) your livelihood.

We wait for your presence to show the way.

B: A poem, titled ‘Last month’.

No change of support, only stasis.

Glad the great hero is alive and well.

Things have their own way in record time.

Black people used to resolve large receipts slowly,

and I am sure something is opening its doors

and willing to sell its earnings and dollars.

H. Lawrence Powell and I would open the doors

when we visited, he has one of the properties,

it has its own level. It is your own house in the year

of the solar wind, and this is the power of the book.

More of the Interview:

A: Preheat the oven, and the garden grove is ours.

B (mid-sentence): ... the interview, more of it.

If the market share falls away

from July onwards, at least

the paper has a review — The San Francisco —

A (butting in): There are some of my own flaws —

B: Claws? Flaws? The road runner?

A: Steady on. The higher the level of the opening,

the more you hurry, and the life of leisure users —

say about the past four years — it’s a long

line of human sexuality. One, the first error,

then a power failure for what’s left of the year.

B: Hmmm... Flaws become ‘errors’. Three years,

filling out the history of the human heart.

A: History?

B: The one you’re with has a history, you didn’t know that?

A (calmly): Yes. (confused): Uh, no. Most of the time

I want to encourage a million hits.

The error you would have is a file on the arts,

corrupt —

B: It is where you have the power.

You must serve part of the first year.

A: Corrupt data, I mean. The report. Fine.

The more heard, the less gathered.

B (looking for a piece of paper): There is one more line...

about a college graduate you are trying to teach —

William eventually took up a lot of time, right? —

... reading the letter of your life... uh... forget it.

(laughs) Boy, the way you guys

were able to use these discoveries!

A: Well, however long the road, anyone can walk it.

The Berkeley Renaissance was really very much

a large American way of anger.

B: Berkeley? Really?

A (annoyed): Mortgages were foreclosed on a million homes!

The heavy use of work in the nation, Bertha

had some ideas about that —

B: You and Bertha, are you starting —

A (interrupting): We’re not really starting anything.

The Federal forms of their injuries

have originally been worth 800 dollars per person.

B: There was no other way of reading it?

A: Whose side are you on? The proliferation

of the green arms of interaction

has various uses: the ones you used

for being a mother, and the one you used

to get your free meals.

B: A mother? Hmmm, I think you’re right —

A: Sure... about fifty per cent of the road.

Reading French

Hôtel de Ville

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The kids should visit a history museum

in their senior year, to understand disgrace as

one form of Clinton’s victory. On the other hand

the European Community foreign debt gives

everybody bad dreams. So we do need to solve

the problem of students reading difficult things

that will lead them astray: why did Rimbaud

turn from socialism to capitalism? As if

it matters. We’d be delighted to have his uniform.

The name from the dish multiplies twenty black men.

We want to see all the modern art stuff, too.

Thank you. Press the button marked ‘monument’

and see what happens: a recorded voice says

‘I have wasted my life’, and we pay to listen.

Anguish

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The May frostbite is still on the land,

a statement by analogy

down by John Quinn.

We should assess this.

Single men sit through the night.

Force a dual key to a bloody game

on the issue in this exhibit

to see more of the sea.

Flying, all share a common fear.

Get a file, he said, she’s

come here with this shot deal, no pay

and no exit. Kinda nice to know that,

thanks for joining in the song

at the close, four years.

Antics

[»] Contents    [»] See note

And I see a feast

people on the phone

call that day

the key to the song

that blocks insomnia.

So you had taunted us

by going to where

that civil tongue is a lingua franca

on the one genuine document,

a plausible text, though how true

no one knows, exactly, and now

they want to solicit whatever it is

that has a significant increase,

its attention on a big coach.

Barbarians

[»] Contents    [»] See note

To be an equity issue in this is all you can expect;

in the statehouse today old McAfee

told his story, and none too soon.

He is only local news in a local court, but

I was as worried as anyone. All the media

were there, barbaric on the video phones.

They’re seeing it like so: he has a free kick.

Did you say ‘What happened to the eighties?’

Are they the only ones saying this lady

made a few dents in the system,

took her doses —  I see it as two doses —

and then a plea bargain for the shopping assault?

This edition paints it as a gamble on love, or

a kiss too soon, or Mondo music and a new full moon.

Bottom of the Harbour

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Maria today got a heap of stuff,

all she can use for a month.

Taylor said she should make one

for the Indian, that is, the male person

originally from the subcontinent

and since she just wasn’t being the buyer

for two of them, she said no.

This had an effect on the warrior courtroom

until all of that month had gone by,

or do you mean that the U.S. should give up

the Cold War tactics shown on the

Canton blankets? We use them to keep warm,

for goodness’ sake, it’s a case of being up at dawn

bottom-feeding in and around the drowned cathedral.

Childhood

[»] Contents    [»] See note

         1

Call its stated goal an assault on the new window

looking at other fundamentally longer music and film

the norm for most women: like the market

the island is the editor of a different algorithm,

and clocked an experiment that feeds me

over the long tradition of discourse

which lasts longer than their own phone calls

and he on the web. The woman held to the belief

that it was his faithful mistake.

Are the blues just a warp in the DNA,

a genetic splice on the silver bullet of jazz?

At the beginning of the major slowdown

music is used to liven up the dismal matter

late at night when every gesture is cool.

         2

See the net, the ten-year mission,

the dish, the town, the gong shimmering.

The city played the ‘call on the applet’ song

and claimed that a lot was going on.

You will hear from the U.S. government

and the E.E.C. boffins in due course.

they do what they do to guide the assault

on the date. Barry’s the one who knew

what he had seen between sound data

and the player, and had gone to get some help

because he is the only guy out on a limb in D.C.

with an inflammation of the chest. Dos Santos said

he announced that on CNN, some old male figure,

and that’s when they made the initial analysis.

         3

What the day-to-day white cell function was

and its annual fatality rate, nobody knows.

You know any large kidney stone can do it,

before the end of the union,

the bits of rock inside the suffering flesh.

He was indicted for some minor crime,

and was allowed bail on condition that

he stayed away from the schoolyard.

That’s what the year brought us. Thanks.

(Delete the eighth.) Keep this Sunday free,

be on call, it would cost them one budget at least

(using Outlook) to keep all the doctors on call

ready for duty (command) to be finding out about

the swap deal relating to the evolution of a saint.

         4

Call me. It has the fix-it.

In his three days using it

he just couldn’t get through

to the end of ‘log enable’.

He didn’t use a cool bar

when the investigating court

claimed that the CIA under any other name

would be the same.

All the defendants, the whole sack of them,

have long been made ineffective

by the relentlessness of the judicial assault.

On the phone, deletion is the aim.

This idea is not the only visionary

thing to happen in a small novel.

         5

Combing your hair, you don’t follow suit,

you look all blotchy on the late show

and indeed the team in the studio

including John Updike and a close female friend

beat the previous month’s audience figures.

You’re seeing the virus and these guys

all dying in a firefight, but on a neighboring island

the locals benefit from new lease of life.

The goal of the pain can get busier than all the data

in the world, the flaw in the work that we do

for state PTA president is a lack of talent.

Update the loan. The MIT Board is on the Internet

and his roommate has enough votes to win one of the best

seats in the house, still layered and glowing.

Dawn

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Jerry Matsuno will get a band together, don’t worry:

it’s just a local phone call away.

Today they can open the case.

There are more witnesses to be called, so

keep an eye on what Jerry Marshall wants.

Really, all these criminals and junkies are the envy

of a bevy of affected socialites. That is, their manners

are affected, not their health.

The studies say they’re also obliged to slow down

every Sunday. ‘At the top of their key’ means that

for ‘don’t feel safe’ area you should read

‘black and Latino vision’ area. Your call,

call the Davidians for your weekend closure,

and Monday a lesson on the civic union of Genesis.

Deluge

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Upgrading the late edition for all U.S. units.

So why didn’t you move the stock?

That one guy got a new all-nuclear crisis

for the week of the invasion of twenty people —

Congress and the effect of the debates.

Find a buyer who is in the American party.

I mean you’ll visit downtown Los Angeles.

You do not get that on the Internet.

That busy team has no qualms about going on and on,

the later we delivered the women to encourage the men

to get that problem solved — it became a key

that unlocked the pain of the Soviet Union,

and today a new location for the quiz shoot,

a green meadow filled with buttercups.

Democracy

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Well, so much for the idea of an open session:

the result  won’t be known until tomorrow.

So much for the tools of democracy. Elections

are an assault on the rights of the people.

Talk to the PC makers. We need cheaper

entertainment, not cheaper political displays.

They use our money to promote themselves

so they can take our money again.

To see it all, but to miss that one second

when the gun is fired... there’s an old saying:

How much water is needed to run a horse?

I’d be interested in hearing your reply.

And we put in a call for the committee

to tell us everything they know.

Departure

[»] Contents    [»] See note

As a view

of the busy sale

quantity sat on a DVD

and this one

is also your mistake

when you

listen to the ABC

on the pound and the dollar

or the euro

on a fix —

so much for

the public

who know it

in the wallet.

Eighteen Fairies

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Eighteen sequential disasters this year,

that’s what happens when you plant the seed

and don’t plan how to reap the crop,

like “I had a coffee (plant growing ) in the shade”

and “I had a coffee ( ... ) in the shade (of the

trees that adorn the front at Nice)”.

He sold some advertising, but his wife sold more

through the gullible mall culture in the sixties.

I am up to date. Does that sound immodest?

We had the dead based eagle product

and a $4.00 increase on the freeway, and

he is on board and on the sea and

people were shown his dissent — its use

was as a false light to all the seeded day.

Flowers

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Jim Gott and old money

don’t mix. He sent flowers to the old lady,

but nothing came of it. Then he fought

the Chinese laundry over the disputed crease

in his last clean shirt sent by UPS, the Chinaman

got a court order that he not be so called.

He makes peanuts: his thousand a year is viewed

as a decent living: you figure it out.

Old Gott was taken to court, a kind of

maze synod, that September, ornamental

cherry petals littering the streets.

Thirty-eight years later the change sheet tells us

that he was called The Fiendish. In the distant  future,

I shall be as efficient as you.

Genius

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Josh Elliott, be innovative, nouveau.

It is more music pass than a treatment,

an ad that makes only a tiny use

of its own matching channel as an altar,

and a decent cost analysis is still needed.

The BBC wanted to see if that moment still has

a null market, or can they kick in into life?

They only sell movies they don’t have the ending for.

For that large a show, get a couple

to fight a ban made up of forcible sodomy law.

‘Separated at birth’ is all the formatting you need.

You know where: what tools to use, you

know what to say: we diva the couple to do a little more

and as for shared data, forget it: see ‘soufflés, social’.

Horticulture

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Thomas Cecil, what did you do?

A man can he get what he wants

on the inside — much good did that do me.

Thomas was sued by the city

because he gave a false statement

when he came to the desert resort

which was not open, to peel an idea.

That means they’ll not nominate — that is —

because of the delay they called to say

that the sea — no, the Warsaw pact countries

mainly lack seas, thus navies, whose diet can never

be shown because of the jelly bean component.

If Greece gives someone a permanent visa status

it means that the Jewish faith cannot do for old Thomas.

Lives

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Put me on the list of local media maniacs.

I am an old man working on a dBase file,

and I know that all the men in the theater

are there for a reason. I knew a student

with a hearing aid, and then the insane visual

was invented, the Enola come-on. Come on,

I can’t hear you. Take the kids to see the conditions

caused by the Vietnam War, why don’t you?

They’re not humane in Dawson City.

It seems to me that your famous design champion

is up a tree, and what effect does that have

on the practical Mister? Mama must do

what she must, shut down by the videotape marshal

as a mandate for the people of Mormon.

Marinara

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Michelle speaks especially to Cleveland:

‘the CIA did sit in, that is, sit

in their offices on this issue also —

they come on down the steps

outside the Capitol, chanting initials:

NATO the FBI most US troops — blah

blah — then it’s denial and denial.’

Marina, this should be a speech from a script

worked up in the story conference room

of your dreaming self: Don’t hide it,

your life will be on film: the entire avalanche, the whole

disaster, the cascades of shit and honey, someday

tilting in the sky over England like a Dornier —

a blast crucial one single family and now gone.

Martian Movie

[»] Contents    [»] See note

What to do? Nothing; just wake up to see if the units

prod the day awake, to keep this idea like a jet in a hangar.

You might be the key that all three of us need —

(and Jimmy the Basin) — need to be on call to notify

Kitty and the target — oh the arduous trade —

do the scene — of what, may I ask? —

the scene where some guy keeps keying the Martian

into frame. How? I do not know. I’m a kid and all we know

is the creation of the creature, but you don’t fit the cells

where correlation is the issue, a serious issue.

I’m on proxy, that is, resting, now in the slough

where Marcelino and his pals make themselves scarce,

the navy is in town and that guy called Austin is a pretty

call on the infield. Yet the tomb riddle will be solved.

Metro

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Two guys from Detroit pored over the suicide letter

as its auction price rose through the $8.00 range.

A male choir that this year sang in Vietnam

is now a medical team on a training course.

No one wants an incontinent hostage.

Femina’s call for us all to share the pretty things

fell on deaf ears; so much for  the taste of justice.

They can’t be bought. An application in the name of Antonov

will not reveal me as a donor or a smaller companion.

We could use a dime when the music imitates a disaster area.

The idea is still to issue a new Long Beach five-point

major disaster this year. At the home they can vote

that the economy is in fact the city of events

and he says ‘no one is a real actor in the film.’

Movements

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The Gulf of Aden did enough, but

you know I said to kill one of those bad

men on Friday, bring the body to me later.

To call the team ‘failures’ would make this

a political stumble. If someone on Dataquest is young

and wants to get a CD in a bid to secede why

in the affidavit of being — why did you —

like all the kids in the city why should they —

but I do not cause the economy.

Is that what the song says? If you go from the beach to

the hotel for the Young and the Stupid, you’ll get

the idea that we don’t need more trees, just more

people who sit on the dish, this sounds fine and energetic

so they should be going out on a shaman basic poster.

New Beauty

[»] Contents    [»] See note

         1

Being viewed as the usual combination

of coward and hero is a debilitating thing;

naturally you would try to deceive them

in the music store, and then you want to sound like

you’re playing with a famous band, playing a song

that is to be a record of the navy’s faults.

You can depend on the City Council to do what is wrong —

the city may be Chantilly, and then again it may not.

So you pour all your resources into the battle

to get to the top of the pops with your angry music,

and force the listeners around the Pacific rim

to vote your way: most are no friends of America.

The airplane to you is that person, a star,

rising high and then falling. That’s the Catch 22.

         2

Being viewed as the combination of beauty and ugliness

is a debilitating affliction: with a false face

and a different coat you would try to deceive them

and the more interested they are your role

in the music store, the more they want to sound like

something that’s already popular and thus out of date.

Fashion has to change: that’s its essence. One day

enduring values reign, then around the Pacific rim,

an SQL battle — structured query language

pestering the database for more and better data.

Then again, you may get sacked; then where’s your

cocky prognostication? Knee-deep in bullshit, a failure

recorded over the navy’s default sonar ping on dolls

and the airplane to you is that person, not America.

Ornery

[»] Contents    [»] See note

We did want to buy the Kennedy coach.

It was ten a.m. And what you’ll get is the KB,

if you do that: the Kent Brewery, a nice little drop.

The light that began on the other day shone on

the long war unit. That would give me what he feared:

the CIA. One is a dish of blood. The other:

stains on the carpet. Both say

they have won if you recall the palace of sound.

It is off the hook, the phone. Any home

is related to a city, and that city is bait. Now

the agents call — plus 217 men — that is safe to assume —

and claim that the downfall takes place on the phone:

that they didn’t do a song that the Nashville people like

in a field of political and human damage.

Parade

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The dollar goes to a city that is his only speaking song

that took place in the open air

and we also collected data based on a list

of all the costs of Saint Keene,

it’s a CD of fall songs, maybe, only

the data is in a format that might give away

the occupation of the person, and

as we got onto the shuttle, a flashlight shone on the ticket.

So the district judge knows that I am still at large.

That was the goal of the donors the courts imprisoned.

They added a goal to motivate the contestants

and that’s among the ideas they need to speed up:

the one who negotiates with NATO will always be

sad: the ideas of all the songs have always been known.

Phrases

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Condiments every two weeks and he was sued blind.

No routine completed, no, don’t know a thing:

for DOS, some awful fee data, not that good. At some point

Internet Explorer can ease the internecine issues.

So one night we’re watching the news: he says

the Soviet cages are what saved the civil service,

and ‘What is the issue? Money? The assault rifle?’

This is the basis for the 1982 phone conversation.

So most of Congress said Mandela’s ANC manual

was seditious, but their song was only a minute long.

You don’t need to decode the closure. They should

take down the field quantity of all those cases.

And even if many of them are cool,

their share went undefended to the finish.

Pronto

[»] Contents    [»] See note

         1

No joy in this one, Bob. Would you like to be

summoned for one little blot on the record,

by a marshal? And create the indictment

today, that will be used for a demo

tomorrow? If you do that, my old friend,

the problem seems to be saying, the data

will go on the skids — it could be a fun contest

held in a field in the Boston area.

Now I don’t want you to get the idea that

finding a guitar has anything to do with it.

Just dish it up like the boss wants: though

if you deal with the CIA — Hi — I’m Bob.

Can’t talk now. Down in the park,

listening to the guitars, lots of single mothers...

         2

Do they need to show more, to agree to put

the data mining double digits to use?

They blame a hotel trustee ten to one.

A bang on the gong and he’s off to Brooklyn

with a call for a song set from Tony, sliding to CNN,

sun blinding him, trouble in the upper airway,

cost of sales data ballooning — he cannot operate.

It is the ‘FM in a Domain Name System’ hazard,

a haphazard collapse they can share with the boss

who already believes that we should solve it —

that must be what the publishers want —

two weeks’ extra pay, he would say that to keep me,

but I’m getting used to his lies. Sufficient unto the day

are its many small evils — Betty, comment on that, pronto.

Royalties

[»] Contents    [»] See note

We’ll make common cause with the Right,

and take that message to the Ford Foundation

who helped the CIA guy in Paris win a medal

that let him sit in on the cultural deliberations

of all those old freaks. Also note

that the quote of the week missed me altogether,

that is, I missed it — I just stopped by

to look in on the literary debate, cast a vote...

Democracy is what we define it to be.

Sure the Iranians voted in a government,

but those socialist shits were going to nationalise —

their oil, British oil, our oil, what the hell —

so we put in that poet guy to agitate, Bunting.

Sure, people were killed: so what?

Scenes

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The subcommittee poses a threat.

When they say ‘the DB city’ they don’t mean

the Deutsche Bahn AG or whatever... here

the board of trade shows what to import, the —

Ronald, get them! Don’t shout! or give orders.

We told the customer what the customer wants.

We’ve only potted palms, and one wolf a year.

Then all the comedians disembark in San Diego.

That’s a company with a real future, though

the double stop is daunting, I agreed with them,

and I should say that the fondled sale failed

on the killed day, a reminder about the order for Tivoli

this week, they even want to set up in the courtroom.

We’ll all need visas, and openness cannot be fear.

Shames

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Don’t kid me, I’m not Noah.

The corps existed in the new data —

Esprit de Corps, I mean — I mean giveaway,

no way — people see the wheel

then get a phenomenal fright.

No one thought he did it — she and the Nazi salt,

baking bread in a cosy home in the Midwest.

That was a duplicate of a shopping mall.

Call me ‘wish of the mall’ and no,

I don’t want the Tutsi player.

Make a decision on the whole movie:

good or bad. Mary is no relation.

Kitty cat, you force the Nazi salute.

I need what? A system of stone?

Sorehead

[»] Contents    [»] See note

I was arrested because of that internal memo,

and ended up in a cell, then I was told

to sit with the police and the main

state and local bigwigs.

If you need a portal, reduce the safety margin

on the airport risk factor, they said, and I got the blame.

An unaltered, PA six-pack call at 6 cents a day

minus expenses, and see who belongs.

The local cop would not open the tomb of the deported —

sorry, departed — as usual he wanted to tell me a story.

The goal is a pool of all new CC research, he said:

they need a set of three standard deviations.

A TV ad face makes comments, what would they know.

Open the tomb, and let me in.

Story

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The Seagate exited at the same time, telling him

to make a profit, but he found only enough

to get by. They’re holding a playboy, he is still on the sofa,

unconscious. Fit the company’s last item

in a dizzying array, then consider the eulogy

you posted on the Internet, you with your bail mind-set,

no one was even in jail at that time, not holding

in the closet the nation, the nation a house.

Today a new philosophy: and they testified

to shut down certain data pathways, not wanting

the bullet, the use of an application, so-called.

The big guy looks just like you, the DNA test

gets the nod. In the scene that you may not know,

the surgeon is on CNN and then it goes dark.

Subcontinent Nocturne

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Units of troops learn to fear what the body seeks.

People don’t care what the law allows you to display:

a city full of media, before we’re torn to pieces

in the Class A data stack. And who used to be

happy in a dungeon, pray tell, tied up with the

Swedish maid? Don’t believe all the FAA tells you.

The radio waves to the north of Bombay tell

the young programmers to want to win, to be on a cool team,

to demand a training that gets them into the call centres

full of money. Player after player falls,

a large old domain is sold to the man in a blue suit.

But the town seems a bit tedious on the trip back

from the airport — after California, it’s a dump —

I hear the city’s soulful call — don’t leave me again.

Tenure Track

[»] Contents    [»] See note

I have been seeing all the wrong types.

Have cards, will follow suit. You could say.

As we discussed the tenure track topic,

people were listening in, like a radio audience.

Perhaps in the last of days of my life

I’ll get to see some easier money, easier

than this rigmarole, studying myths

in a manner similar to a dental student.

So this is how the department administrators

get to mess up the hiring policy, relying on

false information from the Internet

on a normal working day. They had power,

but it seems they just wanted to seem to be

a grunt soldier on a flight outta here.

Villas

[»] Contents    [»] See note

         1

In April, the sun was to be the display manager.

What I am will eat it, data about the team.

Maybe it’s just good enough to keep doing that

since the ideas expressed fake up the stock and bond count.

He can want to win a token of the Norwegian fake,

he wants to believe that this can be a diminished fifth

and so what’s the issue — Las Colinas:

is it that the girl’s address?

or should it be that the pocket books, on the night,

open to a page where the Sonics become better known

as teammates on a vital mission to the azure quandary.

I’ve been booked in the media mall citadel —

data flows and then the syndrome.

No, I do not want to address the Iraqis.

         2

The video shows that they can all be

what they want to be, until the Cleveland full moon

strikes, and they get a quick one on the side, and

they both wanted an eighteen-city police commissioner

to call us on the new board. The quality is suitable

for that, though I should point out that

a check for Washington today doesn’t mean promotion,

so I don’t suppose the Vatican regards pride

as the product that would determine

the station’s campaign of violence — okay,

call me — it only costs a dime — in time to

shut down the TV show. Go on, say some more.

You post the key to a college guy here, I get off,

the companion you can’t see, who sees everything.

Winter Maps

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The cascades cascaded; so far so good.

And certain areas of Europe reminded me

of specific parts of Asia; more or less.

I wrote down the names of these areas,

and the list seemed both necessary and sufficient.

The whole experience was a kind of education.

In the Northern hemisphere, the April dawn

heralded spring, but not where I come from.

Lots of ‘money’ was signed over to me

on the video shoot, just to bamboozle the

nationalized people. It wasn’t counterfeit, but

it had no exchange value, in the crucial new store.

To open an account you had to be up early, and

answer this question: Are you a man or a mug-shot?

At the Movies

Caliban

[»] Contents    [»] See note

The hideous

id is

banished

to the caves

deep under the ground

where

the abandoned

machines

hum

all night long.

Jack

will ruin

his

master.

Dark Passage

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Poor Vincent Parry: he rolls out of a garbage can

and stumbles through a valley of coincidences,

falling into the lap of a blonde.

Poor Vincent: we are locked inside his head,

seeing everything, feeling nothing but vertigo

as the screen swoops and wobbles with his weaving

and ducking to avoid his fate. He can’t

have a drink, we would get splashed,

he dare not look in a mirror, because

we would be there gawking, dismayed...

Poor Vincent: he gets disfigured by a man with a towel

and a razor, and wakes up tied to the bed.

Madge calls, and whispers, and goes away,

and calls back again, spying, sneaking a drink, and

every fragment of conversation ends with Madge

who, if she can’t have what she wants,

kills it. Vincent gets punched around

and a pal gets it, beaten to death with a trumpet.

Madge, fatal Madge, fallen Madge,

defenestrated Madge on the sidewalk.

Ah, Vincent: he used to look handsome

with a pencil-thin moustache, then he woke up

looking like some movie star. He wants to

call out in his bad dream: Untie me!

Set me free! But he will not be free

until he takes the bus to distant Peru

alongside a boring couple of jerks

who have just stumbled over each other

in a bus station of all places.

Vincent dreams that he sits in a white jacket

sipping a drink by the moonlit beach in Peru,

feeling anxious until the music changes

and a blonde appears: Well, tie me down,

and start me dancing.

North by Northwest

[»] Contents    [»] See note

A hero breasts Manhattan traffic, always

ready to stop off at a tourist destination.

A blunder with a telegram and Mother —

a demon never seen, only hinted at

in her distant, comfortable castle —

will lose her little boy, who quickly

plunges into an irritating adventure

in the picaresque mode — leaping

to conclusions as the scenery reels past,

into bed and out again, dodging and weaving

across a landscape more deadly and bucolic

with each passing trick of the light.

Of course it’s post-postmodern to have the hero

an advertising man rather than a policeman-detective

tough-guy action type, and the crop-dusting plane scene

is funny and priceless. Perhaps the Master was trying to

lighten up after Vertigo. There’s no fun there, just

descending levels of madness and sadness.

The blonde, unlike his sainted Mother,

is very good and also devious and wicked,

and so roller coaster morals are the norm

and in fact this unravelling storm of incidents

and grief is the painful future due to us

when we stumble blinking into the light,

for this sequence of parables was built

by its huge crew of many talents to be seen

and heard in the crowded dark, the wicked

are found out and trampled on, another

train, another bed, good night.

Shadow of a Doubt

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Handsome Uncle Charlie, burdened by crime.

He laughs and scatters gifts, but he looks

unwell — no, he’s fine — the man playing cards

looks sick — he has a full hand of spades,

but then, he gets to tell the story about

how the ace of spades leads the pack.

Suspicion follows you like a snake in the grass,

so the story is torn up. But destroying the evidence

points to the evidence. Sleeping dogs lie.

Now, should a girl tell on the bad man?

It would kill Mother. But Uncle Charlie

has been killing plenty of those, it seems,

the lazy, greedy widows eating cake

and wasting money — they deserve to die.

Now those two men are here to see you,

again — something about a survey,

counting all the happy American families

and listening closely to their apple-pie opinions

as they look down from a high window through

shade-dappled branches at a pair of neighbours

gossiping in the sun. On the busy street

the old traffic cop can’t help the girl, he’s

avuncular and normal, and he has a job to do.

Now everything falls to pieces

and a killer pleads for his life. Traffic

everywhere, an engine running and leaking gas,

then back on the train again, the train

that takes you out into the horrible world.

The man with all the cards is here, somewhere,

behind the viewfinder, watching everything,

a resident alien with a point of view.

Uncle Charlie has to die, we all knew that,

it just took a while to fall into place

in front of a speeding black locomotive

somewhere out of town, and far away.

Black and White

[»] Contents    [»] See note

Everything loose, including the morals:

first one, then the other, a kind of sister:

a headache, a beating, and the bad one sneaks out

and chokes the child. Or is the better self

just a sober lady dying to have some fun?

And look, no coloured folk:

the streets are full of white Americans

strolling around a small town. Or dancing

which is also fun, or drinking alcohol,

that pool of mystery and regret.

She thinks: Put on the red dress.

Take it off. Say hello to the nice Doctor.

He frowns and looks concerned, and quickly

consults with an older, wiser man. Then he

writes it up, but we never see him

writing it up. He doodles with a pen at night.

Somewhere back in the fifties: the sound

of a typewriter clacking and a little bell

punctuating the script, I mean the story,

that is, the case notes. More fun in a truck,

then nostalgia. Soon there are three women

arguing and hating each other, then

one of them starts forgiving one of the others.

First her sorrow and concern

for that other woman, then mine.

Where does she get the energy?

It’s the headaches, stupid. Try divorce,

and become a better human being, as if

that would help. Nothing keeps death at bay.

Somewhere a nicer person is moving

slowly towards me. When it’s time to say goodbye

I’ll die, just like that, for her sake. For my sake.

Say goodbye. Never leave me.

Boy in Mirror

[»] Contents    [»] See note

First words: Gimme your hand! Then a fall, a death.

I left town in 1957 and went away, boarding school

gymnasium whirring sixteen millimetre movies:

Escape From Colditz or Stalag Seventeen, blondes

with heaving breasts were verboten for good reason.

So what do boys like about vertigo? It was

a way of experiencing something alien and new:

we had a trick of breathing much too fast for too long

then another boy would squeeze your chest from behind

as you held you breath and almost burst

and a million years later you would come to,

on the floor of a room on another planet

surrounded by strangers while your memories

converged slowly like a crowd at an accident.

Picnic was strong enough, when I was thirteen;

Vertigo would have finished me off.

Now I can face Madeleine in the water in a suit

with stiff blonde hair and stilted accent and demeanour.

The wounded boy in the water quickly becomes a man

dragging her backwards behind him as he swims

to the shore at the foot of a huge bridge —

trying not to bruise Kim Novak’s

wonderful tits.

Wounded three times, each time deeper

but he doesn’t know yet what horrors...

what mistakes, misunderstandings... he’s

juggling with a walking stick, he’s toppling

off a chair.

But he must have seen her stark naked!

Not glimpsed yet: if only he knew: Judy

from Salinas in the mid-West, stormy gateway

to the land of Oz, hiding two secrets,

loose, human,

but also art, and also dragged into a willed shape

by a troubled man

— restored in 1996 —

A footloose male: another in North by Northwest,

a direction no compass has ever known,

despite Hamlet’s ham-fisted play-acting:

‘I am but mad north-north-west — ‘

cut off from their normal jobs and bonding rituals.

Both women are imprisoned by a monster, though

the heroes don’t realise that. First

we have to follow and then rescue the princess,

unmask or defeat the monster, awaken the sleeping beauty

to our desires and needs, but the women are awake

already to their own desires.

Cherchez la femme, then the action

moves to a strangely threatening rural arena

far from the city: dangerous heights and fatal falls;

the (blonde) is unfaithful to the hero, maybe because

captured possessed by another monster and quite soon

the hero is a cuckolder and the woman adulterous and thus

fallen, or falling, or dead and gone. We hear

some moody music — Bernard Herrmann’s

more insistent music: all right,

I’m afraid of the future.

The first incarnation of the goddess is Madeleine,

a name in search of lost time, and quickly dunked, and

hailing from the East she is naturally cold

and remote in a steel-grey suit: now

she drives an English car, a Jaguar with plates that say

MGK 159, obliquely hinting at a stray fact

just out side the camera’s field of view: the owner of the car

once owned an old MG type K sports car,

then got rich

and traded in the clunker for a Jaguar —

but kept the plates — they always want

some memento of their lost youth, and now

an actress plays with his new toy, pretends to drive it, but

we never see her driving, just getting in and out.

Later she can be

more authentic, working in a job,

where she absolutely must clock on until Mister Handsome

becomes pitiful and pleading. She might become

‘Judy’ from some dump in Kansas

and wear sloppy clothes. Anything’s possible.

Speak like a tart, Judy! Good girl! Now she

walks on foot.

Earlier, locked in her metallic suit —

the wounded hero at the start

quickly spiraling into madness —

the mirror shape of the plot and counter plot

in harmonic motion, the circular corsage,

the spirals in the trunk of a dumb tree, then

the camera notices her hair, and the clumsy portrait,

driving in diminishing circles around the sunlit town.

Spiral, circle, spiral, circle...

May I commend the awkward acting? you

were the copy, you were the counterfeit —

those beautiful phony trances — thus

more sincere, or just less competent —

rather that than be like the brittle professional woman

in North by Northwest, or is that just a personal reaction?

And the smooth villain in the suit is named Elster,

German for magpie, a collector of beautiful things, but:

Die Elster stiehlt, so gut sie schwatzt — the magpie

steals as well as it chatters. So the great painter Elstir

haunted Proust — so much success! Yet

troubled by thoughts of his future death —

‘ambitious melancholy clouded his brow’ —

a clever analysis of a fleeting expression, an expression

which may have been, in fact, the painter’s embarrassment

at hearing a gushy and pushy young suck-up artist

praise his ‘fame’.

So, Marjorie Wood says of her brassiere: principle

of the cantilever bridge, an aircraft engineer

down the peninsula designed it, in his spare time.

Between two deaths — Gimme your hand!

and a good policeman falls to his death

in the alley below, then the old college chum Gavin —

Mission number, skid row? No, ‘Color, excitement,

power, freedom’ — San Francisco eighteen forty-eight —

then Ernie’s Restaurant with its red velvet wallpaper

and her green English car — in the Spanish Mission

graveyard calla lilies — mist fogging the lens —

a suicide’s grave in consecrated ground? What

madness is that? Catholic continuity girl, please!

Then at the McKittrick Hotel, an old drudge: ‘I’ve been

right here all the time, putting olive oil on

my rubber plant leaves’, then

a detour to the Argosy Bookshop and

an avuncular European man — if he reads books,

he must have glasses and a funny accent, then

a strange darkness falling too swiftly, following

the script into a kind of nightfall, however wrongly.

The scene in the redwood forest.

Her big white coat, so vulnerable...

Scotty (drinks) Boy, I need this!

There’s a brandy bottle. Next scene:

Scotch and soda.

Fluffy white coat!

Pink soft body underneath!

Scotty: I always thought you were wasting your time

in the underwear department.

Good Barbara: Well, it’s a living.

Kim Novak, left-handed, writing a sad letter:

We had fun... and then you started in on the clothes...

Beside her crummy hotel, the Twelfth Knight bar.

She had to die...

I