the cuckoo is a pretty bird,
she warbles as she flies
The cuckoo is a
- BANG -
--Sean Bonney, The Commonsshe warbles as she flies
The cuckoo is a
- BANG -
The earth is currently operating in a no-analog state. In the center of the grid is a glass water pitcher. The pink lightning was branched � I think I mean forked. Instead of these, I was given an insect, a peculiar prehistoric creature, part lobster, part spider, part bell-ringer, part son of a fallen star, something like an armored dog. But of course a
name means nothing to a place
place-names are necessary relations
a name recovered returns the claims of human affection
for a place
place-names identify a field of biotic relationships
place-names are allied to habitat restoration
listen to a place-name, hear the dead speak
some place-names follow speech but run counter to
meaning
names change when the guard of speech alters
some place-names are all that remain of lost languages
our place-names un-name older names
most people live in places, a few dwell in names
the meaning of a name may go into oblivion long
before the name itself
perhaps in the way Dipesh Chakrabarty once said the colonized are placed in a perpetual �waiting room of history.� To wait for what? � For it to get worse? It already is worse. For it to get better? The cuckoo is a pretty bird. I wear a flowery dress to prison and let them shave my head off ... I press my hands to the window and hang my head. I know that somewhere in the darkened city there is a silent place where a tiny, frightened animal is scratching at the dust and earth, and it won�t stop until it uncovers some kind of burning rock that will illuminate the entire structure. �Fuck. / / Am I smiling [anyway], I think / so?� Because parts, after all, are always unequal to the whale. I am easily distracted and I like to put clothes on dogs. And nothing moved nothing was moving. Nothing moved. Nothing was moving it was moving but at first it wasn�t going anywhere. That�s right. That room is locked. Is it the same room or a completely different one? We had an
old mattress wed had it for years and the salesman wed bought it from had assured us it would last us a lifetime and it
was getting older and lumpy or lumpy in some places and hollowed out
in others and i just assumed it was part of a normal process of aging
it was getting older we were getting older and wed get used to it but
eleanor has a bad back and she was getting desperate to get rid of
this mattress that had lived with us for such a long time and so
totally that i thought i knew all its high points and low points its
eminences and pitfalls and i was sure that at night my body
worked its way carefully around the lumps dodging the precipices
and moving to solider ground whenever it could
but maybe eleanor
sleeps more heavily than i do i have a feeling that i spent much of
my life at night avoiding the pitfalls of this mattress that i was used
to and it was a skill id acquired over the ten or fifteen years of this
mattress� life so I felt there was no reason to get rid of this mattress
that had been promised to us by a salesman who said it would last the
rest of our lives i figured we were going to live long lives i didnt
think we were anywhere close to dying so neither was the mattress
but eleanor kept waking up with backaches
still i figured it was a good mattress and that elly just didnt have
enough skill at avoiding the lumps it never occurred to me that the
mattress was at fault so i didnt do anything and elly didnt do
anything because shes not into consumer products and hates to go
shopping but by the end of a year elly convinced me because she
has a sensitive back and i dont that she had a more accurate
understanding of this business than i did so I said sure eleanor
lets get a new mattress were rebuilding the house
Every bird perched on an electric line is a reason to keep on going one more day. And every bird that swoops off, flies around in a mad circle, and swoops back down to land, is a reason to love. At a particular moment in time, it seems that the birds are everything. Through all of loss and being lost, there are the birds. The pigeon looks at the ground, its heart at your feet. This is a panel on interspecies communication. Goodbye. Hello. �A wrong life cannot be lived rightly.� And here we are in the dark in general, like snow in von Trier. Do not chew or crush the tablets. In emergency use bus lane. Amazing journeys start here. Restart your heart. Restart your heart. Powered by RoadPilot. LIFE JACKET UNDER SEAT. Tell us ten things, please. These blocks appear to have been arranged to imply relations between the texts, and to distinguish the �voices� of the various contributors. This transcription seeks to preserve these features of the text by maintaining proportionately the left margins as they appear in the assemblage. To avoid ambiguities not present in the original xeroxed text, where it is a straightforward matter to distinguish one contributor�s writings from all the others by the appearance of their distinctive typography or orthography, we have indicated which blocks appear to have been the work of the same contributor by use of alphanumerical identifiers in the form: [A 1, 2...], [B 1, 2...], etc. Under a blue fog �
PROGRAM MrsGorman (Input, Output);
CONST
Indifferent = 60
VAR
Thursday, Indisposed, Called: BOOLEAN;
Bed, Chair, Hearth, Fire, Window, open: BOOLEAN;
Rand, Temperature: INTEGER;
BEGIN {Main Program}
IF Thursday THEN
IF NOT (Indisposed)
THEN Called:= True
ELSE {If Indisposed}
Called:=False;
IF NOT Called THEN Random;
IF Rand = 0 THEN (Bed)
ELSE {if Rand = 1then}
BEGIN {Else}
IF Temperature < Indifferent
THEN (Chair and Hearth AND Fire)
ELSE IF Temperature > Indifferent
THEN (Chair AND Window AND Open)
ELSE IF Temperature = Indifferent THEN
BEGIN {Else if}
Random
IF Rand = 0
THEN (Chair and Window AND NOT Open)
ELSE {if Rand = 1then}
(Chair AND Hearth AND NOT Fire)
END {Else if}
END {Else}
END {Main Program}
CONST
Indifferent = 60
VAR
Thursday, Indisposed, Called: BOOLEAN;
Bed, Chair, Hearth, Fire, Window, open: BOOLEAN;
Rand, Temperature: INTEGER;
BEGIN {Main Program}
IF Thursday THEN
IF NOT (Indisposed)
THEN Called:= True
ELSE {If Indisposed}
Called:=False;
IF NOT Called THEN Random;
IF Rand = 0 THEN (Bed)
ELSE {if Rand = 1then}
BEGIN {Else}
IF Temperature < Indifferent
THEN (Chair and Hearth AND Fire)
ELSE IF Temperature > Indifferent
THEN (Chair AND Window AND Open)
ELSE IF Temperature = Indifferent THEN
BEGIN {Else if}
Random
IF Rand = 0
THEN (Chair and Window AND NOT Open)
ELSE {if Rand = 1then}
(Chair AND Hearth AND NOT Fire)
END {Else if}
END {Else}
END {Main Program}
For the word is not beneath the earth so that a man says Dig, nor is it in the heavens that a man may tell you Leap. Meanwhile, tourists will stand far outside any clouds of teargas that may appear. It is part of what defines them. They might want a trace of the smell on their clothes, but still it is the avoidance of pain that is the central fact of their collective dream. Nothing will cause them to disperse. They hold maps. Here is the factory. Here is the museum. Here is the hell of stars. And yet ... and yet ... your flesh is cared for dimly, lots of it cost more per cherub to save up in vats � but that is the logic of risk management in general. Prepare to grow that shit. This is a reminder. From the larynx to the boulder, under groundhog�s grease, from the coagulation to the yellow root in the closet by the fleece. For isn�t the foot one of the most important places in the body? A planet of sand. Sand mountains, sand plains, sand valleys. Sand weather. What if John Calvin had used CBD? �It�s a strange day,� Alysia says, �A green bug in my room & now this mushroom growing in your car.� The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. This mercy will replace to them near first exactly, as taken from clear at new payment tacit doesn�t reduce the few. Natural as due not meaning to; a cloud, after all is not nothing. The stench here is style. �We know this warmth acts like the life shared by all earth�s plants because when it increases in the spring, plants of all kinds sprout from the soil. They dress themselves in their leafy finery and then in their blossoms and eventually in fruit.� Nevertheless, not all ancient commentators assumed that coughing is necessarily the opposite of soul or meaningfulness. A ninth-century Arabic translation by Thabit ibn Qurra of the Aristotelian compendium known as Problemata physica reflects on the fact that the cough is not universal in the animal world, and indeed might almost be thought to be in some respects characteristic of humans rather than animals: Why is it that some animals cough, while others do not, for example a man coughs, but an ox does not? I wanted to write a poem as good as that one, do you know it? Two graces condescended from the Milky Way and landed in a Stockholm recording studio. They had to put their fingers in it. They had to puncture glass to get at it. And if that glass is the window of a Whole Foods, selah. If you don�t put your nose in it and make it part of you it will only be the meh life not the good life, the Bat Opera, the body mounds. So what you see in these rectangles are OH right OH right I forgot THERE�s the HEADLESS HORESEMEN on a TEEVEE show that will decide if you�re a �GOOD� or �BAD� artist or not ... but I DIGRESS, because honestly it would be better to set up some offshore banking account in the Cayman Islands � which incidentally would also surely be a FANTASTIC location for the STARS OF CINEMAROC piece I�d actually really like to do if anyone reading this could FUND that particular project of mine because I know a LOT OF WEALTHY ASS PEOPLE walk though this space. But I digress again because
the birds
are real
they
bring out
what
is
real
when
the washers
bring her over
to the table, i�ll
take her head
and you hold her
body, keep your
hands around
her wings, try to
keep her keel
up from the
table with your
fingers � many
of these guys
are very thin.
^^^^
^^^^
^^^^
^^^^
ok hold
on to her lower
back there so she
can�t kick herself
off the table, good
job here�s her leg,
let�s keep going, can
you please part the
wings a little with
your thumbs,
yes
I crashed there, you know. In the field where an elf on a sleigh is painted
[author�s note. With the Noose Around My Neck, the next section of the multi-part work Zeitgeist Spam, is both a continuation of In the House of the Hangman and a (more or less) mirror, �algorithmically� speaking, of the previous section, Flux, Clot & Froth. So I�m going to �unpack/sample� my library, and will at the same time also sample whatever comes into my RSS feed, as well as any downloads, emails, overheard conversations, the news, TV ... and whatever else presents itself as appropriate. And mash it all up. As with all of ZS, Noose will be composed in sections, which are designed to disappear into one seamless work. It will last as long as Trump and the aftermath.]
[SOURCES: The cuckoo ... BANG �: Sean Bonney, The Commons; The earth ... no-analog state: Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change, 13 July 2001, quoted in Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System; in the center ... pitcher: CA Conrad, �Spider Symbiosis: Time With Freya�, at http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/2016/10/spider-symbiosis-time-with-freya.htmlSo(ma)tic Poetry Rituals, 23 Oct 016; The pink ... forked: Bhanu Kapil, �Notes for a novel not yet written: BAN�; Instead ... dog: Brigit Pegeen Kelly (RIP), �ISKANDARIYA�, quoted in John Keene, �Poem: Brigit Pegeen Kelly�, at http://jstheater.blogspot.com/2008/04/poem-brigit-pegeen-kelly.htmlJ�s Theater, 3 Apr 08; But of course: JBR;a name means nothing ... before the name itself: Alec Finlay, �A Poem of Namings, from Gaelic and Norn�, quoted in Jerome Rothenberg, �Alec Finlay: A Poem of Namings, from Gaelic and Norn�, at http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2016/10/alec-finlay-poem-of-namings-from-gaelic.htmlPoems and Poetics, 24 Oct 016; perhaps in the way Dipesh ... shave my head off ...: JBR, as remixed by Lynn Behrendt, �I Haul I Haul I Touch Myself�, in A Picture of Everyone I Love Passes Through Me; I press ... I think / so?�: Sean Bonney, �Letter in Turmoil 14 / Note on the Hallucinations�, at http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com/2016/10/letter-in-turmoil-14-note-on.htmlAbandoned Buildings, 13 Oct 016; Because parts ... whale: Rod Smith, blurb for Brandon Brown, The Good Life, at http://biglucks.bigcartel.com/product/the-good-life-by-brandon-brownBig Lucks; I am easily ... clothes on dogs: Jenny Lawson, �Dorothy Barker is more graceful than any of us, really�, at http://thebloggess.com/2016/10/23/dorothy-barker-is-more-graceful-than-any-of-us-really/The Bloggess, 23 Oct 016; And nothing moved ... different one?: Ken Edwards, a book with no name; We had an old mattress ... rebuilding the house: David Antin (RIP), �the theory and practice of postmodernism�a manifesto�, at https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/theory-and-practice-postmodernism%E2%80%94-manifesto-excerptPoets.org; Every bird ... interspecies communication: Janice Lee, �Interspecies Communication�, at http://entropymag.org/interspecies-communication/Entropy, 25 Oct 016; Goodbye ... lived rightly�: David Grundy, The Problem, The Questions, The Poem, and Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia (tr. EFN Jephcott), quoted in Lisa Jeschke, �Jisa Jeschke on David Grundy�s Poetry�, in Sundial [Compleat] 2016 (ed. Richard Owens); And here we are ... von Trier; Ian Heames and Jonty Tiplady, �from Sonnets�, in Sundial [Compleat] 2016 (ed. Richard Owens); Do not chew ... ten things: nick-e melville, �Lyrical Commands�; please: JBR; These blocks ... [A 1, 2...], [B 1, 2...], etc: �Editorial Notes�, in Certain Prose of the English Intelligencer (eds. Neil Pattison, Reitha Pattison, Luke Roberts), Second revised edition, 2014; under a blue fog: Samantha Walton, Amaranth, Unstitched, in Sundial [Compleat] 2016 (ed. Richard Owens); PROGRAM MrsGorman ... END {Main Program}: Samuel Beckett, Watt(tr. Hugh Kenner), quoted in Reynard Seifert, �HyperNormalisation�, at http://htmlgiant.com/web-hype/hypernormalisation/HTMLGIANT, 26 Oct 016; For the word ... tell you Leap: David Brazil, �The Method�, in Sundial [Compleat] 2016 (ed. Richard Owens); Meanwhile, tourists ... hell of stars: Sean Bonney, �Letter in Turmoil 16 / Further Notes on Teargas�, at http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com/2016/10/letter-in-turmoil-16-further-notes-on.htmlAbandoned Buildings, 26 Oct 016; And yet ... and yet ...: Issa; your flesh is cared ... management in general: Joe Luna, �Save Lots�, in Sundial [Compleat] 2016 (ed. Richard Owens); Prepare to grow ... by the fleece: Justin Katko, �With Only the Handle Visible�, in Sundial [Compleat] 2016 (ed. Richard Owens); For isn�t the foot ... in the body?: Linda Mary Montano, �The Performance Of Montano�s Shoe Store: Linda Mary Montano 2000/2016�, at http://lindamarymontano.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-performance-of-montanos-shoe-store.htmlLinda Mary Montano, 26 Oct 016; A planet ... sand weather: Don DeLillo, The Names, quoted in dmf, �I can�t get the Empty Quarter out of my mind�, at https://syntheticzero.net/2016/10/26/i-cant-get-the-empty-quarter-out-of-my-mind/-synthetic zero, 26 Oct 016; What if John ... CBD?: JBR; �It�s a strange ... car�: Steve Abbott, �It�s A Strange Day Alysia Says A Green�, at http://home.jps.net/~nada/abbott2.htmREADME; The analysis ... 67% by 2020: Damian Carrington, �World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns�, at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/27/world-on-track-to-lose-two-thirds-of-wild-animals-by-2020-major-report-warnsThe Guardian, 26 Oct 016 (I don�t mean to mitigate this in any way, but somehow the headline writer and the author have conflated animals and vertebrates); This mercy ... meaning to: JH Prynne, �Infusion�, quoted in John Armstrong, �Clarifying Difficult Poetry: Infusing with JH Prynne. Again�, at http://www.arduity.com/poets/prynne/infusionagain.htmlArduity; a cloud ... not nothing: Simon Jarvis, �Why Rhyme Pleases, quoted in John Armstrong, �Simon Jarvis� Jerusalem Deleted and Long Difficulties�, at http://www.arduity.com/poets/jarvis/length.htmlArduity; The stench here is style: nick-e-melville, Alert State is Heightened: an imperative imprimatura; �We know this warmth ... eventually in fruit�: Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom (tr. George F. Dole); Nevertheless: JBR; not all ancient ... ox does not: Steven Connor, Beyond Words: Sobs, Hums, Stutters and other Vocalizations; I wanted to ... good life: Brandon Brown, �The Last Words of Gerard Manley Hopkins�, �The Good Life�, in The Good Life; the Bat Opera: JBR, reference to a series of paintings by Marvin Gaye Chetwynd; body mounds ... digress again because: AL Steiner, http://www.hellomynameissteiner.com/filter/WRITINGS/Agential-Realism-Total-Aleatory-Abstrations-Rad�Total agential realism, rad aleatory abstractions: Art + Porn/On Robt. Heinecken�, and http://www.hellomynameissteiner.com/filter/WRITINGS/Welcome-To-My-Rectangle-1�Welcome to My Rectangle�, at Hello my name is A.L. Steiner, and �Portfolio by A.L. Steiner�, at http://bombmagazine.org/article/26891026/portfolioBOMB, 28 Oct 016; the birds ... thumbs, yes: Laura Corsiglia, How to Handle a Bird; I crashed ... sleigh is painted: Toma� �alamun, �On the Tracks of Wild Game� (tr. Sonja Kravanja), in Currently & Emotion: Translations(ed. Sophie Collins)]
