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Brief Forays in the Wordland Some poems and translations by Alan Halsey see also: graphic work
white persimmon pianissimo white persimmon pianissimo without permission pianissimo pianissimo white persimmon without permission pianissimo without permission pianissimo The poem looks the other way just as one word impersonates the first thing the last thing it means will reward it for. Repeating at speed all night
the message is denied
recoded and returned. The radar
ensures that the reader
deciphered and in that
sense foresuffered will sleep
undisturbed: his dreams
have been distributed
as type / as a sidelight
signals to a minus factor
overplus delight
sing or else.
Ars Poetica for ‘Gutenberg, The Movie’ Finding chocolate by echolocation a pipistrelle would call mere trompe-l’oreille. ‘I always knew Roman spelt trouble’ remarks Ahab in rehab while proving that his prophecies for 1999 were really only grasping the wrong end of a compositor’s stick. ‘Why the always wanting to finish any writing and so end the pleasure?’ Why ‘always’? Why ‘any’? It takes so much distemper to measure the ado. Query whether goblin or globin where the quarry is genetic or a twelve-mile tailback on a major route across the wordland, a zodiac to you if not zebra misbehaving in the misbegot gazebo. ‘Change of mind could be costly for Halsey.’ ‘Presence’ with the usual erratum in this case gone missing but to an X-ray I presumed however reprehensible apparent and loosely translated ‘Presentation’. harsh hierarchies assumed to amass loved contours &/or involved counters for playing at prayers an ambient imbalance as if puns of glass when they re-pose or repose suit purse or purpose as if puns of glass when a fine suspension between commerce and coercion a fine suspicion between commerce and suspension and coercion between as if puns of glass press green and the helicopters buzz around sky and screen commerce and coercion betweeen press red and hellcaptives re-pose or repose as if puns of glass when they press without purpose and a fine suspension dates the song by a slight intonation precisely A Life of John Taylor the Water-Poet The Sculler laden with a quarterne of Epigrams caught last Fishing-tide I know you know John Taylor a mechanical waterman firkt Ferrited and finely fecht Fennor the Rymer ouer the coales his Revenge to be transported ouer sea in a Cods belly and cast up at Cuckolds Haven his 800 bad debters curried or clapper-clawed with a Kicksey Winsey the Writer hereof who rowed in a Boat of brown paper from London to Quinborough in Kent my book and comparisons end together in Phenix Alley at the Poet’s Head Thorny Ailo’s Clinches Perambulations and Emblems of these necessitated Times Printed luckily and may be read by Owle-Light in the Waine of the Moone
Empsonics including a remark by George Saintsbury I can’t remember who predicted the fancy damage. Seeing where a noise is coming from helps. It helps the ‘cry’ in lyric when it is well managed. Epic isn’t for you if you don’t like carnage. An English fountain won’t play after 5pm even though you’ve bought your ticket. Fancy damage to a country house and call it Carthage: a fountain though a pen when a swan but the museum turns musician as the night wears on. Carnage is a joy in an epic and the fanciest damage. Seeing noises will show you where an owl is coming from. It helps the ‘cry’ in lyric when it is well managed. An Alphabet for Karen Mac Cormack A colony is no more a kernel than pronounced command. Beauty when a culture’s a passport’s a quality of syntax. Cerecloth since sincere yet loth to be part. Dover was to a beach as a cliff’s condition. Early when employed and easy for each could be either. Fid of origin unknown pinning topmast to faith. Graze where gold may significantly ground in a garden. Homeland and then some even if somatic and the same. Imperative to reinstate implacable Latin. Jewelled as a day and night watch dualistic. Kaput’s the capital city of an alphabet’s heartland. Lucid tries a line on for size. Miles more than memory is minuted by flicker and flux. Nouns a motor noise in the ear ticks a notice over. Once was an overdue opening for others often. Presence plays across a stage in private pieces. Quiet or enough and too middling. Ripples when a sound through papers in quest. Spinning so far as the top’s been soldered to its north and south. Ten times as many lorries as a transport policy. Utterly unchanged by the utmost repetition. Verbatim on the one side and verboten on the other. Women in an alphabet wanting double you. Xerox of zero on the rocks. You of your years become a sort of a story. Z seldom seen though in size but neither bruises nor begins. Mr Shandy’s First Villanelle Twitter-boned and broken-winded cluttering like hey-go mad devils astride a mortgage in order to have this whim-wham even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap twitter-boned and broken-winded we are all ups and downs bubbled out of goods and money as devils astride a mortgage the comparison runs upon all-four in straight lines at a stoical distance twitter-boned and broken-winded a strange kind of magick bias coolly critical and canonic devils astride a mortgage in Freeze-land and Fog-land Nicodemus’d into nothing twitter-boned and broken-winded devils astride a mortgage Three from Catullus LII (Quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?) We’re quids in, Catullus. Merrier & more. Why not quit? Nonny Blair’s sedated if not curried the Middle East. VAT’s up. The Coalition’s perfected pirate banks. We’re quids in, Catullus. Merrier & more. Why not quit? LVI (O rem ridiculam, Cato, et iocosam) It’s ridiculous, Cato, but you’ll get the joke – you always laugh as I do at a quid pro quo. Ridiculous enough to catch Pup getting hot with the Lady Di issue of Puella but my cock was the joker: that hunk rogered him rigid. LXXII (Dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum) You used to say, Lesbia, a god couldn’t know you as Catullus did. I loved you more than any man loves anyone he calls his mistress but now I know you I know you’re getting it elsewhere and you still don’t get it. If you keep talking claptrap that’s what you’ll end up as. And the more I’ll love you. Pastoral Incursions Where neither way nor ground is clear words crop up again in new margins: the poll steals a head less politic than fearfully polite, raked indirectly back in lawn order. Raked indirectly back in lawn order Lord help us to go straight to the source of confusion. Light stumps ahead. Because light stamps the ground, not a word. Light stamps (not a word) the ground elder. Yesterday’s broadsides flap across the lawn and the margins of belief, too early to be warned not to look straight ahead, out of order. Not to look straight ahead in the order words come in time to observe. Light slips through your hands or else the margin slopes both ways, untoward. But, Oscar, literature was always useful. Official cities of official culture celebfests in bordertowns when Hadrian was emperor. It was thanks to Nero the Olympics Commission finally recognised poetry as sport – you see what tyrants can do and how they like a competition. Another one had Homer’s works written up or down but I grant you around the same time Dionysus who was never exactly useful headed back to the hills and stayed there. The Year of the Sinkhole was 2014 AD, at least in England, where ‘sinkhole’ had come to mean the result of a critical moment when the earth opened wide and ‘swallowed’ among other things cars, usually only one at a time but in a local instance an entire carpark, an example showing that sinkholes shouldn’t be confused with the more common but smaller potholes. Nevertheless if you look closely you’ll see that some potholes reveal beneath the tarmac a larger cavity or what craft jewellers call ‘a negative space’, in other words a certain potential. But to return to sinkholes they are places into which dictionaries say ‘foul matter runs’ although a survey of the popular parlance of 2014 suggests the foul matter more often tended to rise up. Three from Martial I.LXI (Verona docti sillybos amat vatis) There’s no escape. You’ll see it whenever you walk out of the station. It’s set in enormous sans-serif script on the wall of a ten-storey building. It’s said that Sheffield paid Motion an unspeakable number of thousand pounds for one of the world’s worst poems. V.XX (Si tecum mihi, care Martialis) Whatever politicians say, old pal and dear namesake, this daily unending claiming benefit’s not much of a life but who’d want to be one of their ‘hard-working families’? Working for whom and for what’s not said but that’s the choice and either way time spent. Chinwagging at the baths, reading, flaneuring, clocking totty, tossing off passable mottos for sundials what’s so idle about that? Wouldn’t even a cabinet minister prefer it? VII.LXVII (Pedicat pueros tribas Philaenis) Philaenis tribs eleven girls then she’s down at the gym lifting weights, wrestles nine rounds, tips the masseur for a five-star beating. She eats on the hoof, sixteen burgers six beers then she’s off again licking clit. Dear gods, mercy, never let Philaenis have enough of licking clit. stained also sustained noise of warring clones delicate duplicates cloudier than soldiers or warplanes in warp lanes the table a battlefield empty except for Hamlet’s helmet (4 Aug 2014) from Le Testament de Mr Pepys pour rancontrer la femme de je sais quoy à faire ce que je voudrais jo haze todo which I had a corasón but I did natha sino besar her ce que je voudrais avec la mosa uno ombre pouvait avoir done any cosa con laquelle je faisais almost whatever but I did natha sino besar her hazer what I tena a mind para faire tocando sa cosa con mi cosa que je sum demasiado kind jo creo but I did natha sino besar her
THEMPYRE. The literal said it. No use a footnote complaining the text is corrupt. No need a solemn mnemonic to confuse homage with abhorrence or defend a national illusion of notational triumph. Satire will always be your friend. A Life of Lewis Carroll as if an old Nobody of 62 had 21 consonant friends I found my own Knots hiding yesterday behind the day before Dreaming of dreaming How many good meanings I dreamed as the meaning I have not forgotten may not exist in the Fairy-world skirts like seven umbrellas all sorts of odd ideas as an anonym anyone should not think of asking advice the inkstand which is me computing Determinants the old troubles worse than worry sure to come again to carry my Photography to my new girl-guest in so little a dress a floating idea I mark with a white stone The three Liddell girls I remark this day This completes the lesson for twice a rice free a nice guinea Dear Johan If the book is printed the right way but bound the wrong is the poetry the poetry it was? It is. Is not if the poetry is in the position or even the position I’m in. The position might after all have been that the book was bound to be printed that way and yet printed wrong. Position quite suddenly becomes possession and in this case the page does possess the poem either way up or the poem the page even back to front. So if the poem is the poet who stands language on the page on its head then on my head be it if the poet’s dispossession become his or my disposition. Florus: Don’t elect me emperor, for god’s sake. The UK or the Ukraine: which would you take? What do you prefer: rheumatism or balls-ache? Hadrian: It’s the crack of noon: you’re still not awake? Need the hair of the dog for that headache? I wouldn’t be flea-bit Florus for anyone’s sake.
The Frankenstein Franchise for Laura Moriarty Sometimes it helps to rename whoever it is always writes my poems because subjects rarely change in the long run. Let’s eat dinner with thieves and thoughts assistant assassins unsavoury as sugar. Why believe there is someone who believes he can trace every reference? His broken noise is her envoy’s voice and envy is its name: definition defaults when locution confuses and confutes itself with location. If we’d heard the shanty the cameras sang when they landed on Titan we wouldn’t need a changing room to disappear in. To rename is only sometimes to recall: description gives nobody such fun as decryption because as Philodemus said words are poetry’s mother. The perspective funders brought Rousseau and tea, preraphaelite despair, scenes which should be senses but longevity or gravity threw in disrepair. Let’s both scribble in the crucible where losers are lizards all devilled with their endless questions. you’ll find Mercurialis’ house at the edge of the city – protected by two stone dogs either side of his front door – everybody knows he’s found his true lover and they’ve planted their garden on a ledge above the road with aconite, borage, clematis and hellebore – say they prefer to manage a modest estate with a bog they call a pond and a symposium of frogs Ars Poetica for Alec Finlay The sayable in nouns in syllables is nuance As if a flock of small birds ate the feeder but left the nuts After Sappho frag. 16 The cavalry or Tommies Our boys in the navy or the ones flying kites really it’s whoever you fancy better still who you not only fancy but love for consider that beauty of all beauties Helen who left the worthy Menelaus her daughter and (stretching a point) her dear mum and dad to take a boat-trip to Troy [Anaktoria come back. Forget her. It’s your walk your smile I promise I’ve had enough of these squaddies] |
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