You Turn Me On

"My identity has become that of the speaker, the person who speaks from the television."
--Felix Guattari


Everything is
Virtual in

Its way
In the

Way of
Its self.

*

History is
The present

Uninterrupted interruption
Of Presencing

Porous calendars
Timeless collanders.

*

What ever
Avers dies

What doesn't
ever aver

Dies too
More slowly

*

What speaks
Speaks incomplete

Diminished refrains
Dim mutant

Bodies frame
Mutating voices

I've skipped out on today's Thanksgiving celebration since I have an upper respiratory infection ,and am seriously allergic to cats, making dinner at Barb's brother's house in Cleveland out of the question. Am enjoying the peace and quiet. A peace and quiet punctuated by David Byrne singing in the background and the dishwasher slogging along.

*
Today,when I haven't been puttering about the house or helping Barb get things together to take to her brother's house, I've been listening to music while reading Paul Auster's new book and Lissa Wolsak's Squeezed Light. Lissa and I had a pretty close epistolary friendship for a couple of years. It's very moving to me reading through her book and re-living some of our exchanges, seeing something of the trace of days long past. She's sui generis.

*

David Byrne's singing "Time is a pony ride," and you know, I can't begin to argue with that.

Jelly Fish

A jelly fish montage my daughter Claire made:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mom2aroo?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/SxNJVv_YAC4

AT TROTSKY'S FUNERAL

AT TROTSKY'S FUNERAL


by Mark Young


Kilmog Press, New Zealand


Edition of 50, hardback





This is a marvellous book. I feel fortunate to have a copy. Every poem in it is a jewel -- brilliant and multi-faceted.





Let me begin by quoting the first poem, a meta-poem which speaks to Young's method in this volume:





A Philosophy of Ficciones


for Thomas Fink





The history of


history is one





of spaces, some


empty, some filled,





but every one ready


to be re-written.








At Trotsky's Funeral is very much about the re-writing of the writing of history. It is moving, amusing and dazzling, by turns. And it has an extraordinary cast of characters, including but not limited to: Octavio Paz, Turing and Oppenheimer, Diego Rivera, Jorge Luis Borges (whose term "ficciones" Young has borrowed), M.C. Escher, Genghis Khan, Gerard Depardieu, Stendahl, Stendahl's pet squirrels, Paracelsus, Che, Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems, Velazquez, the sage Bodhidharma, Electra, Mao, Umberto Allegrezza, Septimus Veronicus, Promethea, Zhang He, Lucretius, Eileen R. Tabios and Elsebet Schwarzvogel.





The title poem is a masterpiece. Here's a taste, in which Octavio Paz takes note of fellow mourners Alan Turing and J. Robert Oppenheimer:

A strange pairing
Turing & Oppenheimer. & of
the few people
that noticed them
Octavio Paz the only one
to see that
there was energy flowing
beyond the sexual tension. Ever
the astute metaphysician. “The one
wanted to unravel the moon
by using recursive &
mechanical algorithms; the other
to recreate the sun with a
continuous chain reaction. I
saw the future in them. I saw
several futures.”
Islas en llamas en mitad del Pacifico
Mundos de imágenes suspendidos de un hilo de araña

The full text of this poem can be found here. If reading it isn't enough to make you crave your own copy of AT TROTSKY'S FUNERAL I'll be very surprised.

Contexts aren't
your crossed

out underpants
(my panties).

*

Which regime
is this?

Entry beneath
what sign?

*



Not to
make oneself

but make
oneself available.

*

My lack
of coherence

is your
figured ______.

*

Every clock
in here

displays a
different tune.

I'm Excited

How about it?

TEN SEVENS

I’ve never
Been one.

Flesh of
A scent
Imagined release.

One answers
To you.

*

You – no
Answer – who.

Always in
The middle
Of extending.

Is not
Being voiced.

*

Lack of
A member
(a club).

With it
In an.

Blank, blank,
Blank, etc.

*

I’ve never
Been you.

One imagined
Scent to
Fleshed answer.

Blanked surfeit
Of surfacings.

*

Sucking some-
One in.

No out
Being either
You nor.

Note netted
Voice of.

*

Turned for
To make.

Our tale
A limit
One encounters.

Everything else
In reverse.

*


Is this
Mirror only
Missing what
Is legible?

One draws
A blank.

You surfeit.

*

I’ve never
Been imagined.

Answer scent
Extending voice
In else.

One turn
To of.

*


Believe it
Or not.

Impaled by
Strips of
One’s appearances.

As implied
Always in.

*

Applied to
Your self.

What adheres
At present
One asks.

Believe in.
Believe out.