True, Jordan, there’s too much praise in criticism.
What would happen if we really all told the truth about our opinions?
Total disaster. Mayhem. Endlessly reverberating enmities.
We know better, instinctively.
Or do we?
Month: June 2003
It would, perhaps, have been better to suppress my irascibility around the DW Henry comment on personal weblogs on Brian’s blog.
Irascibility over erasability?
It wasn’t personal, anyway, although I took the comment somewhat personally and on behalf of all of us diaristic fumblers.
True, too, that what’s making me particularly irascible is the flu.
Drew completely misunderstood my joke about “gentile.” I quite simply found the typo incredibly funny. For once in my life, I was being neither pedantic nor irascible, unlike my thoroughly irascible friend. It’s burlesque, baby! Ba da boom!
xoox!
SEEMS like a lot of people STOPPED BLOGGING on or before June 17th.
WhAT”S the DEAL, PEOPLE???
come on! gimme fresh content!
i don’t WATCH TV you know.
I’m just so mad.
Mad mad mad.
All the time I’m mad.
School’s out, but here’s a school poem from 1983:
GRAMMAR
There’s a new school where all the pictures hang crooked. The hallways smell of scratched vinyl to the dead soul in the stroller with the round head that wants to be round. Also, a terrific crowding. Crowds. Dancing asses. The girls throw away their crinolines. The boys drink sweeter stolen water. Kids on payphones yelling and yelling. Kids in showers see elder features in taped mirror, putting on their “underfarbs.” Bladders so full back teeth float, but night whistles to small horses, small horses to kids. And the kid in the devil costume sells poppers to passers-by.
“I see London,” they say, hear a slow sliding sound, “see France,” an unsightly rash. The queen of home in silver bikini and plumed headdress rides a baton, is the parade. At recess, the minority expresses herself against a brick wall. Cyclone fence cliques with hair clash with science types with digital watches. Bell tolls now and then for everyone. Binders so full back pages float. Homeroom period, the girl with no sex yet sits in back and all slam desks. Teacher turns grim and claws green, snorts smoke and ruler raps, clacks tongue and shoes down hall to principal. All are calm and bright. Globes. girl draws horse and it’s sloppy, she says it’s a “cartoon” horse. Turtle tank of football boys, scholastic book services, selected reading assignments, gold stars. White lines on cement, meaning games are reward or punishment for the kid who dreams flying over foursquare and no more teasing.
My Baudelaire
Since others are posting their Baudelaire Englishings, here’s one of mine from 1982 or 3. English follows the original:
La Mort des Artistes
Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelots
Et baiser ton front bas, morne caricature?
Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature,
Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots?
Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots,
Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature,
Avant de contempler la grande Créature
Dont l’infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots!
Il en est qui jamais n’ont connu leur Idole,
Et ces sculpteurs damnés et marqués d’un affront,
Qui vont se martelant la poitrine et le front,
N’ont qu’un espoir, étrange et sombre Capitole!
C’est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau,
Fera s’épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau!
************************************************
The Demise of Artists
How many fucking times do I have to shock and jolt
my spherical bells with the balls inside them
And kiss and fuck your impudent bottom, gloomy cartoon?
For a prick in the butt, of a mystical nature,
How many times, oh my quiver, must I lose my arrows?
We wear down our souls in keen, fine intrigues,
And we explode many a heavy reinforcement
Before thinking of the enormous Creator
For whom the infernal desire makes us full of tears!
This is why some never know their Idol,
Like those damned sculptors, marked with a scar,
Always hammering on their breasts and foreheads,
With nothing but a hope, weird and somber:
This is Death, looking down like a new sun
About to open, expand, and brighten
the blossoms of their brains.
Ebonics Blender
Making protein drinks every morning, dreaming of an Ebonics Blender ™:
Turn the Beat around
Shake!
Ax
Fuck up
Shaft
Whup
Whup upside head
and the reggae version: Stir it up…
Before you give me any grief about this, know that I grew up partly in Oakland and Chicago, so I have some familiarity with the dialect, K?
Drew wrote:
The music was very gentile. It was built up patiently and slowly.
As opposed to impatiently and quickly, the way Jews do things.
Thank you chris murray of tex files for your wellwishes… yes, I have the flu, quelle joie! But that didn’t stop me from accompanying G. to a comic book convention today at the Puck building… agggh too sick though to be either descriptive or reflective today… how, when, will I get my head into around through all up in poetry again?
Just thinking a couple of things, today:
1) I like melodrama (in art, I mean).
2) They took all the good theory. That’s why all we have left is a return to the cult of personality.*
*reactionary nonsense
Otohime 