GET BEHIND ME IXTAB

Death has its attractions

suicide its charms,

this we know.

So, watch out for Ixtab:

her theatre is pretty wide,

her borderline

totally unguarded.

No wall there; no assholes

screaming ‘get lost!’

In other words it’s even easier

to stray into her zone

than into hell.

You know, I’m kind of a wild man,

but I will take the long way around Ixtab.

Give her respect:
she's a seducer

and everything she touches

turns to perfect.

So, watch out for Ixtab,
notwithstanding what the fuck we
already know, 
i.e., that
suicide hath its charms

and death its many attractions.

collage by TC

Problem for October 17, 2019

False friends who knowingly recommend stupid poets to you
--or did so any number of years ago--calculating (and perhaps mocking)
the stages of your comprehension of such a slight...

...are impressive,
perhaps superior
but must be abandoned

like abortive trips
to really high-end grocery stores.

DELIBERATION for October 15, 2019

When it's all over there are still these:
repellent people who use their money 
to dress themselves repellently 
and talk loudly in public.
What literary form can stop them?
What argument can even 
retard their success?
But the real question is simply this:

whether to put these people to the        sword
or to SHATTER ALL WORLDS.

PROFILE

she created overheated characters

who were punished and dismissed

women who were raised by manuals

balancing her burden of flesh

(can’t you control your flesh?)

until she was caught defying 
     the patriarchy

now she is no longer the person 
    who hurt him 

the beautiful woman 
so in need of money

but a corpse in the ground

‘Protestant whore!’

Rationem inire:

When objectification is combined
with modesty and virtue well

the issue then has to do
with the flesh of women from which meaning
is extracted she shed the wife and mother

and became only a young

beautiful woman in need of money

taking her place
briefly in the sun 

Poem 95: Sha naqba imuru

The exorcist-priest Sîn-lēqi-unninni

rose before dawn

between 1300 and 1000 BCE



it was dark

but light and dark are nothing to the one

whose prayers

are heard by the Moon



the difficulty this morning

was the voices



there were too many



there were far too many 



and more of them than usual


could be heard over the dogs

UNSEEN THINGS YET ARE

...quod nequeunt oculis 

rerum primordia cerni

accipe praeterea 

quae corpora tute necessest

confiteare esse in rebus 

nec posse videri

...since the beginnings of things 

do not appear to sight

you must also learn of bodies 

which you, even you,

confess are things, 

but which none can see

Lucretius, De rerum natura I. 268-271

such as manuscript ⍺,
       o-prime:
      the archetype

no one gets to see
the archetype

NO ONE

and yet 
its body
sublimely dispersed
brushes against your
dying  flesh
even now

From x-mas but might do for Memorial Day if you're lucky enough to have a breeze

Holidays

by Thomas Crofts 

​

it is beginning to be late

in the afternoon

the buildings are beginning

to go quiet

and a colder breeze

pours through the window

​

people everywhere

are beginning to say

             'fuck it'

https://www.estheticapostle.com/holidays

TUPPENCE IS TUPPENCE

When you are finished
modeling sick imaginary
modes of American-human
life
the rest of us
will be 
flicking stink-bugs off our tunics
and re-awakening
the old falernian
with the sun on our backs

and at sundown
possibly smoking a sizable bowl

and guess what, asshole,
you're invited

REPORT

that guy you were waiting for
we are sorry to report
 he swerved off the
road and
crashed into
a gigantic poem


no, he will not be returning

not in this world

A WANDERER IS MAN FROM HIS BIRTH

is mercury in retrograde?

your ass
is in retrograde

and your brain
where all the noise is coming from
is at perihelion
the nearest approach
to the sun

No Words: May 29, 2017

Midnight Requiem

T. S. Eliot: Do I dare to eat a peach?


Allman Brothers: Eat a peach.

Hexameter

hello! | check out my | fucking hex | ameter | fashioned on | Walnut

Fellini's Greek Class: eh-mar-psa-men

Amarcord (1973)

The poem is by Archilochos of Paros (680-645 B.C.).

The text in Greek:

Επτά νεκρών γα\ρ πεσόντων,

οu$ς ε)μάρψαμεν ποσίν

Χείλιοι ει)με/n φονήες 

Translation:

Of the seven fallen corpses
we trampled with our feet
we were the thousand killers.

A BEATNIK DISCOURSE, etc.

2/15/17

SIDE BLOG: INTO THE PORCHES

The goat-georgic below is also the first entry in a new blog I have begun, Into the Porches, where the reader will find the poems I shall be sending, on a daily basis, to the White House. Not the protest poems you may expect, and surely deserve, but strictly dulce et utile, prodesse aut delectare, for it is to be sweet and useful, didactic and delectable, that one strives. TC

                                                  And in the porches of mine ears did pour

                                                  The leprous distilment

(Hamlet I.v)

been working hard on this one--hope you like it

NEWSFLASH

poems

now equipped with life-saving technology did I say poems

I meant drones 

damn

NO HEAD OF GILLES DE RAIS

He has absolutely no skill in defending himself. He moves about violently from one impulse to another, which destroys him.

I insist: this is a child.

But this child had at his disposal a fortune that appeared inexhaustible to him and nearly absolute power.

                                    --Georges Bataille, The Trial of Gilles de Rais

We will never see the satanic head or eye

of Gilles de Rais made fabulous in paint

or carving. All facets of his dream-world—

voraciously prismatic—are kept in the book of tortures

the vile bon-bons of his fancy

fell from his brain, to pulsate on his tongue,

wherever chapel boys swelled with song

in Champtocé, La Suze, Tiffauges, Machecoul.

Gilles derived from a long line

of war-lords

and rabbit-faced prodigies.

At his trial at Nantes he doubted not

to be convicted, then burnt, by temporal authorities

but nor to be forgiven by the Church,
which owed him much

& whose children he had raped and devoured

rejoicing

wherever chapel boys swelled with song,

in Champtocé, La Suze, Tiffauges, Machecoul.