Difficult Second Album

Merchandise (1)

2008-07-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

1 a pen

went as a man’s warm wet tears
matter as meant: war-meat
rats eat me

2 a piece of paper

& on & on & on & on & on
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
“blind. son, i’m blind”
as blood boils on sand

3 a book

see? sodom’s domes drone & hum
o her sour moods, her sore mounds
see? she undoes her dormouse
hush. hush. she moans

Modulations

2008-06-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

1
Rising mist of the falls:
old men picnic
on a mossy overhang

2
Wry songs must oft have awls.
O Lord, my entropic thief!
Onan ossifies, baked or hung.

3
Ironic arias inevitably, many times over, contain a carpenter’s instrument. Exclamation aristocrat, of or pertaining to the subjective ‘I’, a botched pregnancy, a parbuckle. A Biblical figure with muscular wrists caught in arrested development, cooked a conjunction indicating a choice between two opposing alternatives, killed by rope or wire.

Post-Its - Second Wave, or, Egyptology

2008-06-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

1
the folded hand
in all directions

2
blinding windows
sunset apartments

3
the eye jolts from
photograph to photo
graph : round stones
gathered in a ring

4
a rat-like motion
between the grassy swatches
wetting the fact deposits

5
'my eyes are extremely thirsty, brethren'
the champagne toilet

6
oaky snap
moist green vowels

7
the house is full of shaking hearts
noise of cuban re-integration

8
I peeled back the other skin
of your solitary eye
& there were socialists & photographs

Improvisations (1) - 18/03/07

2008-06-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Clashing the broken barbs. Black tarp under coppery gravel, there is blue, there is green, there is frame. The duck steps out of the reel. That’s it, buddy! Sun smear. Breaking the clashing barbs. Call it what you like. Maybe, couldbe. Pushing up through the yielding ground. ‘That’ after ‘absence’. Writing notes on coloured paper, no-one’s looking. One says: “Class narrative embedded in the food”. Stir the tea, assemble the instruments. Where three crows. Shiver & cream. Hard light snagged in the structural deficit. Piss in a morning doorway. The lion speaks. Barbs clashing & breaking. What is the sound? Alphabet soup. The boarded window opposites. Never Z, vowels glooping to the surface. Never red. Never read. For ‘read’ read ‘read’. Finding prose difficult. Evanescent blocks expanding in the capital scrimmage. Gold cut into the grey in wedges. Now the eraser hoves into view.

Inaugural Theories: A Tankaphone

2008-06-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

1
Crow in the top branch
makes of the cherry tree
a boat in a gale
threshing the sails:
white foam of its wake.

2
Crying to open the broken haunch,
marking off the chewy tresses.
About inaugural
theories I sing, three snails
whisking turf from the open cake.

3
Calling on Pentheus to rake in the mulch;
much raking offends the churlish wrist.
Aborting the general,
the furious icing: in thrusts a nail.
Where is the king, the furtive moth? Pentheus aches.

4
Caliban, pensive, takes up the mic.
Mortuary fakes: send in the church wardens.
Boating into Genoa,
funny-serious things: intrusions entail
washing the curtains, mopping the useless arches.

5
Collapsible victor, stop up your mouth.
Moments of refusal: Cos sand & chopped-out windows;
the bleating of the Jubjub bird;
fumaroles rising from industry’s entrails.
We’ll sing of the curve of the tainted moon, mapping its unseen reaches.

In C

2008-06-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Deleted.

Enlightened Times, Knowledge Increased (1)

2008-06-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Neurotic representations of the Soviet era suddenly “popular”.
Movies of Hemmingway novels complete the commercial.
Jets crashing into an unconvincing typology.
China has its “counter-revolutionary” workers too, you know.
Heterosexuality is considered a dangerous ideology
in this boundless city of self-reproduction
as midwinter falls on Berlin & begins its “dialogue”.
Entwined coils suggest an intimate complacency.
Celluloid is Eisenstein’s true phenomenology.
Perpetual motion : the bohemian becomes the multinational.
Emergency surgery enacted upon hostile newsprint.
The Sincerity Machine has signified nothing.
The replacement editor calls for the standardisation of all media.
This chameleon is as shapeless as memory.

Zealous Data

2008-06-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Anticline in ozone, near the folio. A severe tale to incite the armada. Nero is a branchy god, chattering in his molar suit. Coins blenched in the concerto.

An even shining standing in the hot weir. September was halved, wedging the gagman. But she overleapt the hut, the crisp-fingered gunslingers. In the windy lagan, light seen from a moving van.

Doodle a jihad. The dead zones are sparks, & druids slink through the notes. The brook in heat. A schoolbag churned with hoax twins, hardbound verse heard in the gutter.

Zealous data, open the neuter warts. The backbench alien trills in the concrete. “Scheming keels” bewailed the bookmen. The reds were quivered, taken by gastritis.

A crystal bylaw is a vast binding: kneel. The latest bovine gel bleeding from the ankle. He’s been partying in the dunes. The welkin flares; hikers in the dark.

The Nova Posse tangled in the zeta reconstruction. Chewing on the info razor. Rimed mesa, lacuna zone. O glaciate Allah in the Lucre Deli.

Tanglewood Tales

2008-05-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

1
a bag to put everything in
bigger than the soul can carry

2
Dracula’s signature
was hard to obtain

3
a leaf skeleton
a skeleton leaves

4
what colour is the stone in Xandra’s ring?
the colour of Mr. T’s eyes

5
the colour of Mr. T’s eyes:
a garage forecourt
full of HGVs in Herefordshire

6
one pink towel
one’s pinks towels

7
which way is the wind blowing?
from the south, where pineapples

8
what is the temperature?
less than blood, more than moon

9
a map of Hill End
is like a map of Hill End

Oh! What a Paradise it Seems

2008-05-27T02:39:00.000-07:00

By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept,
waiting for the barbarians, my ear at his heart:
extremely loud and incredibly close. Between Time
and Timbuktu, Mr. Norris changes trains.
Goodbye to Berlin! Goodbye to all that! Welcome
to the Monkey House, where the wasteland ends,
a world where news travelled slowly: the kingdom
of this world, the island of the day before.
Across the river and into the trees, the grass is singing.
Tender is the night, like shaking hands with God.
In the Lake of the Woods, all stories are true. Oranges
are not the only fruit. I heard the owl call my name.
The rose is obsolete: rip it up and start again.

Fingerbulbs

2008-05-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for your participation

Now please take a couple of moments to tell us what you think of Fingerbulbs

I find Fingerbulbs

: extremely useful

/ satisfactory

/ less than satisfactory

/ of no particular use in the workplace

/ inexplicably distasteful

(delete as applicable)

Pipistrelles in the Orchard

2008-05-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

by William Carlos Williams & Kathleen Jamie

1
Five risen autumn leaves turned
tenderly in tinted air,
turned end upon broken red end,
but vanished before we understood
the daylight and the trees.

2
Rugged red rocks are
the world’s unfolded intelligence,
bare finality enshrined;
translucent cells quicken in their enclosure.
The day is alight with trees.

3
One still autumn morning
like today, we noticed that single flickering
bluebird, his stateliness, his grandeur,
between tall elegant firs, testing
the daylight and the trees.

In Risen October

2008-05-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

by Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath

Agony is finished when wordless twilight
ignites her pale red skirts;
leaves drop among melting stars
whose carbon flames bloom palely
under the sky’s frost-dulled mouth.

Puckered stones continue grieving;
this cloud-coated forest
is desolate, dusty: newborn babies
cannot open such astounding gifts.
A woman’s mouth cries under the frosty sky.

Crows talk wordlessly among rain-heavy conifers.
October’s forest redly igniting
is blood’s rose, quietly melting.
Late sun coats these flaming hearts,
its mouth in the sky, its womanly mouth.

Ozymandias Senses Winter

2008-05-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

by P B Shelley, W H Auden & Dylan Thomas

i
The whispering apartments, boundless and bare,
stood in the fountain’s rigid zodiac,
and in their shattered visage, the spying senses
tell that its noble heart has, like old string,
ridges of rich half-moons. Legs of stone,
wandering through, stamped on these witnesses.
Look on my shuddering city: grope awake.

ii
The winter, vast and trunkless, witnesses
nothing beside cold streets tangled bitterly.
The heart is packed with meaning, the heart that fed
the winter traveller from Discordant Beach;
and when blind windows glow on the sand,
a look contains colossal wreck: five eyes break.
Look on my syllables, all assembled.

iii
Only the old wounds are mended. Words appear,
ridges of rich syllables on the sand.
In all love’s remains, rounds like old string,
which yet survive misery, are wintered by
its formula. Stamped on these senses, see,
half-sunk, a fountain’s rigid vegetable eye.
Look on my half-moons in the frost.

"Nobody Dreams They're Yesterday Ships"

2008-05-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

the future is discriminate,
a sensible cigarette

the future is variations of “whether”;
the future is an upstart “today”

the future is raggedly contorting
in Japan

the future is always the future
is 4000 yrs old the future is when

Where Wings Take Dream

2008-05-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

“I think we agree, the past is over” - George W. Bush

1
“Me President, you allies.” The cartoonists
Of the century read this chapter peacefully enough.

They and I coexist, proud relations
Standing up beside the misunderestimated 21st century.

Do the public understand
That our imports are simply constructed,

That today, the nations
Of the Middle East say that there is more to the oil system,

Even I cannot understand?
How should we react to them? Become religious?

Forget the 21st century?
Exactly. They hold us in discountfort.

They’re big, but they know
The administration is going to keep dangerous, foreign values

From our zone
Of trustworthiness, and we have more settings

To our institutions. Kids,
Don’t be hostile. You’re my last hope. I think the nation

Suckles you good. Have faith:
I’ve a sure sense of world reality. I was fortunate,

Being a fish. Well,
That’s the gist of the first chapter. Did you get it?

2 (Fragment of an interview)

“How can the nation square up to rogue religious terrorists?”

I practically banished them overseas.

“And if the Grecians don’t come through?”

You’re asking me?
We knew this measure would be coming, that’s clear.
If I let something hostile occur, my dad would hold me to it.
I am the President: as if public reality was for discussing!

3
More is dangerous: more of Zone,
Of Gist, of Nations and Trustworthiness.

Is administration a being?
Have we relations, proud kids, institutions, cartoonists,

The world of that constructed faith?
Have I reality enough? Peacefully fortunate was I,

Even religious. Become, Allies:
You simply are. Be, don’t react: we read ‘century’,

We do ‘century’ – the Know,
The Forget, the Today, the Beside, the Think Big.

They’re, I hope, upstanding.
First, the public, the 21st misunderestimated settings.

More sense? Sure: Chapter this,
and they say ‘East.’ Well, Fish, you’re hostile.

(There, that suckles). “NATION IMPORTS OUR VALUES;
FOREIGN SYSTEM OIL, UNDERSTAND, CANNOT COEXIST.”

Involuntary Rewrites

2008-05-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

There's a James Wright poem I've always loved - indeed, to the point where I've spent most of my writing career to date rewriting it in various forms (both conscously and unconsciously) entitled 'Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me.' The title is almost as long as the poem, and the poem itself is a masterclass in brevity. In nearly all the versions of the poem I've read, the last two lines run as follows:

Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins

In the maple trees.

There is, though, one exception: in Contemporary American Poetry, published by Penguin and edited by Donald Hall, the last line becomes 'In the castles of maple'. I've no way of checking who wrote these lines: was it an early version of the poem that Wright subsequently rewrote into its current, simpler form? Was it a mis-transcription by Hall or one of his copy editors? The first solution to this mysery is the less interesting: poets rework their poems all the time, often obsessively perfecting their work in subsequent volumes and editions (or in the case of Wordsworth, ruining it). The idea that this anomalous last line - which is beautiful in its own right - should have come about by mistake is far more magical a proposition. How many ghosted lines have been written in this manner? Maybe someone should make an anthology of serndipitous misprints.

Telephone

2008-04-30T08:15:00.000-07:00

Rune

hop hack
too shy
word new
oft truck

Rule

chop heck
tool say
wood newt
loft trick

Mule

chip neck
fool says
good neat
lift tick

Mole

ship peck
food pays
food peat
sift lick

Mote

shop pack
ford pats
mood eat
soft lock

Smote

slop rack
cord mats
moon ear
soot rock

Smoke

slope race
chord maps
soon fear
shoot rocks

Smoker

scope face
chore taps
spoon feat
shout racks

2008-04-29T01:46:00.000-07:00

this poem
will self-destruct
in three seconds

the poem is nothing - version 2.0

2008-04-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

1.
the poem is nothing if not an anvil
the pogrom is nothing if not an Apache
the pointel is nothing if not an ape
the poke is nothing if not aphaeresis
the polder is nothing if not aphonia
the polenta is nothing if not the Apocalypse
the poliomyelitis is nothing if not an apodyterium
the poll is nothing if not apomorphine
the pollusion is nothing if not aporia
the polonaise is nothing if not an apostrophe
the polynia is nothing if not an appanage
the pome is nothing if not an appetite

2.
The composition in verse is as good as non-existent if it is not analogous to the iron block upon which smiths beat their chosen medium, metal, into shape

I repeat: the composition, which may be – but does not necessarily have to be – in verse, and which is characterised by a high degree of beauty in its expression, structure and underlying thought, might as well be the Arabic numerical figure representing zero if it is not to be considered on a par with the incus – the incus being one of the bones of the inner ear, which gained its more idiomatic name due to its perceived resemblance to the iron block which upon which smiths beat their chosen medium, metal, into shape

To reiterate: the composition, which may be – but does not necessarily have to be – written in verse, and which is characterised by a high degree of beauty in its expression, structure and underlying thought (indeed, this definition is itself a restriction upon the composition’s possibilities: anything which we deem excessively harmonious or satisfying aesthetically might well garner this appellative) an object of neither value nor significance, an empty and trifling utterance, a nought, a “whoreson zed”, if it cannot, as I said, be seen to resemble the iron block upon which smiths beat their chosen medium, metal, into shape, or one of the bones of the inner ear which shares the same name in the popular idiom, but which is more correctly known as the incus

Swifts

2008-04-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

I have written a book; this means I am a ‘real’ writer. A book of poems, a tiny contribution to the community of letters, but still it has a life of its own. In the writing, each poem had felt like the ghost of an event or an emotion, the world’s inky shadow. But now the two, the real and the written, have changed places. The triumph of the echo over the voice. Example: I was walking to the post office to send a copy of my book to Chris, who lives in Wales, when I looked up to see a furious nebula of swifts screaming through the air above me – furious nebula is more of a Latinate turn of phrase than I’m accustomed to, but I’ll keep it – and I thought of a poem in the book, entitled ‘Swifts’, which did not include the phrase furious nebula but which might have easily been written in response to the small event I had just witnessed. The book begins to precede the world, and everywhere I look there are pale rewrites of my poems, entirely lacking in texture, structure, the neat turn of phrase. So then: if this is what reality has dealt me, then my second collection will consist entirely of altered or deformed versions of the poems which appeared in the first. It will be entitled Remixes, and will be a crashing disappointment to my small but loyal readership.

Post-Its - First Wave

2008-03-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

1
fingers down the spine
your scented gorilla

2
let me show you the tropes
here are the tropes

3
Are you sure you want to delete 'Tom Raworth'?

4
He's partially constructed:
the radio knows - two thousand
bucks a leg

5
the ruined photograph
is a reservoir of sulphur

6
Trust the dream:
the dog among the ruins; the baseball game
in rush-hour traffic -

7
damn near ten o'clock
& my printer say baboons

Baby steps, baby steps...

2008-03-19T12:52:00.001-07:00

It's a relief to read that Raymond Carver's reasoning for writing short stories and poetry rather than novels is related to a short attention span: I admire his honesty, and, in fairness, he may well have made the right decision - his gift is concentration, close attention to detail; dissipated over the course of a novel, his powers might have waned.

My own writing is driven constantly by boredom. I'm never satisfied, and always want to move on to the next project - hit and run poetics. Difficult Second Album is a means of making myself write, of keeping the projects alive, even if only in ghostly form, in the interweb ether. What I plan is essentially a tour of my working practices - aborted projects, sketches for poems and articles, the inner map of my increasingly confused and poorly disciplined mind. No better and no worse, fingers crossed, than most blogs, but my hope is that it'll at least be entertaining. Even if no-one reads it, it'll stave off cabin fever for another season.