poolhall (Mark William Jackson remix)

racked balls break over
blue felt
(a snap of reality)
_______fingertips
feel the felt for sympathy


behind the table a mirror
shows an older self

shows remnants of youth

______in sallow eyes



obama on the live cross
declares, “at stake now is not
just our ability to solve this
problem but our ability
to solve any problem”,
though the tv is mute

to ears that cannot hear

_______________the
balls lay scattered

as a past


________the 8 is

infinite

_______sideways

___________the
juke injects
extended adbreaks

of manufactured angst
looping insatiably

______________while

infusions of urinal cakes

prompt the next move



“every hour is…
amateur hour”


_________i’m left
drunk on words
(voiceover fades)

A remix of poolhall by Mark William Jackson. Cheers Mark!

outrovert (2010)

there is much to keep silent about

*

that serial mic-in-mouth dream:

hardbodies mass,your book-smarts
amount to nothing

*

the morning mopes,

hardly good smoking weather

*

a status bar wormscross-screen
to little purpose

*

timepoor breakfast
eaten off a mirror

*

fast-acting capslows the room
to baseline

*

you practise rolling dice

but there’s no
need to undress
that billboard girl

(she only ever loves a warrior)




Note: This poem begins and ends with lines ('there is much to keep silent about' and 'she only ever loves a warrior') from Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals (translated by Douglas Smith, Oxford University Press, 1997). 

Below: image by Maureen Flynn-Burhoe

etc, etc (2010)

was born in the united

no-interruption fantasy:

the “organic”,

elaborate shadowlets,

pathing

a powered deception of

phrased provisionals;

a mood of the finite

in circulation,

this gift of

contact info:

these primitive nouns –

though a lead

may not

lead,

each star relays an asterisk

of interval

slippages / undead (2010)

of how things stand:
butcher’s window display,
blood residue on pseudo-grass

*

bystander effect: knowing only
the known body, warding spells,
the craven info

*

the skin is not
on the map, acts like
it doesn’t want to be here

*

the text-fatigued
the soundproofed
the portable ghost-head

*

camouflage for dread:
rare pills (small gods)

bring blood to the tongue

*

riot police
slur syllables
behind the shield-wall

*

the forced door, systems
breached, direct sun
upon a data crypt

*

scared to show the volume
you carry (some sacred relic),
you will nest it in your hands


Image: 'Dead Undead' by skippytpe (click to enlarge).

Night of the Living Dead (Abject remix) (2010)

how best to be dead?

glowing through night
______, family homes

(the lock
_______justified)

another camp
______-advertisement mother

as taboos devour a
_______-man of simulated
___________employment

you have to laugh
_______-at veiled instincts

, moot TV killing

, the lack of real options
_____in a cemetery spillage
____________________situation

Process Notes: This is a remix I did of my poem Night of the Living Dead. I pasted the text of the original poem into Wordle, then relied solely on words used in the original to construct the remix. Just a bit of fun really.

sleeper (2010)

what’s said offair re
dud pills you’re not
who they pay you to
be hushing undertow
of riffage tho on alert
for nonimitations as if
deviants make the best
witchhunters could
you be any more uni
formed & those prods
sting real bad mate
just ask the casual
ties those cartoon
wackies never out
grown a tad under
dressed for a funeral
the poster boys of neo
tony can only bet on
walkovers tribes of
bacteria colonising
less polite hosts &
re spraypainting the
18th jed the greens
keeper says he really
has no other option


Notes: neotony is “the retention, by adults in a species, of traits previously seen only in juveniles” (from Wikipedia).

The greens of golf courses are sometimes spray-painted with ‘turf colourants’. This practice has been observed in Australia.

poolhall (2010)

racked balls break over
blue felt

_______fingertips
as feet for the shot

behind the table a mirror
that no longer works &
obama on the live cross
declares, “at stake now is not
just our ability to solve this
problem but our ability
to solve any problem”,
though the tv’s on mute

beer threatening to strand us
beyond such misery
(scotch is a promise)

_______________the
game-lifting sweetspot
long gone

________going for the
8-ball suicide mission

wading this quadruple
vision cannot be
blinked away

___________the
video juke entertains:
extended adbreak
looping insatiably

_________left
stranded by language

______________jim
gets himself ejected
shouting, “every hour is…
amateur hour” over & over
while punching himself
in the head

real money makes things more interesting (2010)

“lucky at cards?” (he laughed
(as if it were simply a matter
of overcoming superstition (yet
he believed (he held)
a poorly constructed hand (&
had a ‘feeling for
the measure of things’ (doesn’t
know now what he knew
then.)))))
_______“gentlemen,
as of now, every card
is wild.”

Below: 'The Jokers of the Pack' (click image to enlarge) by incurable_hippie.

it is not a song (2010)

seek evil

(if only to verify
____________its existence)

the cure for curiosity

____-______-or

“fate is what
_________has already happened”

____________this scattering

__(scratch upon the sky)

(try to be afraid)

psychopathologies (2010)

you may
be another:

on-screen
your reflection

homuncular,
an alien

*

clocktime mocks
a drift to war

this insomniac
data hunger

overfocus &
air hockey

*

whose handwriting
is this?

'meditation
is boring'

(thanks
for the intel)

*

without permission
without pretext

floating the
outer data

(memory talks
too much)

*

backslapping
as gloved insult?

reading a dictionary
of symptoms

begin to doubt
your presence in the house

Seven #18 (2009)

microclimates within the mall

muzak / ’toons / migraine

enter the store, expect service
to envelop you

pushy, nasal intimidation / dis-
proportionate response

such indoor behaviour

amor fati (2009)

begin anywhere

working backwards from
this low
(for example)

(no matter how dumped
you ...)

(how misty
you ...)

expect
some through-thought will arrive

a shuttle/shifter, e.g.:

‘let’s go somewhere
crowded, I feel
like a lot of people’

*

dropper,
drop through the city

nameless,
nearing completion

‘nothing I would
or would not change’

in this weave/fabric


Below: 'Fate of Zero'; computer-graphical study by Georg-Johan Lay (click image to enlarge).

impair (2010)

this head
---of shitty lyrics

will never believe
---the sky again

this deadhouse
---is vorpal

words frag up,
---walls fuzz

luck = picking up
---a discard

snorting failure
---through $5 bill

how to edge
---lost & safe?

this entertainment hunt’s
---not it

clair (2009)

the eye that sees clearly
is closed

not dutifully
scanning the news

leaving open-eyed sleep
to the fish

on a sunday slow
with patience

forgetting the freezeframe
dream or wish

loving the birds’
illiterate flight

this barefoot
dance

these tiny
inaccuracies

girl with abstract hair (2009)

sitting purple/pink
__the girl with the abstract hair
prepped for the brushoff

___she drags the sentence
____through his teeth

‘don’t get salty about it’

___‘who’s the friend with benefits?’

_______-she opting not to compute

_________(desire her all you like,)

a dead boy (2009)

(after Jack Spicer)

the river is lost

the flowers dry
and fulvous

shards of cold glass in the bed
for which you are now too tall

the brown bird in the tree
is made of paper

the tree is made of paper
and green glass

another insufficient song
slips under the earth

here where you are sleeping

departing (2009)

post-dawn
___red sun___pinks the hills
_-out the passenger window__winery country
____-signposted gourmet tours

columns of vapour_-rising_-over pools
_-& the Swan too_-as we bridge over it

this early_-only airport traffic
___rows of dormant yellow earthmovers
___________bobcats for hire

these lives we will never lead
____-laid out dead before us


Below: NASA satellite image of the Swan River, Western Australia (click on image to enlarge)

virus (2009)

(for Kat / props to Laurent Garnier)

techno is a virus throbbing
______munt-fodder glob stacker
_____tractions bluffer venom jugger
____null compressor den richter
___scales disturbor bots nicer
__loosed repeater stunblaster iris
_airlocks flooded spectrum gridshifts
glasstooth grinder misfitter stealth
_exhibit unexpected spectre pulse-flare
__omicron-wasp fluid accelerator blissed-on
___spitter madcap courtships culted brink
____cursives the roid belt unelected void
_____shapers strewn planetfall peak icebreak
______nano-roboscopic lifter phantasma
_______grabby bloater carbonate blunted
________mined dark-end quicksilver bloodline
_________spewer cloned samsara salad flak

post- (2009)

late morning
___meditation w/ hangover

night spent
___smoking the dead

a pearl
___melted in wine

to risk
___the beautiful

(it lands as
___paracetamol)

now look yourself up:
___deedless

words asleep, time-
___waste / narrowcast

eyes stung
___(fingertip smokestain)

a woman knocks, her
___body a shop

synthetic flies
___leave graffiti

you’re eating &
___sleeping off cellburst

that dead-
___cell ache

Scratch (2nd cut) (2009)

(Kristen Bissaillon's remix of 'scratches', as part of our remix exchange.)


‘Burb a vicious experiment. Tentative tenements in the crossword. Garage and grocery doors snub birdsong, as if a separate species of closure.

One politic line bleeds into the next. Nobody arrives in the narrative, receives the inevitable, takes endearment right in the kisser.

One monkish audience bleeds into the next (shy collectors, sniped upskirt). The anonymous branch turns to speak.

Vaseline version of self. Airbrush a vacuum; nature has an opinion. Bitten cheek desires to drink.

Congeal, collide, pass in the night. Some structure has been imposed. Flies backward out of sight, out of sightedness. Lapse retired, retried. A twisted wire restraint.

Everything omen bears repeating. Flourishing collections incarnate again, it may yet prove interesting.

Desire authors the uncertain dear. Pill dies becoming.


(I previously posted a remix of Kristen's 'Cartouche'.)