COMMONCROFTS

SISTERS OF SORROW

2012-01-23T15:26:00.029-05:00

The girls laughed:

‘fucking English poets

with their fucking A4 paper!'

just because they are apparently omniscient
does not mean they are rational
or sane
only these were not girls
but if they were not girls
it was only because they were not human
but they were sisters
creatures of intolerable beauty, approachable only
as a child, or a slave, for to them your legend

fvgitteneme
cvmrevocvveris
me Dm. Zoninoaccipis
solidum

is all too legible
they have not neglected
their Latin: they can read your tag
if you cannot:

I ran away apprehend me
when you will have brought
me back to Dominus Zonino
you’ll get a solidus

Ladies of sorrow,
the exact ones from De Quincey.
Their names have been changed

but you may know them by their Roman signs.
They hold all the strings
they are riddled with disease

editrix, existimatrix, musa

and beneath their youthful half-attentive gaze

you will be transformed
to a patch of grease, a crumpled sheet
the merest shwarma
of your former self

and they don’t give a shit about Zonino

or his solidus

thc JanFeb 2012

Postcard to Melissa Poem

2011-06-16T13:29:00.002-04:00

FOR THE OSAMA BIN LADEN DEATH-SONNET CHALLENGE

2011-06-07T16:47:00.002-04:00

for Jay Huddleston

Now that you have failed I’m free to try

ANYTHING and win. Love and fame

to somethingness arise straight from that dream

of bullets swarming round your eye.

My muse is good for a few more fly-

overs in her cheap unnecessary drone.

That desert is my park, my pleasure dome,

my vomitorium,

my Versailles.

You’ve failed so utterly that I am free

to fail as well as thee, and to rejoice.

We’ll swag it over the country, this drunken load,

our wild doxology sung by every voice;

our strangely-worded boast; our plea

to the lost explosive, not to explode.

SCRIPT FOR STAND-UP ROUTINE

2011-05-04T19:37:00.027-04:00

look and see

2011-05-03T21:20:00.000-04:00

My poem "SUPERVIELLE" on

AFTERLIFE

2011-03-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

I think the afterlife
will be a comedy,
but if it's not
that will be funny too.

Age of the Assassin

2011-01-10T16:29:00.013-05:00

My son assassinated me
just now
for about the tenth time today
and he’s only 12.

After the first few times.
I asked him to quit
assassinating me,
I’m not a Templar
and even if I were,

he wouldn’t know the half of it.

But the Templar explanation is bogus
a mere pretext
since he also assassinated the dog.

Next time he assassinates me
it won’t register,
& I’ll just get assassinated again and again

which for all I know is valuable spiritual training

ORDOVICIAN FRAGMENTS II

2010-11-19T13:40:00.003-05:00

the ‘Holos’ Papyrus

‘Holos’, if he in fact existed, was the least saturnine of the Ordovician poets.

--Nicanor Huerqueque Húesped, Los Poetas Ordovicianos, Mexico City, 1922

I am Holos the poet

I can predict the movements of squirrels

the behavior of mountains

the speeches of half-wits

and, if you like, the waywardness of girls

…her smile

a forced, minimal painfulness

to gauge the absence…

and will you turn upon wine-stained sheets

for a riveting tale told by Holos?

…the smell of incest,

that rank folly,

the wealthy divested of slaves

and terrible murder

She is like an estuary that sleeps not

in the vastness of its bed.

She has heard too many of your songs,

and those of too many others, in many an accent,

in dead and dying tongues

made further unintelligible

by shifty regional dialects

so you have heard

I wish I’d never met your mother

her skin…

breathing…

secrets from the future

And has all joy, therefore, been erased

from the world? No. But enough

to make random things poignant.

Childhood joys? Yes, Holos,

they were the first to go.

You can’t conquer me: I’m drunk.

10.

like ravenous chickens and goats

11.

leaves…

shining bright, all forgotten…

they conquer me like whores

12.

What are you doing?

Never mind. I was only asking

as a formality. Go ahead,

finish what you are doing, whatever it is.

In any case,

your silence told me everything.

13.

…always hypersensitive

to the absence of food…

…she sent up a quiet groan…

…after the war

14.

Remember the body parts

we found in storage

15.

Juno will be pissed

I heard her cough

I saw her wing

behind the mountain

ORDOVICIAN FRAGMENTS

2010-08-19T12:52:00.010-04:00

I’m not entirely convinced there ever were any Ordovician poets.

--Odaxius

Undiscoverable metrical principles do not necessitate non-existence.

--Schülerin

We counterfeited ourselves

for your disport

the paper shield

cut a marvelous dash

but the real test was too much for it

emboldened by crashing noises

they continued

fainting

in the drunken verdure

he was but

an exaggeration

of dust

that noisome freight

long abandoned on our shores

I don’t know any

girls named Cosima

I did not even mind when you thrashed me

sneaking up on me while I was asleep

...criminal.

...on the other hand

these are all qualities I admire

10.

these Milanese sirenes

11.

her brilliant procedures

12.

the slinking baroness...

….upside down

.....bitch-house

13.

...degraded...

rural vats

of dodgy wine

14.

the monster’s eye…

dwelt too close

to its nostril

15.

corpses everywhere

16.

they linger at or near the shrine

17.

O gods! the self-importance

of those in mid-career

18.

a great priest he may be

but I don’t like his children

19.

the bitch whose fingers

smelled of sulphur

20.

I am not completely insane

21.

false entertainments

wrong enchantments

22.

something soft

falling down the stairs

2010-07-12T21:56:00.003-04:00

[POEM]

2010-06-01T11:21:00.015-04:00

I will assume what certain poets have said

is true, and it is permissible

to address you

as if you were a person.

America the urchins in my wake are my own,

there is no need for you to be upset.

But your head has been through a lot!

Consciousness, the world, thought,

where things come from,

all things wayward fierce and strange.

Did you go to college only to find

that Shakespeare was gay?

That sonnets have

displeasing content?

Or that Paul was a freak, alas?

Did you at some point figure out

that manicure = handjob?

Few meanings are spiritual

in the literal sense of the word.

You are getting unnecessarily offended.

Relax.

Believe me

I am not going to take away your toilet paper.

But put down your Hi-Liter, liebchen,

there are no more tests.

The full armor of God

hath been to airy thinness beate.

You don’t need armor,

you need lunch money for all

these children!

And some type of diaper

for your hemorrhage.

And copies of Nietzsche

(if you want to call yourself serious)

for your libraries.

America it is time to live

finally!

America disaster is upon you

Do you know what a disaster is:
that’s when stars

become unglued.

But you really must, for once in your life, relax.

For it is hell on the nerves

when metaphors collapse.

ON ROBOTS

2010-05-09T20:44:00.004-04:00

There is more than one way to

make a robot

program a robot

fully to be a robot

disable a robot

dispose of robot

Robots are always

getting the hang of your jargon, always

beginning to be able to disambiguate

your acronyms,

but some, such as:

The p.m. of MG

is / was f. and o.g.

are not recoverable.

Do not use abbreviations

robots very comfortable with the imperative

They do require punctuation:

and on this point they are very strict!

Their flesh is getting softer all the time

Their eyes are like mouths,

slummocking all that is holy and unholy

Objects placed before them

frequently disappear

But robots cannot thrive for long

on the vernacular

that is why they crave clichés

clichés

like a fine mist they enter the ear,

gather on the tongue

and settle around the root,

then spread throughout the system

until

even dreams are generic

Here is good

robot-killing poem:

robots don’t have fingernails

remember: you don’t know

what a stranger looks like.

And on very rare occasions

small pieces of meat.

Here comes a stranger

wielding a

what is it

what it is

what is up

with you

that still bears the imprint

of a dream

of a stranger

skulking in a foreign land

*That was good*

Dispose of robot

sensibly

do not junk

in a foreign land

or leave it garbaged on the plain

even without a power source

or working parts these goddamn things

have been known to be deadly

Humans of America

2010-05-06T13:38:00.017-04:00

rest stop on I-81

swarming with freaks

lurking near the candy machines

all about

to buy a Coke.

Men squat and smoke;

all are sharing the same sunburn.

One old woman wearing a fiberglass (?)

apparatus on her face is helped by another

grimacing to walk;

their progress is intolerably slow.

Others are milling around;

a child emerges

through a desolate opening in the landscape:

he is obese, and strangely weathered.

All are staring,

staring at us.

Molly and I get back in the car.

Some of them too fat to move without assistance,

others are clearly able to get up

and move about.

—Molly? Let’s get the fuck out of here.

Bumper stickers proclaim regional

voting tendencies.

“But I have to pee.”

—No you don’t.

+ + +

The mangling effect

of thinking mangled things

has touched my brain

and Molly's too

practically every day

watery demons wash into view

bleeding from every side

proclaiming

shrill abstractions

berserko prophecy and death

So Fuck you, Lars von Trier

report to the coterie

2010-04-28T08:53:00.010-04:00

peregrenus

expectavi

pedes

meos

cymbalis

+
+
+
+

In response to flood of inquiries,DENVER reading went well. Born is the coolest magazine ever, Satire the greatest lounge, John Tiedemann the host of hosts.

I did, I did read the Heidegger poem.

To Christopher Whittington

2010-04-05T11:04:00.007-04:00

Ms. Klein arose like an avatar of Kali

—mother and destroyer of us all—

to wrench the arrow of sloth from my mind.

Wielding, then, the curved, all-seeing sword

of charity and love

she carved into my flesh a favorable wound:

an exit-wound

to let the tainted blood of sloth, and of ingratitude,

flow out.

Of a truth, my friend, those who render not their thanks

to friends who send them books

are slime

and worthy to have their heads sliced off

and swung by the hair from the upraised hand

of an upper left arm

of Kali

mother of life,

guardian of the cremation-grounds.

4/5/10

Episode in American History

2010-03-26T16:10:00.010-04:00

The Alcoholicat though clearly past his prime

exerts food-chain prerogative

by means of addiction's death-tango

(note fringes on the pantalones)

on the American cock, or capon,

whose own vitality, & superior claim to the yard,

seem to have no application.

Next, and worse, the turtledoves of Union

are about to be sliced

by the poisonous Feline Matron

of vestigial predation!

Dang!

All this takes place apparently

within the nightmare-enclosure

of Asymmetrical Prongs

whose fence-posts are beset

by the parasitic Pills

of unspecific suppression.

INEXPLICABLE NOTE FOUND IN POCKET

2010-03-24T10:20:00.006-04:00

page 385

fat plump endomorph

skinny ectomorph

strong mesomorph

p. 492 Actualization

schitzo p. 470

chill the gnomes from head to toe

screen irrelevant stimuli

Travel Plans

2010-03-19T10:49:00.010-04:00

Your servant is traveling to Denver on 4/7/10 to read some poems at a gathering of writers published by Born Magazine.

And he's thinking of reading the Heidegger poem.

MORT ROLAND

2009-08-20T23:46:00.007-04:00

I need another conversation with the bishop
like I need a hole in my head

he’s fallen and he can’t get up
he sclabbers toward the river for a drink of blood
and water
exposed directly to the layers and layers of gore

Ha! Diex! look at all this gore!

here he comes, with a carbuncle:
look at his twisted eyes
the flesh around them all
raw from crawling from death to death for water

the bishop is like a turtle
no, he’s a hamster, which comes from the Persian
hamaēstar, ‘one who knocks down’.

He did slay many gentlemen today.

AOI now he is really dead
and so is Oliver, God be praised !
because the yelling
was driving me crazy

AT THE CEREMONY, BLACKING OUT

2009-06-11T12:58:00.008-04:00

‘It will stand forever as a silent sentry in these hallowed halls to teach our children and our grandchildren about that which once was and to inspire them with visions of that which can be again—today, and tomorrow and unto the generations,’ Baker said.
—Associated Press, June 4, 2009

cast in bronze and unveiled
next to another popular republican
Former lady Nancy Reagan
shed a blue curtain
fell away and revealed the visage
of her beloved
head
bearing the twinkle of power

She reached out and touched
the statue sneezed

The last time I was in Ronnie’s service
the Reagan-era officials
packed the symbolic core
of American activities

His legacy includes the spread
of dramatic appeal
.tear down..decline…
and the thawing of pieces
imbedded in the statue
specifically the actor, tapped
as an oversize genial presence…
..ventured forth to change America..
after embryonic scenes in Congress

.onstage…
….gestures
…and sculpted remains
“…forever silent to teach
children and grandchildren
—today and today and tomorrow—
and unto the generations aforesaid

that which twinkles, gestures, and dies
onstage, reveals her mind's
beloved oversized remains

EXPLODED SAW

2009-06-04T14:45:00.011-04:00

Upon the occasion of a statue of Reagan being unveiled in the Capitol

On this occasion of rotundity and clear dementia
one reflects upon greatness,
what it is.

Sometimes it is thrust up a vein
fed in like copper wire
connected to I know not what
source of power

Some find it attached to their leg
and swelling like a tick,
about to burst

Some are born with iron teeth
others have the iron teeth installed

While some explode immediately into song
others utter a long lonely wail,
working it gradually up
to something really unpleasant

Some have burst into impetuous flight!
some have ended in traction
others with an irreversible harelip
for their insolence!

Many whistle tediously
but only a few will bore an entire nation

Some find greatness in extended tales
recounted at need
still others remember greatness that never was

I see greatness in dreams
of demolition and removal,
and of the cataclysmic end
of all forms of glowing self-regard
that thrive in public and stand
in the sanctimonious collective
as silent sentry
over the vapid liberty
enjoyed by freaks

MUSIC FOR CAT ORGAN

2009-02-17T16:02:00.014-05:00

blasted velleity!
has ever such velleity
had such blood on its hands?

To him whom then certain regions
of the earth
deny egress:

He that may not refuse this greeting
responds with speech on a topic
most apocalyptic to your ears
he will leave the heart in your body
in shreds

you may well ask the whereabouts of such a leader

bound as we are by this hour developing
mind emptied of everything
of anything abstract
drained
thought proposition dream, all real
equally to the subconscious mind,
stripped mind-poems
now dancing on spindly legs:
semantics language spirit
love and recognition (all equally)
destroyed or otherwise
removed
from existence

hooray!
nothing left / not remaining to be thought.
well except. perhaps. but apparently not,
olfactory aesthesis
and jackasses
insisting on politeness

and that for one thing only:
burglarious exchange
at the subconscious level.

this is a seduction poem

I warn you

palpitating daughters

the purity ball is at an end

Web publication

2009-02-11T08:46:00.004-05:00

Your servant's poems 'Ramadan 2004', 'Moloch', 'Death of the 20-Year-Old Reservist', 'Ereshkigal in Furs', and 'Hereaftermath' can be found on War Poetry (UK), here:

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/.

To editor David Roberts many thanks.

TRIPPING

2009-01-11T15:12:00.002-05:00

Opium for the masses would be fine.
O p i u m i s n i c e.

And those who expect religion
to make them happy
are best at peace, out of the way,
blissed out upon some carpet
in a den.

Our minds would be relieved
of many a careful burden.

But religion is the c r a c k
of these swine:
pure product, appetite enthroned,
analogies sped up and stripped,
plunging the organism into stress,
a bad channel,
a conduit of gnarliness
opened wide—then all too hastily closed
valves shutting
less and less exactly
every time.

IN THE GRAVEYARD OF THE INSANE

2008-11-12T10:54:00.006-05:00

This poem to appear in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. IV: Tennessee, eds. Wright, Graves and Ruffin, in 2013.

To these editors, many thanks.
TC

FAILED SWINE

2008-08-07T16:35:00.003-04:00

THINK YOU know Creation, what it is?
These tables of earth, these pulsating masses of bone?
Green things, trees grotesque and rude,
&c.? WRONG:
this stuff is but the residue of making.

You think there is a purpose here for you?
You're right: you're for the chopping,
you're for the burning and squishing.

But here now,
if you would be thinking like a god,
big with child
small with frogs
filled with sight
then take your shrimp-faced priest
and cook him, cook him! Burn him away,
for the fire is all.

Thomas' Epistle

2008-05-30T16:01:00.007-04:00

to MATTHEW HUSSEY

I.
I think your translation of 'vel quali etiam...'
is spot on.
If there's a better one
I can't think of it.
i.e., ‘illa praedicatio has to be propagated, or
so preserved/kept-together
that it might be propagated
at some unspecific time in the future.’
(Purpose clause.)

If some Platinum Latinist should presume
to school you on this, let me know
so that
a) therein I might be instructed
b) I can put him/her on my list of asses
to cap next year.

By the way
that Greek accusative ‘in apocalypsin’
Is that title Dunstan’s? Tenth century
Glastonbury Greek? A Greek school extant
in England at this time?
Or was Priasimus a Greek.
Forgive me I know nothing,
magister
of the D-hand manuscripts.

Also of interest: the gloss
plectetur id est damnibitur
since plectō is < size="4">πλήσσω: which meaneth,
to SMASH with grievous fucking blows (cf. L. pulsō);
but not yet (as you so elegantly translate)
“to be punished in retribution
for hindered justice,
so that those who sinned for a time
are punished for all time.”
Did the Glastonbrigians have trouble
with Greek derivatives? Were they wont, I mean,
to see too much, or see too little,
into the dusky jewels
of their etymologies?

Forgive me. I am only trying to draw this poem out
until the end of time. (Item: there are soldiers
in desert fatigues
walking up and down the halls
of the English dept. as I write this.
I only record it because it is a fact).

Which reminds me:
we’re losing our sweetheart babysitter Robyn.
She’s going to Iraq.

II.
I’m sorry I won’t see you
this year at Kalamazoo
holding forth on Dunstan’s glosses
on Primasius’s commentary
‘In apocalypsin’, in all its glory.

Relax, and if you've got any Sigur Rós
on your taplop, play it now.
(I'm rocking ‘Hjomalind’ (aka ‘Rokklagið’) at the moment).
Remember that
the most important thing in life
is Rokk.

t

On Learning that One Is Heidegger

2008-04-20T23:09:00.007-04:00

“individual passages converge or diverge, not only in content but above all according to their inner shape and scope, according to the gathering power and luminosity of thought, and according to the depth of focus and acuity of their utterance”

Fuck! I’m Heidegger!
I hate my main interests, which are:
ontology, metaphysics, the history of Western philosophy
and technology.
I know next to nothing about my ethics
and really don’t like
what I have to say about poetry.

I was rector at Freiburg?

Emerging from my solitude,
I bring odd and threatening gifts,
the products of stormy relationships
with skeletal women: they are mad.
Item, that zombie was the best sex I ever had.
Yes, I said that. But only to make a point:
that sometimes the punch line is not
the funniest part of the joke.

Edmund and I on this could not agree
apparently.

I should have been a non-human presence (Vorhandensein),
a hellgrammite for instance,
writhing in Valhalla!

Question:
Is an abstraction Vorhandensein?
Like stealing-an-egg-roll-from-a-child?
Or eugenic-dog-meat-overthrow?
I’ll ask Dr. Opel: he will know.

I really have no idea what I am doing.
No matter: that is a way of doing.
Are those footsteps, e.g.,
or is someone playing ping-pong?
Fuck! The genius of that bone-like orb!

Ideas, irreparably
connected, lead to problems
I still cannot imagine.

Question: have you ever seen a monkey
dying in the street?
I have and I’m not joking
it will haunt you for days

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

2008-02-27T10:03:00.011-05:00

THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES
from the French of Francois Villon (1431-c.1463)

Tell me where, or in what country
Flora is, that Roman beauty?
And what about Hipparchia, or Thais,
girls of fabled consanguinity?
Or Echo, answering noise for noise
on the banks of river and mere?
Her looks were superhuman.
But where are the snows of yester-year?

And where is subtle Heloise,
for whom he underwent castration
and tonsure: Abelard, I mean,
of Saint Denis; he saw nat that.
And where, I ask, is the naughty queen
Who ordered Buridan (scholar and lover)
bagged and tossed in the Seine?
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Queen Blanche, like a lily,
who could sing like a siren,
Bertha of impressive feet, Beatrice,
Dame Alys, Ehrenburg of Maine,
and Joan of Arc, the girl of Lorraine
whom the English burned at Rouen?
Mother of God, where is she?
And where are all the rest?
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Nay, my lord, do not inquire.
Don’t ask for them this week or the next,
lest this again be whispered in your ear:
But where are the snows of yester-year?

It's Back

2008-02-04T09:47:00.001-05:00

In misguided, ill-advised and cruelly efficient purging of clutter, 'Chainsaw Friend' was placed in archives. Much honored by the clamorous yawping which greeted its absence, once it was discovered, by both my readers, I'm happy to return it now to its rightful place here, with its sisters, on the outer butt-cheek of heavenly greatness.

Le saucisson bréhaigne

2008-01-09T14:32:00.002-05:00

Jee-zuz. Here I am throwing my eyeballs at the TV screen and you apolitical pervs are talking about your sausages (talking to them too, no doubt). It's like something out of Petronius.
JL 1/9/08

saucisson 1. sausage (eaten cold and sliced); 2. stick of explosive; 3. long round loaf . (Concise Oxford French Dictionary)

Our eyeball is ensausagèd
within the tube whereof you speak
which glows within its greasy case.
drôle (n'est ce pas?) et melancolique.

I mean the console
not our skull.

Oui, c'est drole, et melancolique,
et merdeux, la politique--
comme un saucusson†
suspendé
au plafond.

Nay,
I dwell in the super-solid ether
my body waves there as a banner, yea,
the very gonfalon
of Sanct Perversitee
borne into the battle by a boy
in Crécy, say, or else in Poitiers,
pride starting out of his nose
like pudding.

† A 'saucusson' is an especially rancid--and much sought after--type of forcemeat. Used as a weapon for clubbing during the 'Jacquerie' of 1358.

Archaic Holiday

2007-12-25T20:39:00.003-05:00

The sober, clean and decorous morning ends.
The spirit rises with a grinding noise
like some arthritic planet,
and shakes a path to the river.

“We have already given you the finest gifts imaginable
but this was not enough.”

One great blinding headrush for the kids
after another.

Yes, my brain is asleep
but it has entered that phase of sleep
most dire
crashed within its greasy bed
or on the floor, or somewhere near a drain,
spent from contemplating force,
who’s doing and who’s getting done,
a rakish unsteadiness
of the tongue
necessitating feverish eating and drinking.

On my porch, just arrived: a sweating box of sausage
mailed from Wisconsin,
filled with plump, soft tubes.
The kids tear it open, lose interest.

I, alone, am left
to grasp the Zungenwurst,
toothsome dirty bomb of shattered flesh.
I weigh it in my hand:
is this a joke?

August within, my younger son,
as if he too were thinking
of starting his own cult, now sings:

'O, my skeleton
fits in my backpack!'

all giddy at the end of days,
all giddy at the end of days.

CLEANING HOUSE

2007-11-30T10:21:00.000-05:00

Too much clutter, poems like gluttonous vermin residing in lakes of excrement infernal...

...I must purge off, must enter and

clean out loitering superflux

PVBLICATION

2007-11-13T21:00:00.001-05:00

Poems 'Unplug the Vegetables'
and 'On Learning of a Famous Poet's Syphilis'
in

Vol XXVI 2006/2007

many thanks to Upstart Crow

editrix

Eliza. Rivlin

to whom

the following Sonnet

TO ELIZABETH

I found Upstartled in my box this Crow

within whose paper belly did reside

my little poems, since you ordained it so,

that they should find good harbowerage inside.

Like wandering eels, that find their saucy way

into some hull, and are its bilgey freight,

they need not swim but only rest and play;

the vessel bears them on, nor feels their weight.

Thereto it is a vessel tall and strong

whose mastheads on the maelstrom bravely walk,

and sheets are swollen full of noisy song,

and decks are all aswarm with vulgar talk.

We fear no Pirates, nor no rocky wreck:

whilst E.R. steers, the Killer walks the deck.

SHALL I TELL YOU

2007-11-02T14:41:00.004-04:00

‘I’m a myth…I’m Beowulf…I’m Grendel…I don’t know who I am.’ --Karl Rove

A toxic plushie
the stinkhorn of a puffball
a tedious fart
pedicular powdered parasite
retarded alien
or other nauseating prodigy
buttoned globule
arrogant pisspot
expanding pool
of evil-smelling adipocere
*compared unto which*
the toxic mere, bubbling with gore
and alive with monstrous births
we find in Beowulf
is a baptismal font, full sanctified to bless
and brimming with light,
or else a really spicy bowl of punch
or a draught of vintage
cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth
(aye, the blushful Hippocrene)
or, yes, the very milk of Paradise.

your dry round powdery head

will it never blow away

Excerpt of poem by Robert Kelly

2007-10-18T20:55:00.000-04:00

Robert Kelly, magister meus (quondam et futurus)

& if we do not get up and destroy all the congressmen
turn them into naked men and let the sun shine on them
set them down in the desert & let them find their way out,
north, by whatever sexual power is left in them, if we do not
seize the president and take him out in daytime and show him
the fire & energy of one at least immediate star, white star,
hammer that down in his skull till he can hear only that
rhythm & goes and enters the dance or makes his own,
we will walk forever down the hallways into mirrors and
stagger and look to our left hand for support and the sun
will have set inside us & the world will be filled with Law,
and it is that exchange we must sweep out of the temple,
the changing of gold and power & the figure of Christ into Law,
till the leaf is subject only to the patterns of its own green veins
which out of all patterns only will feed it when I am dark

from ‘The Alchemist’ (1960)

TASER HAIKU

2007-10-06T09:59:00.000-04:00

1.

if you will tase me
then, by definition,
you are not my bro

2.

you dare to query
senator Kerry? Tase time.
Thus I refute you.

3.

Why aren’t you in class?
Now I'll have to tase your ass
Next time bring hall pass

4.

Whom would Jesus tase.
Think I jest? I say to you
He would tase you twice

ON BEING SHOWN A FILM OF A SNAKE VOMITING A HIPPOPOTAMUS

2007-09-23T16:41:00.005-04:00

for Matthew Hussey

My blood runs cold when I behold
a python coughing up a hippo
so it was when my life began
so it is now I am insane.

Behold the infant hippopótamonster born!
(I grip my coffee cup,
My sons look on, of innocence shorn)
O let me die!
O snake, thou living tube of death!
O disengorgèd hippo tot, whose breath-
less birth destroys my mind!
Urged up, through many a mazy fold,
and wrenched once more into to the head,
thou slippest slowly from the mouth, full dead…

And so be it when I shall grow old
when I recall this prodigy unkind,
and feel its image inching up--O memory!
Then, O God and Man, I'll know such Blasted Nausea
that I could wish my days be severed each from each
by a spontaneous amnesia
to BLOT this natural obscenity.

RIDE THE DRUNKEN CYCLOPS

2007-08-17T11:14:00.003-04:00

Yes, I say to friends from France,
and dear Dutch pals,
to British bretheren and sistren,
--to all sweet foreign affinities!--
and especially to Aoife,
in Ireland,
America is a freaky place.

To be in our experiment
you must be chilled--
full cold at the heart-root--
and unafraid of hell,
must bid ‘to be or not to be’ farewell;
you must needs hold on tight, Marie,
and ride the Drunken Cyclops.

You friends from overseas dreamed not
that in me cools this icy heart.
But how else, every day, could I sustain
the emotional and, I dare say, anatomical extremes
the role requires? 24 / 7
I am doing things
that would cause you the utmost damned astonishment
in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Cuba and Uzbekistan,
in zones wherever we might sneak or land—
And I say to you, my friend,
so you will know, and understand:
another war is coming round the bend.

And to Britney Spears I say
be still you trembling freak
so I can sleep with you

MARCVS VALERIUS MARTIALIS

2007-08-14T15:44:00.000-04:00

If you are likely to be the really persnickety type of reader,
do you mind leaving now?
Just head in the direction
of absolutely anywhere else.

MARTIAL, Epigrams XI.16
(trans. Loveric and Mardas)

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE GIANT BADGERS

2007-07-31T13:25:00.001-04:00

“It is the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey”
--Housewife Suad Hassan

*Got time for one more question.*

“What kind of badger?
Where had she seen that monkey before?
Was it like the one the beggar had,
the one whose eyes were burned
by strips of magnesium that fell from the sky
as if the sun had farted blood?”

Fuck, is that from the Koran? [snort]
But listen, people:
I never said there wouldn’t be badgers.

Just because someone can, or can’t, explain
genetically mutated badgers,
who somehow
(and we will find those responsible)
somehow got dog bodies…
…with monkey heads,
and the brains of a hyena,
plus the reflexes of a jungle cat...
doesn’t mean we are not making progress.

But let me be honest with you:
Mosul? Badgers.
Tikrit? Badgers.
Anbar Province? You got badgers.
Karbalah? Badgers.
Baghdad? You better believe you got badgers.

You know, it's just, I mean,
you can't explain anything
to a giant-size mutant badger!
These are big badgers,
these are angry badgers.
And I understand their anger,
although I disagree with it.

Now, on their t.v. screens, America's gonna see
Iraqi folks, coming together,
children, running and laughing
and screaming.

Did you think it was supposed to be fun
to be an American?
Or that to be a free Iraqi
would be pleasant?
Well, it isn't.

But to answer your question,
I don’t know why the British chose, at this juncture,
to deploy this jackanapes,
but listen people: here we are
at the butt-end of reality,
running from freakish,
hungry,
monkey-headed badgers,
having hyena brains,
the refluxes of cats,
and the chrome teeth
of that omnivorous wolf
that flies out of the sun
to rip and tear
the head
off America!

UPON A VIRGIN, WHO LOST HER FEET

2007-07-29T13:31:00.000-04:00

Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven

Titus Andronicus.

This instrument was engineered for you:
replete with steel, and grease, and giant screw,
the great wheel furnished with chairs, and straps,
and built to slowly rise and then collapse,
to lift your fresh and dainty form aloft
and throw it down (but make your landing soft).

On this machine, this flying, bladed tree,
and on these mill wheels of hilarity,
(and in the confines of this pleasure dome
where, seeking chaste amusement, people roam)
this place of flipping, flapping gonfalons
and tornadic delights, and screams, and groans,

your Mother having borne you to the seat,

your Father fixed your sacrificial feet.

C H A T T E R

2007-07-28T15:23:00.000-04:00

1.

IMAGINE you’re a great bear-shirt-wearing
Germanic barbarian
with his beard on fire
and one arm chopped off, trying
to read Latin, and understand
architecture.

2.

REMEMBER: Longhorn’s tennis nickname
‘Oslamma been Lobbin’:
think of always having to move
from one place to another, having always
to re-establish your fame
always to re-invent your game.

My tennis nickname is ‘Rain Man’;
Molly’s is ‘Shit-fit.’

Martha said a thing I shan't forget:

'Soap breaks open the cell wall of cholera.'

The pity of this.

4.

AS in a weird mirror my name is rex
things seem bigger than they appear
my name is augie my name is thomas,
my [blank] is Molly at ing? ong?
I love my mom now storry
at no time you DEASTERV A SARK !

5.

Corpsig danglish--mine own petard!
Successive nightmares--twenty at least--
vouchsafed me this image of the beast

Remove your mask

everything you ever wanted to know about
death
but were too fucking bored to ask

RELIGIOUS AMUSEMENT PARK

2007-07-18T14:13:00.000-04:00

PLUNGING TOWARD GOD

Glory ride: hardcore.
Suicide? Martyr
bride? No: hardcore
accidental Jesus ride.

ANOTHER

The cross is our only hope.
That, and this rugged length of bungee rope.

ANOTHER

I pray the Lord
my soul to save,
His boing to lift me
from the grave.

BENEDICTIO

But are they not blessed
whom God doth pop
even as tick in the dust,
whose ears the Lord shall stop?
For they shall never hear the rest
of ye contemporary Christian music fest.

Yea, they are psyched.

I'm going to hell.

July 4

2007-07-04T09:34:00.000-04:00

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

CELSUS SPEAKS

2007-06-03T15:55:00.000-04:00

"It is equally silly of these Christians to suppose that when their god applies the fire (like a common cook!) all the rest of mankind will be thoroughly scorched, and that they alone will escape unscorched—not just those alive at the time, mind you, but (they say) those long since dead will rise up from the earth possessing the same bodies as they did before. I ask you: Is this not the hope of worms? For what sort of human soul is it that has any use for a rotted corpse of a body? ...it is nothing less than nauseating and impossible."

Celsus On the True Doctrine [c. 178 AD]

Poem: "Scrofa Bellica"

2007-04-26T13:43:00.000-04:00

SCROFA BELLICA

Her constant grin is what unnerves me most,
impervious as the gaping crow or pig
to love or recognition; gracious host-
ess always gracious to fascist hair and wig.

Teacher, mother, wife: she’s grinning wide.
Her conscience all the while inhales the smoke
of children whom her husbands kill and burn.
(The bodies which they kill and burn they hide,
of course, within her brain,
each corpse entrusted to that torpid archivist.)

Her dark stretched grin
like the stone face of a Sumerian devil,
that hideous and ancient head
stirs in me dread, morbid fear
of having lost my mind already

for behind that grin,
behind those well-picked teeth
there lurk such putrid ghosts
and blasted secrets
as would cause the most churlish of terrorists
to break down completely,
drop out of his cell
and weep for the world.

from Pandemonium (2005), p. 12

Poem: "Gonzales"

2007-04-21T08:48:00.000-04:00

War on terror
mess you up

from Pandemonium (2005), p. 14

DAME RHETORIC

2007-04-13T13:39:00.000-04:00

1.

DAME RHETORIC says “no cliché”
but I don’t know if she means it per se.
She has no blog or video diary, alas.
What is she, a corn-fed dairy lass?
Some tree-dragon? A two-headed freak?
A chicken with self-sharpening beak?
Or is she a pale destructive femme fatale
whose charms make people paranoid as hell?

Philomela, thou rhetorical bird,
I wait forever on thy word.

Thou mistress of ointments,
and of destruction.

2.

Her new teeth are coming round the mountain.
They are worth a thousand new toilets!

She drives her chariot,
whips her foamy horses
and bears her spokes
abruptly into sylvan fountains.
Her gaping jaws are a thing of terror
to all the creatures living there.

She dances like a crazy murderous robot!
And hath a breathtaking
command of fractions.

3.

Rhetorica loquitur:

Lovely as it is, hirmos can’t last forever.
It comes to a head; or else it runs
to pure synchysis,
in other words, completely perplexing
hyperbaton.

Asteismos? Yes, or ‘urbanity’. It is a trope
of great and inestimable value,
as in I would they were even cut off
which trouble you.
Or else, There is no need to ask if Fredegunde
was a freak

Anadiplosis is word or words
used at the end of one line
that frequent the beginning of the next:
“Menacing he comes.
He comes why?”

But what is the ‘Scorpion Rod’?

It is a whip with metal points and tongues
asserting primal punishment and pain.
It arrives from the desert heat of Kings.
Alternately it is a kind of ballista,
or cestrosphendonē. It hurls or slings
great stones, &c.

What is rhyme?

A 600-lb catfish, raised from TARTARUS,
only to be lowered into tartar sauce.

Of hypozeuxis Bede provides

the finest example:

“Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;
whether there be tongues, they shall cease;
whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.”

But not all examples are this funny.

Plus additional rules:

Occasionally you will say something inane:
such as
she is compared to food
which is the lowest thing on the food chain
or
It pours east in luctum.

Note the erotism of these examples.

*

Avoid demogogues, tyrants.

*
Avoid descriptions of giants.

*
Always pillage before you burn.

Epigram

2007-04-03T09:42:00.000-04:00

I hear America putting on its big girl panties!
It is a soft, rustling sound.
Yea, howsoever that I am blind-
folded, gagged and bound,
I hear America putting on its big girl panties.

Publication

2007-02-18T15:53:00.002-05:00

Poems 'Chainsaw Friend, 'Untitled,' and 'Ereshkigal in Furs' are in the current issue of Arabesques. Click on baby for on-line version. My thanks to the editors.

Extraordinary Rendition

2006-09-29T09:03:00.000-04:00

Once you have been translated into Dutch, things begin to move very quickly.

Last night I staggered home from prodigious celebration to find that Dr. Matthew Hussey, Secretary of Translation and Rendition for commoncrofts, had overseen the translation of 'Chainsaw Friend' back into English.

I was right: it was much better. Here, beginning with the quotation of Terence, is KETTINGZAAGVRIEND, extraordinarily repatriated. T

"I are people: I proclaim nothing to make to have with people strange for me"
--Terence, "Zelf-Pijniger"

"The one moment is you a squirrel beetje
sauce gnawing to a nipple
and a thinking none angry is possible
and the other moment lies spread your brain
concerning very the bunch."

I remind themselves that you said hunt
that then we squirrels were.
That was nevertheless terrible.
That was we entirely.

It is as if you sit now once on the top of the world,
and it are fulfilled then of vague uncertainties.

For the squirrel it is difficult
explain how such things happen:
mechanical error
a vertekening a whim of nature
never is possible you finding.

And that does not make you pisnijdig?

In any case, me regrets that I had you dead saw
but I had really that guard, guns, oar loops,
bayonets, muntstukken and what
already no longer from the civil war necessary.
(If people my disorder irritates stalks,
me that immoderate, and I realised
that this the same impact at you,
for this reason I have done what I thought must do.)

These objects are simply fabulous,
man, you had nothing vandoen with the Confederale army
(yes! your head is appropriate exactly in the bucket.)
As I said already, I weet that we always
best maatjes were our life long,
but the way you let me touch never
to your guns, oar loops and bayonets, however,
which annoyed me enormously,
and I realised myself that you
very inadequate there life approach on kept.

Consequently zaagde you
by my best old friend
already seem I that now, however,
strangely looking at to this treasure
and the mixture with cement
meantime thinking of our involvement with the squirrels
in Kenosha
and the strange things which rose then in your head...
You were right then with that gezegde of you:
"life is the ultimate sacrifice"
friend, who is truth.

But stopper with that gelul now,
I must hurry myself I but not my car
keys have left behind in Missouri!

KETTINGZAAGVRIEND

2006-09-28T12:26:00.000-04:00

That's right, Leatherface. I have been translated into Dutch.
You can find "Chainsaw Friend" in Dutch on Het Oog Vaan de Roos Internationaal Poezine, with a click: KETTINGZAAGVRIEND.

I can't read Dutch but I expect it rather gains in translation.

Thank you, Henri Thijs!

Whoever you are!

The Bloody Bacchante: An Ode

2006-08-23T12:32:00.002-04:00

for Christopher Whittington

Bored? You should be.
Because once you’ve been turned on by Pfc
Lynndie England, no other form
of excitement will suffice.
Ye gods, how can we go on,
our blood deaf the timbrel's sound?
Where can the razor’s edge be found
after we have glimpsed
the fertile face
and rangy uniformed loins
that are a powerhouse of torture and creation?

Some standing next to her have died.
Others, like Christopher Whittington,
have been relieved of their sanity,
stripped of all insignia.
The id, with a terrible, sweaty hand,
hath summarily
terminated command.

Who else can rule the concrete rooms?
Who else can move in realms devoid of law
and flushed with ecstasy?
Who else can pour the red libation?
Who else can teach us to lie down
in pools of blood,
and slosh about in there
with so much fury
and primal fecundity?

Now these orgiastic rites are done,
we grope about in vain for forms of fun.

She has infected Whittington with
irreversible savagery.
To break into her prison
to squeeze his body through the bars
(enough of it, at least,
for her to grab on to and bite)
to force himself into her dungeon of delight—
this is his dream
this his only paradise, and she
his only, only beast.

REELING

2006-08-22T10:22:00.000-04:00

That's right, soldier! Commoncrofts is 1 year old today.

Abu Ghraib Study #18a by Jay Huddleston

The artist writes:

Spc Charles Graner gloats over the body of Manadel al Jamadi. Graner, in his previous life was a career prison guard. Now he is doing 10 years for torture and obstruction of justice. He was also court-martialled for adultery for his relationship with Pfc. Lynndie England who got 3 years for her Abu Ghraib crimes and has been previously painted in this series. I do not know any more about al Jamadi.
PEACE,
JMH

--some of his finest work yet, don't you think? T

PUBLICATION

2006-08-21T10:51:00.000-04:00

My book, Malory's Contemporary Audience: The Social Reading of Romance in Late Medieval England, published by Boydell & Brewer, Ltd., is out.

In a word, Hooray.

ABU GHRAIB Study #3

2006-06-25T17:58:00.000-04:00

Here is a painting by friend Jay Huddleston.

Poem: Chainsaw Friend

2006-02-03T17:05:00.000-05:00

Unlike a lot of the poems nowadays being written in IOWA, this one was written somewhere down in the UNITED STATES.

CHAINSAW FRIEND

Jury Finds Man Guilty Of Killing Best Friend With Chain Saw
MAQUOKETA, Wis. -- A jury found a Kenosha man guilty Wednesday of murdering his longtime friend in Iowa and stealing his collection of Civil War memorabilia.
The Jackson County, Iowa, jury deliberated for about 2½ hours before finding Douglas DeBruin guilty of killing Gregory May in 2001…
May disappeared in January 2001. Prosecutors say DeBruin killed him and chopped up his body with a chain saw. May's head was later found in a bucket of concrete at a truck stop in Missouri. (4/20/05)

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto. (I am man: I call nothing to do with mankind alien to me.)
--Terence, ‘The Self-Torturer’

“One minute you’re a squirrel eating an acorn
thinking some sauce wouldn’t be bad
and the next minute your brains are splattered
all over the forest.”

I remember you said that
when we were hunting squirrels.
That was great.
That was us all over.

It’s like one minute you’re on top of the world,
the next you’re filled with vague misgivings.

For the squirrel
it’s hard to explain how these things happen:
mechanical failure
design flaw
freak mishap

and you never find out. And that’s the pisser, eh?

Anyway,
I’m sorry I had to chainsaw you
but I really needed those CSA hats,
guns, belt-buckles and bayonets,
confederate coins and what not.

(When people steal my shit
that greatly irritates me,
and I realized it would irritate you
so I went ahead and did what I had to.)

These items are incredible.
Brother, you just don’t mess with the CSA!
(Yes!
your head fits right in the bucket.)
Like I was saying, I know we’ve been best friends
all our lives,
but the way you never let me touch
your guns, belt-buckles and bayonets,
well, that greatly irritated me, and I realized
you had a very inadequate approach to life.

Ergo I chain-sawed you
my boyhood friend
Though it might seem strange
looking at this treasure
and mixing up the concrete
and thinking about the mixed-up squirrels
and us in Kenosha and the funny things
that popped in your head…
you were right once, that thing you said:
“Life is the ultimate sacrifice.”
Man, that’s the truth.
Crap, I gotta hurry.
If only I hadn’t of left
my car keys in Missouri!

Poem: Rapemyprofessor.com

2006-01-31T10:46:00.000-05:00

You should really rape this professor
if you ever get the chance:
It's really fun to watch him weeping
and begging for his pants.

Poem: Ode to Corporal Punishment I

2005-10-08T11:50:00.001-04:00

I've been ordered to post this post-haste. T

Ode to Corporal Punishment, Part I: Killed by Facists

Wherein the subject is tortured by neologisms.

If you question me
Or check my facts
then I will touch you
with my Flaggellaxe.

If you admit that you were wrong,
then I’ll only hit you with my Zong,
but if you persist in being correct
then God help you when I get out my Noztrolect.
If you say we both are liars
then I’ll have to get the Pliars.

And that’s not all I’ll do, my son,
For I have other things that are fun.
I’ll whip you with my laquered Florzle,
and then I’ll rape you with a Zorzel.

I have a contrivance called the Quo
What it looks like I don’t know.
I don’t know how it leaves its mark:
You see, you have to use it in the dark.

The thing of it is,
I also have a Flizz.
It rearranges and displaces
the features upon people's faces.
It makes a loud KAZAK
Till folks give in, and yell “Fofack!”
For which they get ANOTHER smack.
How my Flizz can go crack-crack!
And O the stings that it can sting!
(I flourish it like anything.)

So if you want to change your phiz
then come and quiz me on my biz
and then you’ll learn what a Flizz phiz is!

Publication 1

2005-09-10T12:47:00.000-04:00

Your servant's poem 'Didaktikon of Death' appears in the current issue of Texas Observer ("The People's Friend, the Tyrant's Foe"), September 9, 2005 (Volume 97, No. 17). The poem is only in the print edition, but do check out website. TO is one of the best things about my home state.

Many thanks to poetry editor Naomi Shihab Nye.

Poem: Automated Response

2005-09-04T11:20:00.000-04:00

the intended recipient of your message
is currently on administrative leave
of his senses
and is at present undergoing torture
at an undisclosed location

be assured that he is enjoying
being tooled in the ass with a broomstick
by John Bolton
and swapped in the head with a telephone book
by Alberto Gonzales
while the headset duct-taped thickly around his ears
blares the national anthem
as performed by Britney Spears

o it’s grand

the intended recipient of your message
is currently having his jaws wired shut
he is also being fitted for a glass eye

if you know the whereabouts of his wife and children
or have any other information about
the intended recipient of your message
log on to http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
we now have, of course, your contact information
and send us your comments!

Poem: John B.

2005-08-23T16:22:00.000-04:00

I am much gratified by the general demand for this one:

JOHN B

Hey I’m John Bolton
My moustache is a fucking different color than the rest of my hair
It looks like I got a maxi pad stuck on my face
Plus I am a big asshole blowhard
Man I will wipe my ass with the UN
I will make those little brown cocksuckers
sorry they ever laid their beady little eyes on my moustache
which they will soon come to regard
as the harbinger of DEATH

I will also shut down UNICEF
and burn the Christmas cards
and scare every child in the world
with my big hands and my moustache
then I will go back to New York
and shit on the floor of the general ass-
embly

I’m really looking forward to being a swaggering jackass
and also the scaring of the people

THC 4/20/05

commoncrofts: for the coterie

2005-08-22T16:27:00.001-04:00

nec dignitas nec superbia neque aut rubor coram vobis--neither dignity nor pride, nor shame either, before you--my motto to the coterie. If you are reading this, you're in the coterie.

Alright! Fantastic. Thanks for being here.

THC III

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,

Singing together.

Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes

Each in its tether

Sleeping safe

on the bosom of the plain

Robert Browning: 'The Grammarian's funeral'