a mirror in the shape of a Möbius strip; 3 Leg Torso and David Greenberger:

I recently came across the fantastic blog, Music for Maniacs, which writes about and links to many fantastic and unusual recordings of music. Today's post is "The Thing with the Three Leg Torso" which is about the band, Three Leg Torso and its collaboration with David Greenberger. Greenberger, who runs Duplex Planet, bases his texts on interviews with the residents of nursing homes. It's really fantastic stuff. The music of 3 Leg Torso perfectly complements the texts. Here are two pieces from the collaboration.

Miss Dog Miss Me

Perpetual Motion

*

Here's the beginning of some kind of a poem of mine, speaking of three legged torsos, which borrows a title from my friend, the poet, Slim Volumes.


THREE LEGGED DOG

1.

I aim with a gun
I miss myself

I aim with a mirror
I miss myself

I am with a dog

2.

The dog is three-legged because
it has three legs

where is the other leg?

on another dog
a dog with one leg

it is a one-legged dog


3.

this poem is being
listened to by a robot

it thinks it’s a violin
a violin with an indeterminate

number of legs


4.

I take an iron to a mountain
and flatten it out

now the mountain stretches for miles
the violins run free along its once steep sides

it is a one-sided mountain


a Möbius strip unwound


5.

a mirror in the shape of a Möbius strip:
reflections only of reflections themselves

GM (grammatically modified) nature and the warming of global language

Coke announced that it is going to start making Coke bottles out of 30% plant based materials (derived from sugar cane and molasses). Scientists have developed bacteria that create plastic.

What is nature? The coke bottle is moving towards being as 'natural' as genetically modified nature (salmon, tomatoes, cows, wheat.)

Soon there won't be a difference between nature and the manufactured world. Or, at least, we won't be able to find examples of the difference. The Pacific? Half plastic. Breast milk? Full of dioxins. Forests in Borneo? Greenland? Subject to climate change and the atmospheric chemical stew. Teenagers? Full of growth hormones. (That must be why I am so short compared to my students.)

We have manufactured language. Can we use it to 'see' nature? Does language automatically mean GM ('grammatically modified') nature?

Can we stop global language from warming? Can we find structures that remember or preserve 'nature'? That help us understand how nature changes as humans change? Is humanity's relation with 'nature' the ultimate grammar?

I went outside and listened to a rock. I learned about fashion.

My radio has antlers.

He Ate 10 Terrorists

in the sky there was
a tiger who flew round the moon
yes, he ate 10 terrorists
and blew up Jupiter

oh we had all the weapons in the universe
but we had no tiger

Space Time Yodeling, the Baka People, and Donald Rumsfeld

A song based on the beautiful psalms of Donald Rumsfeld.



Yodeling in Africa: the beautiful songs of the Baka people.



time, love, or history is

a pack
of waterfalls

on the back
of wolves

the sky tongue of space
lining the brain of an owl

what is liminal
between dusk and twilight

the feathers of a goat
the chrome shine of a tree

Ain't No Sin to Take off Your Skin & Dance Around in the Alphabet

The Lost Consonant

Consonant Wandering through the Woods of the Ribs

(A potential image for the cover of Hugh Thomas' HEART BADLY BURIED BY FIVE SHOVELS
coming soon from the Supernova Tadpole Editions
that I'm editing for Dan Waber & Jennifer Hill's fantastic Paper Kite Press.)

"Come down from the cross, we need the wood."

Fantastic video of a great Tom Waits song ("come down from the cross, we need the wood") from his masterful Mule Variations. In the video, text animates all over a body. The video, by Anders Lövgren, makes the song a drama of written text and the "forces inside" the words--the letters--as they relate to the body. Our minds and bodies are crawling with words in some kind of lexical formication. Our bodies are pages for memory, for textuality, and, as Harryette Mullen, says, "we are licked all over by the English tongue," which, to me, sounds like she's not talking about a lover, but that big dog, that overenthusiastic galoot of a language that is English.

amperstones

Twwo MMore TTroy LLoyd IImages, OK, TTThree

Beautiful Troy Lloyd Images

Troy Lloyd sent me an astounding package of his work quite a few months ago. I was mesmerized and overwhelmed into total inaction (I'd hoped to document it in photos and scans) the package was so marvellous. Here are two images culled from this wondrous Lloydarama. And: hey, Troy, could I use some of the images for a chapbook I'm creating?

Untittled: Magic Hand

Tongue Golem

Phantom Punctuation

A hidden comma curled like a seahorse in the mind. Wraithlike periods, ghostly ellipses, the semi-colons albino and invisible. These are the spectres of phantom punctuation, the incorporeal spirits of the mouth, gathering the breathlessness of thought, run-on and indivisible, as if between the cupped and narrow hands of paradise.

If the written word is weather fallen from the troposphere of speech, punctuation, rising from the apostrosphere, is the seasons, giving shape to the spoken year with its ecliptic and paradoxes, its long summer dashes, its bitter winter of exclamations. Grammar the pre-emptive counsel of language before the chaos of the mouth.

Gary Barwin book a forgery

I have been carefully examining past works of Canadian poetry and I have uncovered something quite startling. After a close reading of the text and an investigation of other facts that have recently come to light, I have discovered that my book, Raising Eyebrows is in fact a forgery. It wasn't written by me at all. It is in fact a copy. I am still working to discover the source of the original.

I am in the process of returning my royalty cheques to Coach House Books. I hope I don't have to give up the condo.

MOON, BABOON, CANOE

a baboon rents a canoe
then smashes into the moon

fragments of moon, baboon, canoe
rain down

and as you breathe your lungs fill with
moon, baboon, canoe

moon, baboon, canoe inside
as you breathe

people that I love, you say
people about whom I care

moon, baboon, canoe
moon, shoelace, canoe

baboon
baboon

Necker Note Boll Weevil

BOLL WEEVIL

I make boats run through the sea. I make boats run through the sea. I make it rain. I boil the trees and the giraffes loud as knives. I raise babies pink between the slats of cribs. I make it rain. I boil the trees and the giraffes loud as knives. I raise babies pink between the slats of cribs. I make boats run through the sea. I make the boll weevils cry. I make it rain. I boil the trees and the giraffes loud as knives. I raise babies pink between the slats of cribs. I make it rain. I boil the trees and the giraffes loud as knives. I raise babies pink between the slats of cribs. I make boats run through the sea. I make the boll weevils cry. I make it rain. I boil the trees and the giraffes loud as knives. I raise babies pink between the slats of cribs. I make the boll weevils cry. I make the boll weevils cry. I make the boll weevils cry. I make the boll weevils cry. I make a difference. I’m a big stupid baby stuck between ground and sky.

“You’re a know nothing” sky says to me. “Sky’s right,” ground says, but what do parents know? I take off my hat in the river, set my hair on fire.

Shout and Bite

Two men ride horses.
They begin biting each other.
“Day,” one shouts.
“Night,” shouts the other.
They continue until they are old.

The sound of the world enters their ears.
It is neither dark nor light.

"I know a man" translations

A recent post on Steven Fama's very excellent blog the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica discusses two 'translations' of Robert Creeley's iconic I KNOW A MAN one by Rachel Loden and the other by Douglas Rothschild. They are both translations or altered versions, using the Creeley original as a meme both in terms of structure as as well as a cultural artefact. The comments stream, with posts by both authors, are very interesting too. In responding to the post, I made up a quick version of the Creeley original, clearly riffing off both Rothschild's and Loden's versions.


I KNOW A MEANING

words, I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,—words, I

sd, which was not his
name, meaning sur-
rounds us, what

can we do about
it, or else, shall we &
why not, just say something,

words, he sd, for
christ’s sake,
look out where yr going.