B U T C H E R E D S W I T C H

Joseph and Tammy

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 06:11:00 +0000

As the spirit moves me

so will I move…

Dreaming of Tammy, Tammy Sincavage

All the things we will do

My name is Joe, Joseph Sincavage.

Tammy’s a cousin, not through blood.

We go on drives

through the windy back country

The sunlight is dappled she

cooks me

I don’t read the paper, I keep my house neat, I walk late at night, back and forth on the street. Everyone knows me, I have to remember that.

Give me a list of chores and my afternoon is full. Downtown’s half dead.

But I love to go in the stores. Pass my eye over the goods. This is what

is available. I just want know

what is possible. What I can be I must. I’ve

always loved that.

No Stalgia For

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:45:00 +0000

See it like this

the morning where the evening

and its tendencies unravel

are relived.

If in this morning--shame

glots the chest--as if no one ever drank--evidence, evidence—

if in this morning there should also be weather

then it’s already over. You’re finished, you morning

if the wind blows

orange

across the mad rational hulk of your buildings

the non-human context of your beach silence,

coming from nowhere to nowhere

—see, like this

and if not? Still missing Them

things about them times with

their families

-- ah god--

everything gets tossed, it’s the commerce of just

the lowest prices

No stalgia Three

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:31:00 +0000

“We don’t even have the land

live off? we’re cut off

So go back home @ night ends and eat a slice of pizza pie

On the couch in the t.v. blue down low

Volume don’t wake parents what is to be done

With the bundle accrued through the day

no system can unify

a mess towards purpose

Layers and contradictions, because

We wouldn’t even want to

We want to be painted

board in a hall wood and dust, maybe

And time

feeling lost time passing with no

Transcendence through art o god juts so bad

Speak to wish clearly, to hew accurate a picture that

Feels it is so there

No stalgia pt. 2

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:36:00 +0000

Leave it is imperative but

where
and for what and
also just plain how--

impossible, the questions left behind

the name in a dream and his story

that windy back

porch the semi-shut-in sells dope off

with a just-so laconic pose

Suddenly stands for everything

Ever tried to be said to be raised

just as quickly

discarded once perspective

shifts even a little

car or a train

window I’m always looking out of

a back mountain

road getting high

No stalgia #1

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Driving down the high spine of the little world,

world that curves still the focus

made body in the proximity of

possible doings never come to pass

an ache that race

that race to where

alway

s lost so palpable lush vegetation

attitude that serves that severs

unity to a value reduction a

value to be extracted, only value

in the use, the passing the taking of

the motion like

not important the quiet town

ies

carpel tunnel stance and quiet rendering thereof leaves

manifestly apparent

not going to happen not ever

never happen leaves a spacethe leaving

now

only bare/vision

the weight of town little and dirty

wintered and bare lots of

mega stores have cropped all other commerce

Can’t / doesn’t anyone see the ring of over

Walking through streets

in the night trying

to conjure or find

fading unanswered

asking of our question are we

D I S C O N T I N U E

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:54:00 +0000

Discontinue

catalogues record the days

Half discarded way full of blank

unnamed arise and fall away

They wait are they called on

Space in private intrude not better

Walk this we as if full with arms

We drop socks pick to stoop

And grab ourselves in fits

Comedy sheds

Blunders all the evidence

So sad yes lies in thought

The flood of feel you coming

From the catalogues: a

Spontaneous chaos advocate the of

Improvisational legends made

These thoughts that arise in arbitrary grid

Are pulled away

The color is red, the image: a

Bellows.

Unknown

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:37:00 +0000

Unknown

Condition Interruptus

Falls like snow on the silent evening home where when

Faced with the view of all possible actions we avert our eyes or

do not choose an expression to read in

all that misspent money or retrospect chose not

choice with our proximity constraint now broken

remains our interruption

pulled for scrap

value now highlighted now thrust

into away the center from stage

strange grammar

the days feeling the

height of falling the land appears just the best AbEx you ever saw

but it tells of none smaller

material

the material of your day s was how and

the refractions of light inside these walls of

falling from

higher than the birds to land soft in

this breast on this day

“I have to get out of this”

the result not conclusion

sending it back out in refractions

(never) changes

it self is under where the action

is not sleeping but not moving being

but not opens to

gather the strands

yanking them from the throat

down to the guts

‘it’ becomes relationship and ‘we’

becomes just becomes

some becalmed story

put to sleep

never more lovely than

more lonely

then more lovely

than

material

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:35:00 +0000

material generating generating material couture

empirical excise cannot fight

techno-gig

runs without thinking

come on un

zip no lip

synching professionalism and pomp

other p words fit

my platform haven’t you noticed

we’re absolutely in it there’s no

question the man sweetie wasn’t

trying to scar you drunk

he's just and doesn’t know

this child is over

there by the pile of hammers Daddy

shouldn’t yell so maybe

that’s not true

You make words with

your big hammer:

Human services human. Etc.

Over and again story

of my life mine

the be/st (a)

lets do property hop

a train lets you go

vroom

I n t e r r o g a t i o n

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:44:00 +0000

smoke scrambled a picture ascension hung over the line between new form and notes a not sufficiently developed distanced ironic mysticism this theory is a toy-child whose body isn’t even anymore people want pizzazz and pizza want to read with a drunk on a tear slips down the face of the statue of nobody doing the busy busy doing the popular activity hereby reproached simply by mention what the intention are you thinking you think you are writing

you look off into the sky while typing the words is there any beer in the fridge for a potbellied narcissist who sweats pages of proto-narration congealed into this gloop of a sauce but a casserole won’t wait just serve it

that’s your pitch whose talking stop butting in that’s final she’s walking fuck this fuck that revenge must be hot you have to get revenge fresh from the market that morning

now we can’t get back in the garden of forking paths the walls are made of fog the rocket ship made of logs somewhere somebody please she can’t reach her arms are that small and then we abandoned the she voice to find animals in the sky very worthwhile and logical they make a lot of a sense totally whose brain said that to a dog and a fly at the same time both replied you’ve got to be kidding but they rsvp’d regardless sometimes you have to play the game SHE was in the broom closet drunk on vitamin water and you were enchanting in your hoop skirt

ID entity

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:30:00 +0000

shut up faces of places we go we are tired of trying to board my presence we don’t mention you crying you envy that edge for to keep it from coming to bear on the matter the pressure disaster swelling above the crowd the swelling crowd bearing on their hands a hard rhetoric a cask draped in the black banner provided its note through the new tone mounted in fear pressing down harder trying to fit the lips of the process over the sex of the concept how irresponsive regardless heartless wish it had never started.

WEnare the face of places, tired we flip through the catalogue of instances try and find an situation that will fiT the mood Fit to feed computing machine bleep blop a punchcard pops out your mouth the langage of pressure the invisible presence a-a cream IN visible creams hard bearing there where they’re revolving in the center where all the threads are blended the crowd gathered Under the grey half dome Under the giant tRemors begin irRepresSible not thoughtS exactly an image you can Run with - why has the crowd gathered

They / upset / something (are, about)

- Why has the helicopter / (arrived)

Private security

In one of these buildings perhaps in a suit e

The target trembling / (hiding) a function

ary ultimately a chain of puppets; )

that is what one pulls back

the curtain reveal a tower high as justice

all types / motion / happening (of, are) helicopters garner attention with their roar the little droplets

glisten

pouring from their bellies, look see the muzzles poking out

the sides gleam like camera lenses they are ready to take pictures

The crowd is passing a small box

around in pah there upstretched hands s a picture on the box, but we can’t make it out. Goodbye.

New Poem

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Associate

Stoners and welders burn through the pot black space a light left slug trails? It gets under your pants. It burns. The form of the face hidden in the open sex impact we feel land we flee tour-selves.

We must have got lost, this place is not where we left. Everything is bigger or smaller than it was. Ratio between the now-size and the past-size: adjustable relation. As we ration the memory of our lovers gaze breaks in the face of (this) gathering mass hot like melted iron (abrupt redaction).

Interrogation 4

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 03 May 2011 05:52:00 +0000

The days soft from deluge rain

the deluge spent the beautiful day

in the cavern dream

echo of music

I no longer follow

The last cry of an animal the sound

n my ears looking over the bad poetry

such dumb, rough tongue as not fit for metaphor

the exaltation of decay

a day-dream of No

Consequences

and the outside world

wear cold splendor belongs

to anyone more spot on,

more talented than yourself

Intelligence, such as it is,

self-pitying and grand

this is o.k.

this is people

grist for the mill.

The insinuation: being.

This mess is dirtying,

but to become more seems half-

a raggy chew
toy with

this navel

gazing

Consequence:

Interogation

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Interogation.3

How many sets of dusty books do we have to dust

Off to get at

The whole picture—all at once—

Large, perfect, far, as well as detailed, segmented, close

Hot?

How much quiet is there to be measured

against the protestations of the shit-storm?

Like, not to castrate them, dirty-apple cheeked

Angels, no—but can we discover exactly

How many hill-people die rock-unlifted by the

Human hand of the mainstream/media/society?

Why do I feel it is my duty to ‘discover’

the ‘secrets’ of these ‘books’?

Here is the secret: this city situation

Abuts the extremes, so to see

The brokedown baglady pour water

On her stuffed-full-of-shit plastic bags,

--To wash them—

Makes me feel very my my relative class

As—well as what it is—

Even my hair feels like class, as it swoops down my brow.

II.

Indirectly, we’ve come to one of the major components

One of the basal ingredients underlying the foundation,

‘like unpressed pulp to the dusty books”—

Indifference. Indifference

lies in these lines.

The writer thinks and writes about ‘the poor’ and about class all day,

But despite reaching chilling conclusions, does not move to challenge—

Only really wants to keep on getting stoned at night, and then life’s alright—

So? That’s how indifferent indifference is: even when I care I don’t

Do anything. It doesn’t bode well.

What does though, these days?

III.

Inadvertently, we’ve come

To a basic factor in the personal calculus of ‘the writer’:

The connection/separation between ‘the world’

Created by their writing,

And the ‘larger’ outside/social world in which they live…

So? Well, ok. Just saying.

To write draws in and destroys the world.

Making ‘a world’ on paper. The paper world mirrors,

Mocks, cat-calls, questions the world ‘outside.

We are perilously close to a whirl-pool scenario

With this type of relationship. So many

Writers are drowned. They just don’t know.

Oh, they know. They know. They. Know.

Interrogation pt.2

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 05:34:00 +0000

This piece, a companion to Interrogation, was compiled using a method I quite like, whereby a previous work has chunks of text (no longer than a line) randomly moved around and mixed up, over and over. After the blending, harsh edits are made, and a pared-down, 'new' poem emerges. Previous Butchered Switch poems employing this method include H O W L and Mynifesto. Enjoy!

Interrogation II

Here is how the world ends,

everything speaks:

The deform tree,

the angels,

that secret home.

The touch burns our focus

wavers.

Taste that man-specter

whom defect works to speak to.

But where’s the home?

Maybe in ‘stone.’

A personal rune:

the stone wafts poetry.

Error my poetry.

Tree: the empty form.

Revolve upon us

Tree,

we keep sucking.

N T B T

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:47:00 +0000

At what point does jump that won’t end become flying?

Point of light / order playfully settles on the shoulder of the day

an action of rising: the day assures itself by sketching

on a page in the book of days: an artists graph--

Not To Be Trusted. Well, certain avenues of clearance are open.

Riding the bus of a morning with a dogged feeling,

of a sentiment not yet conveyed to myself the best of abilities.

Sitting forward quietly watching insurance ad copy swim

into focus on those banners they drape in the buses in now—

“A busted pipe in 4A can turn into a flooded ceiling in 3A.”

The unavoidable idea that in the city you begin

to see: ‘Mayhem,’

advanced peopling--horizontal, vertical, motorized--

makes it impossible to foresee all the shit that can drop on you

through no fault of your own, save proximity.

Then the radio cuts in with

“due to the president’s visit traffic patterns will be spontaneously

adjusted and road’s blocked off throughout the day.”

And I just start.

Trafficking in the gentler mayhems.

Being in the bus, being a boy, submits

to the vast wash of

the heart at the heart of the crocus—the roots, the weather

the vital bus—

ascending and descending

uptown and downtown

all at one and the same time.

My sweatpants are whistling.

The bus is filling.

Today all the people are real

Interrogation 1

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:13:00 +0000

I have no tradition

I feel lonely

I must build and rebuild

my personal everyday

but the continuity is not here simply quite simply

this personal devolving

conscious: lingering

doubt: What do I want?

As a hetero-white American man without defect, I don’t think

I’m supposed to even ask. I have

everything I have.

Right but maybe

maybe you’ll say I shouldn’t feel guilty

Or maybe you’ll think ill of me for being self-pitying.

What are you talking about?

What is the underlying organization?

That specter

That personal

expansion that comes with music: poignancy

The central message that appears and fades is stronger unnamed.

The individual plays in a small black room inside a large white space

We reform and deform and the angels and

the chariots and the empty form

revolve invisibly about and impose themselves upon us

and we keep sucking this bottle keep trying to get laid

and the band plays the music and the smell wafts

and there is a lonely reference of the past

poet riding his horse backwards into the brambles

and the speed increases and everything runs better with grease.

Hello I’m speaking.

Not the poet but his work. This

accretion of script that doesn’t really cut it.

Cut it up put it back together

go on saying this trying to get to some next level, not beyond, simply next,

Here is how the world ends,

everything we want but no notion of why or underlying system.

Maybe there is no better way

beyond the ‘stone’ of a referent

a personal rune: the shaking,

soft stone rising out of the loam

spitting secretions and

desecrations with no mind but such force

the hot stone to the touch burns

our focus wavers but the stone remains

Works for Paper 2011: 1

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:14:00 +0000

I drank some cokes.
   My in ran out.

A dog barked its shin.
   My in ran out.

Mather left Father.
   My in ran out.

The shed got a text.
   My in ran out.

The Mirror drew a picture.
   My in ran out.

A) Yearning for form?
   My in ran out.

B) The first instance?
   My in ran out.

C) The transubstantiated form of the arch?
   My in ran out.

The jingling tip of the fools-cap bobbles.
   My in ran out.

Standing before the king the fool.
   My in ran out.

The fools realizes his clothes smell heinous.
   My in ran out.

For how long have they smeln?
   My in ran out.

At last, my ink ran out of ribbon.
   My in ran out.

A) inchoate B) anomalous C) logo

The Vivisected Untitled Animal Poem ?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 02:07:00 +0000

We here at the Butchered Switch offices are proud to unveil the first in our newest regular feature--the Vivisection Operation. Switcher Andy Dieck of Brooklyn sent in this piece, which is a vivisected version of the recently dropped Untitled Animal Poem ? . We find his lines vigorous and overall his choices have revealed new and suprising depths to the text.

If you find yourself spurred to vivisect a poem please feel free to send it in to the offices by way of our email address found in the profile above. We eagerly await any submissions.

-Thank You,

Enjoy. (Note: this post was guest edited by former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleisher.)

In the dawn in my boat, I go to cover
the sound of the dead
women ripping each other off.

That song we sang until
we forgot it forgot us kiss.

his henchmen set up
camp in my yard

The pen I picked up
was different from the one
I put down.

Who keeps saying that?
the crow and the people

people lose all interest
you’re not a character, you are no depth,
Deux Machine all up on that string
drop the chorus in on tethers
the story goes like this, he doesn't get the girl.

Years later the Bruce Willis's roll up,
to get filled in on the backstory.
pull the sheet off its cage. It looks like a vulture,
hunched over a game of solitare. Smoking,
the parrot soliloquizes the explanations.
this function is its cage.

Untitled Animal Poem?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:19:00 +0000

"The mind is exactly this tree that bush
without thought or feeling both disappear"

-Ikkyu

The pen I picked up
was different from the one
I put down

the crow and his henchmen set up
camp in my yard

get out of your way cries the parrot

bah cries the goat

people lose all interest

and in the dawn I go in my boat

I don't know how to use

that song we sang until
we forgot
to cover
the sound of the dead
women ripping each other off

they're quite comfortable there

I saw your wife go
in the dawn in my boat

the song forgot us kiss
off kiss off cries the parrot

quick read the headlines lining its cage,

to get filled in on the backstory
pull the sheet off its cage

the parrot soliloquizes the explanations
this function is its cage.

your not a character, you are no depth,
Deux Machine all up on that string
drop the chorus in on tethers
the story goes like this, he doesn't get the girl.
Years later the Bruce Willis's roll up,

a parrot and a goat,
the crow and the people

The dawn in my boat, I go.

Who keeps saying that? Is it that parrot?

Catch it mid-day and it looks like a vulture,
hunched over a game of solitare. Smoking.
Turning the screw.

Superbowl Success

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 01:05:00 +0000

I was in a bodega buying a can of calimari with dimes and while waiting in line my attention was caught by a figure speaking on the little tv over the counter. It was a former football quarterback talking about winning a super bowl, and the implications it had on his life. He was, how can I say, very earnest. The portion of this poem that is dialogue is taken fairly verbatim from his musings.

I was struck by a few things, one is the simple observation of just how important the superbowl is to people. Secondly, I was amused by how seriously this man was talking, it was as if he were giving a moving affirmation of the institution of marriage, except he was talking about what it feels like to kick ass at the ultimate sports experience in this country.

I also thought how much his tone and conversation, very self-satisfied and moral, mimics the attitude of direct-marking and business language, which boils down to the idea of to the winner go the spoils. Here was an exceptional individual basking in and contemplating the meaning and implications of their fantastic achievements.

So, take it for what it's worth and enjoy the game.

Superbowl Success

The blue glows on the bottles and patrons in their rows

On mute the tv mimes the sports dance

As the thrum of this sports bar setting dims to silence

You in your stool elbow deep in the peanut bowl

are brought ever closer to an unwanted confrontation

the weirdo across the room has made eyes at and is coming towards you.

But do not fear nor look away from this strange man

Who speaks too loud red face set around too white teeth

You are so alarmed by this intrusion into your personal space

You don’t hear what it is he is saying at first,

but pay attention and be warned:

his voice will disappear you

into the pampas of his shoulder.

For he is an adman and a caffeine junkie

It is his turn, to explain, his subject is success and fame:

A black sound stage a large man with a withered cheek sits wearing a cream colored suit, holding his hand in his lap nodding in the viewers direction, where the interviewer sits, asking questions telepathically—or the large man is just rambling on in that free-associative, filling time, bridging way like tv personalities do. The well-groomed former tight end at the start of his announcer’s career. The quarterback who broke major passing records at the super bowl, ruminating on the import of the ring:

‘I don’t act any different now then I did before it happened, I still

get up in the morning and go to work, but I don’t know, it seems like

people talk to you differently. They use your name. Talk about you differently.

It really changes your perspective, because you are brought into new levels,

So you can view time open, an empty stretch fading out of

The picture you have ranges but

When you’re a kid you think fixedly

‘I want to win the superbowl.

The time on the field so much outweighed

By time off, a guy has to build himself

An exit strategy, set something aside

For the years of his dotage, and

What I’m saying about this ring is

That if factors in that equation

I don’t even know all the ways how.

Your only chance to have it not

Kick your ass

Is to ride it out to completion.

Subway Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:11:00 +0000

to turn and cook the meat we got married
after a week new start new life

i woke up and i was 35 only the poor are glad
to be alive youth culture
hip vulture Lars the strongman downing whiskey
he burps and laughs you'd never guess
that he was sixty the hobo
is not homeless
he plays rhumba on the subway all day for change
a culture warrior in a spurned war when will fortune turn

the page made mistakes it was not over
when it was full i was not
serious when i called you
fool forgive me
let us drive through the clouds
with the radio turning changing jumping strangely
enough is enough is strangely enough

the cat feels pensive paused over its water bowl
sound in the hall a shadow in the mirror
I did not see who it was but no impression has been clearer
it was a failure kicking around playing at being a demon
you know its that season that flavor that taste of
sawdust kicked up on a bar floor swept up out of a corner
the cat died where I lay and cried but
the demon came back for more to understand

go back and cross out every fifth word
if that does not work close your eyes spin three times
tape paper to your forehead and look in the mirror
the subtle transfer occurred with out being seen
see an order had been activated
called dynamics and harmony of aesthetics and action
a stage and a play and it revealed the magic
as god were looking over your shoulder looking with you and
approving,

as if a circus had arisen on the street as if wind
blows through a sheet and we release
our kundalini by breathing right
and minding our manners and making sensible purchases
and raising kids and watching what we eat
the taste is both sour and sweet
the treat is to be free and run no more after any one thing
and even to die creates no fear in no man

we've gone as far as we can which is eighth avenue
for certain new yorkers the fulcrum of the universe
and here we parted and sighed and our sighs rose
and we rose on our toes and our lips shook hands openly soonishly
your hair rose when the train passed it hung there twirling.

'His palpable is tiredness'

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:29:00 +0000

Those work is based on an encounter i had that revealed my position in the power hierarchy: it was a simple encounter, me trying to squeeze past a waiter in a hallway.

His palpable is tiredness

A wall with no middle,

Lock with no hole

Eyes in another universe

We can only see past

Each other even though we nod

Hello, this hallway is narrowing

So we have to slow dance past

One another even as he heads

With his bucket to the latrine

I am leaving this karmic omlette

Resides in reptile eyes

That though we are innocent

We are none of us clean

At least not me, I feel so

Dirty, what did I did

eat garbage

dwink gasowine

Subject Index pt.1

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:57:00 +0000

Subject Index;

this is the title of a new sequence of process poems taking the subject index of a marketing textbook's subject index as the inspiration.

Safety

Contest

fluctuations

Forecasts potential territories

Sales branches

Sales era

Sales force

Compensating culturally diverse computer

Managing

motivating

Performance evaluation

Recruitment and selection

Size of training offices

Salespersons sales promotion(s)

Methods opportunities and limitations in

Soft drink trade sampling

Satellite television service scanning environmental

Decision making scrambled scripts

Search seasonal products data

Distortion and

Consumer buying behavior

Selective self-interest

Self-regulatory program seller

Selling personal selling agents

Sentence-completion tests

Service(s) characteristic of classification of exchange of marketing of nature and characteristics of organizational buyers sexual harassment

Shareware

Shopping centers

Shopping products

Short-range single-line

Single-source variable site locations

Situational factors and situation analysis

Social activism social class behavior

And purchasing as philosophy

Defense issues in ethics impact proactive strategy

Soft drinks special-event

Willingness of images store specific storyboard

For straight alliances competitive

corporate strategy stratified subculture

Sugging

Under the guise of matching

In sales courts

in sweepstakes

End of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:42:00 +0000

Well, we've just about wrapped up our first year here at Butchered Switch, and as we calmly survey the offices--the weeping interns, the wretching accountants--we know that everything has gone better than could have been expected. We've had it all, laughs, tears, withdrawal. And our commitment is firm--to continue our legacy of producing the most, best poetry read by the fewest and the craziest into the next year. Salut!

EVERY THING

Did absolutely everything

Wrong

Only in my head Had it goin on

As I did so it happened to me

and I did not speak, was not spoken too.

There were tears running down the street great fancy

Painted circus curtains many murals do contain

And the head of hair of the fray

And the inconvenience Intrusion by the old-man friend

This being me everything jumbles

Coffee rumbles from the shudder

Spilling onto the wood-box top Our table

The spot light splashed they were rocked in a pod-

Cast tone in bronze

Bell

Back to back tech technology

Somebody shut those puppets up

Parable of Hope/Mountains of Madness

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:35:00 +0000

I know I know what your thinking; isn't this just a bit of plagarism? I mean, this poem is just the text of Mountains of Madness, the H.P. Lovecraft novel. That position overlooks the edits and alterations that have been made to the text. Perhaps the biggest job was cutting out the second and third adjectives and adverbs cluttering the text. Think what you will about Lovecraft's racism, as a writer he had a vivid sense of the motion of a text, and the affects that could be achieved by that motion. He also either did not trust himself, and tarted everything up with unnecessary flourishes and 'color' or he was a big windbag.

Bob Ducca is a very inspirational man and if you google his name I'm sure you'll find some fitting introduction to his wisdom. When I hear him reach his poetry my head swims and for a moment I feel I am back among the smoke and street-cars of 20's Paris.

Parable of Hope for Bob Ducca from H.P. Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness

Arranged by Michael Newton

We had risen Gradually

Flying over the higher foothills and along

Towards the relatively low pass

As we advanced We occasionally looked down

The terrain the crevasses the glaciers, wind-bared passes,

and the other bad spots

mystery beckoning in the sea of sky

archaic myths the winds swept in

the omnipresent and resonant cave-mouths

the touch of evil glimpsed betwixt their sound

as complex and unplaceable

As any of the other dark impressions.

no human eye had ever gazed those mountains of madness.

Unable to speak behold that realm

Disbelief in senses Finally saw

fiendish violation of known natural law

long before we had passed the great star

and reached our plane

these foothills black, ruin-crusted slopes reared Against the east,

reminding us of those strange Asian paintings

And Nicholas Roerch;

We could not face without panic

The prospect of again sailing by

Those cave-mouths where the wind made sounds

Keyed up to a dangerous nervous pitch We made takeoff Over the nightmare city The primal Cyclopean masonry spread

as it had done when we first saw it

and we began rising and turning

The ice-dust clouds of the zenith were doing all sorts of fantastic things

I tried to keep all my skill and self-possession about me,

And stared at the reddish farther sky Betwixt the walls of the pass,

Wishing I had wax-stopped ears Looking back,

Ahead, sidewise, and upward Began shrieking

Mad Close to disaster

(What final horror made him scream so insanely?)

III

Hinting that the final horror was a mirage…

Single, fantastic, daemoniac glimpse

Among the churning clouds

Memory had chance to draw

black pit, cavern rim, five dimensions, windowless solids, nameless cylinder, elder pharos, Yog-Sothoth, primal-white jelly, in darkness, out of space, wings, eyes, moon-ladder, the original, eternal, undying,

When fully himself he repudiates all this,

Attributes it to his curious and macabre reading…

But the higher sky was surely vaporous

And swirls of ice-dust do take strange forms,

And Imagination can sometimes be reflected,

Refracted, and magnified in

Layers of restless cloud,

But he never could have seen so much in one instant.

At the time his shrieks were confined to the repetition of a single mad word.