A Miscellany for Nicanor on Sept 11 2011

Couple of things for Nicanor:

Small Rocket Ship Spinning Atoms Logo

They fed neutrinos into our sun
Earth simply disappeared
Stones thrown from the moon
Jellyfish riding our spines
Theocracy
Time-travelling Russians attract the baldies
Impersonators infiltrate
Nuclear war
Asteroid impact
Machine intelligence




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After Gasta Claus


The revolution never came north
They went south instead
And they went further south
Then fell off the planet
With all of us intact
But little to breath
Less to eat
And there we float just off to the left
Off the planet
Watching the earth
Like a tv you want to punch
Cause the show sucks
And there’s nothing
Else on
There are no stars that you want to follow,
And how do we get back
How do we get back
By words by deeds
Or just by wishing
The hands out trying
We are trying to pull ourselves back to the earth
By grasping at the very lack of molecules
Into which we fell
And if we get there.
We‘ll crawl up from
The south
Like monsters
We’ll come north
From the south
Like monsters
And norther
From souther
And maybe you’ll see us

We look a little hungry
Space don’t got much
to eat


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To Nibbles, my dog

To Nibbles, my dog-child
Who knew nothing at all, your eyes said
As much as tobacco, dumb enough, your glance.
But you had big shoulders to get up over things
And when you left me, you had no spine.
Look at other dogs, all worked up, orphanistic, save them!
But you just improvised, rotting old Nibbles
As you whirled around in your scared fits
Which brought my house down in fear
Despite all the drives to the ambulance, we didn’t
Because it was filled up with the naked dead
And you had bitten the child in me
While we wrestled up in the air, landing on some poor prostitute
But you were my best friend.
Your dog family didn’t get it
They didn’t want to get it,
And the number of times you sold me,
Nibbles, comrade!
You made a mystery of me
The way I ran into the street that day
Sure you were happy, sure you were happy,
Happy dog.


From “A Niebla, mi perro” by Rafael Alberti

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I bought a hat in Spain


Whose against poetry
But a humid businessman named Artaud?
A priest lacking one thing?
A general who doubts the miasma?
A vagabond who pisses on everything
Including the very visage of death?
Someone who talks bad to you?
A dancer on the precipice
of a narcissist, ya gotta love that!
Bloody joker, but
Deliberately miserable?
Howabout a poet who lives in a missile silo,
An alchemist of these times?
A plastic bagged revolutionary,
Bringing home the tasty little bourgeoisies?
A nut?
Some god, the innocent!
Or maybe some petty little alderman from a shipping town?
Underline your answer!

What is it that poetry has against itself:
Temporal tea?
A rock sliced by snow?
Maybe a wallet full of human poop?
God thinks so.
A spy telling truth?
A newsflash from your face
Direct to a writer of your own?
Hold your horses –
Some cheap pass at young poets?
Artaud eating a sausage?
Then flying apart because
Artaud is full of gas?
Some thin artery about to explode?

Take note of the Cross
Which many consider correct.

Of “Test” by Nicanor Parra in de Obra gruesa (1969, Chile)

------------------------


Indie Act

Long unhinged
From the machinations
Of the catholics
I announce to you right now, today:
I have my own faith.
It is a small, new country
That ends just past my nose.

This is one of the perks
Of being 57, the right
To flee any church so eager
To put me underground.

I’m not nuts about it, sure,
Not like if a flower gave me a nice smell
When it touched my body.

Sort of delirious, enough
To make a butterfly convulse
When it appears crowned
With an apparatus
That resembles my soul.

May the Fifth International forgive me.

Here, in Toronto, this whatever
Of November, current year,

Wildly aware of what needs doing!


From “Acta de Independencia” by Nicanor Parra, in de Obra gruesa (Santiago, 1969)

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Due to other commitments, my next post to the blog will be September 22.

If anybody's reading this, give me a shout, tell me what you think. Even better, ask me a question about Nicanor! I'll try and answer it!

con un abrazo

Jim