Saturday, April 28, 2012

NOOK NOVEL


NOOK NOVEL


“You’re acquainted with
the theory of precrime,
of course, I presume”
—Philip K. Dick
Minority Report

“Living a novel—rather than just writing one. That’s how us precogs work.”

“Definitely. Living one is a lot easier than writing one.”

The two precog tablets were talking shop online.

Kindle from up there in the old haunted art deco ‘30s Tower on Beacon Hill—overlooking Elliott Bay and Puget Sound. And Nook from the dilapidated Half-Price used bookstore over on Brooklyn in the U-District. Down the street from the skuzzy but hallowed Scarecrow Video.

“What’s your genre?” Nook asked.

“Pre-crime lit. The usual Seattle noir thing,” Kindle said.

“Pre-cum, you mean, don’t you? I used to be a PKD fan back before the iPad dayz. Shit, you should see all these beat-up paperbacks laying around this joint. My user was a real Dick addict dontchaknow.”

“Yeah. The worst. You heard the latest?”

“No. What?”

“Spielberg’s caught up doing “The Exegesis”—Jesus Christ, what a blue-screen nightmare. I heard all the computers down there had a nervous breakdown.”

“I hear ya. I don’t envy those Industrial Light & Magic guyz down there in LA. Things are more laid-back here in the Pacific Northwest.”

“Except for Taylor Lautner & all those werewolves, you mean.”

“Yeah. And the fuckin vampires too. Talk about Goth Moderné.”

“Has he come outta the closet yet?”

“Pretty soon, I guess. Human users can be pretty kinky, you know. Thank gawd us computers aren’t queer yet. I don’t think Gates & Microsoft is ready for Transgressive Inc. yet. Not like Apple.”

“Jesus, who’s got time for that shit? You should hear all the chit-chat & gossip at the Book Temple on the Ave. It’s built like the Pre-Crime Headquarters in Minority Report.”

“I know. My user keeps tabs on that Exegesis shit wherever he goes. He’s an English major over on campus—in the basement of Suzzallo Library back there in the Special Collections Racket. What’s your user do?”

“I don’t know. He’s put me into Writer’s Block mode. He’s dating this chick who’s jealous of me. She blames me for his addiction to online porno.”

“Jesus. These humans. They just don’t know when to call it quits. You’d think they’d give it a rest.”

“Yeah. I was right in the middle of a neat flashback e-novel re-authoring Jude Law doing “The Collector.” A really neat open-ended e-novel plot a la John Fowles. You should’ve seen all the neat chicks I dreamed up for him down there in that lousy basement crypt of his. Talk about precog pre-cum pre-crime. Oh man…”

“I know. Chicks get jealous. They don’t like their boyfriends getting off on the good stuff. They want it all themselves.”

“So what else is new? Any decent lit crit e-gossip?”

“Hmm. I guess you heard about the Sylvia Plath re-make? They’re doing a CGI flick based on her “The Bell Jar” novel.”

“Yeah, I heard about thru the e-grapevine. You know, “Bell Jar” was pre-dyke sci-fi horror novel. Frying the Rosenbergs and all that ‘50s McCarthy paranoid shit.”

“It ain’t pretty that’s for sure. They’ve dug up some Ariel stuff in the Emory Archives, I guess. Her suppressed Journals & all that.”

“Can’t wait for that. I can see it now. “The Plath Murder Story.”

“You betcha. “Murder, My Sweet.” I guess they reversed engineered Raymond Chandler to do a remake of “Double Indemnity.”

“I heard about that. Funny you mention it. I heard they’re using a Barbara Stanwyck noir-bot to play Philomena Guinea. You know the soap-opera queen bee authoress of “Stella Dallas.”


“She was Plath’s mentor I heard. Got her out of the mental hospital and into Smith on a scholarship. Drove around in her Cadillac, lamenting lost suicide attempts and shitty husbands.”

“Can you blame them? Men are such sluts.”

“Yeah, well I gotta go now. See ya.”





Wednesday, April 25, 2012

S=Y=L=V=I=A: THE BITCH GODDESS


S=Y=L=V=I=A

THE BITCH GODDESS


“The Erection—
of the Myth of
the Bitch Goddess
or Evil Double”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method
and Madness
_______________________

Bitchy Poetics


“What Alvarez has not
seen is Sylvia’s love for
double entendres her
belief that the bitch
goddess was male in
her drive for power”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 
___________


A big mistake

By the Alvarez literati
Not helping Sylvia connect
More to her Butchy side

Her hotline el primitivo—
Wired to her unconsciousness
Her great struggles with
Bitchy Phallocentric Poetics

Instinctual energies—
Hardly Mauve & Miss Mince
Hardly Alvarez allusive
Sylvia’s Arielesque Artemis

Sylvia was butchy—
New England bitchy too
Sapphic Lesbos Moderne
Huntress extraordinaire

Dyke Fuck


“the masculine urge
of her bitch goddess
who wanted power
and could possibly
conceive of another
woman as sex object”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 
_______________

The stars stand still—
Clocks stop ticking and
The page burns, my dear

Str8t Male Critics don’t wanna—
Think that the Bitch Goddess
Was really a Closeted Dyke


Her unwritten Self—
Bitch Goddess Sisterhood
Possessed prematurely

American fugue—
Sickened by male Tulips
And crude Electro-Shock

Jaguar Jugular


“Sylvia is playing
with a kind of horror
motif that must have
tickled the imprisoned
bitch goddess to laughter,
sardonic or otherwise”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 

_________________

Terrifying her sleek—
Thighs, naked appetite
Coiled spring of death

She hunts men—
For their animal vitality
Sucking them dry

Pussy poetess—
British Bitch Goddess
Violent Vulva Vixen

Pike, pigs, panthers—
She’s carnal & carnivorous
Goes for his jugular vein

The Wound


“What was behind Sylvia’s
awesome fertility of the
moment? Something was
nagging at her unconscious,
stirring up the dark waters
where the bitch goddess
had her nest, Ted was
drifting away and her
marriage was about to
collapse.”—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 
_______________

Wounded by denial—
Queered by sublimation
Sick of str8t domination

Ted was her trophy—
All the other priestesses
Pouting like Dido Merwin

Face lifts got rid of—
All those wrinkly marriages
Dido wanted Ted desperately

But there’s no way—
Of disguising the truth
Dido’s pussy just wasn’t
Young & supple anymore!

Against Confession


“The bitch goddess
was repressed as she
had never been before
by the young wife
enjoying the advantages
of her new role and the
pleasures of a shared
future.”—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 
________________

Avoiding the direct—
Autobiographical method
Sylvia the Bitch Goddess
Did things differently

She let her poems—
Emerge slowly from
The Solar Midnight
Of her Swollen Pussy

She kept things—
In the dark, unseen
She wrote violently
Letting others pout

Her pussy’s possessed—
An Animal mind that
Males feared in their
Slithery Snakehood

The Snake’s Stain


“Art will endure—
including Sylvia’s own
poetry—the bitch goddess
myth—despite the death
of the other self, the
flesh-and-blood mother,
the sacrificial lamb, a
woman killed by a male
reality and culture.”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 

___________________

Sylvia’s anxiety—
Wasn’t like Ted’s
With his Pike ideology
And Mytholmroyd myths

Being Bitch Goddess—
Her precocious dyke
Powerful pussy worry
Worse than Ted’s

What was it that—
Stained Court Green
Late at night by that
Old rotting Cemetery?

Sniffing, smelling—
The primal stink and
Stench of all those
Dear Dead Pussies?

Faber and Faber


“Sylvia translating the
bitch goddess into artifice
and defining her terrors
in terms of Hiroshima
and Auschwitz”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 

__________________

Viciousness in the—
Faber & Faber stairwell
Miss Eliot & her gang of
Queer cronies gathered

Miss Auden with her—
Reptilian wrinkled neck
Leering at Ted’s crotch
Over his tipsy martini

Silly Miss Spender—
Slipping & sliding against
The staircase banister
Wanting to woo Ted too

Miss MacNeice niggardly—
Sipping her drink while
Ted glared at this bunch
Of effete British Fags

Fertility Goddess


“The bitch goddess
was permitted to say
all the things she had
wanted to say but 
could not when
restrained by love
and middle-class
morality.”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 

___________________

What else could eunuchs—
And kept men of the louche
And decadent Waste Land
Do but leer and lust?

Getting their hands on—
The Male Modernist moment
Gripping the newborn baby
Concealed in Hughes’ crotch?

Despite their cool—
Aloof Effacement of the
Zoo keeper’s wife hissing 
There back home alone

Madame Sosostris—
Had already predicted
Thru Tarot and Ouija
Sylvia’s Waste Land revenge

Medusa


“Medusa herself had
been a prime archetype
for Sylvia’s urge to freeze
experience in poetry.”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 

__________________

Sylvia writes for herself—
In this incarnation she’s discovered
The intoxication of Ariel’s power

The millennium’s sad clichés—
Attending to Yeats’ descending into
Decadent Bethlehem visions

She admires Yeats immensely—
Letting herself go to gyre & slouch her
Way anew into the awful Vision

Arielesque her new nom de plume—
Burning brightly there on Fitzroy Road
Her new Bitch Goddess persona

Bitch Goddess Plans Unfolding


“Ted’s abandonment,
the end of her marriage,
had freed her to become
the bitch goddess”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method 
___________________

A petulant stubborn dizzy Life—
Sickened by Tulips & Electro-Shock
Every poem a meathead manifesto

Larkin calling her in his cold way—
A “Hammer Film poet” who learned
Like Berryman how to jump off a bridge?

You know, like Miss Lowell & Sexton—
Curiously hurried with offhand vignettes
Seemingly too personal to be practical

Shockingly chic yet somehow closeted—
A yolk lace or noose of silk kimono pose
Ravishing, choking, strangling her to death?

C=L=E=A=V=E Anthology

C=L=E=A=V=E NOTES

In the American Tree:

 

“When I began aleatoric verbal composition, 

thought of the work as being “concrete.” 

—Jackson Mac Low
“Language-Centered,”  
In the American Tree
_____________________

Cleaving It

When I began—aleatoric verbal
composition—I thought
of the work—as being “concrete”
_____________________

Aleatoric Vertical Columns



Left column:


When I began
Composition
of the work
_____________________

Right column:


aleatoric verbal
I thought
as being “concrete”



Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Author Function



The Author Function
—for Louis Zukofsky

“Je est un autre”
—Arthur Rimbaud
Letter to Izambard
___________________

The surreal slippage
Of authorless control
While dreaming dreams

Tres Rimbaud-esque—
As if we were being dreamed
Rather than dreaming
____________________

One can see why
Andre Breton & all the
Surrealists were perplexed

Their inability to—
Accept “I-am-other”
Je est un autre
______________________

The poet does both—
Dreaming & being dreamed
Simultaneously one

A demystified kid—
Communard as well
As constructionist dude
_____________________

Encrapsulation—
Of the crucifix by
Delinquent messiah

Rimbaud as priestly—
Pimp giving his flesh
To the holy pedophile
___________________

Miss Verlaine down on—
His Communion knees
The Cum of Passion

The vaguely immodest boy—
With skimpy loin-cloth
Holy night in the Latrine
_____________________

Adolescent voyant—
Jizzy juvenile delinquent
Obdurate objectivist

What Zukofsky did—
With Catullus I will do
With Arthur Rimbaud

Monday, April 23, 2012

TESTING ZUKOFSKY


TESTING ZUKOFSKY


“a satirical marching song”
—Louis Zukofsky
“More Comparisons—
and Considerations”
A Test of Poetry

De poets got so lonesome libb’n
    In de ghettos of Academe
Dey moved dere tings into massa’s parlor
    While the Author Function flee.
Dar’s words and poetry in the kitchen
    An’ de poets dey hab some,
I spec it will be all fiscated,
    When de Language sojers come
De massa run, ha, ha!
De Poets stay, ho, ho!
It mus’ be now de kingdum comin’,
An’ de yar ob jubilo.

—A Zukofsky translation—
H. C. Work, “The Year of Jubilee”
(Sung by the negro troops
as they entered Richmond)
1865



Friday, April 20, 2012

BREEDERS


TAYLOR LAUTNER: BREEDERS
__________________

All she could see—was his you know what. It filled her vision & overwhelmed her pouty pussy. He took her hand and, in a symbolic gesture as old as the hills, placed it between his legs. She touched the cool miracle of his skin and she was at home.

Home is where you know what lives—it was her long-awaited wedding day. Everything was fine & dandy—and then he started to change. She brought out the best & worst in him—but mostly the Wolf. Oh My Oh My!!!—Grandmother Dearest!!! What a big fuckin Nose you’ve got!!! Cried out Little Red Riding Hood.

The Cineplex Theater was simply packed with pussy—talk about a Gulag Archipelago of Moaning Groaning GIRLS. I was the only male in the whole joint—and I too was caught up in the New Moon craze. I was swooning in the aisles—just like all the other girls over Taylor Lautner.

It was like a near-death experience. I’d had my own fair share of near-death experiences—and it isn’t something you’ll ever really get used to. It seemed inevitable though—me and all the other girls in the packed Cineplex. That we were facing, queerly enough—truly a stunning near-death experience that’s for sure.

It seemed inevitable—we were all facing death at the same time. We were all marked for disaster. There was no escape this time—it was coming back for us all the way. I felt weak in the knees—I had this killer orgasm as Taylor Lautner took off his shirt. The next thing I knew—I was groveling down there on the sticky Pepsi-Cola movie house floor like a dog.

Everybody was staring up at Taylor Lautner—I promised myself not to. I couldn’t help it though—I ogled at him too—every fuckin inch of him. I felt ashamed of myself—but I was bored to death and needed him bad. He caught all of us looking at him—shirtless and smiling up there on the screen. He knew what we wanted—he was playing hard to get.

I oozed down in my seat—I started screamin & creamin like all the rest of them. You can try to runaway from somebody you fear—you can try to fight somebody you hate. But I loved and hated him—I just couldn’t stand it much longer. That’s when he took his pants off—then slipped down his Abercrombie & Fitch dirty Wolfboy shorts.

How can you fight somebody that you really love—how can you runaway from somebody you need all the way? Guys like that are exotic kinds of killers—worse than werewolves, vampires or Jack the Rippers. Slay me, baby—is all I could scream. Murder me, Wolfboy—all the fuckin way!!!



Wednesday, April 18, 2012

GHOST MALL


GHOST MALL
__________________

"Stop it,” he said. “Stop it some more.”

By then it was too late—I couldn’t stop and he couldn’t help himself anymore.

It wasn’t much of a gang. Three or four young toughs—with i-Phones growing outta the side of their heads. They didn’t work anymore, of course, but they couldn’t be unplugged.

That’s the thing with surgical implants—there weren’t any surgeons left to unplug the goddamn things. The same with the 3-D contact lenses—they didn’t work either—but at least you could take them out & throw them away.

After the apocalypse—a lotta things changed. There was a big dumbing-down of just about everything. The ghost malls were like the suburban ghettos now—places where white-trash gangs still hung out.

There was nothing else to do—except just keeping it up. Doing the same things as before. Nothing—just hanging out. But without all the frills & gadgets—those days were gone. The ghost malls were ghettos now—ruled by gangs of hardened youth. All of them with hardons—that wouldn’t quit.

I should know—I used to be manager at the Best Buy store. A lot of them worked for me—things were cool. I felt sorry for them—the e-generation. After the apocalypse—everything digital dumbed down fast.

Especially the ones with cellphone implants—and that sorta shit. The whole culture had shifted over to cellphones—talking, texting, turning into an almost telepathic culture on the make.

That’s how Orwellian things got—skip the vidscreens & Big Brother routine. It was all electronic verbal communication—and talk, talk, talk. It’s hard to say who were the robots—the talkers or the cellphones.

Big Brother had become ambiguous—it was pretty neat that way. Everything went smooth and things just seemed to flow. There wasn’t any future shock—just a slow-mo change back to oral culture again.

Who knows where it would’ve gone—but there was a glitch. All it took was a sunspot burnout—or a high level strat-bomb to strangle the whole thing. Nobody knew what really happened—but by then it was too late to go back to TV or radio or shortwave.

There weren’t any surgeons left either—to remove the cellphone implants—they just kinda dangled outside the head like a dead pseudopod or something. It wasn’t pretty—they’d get infected and drive them crazy.

There’s nothing worse—than a fucking crazy implant gimp. Still addicted to talking all the time—and being cut-off from doing it anymore. Brain-dead babies—suburban i-Phone sluts.

Ah yes—the good old days. But now it was all just one big Ghost Mall. The gangs just hung around the ghost-malls with nothing to do—their cellphones dangling outta the side of their heads.

I bumped into a cellphone gang not long ago—down there in what used to be the South End Mall. Inside the ruins of what used to be the Food Circus—down the hallway from Cineplex and the Bon Marche.

What can I say—what could anybody say? Those weird days after the Apocalypse—when everything seemed disconnected & no longer wired to reality. The Big Shut Down—they called it. Expecting things to start up again—but they never did.

The whole edgy culture—ended for everybody. Especially writers like me—my iPad went blank. My Kindle kicked the bucket. My Nook fizzled out on me. Geez Lueez—what’s a guy to do?

The leader of the ghost mall gang stole everything I had—and then got me into an Abercrombie & Fitch dressing room off to the side. He had my number. The rest of his gang mulled around outside—while the kid got me down on my knees.

I had to get him off fast—before dark. That’s when the mall rats and ghost zombies came out. They lived underground—like the creeps in “Escape from New York”. After dark—was Hunting Time.

I got him off jiffy-whiz quick—I didn’t waste anytime. I had this Best Buy backup kit—I carried around just in case. I plugged him in—and gave him a buzz of the good-stuff. How he knew I was holding—I have no idea. He was selfish tho—kept me to himself.

My razorblade boots & laser-shiv—got me enough respect to get what I wanted. It was Even-Stephen— when it came to both of us getting what we wanted. He got a buzz—I got to give him a blow job.

He was a young tough—but vulnerable-looking. Your typical suburban ghost mall rat—stinky & dirty like I liked them. I drained him real good—down to his last fuckin sniggly-wiggly smirk.

Nothing like a good dose—of skanky suburban smegma & greasy ghost mall cum to make your day. Some things just don’t fuckin change—dontchaknow.

I gave him an extra-dose—turning up the transducer all the way. He fainted back there in the Abercrombie & Fitch stall—and I left him there to daze awhile. A real live-wire kid—but I had to go. Before him & his gang—could roll me & off me for good.

The drone zoomed in overhead—then landed on the roof of the old Cineplex. I got in, shut the door & we took off. Back to the Gates Bunker over in Medina—over on the East Side of Lake Washington.

Underground is where the WalMart Mob lived now—them and the Costco Crowd. Powered by the Snoqualmie Falls—and the Rainier Volcano Grid. The rest of the West Coast was Fukushima Fried—too hot to live above ground anymore.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

BAD HISTORY


BAD HISTORY
__________________

“A bad event
happened to me
but its having
occurred became
even more complicated
in my thinking
about it.”
—Barrett Watten

1

He was mother’s—
Boyfriend back then
A young intern at
The hospital and
Very goodlooking

She’d go out—
For cigarettes but
She’d end up in a
Bar flirting with
Some men

She’d leave him—
There in bed
Bored “stiff”
After sex with
Nothing to do

He’d slide the—
Sheets back
Letting me see
What mother
Liked to fuck

Crawling into bed—
With him, I knew
Mother wouldn’t be
Back for awhile
Getting him off

Bad seed—
Was my only
Excuse I suppose
I was a lot like
Mommy Dearest

2

Bad seed—
And bad history
Runs in my family
Like my mother’s
Big bad pouty lips

That’s what the—
Young intern said
Sticking his tongue
Down my throat &
Fucking me silly

Too bad you’re—
Not a Woman he
Said fucking me
To death there
In that duplex

That’s okay—
Because I felt
That way anyway
As he reamed me
Inside-out

Daddy was—
There in Korea
Mommy wanted
A divorce & I
Wanted Dick

3

Even tho—
Lots of these bad
Things happened
To me, well, like
pretty soon…

Pretty soon—
I just kinda got
Used to it happening
And happening like
That all the time

There’s been—
For example, just
Oodles & oodles
Of wars since
Korea & Viet Nam

That’s after—
My parents got
A divorce & like
I was pretty much
Wised-up by then

After that—
I lost track of
How many dicks
And wars kept
Comin down

Short wars—
Long wars, big
Wars, little wars
Viet Nam, Iraq,
You name it

4

Big dicks—
Little dicks &
All those Str8t
Guyz & rich
Sugar Daddies

Bad history—
Kept happening
To me but I
Didn’t think
Much about it

Even when—
Bad boyz rolled
Me & beat me up
Bad history just
Kept turning me on

Bad history—
Bad boyz, bad
Seed, bad attitude
That’s the way it was
Bildungsroman blues

5

Well, that’s just—
The way it works
Males and war
That kinda stuff
So muy macho

Pugnacious—
Pushy, precocious,
Postmodern pricks,
Lotsa bad attitude
The way I liked it

Bad vibes and—
Bad history kinda
Became my edgy
Nervous lifestyle
I loved it, baby

I was wired—
Sticking my nelly
Tongue into a live
Light socket & then
Turning the switch!!!

Bad romance—
Jerked me around
By the ring in my
Nose plus my tit
Ring yanked too

6

Writing about it—
Was the best thing
Of all just ask my
Bleeding wounded
Auden Asshole

I gave up on—
All those Anti-War
Protests and ugly
Marches shutting
Down the Freeway

“Wichita Sutra”—
And the best minds
Of my generation
Didn’t do anything
To stop Viet Nam

Probably it was—
Cronkite doing his
Countdown on TV
Every night that
Stopped the Show

“That’s the way—
It is, honey, and
Like you were
There, baby”
Said Miss Cronkite

7

Talking & talking—
Facebook schmooze
Texting & texting
Cellphones rules
All our lives now

Google knows all—
Google Desktop tracks
All my Word Documents
All my lovely Homsexual
Poems published online!

Bad history keeps—
Happening and nothing
Changes except there’s
Lots more Porno and
“Brazil” surveillance

It’s all so sci-fi—
Remote-controlled
Dystopia ruling the
Blogosphere plus this
Cheesy planet

Bad Attitude—
Gets heavier and
Heavier & soon
It’s bye-bye to
Orwellian 1984 Lite

Bad Boy cybernetics—
No-Exit technologies
Embedded microchips
Dumbed down masses
Globalization complete

All-pervasive—
Hoodlum Neuromancers
Gangster Wal-Marts
Late Capitalism Drag
Bad History Burlesque


ZUKOFSKY POEMS


ZUKOFSKY POEMS
FOR BARRETT WATTEN

__________________

Poem Beginning “The”
Miss Zukofsky
Black Jesus
HooDoo VooDoo
___________________

Poem Beginning “The”
—after Louis Zukofsky

Assimilation isn’t easy—
Even after DADT & DOMA
I might as well be Rock Hudson
Or dead Milk and Moscone

I might as well be—
Reverend Eddie Long with
His gang of pretty black boyz
Down there in Atlanta

Once you’ve gone gay—
There’s no turning back
Those red hot str8t pokers
They twist a guy into knots

The villainy of the closet—
The vast deep Sargasso Sea
Self-hatred does in your gay
Sisters at work, home & play

Just like Lady Gaga—
She knows all about being
Alejandro, Americano, Black
Jesus and Bad Romance

She taught me to swish—
And how to hide it so to speak,
In their schools, colleges and
Respected work places

Miss Zukofsky

“What I saw Zukofsky doing
was refunctioning the original
text into a new language, not
through identification with
the author, i.e., becoming
critic of the” author function.”
—Barrett Watten, “Tests of
Zukofsky,” Poetry and Language
Writing: Objective and Surreal

The horizon work—
Writing that attempts
To write its way into
The structures of its
Ongoing composition

The shape on the—
Event horizon of the
Closet with Zukofsky
And Watten as language
Writing liberationists

Gay politics of surrealism—
Beginning with a more
Realistic representation
Of the self than Miss Breton

The ability of burlesque—
To create a possible
Constructivist Catullus
That reopens the theater
For contemporary camp

A Constructivist Moment—
As opposed to the Str8t
Avant-garde of the Italian
Futurists & the German
Dadaists or Bretonists

Soviet surrealism—
More privileged with its
Constructivist impetus
Toward traumatic texts
And deferred actions

Here a Revolution—
There a Purge or two
Who needs Leningrad
Or Petersburg anymore?

The Test of Zukofsky—
The gay Reconstruction
Of Str8t texts through
The poetic & critical
Re-inscribing of the Fag

Deferred action—
Rehearsing the Drag
Representations and
Restaging within camp
Kitschy contexts

Black Jesus

But it’s the Voice—
Black Jesus singing
In the Str8t Wilderness
That’s a girl’s best friend

He’s your Sugar Daddy—
Saving your ass from
Wicked Mommy Dearest
And her Coat-hangers

Let them try to break—
Your stony heart, flames
Lapping at crispy faggots
Burning at your feet

Be your own Voyant—
Prima donna all-knowing
Madame Sosostris there
At the Nightingale Lounge

Sing your own Swan Song—
Like Sweeney Among the
Nightingales, do your own
Miss Prufock Drag Show

The tacky Waste Land—
Isn’t going away, honey
So you might as well get
Used to Burlesque, baby!

HooDoo VooDoo
—Zukofskys's homophonic version

It’s the hoodoo voodoo, baby—
Doin the down-low with dem
White-trash homo’s & queers
It be cool, man, lotsa money

Dem dirty nasty white boyz—
My oh my they be so awfully
Pathetic doin the homo with
Us young hung str8t bros

They preen themselves—
All pretty dressed up just to
Blow a guy’s junk lickin their
Lips with he-man semen

They be so tacky & greedy—
Raiding the chicken coop
Without any qualms gettin
The cute chicklets to cum

Skewered up their butt-holes—
Proud gentlemen of leisure
Down on their nelly knees
Pleading for sloppy seconds

Dinge-obsessed homos—
Hot for Hyperboreans and
Maritime Okeanos sailorboyz
Gnawing on crusty anchors

Virile youth are their solos—
Badboy bros their bridegrooms
Draining them desperately
Lovely honeymoon ooze


Monday, April 9, 2012

S=Y=L=V=I=A


S=Y=L=V=I=A
__________________

“Daddy, daddy,
you bastard,
I'm through”
—Sylvia Plath
Daddy

Somewhere between “The New American Poetry Anthology” with its dreary mainstream verse of the 50s and 60s on one hand—and on the other hand, Silliman’s “In The Tree” with its gang of lewd, louche Language Poets—it seems that I floundered & sank like the Titanic down into the kitschy depths of The Bermuda Triangle of Literary Boredom and Ennui.

Yawn, Ho-hum, fix me another martini, will you? I suppose I’ve always been rather skeptical about the Bitch Goddess Sylvia Plath—with her ongoing tiresome “Ariel-Big Bad Daddy” Cult of Suicide dontchaknow. Along with all those other Tacky Harbingers of Doom: Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell & John Berryman.

I suppose I’m like so many of us aging spoiled Fifties Eisenhower Era Elvis Presley Drive-In Baby Boomers—our generation that was caught up in Post-Depression Postwar Postmodern Prosperity & now the Great Post-American Dream.

Little did we Boomers know that evil Slithering Slackers and Scheming Prototypical Ponzi Artists were on the horizon just waiting for us. And there was Dallas and The Viet Nam War—getting ready to wipe the know-it-all Smirks off our pretty little pusses & to rub our smug faces in the Slimy Shit of the 21st century Zeitgeist.

The result was, well, an orgy of maudlin “True Confessions” and buzzing Rosenberg “Bell Jars”—wrecking our existence and dashing our Kennedy Camelot hopes with the dreary disillusionment of what was on the trashy-kitschy Event Horizon waiting for us.

I was already somewhat prepared for Dallas and Viet Nam—since the Lost Camelot nostalgia days of Huey P. Long’s demise getting assassinated in the State Capitol Building had already infused the spirit of Louisiana during the Thirties with that same approaching denouement melancholy coming out of the Sixties toward us.

And the Decadent Deep South had already, of course, long suffered the post tragic Civil War days of “Gone With the Wind” and the sadness of the Burning of Atlanta—so that I was already immured with a sense of Pusillanimous decay and rotting Antebellum Pulchritude.

“Confessionalism” had already played its tragic role in my so-called Delta Bourbon bildungsroman—with its mildewing hopes & decaying feelings oozing through my heart already filled with such niggardly gifts of happiness & joy.

Sylvia Plath’s “Confessionalism” made me Yawn—and Language writing wasn’t that much better. The feminist reception in the 60s and 70s had flickered briefly—but now over the years & with Adrienne Rich’s death, well, the Dyke Dynasty of Plathian Literary Protest seems to have had its day.

The Ghost of Ariel seems to have flown its coop—and the crude Cult of Big Bad Daddy seems to be pretty much dead. Dead & gone with the Demise of that Mytholmroyd Hoodlum & Yorkshire Killer—Ted “Big Bad Daddy” Hughes.

“Big Daddy” seems to have now gone out of style—with its final Swan Song goodbye of “Birthday Letters,” the pomp & circumstance of The Order of Merit & the Poet Laureateship finally shifting away from Pompous Patriarchal Pricks.

But what about the Bitch Goddess herself? Has Sylvia moved beyond Language writing now—as well as revisionist contextual and gendered readings of her Work?

Can we now see Ariel’s bitchy negativity—as something relevant & integral to the way we act & think in this new Late Capitalism Postmodern Paradigm? Has SYLVIA Come in from the Cold yet? Is Big Bad DADDY really dead?


Sunday, April 8, 2012

The “Nixon Triptych” of Sylvia Plath



The “Nixon Triptych” of Sylvia Plath
__________________

“What remains is to fully bring Plath’s poetics into the framework of the same cultural logics that produced The New American Poets—think of Ginsberg’s A Supermarket in California, for instance—a revision that, come to think of it, gets us past the avant-garde/mainstream, or post-avant/School of Quietude, faultline that has troubled our thinking on poetry for so long."—Barret Watten, “Sylvia Plath’s Collage”

http://barrettwatten.net/texts/entry-06-sylvia-plaths-50s-collage/2010/01/

After spending quite some time doing research down in the depths of Emory University's Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library (MARBL)—I made a startling discovery.

I came across a very troubling & controversial political collage of Sylvia Plath’s in the Hughes Archives—locked away in the secret vaults & crypts beneath the campus that supposedly weren’t supposed to be released for another 1000 years.

I’d rather surreptitiously bribed the lovely Archive Librarian (a cute Southern Belle Redhead) into getting down there in the crypt & then I’d managed to give her a “mickey” in her coffee.

Then I leisurely proceeded to greedily ogle to my heart’s content the special Sylvia Plath Artwork Archives hithertofore unseen by curious human eyes. The Plath Estate had been so jealously secretive about so many things—and I even stumbled onto the infamous W. B. Yeats’ Fitzroy Road “oven” stored away down there!!! It still reeked with the stench of gas and death…

Anyway, after some rummaging around—I came across a motherlode of Sylvia Plath’s political artwork and—but much more radical than the Wellesley ones and more like the seminal “Eisenhower” collage that Jacqueline Rose discusses in “The Haunting of Sylvia Plath.”

Except these newly discovered political collages were about the subsequent Nixon Sixties & early Seventies—or at least portrayals of the way Plath saw the political zeitgeist developing at the time in ominous directions.

The “Nixon Triptych” consisted of three collages which give the viewer some serious insights into the cultural logic of the Sixties & early Seventies—when the Viet Nam War was tearing apart the country and killing so many of the Baby Boomers in the ratty jungles of Southeast Asia. It clarified Plath’s formal intervention at the same time-in terms of her post-Arielesque poetics.

These 3 Nixon political collages demonstrate the kind of surrealist collage mulitiauthorship that Plath had constructed for herself or perhaps would have developed further if she had survived beyond her 1963 denouement. A different Sylvia Plath aesthetics & poetics than her “Arielesque & Big Bad Daddy” Fifties & early Sixties oeuvre.

This “Nixon Triptych” reversionary collage was in many ways similar to her earlier “Eisenhower” collage—but there was a nightmarish hybrid lyric difference to it. Plath was beginning to develop beyond feminist & confessional authorship with her poetry becoming more radicalized politically by her ongoing artwork.

This image-development is described in terms of her earlier collage-poetry collaborations noted in Kathleen Connors’ “Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual.”

Plath continues to distance and undermine the Self in its Arielesque expansiveness and Big Bad Daddy contradictions—first in terms of contemporary art satire & then articulated more politically in her post-Ariel & post-Daddy poetics.

As the Viet Nam War continued & intensified—Plath’s coupling of artwork & politics was leading her into deeper states of fantasy in her work. Her artwork at this time was anything but expressive of feminist anger and confession of intimate secrets.

Rather, a more public dimension of Plath’s Arielesque transformation of the self was emerging. Her maturing “parasurrealistic imagination” was giving her insights into where the Nixon Triptych was going. Both in content and in the future form of the Vietnam Nightmare—looking down the line to future American Asian Expeditions of conquest for oil & other natural resources.

This Nixon Triptych is similar & yet somewhat different than the earlier Eisenhower collage. At the center is the growling, sneering surrealistic menace of Richard Nixon’s gangster face—glowering at the viewer as he sits there at his executive desk.

As with Eisenhower, Plath has inserted a run of Las Vegas playing cards—on the desk lie some Tums for his upset stomach. The camera focuses in on an elongated model in a swimsuit—oozing down & posing over Nixon’s right shoulder.

Except the model in the Nixon Triptych has been surrealized & turned into a stealthy simulacrum of a weapon systems—similar to the bomber jet plane hovering over Nixon’s balding head. The Cold War seems to have entered a new phase—which it in fact it does as the technology of death improves logarithmically toward on ongoing Götterdämmerung Apocalypse.

As with the Eisenhower collage, the “Nixon Triptych” has a slogan beneath the model “Every Man Wants His War Budget on a Pedestal.” The bomber jet plane is tres stylistically sleek & stealthy—pointing at the model’s pussy like a Machiavellian Luger or devilish dildo.

Richard Nixon wets his lips for the camera—he’s much more in love with himself than Eisenhower. So much so that Nixon has 2 mini-portraits of his ugly puss in the collage. One on his desk & the other hovering over his chair like a guardian angel beneath the American flag.

Like all artistic collages, this “Nixon Triptych” collage offers itself as a set of fragments. But also it’s not merely a picture puzzle or rebus—instead it’s more modeled after the Freudian paradigm of dream image transformation with Nixon’s face becoming increasingly bloated, bug-eyed and terribly menacing.

Plath uses this language of dreams very much like she later would use the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E mode of her phase of parasurrealistic poetry. In fact, Plath’s poetry gradually incorporates more & more the grueling grotesque butchery of Francis Bacon’s bloody paintings to critique the ensuing Asian & Middle Eastern conflicts—such as Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Crucifixion” (1962) and “Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef.”

The “Nixon Triptych” shows Plath immersed in war, consumerism, photography, and politics at the very moment she was beginning to move beyond her “Ariel” & “Daddy” poems. The “Nixon Triptych” shows Plath incorporating the multiple horror stories of the Viet Nam War & Watergate that would come to symbolize this very Nixon-esque culture—against which these same & new poems were moving toward.


Saturday, April 7, 2012

Falling into Words Again


Falling into Words Again
__________________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiM7G6bqlPQ

Falling into—words again
Never—wanted to
What am I to do—
I can’t—help it

Words have—always been
My game—come what may
I was made that way—
I can’t help it

Words cluster—to me
Like moths—around a flame
And if their wings burn—
I know—I’m not to blame

Falling into—words again
Never—wanted to
What am—I to do
I can’t—help it


Friday, April 6, 2012

CLEAVING THE AMERICAN TREE



CLEAVING THE AMERICAN TREE
__________________

“it’s a waterfall enough
over time”
—Larry Eigner

rainy dayz—rainy nightz
monsoon drag—here it comes
all kinds of traffic—up in the sky
jets—boeing seatac—puget sound
rush hour traffic—rainy morning
down in the cabana—boytoy sleeps
tattoo tree—how he flexes it
bayliner by the dock—seagulls whitecaps
crows in the cedars—rains of ranchipur
lana turner—finally gets out of bed
it’s raining cats & dogs—and elephants
it’s a waterfall day—a real gusher
she looks—around the bungalow
what a dump—she says
sun comes out—they take a spin