Saturday 8 March 2014

62. This Is the Start of the White Book (Soggy But Granular)



Well, here’s a familiar to-do – to
Start again yet again, w/ old friends now
Who I hope will yet enjoy this once you’ve recovered
From all that chocolate, sweet, soggy & granular.

What do I know about human action?
Is it actually this, or something else?
Variously coloured, delightful & dangerous
Trapped but trying to fly free.

We need here lists of needful things:
Chocolate ghosts, laying eggs, sour cress
All well flavoured in their tablespoons
Some of it left over from Christmas.

Where it shall wish, hot & strange.
Imagine a room full of poets (oh no!)
All mouthing revolution. Well – better riots
Need a better start than this I fear.

Just follow the instructions. Easy.
Hillbilly kings shall lead the way.
Photos not that difficult & very useful
Then inexorably to crash against objected power.

The alchemy stuff is fun (like botany)
But they’re both basically metaphors. Beat in
Each bit of ingredients carefully.
You don’t need conference reports here.

Set on this luscious mess to cook it up.[1]
Start with the stuff! Work with what it does!
You are realising where it will end.
Steer & support to its desired resolution.

Always another bowl! Isn’t that just it?
Like poetry, painting, planting – lots of things going on
Kept in play like you do with a crowd of children
Growing up into what you have assured them now.

Oh fuck! – how long will it take to transform?
All our lives, of course, whether put aside or riotous.
What goes on not clean, cool & justified – [laugh!]
But fungible, corrosive and yet creative

Communal also, as it arrives like a rising wave.
Swim it or surf it. A lot of things will get broken
Even poetry. Correct theory is just an empty legend.
In a new landscape, new lives & new languages.[2]




[1] Oh god! All we do is to get more food; but isn’t that the basic revolutionary demand?
[2] Names, words, can never be innocent – but what can? We exist by killing & shitting continually, we Amorites, friends, poets & all others.

1 comment:

  1. “Imagine a room full of poets (oh no!) / All mouthing revolution”: vide Poetry & Revolution International Conference at the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre, Birkbeck College, Friday, 25 May 2012-Sunday, 27 May 2012, which I didn’t attend, so remain ignorant of the Decrees of the Poetry & Revoltion Conference Committee; but did attend the special Xing the Line reading (sponsored also by Birkbeck CPRC) on May 25, at The Apple Tree, 45 Mount Pleasant, with Tom Leonard, Jack Hirschman, Ziba Karbassi, Marianne Morris, Sean Bonney, Harry Gilonis, and, of course, cheered with the rest at an astonishing, powerful and moving event. Best source of information on the Conference: < http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/events/Poetry_and_Revolution_Conference_Schedule/Poetry_and_Revolution_Conference_Schedule >. The best source of information on Xing the Line, the best reading series in London, see its Facebook page.

    ReplyDelete