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©Argo Spier.
ISDN - 2003-09-06 and upon request.
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contents
prologue 9
black versus hay 15
easter egg 39
ghost writer 81
epilogue 131
prologue
Green Muse Trying
[when the sun shines again]
when the sun shines again
'Why don't you wake me when the sun shines again,' Liza asked.
'I need sun for shadows and tone. Bright sun,' she said.
'Ok,' I said and stretched out my hand.
'Don't touch me,' she quivered. But I touched her.
'Don't touch me there,' she refused, stood up and left the room.
a poem for Liza
when I walk across a street
I notice you are not on this side or the other
when I enter a house
I notice you don't live there - were never there -
when I wait for you on the corner in any town and in
[states,
in lands, I notice you are not there where my footsteps
[lead
I also notice when I notice you are not there
- lands - I am incapable of understanding why
Jonathan C.
(p.s. I met Jonathan in Vienna in 1998 at the 'Annual Southern February
Get-together and Festivities Calen-der.' Liza was there as well. Due to
attitudes on both sides of the river, Liza and Jonathan didn't meet one
another face-to-face. It was up to me to introduce them. My own personal
involvement in the Calendar Festivities and the pressing schedule to complete
Black and Hay, made me make the mistake of my life: I misjudged the importance
of such an introduction.
Only afterwards did I realise, when it was too late, the consequence of
my misjudgement. And I cannot tell you how ashamed and cross with myself
I am today. I have failed in a terrible literary way. This I haven't mentioned
to anyone and, up till now, I have shouldered this miscalculation like
a first Atlas rock.)
Black versus Hay
[fifty of a hundred]
unlike vomit bennitonni green
yellow is the sun and unlike
softy, shitty worlds of dreams
shiny is the gold
that drips from the melting pots
where wizards purify lead, copper,
bronze and tones of yellow
oh and the yellow tones of the sun
… its green
(lovely you are my little love)
small you are my little love
(lovely you are my little love) - I
have hidden you and now you are safe -
my little love you are safe
safe from world's evil, seeking eye
safe from people's shallow grab
(lovely you are my little love)
small you are my little love
(lovely you are my little love) - I
have hidden you and now you are safe -
my little love you are safe
safe from world's shallow, seeking eye
safe from people's evil grab
black versus hay
why do you buy
clothes the colour of fashion
that only black-haired people buy?
why do you do this?
when you - yourself - are as blond as hay?
and that
and that
and also
and the sun goes down
like no friend of mine
etc.
what is needed
is the valance decorating the silken tights
you wear
Arise Necro Poetica
your face - it is a blur - and upon discovering it
seeing where it amasses in its coin I - the grave digger
feel the need to peal o its absent vagueness [I am -
loosen from it layer after layer
tear from it its mantle
break its frame
unveil its body its lax shape - the skeleton
in which it hides -
I - the priest I am - need to open its adumbrate
mask
tear away its holy cobweb cloth
need to find the hidings of its smile
need to unravel its old syntaxes - the vast alict -
its singularity
its gluey substance
the breath - your breath -
its boasting word - the word you speak from it -
I - the tomb robber I am - need to muck-rake
thesis and shadow your cast
need to onus burning sediment
stir the burial waste
steal you away from waste
I - the grave carer I am - I am a running limpid
match
running straight to your face's aid its shape
its appearance
its dial suit
I engross its word's blemish
fetch with haste and hurry a new word
find a winning find - another word: the digest's mould -
I - the poet I am - preferably veil over its
essence secure it again
dig an antechamber anew
a new cubicle for it
for it to compound in and rest in
your face - it is a blur - it blurs again under
layer and
under obscurity's ward [frame
again it forms as if calling for the kisser to inundate his tribute
for his - my - new words' fancy
for the sake of new semantic value
and its gravid complexity
watching you waiting
from a piece of glass picked-up I build a window
to watch the world through - the world
in which you move - when
from here to eternity - you pass
by my frame: I will
see you!
*NEW[from a piece of broken glass I build
a window to watch the world through - the world
in which you move - when
from here till tomorrow you pass
by my frame I will
see you!]
the shopping poet (a P.S. Poem.)
half-way up the mountain heading for Fréjus
6 km from the Centre Commercial Géant
he was pushing hurtling a shopping trolley
in it: a six-pack of Kronenburg 10 beer
pushing hurtling towards the hole he hides
in
man I smile oh man I know I thought man and
from my bmw I hurtle - across the roof top
into the grass -
my own empty Kronenburg poultice
spot-on onto grass
from my sight hidden the blooming tree
mineralised with light the Northern flight
apple tree blossom tree for summer
fruit for winter passed away
a little blood wasted in the sky
forgotten forlorn the little blue
on the line
the washing denim black 'his'
tights hay tease 'hers'
and diaphanous in the Southern breeze
springtime love for full-time summer blade
apple red young day come apple ripe
and autumn sheath remembrance brown
blackened and hayed: the crystallized sun
strange
2 people
one in the top floor passage
one in the passage below
walk in the same direction
pacing exactly the same pace
pacing coming
straight towards me
three-storey house
6 windows
one shut
two shut
three open
one shut
one half-open
one open
3 alcoves
open
open
open
my face, press it against yours
No honey?
To have words or to have silence?
Or to have both? Mission Impossible?
A search into what stays, into what passes
on?15
Mission Impossible? Stealing? Yes!
Dionysus fights Apollo. Destruction loves Construction?
Mission Impossible? From the 6-cornered cell16
No honey?
No poem? Earth woman or water woman?
Mission Impossible? No! Never!
No new literature?
the cancer of the word
I have decided not to touch the poisoned ivy and not to jump
into the Evian stream. Not to drown or ride the tide.
Nor its current thyroid.
Oh but beware! Here I come! See!
There are things you should know.
There are things, the same things, you should not know.
There is the pretence of not knowing, while knowing:
Liza is my love:
Liza brown Liza blue.
She is hay take her away.
Bring her back.
She is black.
And I … I am kadmiumrot hell like your day.
Oh know! How? On earth and in water else
How can one not make him/herself a poem
and put it on a shelf?
An Adam's apple poem on a shelf?
A boat is a boat not a rose, no chimpanzee
a boat is but a boat said he
no rose18 no chimpanzee
nobody in it drifting to the sea19
but a poem a poem by me
it is mine
no monkey business
but you
I want you I want all that are you:20
the river and the sea the current
and the boat and you
I cannot wait for you any longer
I've found it!
I've found it!
the current under the main
the current dark beneath the surface
oh where no eye can spy
no hand where it can touch the frame
the stream
and under it
even:
a stronger one
stained grass
will you support
talk
talk to me? say it!
say you will! oh why?
won't you come with me?
we can run and find the sun
we can find the stream
green
but most of all:
we can stain the grass
with the vulgar moment
of true last lust
come
support me go with me!
the gaining fear
I fled from my room fled into the world: its scream
- the reticence of it - it frightened me!
I sped back into my room: its voice
- the hush of it - it frightened me!
I hastened into the word: its shattered faltering
hurt
- the thunder of it - it frightened me!
and when I looked at the gaining fear I saw
you
and I saw that whatever I do I see you seeing me
absence
the night - oh the rouges the rouges -
the sun - when it sheds its hay - swaps its hay
for the black black night - the tongue of it -
and the rogue - oh the rouges the rouges -
I can hear the stiened corpse move - its rosin
colour -
the word of its death - the croaks of its voice -
I can hear its rush across the valley - its black colour -
oh when the turn of the light - that day -
the heart its ear
oh when the rouges the rouges - at midnight - the rogues
when their silent blind light and the clock
- its hour -
when the loudness of the midnight hour and the verse
- oh the rouges the rouges when verse's green
flares - [when
it shines on you when the night calls and blackens - oh -
when the rouges the rouges blackened the wasted hay - the [day -
your absence inebriates its essence and its hesitant sigh
the wheel, the urn, the lion and the chameleon
when the wheel of time gyrates and day
and night hunger
the urn spills its ash
spills hay - the hay of your colour -
the chameleon and cruel lion
feed in the jungle and turn
at night:
when my colour - black - meets yours - hay
-
and feeds on it - when you feed
on me and I on you -
both of us devour only each other's word
while - with pauperised gloom and stifle -
the carcasses of our dearth lie bloody and spent on the
in-between [land
easter egg
[fifty more and something of late]
why? a poet
Writing a poem on a balcony, sitting sipping Campari neat, and red, I
glanced at the waiting boats feeding at the quay. All of a sudden I thought
about it! About: 'The silk-en black linen of her skin. How it always turned
to hay when I touch it.' About: 'How lovely she is when she is naked!'
About: 'It is almost as if I can feel my own skin when I think about hers!'
I then became very relaxed. For the first time since all hell broke loose
and I got involved with Black and Hay I was returning to a state of calm.
I was in heaven. Oh, I was exactly there where I was supposed to be: in
a luxurious setting, in a nice apartment and on a balcony with sun sown
all around me. 'Campari and poetry on the Cote d'Azur. Alone at last!'
Now the story begins: She walked onto the quay and into my view. She noticed
me with my pen in my hand and my notebook on my lap. I was working on
a story and, that very minute, she noticed that something quite out of
the ordinary was happening! Her appearance and pose were changing! She
turned cheap! Her blue Denim Jeans tightened with a new force around her
buttocks and thighs. Her nails flashed red. Her hair changed from indigenous
black to yellowish hay! A dyed sort of colour! Her movements, long and
stretchy, became even longer and freshly arrogant. Her legs, as she lifted
them high, forcing her into huge polar-bear steps, up and down, became
instruments to arouse desire. And her measured strokes and occasional
ogling of the boats and me, man, it breathed sensuality! I looked at her
and forgot about whatever poem I was working on. 'Good riddance! Campari
and poems on the Cote Azur. Nice!'
I got into an even more relaxed and assertive mood. But it wasn't to last
long! A vapid man (oh that was disturbing!) walked into the picture. He
walked straight into her sight and then crossed over into mine. As he
did it he grabbed whatever was floating in the air and put it safely down
onto solid ground. 'Oh, there you are, love!' he
disrupted and burned possessively into her. 'Hi!' she answered nervously,
looking at me for help, but I was writing poetry and couldn't attend to
her outcry. She turned elsewhere. With a last irreclaimable glance at
me, with remorse in her eyes, she left me. She snapped away from me like
a nylon cord. She snapped and pulled herself back into her previous pattern
of behaviour. A fish caught on the line! She again became what she was:
A woman stuck in a connubial relationship. The wife of a man. 'Amazing!'
I thought, 'a wife on a quay waiting for the love of her life again!
Oh, Campari and poems on the Cote d'Azur!'
'Why? A poet. Why me?'
chocolate eating lady
Yesterday was another one of those days. I was in town and, without being
able to do anything about it, I was looking, waiting and expecting to
see Liza. Every shop I entered, every corner I turned and every street
I crossed I was thinking about her. I didn't find her, of course and,
towards mid-afternoon, I grew a little dejected because of my futile search
for her. 'I am really expecting the impossible', I thought. 'It's foolish
of me to expect to find her here.'
Discouraged, I retraced my steps and decided to go home. On my way home
I passed a Victorian pub, the Queen Elizabeth, and stopped for a drink.
Blue letters on a black board announced the name of a new kind of stout
at an introductory price. 'Jive it up with Lobischen Stout', it said,
and under the heading in Albertus Extra Bold the name was written 'Austrian-Irish
Beer - Lobischen Stout.' Inside, two aged yuppies were sitting down one
end. I went to the other end. As I passed them I heard one saying: 'They
have half sizes in Marks and Spencer's', and added, 'You can always find
something to fit. If 54's too big, you can try 53 and a half.' Both of
them were drinking Lobischen Stout. The label on the Lobischen Stout bottles
are enough to put any educated man o drinking it for good. Silver background
with golden letters, but the letters were too big. The typeface was wrong
too: Albertus Extra Bold again, 28 Point. Special Lobischen patented blue
tankards came with the bottles.
I settled in and as I did so I noticed that the copper foot rail at the
bar was too high, two and a half centimetres too high. Normal foot-on-the-bar
drinking was not possible. The bar was built either for bigger human beings
than me or for sit-on-the-stool drinking. One had to sit down to be comfortable.
I sat down and I thought about Liza. The barmaid behind the counter came
to me and asked: 'What do you want?' and added, 'There's a special oer
for Lobischen Stout. It's half- price today. 'I noticed her absolutely
too low-cut out neckline, and some of the bronze coloured fringes of her
bra sticking out over her dress, and said: 'Ok, a Lobischen Stout, please.'
She went to the fridge, opened a bottle of Lobischen Stout and poured
it into one of the ridiculous Lobischen tankards. When she brought it
to me, she grabbed a chocolate Easter egg from a huge glass jar that stood
halfway between me and the till. She stued the egg into her mouth with
the ease of a professional. A chameleon shooting down a fly with its tongue.
'Thanks', I said as she handed me the beer.
'Fruitlessness', she said, not really looking at me. 'I can eat myself
to death on these eggs.' I didn't reply. But when she brought a stool
and came to settle down opposite me, facing me, I felt I had to make some
conversation as a sign of good manners.
'You look tense', I said.
'Oh, I am so tense you wouldn't believe it!' she said and immediately
got o her stool again and went back to the jar. She took another chocolate
egg and stued it in her mouth. She came back. I emptied my Lobischen Stout
with one solid swig. It tasted like lead poisoning, but while I had her
attention, I thought I had better order another one. I ordered another
one. She got o her stool and fetched it. When passing the glass jar, her
left hand scooped yet another chocolate egg. She stued it in her mouth.
This time I noticed the red nail varnish on her fingernails. I liked the
colour.
'Do you work here everyday', I asked as I gulped down half the second
jug of Lobischen.
'Oh, the days are nothing, but the nights I work here, you wouldn't believe
it. During the day nobody comes in', she said munching and smooching on
the egg. I wondered how Liza would have handled working in a bar like
this. And when I thought about that I thought: 'How long will it take
for a piece in a column about a chocolate-eating lady to reach any point
at all? Is it worth it?' As I was wondering about that, Madame Chocolate
moved to the jar again. Egg time again. And when she came back, munching
it, one of the yuppies called out: 'Two Lobischen!' She got o her stool
to fetch the beer. 'Can I have one too', I quickly added in an eort to
save her an extra walk to the fridge. She didn't answer me and fetched
the beers, passing the jar but not taking an egg this time, and returned
to me and got onto the stool again.
'Love and loneliness are life's problems: don't you agree?' I said without
really meaning any of it. And, 'Can I try an egg too?'
'Of course', she said, got o the stool and fetched me an egg. She took
one for herself as well. Came back. 'Love's the problem, yes, it's life's
biggest problem', she said. 'I have finished with men.'
'So have I', I said. 'Finished with women … I mean, I fell in love
with a girl named Liza and she left me. I haven't seen her since.' When
I said that I felt the warmth of the Lobischen Stout in my abdomen. It
was the first time ever I had mentioned Liza's name to a stranger.
'My name is Liza!' she said and her little face, too fat, lit up. I looked
at her as if I was seeing her for the first time in my life. Her eyes
were as brown as the colour of the Easter eggs she was addicted to. She
looked me straight in the eye and smiled. I was also getting a little
bit drunk by then.
'How on earth am I going to fit this into Jonathan C.?' I asked.
'What? What's that you say?' Liza asked.
'I said my problem is how I am going to fit this piece … you …
into Black and Hay.' I repeated and added, 'I am writing you!'
'What on earth are you talking about? Are you ok? You want another chocolate?'
she exclaimed. 'What do you mean you are writing me? Are you a writer?'
'Yes. I am a writer. At the moment I am writing about yesterday. I came
into this pub yesterday and there you are talking to me now … see?'
I said. She looked at me with terrible, worried eyes. It was almost as
if, all at once, she cared for me a great deal and felt sorry for me.
How could I explain it? I had found her at last! It had been such a long
day. One gets depressed by it. I spoke to her again. 'This should make
the point, shouldn't it? It was worth it, wasn't it?' I asked. But she
just sat there, looking at me. It was getting late. Neither of us noticed
the time. We didn't notice the yuppies as they left and didn't pay. We
didn't notice when other people came in and went out again because nobody
served them. How and when I got home I don't know.
'I must have drunk quite a lot of Lobischen', I thought this morning.
My head was aching. I was sick the whole day today. I couldn't write a
thing. All I know, somehow, is that Easter egg eating Liza has in some
strange way burnt her mien into my life. Even now, as I write this, I
am thinking about her. I am looking, waiting and expecting to see her
walk in here with a jug of Lobischen beer in her hand, munching a chocolate.
But I know I am really expecting the impossible. 'It's foolish of me to
expect to find her in here.'
Is this something recent?
Liza had to go to work. I had to visit the doctor and make a phone call.
Winston always wants to know. Liza had ordered me to see the doctor. Then
I phoned Winston. He was as jovial as ever, but also concerned and inquisitive.
'Why? What's that?' he asked.
'I busted up my knee. I cannot walk', I said.
'How did it happen?' He persisted.
'I tripped over a hedge in front of the opera', I said.
'A hedge?' he asked. 'Hedges at the opera? You aren't putting me on are
you? Hedges at the opera?'
'No', I said, 'it was actually the concrete wall behind the hedge, but
it's bad. It's all bruised. I have to go to the doctor.'
'Hedges at the opera? Is this something recent? Hedges at the opera?'
I didn't want to go into this. The topic had all of a sudden become haunted
by a hint of embarrassment. There was a snake hiding below the surface.
I just said: 'Really, I'll phone you tomorrow. Have a nice day and don't
worry about it.' I hung up.
a dying word and take mine
It's easy … take a dying word and take mine
and you have a poem
and that's all there is to it
see … man … the woman
she is the poem and the writer:
it is I, Argo Spier
A busted-up knee at the opera
Out of the blue and quite in the middle of the night, last night, it happened.
I have always questioned the concept of reality, the meaning of it, as
well as the general semantic connotation that is normally attached to
it in everyday speech. 'Reality versus day-light brown consciousness.'
What intrigues me about it, is the dun sub-side of it. And then of course
opera is something else too. Last night proved my suspicions write!
It's a long story. A dream kind of story, one might say, but a story with
a cutting edge. Actually it started the night before last, the night I
went to the Opera with Liza. For the first time ever this particular art
form struck me as a possibility for bridging the gap between what I have
always suspected about reality and what everybody else seems to believe
reality should be! Take this opera: it was rather a silly one. An idiotic
man fell in love with another man's wife. He paid for his mistake with
his life. The woman also died because of his idiotic desire to display
what he should not - his love for her. It was really very average but
that was not what impressed me! It was the voices of the singers that
got to me. It was the words and the music! The combination of these three
aspects took me into dierent spheres altogether. What also impressed me
was the general attempt by each of the singers, and the props too, to
play their parts to the full. The way everything was synchronised and
the drama seemed so undeniably authentic and realistic! I ended up in
a strange world of my own with a very unconventional state of aairs. The
darker side of reality became so visible and so clear to me. The whole
formed by all the elements on this occasion proved my point: daylight
consciousness is as oriole as reality itself! As flying black and yellow
hay as you can get.
Throughout the whole of yesterday I was occupied with the meaning of this
discovery and with those things that live in and around us but cannot
be seen. It was almost as if I had become part of the events in the opera
and that my conscious private life had become an extension of the night
before and its own arcane little opera in itself. I had never before experienced
this in the same manner as then and it felt to me that I had become some-thing
like a pawn and singer myself. But secretly I was very happy that I understood
reality so plainly at last. I felt like a top dog and a very good actor,
understanding the real source and master code of things, things that were
not even there yet.
'Reality, it doesn't exist! There is no border between reality and sur-reality!'
I said to myself and continued with the day. And when I went to bed last
night, I thought about it some more and was more convinced of how good
I am. I even dreamed about it. I was winning even when pain interferes
with fantasy. At one particular point in my dream however I got scared.
Panic seemed to creep up on me. I lost a little of my status. I experienced
the desire to run, either away or back to something I had left behind.
It was just that, all of a sudden, I had the urgent need and desire to
return where I had left the night before last. But then I reached the
beginning of the delta. I calmed down. There was a fireside and a happy
home. 'I have to see her!' I thought. Then I saw her! Her brown eyes were
blinking at me. She stood within a huge Manuelian sphere and she held
out a tag with her name on it. It said, 'Liza'. She was waiting for me!
I could see that clearly in the way she shed her poise! I was relieved!
In her free hand she held a gold-plated candlestick and waved with it.
She was looking, longing for me. She waved with it again, calling without
words. Her face was vague, busy and completely blurred, the way I like
it. She moved towards the middle of the floor and got onto the boards
leading to the same spot where the baritone had fallen in love with the
soprano the night before last, just a couple of metres from where they
had later both died. 'They shouldn't have fallen in love', I thought.
The soprano had given the baritone alcohol which was originally intended
and smuggled by boat for the soprano's husband. He was supposed to be
on the quay when the boat got in but he wasn't. From what I could make
out he was on an errand with another man but tried to cover up his absence
by refering to this man as his valet and stressing the medical importance
of his errand. The soprano wasn't too happy with this. That's how it all
started. One can reason that his absence prompted her to give the liquor
away to the baritone, but on the other hand the baritone should have been
more cautious about what he accepted from whom. His eagerness was also
part of the mistake. Anyway, the two of them paid dearly for the fact
that they shared the alcohol. Drink is always a problem. They died in
the end. But then: Liza stood there again, waving with the candle. The
lights went out and all of a sudden, as I was dreaming, the candle went
out too. That was a sign for me that her husband was away on a trip, looking
for a love potion of his own, and that I could rush to her without any
danger. There was the voice of the wind. It was dark but her face lit
the way for me. It was now even sterner and more blurred than in the last
paragraph. A light was lit in the backstage dressing room. I saw her full,
shapely body heaving through her translucent silken sari. Oh, I always
love to see her this way. A vague hidden woman that should be naughtily
whipped! I was very happy and thrilled by the prospect of holding her
again. Peace came over me. It felt as if I was home at last and the inception
of my existence had become vividly apparent to me as never before. Unrest
evaporated from me. Cure was near. The birds they sang. I was home. All
I had to do was to get up the boardwalk. The way was clear. She had arranged
everything for me. With joy I jumped the first step. And then it happened!
A hedge, that wasn't there in my dream when she had started to wave, appear-ed
to have grown even higher. Behind the hedge a con-crete wall had materialised
out of thin air. I was jumping. I was too low. I noticed the hedge but
not the wall! As I burst through the hedge, with great ease and bravura,
getting closer to her, I noticed the wall. My view was wrong! I realised
my mistake without being able to do anything about it. I was disorientated.
My heart was bouncing. The smack of my knee against the wall came with
such force that I thought my knee-cap was shatter-
ed. Pain shot through the whole of my leg, becoming part of my entire
body. It filtered through to my heart, entered my soul. I wanted to scream.
I was in panic again. The pain scurried back from my soul down to my heart
and back to my knee. A red tracer button lit up where the blue dumdum
bullet of the wall hit me in the knee. I was
screaming out loud. Liza woke up with a fright in the bed beside me.
'What is it? What is it?' she shouted and then, realising I was dreaming,
she said, 'Go back to sleep. You are dreaming. It's only a dream! Shhhhhh.'
She had to calm me and hold me down. I wanted to get up. My knee hurt
badly. 'It's just a nightmare, go to sleep now!' she said again and with
authority she pushed me back into the pillow and tucked me in. She kissed
me on the forehead. 'It was just a nightmare', she said again. 'What a
vivid dream, man', I thought, 'clear as gold', and went back to sleep.
This morning, when I woke up, I had trouble getting out of bed. My leg,
I could hardly move it. My knee, you should have seen it! It had a bronze
mark on it and was swollen enormously. Red blood stains marked the spot
where the concrete wall had made contact. It hurt and I could barely stand
on it. I felt like an idiot. I wasn't a winner at all. 'Reality, my foot!'
I thought.
'Why can't you walk?' Liza asked, her eyes still swollen. 'What a terrible
night it was! You screamed', she said. And when I pulled down my pyjama
pants to show her the source of my calamity, she exclaimed: 'My God, look
at your knee! What have you done?'
'I didn't see the wall behind the hedge!' I said.
'What hedge?' she wanted to know.
'At the opera. There was a wall behind the hedge!' I said.
'A hedge at the opera? What were you doing at the opera?'
'I wasn't at the opera. I dreamed it!'
'There aren't any hedges at the opera! We went there Wednesday. Didn't
we? What wall?' I could see the distrust in her blue eyes. Her eyes were
blue, oh the blue I always like to see in her eyes.
'I just didn't see the wall!' I said. Tears came to my eyes.
'How can you dream about walls and hedges? Look at your knee! You must
go to the doctor!' She had everything under control again. I was disturbed,
'The doctor? What do I have to tell the doctor? Tell him that I have bashed
up my knee in my dream? He knows the opera - he would say there are no
hedges there!'
And while I typed my reply to Liza's remark about going to see a doctor,
for a moment I doubted my own ability to tell a story in a column, but
then I realised that was not really the point and I put it out of my mind.
I was calming down. We discussed the reality of the scar on my knee for
a while. It was a silly incident and rather embarrassing. I didn't know
how to explain my busted up knee to the doctor.
This morning, however, I went to the doctor as Liza had wanted. I always
do what Liza says. On my way to him I thought it better not to mention
the opera. Just the wall. And when I had decided that, I started to smile
and the piece about things-to-know-and-knowing-and-not-knowing of the
poem on page 29 came to my mind.
Sure: Liza is my love:
Liza brown Liza blue.
She is hay take her away.
Bring her back.
She is black.
And I … I am kadmiumrot hell like your day.
Somehow I was covertly very happy. I had a
buzy night. Ok, it didn't quite work out and my knee was busted up, but
I was close! I also had a day o from my own writing, but even more importantly,
I think, was that I knew I knew I was write about a lot of things. 'Blue
day things and brown night things.' And when I strained into the doctor's
surgery, I was in even greater luck! He wasn't in! Apparently he had tripped
over a silly wall behind a hedge, so the nurse told me. I liked it. But
I haven't mentioned it to Liza. I just told her my knee will be ok. Really,
reality, man, it doesn't exist … everything is reality! Love as
well … but love, oh!
not a poem nor a column
I discovered that only the next day!
She had written to me. But by then
it was too late. I had left already. She had
said she would never talk to me again. Oh I
was such an idiot to have fallen into that trap
again. Believing her.
No, this is not a poem nor a column!
What else you got?
Last night, sitting in a bar, a honky-tonk without a piano man, I asked
for a nostalgic Lobischen Stout.
'Man, that beer didn't take o. We had so many complaints from people.
It made them sick, vomit, you know, we've got our reputation to think
of etc.' the barman said to me.
'What else you got?' I asked.
'Reference Water', he said.
'Oh no', I said. 'I know all about that! Never again!'
And after a pause, I said: 'Say, Liza's not working across from here anymore
… Victorian Pub? Elizabethan. Is she?'
'No, she flew o. She went to Stars, took those two yuppies with her.'
'Stars? What's that?'
'Some kind of dream place … man are you going to drink something
or what?'
'Ahh what the heck, give me Reference Water.'
That was the worst decision I made in my entire life. I never left that
pub after that. I became an even better poet and a drunk. And the problem
with poets is, you know, when they drink, their masses of words don't
stand the test of reality. 'Don't fool yourself into believing', I have
tried to explain to myself many times, but nothing could have helped me.
After I had taken a sip of that Water for the second time in my life,
my whole vivacity seemed to change. I was ruined. There were only words,
words, no-thing but words left and when it came to a single honest question
there were no replies. Nobody seemed to be out there. I was alone and
I was lost. 'Why would Liza have done such a thing? Leaving me without
a word?'
The cake and I
'Damn you', Liza hissed with a trembling voice. 'Damn the cake, you frumpy
bastard!' She jumped from the chair knocked it over, grabbed a knife and
rushed for the cake. With distressing alertness, she stabbed it write
in its centre. 'This knife goes into the centre of the heart of the hypocritical
bitch!' she shouted. She stabbed and stabbed and twisted the knife into
the cake several times. Chocolate icing cracked, broke and scattered all
over the table. Some lumps of cake fell onto the clean carpet. One of
the candles that gave light to love and romance toppled from its golden
stance and went out. 'I - me - I don't want no vapid folly cake from her!',
she yelled and then scream-ed even louder into my eye, 'And you, idiot,
why are you playing delivery boy for barbaric moats! Let she errand her
own garb!' And, as if she knew what she was doing, she rammed from the
cake, with the greatest precision, the most vulgar-sized portion of Zacher
Torte I have ever seen. She swiped it o the silver side plate and drilled
it into my bronze face. 'Eat it! Taste her fuddy-duddy fucking wedding
cake!' she screamed. I said nothing. I just sat there with the oversized
portion of cake, half of it in my face and half of it in my mouth. The
part that was in my mouth tasted like lead.
'Oh sure, Stevia Rebaudiana Bertoni - sweetest thing in the jungle, I
love you but sure, one thing is sure: this cake is now as fucked-up as
the evening is, look at it!' And. 'Do you think there is something physical
between you and me?'
the smell of nail-varnish
I have tried to discuss it with Liza, but she has refused. I spoke to
Winston about it, but he just looked me in the eye. When I pushed the
point, nobody seemed to want to know. 'Lots of men paint their nails.
What's the problem with that?' Both Winston and Liza varnish their nails.
'What is the problem? Men painting and varnishing nails?' There is nothing
wrong with that! On the contrary!
Nail-painting and varnishing add to the sensuality and spice of life.
Women discovered this trick long before men. Liza's nails are always very
well manicured and precisely painted, and if you want to you can read
her class from the colour she wears. Both Winston and she are mad about
fashionable colours. Soft pastels, single hard colours, dierent tones,
sometime-plum sometime-apple and sometimes apple-mixed-with-plum. I prefer
straight red or blue. Blue when I am in a meditative mood and red when
I am assertive. 'What's the problem with that?' Its just … I …
you know? I paint my nails too!
I started varnishing my nails last year. It was at the Annual Southern
February Get-together and Festivities Calendar. I was doing meditative
work for Liza and Jonathan at that time. It was quite a thrilling experience,
I must admit, and, thinking about it now, it was a mile-stone in my writing
career. It was a moment of change. From then on, for the first time, my
work started to get o the ground. My work got better and I started to
believe in myself. It happened one night. I was invited to the opera and
it was after the opera, in my room, when I had asked Liza to come up for
some poetry, that I painted and varnished my nails for the first time.
It was Liza who suggested it.
'Why don't you varnish your nails?' she had asked. It was quite an innocent
suggestion and I had laughed about it at first, but later, when she insisted
and giggled like a schoolgirl, I did it. She had only had red varnish
with her. I painted my nails red. I clearly remember how I stood there,
with my half-dried red nails and my poem in my hand. The smell of the
freshly varnished nails had filled the room and had mingled like a forbidden
aroma with the sound of my voice! I still have the red-stained shirt with
the nail varnish on it. We had a very romantic evening. We talked a lot
and discussed my work till the early hours. But then she had to go back
to her husband. I had become a mature poet! I knew it!
Since that night I have indulged in varnishing my nails regularly. Always
after a new poem. Liza likes it. She too likes the smell of it, and on
special occasions, she likes it even more. Occasions such as when I lay
the table and cook her a fine meal. The gold-plated candlestick I received,
as a keepsake from Liza, Jonathan and the other Festivities Calendar Board
members, must however always be put on the table and the candles lit.
Everything was fine for a long while. My work displayed a new zest and
a youthful vitality. Liza was happy and I kept on progressing towards
becoming the greatest lover-poet of the 20th Century. But somehow, slowly,
attitudes seemed to develop and the healthy balance between poetry read-ing
and nail-varnishing became threatened. I don't know what happened or who
was to be blamed for it. Liza had changed.
Apart from the fact that one is never sure of what she thinks or what
she plans to do, and her fits of rapid mind-changing when di~cult issues
are involved, lately she seems too weary to make any decisions at all.
She seems to be distracted and bored during my poetry-reading sessions.
More easily than before. I have tried to compensate for this by cooking
even more exquisite meals. I invented the tra-da-da-naaaah special-occasion
meal. It is a multi-course meal with a precisely prescribed ritual, culminating
in the reading of my poetry. It was immediately a great success and it
revitalised the nail-varnishing and poetry symbioses. We both enjoyed
it very much every time. A lot of my work got read. I wrote longer pieces.
It also aected our other meals. Soon every meal had be-come a tra-da-da-naaaah
special occasion meal. On each occasion, before the meal, I would punctually
varnish my nails, cook the meal, lay the table, put the gold-plated chandelier
on the table and read my work. Nail-varnish, candlelight and poetry! We
had developed an exotic lifestyle and everything was fine for a while
again. But Liza's boredom seemed to grow. It is something within her.
She seemed to be needing more and more novelty all the time to be able
to concentrate on my work. I must admit my work has indeed become balanced
and mature and the strain of understanding it, and the concentration needed
to follow the linking passages, has become almost un-bearable. Liza wants
to go to sleep more often and earlier. She just sees me painting my nails,
smells the half-dried varnish, hears my voice croaking on a poem, and
then she is bored and wants to go upstairs. There were times when she
lost interest even sooner than that. At times like those, we left half-cooked
exquisite meals still simmering on the stove.
To really understand what is going on, why the tra-da-da-naaaah special-occasion
meal is also slipping now, I can explain the ritual as being basically
the laying of the table, cooking the meal, varnishing nails, putting the
gold-plated candlestick on the table, lighting the candle, eating the
meal and, when I start reading poetry, she wants to go to bed. These phases
were always intended to be slow build-ups to the climax of poetry reading.
But Liza's boredom now hampers this. The tempo of these phases has increased
and the intervals between them have shortened. Relaxation and enjoyment
of each and every one seems to have disappeared. Liza can get bored in
any phase she chooses. Its probably also because I am writing faster and
better and, now that more poems have to be read, time always seems to
be too short. If I wasn't so meticulous it probably would not have come
to this. Maybe that's also part of the problem. I have come to the point
where I am worrying about it. It poses a problem for me.
I don't have the time anymore to really enjoy the evening and the fact
that less of my work gets read, maybe I write too much, is very destabilising
and kills the enthusiasm. It also takes time to cook special meals every
time. When I have to hurry to cook them, laying the table and varnishing
my nails at the same time, I get nervous. It somehow takes away the thrill
of preparing the occasion. Liza has also started to watch me the minute
I start to cook. That gets on my nerves even more. I am nervous. Sometimes
I am so rushed that I forget to varnish my nails beforehand and then have
to do it during the hors-d-oeuvre. Liza, at times like these, gets bored
right from the beginning of the meal. She wants to go to bed and sleep.
That poses yet another problem. How can I go to bed with varnished nails
only half-dry? Sheets get
spoiled. Blue or red nail-varnish stains are virtually im-possible to
remove. They harden completely. Most of the time, on these rushed occasions
I am also forced to sleep naked for fear of staining my pyjamas as well.
I was brought up dierently and that still has its eect. We never used
to sleep naked! I am afraid to complain to Liza about this.
The other night it happened again. I was in such a hurry, cooking the
meal, laying the table, putting the plated candlestick on the table and
lighting the candle, that I completely forgot to varnish my nails, again.
She saw it but said nothing. We had gone through the hors-d-oeuvre and
the main course at such a high tempo that it was only when I got to the
poetry reading and the dessert that she seemed to have time to rebuke
me for it: 'Why don't you varnish your nails?' she asked. Her voice was
commanding and persistent. I was quite embarrassed about my mistake. My
mood changed immediately from meditative to assertive. But it wasn't nice!
I had to varnish my nails during dessert and still had to try to read
a poem! My nails were only half-varnished, and still smelling wet, when
we were already upstairs and in bed! We didn't even have time to finish
the dessert.
I am very worried about my work! Somebody! I must have time to read my
work! It happened last night yet again. I can't keep it up! I had my nails
varnished red. Liza got bored with the meal and my poetry. 'Oh, I am so
bored', she said. Her blue eyes were hay-coloured.
'Blue suits you better!' she ordered.
We were in the middle of the main course. I stopped eating, put down the
poem, took some solvent and re-moved the red from my nails and painted
them blue. When that was done she said: 'Oh, red suits you much better!'
I took some more solvent and removed the blue and painted my nails red
again. By that time Liza was bored sti. She wanted to go upstairs quicker
than ever. We left the main course just as we left the dessert in the
previous paragraph and ran up the stairs. My nails had never been so wet
before. Liza had to rip o my clothes in order for me not to spoil them.
I couldn't use my hands!
This morning when I started talking about it. She re-fused. I phoned Winston.
I want to know. I tried him. I told him about our rushed meals. About
how I don't get time for cooking at leisure. About the hastened way the
various phases follow one another. About the dierent courses, from the
hors-d'oeuvres to the desserts. When he didn't react, I hinted at Liza's
boredom and the prob-lems it creates for my poetry-reading sessions. He
listened carefully to me and then just said: 'Don't worry so much. Liza
is a very nice woman. She loves your work!' But that didn't satisfy me.
I needed other answers. My work must get the proper time allowance. I
mean what do I write poetry for if nobody has time to listen to it? I
push-ed the issue a little harder. I mentioned nail-varnish. He grew very
quiet. I could almost see him looking down at his own Mojave-coloured
nails and frowning. Then, when he spoke again, his voice was angled and
straight in my ear. He measured his sentences with clean cutlery, cutting
each and every one the exact length: 'Sometimes you are a big idiot, Argo
Spier. Sure, you don't really know what is happening to a man when he
paint his nails. As a matter of fact, you know nothing of the subtlety
of fash-ion, but, honestly, I don't want to make any trouble between you
and your family. So why don't you just fuck o man. We are friends. Let's
keep it that way.'
I was stunned by his honesty! I ran to hide with Liza. She refused and
send me o again. 'Go write poetry!' she said. I was hurt, disappointed
and lost. The best state for a poet to be in. I fled to my corner. Within
seconds I had a poem. I am getting good! It was not only a poem. It was
a theme!
And when it was boned and home-dried, I looked at it and realised, oh,
it was the best poem I have ever written! And being busy rejoicing about
it, a sudden thrill shot through my body, like an addictive drug, rushing
warm-ing from my abdomen to my heart, filtering into my arms and legs.
I looked at my hands. They were trembling. Last night's red varnish was
spoiled. My breath started to quicken. In and out. I shivered where I
sat. Goose-pimples infected my skin. My brain ran. I was hungry, very,
very hungry all of a sudden. We hadn't finished our meal last night. I
needed food. Something special. I needed to read my poem. Anybody!
I stood up shakily, and when I got to the dining room, there was Liza.
She was busy laying the table and when she saw me, she laughed at me.
Her nails were freshly manicured and neatly varnished and I knew, tonight
… tonight … halfway up the stairs … I would read her
my new poem: Black versus Hay!
Two days more
I was checking my watch. It said: 'Time's up! Communi-cate with the one
you love! Hurry hurry half price last round going going gone!' 'Why don't
you put that thing softer … buh huh, isssssh making a noise man',
the drunk at the opposite end of the bar said, showing his teeth. For
the past four hours he had been trying to draw me into a conversation
with him. But I wasn't in the mood for drinking. I kept my cool. There
was a new barmaid that night and it is always good policy not to be too
fast, especially when new barmaids are involved. I learn-ed that a long
time ago.
'Buh huh', the drunk said again. He was annoying the lady. 'Shoddy shaft
say shhhh last drink … buh huh', the man busted in yet again.
'Don't mind him', I said to the woman, trying to save her from embarrassment.
It was time that I show my superiority as a gentleman. 'You get all kinds
of people come in here', and pointing to the drunk, I told her: 'He's
ok, leave him alone.' I lit a cigarette but it fell from my hand. 'Shirk',
I thought as I noticed that I still had a burn-ing one in the ashtray
in front of me.
'You want some more Reference Water?' she asked. 'It's time.' Then it
struck me! This woman could be Liza in disguise! 'What a voice!' It warmed
through me and I suppressed a burp. 'Oh she was Liza in disguise alright!'
And, looking at her again, she was opening up like a flower. Her voice
had that deep familiar husky tone and was soft, inviting, so kind! How
could she have kept up her disguise so well all evening? And my mind drifted
to old times. 'Why is it that women's voices are so soft, so nice, gentle?'
But as I pondered on that, true as dice, the split image of Liza, in all
her nakedness (!) walked through my brain. 'God, what a winning torso!'
She kissed me and I immediately started talking to her: 'Ok, I know, when
you … sure … Oh, I always do this gladly. Yes sure …
always! I was actually very glad those yuppies took you away from me!
No, I was sad! See … sure … I understand you! It's ok! My
poems aren't that good!' and I laughed loudly and continued: 'Sure …
a woman should have a decent man and if he is not around, it's her duty
to take what she can get. Yuppie or no fugitive yuppies, I understand
that.' I was quite happy. She had come at last.
'You want some more Reference Water? Last round!' Liza had jumped from
my mind and now stood behind the bar. Brown eyes were blue.
'Listen, you are good, you are good!' I said to her.
'Reference Water?', she asked again.
'To tell you a secret. Yes, I was glad in the beginning when you had left!
I had amity for a while and Black and Hay's almost finished … sure
I can work if I want to!' I said to her.
'Reference Water' or what?' she insisted.
'Sure … and, say, give that professor over there a drink as well.
What do you drink? Oh, never mind I'll give you some nail-varnish tonight
you won't forget!' and I wink-ed at her twice, touching her fat little
hand with the red nails with my little finger.
But I was in for a surprise! What a reaction from her part! She was Liza
alright.
Madame Liza-Red-Nails-New-Bar-Chief (Lady) flew into a rage of boredom,
such as I had never seen!
'I want you out of here!' she shouted into my face, spitting all over
my glasses. 'Pith o out of here!' she scream-ed and her voice bordered
on hysterics. I feigned dumbfoundedness. Women are such strange creatures:
First they get you high on Reference Water, then they ask you if you want
some more, and if you say yes, they throw you out of their lives! But
I am a gentleman. I know how to handle the ladies. I pouted my lips and
winked at her twice more. That did it for the night! Thank goodness this
is only a story! Liza (= New-Bar-Lady and Imperson-ator) came round the
bar so quick. She grabbed me by my collar with her left hand. Pulled me
up high. Lifted me from my stool. I hung there like an idiot, completely
in her power. She turned me around, smashed me in the balls with her knee,
and at the same time, with her right hand, grabbed me from behind so e~ciently
that my half-smoked cigarette fell from my mouth. White-light pain shot
from the lower part of my body, blurring my vision. She moved me to the
door so fast that no reaction time was to be grabbed anywhere. She bumbled
the door open with my head and threw me into the street. I tried to keep
my cool, my balance most of all, but the professor was lying half-way
on the pavement and half-way o. New-Liza must have thrown him out before
she had even touched me. I hadn't noticed. I tripped over him, went down
like a pillar and lost my glasses in the process. 'Buh … huh', he
said, 'Take o your watch man … 's making noishhh!'
I checked my watch. It said: 'Time's up! Communicate with the one you
love! Hurry hurry half price last round going going gone!' I ripped it
from my arm and threw it across the street. Blind mice and free zones
and most of it all, and all of it: 'Liza!'
This morning, when I got up, I didn't know the time, and, when I went
to the optician to have my glasses fixed, I thought: 'Jungle lion! How
low can a man sink in the eyes of a woman? Liza would have been ashamed.
Good thing she had left.' I mean, one gets so ashamed of it.
You and your mass of words that don't stand
the test of reality
I was passing there. Crummy neighbourhood. There is always something happening
there. Its quite embarrassing. A few years ago it was safe to get home
through the old city, but since then, more and more low-class people have
moved in. Whenever you pass there now, there is always something happening.
'Pipe up, get out!' a woman shouted. She was pushing an old man, some
ten years older than me, into the street. I didn't want to get involved.
I stepped o the pavement and waited. The poor man was drunk. He tumbled
and slipped o the curb. 'The neighbourhood has gone downhill', I thought.
'I really should sell my house. Move to France or Portugal. Vienna? No,
too many loose women in Vienna. Much too much bubble-gum Mozart revival
culture! I've been to Vienna once. I drove a woman to the station. She
had to go and collect some yuppies, but that was before I met Liza. Portugal,
I've never been to Portugal. It must be nice there. Sun and all. A bit
way out of the way though, maybe France. Yes, France! A big quiet life
in Paris!'
'Frustrating bastard! Poet! You with your ship's kitchen words! I don't
need your protection!' the same woman, she was roundish and had red nails
like Liza, shouted as she pushed another aged man, say twenty years older
than me, from the same door. He was haggard! I'd never seen such a dilapidated
man in my life before! He stumbled and wobbled even more than the first
man and was obviously more intoxicated. He fell over the first one. 'Poet,
you with your frumpy masses of words! Don't you tell me the test of reality!'
she shouted at the top of her voice and went back in the door. The whole
street looked up. 'Poor guy', I thought. I was thankful that I am not
his sort. 'I have Liza to keep me straight.'
I side-stepped the two fallen bodies and moved on. 'Listen to this watch
… ssshhhhhh!' the dilapidated man was saying to the one he called
'professor' and was now worming underneath him, trying to wriggle free.
'Buh huh … put it softer … issssssss making noishe', the 'professor'
snorted and started to vomit over the older man's pants. 'Oh man, what
a neighbourhood. I am going to sell my house! This is no town for Liza
and me!' I thought.
But that was only part of the story: What happened next, was furthest
from my mind. I didn't expect it at all. An educated woman such as Liza
… as I got home … I was quite upset after I had passed the
two lummoxes and the screaming lady. I had to stop somewhere to reflect
on it. I went to the 'Queen Elizabeth' to catch my breath. The 'Queen'
is close to my home, you sssssseeeee. I didn't stop there long! Anyway,
when I got home, I couldn't get the door of our house open. Liza had to
come all the way from the back and thought it was a second-floor man,
trying to get in. 'Oh, you should have heard her!' An educated woman like
Liza…!
Green Muse, trying
Sixteen years old and come-on-sharp-in-the-blueness-of-the-eye, she approached
me from behind. My face was locked into my work.
'Are you writing again?' she asked over my shoulder. Her voice was flat.
'Mmmm, shhhht', I murmured, keeping my eyes on the Nothing Reality of
Cyberspace inside my Philips monitor.
'Huh, what? Yes?' I said, looking at page 75 of Black and Hay. I had replaced
the title Jonathan C. and his quest for Liza, the woman of his dreams
stroke his search into the Necro Poetic world of Argo Spier's Wallpaper
stroke with Black and Hay. The first title had seemed too long right from
the start. Long titles are always a problem when you want to get a lot
of poems over fast. My exploration of A Hundred Years of Good Solid Stream-searching
Poetry, which should have formed the basis of Black and Hay, had also
taken longer than I had imagined and didn't really produce the necessary
research material. The thousands of poems by Wystan, Yeats, Stearns, Graves,
Sylvia, Larkin, Georey, Craig, Seamus and others, and the fact that they
were so good, also contributed to the general problem that faced me. I
just had to shorten the title. For some weird reason I had stumbled on
'Black and Hay.' It seemed nice at the time … but now I am not so
sure. My mind drifted.
'What can I do about it?' I replied.
Ok, the problems, the title, etc. Had I lost my nerve? I just don't seem
to be able to get the theme together. Was I still up to writing? Have
I become incapable of compiling complicated structures like the one I
had wanted for Jonathan, and now has fallen back on Black and Hay? 'The
waxing and compiling of the smaller poems doesn't work … also too
many references to Main Stream Tradition, etc.' I thought. Oh, how many
times now have I doubted the core verses and reworked them! Well, I suppose
I really only changed the title to save face. Black and Hay, a minimalised
version of J.C. 'It works … doesn't it?' I murmur-ed and half asked
myself.
Being at that moment involved in these problems and occupied with even
more advanced postscript thoughts when she had entered, and seeing page
76 scrolling, it flashed through my mind that I still had to work out
who really writes poems, who possesses them and what poems actually are
when they are poems etc. Quite im-portant issues in the process of writing!
(I still have to devote some attention to this). 'Oh, it's all so complicated'
I said again and my mind was was was chasing after the answers. And then
again: 'I just can't allow that!' It also flashed through my mind that
I was in desperate need of a couple of other 'hinge' poems! And colour
too! The existing colours in Black and Hay had to be brighter! Gold, silver,
bronze, lead and the odd blue and red? How did brown fit into it? I've
tried yellow, even the sun, but perhaps I should delete that … too
much contrasting yellow. White might be the answer! No! It's an even bigger
problem! I would only be stuck with 'light' if I use 'white' and white
isn't even a colour! Green? What about: jaune cadmium dor‚ to contrast
with vert véronése? Or green gold, ochre, ombre brûlée,
even or pâle and ton chair!
'You are always writing when I want to talk to you! You never listen to
me!' I heard her say this from miles away from the Norma Colour Chart
on which I was balancing. I didn't even consider answering her remark.
My thoughts were too slow. But after a few moments, I real-ized she had
discovered something of the truth about writing, and I had better return
some of the way, at least, to be in a better position to guide her through
the mysterious ways of the 'Non-Silentic Art-ways' of Black and Hay.
'What? What did you say? Who's behind me?'
'You think you are a poet! You are a fool! You are not listening! You
never listen to me!' her voice sharpened and I felt the stab of one of
her blue eyes close to the Achilles spot in the centre of my back.
'Please, my darling, not now! Let me finish this! It is very important!
You have no idea how much I need this page to link up the others. The
colours … the cover …' I heard myself say.
'You can eat the cover! Corkscrew you! You never listen to me!' she went
on in her own way, making her point very clearly. Voice sharpened and
more focused now. I felt several more stabs, this time nearer my neck.
Her seriousness had an urgent thrust. She meant exactly what she was saying.
'I hate you!' she cried out.
I heard tears and there I was, back, quick as lightning. I turned my chair,
my face and looked at her. I saw her where she was standing. Hiss and
fury were in her beautiful eyes.
'I hate you!' she shouted. 'You never listen to me! I hate your poems!'
What had been blue in her from birth metamorphosed chameleon-like into
brown. She became a lioness.
'Invincible', I thought and, with a shock, I saw it! 'It's you!' I exclaimed
in a white voice. I recognised the green stem. The tender sprouting leaves.
My daughter, the green Muse, trying! It's her! She is page 78! And I saw
what she was doing! She was making a stand! I saw it in her eyes: the
one spelled 'Li' and the other 'Za!'
'You are a fool of a dad! A fool of a dad-poet!' she fizzed with more
tears and wiped from her cheeks the last recollection and some remnants
of the Black and Hay and ran from the room and me.
I sat there staring at the space she had left behind. I had never in my
whole life been confronted with the absolute pointlessness of trying to
write poetry as I was then. One has a poem and one loses it, just like
that! I was stunned. I just sat there. I didn't even call out after her
when she had run o. My ears rang. The slam of the door was so hard, even
the window of the space inside my monitor shivered. What an Atlas rock!
'Oh green Muse, trying. Winning!'
ghost writer
[mediaeval blues and the run
of Johnathan C.'s love for Liza]
Quick fax to David
No vc 10h ok I have it 10.05 now.
Topic: Choose 'The weather and a hand and a hundred' or 'chat
nothing ash.' Stick to topic. Chat slow load. Click Java light.
I am leaving fax channel 10.15h. Will be on
in Paris plus Vienna 10.20h.
Trace me. Prepare quick switch chat-n- mail.
Enter 2 ways:
via edbox and p-files then edliza click. Don't
forget your handle: d3.
Via straight flow url: http/www.geocities.com//cgi-bin/chat/chat_entry/
Bye and good luck. Coming? If not: ok.
Sandy2
The Crystal mountain, the post office clerk,
Liza and me
Last night I joined a cyber-conference on the
Internet. On the Geocities Vienna Channel Chat I met a man/woman by the
name of David3. I had logged in as Sandy2 and he/she as David3. On the
Internet men assume women's names and women men's names. Certain protocols
have been set for cyberspace-conferencing, and from the beginning the
use of pseudonyms was supposed to be one of them. Why men should take
on women's names and vice versa was never really explained, but it has
become everyday practice. It does have a beneficial psychological eect,
however, one which promotes un-adulterated communication. When a man pretends
to be a woman by using a woman's name, he certainly has less chance of
becoming involved with a male conferencee and he won't get loads of hate-mail
and 'up-yours' in the guest book of his homepage. But with newcomers to
conferences one will never know whether they are male or female.
For QuickC typing in cyber-conferencing they also use abbreviations of
names once the handles have been set. A 'handle' is your log-in identfication.
's2' types quicker than 'Sandy2'. 'David3' becomes 'd3' and 'Sunday-bazooka',
'sun' or even 'ba'. To give a more concise example of how the protocol
really works in the execution of QuickC cyber-conferencing, this is how
the conference started last night:
'd3 what's call up stick to subject u ok?' And after the response: 'd3
syntax's change mood dosing o hurry time screed.'
The subject of last night's conference was 'chat no-thing ash.' Quite
an interesting topic and, after this morning's evaluation, it had led
to some significant, valuable linguistic points concerning the great debate
on the use of deconstruction texts in cyber- communication. But d3 had
called 'deconstruction' 'double talk-think'. He/she was, at one stage,
rather concerned about the absolutely open anarchistic character of cyber-talk.
'Can these conversations be traced?' he/she had asked. The conference
had by that time become watered down in its movement back and forth, ending
in frivolous remarks about love and feelings of mutuality. Ordinary men-women
connubial relationships had crept into it. d3 sounded as if he/she was
familiar with terms such as 'marriage' and 'spouses', etc. I got bored
and started multi-tasking on the book I am writing: Black and Hay. I started
working on this column. Switching from Vienna Channel Chat to the base
computer, I got worried. d3 was making more familiar remarks about 'love':
'London boat Tristan and Is?' 'not drunk flying to Stars stras?' I was
considering throwing the draft of Black and Hay into the dustbin. How
can I fit a column about 'Cyber-chat' and 'Internet-conferencing' into
Black and Hay other than using it as a prologue and changing the title
to Green Muse Trying?
While waiting for d3 to come up on the screen with more relevant material
I thought: 'Maybe a new title will solve the colour problem in Black and
Hay.' When d3 hadn't responded for several minutes I replied to his/her
question about the traceability of conversations in Cyberspace.
'Yes, everything is traceable for 100 years', I QuickC typed.
'Why did you mention the word 'love' then?' he/she immediately responded.
'Did I mention love? Another of my ideas stolen? d3 is quite a fast typist
too!' I said out loud and reciprocated with: 'I dunno have u a coee dis
qui?' I was completely alone in my study and the strain of cyber-conferencing
together with multi-tasking Black and Hay was beginning to show in my
responses.
The conference ended quite late. When both d3 and I had logged o it was
already afternoon in Vienna Chat and deep dark night in my room. Liza
was sound asleep in the room next door. The way d3 had said 'goodnight
bye' and 'have sweet dreams u' had struck me. In some inexplicable way
it was typed with such tenderness and well wishing that for several hours
after the conference I was still thinking about it, brooding on it, lying
in bed, trying to sleep and hearing Liza's heavy breathing next to me.
Even long after midnight I was still awake and thinking about it.
When I at last fell asleep and started to dream, I found myself walking
with Liza across the side of a smallish mountain. It rolled all the way
down to the bottom of a beautiful valley. We were strolling towards the
bottom, where a crowd of people were awaiting us. We laughed and felt
gay, and held hands. Her eyes were as happy and blue as the sky. She snuggled
up to me and I was completely in control of love and her want of me, but
then I lost her. I lost her when I discovered that the whole slope we
were skipping down was littered with huge, precious mountain crystals.
It was a crystal mountain! Exquisite cones and exceptionally big natural
mountain prisms stuck out from under the ground. I wrested two big ones
free. One for Liza and one for me. And looking at them, I realised their
value. 'At least fifty apiece, and I am sure it could be more!' But looking
further down the hill, I saw bronze-coloured copper stones. Very special.
I took two of them as well. It was then that I discovered that Liza had
gone. She had mingled in the crowd and vanished. 'Man, I must remember
to mark this spot', I said to myself, but also thought, 'I had better
try and find Liza. We have to make it together.' I rushed back from the
bronze-coloured copper stones to the cones and prisms and then fur-ther
back up the hill. Being in such a rush, I dropped both the stones and
the prisms and almost tumbled into an enormous, deep crevice that wasn't
there when we had come down. Some of the people from the valley were standing
on one side of it, pressing forward, trying to get to the other side.
None of them could get over it. It also seemed impossible to get across
by going down into it and up the other side. Everybody was upset and uneasy
about the rapid change industry had made to such beautiful countryside.
They were talking about it. 'My best bet to find Liza again', I thought,
'was to go to the post o~ce as fast as I could.' Things happen fast in
Cyberspace-chat and dreams!
When I opened my eyes I was in the main hall of the post o~ce and there
was Liza waiting for me, right in front of me! She knew I would come!
She was dressed in nutmeg. Eyes knowingly blurred. Hay-brown and black.
The post-o~ce clerk was grey and stubborn and had a bad character. His
jealousy flared like a rash all over his face. His greedy eyes were green
and he sold me a blue stamp for an unbelievable high price. I was laughing
at Liza and paid no attention to his trickery. I just paid what he asked.
Only when I tugged my wallet away from him did I notice it was empty and
started to complain. But the clerk just said: 'I cannot refund money.
I have to ask permission from the superintendent', and he left, scurrying
to the back of his lobby and out of sight. There was Liza, and I, standing,
waiting for something to happen.
'The man is taking us for a ride. He will not return until we have left',
I said to her.
'Yes, he is breaking trust', she said, 'I am so glad Stars has happened.'
I couldn't get the full meaning of that, but this is the way cyber-talk
dreamland walks go.
And she added 'I was bitter then, but now I am free.' I was even more
confused by this remark.
It was already late at night. I just could not get to sleep. I dreamed
and I switched back to the conference: 'd3 what's call up stick to subject
u ok? Say d3 you a woman or man gay?'
QuickC typing, d3 answered: 's2 whats woman to u?' Then I got it! Not
gay! Not a man! d3 was a woman! d3 was Liza!
'I cannot keep on writing down dreams in Black and Hay! It's repetition!'
I shouted to her with capital letters, trying to hide the joy of my discovery,
and entered a deep-er level of sleep. I clean forgot about Black and Hay
and the tedious problem of the repetition of its dream sequences. I slept
like a log and smiled. I even started to dream in my dream! I dreamt she
had fallen in love with me. I dreamt that all her fears concerning 'Double
think-talk cyberspace' and 'tractability of cyber-type faces' had disappeared.
I dreamt that she had become absolutely free and at ease while with me
in space. I dreamt we were lying on a cosy bed outside the post o~ce with
nobody no body to disturb us. I dreamt she was naked and I was small.
And I dreamt she lifted her left leg over my right hip. I could feel her
thigh moving up and down. It was as if she had wanted to comfort me. I
dreamt I saw her feet. Even now as I am writing this, I can tell you exactly
how her feet look! This is remarkable! I mean, there's d3 cum Liza in
cyberspace and I know his/her feet by heart! 'Mmmmm,' she murmured and
with a soft husky whisper into the cushion of my ear she asked me why
I had wanted to throw Black and Hay into the dustbin. I purred like a
cat, smiled like an idiot, and said I would never have done such a thing!
'It was just a thought', I said, 'I will change the title to Green Muse
Trying, enter this column and keep your name vague. Nobody will know!'
I felt so secure in her presence. Like a baby feeling at home in its house.
A river that had been running to its delta. 'My poems and columns are
so good!' and I started to hum her one of my latest poems:
'There are things you should know.
And the same things you should not know.
There is the pretence of not knowing, while knowing:
Liza is my love:
Liza brown Liza blue.
She is hay take her away. Bring her back.
She is black.
And I … I am kadmiumrot hell like your day.'
I felt so contented having her near me, feeling
her black-ened skin. It felt like I was discovering happiness once again
after a long time. I was approaching deep r.e.m. sleep. Oh, Liza was with
me and we were black and both hay. Ahh, 'chat nothing ash'! Black and
Hay, it was no concern of mine anymore! Black and Hay was going it's own
way. It was Green Muse Trying now. It was a run down the hill. No stones,
just cones and prisms and round copper- bronze amulets. Repetition or
none. Answer or question. Cyber-space or bone. Sense or done.
We both slept like humans till late morning. And when we went back to
the mountain, we were both on the other side of the crevice. Even my car
was still there, waiting! And as we got into the car and she held my hand
again and as we drove o into the rising midday sun, we looked at each
other and we smiled. 'We've done it again! True as black and hay, we have
done it! Mrs. Liza Green Muse trying … winning!'
And we laughed and laughed about it. 'd3 what's call up stick to subject
u ok?'
I was born again. The cyber-conference was a big success! And as a matter
of fact, I kept on thinking I had quite enjoyed writing The Crystal mountain,
the post o~ce clerk, Liza and me. The title might be a bit overstated
and the lines jumpy and blurred, but so what? Liza was with me and we
were driving on the road together and I, I had another column for Green
Muse Trying!
Then I thought I had better phone Liza as well to see if she was still
in bed. She would want to know where why I was on the road, so far from
home.
I don't want brunch
I had been avoiding the ghost writer now for some time. I still had to
settle the Strasbourgian bill with him, And Also the amount of stories
that had originated in the Macrobiotic restaurant where we always meet
had grown phenomenally in quantity. Not much ghost writing was required
but masses of copyreading and corrections needed be done! It seemed to
be the biggest problem. There were too many! He had more than once reprimanded
me about it: 'Why do you repeat the same mistakes over and over again?
Aren't you taking your 'repetition theory' a bit far?' he had insisted.
When I saw him in the supermarket yesterday I was quite embarrassed. I
tried to avoid him, but he had noticed me at the wine shelves and had
come over.
'I still have to settle the Strasbourgian bill', I said to him, and added,
'I have been quite busy lately.'
'Are you still working on Black and Hay? Jonathan C.'s Love for Liza,
or what do you call your books these days?' he asked and I could feel
his reprimand again in the way he asked the question.
When I nodded, 'Yes', his sarcasm carried more reprimand:
'I thought the stories were for Green Muse?'
I didn't answer that. Instead I said, 'Let's have dinner together', and
I invited him for a meal on Friday.
'That's nice', he said, 'I've gone completely vegetarian. I know a 'new'
place.'
I agreed. 'I'll pay for it', I said.
'The 'Haiku-Three Muses cum Venenian' account is still open too', he replied.
'That was a good book, wasn't it?' I touché-ed him and once again
refused to go into discussion of the bills. 'Forget the Strasbourgian
bill. Just pay the Haikukian bill! It lights up red every time I run the
accounting program. It's disturbing my automation. Why, anyway, did you
have to stay in such an expensive Vilniusian hotel? 50 wasn't it? Good
god, not even I sleep in rooms as expensive as that!'
I was quick to answer him, 'I had Liza in there', I said and winked. 'I'll
take you there one day!' His nails were mauve as was his scarf.
He laughed. 'Why? To go and get more useless stories?' he got back at
me and laughed again. This time in his typical jovial kind of way.
'10.30h Same corner as always. You pick me up?' I asked and laughed as
well.
'Make it 11.45h I don't want brunch, you know!' he replied and we parted.
Only after several minutes
I waited for him on the corner at 11.45h and when he arrived it was exactly
11.45h He was as punctual as Greenwich Mean Time. We went to the restaurant
and on our way I made a joke about the scheduled corner,
'When people saw me standing there on the corner, and when you came by,
they thought I was doing the street and you were scoring!' I said and
tugged at his scarf.
'Don't do that', he replied.
I tried another joke when we entered the restaurant: 'It smells like a
real restaurant!' I said.
He laughed this time and I was as happy as I was hungry. He steered me
to a quite corner and a table for two. Opposite us a table was taken by
a solitary lone woman. He let me face the woman. There was a candle on
the table. He lit it. The two us have an instinctive mutual understanding
about the fundamental things in life. Our meal was flamboyant but vegetarian.
No pepper no juicy sauce. But that was only to be part of the story! During
the course of our usual intellectual chit-chat I discovered that there
was a deeper source and motivation for me to write this column:
'I got something for you!' he said, quite out of character, towards the
end of the meal, and handed me a wrinkled and faded piece of parchment
with wineglass stains and candle wax drippings all over it. It was the
lost medieval Leimruten Mann translation. I took it, looked at it and
turned white. I could only face him again after several minutes.
'For Green Muse Trying?' he suggested.
'I have done this scary-wary thing! It was in the draft that got lost!
Valentine Blues section!' I exclaimed with aspiration and white fright.
'I know', he smiled.
'It was lost! Where did you get it?' I stammered.
'I know. Doesn't matter where I got it from', his eyes were burning, a
strange green colour. His voice was vibrating.
I just sat there, looking at him. White and worn. Fun had flown from my
door. 'I can't rewrite Leimruten Mann again! I have deleted the main structure!'
I continued, 'I cannot keep on reproducing what's dead! I don't have the
original anymore!' And after a pause I broke in again, 'I am not doing
it!' And after yet another pause, 'It doesn't fit into Green Muse!'
'Green Muse? Black and Hay! What does it matter? Why are you such an idiot
Argo Spier?' he asked and burst out laughing. Laughing loud. 'The majority
of your work is always in a state of deletion! You change names like they
were no names at all. And also, nothing fits into Green Muse d'or,' and
he kept on laughing. 'Nor in Black and Hay for that matter! That's the
success of your work! Don't you see it?' and he added, 'Why are you so
blind?' 'That's sucking-plucking soaring dead dump repetition, man! I
am not reworking it!' I looked at the text again and when I looked up,
and looked past him, I saw the woman at the table behind him. She was
looking at me. Our conversation must have been a bit too loud and had
carried itself to where she was sitting. I saw her chocolate brown eyes
and the blue wall behind her head. I noticed the way she held her knife
and fork, so foreign now, and how she put bio-food into her mouth. Her
manner was so dierent now from what it had been since I had noticed her
at first. She held the cutlery dierently. She ate dierently. And she looked
at me.
'Do you think Liza is going to come back from Portugal? Belèm?',
I asked in a meek eort to change the subject, sitting there with my shoulders
sagging, worrying myself towards a darkened grave. The sudden reappearance
of the Leimruten Mann text was too much for me!
'Portugal?' he frowned. 'I thought you said she left for Stars with the
Yuppies? Where's this 'Stars' place anyway?'
'I am not doing the text! Order me another Bio-wine', I succumbed and
thought about the piece I wrote about Winston. Liza and Winston! How come
they know so much and have all the answers? 'I am not doing the text!'
I repeated again, this time with stern emphasis, 'It's too dangerous!'
After that we finished the meal and when I paid, I thought, 'I should
have paid his bills right from the start.' And as we passed through the
restaurant towards the door, I saw the solitary woman's image again in
the mirror on the sideboard. She was watching me leave. Her hair was hayed
like sun but her skin was black, black like a gypsy's silken linen pyjama-panties.
I racked my brains, trying to remember the parts
The morning after my startling experience with the reappearance of the
translation of the Leimruten Mann text, I again started re-incorporating
it into Black and Hay. For some unknown reason I was crying sad. I had
to rack my brains in an eort to try and remember the parts I had deleted.
The original text had disappeared completely. I was at a loss. Also, the
infamous two Yuppies haunted me: 'What business have Yuppies with Liza?'
I tried various opening paragraphs. At last I settled on typing a spectacular
heading:
The Appearance and Disappearance of the Leimruten
Mann text - a column about mediaeval blues -
I was hoping the heading would make recognition
and remembrance easier. That it would pull me. But it didn't. By mid-afternoon
I still had only the heading on the screen. Only towards the evening Liza
and her Yuppies vanished from my thoughts and I remembered some of the
original translation of the raw text and slowly everything started to
fall into place again. Later in the evening I remembered every single
word I had jotted down in the first draft. The Leimruten Mann text: The
main introductory paragraph was:
Die Erscheinung der Text29 - Ein mittelalterliches
Märchen und Lied Kinder zu warnen nie hinter einem Dichter zu wandern.
Geschrieben von Albert Fuchs, im Jahre unseres Herrn Gottes 1996.30
The second main subtitle was:
Eine Verarbeitung von den vielen Märchen
und Erzählungen aus mittelalterliches Zeit. Dem Nordischen König,
Albertus der Grosse, Herscher über die Barbarischen Rassen von den
Östenreichischen und Nieder- und Nordischen Saxischen Wälder
Länder.
The Quote was:
'Putain, said the little Prince as he aimlessly
walked through the inner court of the castle.'
I started the new story: 'Putain, putain, putain,'
the little Prince shouted. He hated the little Princess. The little Prince
was brought up never never to use swear words or any other utterances
of abuse. Also, both the King and His Queens, were very strikeout about
the proper conduct of women towards men in their daily encounters. The
absolute untouchability and the honour and immaculacy of women was one
of the highest virtues and one of the most important proclamations the
King has made in his long reign over his subjects. 'Putain', said the
little Prince as he passed through the kitchen where the nannies always
loved him and played with him. 'I hate her, the putain, I hate her' he
avowed. When he ran past the King's chair at the window, he looked at
the wall where there was a mysterious hole, a huge hole next to the window,
where, as the nannies had told him, the King, in an utter rage of madness
once took the blacksmith's hammer and hit the wall. When any of the servants
past this hole they made a strange cross sign and uttered the words: 'The
King's Cow's Cunt. It was the Fox's Hunt.' That was also proclaimed by
the King. 'Putain', the Prince said again and again. 'She's a putain!'
From one of the front chambers a hired Poet came out at the same moment
the little Prince was running up the wide, richly-decorated Jugendstil
stairs. He grabbed the little Prince by his arm: 'Shhhh! Shhhh!' he said,
trying to calm him down, 'Read this and please calm down. She is not worth
it! Please!' he said and gave the little Prince a parchment with a heavy,
loaded piece of old German writing on it. I still remembered this particular
piece of writing very clearly, as I had copied some of it from the original
document and adapted it to suit the story:
'Im Konigreich des Königs im Jahrhunderts 1996 erscheite er am Wand
eines Bild und die folgenes text. Die Zeichnung zeigte Insekten, das Schloss
Tivoli, eine Eule und einen Lebensbaum. Die altertümlichen deutsche
Text, gehet über den Leimruten mann: Er war im Ho der König
grosse Alarm. Unheimlich schnell, nach die Erschieung diese Text lass
der Köning verschiedene Dichter und Wörterspecialisten kommen
die Text uberzuzetzen in ein sprachbares und lezenbares Sprache.' 'Der
folgenes Text31 war es':
'ich lau geschwind mit der leimstangen
und hab darmit ein gutzgauch gefangen
umbs haupt vereren mich die muggen
und hangt mirs haar au kross so grosz
vielleicht gehe ich dahinden blosz
mein schoner hut und federen drey
disz kautzlein macht mir kurtsweil viel
ein schoner vogel mein hundt subtil
wolt iemandt mir dasselb verkeren
das thut der mugen wadel abkeren'
'Der erste Dichter machte der folgenes Text
davon:'
'Swiftly I chase, lime-stick held high,
and with it spring's cuckoo caught I,
while about my head flit midges in clouds,
and so long hangeth the hair on my body
shall I journey perchance unclothed with hat
so fine and feathers three such garb doth bring
me excellent glee. A beauteous bird, and
my cunning dog, should any wish to change
with me, the midges shall swarm no more”
'Und er zetze diefolgenes verses dazu unter':
'He who knoweth where be the nest
Doth have the knowledge 'tis true;
But he who robbeth it from its rest
Possesseth more than me or you.'
'Der Text von der zweite Dichter war zo unerstaundlich
schlecht dass ich, noch jedes ander Schriftsteller im Reiches Konigs,
es uberschreiben dürfen. Unter seine text hat er geschrieben:'
'If you want further clarification on the context,
do hesitate to call me: I do not know.'
'Der Text von der Dritte Dichter, der grösste
Dichter aus Reiches, der berühmter Argo Spier war das folgendes':
'Self portrait: A freehand translation of the
16th-cen-tury Minstrel of The Bird Catcher.'
'Swiftly I run with my bird-lime stick
Swiftly I've caught many a beautiful tick
Around my head mosquitos fly
In my hair they tangle why whereto can I flee
Leaving behind my strapping hat
And feathers three
Oh small sharp kill-joys
Give me a lively bird my subtle hunt
Someone else to take my place the want
And away you chase'
'Unter zijne überzetzung hat er noch die
folgendes Text übergeliefert':
'Blah la.'
The little Prince struggled free from the hired
Poet's grasp and fled to the door leading to the backyard of the court,
letting the text fall and float down onto the immaculately clean floor
of the hall. On the steps leading to the garden a small little Fox coyly
sat and silently watched. The Prince looked it into its eyes. They were
chestnut brown eyes. 'Are you a fox?' he asked. The little fox didn't
reply, it just watched the little Prince's face and sat there as if begging
to enter the warmth of the kitchen. 'You can't come in', the little Prince
said, 'my father will skin you alive and make a hat out of you for the
winter, go away.' 'Go away, go on, away!' The little Fox just waited there,
and kept looking at the little Prince's face, but as the little Prince
took something from his pocket to oer it to the little Fox and held it
out to it, the little Fox retreated but, for the first time, it noticed
the honesty in the boy's blue sweet eyes.
At that moment the third Poet came into the court yard. He saw the little
Prince and merrily called to him that it was time for his daily poem-story
lessons. The Prince was still a little distracted but went to the Poet,
the most famous Poet in all his father's realm. (I am that Poet!). And
as everybody knows, The King's realm now includes the Barbarian Nations
of the Venian Blinds as well, also the south, and the east and west! That
is precisely why he had to endure all these foreign language poems the
hired Poet was trying to teach him. There was also the story of the Young
Queen of the South, but that I had better keep for the next column. Over-complicated
structures in columns will only put readers o. It's an old trick known
by practically all superior writers! There was also the Queen of the North
too. Anyway, the Queen of the South had a language problem. To understand
her when she was trying to say something was really quite impossible!
She was always mumbling as if talking into someone's ear cushions and
her speech was always blurred like her face. And, what is more, she always
talked about impossible things. Things like 'keeping the trust' and 'we
won't see each other anymore.' The King was really embarrassed by her
youth but he kept his tongue inside his mouth most of the time. The King
was one of the greatest strategists of his time. He just made his proclamations
every time an emergency arose. The Young Queen was also a thief and had
copy-catted many a text just to impress The King. Shortly before his conquest
into the LiLaEs and her final humiliation and abduction she tried to save
her skin by sending the following text to The King:
'Gewiss', sagte der Fuchs. 'Noch bist du für mich nichts als ein
kleiner Junge, der hunderttausend kleinen Jungen völlig gleicht.
Ich brauche dich nicht, und du brauchst mich ebensowenig. Ich bin für
dich nur ein Fuchs, der hunderttausend Füchsen gleicht. Aber wenn
du mich zähmst, werden wir einander brauchen. Du wirsst für
mich einzig sein in der Welt. Ich werde für dich einzig sein in der
Welt … wenn du mich zähmst, wird mein Leben durchsonnt sein.
Ich werde den Klang deines Schrittes kennen, der sich von allen Anderen
unterscheidet.' Der Fuchs verstummte und schaute den kleinen Prinsen lange
an, 'Bitte, zähme mich!', sagte er.'
The King was not impressed. His full attention at that time was concentrated
on the correct upbringing of The little Prince. And also everybody knew
that she hadn't written the text herself but had lifted it from another
court Poet, now also under the Sovereign of the King, Saint-Exupery. The
only Problem was that The King was too intoxicated with planning his victorious
battle and campaigns to understand the text. He had ordered that The Little
Prince had to fast-learn not only the content of the stolen piece the
Queen had sent, but also to translate it for the King and also become
a Poet. This was the reason for his disinterest in the Barbarian Language
of the Queen of the South. But this is material for another column, as
I have said.
'Come come, sweet little Prince', the best Poet in the Realm called out.
'Come, it is time for the Story of the Birds and the Bees, I wrote it
for you last night. What are you looking at? Is there something in the
bushes? It certainly will be a rat. It cannot be a fox, can it? If it
were a fox we could have killed it and made a hat for your father, Our
Great King! Come on now.' The little Prince saw there was no way out and
he went with the Poet. They went back through the kitchen where the maids
were merrily cooking the evening meal. They passed the King's Cow's Cunt.
'The King's Cow's Cunt. It was the Fox's Hunt', The Poet said and made
a small bow. 'Cow's Cunt Foxy's Love', the little Prince said. The Poet
looked at him sternly but said nothing more. They went straight up to
the spacious study and the Poet started his lesson without wasting poets'
time. 'The Birds and the Bees', he said and began to recite his newly-written
poem.
'Heute in meinenem Kopf singt ein Vöglein32
schön Serpendich zum Strassburg singt
das Vöglein schön gehst du weg gehst du
weg weit weg von hier Bienen rund meinen
Kopf Bienen rund meinen Kopf singt das
Vöglein schön Serpendich zum Strassburg
singt das Vöglein gehst du weg
gehst du weg
weit weg von hier
Aus meinenem Federbett kommt ein
Vöglein schön aus meinenem Federbett kommt ein
Vöglein schön Bienen rund meinen Kopf
Bienen rund meinen Kopf singt das Vöglein
schön Bienen rund meinen Kopf singt das
Vöglein schön
Heute in meinen Kopf singt ein Vogelein
schön Serpendich zum Strassburg singt
das Vöglein schön gehst du weg gehst
du weg
weit weg von hier
Aus dem Wald kommt ein Fuchschen klein
aus dem Wald kommt ein Fuchschen klein
singt das Vöglein schön Bienen rund
meinen Kopf Bienen rund meinen Kopf
singt das Vöglein schön Serpendich
zum Strassburg singt das Vöglein schön
gehst du weg gehst du weg
weit weg von hier
Fuchschen klein Vöglein schön
Fuchschen klein Vöglein schön
gehst du weg gehst du weg
weit weg von hier
nein nein nein sagt Prinzchen meinen
nein nein nein sagt Prinzchen meinen
Heute in meinen Kopf singt ein Vogelein
schön Serpendich zum Strassburg singt das Vöglein schön
gehst du weg gehst du weg
weit weg von hier
zähme mich sagt der Fuchs
zähme mich sagt der Fuchs
nein nein nein Prinzchen meinen
nein nein nein Prinzchen meinen
Heute in meinen Kopf singt ein Vogelein
schön Serpendich zum Strassburg singt
das Vöglein schön gehst du weg gehst
du weg
weit weg von hier
Aus meinenem Federbett kommt ein Vöglein
schön aus meinenem Federbett kommt
ein Vöglein schön Bienen rund
meinen Kopf Bienen rund
meinen Kopf singt das Vöglein schön
Bienen rund meinen Kopf Bienen
rund meinen Kopf
nein nein nein Prinzchen meinen sagt
nein nein nein Prinzchen meinen sagt
nein
Aus dem Wald kommt ein Fuchschen klein
aus dem Wald kommt ein Fuchschen klein Vöglein schön Vöglein
schön Bienen
rund meinen Kopf Bienen rund meinen Kopf Serpendich zum Strassburg Serpendich
zum Strassburg gehst du weg gehst du weg
weit weg von hier
nein nein nein sagt der Prinzchen meinen nein
nein nein sagt der Prinzchen meinen
ja ja nein
zähme mich sagt der Fuchs
bitte zähme mich sagt der Fuchs
nein nein nein schläft schön Prinzchen meinen
nein nein nein schläft schön Prinzchen meinen
zähme mich fleht der Fuchs bitte zähme
mich fleht der Fuchs zähme mich
fleht der Fuchs bitte zähme
mich
nein
nein Prinzchen meinen nein nein ja nein
Prinzchen meinen nein nein sagt doch ja
Und aus meinener wollenen Mütze kommt
ein
Prinzeschen hübsch und zart aus meinener
wollen Mutze kommt ein Prinssseschen
hübsch und zart zähme mich sagt der Fuchs
zähme mich fleht der Fuchs Bienen rund
meinen Kopf Bienen rund meinen Kopf
singt das Vöglein schön
nein nein nein schläft schön Prinzeschen meinen nein nein nein
schläft schön Prinzeschen meinen
mich
fleht der Fuchs bitte zähme mich
bitte mich fleht der Fuchs zähme mich
fleht der Fuchs bitte zähme
mich
dich
nein
nein nein nein schläft schön Prinzeschen
mein nein nein nein schläft schön Prinsschen
mein nein nein ja
ich fresse dich sagt das Fuchschen klein
ich fresse dich sagt das Fuchschen klein
nein nein nein schönes Prinzchen mein
nein nein nein schönes Prinzeschen mein
nein nein ja
Vöglein Schön ja sagt ja
ja schläft ja”
ja?'
But by the time he had finished, the little
Prince had fallen asleep standing upright, and I personally, had got so
bored with the Leimruten Mann text, for the oomph time, that I had decided
to incorporate what I have of it now, unfinished and fragmented as it
was, into Green Muse Trying. I can't remember whether at this stage I
had al-ready dumped Black and Hay in the dustbin and had start-ed on Green
Muse Trying. The whole business of digging up texts and researching into
poetry, the way I got involved in doing this, Bio-lunches and ghost writers,
and this whole idea of a hundred years from Yeats to Seamus and even back
to the more distant 16th-century Pre-Gregorian times ('Holographic collections'
and appearing and disappearing Leimruten texts), had got too much for
me. The so-called 'Finished Neue Literatur' and 'Streams of Human Non-Silentic
Art', and the incorporation of it into whatever book, was getting much
too complicated for me. Much too complicated for me at my age! I was starting
to miss Liza again and I simply decided to end the column. As a matter
of fact, I completed Green Muse Trying the very same moment The Prince
had fallen asleep. I just had to! One thing haunted me, however, then
and even now, as I am completing this paragraph. It haunts me like the
stench of a dud: The fact that I had misjudged the importance of my role
as mediator in the case of Jonathan and Liza. Oh, and what had become
of it, the third Atlas rock. When I had finished the Leimruten Mann text,
this time for good, I phoned the ghost writer and told him: 'If the text
gets deleted once more I will not rewrite it again!' How daft can a man
get? And when he gets that daft how much more daft can he get? I felt
relieved and my sadness had by then completely vanished from me. Actually
I wasn't really missing Liza, I was thinking, and, to prove it, I wrote
the following dialogue underneath the Leimruten Mann text just before
I e-mailed it to the ghost writer:
'I am glad Liza is stuck with the Yuppies!
They can colour each other's nails … toenails even, as far as I
care!'
a very concerned voice and my face blurred
The Leimruten Mann text and its rewriting played a role in the developement
of my relationship with the ghost writer. Our companionship became naturalistic!
Probably also the overdoses of vegetarian macro-biotic lunches we were
having had a hand in it as well. On a regular basis I was meeting him
on the corner. We had more Bio-meals together in one week than I can remember.
We discussed my work every time we were together.
'We are friends Argo Spier', he said one day over lunch in our reclusive
corner, and somehow, on that particular day, he had given me not only
hope for a possible solution for the Black and Hay versus Green Muse Trying
dilemma in the book, but also something which had scared the living daylights
out of me. The incident, and the talk we had, had changed my attitude
towards writing for good! What he had said contained a novel approach
to literature altogether and was such a very good time-saving idea, and
good news for columnists, that I realised it the second he opened his
mouth. I only gradually came to understand its full scope, however. It
could make 20th-century literature obsolete and quite unnecessary to produce,
while the same quantity of output could be main-tained or even be pushed
up spectacularly. But there was a danger to it! Even now as I am tackling
it and working on the idea. I am wary of what could come out of it. The
danger is: copyright!
'Do you really think new literature could be made from old stu?' 'What
about n.p.?' I asked him.
'I don't know. You've been working on medieval didactic city-storytelling
and Heylyn's holographs … Nakhs-habi… What do you think?'
he answered and for the first time in Green Muse Trying he left holes
in sentences. He also didn't quite complete it.
'I knew you would say that, Mister Symbiosis!' I answered, looking him
straight in the eye. Our relation-ship had grown.
'Yes? Why don't you try it?'
'It's a very delicate thing! Fragile Vestal Virgins' stu. I had been thinking
about it too even without knowing it but, man oh man and woman and woman,
it's a dangerous stepping stone', I responded with a very concerned voice
and my face blurred like Liza's when she sips coee. I had a flash-thought
of Liza in some little coee bar. A Yuppy was sitting across the table,
holding her hand, watching her eyes turning from blue to brown.
'16th-Century's 100 years … Black and Hay! Can I get caught?' I
said, also leaving a hole in a sentence.
The week before we had both settled, for good, the fact that Black and
Hay, was just to be the story and not the book and that 'Green Muse' will
run its own course from then on. Green Muse Trying will be the book. Yet
when I had then again substituted Black and Hay for Green Muse Trying,
he said nothing. I continued. 'There may be reprints drifting all over
the place and all of them may be copyrighted!'
'So?' he smiled, 'Necro Poetica! Wallpaper poetic sequences! You invented
it! I mean, the way this is going you are just filling pages! How are
you going to link the stu?'
'It might also take over Black and Hay completely', I said.
'Green Muse, you mean', he reacted and threatened.
'Yes, and Jonathan C.'s search for Liza', I said, 'I … I don't know
about 'Ghost writer'. I was growing very uncertain about a lot of things.
'Aren't you overdoing it now? This Liza bit? Every single column! Liza!
She went to Stars. It's her problem. God, what a ridiculous place to go
to! I suppose 'Paradise Fun Exhibitions' organise tours there. Big letters:
'Come see Liza and Yuppies! Come see Liza and the yuppies!' he remarked
and started laughing vulgar and loud at his own joke as if the matter
was solved.
I didn't think it funny. 'You don't understand', I tried again, with an
even more blurred face. Voice stern. 'If I use 16th-century texts, I have
no control over the flow in Green Muse. I might get stuck!'
'Oh, don't be so serious about it and put this out of your head Argo Spier.
Your work isn't going anywhere', he interrupted and tried another idiotic
joke, 'Why don't you become a school teacher since you seem not to be
up to it!?' and he laughed so loud several people in the restaurant stared
at us.
'No, I don't think I have to try it', I said, ignoring his joke and misplaced
joviality.
'We are only talking about and looking at this column. Where is it leading
to? Nothing has happened in it so far except our chit-chatting in a vegetarian
restaurant!' I said and my expression signalled more worry. I thought
about the poem 'Black versus Hay' in Black and Hay … in Green Muse
Trying.
'No, I am not going to do it. No Evian stream for me!' I concluded. We
had our meal, I paid, and my day was done. I had another column for Green
Muse Trying and he, he had another piece of copy-reading to do, but somehow
I was quite disturbed.
fragile innocent women
The next morning when I woke up I thought about 16th-century literature
and the apocalyptic nature of source codes, but I was distracted: 'How
am I am going to face yet another day of writing?' At tea time it came
to me: 'Yes, I am going to try the ghost writer's idea!' Nakhshabi! That's
close enough to Heylyn's Hologra-phic pictures. A hundred years! A hundred
years of 16th-century storytelling! It sounds great!' flashed across my
mind. I immediately started work on it. I worked on it without shaving
or eating, nor sleep. I worked on it for two solid days! Scanning and
ocr-ing Omnipages, cutting and pasting from private letters, copying individual
sentences, retyping and reworking texts. 'It's easy to hide copyrighted
material', I thought, 'Who is going to trace individual sentences!' And
when at last I completed the Nakhshabi-story in fragile innocent women
and had e-mailed it to him, he was thrilled. 'What a curt you are ARGO
SPIER!' he had called out and I could hear he was in a jovial mood.
Let me tell you the story: 'Dearest beloved little girls, fragile innocent
women all over the world, come closer, sit at my feet and I will tell
you a story that will enthrall you and make you happy and gay and even
when the celestial skies are grey and gloomy will aord you a smile. Oh,
you guiltless inoensive sweet little lovers with your innocuous little
passions, oh my lovelies, come sit with me. I will tell you the story
as told by an old friend, a Wallpaper man too, the virtuous Ziya'u'd-Din
Nakhshabi of Persia. It is the 'Story of the Prince' and the Great Misfortune
which befell him. It is the story of the honourable virtuous Khojasta
who longs for her lover and while waiting for nightfall to come, to rush
to her dearest darling, she whiles the time away talking to her only companion,
Tuti, the parrot.' It is known that women do such things. They talk to
flowers as well, even to cactus flowers!'
'Come, sit closer, lend me thy sweet tender ears, impeccable females …
faultless queens. When the world one evening decided to close his one
eye, the sun, and to open the other, the moon, a long night emerged, coming
from its save quotas in the east. The day noticed this and left for the
west. In her room, Khojasta, with an aching, needing body and wanting
brown eyes went to Tuti, a parrot from an exotic country and said to it:
'Oh I want to stick my fingers into my brown eyes and pluck them out,
for I have been touched with calamities as a result of what I have seen.
My eyes are the culprits. What ill fate has befallen me! Oh let me die!
Ever since I saw Argo Spier with these beautiful eyes of mine, my heart
has refused to stop lusting and oh, my soul, it's not mine anymore, but
his!' 'Tuti replied: 'Khojasta, oh my dear. Every single trouble in life
came by goggling. The world is made of this kind of trouble! Men and women
seeing one another. Don't look at a man if you are a woman and if you
do look, don't see him! Or if you have seen him, don't tell your husband.
Seeing and telling husbands and wives will cause great harm! And he started
to tell her a story of great magnetite: 'One day,' he said, but at that
moment the telephone rang. I picked it up. It was the ghost writer!
'You!' he shouted, 'I am glad I got hold of you at last! Where have you
been?'
'Here', I said, 'Why?'
'I'd been phoning you for two days now. Nobody pick-ed up the phone',
he was full of anxiety.
'I was writing', I said, 'What do you want, I'm very busy!'
'Don't do it! Don't do it!' he repeated himself.
'Don't do what?' I asked. Our symbiosis only works in Bio-restaurants
it seemed.
'Nakhshabi!' he shouted.
'You don't mean it! I already got three pages! Why?' I asked.
'I was wrong! Nakhshabi is nothing for Green Muse Trying! It's also copyrighted!'
he panicked.
'How do you know it is copyrighted?' I wanted to know.
'Someone in a newsgroup on CompuServe told me. You cannot use it!' he
replied.
'I am using it!' I said.
'You are not going to use it!' he shouted, 'If you do, you can find yourself
another ghost writer! It does not fit in Green Muse!' he tried to convert
me.
'I thought you said nothing was suppose to fit in Muse!' I oered.
'I told you I was wrong. Your work might be worth-while if you use it,
in which case you will have to delete all of Green Muse! Nothing worthwhile
sells! Don't you know that? Argo Spier don't be an idiot. Listen, don't
use Nakhshabi. That's all I am saying. Please delete it.'
'No way, man! I am the writer! I say what goes and what not! That was
the deal. Anyway what am I going to do with these three pages I have already
done this morning?' I looked at the counter, the three pages had now become
four! 'Four pages!' I added.
He was quiet for some time. I kept on typing. Then he asked: 'How many
times have you mentioned 'Nakhshabi'?'
'I don't know. Wait. I will count', I said and scrolled back to the first
page. When I had counted I said, 'Four times! Numenosum! I have used it
twice and you have used it twice! At the top there's also 'Nakhshabi-story.'
Does that count as well?.'
'No, that doesn't count. So it's four times. Let me see … ' and
for the second time in Green Muse Trying he didn't complete his sentence.
What is happening to him? Is his personality changing or is the character
dropping out of line?
Then he answered and asked, 'Send me the four pages. I will take it before
the other stories. Let me copy-read it now.' I was in a tight spot. I
had worked on it for two days, since the early morning, and I was just
getting into the phase that I like when working on a column. I didn't
even know whether it was finished. He wanted me to stop it! How can one
stop a story? Columns don't work that way. And stories, stories happen.
They tell themselves. Yet I realised the full consequence of what he had
said. If I continue it will turn out to be too long for a column. I don't
care for his excuse about copyright. I can mask that. But he is right.
It will take over the book. It will probably make Muse worth reading.
I cannot let that happen. No, not that!
'Ok' I said, 'I'll fax it through, stay on the line.' After I had scripted
the last paragraph on the previous page, I spoke to him again, 'Ok, I
see what you mean. I'll stop it but the column, as it is this far, stays.
Four pages! I'll mail it straight away.' He gave a sigh of relief, 'We
are friends, Argo Spier', he said and rang o.
Fragile innocent women had now become four pages and three lines long
and was done!
I went home to write something
After yet another lunch in the 'new' macrobiotic
restaurant together with the ghost writer, I went home to write something.
It was a new day. I had acquired substantial health from the numerous
tasteless Bio-meals. I needed to get back to my 'old' equilibrium. There
were important issues to concentrate on: the diasporic wanderer, roun-ding
o the King's sequence, more corrections and fine-tuning of the linking
lines, the epilogue, etc. But as I got to the o~ce, a young Bulgarian
male rushed up to me and handed me a note rolled into a ball. He must
have been waiting for me. 'Read it' he said in broken English and nervously
and quickly retreated like a spy, continuously looking over his shoulder
as if he didn't want people see me talking to him. He was in a hurry.
'Strange' I thought and unrolled the note. This is what it contained:
'Liza is back in town.'
It was signed by Johnatan C.
'Strange', I thought again. 'A Bulgarian wanderer!? This is new! It's
the first time a Bulgarian moves into my work! Normally this was reserved
for Jews.' I brooded on the note and the incident and never got to writing
anything at all the whole day. I decided to keep the note. It wasn't suitable
for a column but somehow there was something something in it. And it flashed
through my mind as I gave it up to find something to write for the day:
'Maybe I should cut these Bio-lunches. The food makes one too virile!
Real King/Queen stu might come out of it!'
a poem for a queen
After the Bulgarian incident, I noticed that my car had been stolen. But
I was too busy brooding on the King-sequence in Green Muse Trying to pay
any attention to frivolous things such as car theft and modern socio-cultural
problems. The King-sequence needed a poem for a Queen. I started digging
into it: 'A poem for a Queen! What's that supposed to mean?' The more
I thought about the problem, the closer I got to what was still missing
from Black and Hay. I had to discuss it with somebody. I phoned the ghost
writer: 'Don't waste your time on literary criticism. Writers don't write
about writing!' he said after having heard me out. And he also asked me
why I was not sticking to our agreement about Black and Hay, Black and
Hay which has become Green Muse Trying.
'You said you dumped Black and Hay in the dustbin and that the columns
in 'Ghost writer' would be incorporated in Green Muse Trying. Why do you
keep on referring to Black and Hay still?' He wasn't in a laughing mood.
'I never said Black and Hay was done!' I answered.
'You did!'
'I didn't!'
'Yes you did! Look, don't waste my time. I am busy! I am not interested
in poems for queens! That's ridiculous. It's the 20th century man!' His
voice was suddenly very impatient.
'Don't get impatient with me!' I said.
'Don't waste my time!' he replied.
'I never said Black and Hay was done!' I fumed.
'You did! And stop it now! You put in 'a poem for a queen' I stop ghost
writing!' he threatened. His threats was becoming thin.
'Oh, so! Now Mister Ghostwriter is going to tell me what to ghost! I don't
need that! And don't you waste my time! Also I don't need language anymore!
And what's more, I am not dumping Black and Hay anymore, I am tearing
up frying Green Muse! I am stopping with writing! That's what I had wanted
to tell you. They have stolen my car! Good bye to you, sir!' I shouted
and rammed down the phone.
I was lying, of course. It was a good chat. I calmly went to the computer
and started working on 'A poem for a queen.'
'A poem for a queen is always a poem on three levels, possibly on four,
and it always illustrates the power of 'Wallpaper Poetry'.
'The first level is always an obvious one. It is the words you read and
the story it tells. It includes the feeling that is aroused in the reader
when he reads the poem, as well as the hints of other stories, other poems
that, together with it, form part of a larger story, completing a total
design on a wall. It converts the normality of words, uses typical and
accepted writer-reader protocols and ordinary language. It conveys ideas
and feelings the author wishes or hopes to express. In it, the writer
entices the reader to go as deeply as possible into the meaning of the
combinations of words.'
'The second level is also an obvious one. It is the so-called dream level.
This level suggests the awakening of the unconscious and is presented
as proof of the entry of the numenosa into language and the validity of
the inter-textuality of semantic categories and the meaning of words.
It uses archetypical artefacts such as mandalas and tertakis which live
in the overall conscious and sub-conscious of the human soul and/or vernacular.
The Able reader should follow and discover the instructions of it carefully,
that is, if he/she wants and is stimulated to do so. Every word should
be counted and analysed. This level represents the unavoidable desire
of the human soul to create, to design, give meaning and to communicate.
In this level it is as if the author's words are saying: 'It is my intention
to make you a reader of my 'Wall', implying, 'that the reader can write
my poems for me. That the reader can be the writer and the writer the
reader.'
'The key to the second level lies in words such as: 'word, said, time,
give, more, faces, you and four.' The number of times each of them appears
in the text must always be four. There must also be four characters in
the poem voicing their opinion, which is an indication of the importance
the author attaches to the concept of four in communication! The easiest
way to move about on this level is to accept the fact that concepts such
as Inter-subjectivity, Inter-dimensional consciousness and Zeelen-freundschaftlichkeit
are realities, just as words are realities.'
'The third level is a personal and 'closed' level, only for those involved!
As such it is deconstruction. Nobody can enter this level, except insiders,
since the poem must seem to be a direct reply to 'words' uttered in personal
and trusted spheres. It must contain the true soul of a personal 'Necro
poetic séance' and is in fact the art of the 'resurrecting used
words.' It is the creation of secrecy and closeness in dialogue. 'Words'
are now 'answered words.' No keys will be provided in the poem for unlocking
and entering this level! The author is the true writer, the true controller,
the master of his 'Wall' on this level. His 'Paper' is his deepest personal
safe haven of trust and his personal chamber. His poetry is a private
decoration and private contribution to inter-subjective dialogue. He maintains
his individual identity in this deeper compartment. He is the magician
and sorcerer in control, a writer in the truest sense of the word.'
'The fourth level? The fourth level is always questionable. What could
be in it? Words that are things? Language itself? Who knows? Disillusion?
A fraud?'
a poem for a Queen
I looked at 'A poem for a queen' when it was done and thought, 'Man, look
at the foam on the top of the half a glass of a poem. I've done it!' and
I phoned the ghost writer again: 'I've done it! I've done!' I said.
'You aren't putting me on, are you? I knew you would! Did it work?' he
asked as jovial as ever. And he added, 'What's that about your car that
got stolen?'
'Doesn't matter. I don't need a car. I had enough 'car' in Belim. Yes
I've done it!' I said and laughed happily into the phone. 'Friday's meal
is on me.' And after some more chit-chat we hung up. 'I just love the
guy!' I said to myself. 'Maybe he could come out for the weekend and Liza
could cook for him.'
despicable creatures
Then, one day it was February, cold, rainy and no love was left to scent
the stinking spring air. It was time to dump Black and Hay into a dustbin
and publish Green Muse Trying. The morning was grey. I discussed this
with the ghost writer and he immediately turned his back on me. Bills
and suggestions. Beginnings and end. We started to talk about irrelevant
things: love and such.
'You are absolutely wrong to think I will write about Valentine and use
it! Love is for younger people!' I said. 'Black and Hay belongs to Green
Muse, and there's no room in it for love!'
'What are you going to do with the stand-alone version of 'Valentine Blues'
then?' His back was still sporting for his face.
'Not in a 100 years will I do it! Bringing in seasons at this stage. That's
rediculous! Some days still can be recuperated if you wish but love-seasons!
No!' And with a very sarcastic tone I added: 'Do you want me to bring
in hours and minutes too?' Maybe I was trying to convince him to ok what's
been written so far.
'NO!' he firmly said with capital letters, 'that's not what I mean …
I mean … ', and he left two holes in his sentence and didn't finished
it. As a matter of fact, as I am writing this now, it strikes me that
that was the last time that he had said something in Green Muse Trying.
Our relationship was all of a sudden over. The symbiotic co-existing was
oozing from its source. Both him and me suddenly had become what we really
are: human beings. Both of us had dropped out of our casts. But to avoid
using up unnecessary disk-space and to have to produce yet another paragraph
on the topic, I dropped the subject. I had nothing to say to him any further
and just turned around and went home. Liza was out. Yuppies? I went up
the stairs to where I sit write now. I deleted all his e-mail in connection
with Green Muse Trying. It seemed the most natural thing to do. 'Valentine
Blues - A Column for Jonathan and Liza: Theme for the Annual Southern
February Get-together and Festivities Calendar. (From the letter Jonathan
C. wrote to Liza and passed on to me.)' that really would be repitition!
I will not write it! How many more such themes? No, I disagree from him.
I will tell him that straight the next time we go for a meal!
It was by then past noon and the sky had changed from grey to blue and
Liza with her hay-coloured-skin and blurred face crossed my mind. Oh I
felt so sorry for Jonathan! I looked at Green Muse again. Only an epilogue
was still needed. 'I can do that on my own', I thought. 'Preferably poems
to really swing the structural effect'. I was starting to float. The prospect
of writing poetry again thrilled me. I had the whole afternoon for it.
Liza would not be home till late.
I started on it. 'Castle and Flower - A Winter Love Story in Verse and
Exercises in the Art of Imitating Haiku', was the heading. Oh, It was
easy! And when I have finished it, it was close to the evening. The sky
had at that time turned to an orange-hay colour. I was very satisfied
and stangely happy. On the inspiration of a fleeting minute I decided
to dedicate it secretly to the two faces of Liza in Green Muse: Liza Maya
Nuda and Liza Maya Vestita. Of course I didn't write this dedication down
in digital space! It might provoke Liza when she sees it later! I kept
it very very secretly hidden way back in the deepest part of my mind.
I was very proud with myself and immediately made four copies of the epilogue.
Two copies I reserved for Liza. One for Jonathan C. (Oh, the terrible
literary way. A stone!) to give to Liza at the next Annual Festivities
Calender Meeting, and the fourth copy: 'Man, I've done it! It was the
epilogue for Green Muse Trying!'.
And then when I paged Green Muse Trying together with the finished epilogue
(Why am I sad? Why did Liza have to go with the Yuppies?) my eye fell
on the following paragraph:
'And when it was boned and home-dried, I looked at it and realised, oh,
it was the best poem I have ever written! And being busy rejoicing about
it, a sudden thrill shot through my body, like an addictive drug, rushing
warming from my abdomen to my heart, filtering into my arms and legs.
I looked at my hands. They were trembling. Last night's red varnish was
spoiled. My breath started to quicken. In and out. I shivered where I
sat. Goose-pimples infected my skin. My brain ran. I was hungry, very,
very hungry all of a sudden. We hadn't finished our meal last night. I
needed food. Something special. I needed to read my poem. Anybody! I stood
up shakily, and when I got to the dining room, there was Liza. She was
busy laying the table and when she saw me, she laughed at me. Her nails
were freshly manicured and neatly varnished and I knew, tonight …
tonight … halfway up the stairs … I would read her my new
epilogue: 'Castle and Flower!'
And then I couldn't resist it, I put in Valentine! 'It's all repetition
I know', I said to myself. 'Repetition man, repetition', and I smiled
epilogue
[castle and flower - the sumtotal of
a hundred years of noise]
castle and flower
[when leaning she laughs]
teasing into mine
in school when she leans on me she sits
on top of the bench - she laughs -
she laughs merrily teasing
with her eye into mine
'you are not allowed to sit
on the bench!
you should not be in the classroom
you cannot do that' - laugh with me -
but when leaning she laughs
and when merry she looks at me
and when in my eye I see her diving
splashing as if into a pool
and when she surfaces again
on the inside cavern of my world
she is wet - laughing still- wet
with the dregs of my compliant soul
[the long days of summer]
the days of long
into the long days of summer
the days of winter rush
- I have lost the register
into which I write drafts versions
of my poems -
into the short days of winter
you – the pet of my life - rush
into summer and
are gone
a warm little foetus
Into a cuddle I curl
into the couch I crawl
=
a warm little foetus
in a mummy's pouch
the split of day
into the split of day you hurriedly
fled and how
from out of the crumbling night
you slowly return!
oh, how
you restore and come back
from where your fragile feet
had wounded
into the sound that nights make
ring blend
ring! its the sound nights make
that scares you
ring blend
ring when you pass the signpost
take it won't scare you
ring you will see my succour
blend my love
ring
ring my love is waiting for you
it waits there at the side
of the shade
where the darker it is
there where I ring for you
wait for me
running
oh day
do forget the day that you left me
oh do erase the day when you issued
cold and naked into the coughing night
the night when you fled and run
aching after the deadening cry
curly lovers
two rivers
curly lovers below
two heavens above
dying summers
two rivers two curly lovers
dying winters
curling circling
from opposite shores
from an opposite shore
I saw you wink
you wink as if you knew
that the way I approve of you is but a darling
thought of mine
my sweet little gift to you
as if you knew its not yours
for me
not yours to part with
setting it for sail to me
[when shines a moon]
when shines a moon
when shines a moon in lands
where no moon has shone before
was never seen
dark swells of chests rise
in stark surprises
I rise for you
as you rise for me
you who are my love
you who hold what is my love
- my verses -
a fool for you
oh the damage a fool
can do is more
much more than wise men
can undo
why am I a fool for you?
when you sleep
sharp in the face again
you sleep in the mirror
on my shoulder
your bleak parting eye
in winter’s pale
your bleak parting eye
forgives me as it leaves me
it forgives me as I ache
for you
through the looking glass
on crystal glass bridges you stand
steadying feet and hand
you are apt I know
I can see it
and looking at me looking at you
I can see you looking at me
I can see you through the looking glass
inside your eye
I am apt too
you know that too
my return
in self-made garden
and in tower you watch
you tend the prune
a but
you tend the days
all days decay
a father watching
a mother longing
you shape the years
make them growth
a bloom
circumspecting my return
every day
for the while
what have you done
be
have you been done be but
the same as me
be sane
for the while
same as me
many a time
many a time you inspected the sky
its line
many a time your falling face
has fell
on a crumbling day
many a time your eye
has not seen mine
when will I see you again?
the travelling night
I winced when I laughed
was I laughing at you?
no it was only the night
that came travelling by
[humanoid your face]
your celebrated feeling
humanoid your face
callous your celebrated feeling
inhuman your spent
love for me
the fjord
it is your hand that winks
and it is your eye that parts
- it parts from me
it is your shine that bridges
my belonging
and when it is you who
make the fjord
its distance
it too is you who are leaving
coming - always - back to me
when you run
when leaving you are returning
how can this be
is it something in the sound
your feet make when you run?
lovers’ light
lovers' night first sight
it is far too bright
for you to see
flower and castle
green tree
yellow flower
not friends
just flower
and tree
- you love me!-
in between
hanging the performance - it is blue -
falling - it is brown -
the colour in between
is the shape
that bleeds into me
god I linger for you
reciprocation
it flows from here to there
and back again
the river runs through the cast
of our eye
- yours and mine -
and when I look at you
when warm at brace and bank
you feel the sensation too
- you can feel it
with your hand touching mine -
and at riverbank and prop
where you wait
where you used to wait
I too wait to see with you
how it flows from me to you
and back again
Other storytelling poetic sequences by Argo
Spier
Bogy Road - A multi-levelled search into the essence of Wallpaper poetry
and glimpses of the power and darker sub-conscious side of Necro poetica.
Sampel Four -Wallpaper poetry and Necro poetic seances, moving into the
absurd with the printing out of wini.ini files as poetry.
Mucus Gravel - A compilation of sea and farmer poems, hilarious Wallpaper
poetry and beautiful songs.
Raam - The only work in his mother tongue, the Afrikaans language; a Kubrickian
space narration with translations of poems into various languages.
Municipal Paint Opera Lodge Café - Containing The Blackwater Stories,
Wallpaper poetry and dreams.
Santa Christiana D'Aro - Wallpaper poetry and a brilliant and homely story.
Belim Tower Road - Wallpaper poetry, containing perfect illustrations
of Necro Poetica, the resurrection of words already said and cold and
the creation of fragile Vestalian sound poetry.
On the beach of Ville St. Gillis Croix de Vie - Miscellaneous and uncompleted.
Mister Page on Page International Airport - Miscellaneous.
A Lover's Sundae Sarum - Anniversary love poems.
Douche and Addition - Poetry and columns.
Zinzli come home Albi - Summer Poems from Chur.
Seasons of Sarum - Storytelling poetic sequences and a deep drive into
Sarum.
Green Muse Trying - Columns and Storytelling Wallpaper poetry.
Blurbs on some of Argo Spier’s publications
Green Water Pain -
[When Night grew with the Dew]
'… with fingers that pat into the core
of feeling'
'Green Water Pain contains the right mix of
art-historical issues, love verses, vague sadness and frivolous ditty-like
rhyme. It is a sensitive journey and to the pointe poetry. The intermingled
references throughout the story to the poetry Paul Celan gives it its
eary palpate'.
Was it Mucha's?
No it wasn't Mucha's, it
was Jan Zrzavy's Cleopatra 1 and the Still-Life-
with-Lillies-of-the-Valley, it
wasn't Mucha's, it was
Frantisek Bilek's How-Time-Models-Its-Poet, it
wasn't Mucha's, it was Maximilian Pirer's
Medusa washing her wriggling hair
no it wasn't Mucha's, it
From Medusa's wait
Nights grow with the dew and slowly
night after night they swell like love puffed virgins
hungry women
night after night at night they wink their eyes
and wriggle their snakes
oh you vile guilty ones laughing sweet
when spawning your basilisk egg
screaming loud when breeding your feral foul
when hauling your little snakiest babes
from Medusa's wait
Mr. Changs! from Ching-Ching
[Summer Love from Chur]
'... hilarious, sad and yet lovely. Soft tender
insider poetry'
'The story of Mister-Chang!s-Lue-from-Ching-Ching
refreshes and will bring a tear to the eye ... but it is also a story
of a very compassionate and understanding smile!'
'In the morning, in front of the Mirror on
the Day of the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching,
Mister Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching saw the impartiality of his Teeth.
He saw how Independent they were. Each Tooth went its own Way and refused
to conciliate with any other Individual Tooth. They all travelled away
from each other with ever increasing inflated Speed, and those that had
left first faded into the distance like Fleeting Days in the Lives of
Poets. Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching looked at his own Eyes watching
him from the Mirror. To his surprise he saw that his Eyes were also showing
a similar Pattern of Behaviour. They were fading. Travelling towards unknown
Destinies'.
Castle and Flower
[Winter love story in verse and exercises in the Art of Imitation of Haiku]
I dedicate this short draft and exercise in
the art of imitating Haiku, to the three “Witches of Eve”,
Maya Nuda, Maya Vestita and there bigger sister, known since the beginning
of time as the cruellest and most incisive, Nancy Muse, who, in the slow
months of the year of 1997, castigated my cringing soul and making me
run, beg crawl and return to the feeding dens of their love for me.
All of what is written down here on paper happened
in actual life. It happened with me in the same year. The Year I refused
to be what I am not: a Poet!
A Winter Love Story in Verse and Exercises
in the Art of Imitation of Haiku - When leaning she laughs - When shines
a Moon - Humanoid your Face.
THE MOVING MYRIAD
A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
Laggard winds and clarion breezes … colour, laïs and a circle.
The Moving Myriad was written in the weeks
before the author was to appear in court on a charge of refusal of payment
for a misprint of one his mayor publication, Green Muse Trying. The Moving
Myriad gives a good insight into how the author's mind functions in catastrophic
events and how he battles to come to terms with his persecution by the
KOLV VZW printing house. The association he makes with the prosecuted
medieval chanson composer and poet JEHANNOT DE LESCUREL who was hung in
1304 for promiscuity and immoral love is transparent. DE LESCURAL was
author and composer of one of the first three-voiced laïs in the
history of polyphonic mediaeval music. His song and composition, Gracieusette
Gillette, of which the original text is given in the footnotes along side
the English translation of it, is theme grande in The Story of a Myriad
and its recurring echo's throughout the book tells the story of a tender
and indestructible love.
… thought provoking and tender with the delicate honesty of a fearful
heart… Just a lovely sequence and completely worthwhile to read.
LWCFSD Poetic Society.
Recognition Song for Madam Gillette
A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
clarion breezes and the colour of life
Recognition Song for Madam Gillette and its
recurring echo's of the licentiousness of carnal love tell a fragile story
of a tender and indestructible love, the love of words.
The author uses the sad history of the prosecuted medieval chanson composer
and poet JEHANNOT DE LESCUREL who was hung in 1304 for promiscuity and
inmoral love. DE LESCURAL was author and composer of one of the first
three-voiced laïs in the history of polyphonic mediaeval music, Gracieusette
Gillette. At the time writing the author too was prosecuted and fined,
but not for immoral love, but for the refusal to pay for a misprint by
the Kolv Vzw publishing house in Ghent, Belgium of his book called Green
Muse Trying.
Thought provoking and well structured. A story
of the delicate honesty of a fearful heart but a lovely sequence and serious
alchemy. … The poet is a charm and his seduction power is great.
LWCFSD POETIC SOCIETY.
Sym-
metry breaks. Russet sound
and brass replaces guise; pewter and alloy, tin.
And into the foreground a dark myriad slowly
motions. It breaks from the clinging archetype;
while in the widening space of the rearing
no man's land, the ABEL man runs.
And there is a call. It calls as if calling
from a hinterland. It calls you.
Legally a Muse
Aspirations and motivations, the theme of love-and-war
and small worlds are the ingredients that make Legally a Muse a story
of light complexity and lovely predictable suspense. Its about the forbidden
zone of makeshift communication and the overkill of innocence in the face
of instinctive rivalry.
'We were in a movie. And she couldn't help
it. But she took her script serious and did at that moment something that
she had never done before. She bent over and kissed me full on the lips.
The teeny-whiny little margin of what had become of the write and the
wrong disappeared. And she kissed me again. And this time she ventured
deeper into the forbidden zone of makeshift communication. Plain adulatory.
Her heart pounded fresh and I was a writer. Some flesh. She stuck the
tip of her tongue into the small slit between my lips. I felt lithe and
ordered another round coffee'.
Oliver and the Art of Sharing
Boundless self-centricity verses its counterpart,
the perilous desire to share inner feelings, and the challenge between
these two rivals as well as the deadly pursuit of cause-and-effect throughout
'Oliver', mould the story as it slips from happiness to a quest for happiness
into an unpretentiousness and very recognisable readable piece of writing.
'An unbounded compassion washed over me. From
then on every single motion I made in the Old City became a journey of
joy into Wonderland. The Wheel of my karma had started to turn and I was
caught in its positive tolling. My soul and I were reincarnated in the
body that was with us and we both were excited like children going on
an errant with their mother'.
Machines of Art
[From the Argo Spier Prague Interview]
'The material used in the Praha Interview, originated on a walk in Prague…'
'The Praha Interview, originated on a walk
in the mountains surrounding the little town of Tsciertschen in the Swiss
Canton of Graubunden. Argo Spier, a pupil of the South African poet, N.P.
van Wyk-Louw claims to be the Master-of-the-art-of-recombination of words.
The interview collects and recombines parole, creating a meta language
and poetry ... the scrolling kind. As are his poems, it is picturesque
and interlinked. It is a story, Argo Spier is a storyteller ... and his
stories are his work, Wallpaper poetry and Necro Poetica, the ghastly
rituals of writing poetry, his kind'.
'Poetry! You want to know what poetry is!
You want to know what makes a poem a poem! A poet does not know answers
to fit questions like these and the last person to ask what the essence
of poetry is, is a poet! I have not discovered this so called essence
yet and probably never will! I am still searching for the it of it like
every other natural born writer under the sun. I just don’t know
the answer to it and I am not the write person to be interviewed about
it!'
BOGY ROAD
[POEMS OF INNOCENCE AND JOY]
A Wilgcoffee stand-alone publication
'... utterances and everyday dialogue shaped into shocking rhyme'
'... working with flat characters and a simple
plot, SMUTTY creates a racy story with a constant night marsh and chilly
touch as it reaches its tentacles into the subconscious. Bogy Road has
a newness and a fresh vagrancy. It contains séance-like poetry
which excites'.
LWCFSD Poetic Society
Then she opened her mouth and showed me her
tongue. JUVANTE JEZU,
it was split! It was split like DI THE LEVIATHAN'S. She spoke with a voice.
'I am not dead. I am alive and I am a woman not a feman!
Honestly I can also be a man!
I am the poem you are writing!' she said and then she opened her mouth
again and hissed into my face.
I saw her skin color.
It changed from amethyst turf to moist mud.
I smelled the vagrancy of revitalized life seeping through the air like
a cool drug, breezing, promising, inviting, sweetening, growing, ripening
and segmenting.
Blue Sweet -
[Mr. Page on Page International Airport]
'... desolate spaces of feeling, accumulated
debris of used words.'
'Blue Sweet is a neat but strange step in
the spoor of Wallpaper poetry storytelling. It contains sediment of gall,
its unscrupulously honest and there is a typical touch of classy hilarity.
The right mix of ordinary utterances, irrelevant dialogue, stark expression
and the inevitable dramatic drive, makes it the perfect setting for a
true Sduttian story of a Mr. Page
on a Page International Airport.
And you’re lonely.
And you. Don’t know which. Way.
And your words. Are juxtaposed with images.
Of long Bien Temps. Ago.
Blue Space. Up the slopes. The Hex.
And you’re lonely.
And you. Don’t know which. Way.
And your words. Are juxtaposed with images.
Of long Bien Temps. Ago.
And you are.
… daring wallpaper poetic storytelling and a sweet suck on…
With minimal strokes and well selected words
the author works his way through the vast amount of accumulated encyclopaedic
debris left behind on the road of literature and reshapes waste to beauty.
With its 6 separate stories Blue Sweet, carries the reader over the threshold
of hesitation into the surreal world of the process of creative writing.
Vast spaces containing human feeling emerge as the pace is set and kept
throughout the book … a decorous contribution to the debate re the
essence of creative literature.
The master poet is here, once again, at his
best and he uses his seduction power with great ease, skill and unscrupulous
honesty. Blue Sweet with its irony, pathetic mien and off-beat bravura
… a daring statement, lovely and an experience in depth to read.
LWCFSD POETIC SOCIETY
Cocked Poise
[When I castled your Eye in my Loess]
' ... bracing and garrulous ... yet a gentle read and a tender story'
'… intricate and to the bone, a referral
to Seasons of Sarum. Cocked Poise has several deconstructive doors offering
contemporary art-historical rumpus. It has fingers touching in deep water,
the ritual of writing tout court'.
'No musician', I said, 'there’s no musician
on the beach, other than me! There’s nobody
other than me, to stain your sky. There’s no mountain,
no valley so high,
no sea so high,
as the day, the almighty day, I castled
your eye in my loess.'
A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
... refreshing and loquacious...
Taken up in this publication are the sequences Zinsli came home Albi,
which contains the so-called Chur poems and originated in Switzerland,
A lover's sundae sarum, love poetry written in Austria, a third sequence
written on the beach of Ville St. Gillis Croix de Vie, France and the
in 1997 well received Canterbury Carillon which was written in England
as a contribution to the defamed child abduction and murders in Belgian
in 1995-1996 and presented in schools across Europe
'… intricate … core material from
the author's Seasons of Sarum. The sequence has its fingers touching into
the sub planes of the great poetic undercurrent unconsciousness. The ritual
of writing tout court'.
LWCFSD Poetic Society
[THE POET IS A NOMAD]
The diurnal alternation of light,
and poacher night, its weight,
and the weight of day,
and earth in its dreary sleep,
and sea, and earth, in the wake
and depth of douse,
and the stabbing stone, its height,
and the moon,
the immortal moon,
its silver dish, and your sun,
its flame,
and the flare of shining flaxen
gold.
- Your re-enactment of IT, of the Primal Scene,
that is what makes the poet a Nomad. -
The naked star, its meandered scatter
outside of the ring of the sky,
the rambled maze
in which the poet's frail reward
is solitude and sand,
and in which, wolf and coyote,
jackal and fox,
and howl, carouse,
celebrating death, resur-
rection,
and birth and birth,
and stirring dying days,
and surviving twilight.
- The dawning of your re-enactment of IT,
of the Primal Scene, that is what makes the poet
Sample Four
[The Masked Man of Sainte Margarita]
' ... the endless generation of words, images,
themes and stories'
'Sample Four employs Wallpaper poetry (the
endless generation of words, images, themes and stories) and results in
Necro Poetica (the ritual of writing). It is a Sduttian and Argo Spier
pushes his own genre to the limit by incorporating a transcript of a TV
Soap Opera and the so-called Computer poems, the latter which are print-outs
of the wini.ini file of his own computer. The dark and cult-like undertone
throughout the book hint towards what edge Argo Spier wants to drive language
and poetic storytelling. Sample Four is also an encyclopaedia of sound,
pictures and non-sensible sense and an intriguing story of four poets
in a bar in the middle of the Karoian desert discussing meta aspects of
writing tout court'.
next day ... static life
they gathered on the beach of Miramar
(they knew about the nightly raid)
Phaedo Phaerus Timaeus
and
the Masked Knight of Sainte Marguerite
sat on a rock feet in the water
don't be metaphysically naïve
the soul belongs to the world of fluid forms
that's why it rains so much it's easier to fight
that way when all is wet
the earth dogged
're you sure?
absolutely poems are written
MUNICIPAL PAINT OPERA LODGE CAFÉ
A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
The Story of Helena and the Secret Pleasures
in the Palace of Joy.
The master poet is here, once again, lover and at most, in control. His
seduction power is great and he is just the Master Lover. The speed, versatility
in matter choice, use of words and themes and skill makes it the most
beautiful and boldest story written at the change of millennium. Municipal
Paint Opera Lodge Café with its irony, pathetic mien and on-beat
bravura is a most pleasant experience to encounter. The reader will just
love it. It is wallpaper poetic storytelling sec.
LWCFSD POETIC SOCIETY
somewhere
backstage Vienna another life VALENTINE
winter spring summer autumn
rain
subversive thoughts authentic Passions JOYCE
JAMES sure waiting behind the doors shoes
dreams writing poems landslides roofs
shoes numbers room numbers upstairs
sky
don't read what you don't write
slippery mud slices slippery slices
slipping under feet Macintoshes more
rain more steep rain poems
my many poems
wait! wait! wait! open the door
who's behind that door door door
do you hear hear hear the echo echo?
people notice poems everyday when
I write
poems everyday deconstructing poems
writing
people write about poems filamentary writings
signs of the Zodiac SAGITTARIUS VIRGO
WASSERMANN fire earth water breath and men
people many people Northerners
Southerners United East Indian
Companies
they write about poems my many
poems
they read about poems my many
poems
they read naughty things in poems very naughty
things in my poems naughty things with married
women children Muses of Dark Pools death
poisonous life lies lies lies lies lies
Santa Christiana D'Aro
WALLPAPER POETRY SEC THAT FAST SCROLLS THE
PERILOUS 'HOLIDAY' ADVENTURES AT SANTA CHRISTIANA D'ARO.
Look ... you put flowers on the table you make it nice they knock it over
when reaching for the milk and butter there is water in your plate water
on your bread water all over you you don't like that you don't want to
make it nice anymore you knock the bread on the floor it mushed up the
floor you get up you slip on the smooch you hurt your back you don't like
that you think why you had put flowers on the table why you had made it
nice why look at you you are like an old idiot you don't like that nobody
likes that nobody likes an old man they ask you hey why you walk like
that like an old man all crooked and bent askew you put flowers on the
table or something someone knocked it over when reaching for milk and
butter or what all that water in your plate water on your bread water
all over you you didn't like that you didn't want to make it nice anymore
you knocked the bread on the floor it mashed up the floor you got up you
slipped on the smooch you hurt your back you didn't like that you thought
why you had put flowers on the table why you had made it nice why look
at you you are like an old man you don't like that nobody likes that nobody
likes an old man everybody's gone ask you hey ...
Municipal Paint Opera Lodge Café
…. seduction power, exuberance in cadence,
speed, complaisance in matter-, word- and theme choice, appropriateness
of thrust and the brilliancy of hidden rhyme make of 'Lodge' a push of
one in a million. And with its irony, pathetic mien and on-beat bravura
it is an experience to apperceive. The rendezvous of the poet and his
beloved on the steps of the Opera lodge Café at Backwater Bridge
is just too beautiful an experience … too beautiful to describe
in words other than his own.
somewhere
backstage Vienna another life VALENTINE
winter spring summer autumn
rain
subversive thoughts authentic Passions JOYCE
JAMES sure waiting behind the doors shoes
dreams writing poems landslides roofs
shoes numbers room numbers upstairs
sky
don't read what you don't write
slippery mud slices slippery slices
slipping under feet Macintoshes more
rain more steep rain poems
my many poems
wait! wait! wait! open the door
who's behind that door door door
do you hear hear hear the echo echo?
people notice poems everyday when
I write
poems everyday deconstructing poems
writing
people write about poems filamentary writings
The Story of Caroline
A Wilgcoffee stand-alone publication
A quest for the sanity of love and a drive into the unconscious …
stark and a never ending story…
The story of CAROLINE and her double diagnosed
male persona with overt personality traits, T'ALBERT, EUGENE is one large
encyclopedic peeping box in which emotion intermingles with about everything
to tell the story of the creation of the story of CAROLINE.
… well structured and the multitude of
theme lines are running a steady course throughout the book only to intertwined
in the end into a tight knot.
… hilarious at times, chilly at others, with poetry and prose interlinked.
There's the 'reality-at-home' and the 'reality-abroad' and there's the
merge of these two with very recognizable patterns... An exciting story
of a writer's love for the love of words. - LWCFSD Poetic Society
Then, and honestly, I couldn't helped it,
I devilishly thought why not drop a pebble in as well? Just for the tease.
'If you think I am so kind, why don't you tell your wife that?', I said
and added, 'Or do you have a husband?' and burst out in laughter. Victory!
However it was short lived. She stung me immediately where it smites.
Chapeau!
'I already have!', she touché-ed.
I repressed a frown. The tight elastic band around this cheap unbounded
novelette was squeegee-ing tighter.
'Yes...? Everything...? Oh dumbfounded love!'
'Of course not! But if he is to ask me ... sure I will tell her!', she
replied.
Raam in 5 talen: Afrikaans, Nederlands, Frans, Duits, Engels
A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
'Een Kubrickiaanse reis doorheen de grenzen van taal'.
RAAM, een Kubrickiaans ruimte epos, beschrijft
niet alleen een reis in de ruimte, maar is zelf een reis , een reis doorheen
de ruimte van taal. De lezer wordt meegenomen doorheen een veelvoud van
goed gestructureerde taallagen, lagen die in elkaar verstrengeld zijn
en die in elkaar overvloeien, afzonderlijk en toch onafscheidelijk van
elkaar. Met een bijzondere en suggestieve stijl en een zekere geladenheid,
creëert de schrijver in dit prachtige en compacte werk de illusie
van een geboorteproces van taal en van een taal die zich ontwikkelt vanaf
het vroege archaïsche begin van klank, menselijke klank, tot volwassen
geworden zingevende expressie. Naast de originele versie in Afro-Afrikaans
van de dichtbundel RAAM, bevat deze publicatie ook Nederlandse, Franse,
Duitse en Engelse vertalingen ervan en een inleidende artikel over RAAM.
[AFRIKAANS]
De tijd wordt zwaarder
in de verte verschijnt een speer
een vernauwende buis
vuur
een schijnende monoiliet
vreesaanjagend in de schaduwkring
die wachtende wildehond
canus lupus : roofdier of wolfshond
en het sterrebeeld het getal 58
[Français]
Le temps est saturé
dans le lointain un point est apparu
le tuyau se rétrécissant
ou le feu
le monolithe luisant
terrifiant
dans le cercle d'ombre
le loup qui attend
canus lupus : fauve ou chienet la constellation
avec le chiffre 58
[Deutsch]
Die Zeit wurde bleiern
In der Ferne tauchte ein Punkt auf
eine sich verengende Röhre
oder eine Flamme
ein gleißender Monolith
Kälte verströmend
Im Kreis der Schatten
wartete der wilde Hund
Canus Lupus:
Urhund oder Wolfshund
und die Sternenkonstellation Nummer 58
[English]
The time grew heavy
in the distance the point
the narrowing tube
or the flame
a shining monolith chilling
in the shadow-circle
the wild dog
awaiting
canus lupus: vulture or wolf dog
and the star constellation
with the number 58
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