Stain, guilt

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Gemma Mahadeo 

I scrub maniacally
at the chocolate sauce thickness
in the fabric.
Hitchcock was right
to use it as blood
in Psycho:
its viscosity he may have found fitting

		              [	
		              Hitchcock I think the murder in the bathtub...coming       out of the blue, you know...that was about all
		              Truffaut    c'est ça. c'est...c'est comme le viol...
	 	              Hitchcock sure
		              ]

but the stain and the guilt of it
cannot be replicated.

I scrub again
	
               (DAUGHTER: Bring the screen. Quickly!)
				 	                                         I am dying, I am dying
Strindberg's Ghost Sonata girl's words
repeat constantly in my head
as I crouch, foetal-like, in the shower,
watching the red and clear liquids

	       (COOK: You drain the goodness out of us, 
	             / and we drain it from you. We take the blood /
	             and give you back the water – with the colorite.)*

dance down the plughole.

* Excerpts from an interview between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut discussing Psycho (Aug 1962). Quotations used are from Michael Meyer trans & ed. Strindberg: Plays: One (London, Methuen, 1993).

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Depth: Text and Playthings

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Jason Nelson

Click on the image above to launmch this piece or else try opening it in a new window.

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Variations at Café Chéri(e)

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Derek Rawson

The sun sets in the time it takes for the waitress to come.

i) In light darkness we sit; how to order has slipped our minds.

ii) A thought of leaving… But here she is, behind a red smile.

iii) She holds a tray by her side: a pale sliver, wet moonshine.

iv) The sky: the far-off blue-green tint of a top-shelf bottle.

v) Faces in the twilight: wet rings on a half-cleared table.

vi) A man wipes the last drop of light from his chin; lifts his head.

vii) An old regular nurses his beard; the froth is long gone.

viii) A woman combs the day’s rays from her hair: blonde becomes brune.

ix) In the gloom of our reflected selves, indecision…

x) From here one might say that it was sucked into the city.

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Returning to the Return*

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Jenny Powell

whwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwh whhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhwhshshshshsh

whsh whsh whsh whsh whsh whsh whsh whsh ssssssssssssss
                           gull flung                                            ssssss
                                                                     swoooooaaa
                                                                                      a
                                                                                        a

                                         a a
swoop on high sea       a
                     swoooooaaa
                                       a
                                         a   a far flung

listening to the cry of the sea
whakarongo ki te tangi a te moana

            aeu u u u u u u u u u u u u u
     aeu u u u u u u u u u u u u u u
 aeu u u u u u u u u u u u u u
splinteredsplinteredsplinteredspinteredsplintered

tree god splintered on the high sea
                                     Ma
Tane Mahuta Ta Tane Taneeee
                               ne
                                    huutaaaa splintered

kauri kowhai totara rimu rata miro mistletoe splintered   splinter
kauri kowhai totara rimu rata miro mistletoe splintered   splinter

split split split sp sp sp sp sp sp sp sp sp
                                      matau                 tartaire

     sp sp                                    sp sp                               sp sp

sp           sp                         sp            sp                    sp             sp

mist low   sp sp sp sp sp   sand wet    sp sp sp sp    sea high       sp
sp       sp                              sp      sp                          sp      sp     sp

sp                           sp                   sp                 sp                   sp
  shshshshshshhshs  shshshshsh  shshshhshs  shshshshsh  shshshshshshsh
                                                       Dionysus
             drowned            drowned                     drowned         drowned

heart splintered                 heart splintered                 on the high sea

shshshshs
                              far flung                            far flung

*New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn composed his first major electro-acoustic work in 1965, ‘The Return,’ a sound image setting of a poem by Alistair Campbell. Lilburn subsequently went on to create a significant body of electro-acoustic music with predominant New Zealand themes.

 
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Blue Light

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Mark O'Flynn

‘When I was in Hong Kong,’ recounts Mr. N, (547113), ‘I
stopped at a red light in Kowloon Tong.
It was about three or four in the morning.
Neon sky. Stars of office windows.
I was a gangster then.
After a while a white car pulled along side me
and the electric window went slowly down.
It was Jackie Chan and he smiled and waved.
Jackie Chan and I had gone to school together, before he was famous.
I was pleased to be remembered by Jackie Chan and so I waved back.
Then the light turned blue, and the white car drove away and I never
saw Jackie Chan again, apart from in the movies.’
‘Are you saying you knew Jackie Chan when you were a gangster?’
‘Yes. He was a gangster also. We were gangsters together.’

‘And the red light turned blue?’

‘Oh, no – Green – The red light turned green. It was long ago
and it has been so long since I’ve seen one.’

Posted in 46: ELECTRONICA | Tagged

Whose Tongue is the Wind’s Tongue?1

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Joanne Merriam

A gin-damned drunkard’s wan half-witted face 2
stared with piteous recognition in fixed eyes. 3
The winds from the west all breathed a story; 4
I couldn’t understand a word. 5
How long I stayed alone with the corpse I never knew. 6

 

What is that noise now? What is the wind doing? 7
They pursued it with forks and hope; 8
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch, 9
the secrets and the signals and the system. 10
Is it a banished soul? 11

 

Essence of winter sleep is on the night. 12
I sit and listen to the wind’s 13
laughter out of dead bellies. 14

1The title is from Agernon Charles Swinburne’s “Hertha.” I added capitalization.
2 from Gilbert Chesterton’s “The Mirror of Madmen.”
3 from Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting.” I removed a line break.
4 from Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “The Lost Garden.” I added a capital and the semi-colon.
5 from Edwin C. Ranck’s “The Epic of the Hog.” I added the period.
6 from Christina G. Rossetti’s “Under the Rose.” I removed a line break and capital,
     and added the period.
7 from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”
8 from Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark.”
9 from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” I removed a capital and an exclamation mark,
     and added a comma.
10 from Carl Sandburg’s “Our Prayer of Thanks.” I added the period.
11 from Bliss Carman’s “Behind the Arras.” I added the question mark.
12 from Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking.” I added the period.
13 from Joanna Baillie’s “Night Scenes of Other Times. I added the ‘s.
14 from Ezra Pound’s “Ode Pour L’Election de Son Sepulchre.”
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Mascon, Mañana

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Joyce Parkes

Bridges over the river write,
seen resting on land lining
the water on either side

of the current’s course, may
have been built to carry
metaphors to and from

dwellings surveyed, surmised
and summarised by mobile
minds impelled to observe

the next wave to the sea,
the tide taken as free
to encompass mascon and mañana.

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TV Life

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Konrad McCarthy

A screenshot from Konrad McCarthy's TV Life

Click on the image above to view this video, or else try opening it in a new window.

CREDITS:
Cast: Cameron Zayec
Writer, Director, Producer, Camera & Editor: Konrad McCarthy
Gaffers: Yu Nanakuma & Eduard Jakaj

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The Warriors: an imaginary ballet in three parts

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Jessica L Wilkinson

1.
Fiction leads through factual composition to an
arbitrary place of free delight—at the end of
such an arc is Mr. Percy Aldridge Grainger,
slapping his knees and humming through the
beat. Throw caution over the house and it
might bounce back in protest. Throw it twice
and meet me on the other side.

2.
Your doctrine was to be honest always—to
document the truth or else the truth would
never out. To this effect you locked the
message in. I pick up scraps of information and
throw them on the preservation pile ignite
the match for a brief ungraspable illumination.
Feel these rhythms, too complicated for human
players. This is how we dance—you and
I—slightly, without pause

3.
In a nutshell with a mallet
upon my curves and
louden lots bit by bit
zigzags fair
the two of us against the world
princess
is technique
blood be my thigh
so nearly faultless
my walls
WARRIORS!
shimmer

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The Lexican’t

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Louise Molloy
I M P E N E T R A B L E I
M P E R V I O U S I M P L
A C A B L E I M P O S S I
B L E I M P R E G N A B L
E I M P E R I O U S I M P
A S S A B L E I M P R A C
T I C A L I M P E R M I S
S A B L E I M P E N E T R
A B L E I M P U D E N T :
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Elements, Afternoon

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Sam Langer

Almost crying over a German memoir
understandable, in that he was a great man, cooking kidneys
& getting married.

The backpackers line up to check their Facebooks,
must learn to examine faces & not tits as much.

A quiet little butt going up library stairs in jeans.

To have been born before money
& still be a child
with hands to peck out grand, peaceful
hunts across the typewriter

that end in a violin recital, for laughter & applause,
& beer mixed to 2 parts Chinotto in the hours
before cool summer dawn.

The architect checks his phone.
The round lamps on.

To have a halo. A face, kind arms.

To be a flying book.

Posted in 46: ELECTRONICA | Tagged

sonata forms back

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Sam Langer

but who can tell
europe
room
a porn clip would not require the french press

the four crossed boulevard richard lenoir in two couples,
steadily. why, in those two, the dead of night.

coordinates missing
presumed holiday

study money

the city. grave of the sippers

trees on their way to town

thought of the page spoiling

dough climbing
down the organs
to print dresses flush with bodies
pass
express & yourself
by chairs
the door stopped

he stooped compared
to his fingernails

obligatory fields, obscurantist hair
i get trouble from the customs
officer for talking

carefully described hatred of towns flowing under the concrete steps.

a message comes over the tapestry
those are just some vices

all paintings in men are brothers

red heaven

follow like wax

planet fuck

life the frustration of living force,
said thru a kazoo

shofar practice

move from bungalow to salon
a little in the giant flow

don’t ask me when i am coming back to europe
but i will fly there on my spare copy of à rebours

neutral final

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Et Tu

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Joshua Mei-Ling Dubrau

Josh Mei-Ling Dubrau's Et Tu

Click on the image above to launch this video, or else try opening it in a new window.

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mixtape (sub-version):

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Eddie Paterson

THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE I’VE EVER HEARD ANYONE PLAY THE SOUNDTRACK FROM GHOSTBUSTERS sadly my dad is not rapping in hebrew with his rainstick, it just sits there next to the pile of newspapers we have.. i spent good money on that thing, do you want bubblegum for your cough? ____ is cute & we have fought twice, which isn’t bad. (both times about her mobile.) my results were ok, but not perfect. there is a castle here. grandma is convinced a MUSLIM woman is cutting the heads off her gardenias. she seems to be covered in a layer of what appears to be fine dust. or ash. perhaps i’m a marxist? this is not like _____ coming out in one he was the bigfoot & he & neil diamond were selling an album they’ve made on garage band i went to see kevin johansen play for a second time. drunk a lot of mate. haven’t got a job. today i helped a man catch his runaway donkey. but i had better start from the start. everything else in tokyo seems to be just as good as
their toilets. it’s weird to be in a place with no bogans tomorrow we’re going to disneyland! my boss watched centerstage…she tell me to write this movie…i want a nice bed linen…i loved so much to stay the wife…i want that here in japan i am an old man. & you are a beautiful chicken. CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! this marks one week without an infection. no pus for you! we are professional blueberry pickers. we are now professional apple pickers. sorry for my lacadazeical approach & spelling of lackadazecal i am the quote dirty dirty child who doesn’t succeed & hasn’t made the movie of the year. love, john-hair-implants-didnt-work-galliano o i think i can be famous…but i feel tired…please lets go shopping i miss you like it is winter here.

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We Are Called

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Angela Gardner

Otherwise volatile substance, walks past in the rain
and how nearly we are human,
failing and uncontained, within new ways of looking.

What to call the genetic distance between us?
Sightings of the unwieldy zorse, the liger, the wholphin,
sometimes jaunty above their smiles.

Then there is the problem of touch, centuries
the nervous system transmits of spurious instructions
slights and channels, fraught and sniping

all dismissed with careful knife-work. If only we agree
on what we will call them: blind-sight, money
well spent. How uncomfortably close they come

each with their carefully constructed surfaces
we map with meaning. Mirrors like our children,
what will we call them…

and they, our children, what will they call us?

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Animal Light

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Angela Gardner

Being small and neatly branched
your glanced-at limbs manufacture a pressure:
Oh shiny thing as you rearrange yourself
make me happy.

Mid-deal, water-tower in the background
a suburban species of sleet to the fore,
neither of us makes headway. There is a lot
to misunderstand:

our common creeping from the cost and strut
of machines to
our poorly developed momentum requiring
constant clinical resolve.

Where would we be without GPS?
Imperceptible slowness, manifest
in bemused muscle and patent hand signals.
The truth or perfect.

If I want to hold something nailed down
why strap on a jet-pack? In the fall
the air around me is a movie soundtrack
of unopened parachute silk.

Posted in 46: ELECTRONICA | Tagged

Parsley

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Joyce Parkes

(With thanks to Nick Driscoll)

 

Parsley rarely receives
what she deserves, though
she rarely deserves what she has

received she maintains
discussing entitlement with
Carolyn, Nicholas, Maurice and

Georgina in the garden
of thyme and time, spotting
uncertainty. Like a canopy of

constant azure above
the greenhouse built by her
orchid-growing parents, who

were mindful enough to
deconstruct cells of certainty
and foster leaves of fortitude.

Too late now to ask
Petronella and Paul
what they thought of belonging.

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sample

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Michael Farrell

1

we have over 45 years experience
skin , launched in 1960 with soap
messaging ( sm ) and presence protocol suite
deal with , use , etc . : a matter
contributed online encyclopedia intended for people
sneakers make us happy . we like

1

of dollars per year on groceries
made easier every day with real
nutritious recipes which can be prepared
this final issue of scrapbooks magazine
is to provide a truly embeddable
and examples of machines in action

1

always rides with a big smile
the interest formula is often abbreviated
oils and herbs , handmade in australia
computer by obtaining an interest loan
involved or complicated ; easy : a task
with a focus on interesting melody

1

had to write for the english
a high performance xml serialization and
and solutions to common life problems
is the goal of the project
the perfect tool to manage perfectly
our philosophy is . . . . we believe in

1

anybody who wants to have fun
people with their way of life
with beautiful wedding albums , free downloads
2 to 10 minutes to complete
time tracking . stop wasting time tracking
having or composed of only one

1

rich , completely integrated and fully scalable
hunger for fast , fresh , and appealing
the simplest and most professional approach
water information | radar | learn about meteorology
the life , the food , the goods
post your buy & sell ads

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nothing left in

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Benjamin Laird

nothing left in

Click on the image above to launch this piece or open it in a new window.

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waves

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Derek Motion

punch & paw out a slippery motif post
tourist hotel shots smack it down all
fourths-&-fifthsy while the event gloss
still burns white chase the midi sync
& loop up in a drizzled morning snap
to the rotodrum drone & channel it
make the pulsekickers pulse like trains
out your windowframe further outcast
yourself from the last of the generic
neighbours with several different
levels of treble & unease stew on
the ambiance & structure over coffee
generate a wash that mirrors the sun’s
struggle with cloud while the mood
lasts & filter a set of harmonics to
parallel dust over the mantle bang
bliss out on the click track swing
it until dance wouldn’t feel right
then effect a nightmare ocsillation
prove your point & howl:
bring about stray recognition dub
your plaintive tones high but enlist
your sister for more jaggzy lines
the hook and the breathing
don’t hesitate face the sun
cresting the hedge now call
adele / jones / olaf write collage
into all cities the collaborative
dew collects a triple threat of
rave stagnation bleeding into
the annals listen softly

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Iseult to Tristan

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers

1
A sudden wind
brought the cold:
I took my coat out of its shroud

and closed my face
against the icy dust.

I put my hands inside my pockets
and found you there.

 
2
Tiredness
has a way of filling your bones

then seeping out
glutinous like blood

to cover
desks and screens.

I asked for rest
got to breathe

and key for the sail
on the empty sea.

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Organ Charms

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Jessica Bell

Grinding jaw against splintered bench,
clear smears: ethical sheen. Umbilical
chords imitate charm, hidden between
enameled prayer; left to mix into bites
on my back. I squeeze scent from split
ends, recalling your black cloak brush
over cheek; warm glowing water gush
from my mouth, or was it yours, Vicar.

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Where o where

Posted on December 1, 2011 by W M Lewis

Are they dampening my friends’ wind chimes’ silly noises or stuck helplessly in their hairs like cats in a monsoon gutter.

Are they in the hands of tiny incompetent jugglers hellbent on forging their own useless and beautiful careers.

Are they going to school alone despite their minor age the buses late the bells loud the sisters and brothers off with their older maybe boyfriends.

Are they fixing engines happy in grease and knuckles wrinkled from endless brilliant exertions that unjust yet profitable bosses wish.

Are they traveling on unexpected buses theirs fears left in Melbourne the corner of Collins and Spring Sts hopeless really while expected rallies flat as a medieval earth fall.

Are they dating online fucking in toilets under bridges at the beach in the forest yes let them be there inhaling the air thick with life lingering while they catch their breaths just a minute I’ll be with you.

Where o where are my dreadlocks now.

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The Freedom Fighter

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Misbah Wolf

In case you die and they don’t know whose side you are on, you have an identity card that states your distinguishing features, like the mole on your neck. At night you and your friends smoke hashish and then jump in the soft snow. Your father mines opals in the mountains near you, and eventually you will go blow up mountains with him. You told me once that you had witnessed the death of your friend’s family as they were fired upon by the enemy across the mountains. Now as we travel through the snow engulfed valley, I look out the window of the Jeep and try to spot the enemy, but all I see is a land divided into bare trees and great valleys. My father patrols the edges of our conversations and we move further apart. You talk about blowing up mountains and offer me a shot of brandy, but I am terrified I might get caught. You keep a rifle under the driver’s seat and your pashmina round your shoulders. I see the swollen scar of a bullet wound on your forearm. I see a thick silver necklace adorned with coins and lapis lazuli in a roadside shop and beg my father for the money to buy it. But my father ignores me and vanishes in the street. You appear moments later with the necklace and hand it to me. Later when I leave those mountains, a parcel arrives for me in Karachi, and in it are two silver pens. No one makes a comment about them and I say nothing. In the afternoon before I catch my plane back to Australia, I hide them under the empty rabbit hutch on the rooftop.

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