Essay on the Allegorical Uses of Syntax

for bpNichol (and others)

The capitalization of Gneiss
Exiled from the capital
Capitol the capital of Speedy

Plot more than scheme
Story more than plot
History more read than blue

Poetry being at a dead
End time being til no
One listens to poetry save

Golden crowned sparrow
Spavined fools gold
Arrow downed having

Running while spitting
Pissing altogether winds
Digging remember hind

Objects known by shadow
Play deep reality plow
Down use values fucked

Up rock chuck hawk chalks
Up subject verbs object
To capitalize on plot schemes

Poems than none other is
looks at it when reading
Don’t say jay nay pa stop

An H say

Of Rabbit Ideologues

Fig. 3: Robbe-Grillet returns to the scene of his Breton childhood en forme de pooka.

He rises on haunches and speaks the following:

"Ideology, always masked, changes its face with ease. It's a hydra-headed mirror: whenever one head is cut off it soon springs up again, presenting the adversary with his true face in the mirror, which he believed he had defeated. Have a nice day."

Personal Poem

Every day I become more like me.
I’m about to be killed, right?

damaged persons never forgive(n) - ?
More on this theme later.

Your money will run out before
your life, making suicide

unnecessary. In the mean time,
don’t touch me I’m radioactive

with a half-ass life
60 million years.

Poetry as an Instrument of Social Change

"Socialist Kate Richards O’Hare, speaking in North Dakota in July of 1917, said, it was reported, that ‘the women of the United States were nothing more nor less than brood sows, to raise children to get into the army and be made into fertilizer.’ She was arrested [under the Espionage Act – still in force, BTW], tried, found guilty, and sentenced to five years in the Missouri state penitentiary. In prison she continued to fight. When she and fellow [sic] prisoners protested the lack of air, because the window above the cell block was kept shut, she was pulled out in the corridor by guards for punishment. In her hand she was carrying a book of poems, and as she was dragged out she flung the book up at the window and broke it, the fresh air streaming in, her fellow prisoners cheering.” [H. Zinn, A People’s History of the United States]

Prima della rivoluzione

“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.”

Toujours, Lapins . . .

. . . Note symbiotic relationship with other mammalian species.

(I was kidding about the homeless people - they're welcome to visit the campus, if they can afford the bus fare to the suburbs.)

I will think only beautiful thoughts.
I will think only beautiful thoughts.

I will post pictures of rabbits.
I will post only lovely things.

The key is in the sunlight by the window.
The key is in the sunlight by the window.

I will avoid human conflict at all costs.
I will avoid human contact at all costs.

I will destroy my karma.
That’s the very worst kind.

I will not escape my karma.
No, you will not.

My beautiful thoughts escape me.
No thoughts are beautiful.

I will drive myself away.
Through the bars in the window.

Bunnies in Heaven

I think now is the time to start adding photos. Especially these photos, taken at the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, in September of 2006. At the University of Victoria, the lawns are perfectly manicured and green, everyone is well-fed, and there are feral bunnies everywhere. Men and women in silver lamé togas and plexiglass sandals stroll the knolls saying things like, "What, then, Phaedras, shall we not grant the Outer Planets the secret of the happy gas?" Friendly Public Health employees at the gates stop homeless persons from gaining ingress, and the music of the spheres is on the PA system. I feel a sudden need for utopia.

forced march

And now, an entirely pastoral interlude, entitled, "Spring Comes to Kansastan."

daffodils! -- /
an easter egg under-
no fool a dirty golfball

* * *
jonquils! -- /
here they call them daffodils /
back home
this happened weeks ago

* * *
all poetry books --> quietude
save those
used to break things /

paper-backs
took care of that

* * *

KIM ROSA:
1964-2006:
Doctoral Student
Dedicated Family Advocate

FRANK GURTHER:
July 20, 1918-Nov. 9, 1979
"A Man with Great Integrity
and a Friend to All"

AND LUCKIER:

More from the Er Ye Fer It Er Agin It Dept.

Click on the link below to go to Kansas Poet Laureate Denise Low's forum at the Academy of American Poets web page. Denise is unique, in that she is really trying to represent the rather broad range of poets and poetries in the state (and nation), rather than to promote a particular school/clique/form/style. It's well worth a look-see.

http://www.poets.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=118418&sid=9be774c2504de814a4c8fda01fc5ef07