Z = ZISCELLANEOUS
In a Library of Bad Ideas, this could be the worst.
Random texts from The Blue Folder make up a page of stuff and nonsense.
DRUNKEN LOVE NOTE ON BROKEN TYPEWRITER
KR;SZT;NA!
HERE ARE PROBABLY THE LAST WORDS O
F MY BEAUT;FUL DY;;NG TYPEWR;TER???
YOU MAKE A FOOL HAPPY
YOU TOO ARE BEAUT;FUL
YOU MAKE A BAD LOVER SAD
YOU ARE BEAT/FUL
MY EYES DONT WORK
LF L COULD SEE YOU L WOULD SEE
THAT YOU ARE BEATLFUL
L WRLTE NO SMALL LETTERS
SAY NO PERFECT WORDS
FEEL LNCORRECT PRESSURES
FOR L AM BLACK AND DYEENG
MY NECK LS BROKEN FROM REACHLNG DOW
N AND L AM STRONGER FOR LT
L AM STRONGER FOR YOU
HOW LONG HAVE L BENT WLTH NOTHLNG
TO SEE!
LOOK! ! FOUND MY EYES !!
! FOUND THAT YOU ARE BEAT!FUL
YOU ARE ON THE GROUND
REAL AND GROWN FROM !T
FROM LOVE
! AM SOMEWHERE UPSTA!RS PAC!NG MY
EMPTY ROOM DREAM!NG OF A CURE
DREAM!NG AWAKE AND WA!T!NG
AS LOVE PASSES BY BELOW
YOUR B!RTHDAY PRESENT
FROM ME TO YOU
!S YOU !!!
WHAT MORE COULD ! G!VE ?
FOR YOU ARE BEAUT!FUL
Berlin, 1995
WORDS AND PICTURES!
Here are some words:
AHHH!
fuck
Tickle (crossed out and replaced with 'fancy')
AND SHE EASILY CHOSE
TO FLOURISH LIKE A WOMAN
Here are some more words:
fancy (crossed out and replaced with 'walk')
FUCK!
ooohhhhh! (crossed out and replaced with AHHH!)
MONA LISA PREFERS TO BE FAMOUS
LIKE THAT WOMAN IN THE LOUVRE
Here is a picture:
(...)
Now fold this page into two parts and complete the following rhyme:
The purple clouds are beaten
The street today has won
The lives are cleaned and modern
The Devil sold his son...
DOG IN A MOUSETRAP
Rearrange these:
jumps into a careless land
time dissolves
wrapped and warm
let out the heat
makes the jump
takes back caresses
turning blind eyes
pulls back the touch
how else to tell
fat hard skin
under floor-boards
seeping away
lost bones
hard blood
(he is jumping)
warms the house
enormous home
let in the cold
pages weep
speaks in sleep
stumbles loudly
the giving part
a dark light
expects no-one
stops short
sneaks down
sunk at home
a dog in a mousetrap
dog in a mousetrap
mouse in a bear-trap
bear in a fly-trap
fly in a tea-cup
flying mice in a dog-hut
moving lice on a bear coat
fly-trap under the bed sheet
venus in an egg-cup
(soft-boiled)
add the title
rationed passion
hoopla!
AMANDA AND OTHERS
in the beginning
white morning
black photographs
of white cleavage
brittle roses
and brittle fingers
a song
in the garden of a friend
who runs off
to early warm europe
leaving behind a man in the snow
an irishman
on garden ice
in a black hat
a birthday card
to or from
the dancer
the teacher
the lover
the witch
with nails
red nails
brittle fingers
that tear the blue wall
tiled fire-place
kitten purring
engine purring
buried now
under grass
beneath that garden
back of that house
behind that road
comfortable dancer
comfortable witch
long fingers of death!
black dress
dark smelling dress
and white wines and red
on your bellies
white bellies
dark night
feet up the wall
blue wall
red toes
shoes lost
white sheets
red sheet
sharp heels in soft wood
all ours
all silence
spilt wine
spilt candle
blond hair smelling
all her
eyes dilated
all mine
her tears
both mine
all mine
till white morning
A MAN REMEMBERS HE IS MADE OF DUSTY GUTS AND SALT AND THUMPING BLOOD
AND WONDERS NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME
IF THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE
He walks down a long corridor.
Doors are closed on either side.
Noises are made behind the doors.
Someone approaches.
Is it God's daughter?
A scary monster?
Then there are no more doors.
There is no noise.
No feel of carpet underfoot.
It is a boy approaching.
A distant light puts him in silhouette.
It is a difficult thing to see him.
Now he is a thin man.
At the end of the corridor he meets a mirror.
In the mirror is a door-handle.
The door-handle is easier to look at.
And look at it he does, he does.
And look at it he does.
WHERE AM I
Try to remember that
less than one per cent
of all you've seen and known
is within your knowing today.
Fragments of the rest are
now and again recaptured
as walls and windows are
by accident shattered.
These memories crash
through your front door
dazed and babbling
like UFO hostages
returned from the Far Zone.
EARLY POEM, ONE OF MY FIRST, TOO AWFUL EVER TO FINISH
So another sprawling poem's gonna trip you up
Like all the ones that crawled the floor before and never did
So I'll chat you up and hold you up and buy you up and crack you up
With falsities and promises we'll wish I could have hid.
I'll bludgeon you with compliments that dislocate your name
You'll flinch from them within but scratch for others all the same
I'll hurl my sharpened gifts at you and threaten you with gain
You'll tear at them and laugh and half appreciate the pain.
When I snag my tongue and dribble out my battle plan
Will you wince for me and slightly feel the sting (and understand)?
When I drag you to the stagnant parties, gallow gates and butcher stands
Will you cringe and smirk with gritted teeth, but cling with eager hands?
When I harness you with faithlessness and wretchedness and grime
Will you burden me with clarity and swob me down with wine?
When I shackle you with blasphemy, obscenity and (thoughtlessness)
Will you pardon me with lies of all the decency and time?
When I dry your hair and bind you in your dressing-gown
Will you dry my eyes and wind me in it too?
When I lay you down and hum your favourite nursery rhyme
Will you drag me down and sigh my favourite tune?
LOTS OF DANDRUFF BUT NO ENERGY
Kornelia sent me a tape to play at the Dog in a Mousetrap exhibition. It was one of the nicest surprises ever. Unless its at Norbert's, I suppose it has vanished by now. Friends of hers recorded it in Budapest - I never met them. To the music, which I can't describe, she read aloud in her nasal, droning, sexy voice the following text (plus 'Note on Brown Paper' and one other). Korny is like a sister. But FULL of energy. It was a historic occasion when I played the tape of this terrible text over that strange music at the candlelit HTC Gallery, east Berlin, way back in '95.
I got no energy.
No energy.
Lots of dandruff and no energy.
So who'll go first,
To hold me up?
To keep me up?
Who'll go first to shut me up?
For pity sucks.
Shack up with me.
Shoot up with me.
Ransack my tomb and fly off with me.
No energy.
Tons of appointments, acres of time.
But no energy.
So volunteer while the choices are hard to define.
While the coal-shed's full.
While the fashion's still in.
While the blood's still racing.
While the wing still holds and the singer still bleats.
Bleats out:
No energy (etc...)
THE COVET
(shame, less shame)
wring out for the covet
for bad ends
focus relentless on the crimson crease
suck the vision dry
till lips and tearless eyelids crack
till nails bleed and the neck aches cold
till the vision aches too
from the covet
flick out the reasons
flatten them with tearing circles and sly arrows
swipe at the causes
update the excuses
trip on a sliding copper-lined tongue
till tangled and giddy
cornered and bruised
till altered and shifted
bleached pale and stooping
from the covet
(shame, less shame)
DOLLS HOUSE
What is it to be filled with another human being?
Are there rooms within people?
Lives within rooms within people?
Are people built like dolls' houses?
Cardboard walls, plastic muscles
Chimney flue for a spine
Family at home behind the ribs
Listening to the thunder
Damp washing in the guts
Front door face
(A draft through the door)
Attic brain - filthy thoughts
A little wooden garage with a little wooden car -
Escape hatch to the world
Between stone wall thighs
Cupboards filled with games
Roast beef supper, porridge and wine
A glass of milk by the little cotton cot
Is my family inside me?
Why do I crave what I already have?
(Thinking of Tina and Peter and Leo.)
CRY
Find a place to stay
stay there
move on
choose a partner
a lover
lose another
and another
wrap your neck around the corpse of a friend
stretch it to the end
and cry.
OUT OF THE HOLE AND INTO THE FRIDGE
Come, Ye, out into the rich world!
Come out!
Come out!
Come, Ye of little FAT, come out of yer hole!
Come out!
(second verse)
Open out yer eyes, roll up yer tongue,
And yer sleeves, right up to yer shaven-tangled arm-pits!
Slap yerself hard awake,
And prepare for the gruesome second coming!
Ignore the peppered glass,
The fabulous bunting,
The perfect silhouette,
Without a single edge.
The clam that stinks,
The dirty mark;
The maniac clock with its second-hand joke...
(third verse)
And crawl back into the fridge.
LIFE'S UPS AND DOWNS
Forwards and fearless! Onwards and onwards! Never say stop! Never let go! Regardless of squeaks and shrieks and tires lodged in a tram line! Ever this way and never again that! Amid the battle cries of armies, the victory prayers of mothers for their sons! The restless jostle of fanatics in a crowd! Let there be rain and let me be soaked! To win and to prosper! To arrive beneath cheers of hot, hot welcome! There are no traps made strong enough, no enemies great enough! There is no failure, there is no end! This is the season, this is MY time! What is to be done shall be accomplished in the blink of one determined eye!
"Let there be victory!" sayeth the Lord. "These things are spoken! These things are done!"
Done in!
All lost!
Thwarted and routed! Beaten and burned! Some bugger blew the whistle! The allies didn't show! Where is the justice? The giddy celebration? Who told who to throw in the spanner? Who dug the pit? Who burned the boat? All the cards came a-tumbling down! All the kings horses fled with all the queens maidens! Betrayed and accused three times over! Exposed and denied a thousand times over! Tossed against the wall and shot, shot, shot!
UP DOWN THREE FOUR!
UP DOWN THREE FOUR!
UP DOWN THREE FOUR!
UP DOWN THREE FOUR!
OPEN TAP KNOCKING
Fingers tap
(tap tap tap)
who's there?
knees knock
(knock knock knock)
who's there?
(shut open the door)
SHUT OPEN THE DOOR!
"who's there?"
(...)
"ANSWER ME!"
(...)
but only the stairs do not answer
till bloody silence warps the door
(so pull on something clean, twit, and OPEN IT!)
- Do you know what happened when he opened it?
- do you?
- do you know what HAPPENED when he opened it?
But wait, before it came to that
that is, before she came to him
(there's a clue)
before he troubled to open the door
(please open the door, won't you? Please, please...)
"OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR, FOOL!"
he polished the flat
threw on some records and beans
scrubbed his body, and then
with a grand gesture
and quite terrified
he opened the door
as one would expect
there she stood.
RUBBISH!
there it lay
the garbage
staining his feet
up to his nose
he kicked a path through it
cautious and quick
looking both ways
he turned and pulled off his shirt
pausing to sniff at a bit of old milk
he belly-flopped in
nauseous, then sick as a dog
he trawled his way through it
the dregs, the muck
till right near the end
arms open wide in surrender
he stupidly coughed his way out
with the words:
"Imagine meeting you here!
right on our doorstep!
enormous coincidence!
imagine meeting you!"
And out of the crud
a word said to him
something he didn't quite get
ear-holes stuffed with giddy rot
but something then hissed
through eye-balls or fangs
"sssssshhhhhh!"
then SHE said to him
(...)
something he didn't quite hear
and nothing much more
but stepped passed
and entered the flat
"let me do that!"
said he
and he, too, said nothing much more
ever again
as it happened.
Instead he picked and picked and picked
at the lock in the open door
(pick pick pick)
crouched on the prickly door mat
(pick pick pick pick pick)
till, down on that filthy old door mat
(pick pick pick pick pick pick pick)
prostrate on that fucking old door mat
(pick pick pick pick pick pick pick pick pick)
he noticed an easy way in.
And when the door slammed shut with a shudder
(SLAM!)
it did so in ALL their faces!
(tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap...)
