Translation of René Bélance : I

For more info about the original author, I hope you can read French and take a peek here. 

This is just one snippet of a whole book, entitled "Épaule D'Ombre" [The Shoulder of Shadow], which I'm working on an English translation of for publication. Keep an eye out for further developments and, in the meantime, sink your teeth into this one and achieve Breton-worthy surrealistic trance...

I. Vertigo

with your awakening to joy

with your ill-considered run

with your emergent smile

like a threat to my chagrin 

i draw out my spark like an iron

with my irritating bursts

with my banishing laughter

that creaks against your ecstatic stupor

and my skeleton exhumed from the boneyard 

to the scandal of fine mistresses

who offer up to me their nude bodies

shaking with a trashy shiver

impassive to the stormy eyes of seismic dawn

i put together a reverie of hell

to brush against your body

to electrify your willing throat

a fixed day of splendor waiting the boarding of a steamship

conveying the exiled escapee of that prison

i will take you by the hair

ah! feverishly

in order to mount you

dangled

slapped

catcalled

panicked

wild-eyed

and... alone.

cynically alone.

handed over to hunger

in the bay of foulness

in front of the whorehouses

where a man fabricates 

the mischief-makers

the galley slaves

the children of the greeting of hunger

by hunger

in rags

in ulcers

and the men to scout out first

the men to go barefoot

the men for "home"

the men for the shanty

and then the women

the women for the boudoir

the women for the smoking room

the women for the brothels

the women to bring about the carnage of bankruptcy

the women for the anxiety of jewelers

women to pity

i will tell you all about the barking of the doleful

the lament of deadened rivulets

innoculated by the first needles of helium

i will recount for you the abortion of every fruit

on the unblinking earth

and the measuring out and hefting up of every corpse

for the manure of their sprawling udder

i will make you ruminate.

one window opened on the shore...

the earth will turn about

to our polar arms

and we will have the vertigo of its gravitation

the privilege of establishing 

the changing of the seasons

the influence of your eyes on tidal waves

the brief slumber of fisherman

the nightmare of sprouting alluvia

you will sing ahead of the ecstasy 

because you will not build up 

upon the disquietude and thirst

the braggart soldier

the messengers of transmissible deserts

they will bow at your porcelain feet

their spires

their riot shields

[June 1944]

Dragonslayer Leak

Sunset Rubdown's follow up to my second favorite album of all time leaked today.

Steal it here

Fake Being Polite

After Heidi and Spencer's Terminal Retardation, For Matt Kays

They said
  "in the future when all's..."
block-buster blond-bustings

welted American summers
and moneyed Mexico
on don't pass lines

     the swine teemed
     teeth tucked back
     caked in even blanker dirt

our television hated the music it vomited
                            more the second time
we polished the low-set vanities like teeny-bopper
                            sidekick flip-screens

I read that the Hills have eyes but
are their lids as delicious
               as ours?

The Place Holder

The man who knows where to sit in every single venue
sat his body down in just the right seat at just the right time.

From where I sat, I wouldn't have called the theater's lighting
very delicate or foreboding or hindering to any movement;

and there was no real cause for me to remember how to act,
even though I wanted to compare myself with this man.

The chairs were not relieving themselves (like drunken legs)
or standing rigid (like soldiers) and barring my way--

nah, it didn't feel like a ropes course or lazer grid, not at all,
and it didn't feel like a packed auditorium or press release.

The man who knew, donned in black dress, with backpack,
charged right in and plumped himself down so quick,

like a hawk who had swooped for all the kills of a lifetime,
or the calves of an alcoholic, the arched back of a marine.

Though my own seat was better, this guy had to be admired,
he had to be eulogized since for sure I'd never see him again.

I thought about how my seat was better, and jeeze, why
oh why did he know to sit in that seat of all seats, up so close?

Like a dolphin pissed off and dreaming of opposable digits,
I started to get angry, and wanted to throw my cup at him.

I had gotten a Tall Green Tea from a Starbucks outside,
and now the cup was empty, pathetic, in the cup holder.

It could be right on that guy's lap, in his memorized seat,
I thought to myself, but then the movie started up.

The movie was okay and good enough to distract me
from the man who knew right where to sit down.

After the movie was over, I didn't think of the man at all,
and walked out into the bright sky that always opens up.

Only after getting back to the house and seeing my inbox
did I realize that I had to address and scold this haunting figure.

Listening to Ricardo Villabolos is supposed to be soothing,
but I keep thinking that the man will burst in, get into my bed.

** Note **
With a sense of irony looming overhead, the dolphin link above was immediately found after writing and posting this article via a Google search of "opposable digits." It was the second result in the search. And yet Firefox doesn't believe "opposable" is a word.

Destiny

       In Dreams caring
               walking ominously

          southward
                     in existential hopes

            Oblivious future
                      pressing
              vice|            |grip

Breakdown almost
          i   n   s   t   a   n   t   a   n   e   o   u   s

   Endless struggle
                  perseverance
nonchalance

Bomb Scare

After rewatching Neon Genesis Evangelion

Later
           it was discovered
           he was a net-loss

after they concluded
          their independent study

we realized                  how frustrating
               that must've been

                ***
He thought, "
                 they are so beautiful
          
                ."  "
                 maybe they can scare the bombs
                                                               away."

                ***

The perfect craters
their tight constellation and
    belt of wall gravel

                        pleased the larger birds
                        and then the smaller

                ***
                           smoke
                                 rose
             slowly

                     a perfect pillar
                     of emergency

                ***
We sent back the crisis

                   it was sub-prime
    but advertised differently

Toward Pandemic!

Today I released my new e-chapbook via Lone-Byte press, Toward Pandemic! Click here to download it. The book consults the swine flu and the media's involvement with it. It's a found poem put together via various methods of erasure and cutting-up. You can check out my blog to get the official description. I'm planning on releasing a follow audio-visual-injected version soon.

Sexting

This unsheathing
is what we all always wanted.

Cinco de Mayo.

Underneath, our nether cloths
lead with gold buttons,
but there are never starts there.

Last week the world graced
along another surge of sexting.
There are still naked pictures
being sent to full mailboxes.

Old News as Good News

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 28, 2009

eleemosynary \el-uh-MOS-uh-ner-ee\, adjective:

1. Of or for charity; charitable; as, "an eleemosynary institution."
2. Given in charity; having the nature of alms; as, "eleemosynary assistance."
3. Supported by or dependent on charity; as, "the eleemosynary poor."

We also need to revive the great eleemosynary institutions through which compassionate people serve those in need with both greater flexibility and discipline than government agencies are capable.
-- Clifford F. Thies, "Bring back the bridewell", The World & I, September 1, 1995

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who keeps a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.
-- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

Like Hilda's "eleemosynary doves," these birds depend upon the Author's charity, require mothering, just as Hilda finds solace in the Virgin--"a child, lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a Mother."
-- John Dolis, "Domesticating Hawthorne: Home Is for the Birds", Criticism, Winter 2001

This is Great

Courtesy of www.polisisthis.com!

Random Olson Poem:

"To the Algae" (page 251, Collected Poems)

Never to say no to the algae suddenly
pink coral spine

This is a drunk post with a real quote

The room that is available is Huge. It has French doors, 3 bay windows and a built in bookcase!

I'll tear that door off its hinges.

From the 04-25-09 Benefit

Donna Stonecipher

Donna Stonecipher
has the best name
in America
where fantasy
literature
meets American
poetry nerd snobbery.