 A year ago, I decided to make a healthy change in my life. I moved from the hectic and often stifling Argentine Buenos Aires to the calm and hospitable Uruguayan Montevideo, on the other side of the Río de la Plata. Along with me came my vast library, made up of books I've read over decades, books I've bought and never had the courage to read, and books barely skimmed that I've vowed to read through as soon as I get the chance.
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 It’s time to flap your wings and sting
against the powers and their wrongdoings. because power lies with whom or who? the power that lets the wrongdoer through? The powers that abet a mean landlord to evict a pregnant woman on his own terms, because she complained of the cement dust. these powers that encourage the rich man’s lust. Will no one flap their wings and sting? as they belittle and dehumanize us, it's time to speak up, out and about the wrong that the powers tout. For this route we are on no doubt is designed to lock us all out or is it up to them to determine our destiny, because these powers don't ever want to hear us out because we are always wrong. so soon I won't belong because they always find me wrong. the powers are strong but not smart defiling my family with their sharp retorts and they let a raving maniac walk out It’s time to flap your wings because too much wrong is going on and the powerful people just sit on and watch us suffer but we will have buffer the noises and the poisons that are all set up to extinguish us. Speak out my people speak out and don't let anyone run us out or lock us down, when we know we did no wrong it’s time to flap our wings and sting  It’s not easy being a bird in this world. We are loved by bird watchers but hated by the fruit hoarders who feel that birds should not partake in the fruits and other delicacies that they love. What’s wrong if a thrasher tastes a mango, a banana, or a tomato… in the same day? Birds have to eat too!
Humans have caused so many problems on this planet. They cut down our trees to make their homes forgetting that the trees are our home. They pick all the fruits without consideration for our need to eat. They mow the lawn and scrape away the cuttings so that we can get our seeds. They even set traps and stone us. I am not too much of a fan of people – even though we’re all on two legs.  (opening lines from this story in Paul H’s collection, The Doctrine of Affections)
I got a phone call the other night, long distance from L.A…. so I picked up. / ‘Hello?’ / ‘Hello. Is this Paul Headrick?’ / ‘Yes. Who’s calling?’ / ‘This is Howard Kaylan…. Are you Paul Headrick the producer?’ / ‘Afraid not.’ / … / ‘You’re not the Howard Kaylan… of the Turtles. Lead singer.’ / … / When I told my wife, Heather, about the call she was amused. / … / I show my stories to Heather… before the first draft is complete…. She didn’t like my using our real names and situations. / … / She was wearing her writing clothes, grey Langara College sweatpants I gave her a couple of Christmases ago… Keep it flowing, Breeder It was Flo & Eddie, 1970 (at Massey) pseudonymously Triggers en masse, saucy seventeener — you’re so on the right track, baby! No matter how they tossed the dice Breed’s gotta be up on the miЯRor not just vintage vinyl Copy this — for real — metafictional couple (Hey, we know these people!) And It had to be … It’s only right caving or vexing, she wouldn’t approve his con’s feint (Sweats or no, she’d never faint) Flight time eclipses a flat 55-year oval And how is the weather? Steady, with no real pall on the wet coast heather Pls phone us all, give us a call at Langara What, were you expecting a shout-out for Kundera? [1] [1] Flo & Eddie (of the Turtles), also as pseudonyms for Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan, the two lead singers in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention (Massey Hall, Toronto, 1970); 1970 adds up to a 17’er: being cheeky with dumbo numerology again; italicized lines from the Turtles’ “Happy Together”  (trans, Eric Mosbacher)
The master started looking more and more often at his watch; and the boys started looking at their watches more and more often too… Oh, the endless repetition, the excruciating boredom… the pupils at their desks suffering from an acute sense of… boredom, boredom, boredom! That’s the way it goes, Reader jus’ dustin up the ol chalk bored rust And you say, whoa, doan be droppin those ’od·damn, ’od·awful Gee’s you break ’em you flush ’em, right? — they’s aint the only ’host you’ve swallowed whole You need to Calm down again, pls (gag w/ Maga too, fer dumb luck) Get yr self back to old school Rules (tedium di’dum, dolor o’rama’dam) Get back copyin blah·board scribblin’s — it were ever So Got Schooled flyin drip wet spit wads crisscrossin blow-’n-release rubbers zig-zaggin… And someone said, Ferdydurke, you have been written by a masterpiecer… There’s a new day a’dawnin’ By ‘n’ By [sic]… Ick, zee said And we wuz watchin thud y’all spitball trails oozin down walls in sum excited states of esoterica [1] [1] Second stanza reprised from SongBu®st, p.87; So Got Schooled (a memoir): penmanship, spitwads, rubbers; a hint of Theodore Roethke’s “Dolor”; italicized quotes are verbatim from a previous owner’s marginalia in our first edition Grove Evergreen reprint (1968); was hoping on two more G’s (Robert Grudin & Pierre Guyotat) but couldn’t find anything readily riffable  (trans, Alfred Mac Adam)
…the Reader would be able to wonder, wherever [she!] might be reading a book apocryphally entitled Christoper Unborn / by / Carlos Fuentes years after the events narrated there took place, that is, as it always happens, the most rejected books end up being the most accepted books, the most obscure books become the clearest, the most rebellious become the most docile, and that’s the way it goes, Reader. Get what you work with, right? the way a constraint signals the con’s feint One’s concave echo is another’s convex hearer frieds ringing sass-backward Rejected → Accepted = mime to calm yr·self & Relax Obscure → Clearest = prime to dot.com yr·self & Concentrate Rebellious → Docile = time to embalm yr·self & Dispel Dumb luck — don’t overcook your book’s look And you say (fading now), “that’s the way it goes, Bleeder” [1] [1] Reprise, Umberto Eco’s & Italo Calvino’s novel lines  (trans, Michael Hofmann; two sentences 71 pages apart, joined at the hip?)
They had done nothing wrong. But they were doomed…. The death house in Plötzensee is now Otto Quangel’s home. The solitary cell in the death house is his last address on earth. How to dress this up… put on its side (?) hoЯRor show in a mirror Plöt zen see — das koan that rimes with Wannsee Seine alpha bets spracht mild constraints ? Sie würden splice fore w/ hind bits harsh sprechen a firmer fit hah, maybe zee’s on zum Creation Science shtick ? Constellated in the abecedaries of the abyss (Oh, infamous kenophobe…) Mein sources fuse absent presence mit present absence
does one wan eye see ? [1] [1] Fallada’s novel is based on the actual case of a poorly educated, working-class couple who cleverly, bravely, ran the Berlin Gestapo in circles for three years by placing anti-Nazi postcards in public spaces; the Wannsee Conference was where the sociopathic Heydrich hatched “The Final Solution”; one of so-called “Creation Science’s” more duplicitous debate tricks involves cutting & restitching unrelated sentences from evolutionary biologists’ published work in order to ‘suggest’ counter, anti-Darwinian points (we once saw David Suzuki take the floor, mid-debate, to expose their shameless deceit); the italicized lines are from Adeena Karasick’s Ӕrotomania (pp. 57 & 61), & Ron Silliman’s The New Sentence (p. 147) re: the Lone Ranger’s mask—an absence or a presence; passing ref to Oulipo constraints, as in this abecedary serial poem itself; NB: “wan,” fr Old English wann— see?  He hadn’t known what to expect when he entered the room. Seeing his father lying there, hooked up to an oxygen tube, the I.V., the machine tracking his heartbeat, he looked much less the man he always was. He never seen him look so frail, so helpless. Yvonne and his mother sit beside, not looking at one another, daring not to acknowledge the other’s existence. Yvonne holds one hand, his mother the other. They’re so lost in thought they haven’t even noticed he entered the room. He just stands there, at the foot of the bed, looking down at his father, helpless.
 When Maggie Ryan was 15 years old, she was taken from her parents’ home. It happened in May of 1894 in the middle of the night. Her family never heard a sound from their daughter or her kidnapper.
The authorities searched for her several years until the police closed the case. Back then the police didn’t have the sophisticated crime tools to help with these cases. They did use many sniffer dogs in the search. Her parents, Michael and Kate, were beside themselves with worry and stress, so much so that Maggie’s mother took to her bed for most of the search. She couldn’t deal with the police questioning and left it to her husband to deal with. It was a very tough time for him. Beside the worry over Maggie, he had to take care of his brood, go to work and help with the police inquiries. He was very stressed to say the least. |
