Jester opts for pith… helmet over cap ‘n bells
I am the court jester, the maxim molester, sardonic magician deriding tradition. My scepter is a cattle prod. I know my job. I unmask gods.
Tagged Uncle HomunculusCONTENTS
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Prose & poems
Ballade of Days
When we huddle closely in our bed, the night shadows bleed tricks upon the walls, and we, wet flesh, sighs, and twists that vanish in the mist of night and all its ghoulish subjects, are we more than what we keep? No more soul than silver, temporal and quick. Do the dead count our blessings [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-Smithspam header assembly
Your new penis is waiting for you Can you imagine that you are healthy? Things happen: Let your house help Earn money with pleasure Of be endless harinder dicomed bettenhausen evens xiphydriid picht dwang cycles petiolata fluxility photoste hexathlon disoriented tepefies eischens slitless rubbly Wake up y0ur Johnson. militant Can you NOT afford to have [...]
Tagged joesmith, prose poetryLOVE HITS LIKE THE POLIO OF BETTER DAYS
A HISTORY POEM Inside this? A ballade for the popinjay— Inside this a ballade of her blue china— His blue of an enphebe prince-ling, bulls and mountains And her white of froth and fountains in a park Where peach blossoms grow As a bookseller baits his breath for April— And the princess wouldn’t shed a [...]
Tagged Scott ZieherFOUND MAIL
Chagrin Pentagon Promises Law Demons Ashes Dressing Crossing Rope Deeds Positive Hopeful Brick. Filling Tight Spot Classy Epiphany Fear Gratitude Grief Guilt Happiness Hate Horror Jealousy Pity Pride Regret Rejection Remorse Righteous Serenity Shame Shyness Suffering Virtues Love Views Article Tools Sign Cite Polyester Natural Blend Fleece Lithe Quilted Muslin Stuff Soft Silky Soft Silky [...]
Tagged Scott ZieherA STONE FROM THE FISH
The laundromat leaves make a wicked tornado The magazines yawp out their Holy Toledo! I reach around in the fish’s mouth Through ideopathic nostrils and yank The hot rock from its nest.
Tagged Scott ZieherCacophony in A Minor, Op. 4, No. 13
Up in the pent apartment, scarcely a story away from an incidental street, flush from another neighborhood murder, at odds, again, with the alleged moon. Hungry, but out of essential soup, so walking the way of all flesh to the quick mart for coffee and reports in Arabic. A targeted buyer of bottles and noodles [...]
Tagged joesmithAlbert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent [...]
Tagged Albert Camus, thought fodderThe Man Rock by Russell Edson
The Man Rock A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits a longtime to be over. It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when he got outside. A rock asks only what is a rock. A rock [...]
Tagged pith... picks, Russell EdsonRené Char: Four Prose Poems
The Absent One This brutal brother but whose word was true, steadfast in the face of sacrifice, diamond and wild boar, ingenious and helpful, held himself in the center of all misunderstandings like a resinous tree in the cold admitting of no alloy. Against the bestiary of lies tormenting him with its goblins and its [...]
Bill Knott, Comic Poems
from The Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999 – BUY THE BOOK . LEDGELIFE The taller the monument, the more impatient our luggage. Look, look, a graveyard has fancy dirt. Historians agree: this is the pebble which beaned Goliath. Every billboard is theoretically as beautiful as what lies unseen behind [...]
Tagged Bill KnottBill Knott, poems from The Quicken Tree
. CHRISTMAS AT THE ORPHANAGE But if they’d give us toys and twice the stuff most parents splurge on the average kid, orphans, I submit, need more than enough; in fact, stacks wrapped with our names nearly hid the tree: these sparkling allotments yearly guaranteed a lack of–what?–family?– I knew exactly what it was I [...]
Tagged Bill KnottBill Knott, poems from Becos
FEEDING THE SUN One day we notice that the sun needs feeding. Immediately a crash program begins: we fill rockets with wheat, smoke-rings, razorblades, then, after long aiming –they’re off. Hulls specially alloyed so as not to melt before the stuff gets delivered we pour cattle rivers windmills, aborigines etcet into the sun which however, [...]
Tagged Bill KnottPoems by Claudia K. Grinnell
Miles from Somewhere I A plane descends, throws its shadow on the ground: a giant cross, a giant, all-consuming cross. A man and a woman are walking, the shadow eats them briefly, then sun again. II It’s tricky, isn’t it, talking about love, like talking about socialist art (demanded, of course, in the strictest realism, [...]
BILL KNOTT: NO MAN IS AN EYELID (a wandering fan’s notes)
by klipschutz “Looking for affiliations is a game, like looking for ‘influences’ in literature; when the game is over, the problem is still there. In literature it’s a question of genius; in history, of power.” -The Morning of the Magicians, Louis Pauwels/Jacques Bergier . His earliest work earned him nearly instant cult status, which gradually [...]
JB Mulligan, selected poems from “City of Now and Then”
. the road to knowledge is arduous indeed Frastus has been a man and a woman. The latter he tried once, thinking it would help him attain the wisdom of the ages and a few good times. So he blackmailed a god into granting his wish: what he got was a case of the Curse [...]
The Family Monkey, Russell Edson
The Family Monkey We bought an electric monkey, experimenting rather recklessly with funds carefully gathered since grandfather’s time for the purchase of a steam monkey. We had either, by this time, the choice of an electric or gas monkey. The steam monkey is no longer being made, said the monkey merchant. But the family always [...]
Tagged Russell EdsonChild
You will remember that this world will not last. You will remember that I’m the large sunny rock to lie upon. Blend into me in case the world is too large. You aren’t even listening. Except to your own thoughts about noise and food. I am trying to explain the world to you. You will [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-Smith