IN ABURDHEVAS

in Aburdhevâs
the year never comes to an end;
the earth never yet completed a full turn
round the sun

in Aburdhevâs
at midnight you hear them shout,
‘Happy New Day!’
and they embrace you and kiss
and tell you of their hopes
with smiles and tears

in Aburdhevâs
are many wonders and interest-things
and I wish I could tell you more,
but already I have to go

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Whilst The Old, The New by reading_is_dangerous]

IN WATAWAGAH

in Watawâgah
my mind became metallic
my thoughts—incommunicable

I muttered to myself,
‘Resounding wheels,
jeweled wheels,
I never knew!...’

the universe is a ballroom.
Here people come to
lusty
conclusions—
I am missing words

in Watawâgah
phrases tried to take over my mouths—
I had two of them, mouths

the nose of my belly
the gold of my mind
the legs of my mustaches—I was a man
within a man

in Watawâgah
the sky was crying into a lake.
A fisherman told me,
‘Take my daughter with you,”
but did she want of me?

my hopes—
they would shrink,
but…

‘Yes,’ the girl said,
my mind became metallic
my thoughts—incommunicable

I was everywhere
I was all the time
I kept my eyes under my arms
my dreams had fingers

...and the finger tips
and the nails
ha! ha!

::: ::: :::

[Picture: in Watawâgah by reading_is_dangerous]

LEAVING NAMNARATH

so I tiptoed from the porch of E’s house
dressed up in white flannels
and leaving Namnarath
with an utterly abandoned feeling
I stumbled almost blindly into the Hills

I was contend to be alone,
but I could hear enchanting murmurs:
‘Look at that’ a voice whispered to me
as I came across silver idols
as if by accident

a dark suspicion was born in my heart.
Later that day was pouring rain

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Idols by reading_is_dangerous]

IN MUSHMUSHEH

in Mushmusheh
I saw a shadow that was jumping across the night sky

what was it the shadow of?
and why was it jumping?
and what was its size?
I do not know.

in this big universe,
there are things big,
and things bigger

I was happy the shadow went westwards
while I was going North,
to the Hills,
to see the ordinary shadows
of ordinary monsters
(although I was told they were not that ordinary)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: in Mushmusheh by reading_is_dangerous]

IN MAGGALEH

in Maggaleh
the Astronomer decorates the New Tree
according to what he reads—
what is written up there,
in light,
in curves,
against the darker background of the Night

::: ::: :::

[Picture: in Maggaleh by reading_is_dangerous]

FLYING

there was Mithra,
then J. Christ,
then Santa and the reindeers—the idea
never changed much

to fly above the land,
to fly above oneself,
there only is one way: LOVE

love this life
and share with others all what you love (including
whiskey and red wine)

This is why I believe the Internet can be
a great tool—it makes sharing ideas (and more!) so easy.

I love reading,
and writing,
and painting,
and that means I’ll be sharing:
more of that with you.

better and better, I hope

Merry Givemas!
To you, my friends

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Flying by reading_is_dangerous] (I found Mr. Santa and the reindeers on the web -- the background and the wonderful snow are from r_i_d!)

IN OGOG-QOMPO

in Ogog-Qompo,
I asked them about the name of their city

they said,
“Everything here
we like it when it’s round
and like the sound of Go,
and like the sound of Qo,
and like the sound of Po,”
and they seemed ready to keep going,
and tell me they liked the sound of Bo,
and the sound of To,
and the sound of No,”
but I cut them,
and I asked,
“What’s in those hills over there to the North?”

“A few old trees,” they said,
“And ruins,
and living among those are some of the
strangest monsters known to us.”

a little Ogog-Qompo boy asked me,
“Will you be going North, and to the hills?”

perhaps…?

(and why that question...? Could it be that... Did I look like a... a mo-)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Hills by reading_is_dangerous]

IN RAMTAVILLE, IN FINTAMEH

In case you’ve been wandering what’s happening to me, and why I don’t write much, and nothing in French, well, it is, because I am stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. I feel like an apricot human being, a monster, a little being that doesn’t know what language to speak, what to say, how, why, where to put a comma, when to stop a sentence, when to hit the return key, etc. I am a fool, not exactly an old fool yet, but I’m going there, one year, two years, three years, one silly poem after the other.

Today I saw a friend, and we played chess, and it was fun, and we laughed a lot, then I went home, and I thought, “Everything or almost has been written about everything, and it feels like there is nothing left to say, but to say it otherwise, except for that little part that hasn’t been said yet. There is a secret I’ve been keeping with me for ten years already, something that could change the world, the way we live, something I got through my brother, something I told a few people about, but it sounds so crazy that I almost never talk about it, and I was about to turn that secret into a mystical novel, but I got stuck, stuck, stuck, and it’s been three years already, and I’m now left without a penny.” Ha! ha!

I saw the moon, and it was full, or it looked like it was full, but there were clouds covering the top part, but the bottom part looked like it was full, and that half of a full moon was coming down in between the new buildings they built this year, Yerevan is booming, you see, if I still had my photo camera I could show you, or maybe I could make a drawing, but why? Imagine boxes, big, gray, ugly, stupid looking boxes with nothing inside yet, they don’t even have their windows ready, so the moon, it could have gone into one of those boxes, and hide there. How beautiful the moon, even if you’ve seen it one million times.

The earliest nightmare I can remember, I mean the oldest, but I was only four: I was falling. Since then I’ve often dreamed that I could fly, and every time it seems as if I could better than the previous time, if only a little better, so that it came to be that I could fly at will, but never too far from the ground, and then at higher altitudes, at higher speeds, with better ease. I dreamed that I could teach flying. I dreamed that I could throw myself down a bridge, and fly despite the fear. The most recent dream I had about flying involved catching a person, who jumped from a building, and despite her weight I was able to fly off and show her around, this is the city, this is outside the city, this is a forest, see how beautiful it is?

I love woods. You don’t see much in the forest, especially a Canadian forest in the winter when the sun left, and it’s all blue, snow blue, and the trees are little, thin things. You can’t see much in there. The wolves have all been killed, there is not as much as a rabbit left. Not a deer. Not a bear (thank god). There was nothing at all for me to see in those woods of my childhood, but much to imagine. What I can’t see, I imagine. What I imagine, it can exist or not exist. I find that what most people call reality is just a tiny part of it. You don’t see much in the forest, if it’s just a tiny part of it you see.

Inside of me is like outside. My inside is part of your outside. You are part of what I call outside, but so is my inside. It’s all outside to me. If there is anything that is really inside it must be the part of me that I can barely get to, the things beyond the things that I can imagine or dream about.

One thing about your dreams: Don’t let other people influence your dreams, and I’m not talking about the things you wish for, no, but of the pictures you see at night, those dreams. Those voices inside of you, the faces, what happens to you–part of it, part of it must be... it came down from our distant ancestors (the fear of falling), but there are other things, recent ones, new thoughts, new combinations, new truths.

Truth can be old or new. Different truths. Truth truer, true like. Can anything be true like or can a thing be either true or not? True here, false there. Now true, then false.

If the universe is finite, then there is something wrong with arithmetic. 1+1+1+1+1+1+... etc. all the way into infinity doesn’t sound true. The proof of it is the monstrosity called Pi. When the space aliens come visiting us, one morn, they’ll show us how to write that number and all the other ones in a way that will make sense.


in Gabdalah
they threw numbers at me

six,
seven,
five,
twenty,
forty,
twelve,
etc.
I laughed at them.


in Fudhimap
they tossed a hand-grenade at me.
I ate it. “Are you men?” I asked them.
“You could behave better than that!”

they screamed, oh!
yes,
they did,
they screamed
they were afraid,
little half-humans,
poor things,
afraid of the light they were.

the light they were. They were light?
They were afraid of themselves.
There can be nothing worse.


in Ramtaville
I was about to delete these words...


in Fintameh
I asked you
what words you wanted me to change.
This one?
That one?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The Tzirane by reading_is_dangerous]

I shall come back here tomorrow, to kill the bugs. They must be numerous.

IN POMTOM-NAMEE

in Pomtom-Namee,
pondering on what could be
a tale of a green bird and a blue egg
I thought,
“I need a coffee,”
and going to the kitchen I toyed
with these ideas,
“The blue egg is man on earth,
and the green bird is a winged superman
who made it (back) into Paradise,
and the egg’s shell of course is fragile,
but life in heaven is also uncertain, ha! ha!”

I was unhappy with these simple metaphors,
but there was nobody around to help me
to think of something better

in Pomtom-Namee
I had an espresso coffee device;
I wrongly put the coffee
in the water compartment,
and I almost poured the water
in that little cup
where I should instead have put the coffee!

that incident made me think
the bird should be blue,
and the egg green,
so the colors could lead me to a tale
first of a Man Egg in Eden lush and green,
followed by the story of human beings
coming to life on a blue planet,
and opening their wings:
knowledge and imagination

in Pomtom-Namee
I remembered a famous composer’s saying,
“If a melody is any good,
one should be able to whistle it,”
and, but
I could not decide on any word
to properly finish this:
“If a story is any good,
one should be able to … it.”

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Ballet by reading_is_dangerous]

IN REMSEE-BAREE

in Remsee-Baree
they told me,
“There is a ballet of ideas in your mind,
and those girls are beautiful
and you wish you could invite one to your room,
but we’re keeping an eye on you,
so you better behave well,
and now go to the Grand Ballet
if you will,
enjoy the show,
tonight they are performing
‘THE BLUE EGG OF THE GREEN BIRD,’”
but I didn't go,
and the next morning I left Remsee-Baree
and I went elsewhere in search
of what it was
that I was searching for

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Diamond by reading_is_dangerous]

TRAINS OF THOUGHTS

trains of thoughts
come and go

at the station here I am waiting
for a train—which?
I don’t know yet

but when I’ll see it,
I’ll know

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Model trains by reading_is_dangerous]

IN POTOMATAKO

in Potomatako
they accept no thing,
no plan of action,
no account of any event

they even do not accept
the possibility of their own existence
in Potomatako

of course accepting it
would mean
they no longer could be standing
among those who accept no thing

their life is a bit strange
in Potomatako

::: ::: :::

[Picture: On the road to Potomatako by reading_is_dangerous]

FORTIETH

Ambo flew by a castle tall in the hills. Pink, oh! How pink the walls of Castle Tall were in the hills. A people of mice lived there, standing, female, dressed in white robes, magical, and mysterious. Their language was a strange dialect.

Ambo landed. He picked a blade of grass. “Well,” he thought the grass looked like a sword. It was a sword. Ambo had a sword, green, and straight, supple. “Let’s go see them, the mice ladies.” By then, maybe you guessed it, he had dropped his magic pot of paint (remember it was deep blue) and the elephant-sized brush he wrote words with, onto the clouds.

They were forty mice in that castle. Coincidentally it was Ambo’s fortieth birthday. “What does it mean?” the magician wondered (how did he know they were forty? I don't know). Did I tell you Ambo was a magician? His power was based on this that he thought this looked like that, to such extend that for him this was that and that was it, almost always. Now why did Ambo need a blade of grass? Because it was his birthday, and birthday is almost always a strange day. Especially the fortieth.

A womouse greeted Ambo. "Holle," she said, "my nema is Edilo." Her eyes shone.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Number by reading_is_dangerous]

AMBO THE MAGICIAN

Ambo contemplated the December sky for days in search of what the great whiteness reminded him of, until it dawned on him at last that gazing at the even clouds felt almost the same as staring at his computer screen after having opened a new, blank document. “Well,” he thought, then he took a magic pot of paint (he was a magician and the paint was a deep blue in color) and an enormous brush the size of an elephant, and thus equipped he flew up into the sky, and on the clouds he wrote this first word, “HELLO!” in beautiful, big, blue, bold letters.

It did not take long for a wonderful cheer to be heard coming from below. People on earth had seen the word! They had read it! They liked it! So next Ambo wrote, “PEACE”, and soon there was a lot of cheering heard again. And then as he was flying around and in the clouds, and pondering what he should write, he had this idea for something he thought sounded “pretty much universal”, and he wrote: “GOD THIS IS GREAT!!!” and he underlined the word “this” and he used not only one, but three exclamation marks. Now there were cheers again, but this time Ambo thought he heard some booing too. Maybe some people didn’t like it that he used the word “god” together with the word “this” or maybe it was all because of the word “great” with the three exclamations marks—maybe that made a few people envious?

There was plenty of clouds left to paint on (it was December right?) so Ambo thought he should write some more words, but what? Gift ideas of course! and so he wrote this one first, “GIVE GOLD” because he believed the price of gold would go up very soon (unless everybody gave it away simultaneously), but he didn’t bother to write that on the clouds with his elephant-sized brush, because he thought the smart people would get it anyway, and too bad for the others! But then he wrote, “GIVE POEMS” and with that one he laughed aloud, for reasons that should be obvious. Then he wrote, “GIVE LIVE MUSIC” and with that one, he thought that was enough.

Ambo drifted away from the city sky, because he wanted to experiment with his writing without having one or two million people reading what he wrote on the spot. Somewhere over the hills, with only a few cows and horses looking at him, he wrote onto the clouds, “I AMBO YOU” which didn’t seem to make sense, and then, “YOU AMBO ME,” which already seemed to have transformed his name, Ambo, into a verb, but meaning what?

Next he tried, “YOU AMBO AMBO” which probably meant, “you do-something to Ambo” and finally, he wrote, “AMBO AMBOES AMBO” which seemed to mean, “Ambo does-something-called-Ambo to Ambo.” I make myself, myself? or “I AM WHO I AM”?

(to be followed)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Communication device by reading_is_dangerous]

TIME DOES NOT FLOW

time does not flow.

time is the nth dimension
where n-1 is the number of dimensions
across which a self-conscious system
can easily have an influence on its motion.

there could be an infinite number of dimensions
or just a very big number like 3,002,988
or only 22
or just five or six.

now! go stretch a bit,
take a warm shower,
have one cup of hot coffee,
work for an hour,
then go to that fax machine
and send that letter your loved ones have been waiting for.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Letters by reading_is_dangerous]

"You — you really can see into the future?" said Constant. The skin of his face tightened, felt parched. His palms perspired.
"In a punctual way of speaking — yes," said Rumfoord. "When I ran my space ship into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, it came to me in a flash that everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been." - The Sirens of Titan, Kurt VONNEGUT

CLOTHED IN SILENCE

this place is silent, silence

all the words
and the pictures
and the links
and the music videos
and the flashy ads
and the colors
and the various options
and the gadgets
and the avatars
and change this and change that
and the rest,
it’s all here,
they’re all here

nonetheless the place here is silence.
We’d hear (!) a poor cat a mile way from here if
it were vomiting silently.

now I am not sure if I feel like to scream or
to whisper (and what words?)

I’d love to see some dust, virtual dust
to cover these lines over time

then a breeze, a virtual breeze would come and
blow off that dust,
and the words

far, far away
The wind, virtual wind would carry everything to a
far away place, a virtual place (virtual distance?)

everything and all would be gone
except for you and me
and a few of these red mountains you see
and this golden castle of ours
and our funny flying machines

::: ::: :::

[Picture: So silent a place by reading_is_dangerous]

BATTLE OF THE SHEETS

Sunday morning.
It is the battle of the sheets!
I struggle with a slab of fat, arg!
I combat a vicious plate of flesh, arg!

Came the afternoon under a bleak December sky
and here it was, a pane of hair

A theory of hair
Magnificent hair that grows only in my imagination

The hair wants to fight a duel with me.
Oh!

I throw ornamental plants at it, them
I try prehistoric passes, but
The magnificent hair gives me a wicked smile
and with a mischievous swing,
woooosh! the pane of hair slices a thin inscription from me

what inscription? What words? These:
“This piece of glass is very flexible.”

this was a long time ago
Far, far from here
In a golden castle it happened

I fled its walls
I fled the country
I fled from you, and that meant from me

::: ::: :::

[Picture: As old as the hills the castle was built on by reading_is_dangerous]

THE MEASLES OF FEAR

the measles of fear
the mumps of fright

the chickenpox of scare
the whooping cough of dread

the diphtheria of terror
the typhus of alarm

the plague of panic
the tetanus of apprehension…

Sound the siren!
This is cholera

Emptied, the soft cylinder of the stomach
Emptied, the ducts, the bowels

Each day was but a thin little square of paper
on a roll, their life

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Human chicken by reading_is_dangerous]

I just woke up with this idea, to mix two or three randomly chosen lists of words from my Longman’s Lexicon of Contemporary English. For the picture I chose light, gentle colors, but I mistakenly marked it with the 6th of December instead of the 8th.

Last evening a sudden and strong wave of tiredness put me to sleep. This is going to be my first “normal day” in a long time. And it’s a sunny morn!

WRITING WITH SCISSORS

while he refuses to distinguish between
what is inside of him
and what is outside,
he will tell you that poetry comes from within
while fiction,
when he writes some,
seems to come to him from the outside

thus as a man or as a writer he stands between
the voice of his soul and
that of a fictitious account of reality

“I am a thin membrane, a filter, a self-conscious filter,”
he explains

“and when it rains outside of me,
it also rains inside of me. And when it
rains inside of me, it also
rains outside of me. So if you need some rain,
you can just tell me,
because I know the secret of making it rain inside of me,
which mean I can make it rain outside of me.”

interesting fabrications he can think of.
The other day he told me that when Matisse (at 72) could no
longer hold a brush for painting
he used scissors to
create the shapes he needed for his works

“that’s what I am doing,” he says,
“writing with scissors.”

yet he’s not even forty years old

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Memories of... by reading_is_dangerous]

SEVEN HENRI MATISSE QUOTES I LIKE VERY MUCH:

1. It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
2. I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
3. There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
4. An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.
5. I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
6. I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.
7. Exactitude is not truth.

PUNCTURE THE SELF

he punched a hole
through his own neck
so all that was inside of him
leaked out

the atoms of his thoughts,
the molecules of his thoughts,
the creatures of his thoughts,
the very thoughts of his thoughts

he destroyed the wall
he removed the skin of the Self
so all that was inside of him
could be one with the rest

any god or human being can do it—
all is needed is a nail to punch a hole in the Self
to let go of self-consciousness
to become one within all

of course I am not talking about a real nail
indeed you have it here, the Holy Grail
it’s in the smile of your third eye—
if it can see, it will also let you be seen

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Both sides of me in red by reading_is_dangerous]

LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS

the sea of your thoughts,
the boat of your speech,
the fumes of your poetry–
ok, let’s try again

the sea of your subconscious thoughts,
the boat of your mind,
the fumes of your speech,
the fish you’re hoping to catch, the poem.

polluting fumes, yes
But in the end, maybe
a nourishing fish!

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Gone fishing, or gone to fish, or going to fish, or going to be fishing, I am not sure about it by reading_is_dangerous]

THE TREE-HORSE

this is the tree-horse
each leaf is a small theater in the open air
the plays are short and quick
because every now and then the phlantasnimal takes a run
oh! how it races!
oh! how it jumps!
and the plays abruptly ends
and many the tiny actors,
and many the equally tiny spectators,
many of them fall off from the tree-horse,
and on the trail! (be careful!)

my job is to search for those who fell off the leaves
and try and pick them up (with a spoon!)
before the night comes
before the tree-horse comes back

it always does,
because of the roots, you see?
nice,
nice tree-horse,
oh!

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The Tree-Horse by reading_is_dangerous]

excerpts from a book I just began to read

…when the true alchemist spoke of seeking for gold, he spoke of gold in the soul of man. And he called gold that which in the New Testament is called the Kingdom of Heaven, and in Buddhism, Nirvana. And when the true astrologer spoke of constellations and planets he spoke of constellations and planets in the soul of man, i.e., of the qualities of the human soul and its relations to God and to the world. And when the true Kabalist spoke of the Name of God, he sought this Name in the soul of man and in Nature, not in dead books, nor in biblical texts, as did the Kabalist-Scholastics. The Kabala, Alchemy, Astrology, Magic are parallel symbolical systems of psychology and metaphysics. Any alchemical sentence may be read in a Kabalistic or astrological way, but the meaning will always be psychological and metaphysical. […]

A symbol may serve to transfer our intuitions and to suggest new ones only so long as its meaning is not defined. Real symbols are perpetually in process of creation; but when they receive a definite significance they become hieroglyphs and finally a mere alphabet. As this they express simply ordinary concepts, cease to be a language of the Gods or of initiates and become a language of men which everyone may learn.

Properly speaking, a symbol in occultism means the same as in art. If an artist uses ready-made symbols his work will not be true art, but only pseudo-art. If an occultist begins to use ready-made symbols, his work will not be truly occult, for it will contain no esotericism, no mysticism, but only pseudo-occultism, pseudo-esotericism, pseudo-mysticism. Symbolism in which the symbols have definite meanings is pseudo-symbolism.

–P.D. Ouspensky, SYMBOLISM OF THE TAROT

I WRITE A POEM

I write a poem,
then I delete it

I write a new poem,
and I delete it too

…this goes on and on and on,
ten times tonight, already! But
as long as I keep on writing new poems
some hope remains

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Ms Delete (she can't hear me) by reading_is_dangerous]

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. -Oscar Wilde

CHINESE LANTERNS AND OTHER READINGS

Excerpts:

1. MAKING OCCUPATION AND CALLING IT PEACE. Killing fewer and calling it progress. Rotating troops and calling it a withdrawal. Setting up new death squads and calling them allies. Lowering standards and calling it opening new opportunities. All of the above phenomena seem to be part of the current campaign by Washington in Iraq. There are fewer GI deaths in the country now because they don't leave the bases. >>>

2. THE TALIBAN CAN'T BE BEATEN. They've already taken over more than half the country and they are steadily advancing on the Capital. By next spring, there'll be fighting in the neighborhoods of Kabul, just like there is now in Baghdad. American troops will be barricaded in little Greenzones spread across the countryside. Karzai will be locked away in the Presidential Palace surrounded by American mercenaries. There'll be no more foolish talk about "democracy" and "women's rights". The air war will escalate causing more and more civilian casualties. Protests will break out in the cities and tribal leaders will call for an end to the occupation. >>>

3. I WILL NOT PAY MY INCOME TAX IF WE GO TO WAR WITH IRAN. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture. But an attack on Iran -- which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election -- will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions. This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties. It will solidify the slow-motion coup d'état that has been under way since the 9/11 attacks. It could mean the death of the Republic. >>>

4. An internal CIA memorandum has been obtained by Venezuelan counterintelligence from the US Embassy in Caracas that reveals a very sinister - almost fantastical, were it not true - plan to destabilize Venezuela during the coming days. The plan, titled "OPERATION PLIERS" was authored by CIA Officer Michael Middleton Steere and was addressed to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington. Steere is stationed at the US Embassy in Caracas under the guise of a Regional Affairs Officer. The internal memorandum, dated November 20, 2007, references the "Advances of the Final Stage of Operation Pliers", and confirms that the operation is coordinated by the team of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in Venezuela. >>>

5. MORE THAN ONE IN 10 PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES GO HUNGRY, according to new official figures that suggest government food programs are falling short in the world's wealthiest country. More than 35 million people in a country of some 294 million went hungry last year, 390,000 more than in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest Household Food Security report. Of the total, 12.63 million were children. Put another way, nearly one in five U.S. children either went without enough food during the course of the year or had food but could never take future meals for granted. >>>

6. Just days before 911 if you did a search on any web search engine like Yahoo search and looked for ‘’CONSPIRACY THEORY’’, you would get about 36,000 results or web sites devoted to exposing some form of government conspiracy. If you do the same search now you will get around 16,000,000 results. >>>

7. As I scour the blogosphere, I find almost no progressive voices discussing the dire economic realities of this moment. After all, it's much easier to bash Bush, obsess about clueless, corporately-owned candidates, or blog about green products, green shopping, green living, and all manner of green-wash. Meanwhile, I continue to ask: What have you done to prepare for a post-petroleum world? As the Terminal Triangle becomes ever-more cataclysmic, how will you acquire food, drinkable water, and healthcare for yourself and your loved ones? >>>

8. Realizing that they cannot liquidate their holdings, it appears that the Chinese are currently using their U.S. Treasury holdings as collateral for euro denominated purchases and long term infrastructure transactions. In other words, they may be "liquidating" their holdings as collateral and, in so doing, effectively migrating to non-dollar value without ever having to officially dump their current Treasury holdings. >>>

extra

a) Physalis alkekengi (Bladder-cherry, Chinese Lantern, Japanese-lantern, or Winter cherry; Japanese: hōzuki), is a relative of P. peruviana (Cape Gooseberry), easily identifiable by the larger, bright orange to red papery covering over its fruit, which resemble Chinese lanterns. It is native from southern Europe east across southern Asia to Japan. It is a herbaceous perennial plant growing to 40-60 cm tall, with spirally arranged leaves 6-12 cm long and 4-9 cm broad. The flowers are white, with a five-lobed corolla 10-15 mm across, with an inflated basal calyx which matures into the papery orange fruit covering, 4-5 cm long and broad. >>>

b) My instant boob job from 36A to 36DD - and the effect it had on men (and women) >>>

::: ::: :::

[Picture: What-Did-You-Read? (a deity) by reading_is_dangerous]

EVIL CHAIRS

Liquid Paper man--
can't remember what it was
that was so wrong

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Return of the Liquid Paper Man by reading_is_dangerous]

THE SWAMP LION

it is silence or quicksand?

you cannot breathe
the pain is…
there is a mysterious pain that strikes the soul

you think,
“if it hurts, then it exists,” and there you go
the owner of a painful soul

painful and colorful

a swamp lion
that you’ve never heard about
is lurking

its eyes red
its claws ready

it usually feeds on swamp fish
but as it sees you, your neck
your colorful soul...

millions of years ago you learned

to recognize
the moves of a beast that's about to attack you

you turn around, you see the red eyes
there is the swamp lion

should you scream?
or talk?

try and calm down the lion?
or remain silent, with a smile

defiant

perhaps, what about singing a song?
okay, then, but what song?

if only you had one of those swamp fish to throw the lion
instead of that colorful, painful soul

but that would be useless anyway
because what the swamp lion really wants
isn't the swamp fish
but your soul
painful, colorful

::: ::: :::

Picture: Souls by reading_is_dangerous

THE USEFUL POEM

a poem as useful as a chair
like a fork
like a warm jacket
like tea when you need it

a poem like your heart
beating
beating

your blood is going up
your blood is going down

a poem as useful as the next body in your arms
like a crow that tells you what time it is
like a crow that reminds you of November
like a jam session when you need its freedom

I will miss you
I will sing for you in my dreams
I will cross imaginary rivers in hope of finding you

a useful poem one day
a useful poem I would write, but

the useful poem is a dangerous thing

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The kiss by reading_is_dangerous]

THE THEORY OF Dr BARABO

he brings an electric guitar to the beach
where he will stroke it to produce a rare phenomenon
incomprehensible beautiful wonderful

there he plays. The
ear hears no sound
because the instrument is not
connected to an electric current, but the guitarist is
connected to the underwater currents—their echoes inside us
never faded after we left the sea hundreds of million years ago

there he plays, and although the human ear doesn’t hear a sound,
the sea, a wave embraces the invisible shape of the music. An arm rises
from the sea, it is a wave of force,
and it is searching for a knife, a sword to split the world in two

“That’s only one theory,” explains Dr Barabo. “I have another one:
I believe this arm hopes to grab the most perfect, the most ephemeral
assembly of curves: the water woman.”

what does the musician has to say about this? Nothing
This one just keeps on playing the guitar

::: ::: :::

[Image: Seawater elemental par reading_is_dangerous]

Translated at the request of a friend, after a poem I posted here in French with a different drawing (Feb. 25, 2007).

GIANT CREATURES

it is chasing us: a giant sea scorpion!
so we jump out of the waters
to get out of its way
its mouth
its hunger

now are we on the beach; what’s to do?
we can’t breathe here!

luckily we have strange little fins
strong little arms already
that help us crawl back into the waters
once the giant sea scorpion is gone

that was three, four hundred million years ago

today the same arms
with the same bone structures—all these tiny pieces in the hand...
I am typing words to escape the same old giant sea scorpion
its giant mouth
its giant hunger

it is chasing me, us!
and we know its shape and smell because they never left our brain
our old,
our ancient brain,
there is so much stuff hidden in it...

it is frightening!
—It is frightening not!

I am just about to go and read the
Chronicle of the huge and mighty Gargantua.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Return of the giant sea scorpions by reading_is_dangerous]

Ms SOME KIND OF LOVE

golden basketballs,
fancy pressure cookers,
special burglar alarms,
the best computers…
all sorts of people gave her all sorts of gifts
and she never refused any one.

she said,
“I don’t really know anything about love,
but love really knows everything about me.”

yeah? Well, I gave her a great leather saddle,
a funny sou’wester hat,
and good Wellington boots.

it was about to rain,
we had a long way to go
and I wasn’t sure of the horses

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Herself by reading_is_dangerous]

THE SITTING UNIVERSE

I dug out the man in me,
but he grew back

so I dug up all the roots,
removing everything,
any plant part,
all the man,
but it grew back again

so I set it on fire. It was burning…
in the thin flame I recognized myself

then I waited
sitting in the ashes, meditating

patience!
patience!

like the hunter I waited
like the cat, the dog, the toad, the spider

I waited
sitting in the ashes, meditating on a formula attributed to Hermes Trimegistus
by Blaise Pascal,
“God is a sphere of which the center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere.”

later (but what does later mean?) I saw that it was growing again
The man in me was growing again; I grew back, I reappeared: a phoenix.
They say this mythic bird can not stand anywhere, but at the center of the world.

thus I finally understood

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The sitting universe by reading_is_dangerous]

Translated from my original poem in French at the request of a friend. And here is the link for the wikipage on Hermes Trimegistus, the syncretism of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.

HERE AS ELSEWHERE

here as elsewhere
nobody really knows what
the shepherd is thinking about,
and sometimes he doesn’t know either.

in Armenia lives a pleasant viper;
its venom in a few minutes can free you
from all your problems.

they call it gurza

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The She-Snake by reading_is_dangerous]

I wrote these few lines in French yesterday, and translated them at the request of a friend. The most difficult word to translate here was aimable: pleasant, kind, amiable.

The gurza is called a lebetine viper in English, or mountain viper, or coffin snake. I should add that I was thinking about the old Serpent myths as I wrote my little poem.

I ROW

A poem by Henri Michaud (my translation from the original French).

___

I ROW

I damned your forehead your belly your life
I damned the streets that your walk took
The things your hand took
I damned the inside of your dreams

I put a pond in your eye—it doesn’t see anymore
An insect in your ear—it doesn’t hear anymore
A sponge in your brain—it doesn’t understand anymore

I cooled you down in the soul of your body
I froze you in your deeper life
The air you breathe suffocates you
The air you breathe seems to come from a basement
Is air already breathed out
That was rejected by hyenas
The injure of this air nobody will breathe it

Your skin is all sweat
Your skin sweats the water of great fear
Your armpits let out a strong smell of crypt

Animals stop on your way
At night, dogs howl, their head turned up towards your house
You cannot flee
You won’t have as much as the strength of an ant at the tip of the foot
Your tiredness is a stump of lead in your body
Your tiredness stretches till the country of Nan
Your tiredness is unspeakable

Your mouth bites you
Your nails claw you
No longer yours is your wife
No longer yours is your brother
The sole of his foot is bitten by a furious snake

They drooled on your progeny
They drooled on the laughter of your little girl
They came drooling before your front house

The world moves away from you

I row
I row
I row against your life
I row
I multiply myself into countless rowers
To row more strongly against you

You fall in the vague
You are without breath
You tire even before the slightest effort

I row
I row
I row

You go drunk, tied to the tail of a mule
Drunkenness as an enormous umbrella that darkens the sky
And gathers the flies
Breathtaking drunkenness of the semi-circular canals
Badly understood beginning of hemiplegia
Drunkenness no longer leaves you
Makes you lean to the left
Makes you lean to the right
Puts you down on the rocky road
I row
I row
I row against your days

In the house of sufferings your enter

I row
I row
On a black headband your actions are written down
On the big white eye of a one-eyed horse rolls your future

I ROW

(1967)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The president's horse by reading_is_dangerous]

THE SLICES OF HIM

one million blades are coming at him from within

he cannot run away or hide
so he decided he would greet the one million blades with a smile

the slices of him... maybe you could try...
with some crazy glue?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The enemy army by reading_is_dangerous]

THERE IS STILL HOPE

there is less and less of me left,
but there is still hope--
in every curve of every letter there is hope.

I knew a man who made a list of his favorite,
most useful 2600 words,
then gave each word a letter and a number such as
B89 or L32 or W0
and after he memorized his whole new coding system
he began writing strange poetry.

another man I know,
an enthusiastic molecular biologist,
he cloned the gene that makes a hot pepper hot
and inserted it in a tomato

he’s now working on the same,
for the chicken,
the wings

preliminary tests went wrong,
he said,
“the poor chickens’ eyes,
and their insides too: it was awful, ” but he remains hopeful.

now I have an idea of my own,
something like the opposite of the Blackwater mercenaries: Old fashion cops

my company will provide your city with experienced officers
equipped with a good looking uniform and shoes,
a stick,
a flashlight,
a walkie-talkie,
a smile,
and good judgment. Nothing else,
and they’ll go on night walks too.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Organic hope by reading_is_dangerous]

THE LEMON MERINGUE

I could not write a poem tonight, but here is a lemon meringue; please accept it, although I should warn you that it used to be a star, a large ball in outer space that was composed of gases and produced light, and it probably had an electrical charge, you know the astronomers do not usually talk about it, but most of them assume that celestial bodies are electrically neutral, yet they are theories that say otherwise, that the Sun works on electricity, do not laugh, well, you can laugh, yes, because it is funny, but this theory, it could explain such oddities as the temperature at the surface of the sun being higher than the temperature at the center of the star, but if you asked me how they measure those temperatures I would have to take a guess. Maybe they point a thermometer at the sun disk’s edge, then straight at its center, so they can compare the two measures, that is how I would try it at first anyway, by the way, the other day there was a television program about the sun, and every time it was shown, the star, that large ball, the film’s director had added the sound of a raging fire, and I thought that was ridiculous, instead I would have preferred some nice music, maybe El Amor Brujo of Manuel de Falla, in English that music is known as Love, the Magician, it is beautiful and there is a famous excerpt called The ritual fire dance, and I wish I could play it for you on the mouth harp, ha! ha! ha!

I imagined myself in the shape of an intelligent or semi-intelligent, self-conscious or semi-self-conscious gas inside one of any large ball in outer space, you know, and up there I am listening to the whole universe, and I hear Tolstoy when he says, “Stop what you are doing and look at the world,” and I do it, and the result is that I’m not a sun anymore, hmm, that’s when I turn into a lemon meringue on the table right here, see, that’s me, I am a semi-intelligent, semi-self-conscious semi-flat super sweet mixture of the white of eggs and sugar baked until crisp and used e.g. as a covering over sweet pies, and will you eat it/me?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Recipe by reading_is_dangerous]

NOVEMBER HAIKU

the yellow leaves
look at the sky gray with rain—
it’s time to go

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Loxodro, god of the falling leaves by reading_is_dangerous]

PLAYFUL BIRDS

I remember a game of my early childhood.

I would put my hand on the table,
and then my brother would put his hand on top of mine,
and then I would put my second hand on top of his,
and then he would put his second hand on top of mine,
and then I would free my first hand,
and put it on top of my brother’s second hand,
and he would do the same,
and the game would go on like this for a while, faster and faster,
until our hands would fly up in the air like birds.

how do you call it, that game?

::: ::: :::

[Picture : Layers of thoughts by reading_is_dangerous]

I INHABIT THE LIGHT

“I inhabit the light,” Henri Michaud wrote in his poem, Towards Completeness. It begins with these words I translated from the original in French, for you:

You receive
you receive
you have the delight of receiving
of secretly, endlessly
receiving the Impalpable

BIRTHDAY OF THE UNLIMITED

Another World accepts me
agrees to me
absorbs me
forgives me

Armistice of passions
Layers of light
underground-ly
sovereign-ly

The emanation of existence
the expansion of existence
the promontory, the fury of existence

I stand at the coming of bliss
The instant is more than the being
The being is more than the beings
and all beings are infinite

Mobile time
of many levels
ascending, panoramic

An invisible vehicle carries me away

… (1967)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Translation by reading_is_dangerous] (this summer)