Baudelaire at the Printers

My new book, Baudelaire in English, is at the printers, and so in a few weeks you'll be able to get a copy from these cats here. Its ninety odd pages long, and has a nice pink cover. "Document", the other side of the story, is with its appropriate officers, and will also be on your coffee tables very soon. Spill stuff on em. Send me nasty letters.

Soundeye

Hey there astro-zombies, we're off to the Cork SoundEye Avant Poetry Fest, and Frances and I have a LOUD performance planned. It won't be anything at all like this, but you can't have everything.

Commons 32 - 36

recent irruptions of unmeaning
in Kabul etc, where
we have never been,
have made poetry obsolete:
but still my red shoes
would go dancing,
tho not a soul would look out
from the curfew, the
flame-dog pavillion,
everyone knows it,
a representational space, purely
some kind of folk song, to
give up all love,
the city hurts when its broken


poetry, once available
in several sizes
of flip discount menace
before the doors of the mighty
the hounds of capital, unleashed
sobriety, knives & clowns.
But politeness would dictate, now
a specific negation of history’s
lame dogs & veterans
the british anarchist movement
on a day-trip to the seaside:
ok, say that again,
flatten the official town,
the poem.


outside the concept
are three little words
ringing inside them
we don’t know who
on certain chromatic streets
locked insde Poundstretcher
or the cuckoo / take position:
eat shit poetry snobs /
no, she didn’t mean that,
strung from star to star
in all this rough music
inaudibly, a black dot,
a monstrous excrescence
a reasonable point of view


below london town
rattling towers flash
harmonically. not a soul
in the police computer
& all other file-sharing
cinematic wreckage
with a ribbon in my hair
expressed harmonically
as politeness dictates
when I say eat shit
it is just this difficulty
my record collection
all these colonised notes
kill little birds like me


ok, say reverie
secretly swallowed by
- splat -
ok, false gentlemen,
little knots of hair & moon,
we are in your language,
moaning,
gentle drops of lambs
the bitter scream inside gold,
sitting beside you,
trickling,
your exposed alienations,
& the town is yours
o gasping swine

Much Discussion in . . . . .

The new issue of Readings is up, and its a good one. Highly recommended here on the haunted coast.

Listening / Reading

Derek Bailey - String Theory
Marx - sections in Grundrisse about mercury
SCRATCH ACID
Karen Dalton - Demos and Live Stuff
Cesar Vallejo - translations by Ed Dorn, Will Rowe, Clayton Eshleman, Rebecca Seiferle
Frederic Jameson on Adorno, again
Marilyn Crispell Trio - Live in Zurich
deciphering various anarcho media
Bailey / Braxton - First Duo Concert
pipe tobacco
glancing at Vincent Kaufman's book on Debord, its the WORST BOOK I'VE EVER READ, and that includes all of the UNREADABLE novelisations of Doctor Who I used to like when I was little.
chicken & rice, saag, grilled cheese
HENRY THA CAT IS A FUCKING ASSHOLE, ACCORDING TO FRANCES KRUK WHO HAS A NEW BOOK COMING OUT FROM CRITICAL DOCUMENTS, 'A DISCOURSE ON VEGETATION & MOTION'.
Steve Lacy - Moon
JOHNNY CASH
Adorno's sections on Paul Celan in Aesthetic Theory, strangely left out of Pierre Joris' otherwise excellent anthology.
Patty Waters / Pere Ubu / PJ Harvey
Dale Smith - Susquehanna
Adrian Clarke - Possession
RIP RIG & PANIC - STORM THE REALITY ASYLUM
Refusal of the Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean

Bush the Planet Ghoul, One More Time

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison meant to say: "We are seriously disappointed by the irresponsible and criminal action of those who have challenged international law, physically ripping apart Arabs with the sole aim of demonstrating the bloodthirsty power of the capitalist west."

Commons 25 - 31

black is the colour of my
gestural forthrightness -
gently drops the rain
cold blows the wind:
in May 1968, most
young people were working in
Woolworth’s, the cosmetics counter
was so adventurous, a
cloister of learning &
trust, all was represental-
cold / blows the future
ballads of the
-blank-
my true love


if I were like city girls
with few enquiries
transformed into normality
- red etc -
some call it the road to heaven.
Goodbye / sweethearts & pals,
a word of explanation
in preternatural rain, grazing
on the passer-by’s
gestures & curses
inside statistical
seven, singing lke thrushes
when sickness / came to our
execrable opinions


But I’m counting your heads
as I’m making the beds -
the ‘burning’ has been ‘stashed’
below a ‘rent system’, call it
the ‘it’ banking -
to the health of all such bastards,
that one, bleatheth after lambs
wing a ring of, edited
with an introduction by
‘got my goose of English’
all the night through
then I took up a cauldren
& you yell
yes


she was turning red /
the voice of our political poets
increasingly the voice of
it does you too
& secretly the word
secretly
the london hanged
how to treat them,
anxiety linked to
‘we’
his autobigraphy
find
referred to in
I dare you


ok, say magiazine
- the sobriety
does it all, does it stuff
opinions, but
avarice / in english
ok, who - ?
goodbye / or
cold / bother
gonna build me a
the wind shall blow
all abuse, the
inside every for me
as is
not
the or a


There was an old prophecy
found in a bog,
its been traditional or
call it zombies
singing like thushes
where scorn was:
if I was like city rain
inside your aged banking
in rent shadow, below
we’ve got, his bastards
just shot us
everything, in its trembling
transferred to tides, but
we shall have commissions galore.


The most talked about
anxiety, the heresy that
‘they’ appropriated the words
‘my enemies’. really
I can’t say it,
‘normalise’ is easier, or
do your duty, dogs
of saturn, in Poundstretcher
and the sea,
where we were refused,
appropriately, the management
identity, a huge circle
repeating cheap wine
& the moon

Baudelaire Returns

the very great Steve Willey has put his film of my Abney Park Baudelaire performance here. Iris Watson is on backing vocals for the first ten minutes or so. Thanks to Jeff Hilson for the photo.

Come and Exchange yr Leather

Maggie O Sullivan is gonna be there too . . . . .

tonite.

Bo Diddley - 1928 - 2008

Bo Diddley - Road Runner

Instruments of . . . . .

lots of innaresting stuff over at tha kruk blog