Turntable + Blue Light

5 Poems

the training wheels
 

winter comes in off the wastes
with a mounting specification
of just how many true to form were
spoken of out of hand atlas-found
mysterious in all its terrible new beauty
found Schocken-bound heedless of the new arrangements
"signifying nothing" for the nonce
the speculation of it the proud gustos
dynamical the outer spread the outer saying
let there be peace come between me and thee

progress alerts
 
 
right as the rain unto wind
the paralyzed beau less
strain more whinny in the
Muir woods cachinnating
 
this is not the loss as suchlike
memory proclaims a devil drive down
to the lingonberries and Limburger
you step back away from the car
 
the nexus of the ring hopeful
as the young author sprockets
the whole reel of film unwinding
all the way down to flappers
 
and flivvers and floozies at the camp
the summer camp drama course
here is the heroes' vindication
right from the front pages of history
 
a sort of old gang joke the sort that
goes a chorus line up in the Gay Nineties
or something like that silver-tinted
a starfish revolving up onstage
 
yes that kind of joke not worth the
cummerbunds they rent you for the
kind of bash they rent you things like
cummerbunds to wear at nowadays
 
it must be some things like the
ramshackle contrivance and the wherefore
like a legal terminology in dog Latin
office clerks take down in scribbled shorthand
 
read back the deposition states the witness
yes Your Honor no he isn't here just say
what happened in your own words nothing more
well you see it happened on this wise Your Offer
 
shreck dagnabbit o enough just say it please
well I was walking down the sidewalk yes
go on go on well as I pursed my lips a man
put money that's it stop the tape Your Honor
 
palfrey in the deserts riding high in triumph
over the dunes the dusty trail foreseeing
wastrels pinchpennies and the casual reader
lost for want of notes that mortgage wits
 
on pain of very easily stretching see the
TV director as if exercising a taffy pull
no no leftover images they're borrowed
seat you in the table and chairs you own
 
fast sprechen sie Deutsch with a will
no putsch no contraverting the gainsaid
no withering looks that daffodils can't survive
only the calm tumulus in the unquiet city
 
you revolve in so long as the fast-spinning globe
cares away from it all rejecting force of
argument they spit upon or swallow
ungratefully who read these things for news
 

the awards show-and-tell
 
 
terrible éplucheurs raid your
icebox at night it's the brand name
action you can't stand
 
if it's the same damned
lack of beforehand kowtow
underneath it's the lame daisy
 
then came the cars along the lane
with a whiskbroom savages
the very neon signs
 
for the very effrontery of it
shapes and colors on the very
avenue you walk on
 
evanescent appalled not you
clouds synonyms wading souls
not you firmly thundering feet

fernsehung
 
 
the deathtrap of the heavenly machine
gives out nought noise and the sparks
of the flaming angelic
things that corrupt
 
bowing down you kiss the rod it's been
you know not where
 

wistful jurisdictions
 
 
I
 
farthings cast upon the
waters bring forth
plonk and drop
to the miry beneath
 
they will rise in Hawaii
simulacrumed in dreamed
cars Stanley steamed
over Africa by and by
 

II
 
it as a devised stratagem
won't deviously St. Bartholomew
variations à la Handel
to sport the mind Letheing
 
but shall cavort itself thus
alee and the windblown haven
it evermore councils just
harry and the beachcomber
 
wading into surf to extract
subtraction from the sum of flotsam
jetsam out the myriad debris
a literal then I can call a loan
 
at autumn polls and equinoxes
in the forestation of obnoxious umbrage

Christopher Mulrooney has written poems and translations in Horse Less Review, Mustachioed, Segue, Dispatch and Indefinite Space, criticism in Parameter, The Film Journal and Pyramid, and a volume of verse, notebook and sheaves (AmErica House, 2002).

Website: Ut
 

Posted by arielleguy at 10:56 AM | Permalink

If you know the name Mark Kozelek, it’s probably from his tenure as frontman for the Red House Painters, one of the handful of bands responsible for the slowcore movement of the early 90s.

Along with other groups such as American Music Club and Low, they added a rebellious note to the vastly popular grunge movement that had gripped American youth. The combination of grunge’s introspective lyrics and the slowed-down, lush layers of England’s shoegazer music was an odd way to rebel against the mainstream, but worked to greater effect than many could have imagined at the time.

If you’re lucky, you also know Mark Kozelek from his solo work. Upon the dissolution of the Red House Painters, Mark struck out on his own, and in 2000 released Rock N' Roll Singer. Included on the disc were rather unexpected covers of three AC/DC songs. Even more unexpected was the release of What's Next to the Moon in 2001, an album which was nothing but AC/DC covers. A surprise move to be sure, but the surprise turned out to be that slowed-down, largely acoustic versions of Bon Scott-era AC/DC could not only work, but turn out beautifully.

In 2003, Mark formed another band proper (Sun Kil Moon) and released Ghosts of the Great Highway to great critical and commercial success. Its cohesive narrative structure and lush arrangements had many critics hailing it as the best work of his career. Sometime after the release of Ghosts, Kozelek made a surprising discovery – Modest Mouse. Kozelek had never been privy to America’s favorite indie rock band until he stumbled upon them by chance – he had gone to see the Shins, opening for Modest Mouse, and ended up staying for the main event. He was blown away by their music, and soon found himself playing Modest Mouse covers at his live shows, and recording the odd tune every now and then, until one day he had 11 songs on tape.

Such was born Tiny Cities – an improbable series of incredible covers. The very idea sounds like a horrible gimmick gone wrong, three seconds before it even starts (it’s widely recognized that Kidz Bop cornered the definitive Modest Mouse cover), but Kozelek knows what he’s doing, and he does it very well. His covers so boldly alter the originals that often all that is left to indicate they are not his originals are the lyrics, and even then, the startling transformations can cause one to not recognize even those.

The song from which the album’s title comes, “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes,” is a hallmark of this recreation. The retro disco bass line that opens the original song and runs throughout is perhaps one of the few recognizable sounds any Modest Mouse fan is likely to hear on this album. The Kozelek treatment strips the groove and bombast away, and instead opts for a slow, acoustic arrangement with flourishes of strings – an arrangement that still startles me each time I hear it.

It would be all too simple for an album such as this to turn out to be an unfortunate, one-trick pony; however, Kozelek proves once again that his knack for getting into the guts of a song and turning it inside out is far from a fluke. Songs like “Convenient Parking,” with its driving, blues-like temperament, and the impassioned “Ocean Breaths Salty” (turned from a rollicking strut to a hushed, desperate rumination) show that, rather than a desperate musician trying to profit from cheap one-offs, he is a consummate musician who sees in the songs he covers something more.

- Alex Duke

Posted by arielleguy at 12:24 PM | Permalink

5 Poems

Breakfast with Soldiers

Winter turns red.
It’s some sort of dawn
and your hands are full of milk.
Where are all your birds of prey
now that you’ve learned to hope with your teeth?

You don’t remember opening the door
but it will never shut again.

In their drawer knives collect flames.
In the stairwell voices
tramp up and down,
as sure as moss will green
these bricks once you’re gone.

You make the regulation slice,
give it all your eyes,

and the table scars over at last:
tomorrow was just a joke,
a scrawl on the music.
One whiff and all you’ve forgotten gathers,
hovers, and is gone;

one breath and it’s night
and far too easy to be glad.

As a River Burns

Soot comes in the window.
Soot goes out the window.

Sparks
bob on the river. It’s true
I have no clean underwear.

It’s true the river has grown salty
and fish refuse to live there;

instead,
they die.

All day long I hear people say,
Look at those fish,
but they’re really
just sparks.

I wait for the day
to begin
but I’m not sure which day. The river
flows down my hall
but is too shallow
for drowning.
I burned to death there,
being all and newly
clean
and for the first time
truly naked.

No – it was
at the window, I was
half in
and half out,

half spark
and
half
fish.

(untitled)

My friends all say it’s going to rain.
When a strong wind comes up
they lick their lips,
the better to feel it.
Their noses seem to have lengthened with age,
and now and then drip something clear.
My friends never stammer,
but they do get drunk.
Sometimes they talk about spiders,
sometimes Aristotle,
but neither too often.
My friends mostly have complex names,
some more than others,
but not one of them’s a linguist.
When it gets dark,
they huddle together, heads bowed,
and make elaborate gestures no one can see.
A few of them can cook.
Usually they remember to tell the truth.
They build machines of paper and metal
and lie down flat when they sleep.
They’ve learned very well to complicate desire
and write it all down,
nodding in each other’s directions.
My friends have three things in common:
exile is one of them,
maybe also tobacco.
They also keep telling me it’s going to rain,
but I’m not sure they believe it.

(untitled)

It's pretty simple:
you turn a corner
and it all disappears.
The gas station fills with feathers
– robin, pigeon, sparrow, crow –
and someone asks,
Whose apple are you?

(untitled)

The scaffold is wood and smells fresh.
The ocean is wood and smells like old salt.
Birds live here. It's a cold enough place.
Below the grating things hum,
call them clouds or call them machines.
New handshakes are invented every day.
New voices test the air.
Fire escapes rust through their ivory paint.
Everyone's jobless but the statues.

G.L. Ford is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse (uglyducklingpresse.org) collective and co-edits its 6x6 poetry periodical. His own work has appeared in such places as The Brooklyn Review, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Moon City Review, and Carve. His biography of novelist Kathy Acker appeared in Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary: Completing the Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press).

Posted by arielleguy at 01:00 PM | Permalink