Just two more...
I tried for a while to avoid
A further reference to Freud
But your nervous relation
To signification
Suggests you may be paranoid.
A chap whose faith in the logical
Bordered upon the euphorical
Found citationality
In his rationality
And structures irreducibly metaphorical.
(You deserved them...)
When I look back upon my verse
It's always with a sense of shame
I can never make things rhyme (?rame)
No matter what I try to think
To speak in words or write in ink
It's the same thing in my mind —
It's a sign!!!
At school they taught me how to be
So clear in thought and word and deed —
They didn't quite succeed!
No matter ...
It's a sign!!!
Everything I've ever said, every word, every line
All that I keep repeating all the time —
It's a sign!!!
Father forgive me, I tried to understand it
I read through deconstruction
Not knowing therein lay destruction
Whatever you taught me, I didn't believe it
Father, you formed me, 'cos I didn't care
And I still don't understand it
So I look back upon my verse
And it's always with a sense of shame,
I can never make things rhyme (?rame)
It's a sign!
DESIDERATA
Whatever you do, whatever you do, try not to repeat repeat yourself. Get real. Make sure you have enough milk in the fridge (and don't buy that awful skimmed stuff.)
Avoid riding a tricycle in the morning. Respect the word. Always quote out of context, except that this is impossible. Never drink Pimms with reptiles or chemical engineers. Use a toothbrush, not a copy of "The Brothers Karamazov".
Lead us not (presumably) into textualization, and deliver us from the sign ...? For, "Metaphor is the logic of contamination and the contamination of logic." Need one say more?
Endeavour not to impose an order on the text. Order not your elders, betters and blubbers. Order a 37 with lychees. Speak clearly from the diaphragm. Spell diaphragm. Discuss. Pass briefly from adverb to conjunct, and the world will see you as you truly aren't. Write limericks till the mourning after.
But the work of mourning is always already (see Freud). At 12:15 p.m. in East Death. Do not buy invisible signatures of Salvador Dalí. Be happy.
Always look on the Sheffield (Brightside). Go to jail — go directly to jail, do not collect $200. Pass the buck. Give us a clue. Don't stand in the middle of motorways. Stop doing that! If you do that once more, I'll be cross.
Start doing this! If you don't do this now, I'll be Maltese. Think carefully before making up your mind. Too many desiderands stain the cloth.
Ten thousand thundering typhoons, + VAT (Vegetarians Against Tractors).
1/ It's a godawful small affair
To the girl with mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a [sounding board]1
For she's lived it 10 times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to [call the song]
[Sea dwarves] fighting in the dance hall
Old man — look at those cavemen go
It's the creepiest show
Take a look at the old man beating on the wrong guy
Old man, wondering if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
2/ It's on the merry ... [orchard] brow
Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck a vein
Lenin's on sale again
See the mice in their million hoards
from Ibiza to the Norfolk broads
(1 ? bore — ed.)
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog and clowns
But the film is ...
(That's enough David Bowie.)
_ _
| |
I think that I shall never know
A tree as lovely as a po-
em, written by some crazy bod
And nothing at all to do with God.
|_ _|
Out of deference to
The wishes of
Our leadero
The rest of this page will be in free verse
Which isn't just "chopped up prose",
As it has been designated
Because of
The negative spaces.
(Which are all around us
Even as we speak, making
Sure that our speech is writing.)
That's all, fisho.
'Twas in the year of 1992, the month was not July
When I decided to write about Julius Caesar
("The Roman geezer")
Who was much affected thereby.
Though not as much as by Shakespeare — I cannot lie.
1992 — Julius Caesar — dead
Unless memory mistake
{Simple Chinese ideogram}
Unġelaeredon preostas!
Correct answers on a limerick (or a post card if you're Socrates)
Thank you.
Iam estis virin' el Dorseto
Kun multege da libroj sur breto
Oni ofte ŝin mokis
Kaj rezone sufokis
Tamen restis ŝi tekstulineto.
An optimistic Presidento
Wrote limericks in Esperanto
A convenient dodge
Whose obscurity-oj
May not have been quite what he meanto.
There once was a Captain called Haddock
Who lived like a horse in a paddock
Except that he didn't
There's no antecedent
To this limerick which is quite baddock.
As I picked up the book this morning
Just as the day was dawning
I noticed a huge array of limericks —
there were well in excess of six.
So I determined there and then
"Limericks — never again."
Their form is too constricting
Not to say debilitating.
And so we must change the form of the text
and give the limericks a rest
lest boredom set in
and madness creep in
And we go about wearing nought but a vest.
Sorry, but...
There once was a beetroot called Muffin
Which was useful for virtually nuffin'
It was sixty years old
And oozing with mould
So they used it to make some tinned stuffin'.
