Dirty 30 in 30

[unpredictablebijou]

Dora, # 14 is particularly stunning. Well done.

Get out of here! Fr. Hopkins?


I have to say that I love denim-doused branches drawn and beautifully bent.

I will not comment on their gorgeous thickness, though.

So what's to comment? It worked with 'greedy thyrsi'.
Not to worry. I think no comment is really necessary. Kinda speaks for itself.

Happily, my training in Anglo-Saxon four-stress alliterative meter helps a lot with parodies of Hoppy. And speaking of which, is Beowulf-meter going to be one of the choices for the form thread? Discussions of kennings and suchlike?

kennings r teh sexy.

I've resigned myself to the fact that my lit major does nothing but virtually seduce the occasional reclusive intellectual. However, I can think of few things more valuable than that.

You called Liar doll

I called FOOL doll. I call lotsa people doll. But you're the only one I call "Dolly." That's different.

bj

 

[Tzara]

s3v3n733n

So what's to comment? It worked with 'greedy thyrsi'.

Bacchante

Honey dripped from the thyrsos stave
Grasped firm in my right hand.
I offered it to one sweet maid
And made a new Maenad.

When later, we were recumbent,
I asked, "Was that your wish?"
She smiled and nodded in assent:
"It tastes like licorice."


.

 

[Tzara]

Dora, # 14 is particularly stunning. Well done.

What she said.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Bacchante

Honey dripped from the thyrsos stave
Grasped firm in my right hand.
I offered it to one sweet maid
And made a new Maenad.

When later, we were recumbent,
I asked, "Was that your wish?"
She smiled and nodded in assent:
"It tastes like licorice."


.

I'm thanking Santa for many things. Among them, you.

warmness. off till thursday.


bj

 

[Tzara]

Then again, there's this passage from one of his more obscure works:

For all things tangible through shorts, for the tripod-shaped,
for greedy thyrsi gleaming with their gorgeous thickness
denim-doused branches drawn and beautifully bent,
Oh lord, thank you!

You know, of course, I went looking for this. No hits. None. Nada.

I suspect you are teasing me with a parody of Fr. H. or have a copy of The Clandestine Notebooks of G. M. Hopkins, SJ, possibly purchased from a street vendor in one of the seedier rues off the Place Pigalle, or perhaps from the book racks at Priscilla's.

Whatever.

Guy was really short. Did you know that?

 

[Tzara]

X (18 or older only)

Lines Written for a Lady to the East
Roundelay about Some Kind of Love. After Dryden

A love, I think, that every day
Is ours. In this I do not lie.
It is your body I would lay
And tousle your hair all awry.
I'll pull it some, though it is gray;
My fantasy is you'll obey.

It is your body I would lay—
I'll tousle your hair all awry,
But you are not, yet are my prey,
A lovemap you may well deny.
I'll pull it some, though it is gray.
My fantasy is you'll obey

But you are not, yet are my prey,
A lovemap you may well deny.
Now you are mine, and I'll assay
Those downy hairs inside your thigh.
I'll pull them some, though they be gray.
My fantasy is you'll obey.

Now you are mine, and I'll assay
Those downy hairs inside your thigh
Are place for my unfettered play
Up into denser hair, up high.
I'll pull it some, though it is gray.
My fantasy: You will obey.


.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Dirty Fifteen

I am the bitter stone she holds
under her tongue whenever she spits

because she will not simply open
and let me drop despite how she hates

me. If only she would spit me out
with her words, let me roll down I swear

I'd roll around her panties and garters
unspoiled, and find myself a place to bloom.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Dirty Fifteen

After Solstice

Pale gold slowly pushes into the mouth
of our cave, each day an inch or two
further. Soon it will be time to shed
these borrowed furs to become the slim
green creatures of spring.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Dirty Sixteen

Do not save your scraps
says the poet laureate.
Do not try to mend them
into some Frankenstein
of images that don't step
with grace or speak in one
clear voice.

But I do anyway, in a box
and open it now and then.
I hold the flake of one in my hand
until it melts into my finger
and flows into my pen.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

You know, of course, I went looking for this. No hits. None. Nada.

I suspect you are teasing me with a parody of Fr. H. or have a copy of The Clandestine Notebooks of G. M. Hopkins, SJ, possibly purchased from a street vendor in one of the seedier rues off the Place Pigalle, or perhaps from the book racks at Priscilla's.

Whatever.

Guy was really short. Did you know that?

Like, Toulouse Lautrec short? or just regular short?

The deeply twisted part of me is immensely pleased that you actually tried to look that up.

Truthfully, (or perhaps not), your guess is not a bad one. During my last trip to the Continent, years ago, I acquired a number of M. Hopkins' secret manuscripts from a strangely attractive 84-year old bouquiniste on the Rive Gauche. He said his name was Faucon Repéré but I have no reason to believe he was telling the truth. I will admit that I took some slight advantage of my own tolerance to absinthe and manipulated his désordre in making the trade I negotiated for some rather scandalous fragments attributed to M. Hopkins.

Hopkins apparently traveled secretly to Paris on a regular basis, using the pseudonym Alouette Emprisonnée. I saw a few pages of what seemed to be journal entries about his visits, but M. Repéré snatched them rather defensively out of my hands when he realized what I was holding. I recognized only one passage, lines from "As kingfishers catch fire:"

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

You may look those lines up, in fact. The rest of the page was a very different poem. It must have been an early draft. I can assure you it was somewhat saucier than the final version.


bj

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Dirty Seventeen

Of course the lawyer, the head usher
of his church were shocked that such a nice
man could murder nine and shoot
an 8-year old girl in the face
for answering the door.

His ex-wife filed in March but did not get the divorce
until December. He kept the house but owed.
As the smoke clears on Pardo's festering hate,
the papers whisper "tragedy, tragedy."

Tragedy is when the wind whips houses
into the ground. Tragedy is beyond blame,
cannot be traced to its source by forensics.

This was not tragedy. This was atrocity:
the barbarism of one claiming ownership
of another, taken to its final outcome.

 

[Tzara]

19

Limerick, Composed in Anapests

Now this woman known only as Jill
Had found sex a debatable thrill
Until girlfriend she kissed
And found out what she'd missed,
Then she shrieked C'est l'amour! something shrill.


.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Limerick, Composed in Anapests

Now this woman known only as Jill
Had found sex a debatable thrill
Until girlfriend she kissed
And found out what she'd missed,
Then she shrieked C'est l'amour! something shrill.


.

Heh. Very cute.

 

[Tzara]

Heh. Very cute.

Thank you, Dora. I'm trying to write the Thread of Forms entry on the Limerick, and the metrical stuff makes that difficult, at least for me. Limericks are metrically rather sophisticated. And varied. So I am experimenting with meter. Or trying to.

Kind of interesting, but difficult.

Your last 30 poem, though, is about a far more difficult subject. What can one write about someone who shoots an eight-year-old girl in the face? A child who ran to the door because the gunman showed up dressed as Santa? What kind of person could do that?

I don't believe in God, but I have to believe in Evil, unfortunately. Because Evil lives with us, and we can't seem to get rid of it.

I don't understand it and don't want to, unless that understanding can make it go away.

And I want it to go away.

 

[Tzara]

Like, Toulouse Lautrec short? or just regular short?

Well, Toulouse-Lautrec was extremely short, due to a congentital defect. Probably four foot six. Fr. Hopkins was five foot two—me Mum's height—so short, but not probably to the point of being medically noticable about it.

By the way, I looked up T-L and Wikipedia had this to say about that: At the age of 13 Henri fractured his left thigh bone, and at 14, the right. The breaks did not heal properly. Modern physicians attribute this to an unknown genetic disorder, possibly pycnodysostosis (also sometimes known as Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome), or a variant disorder along the lines of osteopetrosis, achondroplasia, or osteogenesis imperfecta. Rickets aggravated with praecox virilism has also been suggested. His legs ceased to grow, so that as an adult he was only 1.22 m (4 ft 6 in) tall,[1] having developed an adult-sized torso, while retaining his child-sized legs, which were 0.70 m (27.5 in) long. He is also reported to have had hypertrophied genitals. (Emphasis mine.)

Might explain all those sketches in brothels, maybe. Or maybe not.

Whatever.

The deeply twisted part of me is immensely pleased that you actually tried to look that up.

It was a good parody, not that I know Hopkins well, but I was reading it kinda going, Really? I mean, I know the guy was gay, but...

Excellent parody, all said. Fooled me, anyway.

Well, I mean, except for this stuff below:

Truthfully, (or perhaps not), your guess is not a bad one. During my last trip to the Continent, years ago, I acquired a number of M. Hopkins' secret manuscripts from a strangely attractive 84-year old bouquiniste on the Rive Gauche. He said his name was Faucon Repéré but I have no reason to believe he was telling the truth. I will admit that I took some slight advantage of my own tolerance to absinthe and manipulated his désordre in making the trade I negotiated for some rather scandalous fragments attributed to M. Hopkins.

Hopkins apparently traveled secretly to Paris on a regular basis, using the pseudonym Alouette Emprisonnée. I saw a few pages of what seemed to be journal entries about his visits, but M. Repéré snatched them rather defensively out of my hands when he realized what I was holding. I recognized only one passage, lines from "As kingfishers catch fire:"

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

You may look those lines up, in fact. The rest of the page was a very different poem. It must have been an early draft. I can assure you it was somewhat saucier than the final version.

I shan't comment on any of this other than to say that you're to blame for my current fascination with Hopkins. I'd read parts, or all, of "The Wreck of the Deutschland" (probably part, as it's a long poem) as a sophomore and found it deadly dull. Whatever is going on here, you've managed somehow to make Fr. Hopkins interesting to me.

So I'm reading the guy. And chained on to other Uranian poets (though, you'll notice that G. M. ain't listed there, 'cept in that guy's book). What I love about the Internet, actually: Everything leads to everything, and I love reading about everything.

Bitch.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

I have studied this a little. On instances where the murderer murders people associated with someone they loved after a break-up, other people they knew never characterize them as evil. This as compared to people who kill out of sociopathy. I think understanding it can stop it.

To begin, we have to look at the idea of how people feel entitlement to other human beings, so much so that they feel they have the right to take their lives. This man was killing all those he could who were loved by his ex-wife, but his main target was the ex-wife. The good news is that spousal murders are (believe it or not) on the decline in the U.S., and I think one big reason for this is that we have begun to understand that marriage does not equate to ownership. The further we go down that road, the closer we get to vanquishing just a teeny little corner of that evil.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Dirty Eighteen

slipping into the shell is easy
but it transforms, hardens,
grows to fit all the smooth
round hollows, moves only slightly
with the tide that rushes
as he stubbornly persists,

staying in, all the way
in

as the whole ocean seems to gust
past as the Rhodophyta sways
pulled by wails and fluffed by bubbles

ending with a yawning snap
and gulp

and slow pouring out

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Well, Toulouse-Lautrec was extremely short, due to a congentital defect. Probably four foot six. Fr. Hopkins was five foot two—me Mum's height—so short, but not probably to the point of being medically noticable about it.

By the way, I looked up T-L and Wikipedia had this to say about that: At the age of 13 Henri fractured his left thigh bone, and at 14, the right. The breaks did not heal properly. Modern physicians attribute this to an unknown genetic disorder, possibly pycnodysostosis (also sometimes known as Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome), or a variant disorder along the lines of osteopetrosis, achondroplasia, or osteogenesis imperfecta. Rickets aggravated with praecox virilism has also been suggested. His legs ceased to grow, so that as an adult he was only 1.22 m (4 ft 6 in) tall,[1] having developed an adult-sized torso, while retaining his child-sized legs, which were 0.70 m (27.5 in) long. He is also reported to have had hypertrophied genitals. (Emphasis mine.)

Might explain all those sketches in brothels, maybe. Or maybe not.

Well, my understanding is that he was basically raised in a brothel, or at least was adopted into that culture relatively early. I could be wrong about that, though. I knew that he had broken his legs and that they hadn't healed properly, but I thought it was just poor re-setting of the limbs; the genetic issue is new info for me.

Many people with one or another sort of dwarfism are also characterized by abnormally large genitalia. I guess I always figured that beyond the initial injury, there may have been some dwarfism in his genetics. And perhaps the reason he was allowed to be so familiar with the women... Thanks for the research, though; makes me love him all the more.

Hmmmm. Shall we have a smallish ekphrastic challenge on the works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec? His portraiture of women, especially the little intimate sketches of the prostitutes on their off-time, are so astounding to me, and say so much underneath about his feelings about women and about his relationship to them...

Whatever.
It was a good parody, not that I know Hopkins well, but I was reading it kinda going, Really? I mean, I know the guy was gay, but...

Excellent parody, all said. Fooled me, anyway.

Well, I mean, except for this stuff below:I shan't comment on any of this other than to say that you're to blame for my current fascination with Hopkins. I'd read parts, or all, of "The Wreck of the Deutschland" (probably part, as it's a long poem) as a sophomore and found it deadly dull. Whatever is going on here, you've managed somehow to make Fr. Hopkins interesting to me.

So I'm reading the guy. And chained on to other Uranian poets (though, you'll notice that G. M. ain't listed there, 'cept in that guy's book). What I love about the Internet, actually: Everything leads to everything, and I love reading about everything.

Bitch.

There is an astral scoreboard somewhere that makes a ka-ching noise every time I can get someone to genuinely call me a bitch for the best of reasons.

ka-ching!

My interest in Hopkins is life-long, and somewhat similar to an inability to look away from a terrible car accident. Perhaps also he's a cautionary tale for me; I worry sometimes that my lust for sound may turn me into a horribly overwrought combination of Hopkins, Whitman and Swinburne, and that I'll someday just drown in my own alliteration.

More to the point, too much religious emphasis can turn a perfectly good and very sexy poet into a pompous bastard. Look at John Donne. From Air and Angels and The Ecstasy to A Hymn to God the Father in one short life. Disappointing.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?


bj

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Dirty Seventeen

Of course the lawyer, the head usher
of his church were shocked that such a nice
man could murder nine and shoot
an 8-year old girl in the face
for answering the door.

His ex-wife filed in March but did not get the divorce
until December. He kept the house but owed.
As the smoke clears on Pardo's festering hate,
the papers whisper "tragedy, tragedy."

Tragedy is when the wind whips houses
into the ground. Tragedy is beyond blame,
cannot be traced to its source by forensics.

This was not tragedy. This was atrocity:
the barbarism of one claiming ownership
of another, taken to its final outcome.

This one stunned me too. You have an amazing talent for cutting down to the bones of something.

Your last 30 poem, though, is about a far more difficult subject. What can one write about someone who shoots an eight-year-old girl in the face? A child who ran to the door because the gunman showed up dressed as Santa? What kind of person could do that?

I don't believe in God, but I have to believe in Evil, unfortunately. Because Evil lives with us, and we can't seem to get rid of it.

I don't understand it and don't want to, unless that understanding can make it go away.

And I want it to go away.

Evil, like jealousy, is a portmanteau concept. It does not exist as a singular entity or force or emotion, but rather is a combination of numerous factors.

If I were to create an equation, it might be something like:

Evil = overwhelming pain + alienation and solipsism + entitlement - compassion.

God is not the opposite of Evil. Love and Compassion are its opposing force. And I'd be very sad to think that you didn't believe in Love.

I'll save the rest of the rant for my sermon tomorrow morning at the Naked Church of the Agnostic Universal Heart.

bj

 

[The_Fool]

B-5

1

Send me on my way to invisible.
I wonder,
if I hide behind my fingers,
will she see how much I want her?
She treats me like a small child, sometimes.
Sometimes I act like one
or at least act the fool.
Something wicked in her smile
makes hiding my face
a way to mock her.

2

I only see one eye
as she peeks from behind her bangs.
She can hide her face behind her hair,
but not her decadence.
I just know she burns inside.
Smolders behind a screen
too clean to be for real.
Her hair, a veil to hide her from view.
Even though her clothes
pile in the corner.

1 again

Pulling the blanket over our heads,
isolation from a world
with which we no longer wish
to share our presence.
Thinking in some childish way
that by hiding
we can make time pass,
or not,
according to our whims,
our wishes.

 

[The_Fool]

B-6

So if Diana Krall’s voice
were a lotion, an oil,
would it warm my skin
as much as my soul?
Glides smoothly
through the senses,
tangible caress
with intangible tones.
Captures me briefly
only to let me go.

 

[The_Fool]

B-7

Dance in candlelight
with intangible curves
held tightly,
caressing the thought of you
pressing your hip into mine.
And lips glance softly
against each other,
sublime air kiss.
Subtle rhythm teases,
strokes my imagination
as fingertips shape
the woman held tightly
in my daydream.
Wake me with a tangible kiss.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

yum.

seriously.

 

[Tzara]

20

Trying to Stay Ahead of Dora by Drafting Quickie Doggerel

Change isn't always so bad.
Sometimes a change can be rad.
Short little lines,
Slightly off rhymes?
"Limerick. Sort of," said Brad.


.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Dirty Nineteen

The kind mother combs
her child's hair from its ends
one inch to the bottom, gently
pulling free tangles, then another
inch up, and so on with the patience
to cover familiar ground again and again
each time bringing luster to the hair, and no
tears to the child, who does not have to be told
Be still. For fuck's sake be still, says the unkind mother
starting at the top and forcing the comb down
snagging, breaking, yanking, ripping
the child's hair matted in its teeth.