AS/IS 2

the interview of Stephen Paul Miller by Thomas Fink at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

   "A Pæan for Pessoa"

Is it over yet, Fernando?
Your statue shrugs still waiting at your · table on the square
If it's you that waits, Fernando,
And not another effigy of absence you declare
As the pigeons gravely bob
And the first few lamps · of evening griffins throb.

Nothing ever ends, Fernando,
Though attention flags and humans have to · give it up for lost
You were not afraid, Fernando,
Yourself to scatter like the crumbs · the lazy tourists tossed
This is not a night of masks
But a day of tanks and buzzards circling · slowly down to roost.

There was something in the stars you saw
You could not draw, Fernando:
Crazy patterns to the way we turn
Your eyes discern, Fernando
Even as you float away
And try to say
If I had a name and origin
I'd render them, Fernando.

Now the Internet, Fernando,
Has come along to rescue us · who never could before
Leave our words like you, Fernando,
Bronzed a thousand ways and read · like driftwood on the shore
I can hear your voice in each
Perverse soliloquy · and parody of speech.

There was something in the stars you saw
You could not draw, Fernando:
Crazy patterns to the way we turn
Your eyes discern, Fernando
Even as you float away
And try to say
If I had a name and origin
I'd render them, Fernando;
But I have no name or origin
To render now, Fernando.

10 26 05

tentacles

deep inside where you bleed
the tentacles choke your being
and you've lost the mystery
of unflinching belief

belief in love
came crumbling down
you will of faith eroded
the way it is
the lust of the day
keeping you satiated
so I scream with a whisper
my words mean heresy
I won't leave again in september
though I have nothing
just silence and madness

as I see
the tentacles
suffocates you
where you bleed
deep inside your being.

copyright(c)2000 Billy Jno Hope

with K. Silem Mohammad at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

Via Abu-Lughod:

The Ghinnawa is a 15 syllable couplet divided into units: 1234/56789.

But it is unspooled thus: 78/78/789/78/6789/78/78/6789/78/78/781/1234/78/78/56/56789 sixteen lines).

An example given in the book:
    'Tears increased, oh Lord
    the beloved came to mind in the time of sadness'

which unspools into:

in the time
in the time
in the time of sadness
in the time
beloved in the time of sadness
in the time
in the time
beloved in the time of sadness
in the time
in the time
in the time tears
tears increased oh Lord
in the time
in the time
beloved came to mind
the beloved came to mind in the time of sadness

One of mine is here.


m.

"...we are continually assaulted by unending cycles of woes and degradation. Politics has been downgraded to war in its very lowest form, and we cannot talk of the political field without wincing with disgust. The political field has become a veritable theatre of disaster and cannot be spoken of without embarrassment...In a situation where a long established tribal culture is under assault from colonialism, new beings, discourses and commodities emerge from the transitional phase. And this transitional phase, with all its swift and sudden cultural reversals and rapid upturning of established tables of values, creates room for the most pronounced kind of opportunism, a situation where anything goes."

is up at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

Check out my Interview with Crag Hill.