plume now scratches the screen at http://aileverte.blogspot.com

incertain.plume
{Sunday, April 25, 2004}

in water
there are no arms

and frontiers
only rhythm

the kick
closes the distance

inside the ear
of blood and algae

wave
farewell

or
fin


plumed @ 10:01 PM | 0 comments

.

{Thursday, April 22, 2004}

plume pondered over the accuracy of chief bushman's predictions foretelling last year that the american troops would be welcomed with open arms. and so it happened. except it was fire arms he had in mind.


plumed @ 1:58 PM | 0 comments


plume stopped at a bar & conversed with a drunk. the drunk confessed that he sought salvation in the bottle. curious, plume asked him to explain. no longer able to articulate clearly, the drunk pointed to the bottle label that clearly promised a redemptive value.


plumed @ 1:56 PM | 0 comments

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{Wednesday, April 21, 2004}

the hearts of artichokes cry out against the indecency of peeled onions.


plumed @ 11:52 PM | 0 comments


bushman spake: "our country is more secure and we are working to make it more secure"

& then, spake again, "threat overseas could become a threat to the homeland"

plume heard, "threat oversees could becalm a throat to the omelette"

so, what's new...?

once more, the bushman takes his patriot act on the road.

plume read, "p.a.t. riot"
{polish airforce troops}

deus ex machina: "excuse me, bushman studied the simplified alphabet. all letters with sharp edges had been removed."

plume must sleep on that one.


plumed @ 11:41 PM | 0 comments

.

{Thursday, April 15, 2004}


a (parenthesis)
a parent thesis
apparente thèse

(parenthèse)
parentent thèse
par honte aise

parenthetic
par (enthetic)

ethnique
parent
drape
ethique
rend

la langue ventre tendu


plumed @ 9:06 PM | 0 comments


"Here lies Sophie S., the victim of a maple tree."

When you pick up today's edition of Le Monde and see the headline "Murderous trees," you wonder whether the Lemon(de) hasn't been turned into the Onion. Then, as you turn to the indicated page, you start suspecting some cancerogenous properties of the otherwise innocent plants. Wrong again.

Over past thirty years, France has turned the trees lining their roads into a wooded death-row, and eliminated the plants guilty of deadly road accidents. Out of 3 milion trees censused at the beginning of the century, there are about 400,000 left today. Declared "public danger" they are blamed for car crashes that, still in the days of Albert Camus who ended his life in such a close encounter, would be counted among accidental fatalities or explained by the overdose of alcohol or by speeding.

And, from afar, no doubt, especially when the wind blows, the trees resemble rows of windmills...

What? Who gave wanna-be Don Quixotes driver licences?


plumed @ 5:52 PM | 0 comments




plumed @ 12:26 PM | 0 comments

.

{Tuesday, April 13, 2004}

ce n'est pas le plume qui paie pour la paix.


plumed @ 12:22 AM | 0 comments




plumed @ 12:08 AM | 0 comments

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{Monday, April 12, 2004}
some random thoughts on t e r r o r

The word terror brings to mind different things. It makes me think of terra, the earth, and of territoire, territory and a hill; as well as of terrine, an earthenware vessel and a kind of a French pie. It also evokes Polish words such as teraz, now, and terazniejszosc, the present. And it contains error, perhaps one relating to the terrain, to the ground we stand in or the ground we have in common.

The French Reign of Terror is contemporary to the tales of terror. Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho date to 1794. In her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry” (1826), she defines terror as being characterised by ‘obscurity’ or indeterminacy in its treatment of potentially horrible events – it is this indeterminacy which leads to the sublime. She says in the essay that it ‘expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life’.

Today, undoubtedly the most frequent use of the word terror has to with terrorism and with the so-called war on terror. I find that latter phrase to be an oxymoron of a sort: in the sense that one half involves assumptions undermined by the second. To declare a war presupposes a clearly-defined enemy and a territory on which a war can be fought. George Bush’s insistence on these terms, despite his awareness that the enemy isn’t easily locatable, is nothing other but a rejection of another kind of thinking that would show the inanity of any such wars, as well as of such territorial boundaries that set up easy oppositions – as those between the “allied armies” and “rogue states,” for instance (as well as, between good and bad, Christians and Muslims, etc…). The war in Iraq is a desperate attempt to divert world’s problems into a clearly defined frame of another nation’s territory… and create such chaos there as to make everyone believe that that is precisely where the problem lies. It’s nice to be able to locate the problem, target it, and fire at it (even if it’s only friendly fire). But, to “cover the territory,” such war must necessarily be global.

And yet, as we see, everything “slips from under control.” While combating the terrorists, the American troops are in the grips of terror, the Iraqis are terror stricken while the militant Muslims count on evoking a holy terror to incite people to opposing the Americans… Perhaps the word to be picked up from Ann Radcliffe’s early 19th-century definition is indeterminacy. What characterizes terror is, truly, error. Terrified or terrorized, one is beset by doubts as if besieged by the enemy, and it is hard to tell where the next blow is coming from or who will deal it. The instances of the so-called friendly fire are there to prove it. Recently, one of the Iraqi blogs* raised the question of the impossibility to distinguish between the civilians and the armed comabatants. The chances are that American soldiers will shoot without trying to find out (one must only remember the number of “civilian casualties” in the early days of Baghdad siege…).

Let me digress. Sometime before Bush declared war on Iraq, I was in bed with a cold that made me completely brainless. So, a friend brought me old black-and-white horror movies to watch, such as The Night of the Living Dead. I was struck with the currency of the film. First, we have an “enemy” that – before his untimely resurrection – was a friend, a family member, who now comes back not only to haunt, but also to kill. (There was a brief moment when someone spreading rumors of Iraqis having purchased American or British uniforms and hence of the prospect of American troops facing people who looked just like them - … as if, by the way, sheer humanity of the “enemy” weren’t enough to make you want to drop the guns.) Then, the living people, barricaded in a house, their windows boarded up to keep out the enemy, are glued to the TV screen and rely for their knowledge of “what’s going on” on the uninformative broadcast whose sensationalizing qualities are reminiscent of Fox news. The word is that “to kill the ghoul, you must aim for the head.” (This is very comforting. Again, as declaring war in order to establish a territory of combat, so knowing that the walking dead has a head that might be shot.) In the end, a band of armed Texans goes around chewing tobacco and shooting off the remaining “ghouls.” As they come up to the house harboring by now a lone survivor – who just happens to be black – poised with a gun in the window and himself not certain whether the approaching group is alive or dead. The Texans don’t ask any questions. One of them just shoots. The film ends with the leader spitting some tobacco and calling it “great shot, Jack!”

Ah, and did I mention that the “resurrections” in the movie were caused by a crashed NASA probe that spilled some radioactive agent it had collected on Venus? Or, translated, the “terror” is a response to some action done in the past and already buried in the memory.

Buried, forgotten, not unlike the August 6, 2001 memo warning George Bush of possible attacks…



*I will add the link once I find it again.


plumed @ 12:12 AM | 0 comments

.

{Sunday, April 11, 2004}

the counter reached the year of my birth. when you are reading this, it has already past.


plumed @ 1:33 PM | 0 comments


Chicago Postmodern Poetry.com is ready for reading.


plumed @ 1:30 PM | 0 comments

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{Saturday, April 10, 2004}

plume's nose has known his news.

now, migrane overtook his brain.
leave my grain to mince its own words.

one of plume's properties is that he wears improper ties.


plumed @ 9:47 PM | 0 comments

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{Thursday, April 08, 2004}


other iraq blogs, in no particular order:

wires: desperaterly rebuilding iraq :: blog run by a British sound systems contractor.

where is raed? :: blog maintained by two guys, Raed & his alter ego Salam Pax.

healing iraq :: blog by an Iraqi dentist

iraq at a glance :: stories from Iraq after "liberation."

iraq and iraqis :: everyday life in Iraq.

g. in baghdad :: thoughts written down hot and as they come.

ishtar talking :: news from Basra.

the mesopotamian

hammorabi :: strong commentary.

fayrouz :: commenting on Iraq from the devil's den, that is, Texas.

baghdadee :: the blog hub

the iraqi agora

iraq the model :: Samawa City blog

iraq now :: news analysis



plumed @ 1:11 AM | 0 comments


thanks to Steven Vincent for pointing out this blog: Baghdad Burning.

as we continue freeing the Iraqis to death, I can only repeat what Sam Weber said in his class on the uncanny today:: "To expect the other to be just like us is a sure recipe for the uncanny, i.e. for the other turning to us a face that will be completely unfamiliar."

that is to say, our notion of society is not the only one. but we ( w e ) knew that already.

our notion of the human is not the only one. This example comes to me in reference to a photograph featured in New York Times a few days ago, as well as in other papers: of an army of Iraqi women veiled from head to toe. Uncanny? because we are faced with humans that refuse to show their face. We associate the hidden face with the face of a criminal that has something to hide. We demand openness and nakedness. But why not associate such concealment with ... modesty? Or with truth? In Boetius, for instance, truth is represented as a woman, entirely veiled. The philosopher ponders over the necessity of that veil & and on the fact that, stripped of it, she, the truth, could be neither perceived nor understood.

bush, kerry, same sham. I ask, why do we ( t h e y ? ) insist on approaching ( other countries / others ) from the position of knowing? Why the stubborn separation into good and evil? Why the belief that ( o u r ) weapons of precision are good merely because they aim well?

Chris Marker in his film "Le fond de l'air est rouge" (The grin without a cat) uses some Vietnam footage in which an American pilot comments with relish on his "great shots" and on how he "loves to blast 'em."

so, the underbrush tells us, here it's all different: we are not fighting an enemy. Iraq, it's all friendly fire.

and so on...

our obligation is to think.


plumed @ 12:16 AM | 0 comments

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{Tuesday, April 06, 2004}

plume notices that news are consistent: the reports of American casualties are given with great accuracy, followed by "dozens of Iraqi casualties, as well."

ashcroft mutters, "hmm, they're being killed for their own good."

asked for explanations, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said details were still sparse and that it was unclear whether...

plume cuts out the phrases most frequently recurring in the news and puts them in a box.

next wednesday, he will bake fortune cookies.


plumed @ 6:46 PM | 0 comments

.

{Monday, April 05, 2004}


fresh issue of m o r i a includes poetry by lyx ish; david bircumshaw who punches a hole in the sky; chris murray who is inspired by SHIFT+{any digit} keys; scott macleod radiating chimaeras#, and others.

yes, and plume's pseudo-scientific theorifications on blogging.
but if you're paying per minute at some cyber-café, better read william james austin on visionism.



#keep in mind, chimaeras are not beasts of burden.


plumed @ 8:55 PM | 0 comments


Slovenians just voted against retroactively awarding citizenship to those minority members who had missed their initial application deadline. The remaining 4 thousand or so persons are among the 18 thousands who were removed from the records and are referred to as the erased. They are all native Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats who had always lived in the territory of what today is independent Slovenia.

This is a case of a majority opposing the Constitutional Court recommendation regarding the rights of a minority...

And before you get too upset, look well in your own backyard...


plumed @ 6:26 AM | 0 comments


... a fragment of last night's dream just came to me:

sleeveless CD's scattered on the carpet. the room, instead of being bound by walls, turns into the beach. oil-rigs and tankers float on the water and then sink suddenly. CTA buses, one by one, drive out from the lake's bottom onto the beach and over the CD's. it's the CD's i regret the most. on all fours, i try to gather what's left.


plumed @ 1:55 AM | 0 comments



day light savings are supposed to help the poor get to the end of ape rill.

the macaque swiftly climbs the tree.

plume still can't sleep.

the monkey mocks him & hits the snooze baton.

banana slips on its own peel,
and two lips grow where a sleeping pill lay planted.

june said to april: march on and don't be so august!

his little brain overtaxed,
plume imp
anciently awaits the refund.

clearly, where there's no rain, puddles lust after flower pots.

when the dark comes on,
people whisper.

with all his light savings,
plume could count on high interest.

albert einstein interfered with the dividends.

now, plume must start amassing
his four tunes anew.

stop gaping at the tip of his tongue.
freudian slip could not have been sexier.


plumed @ 1:40 AM | 0 comments

.

{Sunday, April 04, 2004}

april 4
in Polish, we call it, the month's namesday,
o'four, o'four, o'four,
sleepless triplets.


plumed @ 10:53 PM | 0 comments


plume shall not worship the warship.


plumed @ 3:44 PM | 0 comments


Bernadette Mayer laughs to herself as she reads. & she reads as if she stumbled on these poems for the first time. "I think I got the pages out of order. No matter!," & on, her poem on sleep, on falling asleep, including the capitalist and entrepreneurial method. Poems about war & maple syrup, both at once. "Addendum to maple syrup sonnet": she reads it & decides it's no good, "Sometimes you have to know when to discard," crumples the paper and throws it on the floor.

Bernadette Mayer lives in Massachussetts and doesn't use a computer. Two creeks, that I nicknamed tigris&euphrates, fork at the back of her house which I am sure flows with words and syrup as Mesopotamia. She takes walks and writes her poems on stationary using a typewriter. "Addendum" was typed on ivory page with a dragonfly, center top.

Philip Good seemed shy about his poems, too. I found this very touching. As touching as Robert Creeley saying that sometimes he feels like an imposter in poetry: this attitude of amazement at being faced with one's own poetry...

Or, is there?
I mean, there are only poems.

*

The walls in Bridge space were lined with love-letters to "My Matthew" that I don't know what to do with. I find such things as "would you marry me on impulse" written on "journal" stationary with a red rose, center bottom, distasteful, even as anti-art. Bernadette Mayer misread, "My Mother." I like that better & it teaches me: sometimes one must keep a safe distance.

*

The rejected poem made its way from the floor to my pocket and rested alongside "Charles Shaw" wine cork:


ADDENDUM TO MAPLE SYRUP SONNET

the workshop at the spencertown academy
THE BOYS ARE PLAYING FRISBEE
the boys s are playing frisbee
and the females (sophie & me) are
climbing the tree of my trunks, sorting
letters, non-letters, garbage, poems, etc
in an attempt to find papers i need for
the workshop at the spencertown academy


p.s. reflection of the sun going down
in the porch window reminds me of rage, ok?
you have gots any trouble with that?


plumed @ 3:14 PM | 0 comments

.

{Saturday, April 03, 2004}

plume opened a small press, specializing in thumb prints


plumed @ 2:46 AM | 0 comments


... and if you're from Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan or Australia, you might get photographed and electronically fingerprinted upon arrival in the U.S., such is the newest idea from Department of Homeland Insecurity...


plumed @ 2:46 AM | 0 comments


perhaps off the fence, but while tuning to texfiles, plume suddenly remembered he forgot to file his taxes.


what follows is a
warning from the surgeon general :
when logging onto governmental websites, have a safety pin handy.


plumed @ 12:50 AM | 0 comments


"I knew that it would take a year before the water started to boil. It was now October and there was too much water in the pan. That was the problem. I threw half the water into the sink.

The water would boil faster now. It would take only six months. The house was quiet."

Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn
thoughts of R.B. brought on by R.C. reading, or B.C., not R.C.


plumed @ 12:43 AM | 0 comments


I love you
And I love someone else
What is wrong with that

I do not love you
And I love someone else
What is wrong with that

I do not love you
And I do not love someone else
What is wrong with that



plumed @ 12:39 AM | 0 comments


tymczasem,
tympan wonders what liberal radio should be like,
anyway.


plumed @ 12:36 AM | 0 comments


the choice narrowed down considerably in the timespan of a second hand wave of dismissal. ballots or bullets. perhaps nothing cuts tongues as paper.


plumed @ 12:30 AM | 0 comments


an old and a young man on the train. the old one soliloquizes: "... for there was no Democratic party then. You had to choose between Republican and Charter, as it was called. ... You write score on each vote, from one to nine... And, now, the fun part: you count the ballots..."


plumed @ 12:26 AM | 0 comments


a homeless man with a "SURPLUS" bag shouts out to the water tower square passersby: "and what clothes were YOU wearing twenty years ago?"


plumed @ 12:23 AM | 0 comments


inked plumage as unquenchable thirst for sleep turns to insomnia


plumed @ 12:22 AM | 0 comments


inclined
to rock climb
uphill - look
bombs and unpheavals
here, mute
rivers of flesh
billed and boarded
tongue mutilations


plumed @ 12:17 AM | 0 comments

.

{Friday, April 02, 2004}

dbqp, midst rain, intermittant du spectacle, with a man's hat on.


plumed @ 11:56 PM | 0 comments


Who emptied the April's fool?


plumed @ 11:32 PM | 0 comments


just returned from creeley
reading rock me my boat
from room ten classics
transferred to social sciences one twenty-two
as many
plus a thin pin and heads bobbing
out the
windows
if only he were writing this
a plastic cup
knocked down falls upright
this is how to trick the law of
gravity: with a joke
|
|
|
[just as i wrote
[this, gravity reclaimed its rights:
[a cup of tea knocked down
[falls downright
[miraculously sparing my lap
[top and a pile of books]
|
|
|
creeley is a poet
in a state of wonderment
at the accident
of being a poet


plumed @ 12:09 AM | 0 comments

.

{Thursday, April 01, 2004}

on tuesday, plume started noting down poems on dollar bills (about three) and putting them in circulation. when he was down to the last buck (yesterday), he copied it two hundred and thirty-eight times, filled the empty spaces with poems, and spent them all in one evening.
the banktellers salesladies and thieves, who notoriously check for counterfeit bills, now started reading poetry. passersby and mallwalkers heard of free money being handed out at the counters and cashregisters. they crowded to receive dollar poems.
children were disappointed to get their pocket change and traded candy for banknotes.
poetry was common currency until friday when plume was accused of plagiarism.


plumed @ 10:52 PM | 0 comments


à propos new york times: i inhabit the new york times black hole. they deliver across the street, at the "sovereign" apartments, a few steps to the east, at the metropolis café, a little to the west, to the kiosk under the el station... but not to "grandeur", which is a fancy name for the former hotel where i live.
explain that piece of woodwork!


plumed @ 12:35 AM | 0 comments


ok, so i do read new york times, sometimes even at midnight. the electronic front page often has some multimedia stuff. i don't follow the links, but can't help wondering what kind of "interactive feature" "attacks in fellujah" must make. "drop your own bomb?"


plumed @ 12:32 AM | 0 comments

.


est. feb. 5, 2004 A.D.





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