Thursday, October 23, 2003

"I understand Mr. Harvey, that you have acquired some tires." "And I am glad to know that you have so heard, Sammy, for business is, in my experience, mostly word of mouth. Yes, I have tires. But I need you to pass it on for me Sammy that I bought these tires before the outbreak of the hostilities, motivated by a dream that I had had. I have documentation to that effect that I would show anyone empowered rightfully to ask." 2:24:49 PM    comment []

Sammy the barber lathers Harvey's face with a swirly move he learned working in Galveston that year he was sleeping with Enid who was a long cool yellow girl worked nights and who Sammy would visit in his lunch hour bringing a little present of some money because while Enid was not exactly selling it, she had to, because of her schedule, forgoe (can I do that? - I've been reading all this fucking Donne....) anyway she didn't get what she called the "gestures and tokens of courtship". Enid had read that in a book. She meant restaurants and flowers and dancing. She was a smart girl but left school early being pregnant with a child white enough she sent it to live with kin in California who were passing and she worked hard nights as a maid in one of the Hotels down by the Seawall where there were white folk so incapable they needed a maid at night to clean up the spills and empty the ashtrays and the spitoons in the lobby. "You are a good smelling black man that is why I love you," Enid would say pulling him down into the bed where she slept naked through the hot daytimes and then Sammy would figure being a Barber wasn't so bad. 2:09:31 PM    comment []

Bubel Andriessen plagues me for though I know essentially Bubel's fate and how he escaped from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (dawdling in reverie over girl's underwear) I cannot yet see the McGuffin by which I link him to the depraved pair of Hollywood teens with whom he spends that Murderous Mid-West Rampage Spring of '42 working his way towards Harvey's Kingdom and Mary who is Harvey's Guinivere and Merlin combined. I know sometimes that Mary might sing these John Donne songs that she learned on the radio. One goes: Thou art not so black as my heart, no half so brittle as her heart, thou art. What would'st thou say? If both our properties by thee be known... Nothing more endless... Nothing sooner broke... Marriage Rings are not made of this stuff, Oh why should ought less precious or less tough Figure our loves? ... Except in thy name thou have bid it say: I'm cheap, and nought but fashion. Fling me away.... It's a song about a ring from a girl John Donne was jilted by. Or at least it is written from a boy lover's wounded perspective. I rather guess that in John Donne's life his poems lived mainly on single pages. It may be that one poem lived on many single pages but if so they were copied by hand. I don't think his poems were printed in his lifetime... I may be wrong and I am maybe just strange to find that a staggering thought... 1:31:21 PM    comment []

>>> projected advertisng copy.... this coloring of a lion remembers the afternoon in second grade i was reproached for scribbling and also mr. leo castelli an art dealer who stamped the world softly and is made upon a small dimensioned storebought canvas of durable acrylic and permanent ink markers - the kind you shouldn't sniff- you could hang it in a room with your washer and dryer. quin offers it up a sacrifice because he said he would. if there's truly value in scarcity you might care to bid. biography: quin is a poet and artist living in new york city. his career goes nowhere. his cat and dog seem curiously to thrive on his mournful wasted plaints, and his wife gets more sleep and sex than most... his work has seemed to evolve into an enterprise whereby he imagines old poetry as if it were sung by a jesus/satan/ cowboy on the radio in 1933, close enough to the year history died as any, it seems to quin. more of his work may be viewed and heard at ragtimetexas.com. 12:17:26 PM    comment []