Fashion Board 2-3-04 to 3-5-04

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by pretermitted_child
It's spelled deity.

p(Timmy!)c

you win. further evidence that I am not one (a deity I mean, I am sometimes a timmy). And, on a related note, I barely could stand sitting through English class (does it show?), so no English Professor ambitions here. Also dad and sis are/were both Profs and I can assure all I'm not cut out for that shit.

[Sidd Finch]

Poem Poll....

What the hell.


Dear John, Dear Coltrane

a love supreme, a love supreme
a love supreme, a love supreme

Sex fingers toes
in the marketplace
near your father's church
in Hamlet, North Carolina--
witness to this love
in this calm fallow
of these minds;
there is no substitute for pain:
genitals gone or going,
seed burned out,
you tuck the roots in the earth,
turn back, and move
by river through the swamps,
singing: a love supreme, a love supreme;
what does it all mean?
Loss, so great each black
woman expects your failure
in mute change, the seed gone.
You plod up into the electric city--
you song now crystal and
the blues. You pick up the horn
with some will and blow
into the freezing night:
a love supreme, a love supreme--

Dawn comes and you cook
up the thick sin 'tween
impotence and death, fuel
the tenor sax cannibal
heart, genitals and sweat
that makes you clean--
a love supreme, a love supreme--

Why you so black?
cause I am
why you so funky?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
why you sweet?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
a love supreme, a love supreme:

So sick you couldn't play Naima,
so flat we ached
for song you'd concealed
with your own blood,
your diseased liver gave
out its purity,
the inflated heart
pumps out, the tenor kiss,
tenor love:


a love supreme, a love supreme--
a love supreme, a love supreme--


edited to add the author: Michael Harper

[Apropos of Nothing]

Apro...uh, by the way, I still find the Fred thing amusing. Perhaps a bit overused, but still amusing.

And Atticus, dude, Andrew Marvell is better than that dope-riddled idiot's Xanadu any day.

My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" gets credit because this line reminds me of someone:

And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes

[Hank Chinaski]

ncs
And, on a related note, I barely could stand sitting through English class (does it show?),

Ode to ncs

Sitting in English 387
thinking about
the end of class-
20 minutes away;
Coughing like crazy
low and thundering,
filling the air;
girl next to me
coughing too,
but sweet and lite;
Jeanette McDonald
to my Nelson Eddy,
improvising over the rhythms
I'm setting down
as the class learns
Jesus symbols;

And I wonder
do they wonder
about us
see us as two
together?
sharing a cold,
as we share a bed?
Wednesday they'll know
I'll be in back again,
she'll probably
sit up front
but for now,
we're together
this snowy Monday
afternoon.

[idle acts]

Originally posted by ABBAKiss
Is it man from Nantucket?

There once was man from Nantucket,
Whose cock was so big he could suck it.
He said with a grin
Wiping sperm from his chin
If my ear was a cunt I could Fuck it.


* This is NOT my favorite poem. I am responding to ABBAKiss' question.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
To stand within the Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan
To taste anew the fruits of life
The last immortal man
To find the sacred river Alph
To walk the caves of ice
Oh, I will dine on honeydew
And drink the milk of Paradise

Hickory Dickory Dock.
My balls fell out of my jock.
I laid them to rest
On some hooker's chest
And paddled her face with my cock.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
This puts me in mind of a Poll: Post the full text or best fragment of your favorite poem.

From Charles Baudelaire's "Harmonie du Soir":
...
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige....

(The sun drowns in its own congealing blood.)

The rest of the poem is great, too, but I'm not up to translating it on the fly.

[bold_n_brazen]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
Hickory Dickory Dock.
My balls fell out of my jock.
I laid them to rest
On some hooker's chest
And paddled her face with my cock.

Thurgreed,

This is all your fucking fault.

[idle acts]

Feeling the need to redeem my dignity:


In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

Adrienne Rich

[ABBAKiss]

Originally posted by idle acts
There once was man from Nantucket,
Whose cock was so big he could suck it.
He said with a grin
Wiping sperm from his chin
If my ear was a cunt I could Fuck it.


* This is NOT my favorite poem. I am responding to ABBAKiss' question.

I guess I've never heard the entire poem before. Just the line I incorrectly quoted. Huh. And it's not my favorite poem either but I thought the poll was to post one line with sexual connotations and I think my line fits the bill.

And thank you for using all caps for ABBA.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by bilmore
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

No, I have to re-vote:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
In the stand-up world it's referred to as a "callback," and it can be the most effective arrow in the comedian's quiver when used wisely and judiciously. It's a foul truth I utter, but everyone on the board will think I'm mainly correct on this.

1. This isn't the standup world.
2. Key words: used wisely and judiciously.
3. "most people will agree i'm mainly correct" will never die.

TM

[Replaced_Texan]

I know it's a song, but I'm incapable of thinking of Leonard Cohen as anything but a poet.

• She stands before you naked
  you can see it, you can taste it,
  and she comes to you light as the breeze.
  Now you can drink it or you can nurse it,
  it don't matter how you worship
  as long as you're
  down on your knees.
  So I knelt there at the delta,
  at the alpha and the omega,
  at the cradle of the river and the seas.
  And like a blessing come from heaven
  for something like a second
  I was healed and my heart
  was at ease.
  
  O baby I waited
  so long for your kiss
  for something to happen,
  oh something like this.
  
  And you're weak and you're harmless
  and you're sleeping in your harness
  and the wind going wild
  in the trees,
  and it ain't exactly prison
  but you'll never be forgiven
  for whatever you've done
  with the keys.
  
  O baby I waited ...
  
  It's dark now and it's snowing
  O my love I must be going,
  The river has started to freeze.
  And I'm sick of pretending
  I'm broken from bending
  I've lived too long on my knees.
  
  Then she dances so graceful
  and your heart's hard and hateful
  and she's naked
  but that's just a tease.
  And you turn in disgust
  from your hatred and from your love
  and she comes to you
  light as the breeze.
  
  O baby I waited ...
  
  There's blood on every bracelet
  you can see it, you can taste it,
  and it's Please baby
  please baby please.
  And she says, Drink deeply, pilgrim
  but don't forget there's still a woman
  beneath this
  resplendent chemise.
  
  So I knelt there at the delta,
  at the alpha and the omega,
  I knelt there like one who believes.
  And the blessings come from heaven
  and for something like a second
  I'm cured and my heart
  is at ease

And for those who may be interested in Houston, Marc Bamuthi Joseph will be at Diverse Works tonight and tomorrow night.

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by baltassoc
From Charles Baudelaire's "Harmonie du Soir":
...
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige....

(The sun drowns in its own congealing blood.)

The rest of the poem is great, too, but I'm not up to translating it on the fly.

Le singe est sur la branche...

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by idle acts
Feeling the need to redeem my dignity:


In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

Adrienne Rich

Me too, and with some popular John Donne:

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee.