Dr. Hilarity

[perezoso]

It's noon and
the gnoshers are about
ready for tische-sprache
and further miscontruings
of plato--
a flotilla of SUVs
just sank,
sides of high rises blink,
not exactly 182--
yet as hyper-pennants
of extortion, its agents
well-coifed in Saabs
and benz wheeling towards
fettuccini or a posh wilshire
flop....

Dr. Hilarity you are aware
of this, bored
with subversive tactics,
perusing your
sites for something
other than roller rink
narcissism...

the downtown bus station
at about 4 might hold
some ripe acolytes for your
seamier schemes, mein herr, or perhaps
you should return to your
hovel, with the
merlot and half-read kripke,
a snapshot of abimael guzman
zebra'd on the bare wall
thrusting his fist at the
barons of the world.....

--------------------------------


"birds of prey hover over it"

He thought about branding his Jeep
with large black letters "PEQUOD"...
occasionally addressed the swarthy as
Queequeg....a fever dream his leg
a piece of whale bone and he on deck
with a cap and ball pistol...
on a glassy summer sea, moonlit
the beast's spume spraying near the horizon........

[judih]

over here it's doctor Chhhilarity
and he's got a permanent throat chhhondition

everything's amusing by the time cccche renders it verbal

just look out
his barkkkkkh is ccchhhhalmitous

[perezoso]

A reading from Boorinthians 13/1551/2-4995


Though they squeak with the tongues of hen or of beagles, and hath not clarity, they have become as clowning ass, or tinkling windholes.
1737:772


And though they have the gift of lunacy, and understand all miseries, and all garbage; and though they be no wraiths, though that they could release fountains, and have not hilarity, they are nothing.

1333:34555

[Zlatko Waterman]

The way the phrases and epithets skitter over the surface of things in this piece, refusing to dig in, refusing all but the games of naming, walking on the wires of radar your bats weave in their igneous hovels . . .well . . .this is fond wordsmithing and needs recognition.

But the aversion to the unexpected, the Colt always cocked in this and other pieces, is tough on readers, even attentive ones.

And I am one--

to the wonder of your cachinnations.

Kundera-like, but no forgetting as the dessert to the laughter.

There's always that little bit of broken glass in the craw, star-broken ,and a bit asteroid-shaped-- a fond captive, rock under the belt, the shoe-- the foot of "sincerity." (lares and penates deliver us . . .).

This, and several other pieces you've offered here, is good stuff.

Do you know Richard Holmes" biographical work on Shelley?

Most amazing, like Guy Davenport's and William Gass's essays, though, is Holmes' two volume "Coleridge."

Just mowed my way through it again this year ( now ending).

You're a strong writer. Leave it at that.

No 'engagement", thank you. I enjoyed this and other orts of yours too much.

Peace in the new year,


Zlatko

p.s. My suspicion has always been that Paul's amanuenses were even more "booring" than he was . . .

[Doreen Peri]

Unfortunately, the poem is above me or beside me or something.

I don't know the definition of many of the words, I can't perceive some of the images and so, I have a tough time with reading it.

I don't know what a gnosher is. I don't know what tische-sprache means. I don't know what a flotilla is. I don't get the reference to the number 182. I'm not sure what the image wilshire flop means. I don't know what kripke is. I don't know what abimael means either.

I know you like to critique others and so therefore won't mind my reply, though it's not at all a critique. It's just an observation from a would-be reader who is trying to grasp the content of your post.

Pardon my ignorance.

I'll be back, maybe, after I peruse the dictionary for a while.

High oh oh Five to you!

[perezoso]

Zlatko: thank you for your interesting comments.

------

"to gnosh" or "to nosh" is biz speak for sort of dining, chatting, networking at the same time, preferably at a kosher eaterie: Jerry's Deli...I think it's from yiddish-german (like gnash?)

tische-sprache: german for "table talk"....also used in yiddish

flotilla? come on, dear...like a group of ships...an armada almost


182? note "blink" in previous line? Blink 182-- a hipster CA rock group..I don't really dig 'em but they are da bomb on the Coast

i'll leave "posh wilshire flop" to your imagination


Saul Kripke is a rather abstruse logician and philosopher of language.

Abimael Guzman??? why he's your friendly Commandante of the Sendero Luminoso ( Shining Path--peruvian maoists). Currently imprisoned on an island off Peru .....

Hoppy Knew Year

[Zlatko Waterman]

Your piece above also recalls Paul Celan's comment:

"Read. Just keep reading. Understanding comes of itself."

It's a bastard to have to sacrifice "academic" employment: i.e., getting paid to read your favorite books, but your tarred brush is doing very good service here, ( your swatch above) in this blackflecked aubade for the yearsend. ( all glissandos intentional . . .)

It ( your piece) also reminds me of John Felstiner's comment that whenever he translated from German, he regretted having to give up so many "k's."

The old kickthedoordown letter.

Yup. Ole Ez knew it too in his apothegm about curiosity being indispensible to Literature, and its absence not responding to the attempts of nonentities ( read academics) to call it into being.


Zlatko

[perezoso]

Grazias, ZlatCo, but the name Doktor Hilarity might need altering, seeing that it is, as you most likely are aware of, too akin to a Tommy P. ( our Pierless Leader) character in COL 49, a book I have spun probably a few too many spins....

Futility as yoo may have surmised is a common enough theme in many of my hanna-barbaric yawps across the hoofpops of the whirled....

what did wasserzimmermann say? I knowed a poe-ette that died in the gutter....

so poet I am knot, though syntactical phuck, with no rue, and my tarts are not laden.....anyewe, my auld lame slime, 2000 fathoms phar my pheather phlyies

[Zlatko Waterman]

The Amazing Peradventures of Zimmer, Man, the In-Hibbing-ted Superhero who acts tersely but with Tact include, in my sad tract-ing, a kind of vortex effect:

Peradventure ( or Benedenture/Loose Plates):

Viz:

Being too damned attracted, your mind ( Mine, alkie-ways!) a handful of Yron (wode) filings, ( or fillings), all Tropical, Mango-neatoed to the work of those you admire.

Celan does it to me, and so does lovey Ron Kitaj.

Resist! Be In Hibbing-ted and cast out the Iblis!

HapOrrinKeepNewsyr, Jazz, Cold Train Em All,


--Z