2009 July « gingatao

100,000 Questions

Pop! Fizz and champagne bubble, glug glug out of the bottle, Valentino Rossi style.
100,000 times some poor soul has ended up here, either lost or in search of some strange solace, comfort round the campfire, only to find themselves enmeshed in my wicked scheme, haha.

It does make me happy. I know it doesn’t mean I am a great poet, just that I have stayed in one place long enough. I know it doesn’t mean I am a good person, just that I am a clever pusher of buttons. I know what I am doing, believe it or not.

And so, for all 100,000 individual page views, each one of which was a genuine question and fascination to me, I say to you strangely wondrous and wonderful humans (and the occasional bot) I am having so much fun! Thankyou!

100,000 fallings down into bottomless wordwhole whirlpools pursued by irate platypi,
100,000 chasings round midsummer maypoles giggling redcheeked peasant girls
100,000 scratchings of bonces pondering hmm, whyfore that one this way comes
100,000 why hello, have you heard of redemption through hugging?

Why humans like to read poetry

July 28, 2009 at 6:59 am | Posted in poetry, writing | 21 Comments
Tags: craft, poetry, writing

This post by Stu Hatton, asking why humans like to read poetry set me to to thinking. The quote from Philip Mead that Stu uses in his post suggests that we are attracted to complexity and I agree that whenever a human sees a question, they will attempt to answer it. Curiosity has evolutionary benefits. But I think there is more to it than that.

I started thinking about why humans like to listen to music, I’m sure if you could answer that you would find part of the answer to the poem question. There is the pleasure of extinguishing the self through meditation in music and our first memory being the rhythmic sound of our mother’s heartbeat, the drive to organise the chaos of unfiltered perception and our strange obsession with beauty. All of these can be found in both music and poetry.

And then there is our childish joy in being astonished. Surprised. Delighted. If you could explain why humans like to watch stage magic, you will have gone a long way to explaining why we like to read poetry.

Here is Penn and Teller explaining the seven techniques of poetry in motion.

Palm. Ditch. Steal. Load. Simulation. Misdirection. Switch.
Now, Squires. Explain why the techniques of stage magic are identical to the techniques of poetry. One at a time. (coming soon, unless someone else wants to have a bash at it (insert link))

The pianoplayer remembers be-bop

July 24, 2009 at 8:21 pm | Posted in contemporary poetry, poetry, writing | 14 Comments
Tags: contemporary poetry, poetry, writing

It was Goebbels, whenever I hear the word Kulcher
I reach for my

first table – his generic accent chatter pockets full
of documents, crowded uncool, sniffing
tucking tail under, her rectangular spectacles
and crab-like advantage

(passing silk drift, where’s F.? passed)

haircut cool proof of cleverness through criticism

if I needed patronage I’ld have a tip jar
left hand left hand right!

salt fish and absynthe slaps my back
le-left, the old man, his hat?
be bopping
on a flat plastic sea
like a cruise ship crew

F. she says Scott Joplining by
leave the piano player alone
he’s concentrating
on day dreaming

“What do I care for any crews,
Carriers of English cotton and Flemish grain!
Bargemen and all that rubbish left behind,
the waters let me go my own way.”
Arthur Rimbaud

I have spent my life on stones

July 22, 2009 at 6:46 pm | Posted in writing | 23 Comments
Tags: love, writing

(“What would motivate a man who has been through literal hell, who has lost badly in the romance game and decided long ago he won’t play again–what would make this man decide to love a woman?” Sharon Gerlich)

I’m not sure that you need a motivation to fall in love, as though it were a choice. I think it just happens. When I was younger, I experienced love as gratitude. Gratitude for the sex, yes, but also for the comfort and the momentary release from the otherwise constant feelings of inadequacy which modern life produces and reinforces in a man. But my objectives in life were all about myself and my own success. Love was an escape and a relief.

Now I am older and I have discovered that all the great goals of my life, money, fame, respect, were all as ephemeral as dust. Everything I wanted for myself became meaningless as soon as at it was in my hands and life was a permanently incomplete chain of ambitions. Until I fell in love again.

By providing a purpose outside of myself, my love for her gives meaning to both the struggle and the attainments. Without her my life would still be a jumble of stones and digging of holes. With her I am constructing castles and developing gardens. In giving my effort to her, I retain it. My strengths are given purpose and my weaknesses have reasons and I look to her as others look to God, as the only available redemption.

(Prayer)

grau de sandice

July 20, 2009 at 7:10 pm | Posted in poetry, writing | 10 Comments
Tags: poetry, writing

mojo bags, botanical obscurities
honey, corn and cowrie shells
topped with scented candles,
grinning incantations deep within
the dank basement the lonesome ships
hold tight, ships hold, rollicking
basement -song burst…slap him around and call him Suzie
what shall we do with
set him on fire until he’s roasted-
planets not all liquid yet and y’aint
no ancient seaman hearing this
impressed from gin dank slums
and swiftly cast a’spell here in this

Suspended in the upper air
the seasprayed decks wet with
salt wave overruns tears washbuckle down son
switch it done and under dig
nineteen twenty twenty one
coins of copper
bone ash from seven hung men dripping
lillies, grapes and lace kercheif
sails might a swell be sheets
lace kerchief dropped fluttering down
and drowning til her storms past
and the seas shes sheet glass
the only motion droplet gulls
crowning the softest surface swell

(This piece has been podcasted here)

Happy Birthday Hunter S. Thompson

July 18, 2009 at 9:21 am | Posted in blogging | 14 Comments
Tags: don't ask me who F. is anymore, Hunter S Thompson

Hunter was a writer worth loving for many reasons. He understood that journalistic objectivity was a fraud, that everything is propoganda. And he loved whiskey and guns.
Very few writers admit to liking guns these days. William S. Burroughs also loved guns. Arthur Rimbaud himself became a gunrunner in Africa. If you know any other gun-loving writers, let me know in the comment box.

There’s lots of other things I could rewrite about Hunter S Thompson to pretend I’m cleverer than you but you can google him if you’re interested. Let’s just say that when it came to self-mythologising, there weren’t many better. (Oh and if you’re a friend of mine and occasionally tire of my bombardment by email, did you know Hunter wrote over 20,000 letters to friends?)

So crack open that bottle, pop a few little purple pills, load up that big double barrelled shottie and don’t forget your sunglasses. Let’s hear it for the late great, I want my body blown out of a huge fucking cannon when I die too, Hunter S Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) Happy Birthday, Duke!

“It never got wierd enough for me.” Hunter S. Thompson.

“They glow unbearably bright”

July 14, 2009 at 10:07 pm | Posted in writing | 12 Comments
Tags: writing, writing with soundtrack

“When there is nothing left to burn, set fire to yourself.” Graham Nunn

Haiku-schmaiku he said hic and stood up from the computer. Hit it boys, stepping over the dog on his way to the kitchen to refill his glass. Pointillism and limousines, just as an image perfect formed and complete opened in his mind like modus ponens is the principle by which the scientist distinguishes herself from the alchemist as the whiskey scent chased the words away, brushes past the stereo, “Have you ever had the feeling… The old three-legged dog looks up about to interject, if p then q, p, therefore, but thinks better of it just as the colour shaped in motion like the proposition which underlies all logic with neither words nor petals dissolves. It describes linear causality like this, not unlike the scent of a child laughing and he sat back down and started typing, threecard dissappears chuckling into the
limo, hit it boys that
one
you know podus monens, the talisman of those who place their faith in reason
just as those who are afraid to fly
place their faith in gravity.

Outside the open window the ancient fig tree grumbles, shakes her leaves and sighs, just as three card slips into the limo, hit it boys, that one, excuse me while I