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Sunday, September 23, 2012

video

I started a poem.



 
 the:

deserted carousels, intestines
of video, wide ribboned eyes waiting for
an unravelling,
the spinning
hoo
     la hoo
              ps round&round
the garden like faded teddies memory attempted
to recreate

re
  creation
             al
               playground
to spin the image out&out


I broke this video with a blunt knife.

It bled on the sofa and now it's red.

Collect the drugged eyes of movies
 be
    for
         e they
                 we
                      ave
                           their pictures.

We don't come for the pictures.
Life for memory and ornament,
round&round death cutting straight on its motor-
bike:


 I finished a poem.

5 comments:

  1. Reminds me of a conversation (with the youth, of course, Austin, of course) of which was born a line: You cannot capture motion. It's only still frames, no matter how many how fast, because motion can never be recorded....

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  2. I like the images that you included and that one is more processed than the other, sort of like looking at the picture and then looking at the film negative for that same picture. And I'm kind of intrigued by the occasional gray letters, which make the poem seem to flicker like an old video tape, and if they spell something out I don't have the patience to look for it (but that's just me, because I'm lazy). I liked the beginning and the end of the poem; something about both these images felt very "full circle":

    deserted carousels, intestines
    of video, wide ribboned eyes

    death cutting straight on its motor-
    bike:



    Have you considered back and forth indentation? Going in and then out. Back and forth. Rather than the waterfall cascade.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Thanks to both of you for the comments. The occasional grey letters form the word "recreate". "Death" intentionally has two grey letters inside it. The poem was born from the first line (the last one came suddenly), and it's the carousels I'm most attached to. The pictures of the video are a video I actually destroyed. With a knife. On a red sofa. So the poem is more autobiographical than you'd think. I decided to look into the machinery of what used to be a video of Billy Elliot and now was a lot of grey buzzing. I suddenly saw the deserted carousels (this was also influenced by a carousel accident in the US--I heard about it the previous morning). I will edit towards more 'full circles', as, along with the idea of return, recreation, memory, they're central to what I want this poem to be. I'll definitely play around with the form--thanks for the suggestion.

    Did you like the presence of pictures before and after the poem?

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  5. I did like the pictures.
    I definitely like the circling form idea, circling ideas, round & round like a video. I wondered how autobiographical it was.... figured it was your notebook in the pictures <3
    One thing I really like, the sounds of
    hoo
    la hoo
    ps
    It sounds circular, HOO la HOO ps, and this shangri-la inflection of "la". Whereas the next cascade, the playground, sounds like a skipping video. Which I like too.

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