THE MERRY CREAK : POEMS & PIECES, #27, July 21st, 2013

 C. D. BARRON

THE DELPHI METHOD

  The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination
Blake

We may already be there …
imagination breeds us faster than we know …
the hyperdelphi has us streaming over
democratic pebbles to where
clod love and the shekhinah
call to us like ancient birds

The vapours seem so clear now
we lift devices to our ears
& click our fingers faster
to make more frenzy
of the numen-night

But that fellow selling ethylene
bottles it so sweet
with a label reading Real-time …
we willingly take a shot …
for the maban is taciturn
and sleeps in his cave

I can't remember your name
names change so fast these days
i've given up on them ...
now Beulah's moony shades are strangling
where her eyes sprout figs


[5/1/12
 NOTES :
'the delphi method' is a communication system developed in europe mainly in 70's around an idea of forecasting/e-democracy with the emphasis on structure in decision making but with anonymity of participants important (to minimise "bandwagon effect")   - Realtime Delphi is an online project of 100 experts worldwide to forecast breakthroughs in science and technology
Maurizio Bolognini - particularly of interest in this … he was asked to work on delphi method - his installation work partic. interactive v. interesting  - studio
hyperdelphi is Bolognini's website name .. From interactivity to democracy Towards a post-digital generative art   Ethics, Aesthetics & Techno-communication:  The Future of Meaning   (symposium  @ Bibliotheque Nationale de France 2008) MB in manifesto says he's interested in post-digital artistic practices  At the symposium MB quotes NAUM GABO'S Manifesto of Realism (1920)  "Above the tempest of our Weekdays" etc. Public generative art: from interactivity to democracy  (wonder where Stephen Jones is?)
the poem is caught in time warp between what's now and what prophecy was   the prophetic blake   the maban aboriginal wizard   the orig. greek delphi   merge and are available and unavailable  commercialisation/  politicisation   in a way none of it new   and effective?   do we believe in it?   blake hopefully holds it together  (remember his painting of virgil & history @ Tate 2000 …. deep u'standing of history)


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K. J. BISHOP

THE CRONE MEETS HER SON (ON A BATTLEFIELD)

The revolution, this time, was 'to actualise the marvellous'.
   The gunslinger

enlisted, far from sure of his part, for his weapons fired only
   common lead,

not multicoloured lights or waves of kundalini. But he had,
   in his dreams,

dived to the bottom of the ocean and seen the carcass of a
   whale, with hagfish

at it all around like mad sperm around a dead egg, devouring
   the infertile germ,

and felt his private share of responsibility, like a new organ
   in his body, a harmonica,

maybe. He had always been around the edges, among the
   listeners, tapping a foot,

but if he really was a boar leaping out of the sea, he wanted
   to know that furious joy.

There was no commander as such to give orders, so he found
   a place on the left flank

with the giraffes, and an old woman who had a tray of
   buttons and a thermos

of black coffee, infinitely replenishing, which she shared
   around like a suave host.

With gratitude he drank the unsweet brew in the tin cup and
   remembered how, as a boy,

he'd loved the tubes of buttons in the haberdasher's shop,
   like lasting candy,

kaleidoscopes, or magic money for buying magic things
   from magicians.

Perhaps, he mused, that was where his longtime love of
   finery budded in tulip-stripes.

Looking back, said the woman, it's all ravines and tempests.
   You're cold, have my coat,

he said, stripping down to waistcoat and watch-chain. It's
   bulletproof, and keeps the rain out.

Well, I like rain, but thank you, and here, choose some
   buttons, son. The pearl is smart,

but please yourself. Thank you, ma'am, and in the yellow
   dawn he chose plastic sections of Jupiter

and brass wafers for the charity of the poor, and pearl for the
   whale and the egg,

and fake tortoiseshell for the giraffes, and fuchsia velvet
   domes for sex and love

and loaded them in his old shotgun, and grinned like a fox
   sucking shit through a sieve

because that's how it's done, and he followed the old woman,
   who followed no one,

cocking her leg at every pillar, eating out of garbage cans,
   sniffing bums in trousers,

her jubilant howl assuring him this wasn't desertion at all.


[Note : The quote in The Crone Meet Her Son is from Franklin Rosemont's text 'Freedom of the Marvelous' (Catalogue of the World Surrealist Exhibition, 1976); "To overcome the contradiction between these marvellous moments and the everyday, to actualise the Marvelous in everyday life - that is the surrealist project."
First published in Electric Velocopede, 3 13, 2007, ]


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PAUL HARPER

SUBLIME ENCOUNTERS

with the truth of pablo cycling as sky & water produce a mutual
disappearing trick in an accidental marathon with local thespians
pablo turns a sly profit of five dollars thirty pamela fainting pamela
preparing to go home pamela greets her father pamela & lady
devers pablo in a green room with a diva of inscrutable countenance
bus blocked by fire engine bus blocked by fire engine pablo pamela
& the leader of her majesties loyal opposition pablo a rubbish bin
full of snails & a flash of positive thinking pamela loves her ute serenity
pools is quite a promise a mechanism or vat or a head or everyones
with tubes ballooooooooooooons then slowly slowly novel furniture
knitting is scrupulously avoided & lived in shiny rectangles like stand
with babies in front of weatherboard boxes ahead of their time & drove
vehicles with sodden carpets in a shoebox proved surprisingly
problematic & driving daddies nice new car up the fairway proved no
cure for somehow peace happened & had a beer with a celebrity
acquaintance & embraced their inner geek & the season celebrated
with sunshine had a beer with their nemesis & walked home to various
players gradually deflates it earlier still a new housemate test cricket
in the other shoebox receding in the wake of an invisible glacier reveals
eighteen cakes of used soap but rare & unexpected sightings of embroidered
merop & spinifex grass wren we find to be what little we know of the epistle
persuades us two tubs of powdered chemicals a kitchen during a party
a trick knee tiny policeman a single highly polished green apple
& problems with a procedure known only as a drop are in the category
quite likely while overstated seems too weak or carbon group seventeen
seems unaware of the others existence but both believe a symphony
of uncertainty necessary yet somehow problematic with the eyes
of the ruling class fixed on them they did strange things many years ago
amid streams of & mountains in the forest of violins & their incompatible
yet finely articulated theories concerning flight they have an office to run
mail to sort people & things to administer & a seemingly permanent
vacancy next door in a house too ghastly to describe includes a gold
rush re-enactment village the phrase history a drift of pollen the usual
suspects in the hallway & a plastic bucket approaching egg yolk we
expect the mountain with a mouthful of base metals to sail through
with flying colours & with any luck that small room behind the walk
in pantry will remain firmly locked at the derelict science park we fail
to anticipate they wait we wait they leave shoeless in a blue bus


oOo

SLIGHTLY ASYMMETRICAL INDICATES QUALITY

Ten years listening to the rain . Twenty years hard candy .
Eighteen months tying shoe laces . 700 reasons .  A very
good 5 minutes . If you ' re delusional press 7 . [ ] 3 visits
to the thatched hut . The crying room . Mateship with birds .
An insult to puddles . [ Gold stars for breathing . 130 hours
of I told you so . 33 sec [ ] onds of excellence . Pot 8 O ' s .
105 % of the vote . My meta data is clean . 304 [ ] [ ] ways
[ ] to subvert the bourgeoisie & feel sexy . Clive & let Clive .
Four weeks in the chim [ ] ney . 293 fun sexy ways to urge
Capitalism towards a classless utopia . 10 ways to pleas [  e
the urban proletariat . Complete your Five Year Plan [ ] [ ] [
in thirty m [ inutes or less . Why multiverse ? My life as milk
carton . Can you ever have to [ ] [ o many butterflies ? One
unicorn [ ] [ ] [ is five Sistine Chapels . 3 quarks a day . 138
kilowatts of sportiness . Delete [ ] stimming . From yello [ w
to [ ] [ ] [ fuck off . God ' s chosen puppet . The rhythm fish .
Groovin ' the moo . With lard the possibilities are endless . [
Cherry uses her body to fight the Mafia . [ Lisa likes to open
the vortex . [ ] [ ] [ Ok Josephine back into the time machine .
Two ate nine . Irrevocably twen [ ] [ ty seven . Your I - thing .
A 1 . C 620 . Sitting [ ] in Broadcast House in 1 [735 . Sturm
[ ] & dialysis . Show me a s [ ane man & I will cure him . Nine
alpha . A light year of lead . The seve [ ] n forty ones . Let ' s
try to be the biggest [ possible hat . 640 nano metres orange .





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ED MYCUE


LONELY ROAD TO THE SAN FRANCISCO MINT


Seven miles north from the Seven Mile House
Into San Francisco to the Ferry Building while
East a central California valley morning Tule fog
Burned-off into a sun's golden angel rushing over
The clown face remembered as history westering
Above the City and out over the Pacific Ocean's
Far scattered Island kingdoms into the Asian Orient.

But first come back to San Francisco's Bay edge
To those flats where a pony express stopped and
Might have stayed overnight at seven Mile House.
It's still there since 1853 on Bayshore still a lonely
Boulevard at San Francisco's southern end where
Today Brisbane begins at Geneva Avenue. Go north
Seven Miles to the Ferry Building and Mission street.

Then go west up a mile to the Old San Francisco Mint
Where Wells-Fargo stagecoaches changed the payloads
Having first pawed and paused at seven Mile House
Maybe stayed the night, delivered the mail, exchanged
Passengers, fed and watered the hard-pressed horses
Setting-out again into a night or dawn hooves pounding
On that still lonely Bayshore road to San Francisco.

(2013)



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EDITOR'S NOTES
The only contributor not to have appeared in previous issues is K J Bishop. She has two books published; The Etched City (2003), and That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote (2013), from which the poem, The Crone Meets Her Son, is taken. Her web site is,
www.kjbishop.net

Paul Harper's continue to be seen in Rumours magazine; Chris Barron, Phillip Kanlidis read &  write voraciously, like many of us beneath the mainstream radar; Ed Mycue's latest publication is Song of San Francisco : Ten Poems (Spectacular Diseases, UK, 2012). You can see & hear Ed reading on www.youtube.com/watch?v=qal9yS1xch4

oOo

Edited & finally typed by Kris Hemensley on the little Apple this Sunday, 21st July, 2013.