Snapshots for 17th October 2007

RED TAPES

via Vito Acconci

REVENGE REVENGE   REMORSE REMORSE
REPRESSION REPRESSION   RELIEF RELIEF
RESISTANCE RESISTANCE
Everybody, "Long live the revolution!"
DESPAIR DESPAIR   [Don’t you hear it?]

Turn.  I wanted to say
"a scream wrapped up in itself".
Pile in.  Step on it,
E--the new font,
say that you needed the electricity.  [Say that you crave it.]

Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 10-16-07 (2:47 PM)
Written during my first viewing of Vito Acconci's 141 minute videotape, a bicentennial piece in 3 parts dedicated to Lizzie Borden. Acconci wrote an impressive retrospective analysis of this work specially for John Hanhardt's screening of it at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, but unfortunately the museum didn't include it on their website & barely publicized the series of which it was one installment (also featuring Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, & Gary Hill). At least they acquired "The Red Tapes" for their collection. Vito Acconci received an MFA in creative writing from the U of Iowa, but I first encountered him as an extremely provocative & powerful performance/video/installation artist. His early writing has recently been gathered up, as well as the influential magazine O to 9 which he edited with the poet Bernadette Mayer.
He's had considerable & varied impact on me. But instead of directing you to another text by yours truly via Vito Acconci, you might find David Antin's recent review in Artforum provides a fuller sense of the context for Acconci's early writing: http://www.coldbacon.com/art/artforum/acconci-antin.html

gutter leaves
curb leaves
leaves shards
left braided
across concrete

leaves leaving
branches behind
a kind
of lofty
loss   leaves
empty branches
stark    as
lief to go

Douglas Barber

wind comes
to strip the trees

what was red
& gold is now

sky, clouded,
speckled blue

the cats sleep
all day long

Sharon Brogan

GOOD INTENTIONS

he woke up
with the dawn chorus
rising of the sun
in the calm after the storm
he decided bravely
with good intentions
that there was
no time like the present
take he plunge
put his best foot forward
get things in apple pie order
shoulder to the wheel
turn a new leaf
face trials and tribulations
at this point in time
put his nose to the grindstone
remember the Alamo
take the bull by the horns
use traditional family values
keep the wolf from the door
go the whole hog
have his moment of glory
set the record straight
still waters run deep
start from scratch
win friends and affluence
work like a dog
but it soon turned
into his worst nightmare
a bull in a china shop
as luck would have it
suddenly it was raining
cats and dogs
he had  got out of
the wrong side of the bed
had to turn
his face to the wall
his road paved to hell
scared to death
his senses reeling
pressed his panic button
he realised
it was the same old story
that it was all just
the stuff that
dreams were made of
in the final analysis
to err is human
not to beat about the bush
but inexorably drawn
down in the dumps
he threw in the towel
received  the kiss of death
then was it was all
dead as a doornail
let sleeping dogs lie
nipped in the bud
no guts no glory
but it was just a
simple twist of fate
his bell tolled
and tolled

pmcmanus q152
for Kasper S
certified cliché free
Wednesday, 17 October 2007

The Cherished Thistle

Out the consulting-room window
each visiting child checks
the flourishing thistle towering

from the clay, succulent
vastly-prickled and flowering
between the concrete and the paling fence.

Yesterday it toppled.
Now surely I can root it out and bin it?
No no! rescue it ­ stake it!

With staples, wire and hammer,
and a gloved hand but no stake,
I clamber up, tap tap the staples

(one immediately vanishes
among the lesser weeds)
into the nearest fence-post,

wind the wire, grapple through
thistle-pricks for the main stem,
heaving up the fallen giant

till the wire can round its trunk.
Prickles find me everywhere!
Now the children can look out again,

watch soon the flowers seed - thistledown!
scattering. Our next year's crop
will be immense, and next door's too!

17 October 2007
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria

4+1

outside a white fence
under hard daylight,
an ache in my back

and I stop on the
stairs to look through
three windows:

3 magpies like cats
killed & sent back
as birds      circle

& peck around a wild
apple, fallen to the
road from a hanging tree-

one darts its beak at it &
nudges, darts to grab
nudges  it rolls        feeble

like a shrunken cricket
ball - a crow comes
(flies in from the third

window, up into the first
where I'm watching) &
the magpies flail up

like leaves in a black
wind - apple rolls, stops -
the crow bites, clicks, nudges

traps the apple in the wide
gape of his little sword beak
& steps backward    (all this

happens mutely)      from
the 3 hungers, who stop sometimes
to look around, pick at

pebbles. it's a silent, wrathless
threat and I forget my back
to observe, I'm now

a bird-watcher:
the crow, ingenious
as he is charred,

makes attempts
to cover the apple with a leaf,
with froths of stringy grass,

tries to hide this opal-
fruitlessly. the magpies dance
& look.         then there is a flurry, apple

dropped, loud mouth, and
they're behind
the fence. they've vanished

to negotiate.
I get a painkiller.

when I walk the steps by
again, they're all attacking a trashbag.

Kasper Salonen

in the phonology of the leaf
the leaf is a hidedrum
drumming itself with whispers.

unloosed from a water cycle
water haunts it with an errant love
& a million sticks -
rain is just a prankster cloud
tapping you on the shoulder,
just a leaf's bright ghost playing tricks.

raising the recent dead
into autumn

Kasper Salonen