Wednesday

Collage Poems (1997-2005)



Anne Ross: Egyptian Girl



(January 31) Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (1-31/1/2018).

  1. Jack's Metamorphoses (15/6/97-23/8/98)
    • The Double (23/8/98)
    • I - Elfhame
      • Prologue (19/9/97)
      • True Thomas (28/9/97)
      • Exmoor and Lorna Doone (10/5/81)
      • Early Valentine’s Poem (12/2/90)
    • II - Brussels-Babylon
      • Theseus (12-15/12/97)
      • Minotaur (12-18/12/97)
      • Ariadne (12/12/97-19/2/98)
      • A dark place … (19/8/97)
      • Bruxelles (2/5/81)
    • III - Orpheus in the Bays
      • Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes (17/8-15/10/97)
      • Ritual Dance … (28/10/97)
      • Pronunciation (30/10/97)
      • Orpheus in the Bays (5/8/97-27/2/98)
      • Orpheus in the Bays (15/6/97)
      • Sonnet (22/3/98)
    • History Repeats (23/8/98)
  2. Conversation Pieces (14/9/97-24/9/98)
    • 1 – A One-Way Trip to Palookaville (11-13/7/98)
    • 2 – Erosion (27/11/97-24/9/98)
    • 3 – Waiwera (14/9/97)
    • 4 – Whitianga (1/9/98)
  3. Wharfbury Dogs (21/4/98)
    • I – A NIGHT
    • II – ‘Totem Poles?’ asked the Scoutmaster
    • III – ‘Who’s as willing to to the help result
    • IV – Would you willingly help the Poles?
  4. Evenings in the Blackout (27/10-19/11/98)
    • I - Documentary (27/10-18/11/98)
    • II - Triptych (27/10-18/11/98)
    • III - Home Beach (17-19/11/98)
  5. Dieting. I'm Hungry too (21/12/99-5/5/2000)
    • A Map of Tender Loin (1659)
    • The Scar Dale Diet (4-6/5/2000)
      • Jean Regnault de Segrais (1624-1701): La Carte
      • The Word (21/12/99-10/3/2000)
    • The War Zone(2/4/2000)
    • Diet of Worms (4-5/5/2000)
    • Hop, Skip & Rover (2/2000)
    • The Puzzle Page (24/3-20/4/2000)
    • Viva la vida (11/4/2000)
  6. In the Cave of Henry James (16/6 & 9-28/7/2000)
    • I - In the Cave of Henry James (9-28/7/2000)
    • II - Three, or Two? (9-28/7/2000)
    • III - Causon, causons, mon bon … (9-28/7/2000)
    • IV - What I Brought Back from Safari (16/6 & 9-28/7/2000)
  7. Ancestral Voices (9/88-14/3/01)
    • Metropolis Bronze [2001]
      • [Arch Circle Line] (3/11/00)
      • [as if in an unmade film] (22/1-9/3/01)
      • [Diary entry] (12/2/01)
    • The Memory Theatre of Jack Ross [1986]
      • [We’re only tenants here] (8/7/96-3/3/01)
      • [You are walking …] (9/88-12/9/90)
      • For Louise (15/4-18/7/89-9/3/01)
    • Ojibwa Songs [1991]
      • [Everyone’s fixing] (23/1-27/1/01)
      • The Stalin Ode (25/5/34)
      • [It was grass, once] (12/3/99-12/3/01)
      • Jeremiah 31: xv (10/1-10/3/01)
    • The Poetry of Enlightenment [1996]
      • [Mi chiamo Mimi] (15/2/01-9/3/01)
      • Tranzalpine train (1/2/99-14/3/01)
      • [A bridal veil of rain] (13/2/01)
      • Celebrating Fresh Ideas (30/12/98-14/3/01)
      • [Stench of onions] (27/2/01)
      • [BUS INFORMATION] (4/8/2000)
      • [Diary entry] (8/8/96)
    • Stood up in the London Bar [6/10/2000]
  8. Satan's School for Girls (30/5-26/7/02)
    • I – Freedom is never free (30/5-24/7/02)
    • II – Guilty Verdict for Painter (16/9/00-26/7/02)
    • III – There is beauty in all evil (1/7-24/7/02)
    • IV – Welcome to MASSEY GIRLS (22/6/00-26/7/02)
    • V – Who are the Five? (27/6-24/7/02)
  9. Anamorphoses (22/4-4/10/02)
    • I - “A little blood from you” (10/7-27/9/02)
    • II - The Sacrifice of the Broken Heart (29/7-27/9/02)
    • III - Art of Glass (26-29/9/02)
    • IV - Spirits of the Ice Forest (22/4/02; 7/5/02; 3-4/10/02)
    • V - Waiting for the Werewolf (27-29/9/02)
  10. Postcards (13/11/02-21/5/03)
    • You Are Not Alone In Bed!
    • Dream Transcript (13/11/02 & 20-21/5/03)
    • Rituale Romanum
    • Renfield the Reductionist (4-10/5/03)
    • Tongariro – Rangipo
    • Captain Sensible Braces for Storm (16-17/5/03)
    • For the Thinking Mind (9-10/5/03)
  11. Servants of the Wankh (23/12/02-24/1/03)
    • New Year in Mission Bay (2-8/1/03)
    • Dogs and Flies (25/10/96-23/1/03)
    • Valentine’s Day (10-12/1/03)
    • Klaus Kinski / Krazy Kat (30/10/97-24/1/03)
    • Samsara – Breaking through (10-23/1/03)
    • Punch and Judy (29/10/96-23/1/03)
    • Milford at Year’s End (5-8/1/03)
  12. Suburban Apocalypse (13/6/01-7/11/04)
    • Cabin Fever (9/4-4/5/04)
    • The Drive-by (8/7/03-13/5/04)
    • Oral (1/4-4/5/04)
    • The Accident (13/6/01-13/5/04)
    • Blues (1/4-4/5/04)
    • Black Hundreds (4/7/03-7/11/04)
    • Hitler’s Villa (7-8/4/06)
    • Note on the illustrations (20/5/04)
  13. Days Under Water (27/11/01-24/4/04)
    • Gap Fill (24/1-10/2/04)
    • Serial Kittens (27/11/01-21/2/04)
    • The Proceedings of the Inquisition (19-22/2/04)
  14. Citizens of the People’s Republic of Freaktown (27/11 & 12/12/03-14/3/04)
    • i – Chuckles the firebug
    • ii – I have been a fan for many years
    • iii – Wait in your spring-green pants
    • iv – What is Madeline’s illness caused by?
    • v – The Kentucky jumping spider
    • vi – Do your clubs fit you?
    • vii – The reindeer boy is dancing
  15. Muses (for Joanna Margaret Paul) (11/1-18/2/05; 13/5/05)
    • [Antonio Canova: The Three Graces (1814-17)]
    • Natasha – the Contessa (11/1/05)
    • [Jean-Baptiste Klagmann: The Ross Fountain (1862)]
    • [with David Howard] Three Sisters (after René Char) (9-12/4/04)
    • [Anon.: Beheading of St Barbara (c.1450)]
    • On a telegraph pole (11/1/05)
    • [Dolcett: The Guillotine (2004)]
    • Three Sisters: 1 - in the urn of the second
    • [Micha F. Lindemans: Xolotl: God of Lightning (2004)]
    • The secret of good Guinness (16/1/05)
    • [Anon.: Dream Girl (2004)]
    • Three Sisters: 2 - twosies
    • [Swish Images: Keyhole T-shirt (2004)]
    • Manga (14/1/05)
    • [Anon.: Thai Woman (2004)]
    • Three Sisters: 3 - shoulder your children


Because he liked garbage, he wrote poetry by picking phrases out of the cultural garbage cans – newspapers, sex mags, tv coverage, great poems, everything else – and stringing these phrasings together according to inaudible musical rhythms. … The poet didn’t notice much outside him and he didn’t have opinions.
– Kathy Acker, “Lust: A Sailor’s Slight Identity”
[Eurydice in the Underworld (London: Arcadia Books, 1997) 53-76 (62).]






Libri III

The unconscious has no sense of time, and a fondness for weak puns.
– Kendrick Smithyman, Closing the Chocolate Factory













































(15/6/97-23/8/98)

Publications:

Notes:
  • "The unconscious has no sense of time, and a fondness for weak puns."
    – “Closing the Chocolate Factory:” A reading by Kendrick Smithyman, dir. Margaret Henley, ed. Gregory Bennett – with Peter Simpson and Mac Jackson – (University of Auckland: Centre for Film and Media Studies, 1995).



•












4 - Whitianga


SnobbyAucklandRichy
AssholesSpare aThought 4
Your soul?

I wouldLike toHave a
Fuck atAnyTime

Dogs ShotKeep OutFull Hook-
UpsNow


(11-13/7/98; 27/11/97-24/9/98; 14/9/97; 1/9/98)

Publications:

Notes:
  • Erosion

    So fresh even their next-of-kin haven't been notified.
    – SEALORD Billboard.



•





by K. Wallis Coales
& Jack Ross











(21/4/98)

Publications:

Notes:
  • 'Who's willing to help with the Totem Poles?' asked Mr. Lucas, the Scoutmaster.
    – K. Wallis Coales: The Wharfbury Watch-Dogs: A Scouting Story (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), pp.1 et seq.



•










III – Home Beach


The author was a gay and fashionably-dressed gallant, something over thirty, and apparently one of that class of geniuses who can never do anything till they are goaded to exertion at the last moment.
– Charles Manby Smith, A Working Man’s Way in the World (1853)


Kelp
scratches my skin
with your hands

birds flirt
through the Christmas
trees

Mt Ruapehu’s
hallucinatory green
you wrote

against snow
I hope
she’ll be right

she’ll

you’ll be great


(27/10-18/11/98; 17-19/11/98)

Publications:
  • Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
  • Spin 33 (1999): 50-51.
  • Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
  • JAAM 14 (2000): 49.
  • The Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive. Compiled and edited by Jan Kemp and Jack Ross. Special Collections Dept, Auckland University Library, October 31, 2004.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • Documentary

    Mon. 30 Jan. 1825. Receivd a … Litterary Gazette from somebody in which is a review of an unsuccessful attempt to reach Repulse Bay &c by Captain Lyons … he says ‘Near the grave was a third pile of stones covering the body of a child which was coiled up in the same manner … – I coud not on this occasion view its little nest placed on the breast of Infancy without wishing that I possesed the power of poetically expressing the feelings it excited’
    – The Prose of John Clare, ed. J. W. and Anne Tibble (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970) 133.

    LATER FRAGMENTS (c.1847)

    The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under hedges …
    The flirt of the ground-lark’s wing from the stubbles – how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings when the dew flashes from its brown feathers!
    – The Prose of John Clare, 251.


    I want it always to be night, and always to be winter.
    – Jack Ross, Nights with Giordano Bruno (Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000) [158].


    Flashes of lightning showed hogs feeding on the ungathered dead.
    – The Civil War, dir. Ken Burns, writ. Geoffrey C. Ward – narrated by David McCullough – (USA, 1989)


    “There,” he said, standing back to admire his handiwork. “Now pull up your trousers, my pet.” …
    I was very nervous about being naked there in the bank regardless of how private he said things were.
    He looked at me for a short time, admiring the dark velvet triangle between my legs.
    – Anon., “The Vault” [Internet]


    Reaching back with her pretty right hand, on which our engagement ring sparkled, she gently spread her bottom cheeks apart.
    – Anon., “After Hours” [Internet]

  • Triptych

    Kate couldn’t help it! She wanted to stop but something inside her wouldn’t let her! She knew that resistance was futile.
    – Stephanie Sarg, “Born to Suck” [Internet]


    In August I met a collegue coming for few months from a different branch of our company based in another city. She is a cute girl and we immediately became friends. Her husband was on vacantion because he said ‘I worked all the year as an animal’. We met an evening for a drink and in the some day we started our relationship. …
    – Anon., “Mistress Preferred Job” [Internet]

    HOUSE OR WINDOW FLIES

    These little indoor dwellers, in cottages and halls, were always entertaining to me; … In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family, and so many fairy familiars that we know and treat as one of ourselves.
    – The Prose of John Clare, 251.

  • Home Beach

    The author was a gay and fashionably-dressed gallant …
    – Charles Manby Smith, A Working Man’s Way in the World, quoted by E. F. Bleiler, “Introduction” to Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood, by James Malcom Rymer [or Thomas Peckett Prest], 1847, 2 vols (New York: Dover, 1972) 1: x.



•





For Alexandre Loukine



Sasha, if you read this, get in touch. I lost your address inadvertently in the massive melt-down of my hard-drive which took place over New Year (millennial fever?)
I always meant to return your call, spend a languorous afternoon in some bar overlooking the harbour, sipping interminable glasses of Pernod.
















TCB


Viva la vida

Who can it help?
Count calories
read Gibbon
canter point to point

¡ Viva la via !
¡ Viva la viuda !
¡ Viva Frida !
Gather kelpRead Kant


(21/12/99-10/3/2000; 4-5/5/2000; 25/3-20/4/2000; 11/4/2000)

Publications:
  • brief 16 (2000): 62-69.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • A Map of Tender Loin

    – Jean Regnault de Segrais, Sur la carte du tendre (Paris, 1659)

  • The War Zone

    – C. R. Hooton, Invasion New Zealand 1942 [unpublished typescript] (n.d. [c. 1990]) [24].

  • Viva la vida

    – Viva la Vida! Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism. Wellington: City Gallery (29/1-30/4/2000)



•





















(16/6 & 9/7-28/7/2000)

Publications:
  • brief 18 (2001): 28-35.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • In the Cave of Henry James
    Henry James said he would enjoy [W. D.] Howells’s “zeal and deplore your darkness even more had I not reached a state of final beatitude in which one cares not a fraction of a straw what anyone in the world thinks of one. How they feel for one, yes – or even against one …”
    – Leon Edel, Henry James – The Master: 1901-1916 (New York: Avon Books, 1978): 166.
    The Master’s mind was disintegrating, but it still had its force and logic. On the afternoon of Saturday, December 11 [1915], he called once more for the typewriter… This was his dictation; sometimes Miss Bosanquet missed a word; sometimes there was discontinuity of thought:
    … on this occasion moreover that, having been difficult to keep step … we hear of the march of history, what is remaining to that essence of tragedy, the limp?
    – Edel, The Master, 549-50.
    Has a part of all this wasted passion and squandered time (of the last five years) been simply the precious lesson … of the singular value for a narrative plan too of the (I don’t know what adequately to call it) divine principle of the Scenario?
    – Henry James, notebook entry [February 14, 1895], quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James – The Treacherous Years: 1895-1901 (New York: Avon Books, 1978): 111.
    The substance of his tales … showed a state that he himself called “embarrassment.” These are the tales that are to be found in the volume entitled Embarrassments published early in 1896.
    – Edel, The Treacherous Years, 146.
    Somerset Maugham used to enjoy telling his friends of an alleged attempt by Hugh Walpole to violate the Master, and of James’s passionate recoil – “I can’t, I can’t!”
    – Edel, The Treacherous Years, 316.
    His visit to the Louvre at the Café Anglais …
    – Henry James, The American: The Version of 1877 revised in autograph and typescript for the New York Edition of 1907 – reproduced in facsimile from the original in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, ed. Rodney G. Dennis (London: Scolar Press, 1978) 3.

  • Three, or Two?
    He seemed to know everyone to speak to – an elderly clergyman in a pony carriage, a young man riding. Three nice-looking girls met us, two of fourteen and fifteen, and a little maid of seven or eight who threw herself on H.J. with cooing noises of delight and kissed him repeatedly and effusively, the dogs also bounding up to him.
    – A. C. Benson, quoted in Edel, The Treacherous Years, 247.
    During recent months James had met various Bonaparte descendants … Perhaps some recollection of this caused him to dictate on the next day – December 12 [1915] – the sentence, “The Bonapartes have a kind of bronze distinction that extends to their fingertips and is a great source of charm in the women.” …
    – Edel, The Master, 550.
    Go out and jerk yourself a soda …
    – Annette Bening in Bugsy, dir. Barry Levinson – with Warren Beatty & Ben Kingsley – (USA, 1991).
    push buttons …
    – Ray Gordon, Sex Thief (London: New English Library, 1999) 2.

  • Causons, causons, mon bon …
    In his memoir “Kak ia ne stal poetom” (How I did not become a Poet), V. Kaverin records with outright gratitude his (at the time) painful interview with Mandelstam in the Petrograd House of the Arts. …
    Mandelstam spoke to me sternly, with conviction and passion. There was no room for irony. It was important to him that I stop writing verses …
    – Clarence Brown, Mandelstam (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978) 107.

  • What I Brought Back from Safari
    To Lily Norton he wrote “Isolation she sought and liked, but it was not the right thing for her … don’t pursue solitude, let it pursue you.”
    – Leon Edel, Henry James – The Middle Years: 1882-1895 (New York: Avon Books, 1978) 363.
    He … carried a double size cot on safari to accommodate any windfalls he might receive. He had hunted for a certain clientele, the international, fast, sporting set, where the women did not feel they were getting their money’s worth unless they had shared that cot with the white hunter.
    – Ernest Hemingway, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” in The Collected Stories, ed. James Fenton, Everyman’s Library 187 (London: David Campbell, 1995) 445.



•





Auckland populations rely little if at all on sexual reproduction, but … grow into small replicas of the adult worm, within the parent’s burrow.
– Morton & Miller, The New Zealand Sea-Shore








[AUCKLAND – Monday, 12th February, 2001:]

The invasion starts with the eyes. When you find yourself pecking and rubbing at them, attempting to remove the source of discomfort – look out! Your bondage has begun.
First, the colours go: the intricate shading of a field of grass turns spring-green, as in the BAYLEYS real estate poster. Then go nuances of detail: skin becomes hairy or smooth, tan or cream – no tracery of lines and blemishes. Finally, the horizon lowers to eyes and watch. You find yourself consulting it every second moment, using it as an arbiter for how long things should continue. No time to eat a plum, or throw a frisbee; time to hurry on instead.








For Louise


Worshipping the sun-disk we proceed
Akhetaten
land on the horizon
city of our Lord
Amenhotep’s son and seed

priestesses submit
their Bodies to the Promptings of the Rod
the feral North
packed pellet snow
darkness in the pit

outstretched hand-hooks
of the sun-disk
framed by angled light
this street old times old friends
the films I read old books










Jeremiah 31: xv


For fear the grass should offend thy feet
thou buildest footpaths
(Spent a summer once
constructing wooden bays
for concrete)

Cheers! The polo sports bag
takes its leave
backed up by body
T-shirtdouble-chin
& legs

A voice was heard in Parnell
Rachel
weeping for her children
and would not be comforted
because they are








[AUCKLAND – Thursday, 8th August, 1996:]

Coming up, soon, to the two months’ anniversary of our break-up – or, rather, of Marianne’s unceremonious dumping of me: “Time to pack, Jack;” “Take a walk, dork;” “No time to floss, Ross;” “I’m moving on, John.”
My mind is pullulating with ideas, most of them somewhat unconstructive, I fear (i.e. drowning myself off Mairangi Bay beach; crossing Hobson St a bit too slowly). I recall listening to hours of other people’s break-ups: Ali Lum for one, Bruce & Alison, Lisa & Murray – no-one seems too anxious to reciprocate for me, however.
*

It’s Friday now, & the last class of the week is coming up. Too much more of this job would drive me crazy; I’m halfway there already. On Tuesday I lost my temper & slammed a door & threw something because my afternoon class sat there immobile & wouldn’t help me go and get a chair – or two – or three – for the classroom. Not a great success. I doubt that getting fired would be the best of moves just now.





(9/88-14/3/01)

Publications:
  • brief #33 (2006) – exile and home: 139-48.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • Ancestral voices prophesying war
    – S. T. Coleridge, “Kubla Khan,” in Select Poetry & Prose, ed. Stephen Potter (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1950): 95.

  • Mr Andrew Packard has discovered that Auckland populations rely little if at all on sexual reproduction, but break into a series of tiny vegetative segments, ‘de-differentiated’ so as to lose their visible structure, but containing some of each tissue layer. They grow into small replicas of the adult worm, within the parent’s burrow.
    – John Morton & Michael Miller, The New Zealand Sea-Shore (London & Auckland: Collins, 1968): 503.

  • Metropolis Bronze
    Without a shadow even the self is not real
    – C. G. Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, trans. R. F. C. Hull, 1959 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977): 36.

  • Meda Songs (Ojibwa)
    I have always loved that that I seek. I go into the new green leaf lodge.
    I shall give you a share, my friend.
    …
    I wish to wear this, my father – my friend
    What! my life, my single tree! – we dance around you.
    …
    What are you saying, you mee dá man? This – this is the meda bone.
    My kite’s skin is fluttering
    …
    The Wabeno tree – it dances.
    How rings aloud the drum-stick’s sound.
    …
    Do you understand my drum?
    …
    I am the crow – I am the crow – his skin is my body.
    I wish to go into your lodge – I go into your lodge.
    – Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Conditions, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, vol 1, 1851 [in American Poetry – The 19th Century, Volume 2: Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals, ed. John Hollander (New York: Library of America, 1993): 672-73].

  • The Memory Theatre of Jack Ross
    happiness drained out of him more quickly and completely than out of an unhappy man: an unhappy man is always prepared.
    – Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory, 1940 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962): 37.
    Movement in a memory landscape is always to the right.
    – Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Theatre of Matteo Ricci (London: Faber, 1985): 9.
    The thirteen pillars around the temple [C V G S F B P U A C B P E] stand for the thirteen nations in South America: Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana, Brazil, Paraguay Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.
    The eight pillars in front of it [M B G E H N C P] represent the eight countries in Central America: Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
    The seven pillars in the pond [C J H D P T T] mirror the seven major island-states of the West Indies: Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago.
    The thirteen stepping-stones [S A B S A M G D M S S B G], are the principal islands of the Lesser Antilles: St. Croix, Anguilla, Barbuda, St. Christopher-Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Barbados, and Grenada.
    – Jack Ross, An Elusive Identity: Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day (University of Edinburgh: PhD Thesis, 1990): vol. 2: 224.

  • Metropolis Bronze
    FIRST DAY OF SPRING

    Worshipping the sun-disk I proceed
    (in Edinburgh, everyone does likewise):
    “Akhet-aten – Land on the horizon – City
    of our Lord” … Amen-hotep’s son and seed.

    Meanwhile, in sables, priestesses submit
    ‘their Bodies to the Promptings of the Rod’
    ... the feral North – packed pellet snow
    down-driving. Darkness in the pit.

    So blend them: here the outstretched hand-hooks
    on the sun-disk, framed by angled light,
    remind me of the streets that I’m traversing –
    ... old times old friends the films I read old books ...
    – Jack Ross, “First Day of Spring” (for Louise Armstrong) [15/4-18/7/89].

  • Ojibwa Songs
    We sip cold beer behind closed doors
    And we don’t welcome strangers round here
    – Sharon O’Neill, from her soundtrack to Smash Palace, dir. Roger Donaldson – with Bruno Laurence, Anna Jemison, Greer Robson – (NZ, 1981).

  • Magic Song (Ojibwa)
    I walk about in the night.
    I that walk along – ’tis I

    I hear your mouth.
    You that are a spirit

    Now I come out of the ground,
    I that am a lynx.

    See! I am a lynx;
    Do you like my looks?
    – Schoolcraft, Information, vol. 2, 1852 [in American Poetry – The 19th Century, vol. 2: 676].

  • The Stalin Ode
    We live, not knowing the land beneath us, / our speeches are inaudible ten feet away, / but where there’s enough for half a conversation – / there we remember the Kremlin mountain-man. / His fat fingers are as slimy as worms, / but his words as reliable as forty-pound weights. / His cockroach moustache laughs, / and his leather boot-tops shine.
    Around him presses a pack of thick-skinned bosses, / he toys with the favours of such submen. / One whistles, one meows, another one whimpers, / He alone points at us in thunder. / Tossing off decree after decree like horseshoes – / one in the groin, one in the head, one in the brow, one in the eye. / For him, every killing is – a raspberry / and the Ossetian’s chest is wide.
    – literal version by Jack Ross and Sasha Loukine.
    Mandelstam’s autograph copy of his poem about Stalin, ‘Appended to the record of O. Mandelstam’s interrogation, 25 May 1934, and countersigned by Shivarov.’
    – Vitaly Shentalinsky, The KGB’s Literary Archive, trans. John Crowfoot (London: Harvill Press, 1997): 174.
    Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны …
    – Text from Осип Мандельштам, Сочинения (Екатеринбург: У-Фактория, 2004) 189-90.
    We brave and noble people
    with him we mount through time
    The flourishing heights
    Towards the communistic aim

    Ceaușescu is our example
    By his words and by his deeds
    The country’s bravest man
    and most audacious soul
    – transcribed from We Have Ways of Making You Think, 3 – “The Power of Soap,” written and produced by Laurence Rees (UK, 1992)

  • The Poetry of Enlightenment
    With thanks to the Blackfoot Tribe who adopted me
    – Leslie Fiedler, The Return of the Vanishing American, 1968 (London: Paladin, 1972) 6.
    The Supreme Way is not difficult
    If only you do not pick and choose.
    [Seng Ts’an, “Faith in Mind,” 25]

    The Way is perfect like great space
    [Seng Ts’an, “Faith in Mind,” 25]

    Just extinguish your views.
    [Seng Ts’an, “Faith in Mind,” 26]

    The past is like empty space
    [Niu T’ou Fa Jung, “Song of Mind,” 35]

    Substance itself is empty and obscure.
    [Niu T’ou Fa Jung, “Song of Mind,” 36]

    Stillness without seeing,
    Not moving in a dark room.
    [Niu T’ou Fa Jung, “Song of Mind,” 37]

    Mind is without alienation;
    No need to terminate lust.
    [Niu T’ou Fa Jung, “Song of Mind,” 37]

    Like a blazing fire, useful but dangerous. [Tung Shan Liang Chieh, “Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi,” 75]

    Drink the medicine of correct views.
    Beat the poison-smeared drum.
    [Hung Chih Cheng Chueh, “Silent Illumination,” 83]

    Vexations, burning for eons, turn to ice.
    [Han Shan Te Ch’ing, “On Clear Mind,” 91]
    – Master Sheng-Yen, ed., The Poetry of Enlightenment: Poems by Ancient Ch’an Masters (New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1987).

  • Stood up in the London Bar
    The Count of Lautréamont – a nineteenth-century poet about whom little is known, except that he spent his brief adult life in various hotels in Paris, checking out of his transient existence at the age of 24 – is one of the forgotten presences alive in John Ashbery’s new collection. …
    John Ashbery is currently Professor of Literature at Bard College. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror and has gone on to win innumerable awards, the most recent being the 1992 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
    – John Ashbery, Hotel Lautréamont (Manchester: Carcanet, 1992) [back-cover blurb].
    Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
    Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
    Brüder – überm Sternenzelt
    Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen    .
    – Friedrich Schiller, “An die Freude,” in The Oxford Book of German Verse: From the 12th to the 20th Century, 3rd edition ed. E. L. Stahl (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) 170.



•





(for Olivia Macassey)

I couldn’t live without my phone
but you don’t even have a home – Mel C












(30/5-26/7/02)

Publications:

Notes:
  • Could you ever forgive my self-pity?
    When you've got nothing and you're living on the streets of the city.
    I couldn't live without my phone.
    But you don't even have a home.br />
    – Melanie Chisholm & Richard W. Nowels, Jr.,
    “If That Were Me” (Northern Star, 2000)

  • Freedom is never free
    Logan Cale: Max, the thing about freedom... it's never free.
    – James Cameron, dir. & writ., Dark Angel:
    “Freak Nation” (Series finale), 3 May 2002.

  • Guilty Verdict for Painter
    Guilty Verdict For Painter
    07:24AM Sat Sep 16 2000 NZST

    A man described by his own lawyer as a stupid, pathetic and boasting liar faces a long sentence for rape.
    A High Court jury in Christchurch last night found David James Shephard guilty on eleven of the sixteen charges he faced.
    Shephard was accused of raping three girls after stupefying them with bourbon, cannabis and liquid ecstasy.
    The jury found that he raped two of the girls.
    He has been remanded in custody, and will be sentenced in a fortnight.

  • There is beauty in all evil
    Alison Kingsley: There is beauty in all evil.
    – Arthur A. Ross, writ., Satan’s School for Girls: TV movie,
    dir. Christopher Leitch (USA, 2000).

  • Welcome to MASSEY GIRLS


    MASSEY GIRLS PANTIES
    4 female students who all wear panties
    to lectures, to the gym, whilst masturbating + take photos !!!!!
    Interested in more ???
    Click for details – all for a good cause :):)




    Welcome to
    MASSEY GIRLS PANTIES
    Since 27 May 2000
    Last updated on Thursday 22nd June 2000
    Thursday 22nd June 2000
    We started this venture about a month ago after watching a news item on the tv about the state of our economy. We all joked around suggesting ideas for a business and then one of us came up with this.
    Initially, we thought that it wouldn’t work. But then we sat down with a pen and paper and now you have the MASSEY GIRLS. We made a website and added it to only one search engine. We also asked Scandals if they could link us from their site. They were kind enough to do that. We had a couple of good friends who let us use their PO Box numbers. We then waited for what would happen.
    And this is what happened... we were scattered all over the media nationwide!!!
    Some organisations / individuals have been quoted in the media as saying we are sick and disgusting etc. We never intended to upset anyone, be in the newspapers, radio and tv. We were just trying to earn a few dollars and get ahead in life. We thought of a business idea and we went for gold. (It sure beats working part-time in a supermarket for 6 bucks an hour).
    If anyone has been offended by what we have done – then we apologise sincerely.
    We would like to inform everyone that, as of now, we are no longer selling our underwear. This decision was made (at 6pm tonight) after a majority vote (3-1) that we stop selling immediately because of the media attention and concern by some individuals and organisations.
    We would like to thank the many people who have supported us and we now look forward to enjoying the holidays and spending some of our hard earned dollars.
    THE MASSEY GIRLS

  • Who are the Five?
    Beth Hammersmith [Shannon Doherty]: Who are “The Five”?
    – Christopher Leitch, dir., Satan’s School for Girls (2000)
    .



•





These distorted pictures which, seen through pyramidal, conical or cylindrical mirrors give good pictures, are called Anamorphoses. The drawings are made in very exaggerated perspective …
– Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technical Museum (Bangalore)













(22/4-4/10/02)

Publications:
  • brief 27 (2003): 74-76.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • "A little blood from you"
    … “A serious incident occurred on this flight,” the airline’s general manager told reporters. “One of the deportees on the plane asked to go to the toilet, where he took the laces out of his running shoes. He then came up from behind on our stewardess and tried to strangle her,” he said. “But special police who accompany each flight reacted immediately and prevented any more serious consequences. They subdued the attacker and they landed safely.” The manager added that there were about 60 passengers on the flight. “We don’t really know what was in his head. When she was serving refreshments and asked him what he would like to drink he replied: “A little blood from you.” The flight attendant had bruises on her neck and was still a bit shocked but otherwise relieved.
    – "Shoelace Strangler Subdued on Flight,” Reuters (1/9/02)

  • The Sacrifice of the Broken Heart
    The Black Zodiac: 1 – The First-Born Son; 2 – The Torso; 3 – The Bound Woman; 4 – The Withered Lover; 5 – The Torn Prince; 6 – The Angry Princess; 7 – The Pilgrimess; 8 & 9 – The Great Child & The Dire Mother; 10 – The Hammer; 11 [The sign of Hell’s winter] – The Jackal; 12 – The Juggernaut …
    – The Thir13enth Ghost, directed by Steve Becks, screenplay by Neal Marshall Stevens & Richard d’Ovidio (USA, 2001)

  • Spirits of the Ice Forest
    Ask me about
    helping men
    out of heartbreak
    into hope
    – Furniture Van, Constellation Drive (22/4/02)
    Walking up the stairs, an employee in a green and blue happy T-Rex suit passed him saying, “It’s hotter than a motherfucker in this thing.” “In my day, I took my kids to Hoppyland,” Grant shouted when he got close. “What the hell was that,” Monk asked; sitting down and pouring himself what turned out to be root beer. Grant watched a youth make faces behind a harried employee in a stegosaurus suit with a look of condemnation. “Are you going to jail?” Jakes blurted. “The hearing is tomorrow,” Monk tipped his glass toward her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so rude. But Dexter speaks well of you, and how important it is to get you cleared.” Monk smiled at his mentor, who was purposely looking in another direction. “The great one supposed to make an appearance?” he finally asked. “Not exactly,” Grant hedged.
    – Gary Phillips, Bad Night is Falling (Harpenden, Herts: No Exit, 1999): 135.

  • Waiting for the Werewolf
    DO U KNOW WHO U REALLY ARE?

    E 1 L3 E 1 M3 E 1

    WHERE IS GOD?
    – Graffiti in the Auckland Imax Centre (13/8/02)
    “Are you ready?” he asked her …
    – Morgan St. Michel, Nicole in Captivity (New York: Jove, 1982) 206-8.



•




I have caught
An everlasting cold …
– Webster, The White Devil











(13/11/02-21/5/03)

Publications:
  • brief 29 (2004): 62-65.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • … I have caught / An everlasting cold
    – John Webster, The White Devil; or, Vittoria Corombona (1612): Act V, scene vi.

  • You are not alone in bed
    Be afraid. Be very afraid.
    – Potema Mattress Cleaning Service

  • Rituale Romanum (1631)
    I adjure thee by the Judge of the living and the dead …
    – Fr. Herbert Thurston, Ghosts and Poltergeists (Chicago: Gateway, 1954) 364-65.

  • Renfield the Reductionist
    ‘My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classifcation for him and call him a zoöphagous (life-eating) maniac … He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. … How well the man reasoned; lunatics always do within their own scope. I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. …’
    – Bram Stoker, Dracula. 1897. Edited & Annotated by Raymond McNally & Radu Florescu (New York: Mayflower Books, 1979) 92.

  • Captain Sensible Braces for Storm
    … not quite so parsimonious as he would like us to think …
    – John Armstrong, “Captain Sensible braced for storm.” NZ Herald (2003, May 16) p.A1.
    … purveyor of unfurrowed brows …
    – “Botox Billboard.” NZ Herald (2003, May 16) p.A1.
    … if you’re a little luddite clot …
    – “Tech-tock, tech-tock.” NZ Herald (2003, May 16) p.A3.

  • For the Thinking Mind
    Intellegence Test
    – Creativeprofile.co.nz.



•





(after Jack Vance)

















(23/12/02-24/1/03)

Publications:

Notes:
  • New Year in Mission Bay
    Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
    the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
    When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
    Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
    – Henry F. Lyte, “Abide with Me” (1793-1847)

  • Valentine’s Day
    … as so often happens in histories of cases of hysteria, the trauma that we know of as having occurred in the patient’s past life is insufficient to explain or to determine the particular character of the symptoms …
    – Sigmund Freud, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (‘Dora’) [1905]

  • Klaus Kinski / Krazy Kat
    Ah-h – L’il “ainjil” …
    – Geo. Herriman’s Krazy & Ignatz:– The Komplete Kat Komics, Volume One: 1916 (Forestville, CA; Eclipse Books / Turtle Island Foundation, 1988) 59.

  • Milford at Year’s End
    Kill Manticore …
    – Dark Angel, created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, with Jessica Alba, Michael Weatherly, John Savage (USA, 2001)



•





























(13/6/01-7/11/04)

Publications:
  • Suburban Apocalypse [pamphlet] (May 20, 2004).
  • Suburban Apocalypse [pamphlet] (November 10, 2004).
  • Catalyst 4 (2005): 67-71.
  • “Blues,” in Spin 49 (2005): 60.
  • “Hitler’s Villa,” in Tongue in Your Ear 9 (2006): 60.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • Ve Ve Ve / The Scribe
    – Gilles Quispel, The Secret Book of Revelation: The Last Book of the Bible, trans. Peter Sharples (London: Collins, 1979) 136-41.



•














(27/11/01-24/4/04)

Publications:
  • brief 30 (2004): 88-91.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • Unicursal Hexagram
    – Crowley & Harris, The Book of Thoth, pp. xii et seq. & 273.

  • Gap Fill
    The story’s the same
    Only the names have been changed …
    – Bananarama, “Ain’t No Cure” (Stock / Aitken / Waterman / Dallin, © London Records, 1991)
    Young girls bikini contest …
    – “Ryvav Xemadadun" red-unbearable@mail.com (Friday, February 06, 2004)



•






















(27/11 & 12/12/03-14/3/04)

Publications:
  • brief 31 (2004): 76-79.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • XXI – The Universe
    V – The Hierophant
    VI – The Lovers
    The Caduceus
    – Crowley & Harris, The Book of Thoth, pp. xii et seq. & 273.



•



























(11/1-18/2/05; 13/5/05)

Publications:
  • brief 32 (2005): 95-98.
  • E M O. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008.
  • Collage Poems: 1997-2005. Papyri (2018).

Notes:
  • The Three Sisters

    Mon amour à la robe de phare bleue,
    Je baise la fièvre de ton visage
    Où couche la lumière qui jouit en secret    .
    …
    – René Char, “Les Trois Soeurs,” from Fureur et mystère: Poems 1938-44 (1948), Translated by David Howard & Jack Ross [literal version by Jack Ross; sections i & I drafted by David Howard, revised by Jack Ross; sections II & III by Jack Ross].




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