Embedded Files
She Tends Words
or
A Noctivagation through a Nether Edge Garden
Camouflagedfoliage
Skyjuice
Backchat
Haggaback
Fatlipped
Fumb/rin
Ferreting
Cyanosed
Hissling
SUNbalanced
Oceanscenting
Dreamdrip-backdrop
TrembL
Hhhrt
Sp/l/it
Hellbender
Delico
Sunbled
Maggoty
Umbras
Emberglow
Grape-quash
Shushnow
Angrr
Wind-butted
Buttercross
Sinlovers
Berry-reds
Mal
Selfbent
Neck-a-neck
Flexiwings
Daffy-mads
Stumb
Throbbity
Slowth
Skirl
Hummock
Devildiscos
Tib
Cravedaze
Inturn
Gun-games
Mist-loops
Seggy
Withershins
Pin-winkled
Big-boned
Do-dah-lah-di
Nametakers
Speechutter
Upslung
Flickt
Godglitz
Jazerant
Breeze-blocked
Klink-glass
Flitter
Faux-mad
Cheeky-chops
Curdled
Lukad
Finglan’
Lamp-leaning
Strangesobs
Purpureal
Natter-flack
Convolvulaceous
Chantcasters
Succoured
Drunk on White Noise and Red Pessimism
Switch off the seminar music
Do not let children play with American superstitions
Sing for a dog in a mirror of eyes poor school
Stock houses and empire deserts with all you can eat piano bars
Lunge langue urge to understandable marionettes as unpretentious as glanced meteorites
Put it in a vat of home wired misanthropy
Do not overlook the grumpiness of broken blues chords receiving life affirming graver evils
Predict specific subhuman sub-genres of acoustic instruments
Simplify the bleak and bereft sheer frost of this putative taste boundary
Peel a slew of heretofores of births and rebirths fatally unreadable and terminally unpublishable
Emulate immaculate bulk and mountainous undergrounds
Snip the ego off the syncopated kick drum
Rather than merely hear a tear drop, stake a patch of parched land available for download
Trouble aesthetics with flight and pursuit
Avoid blurring fusing flecks and flickering particles
Stir dots with curls and calligraphic gestures rather than yearning arpeggios
Walk just one street away from the obstreperous clusters verging on psychedelia old and new
Engage in slow slurry conversations on an ankle or the like
Grope at a man-made mandarin movie
Broadcast limited tender buttons, rising stains and whirling dervishes
Except in close-minded silence and stoic crafts, pluck plot turns from the famous using small sombre sounds
Poignantly drizzle the unacceptable once upon a time share
Package gold and green boredoms
After a string of buoyant disquieting settings cash in two black gloves for arcane chansons
Let’s just not say that relentless vocalising underneath muted brass protocols caused brooding sentient beings
Now see it now don’t
After three days of diffusion reverb distortion and delay “Float My Childhood on Rural Norfolk”
When a Palestinian pianist persuades a wave of buoying congas breathe more freely
Never impose chimes on nocturnal creatures
Mangle the plain truth
Scatter squeaks of alluring numerals
Gaze straight into the sheaves of concrete poetry falling back on weak cucumber humour
Whether or not the Quack Quack Gallery exhibits its boisterous ebb flow and haphazard plonking unsettle digital debris
Sample road drills coffee grinders and acoustic computers with pinprick focus on a brass outburst
Under another name hack and saw at rickshaw spokes
Work in gargantuan yard sounds
Beware of mumbled utterances that rhyme with “it’s a rich metaphor for the inner landscape”
Wander on a docked ship or an elongated drum sculpture
Unless a plum job comes up perch between smeared frenzies and unrest
Stock up on delicate dialectics or twist and shout
Watch out for saxophonists with hair on the wrong objects
Settle for vulgar sensationalism or the rough and righteous but pay no more than ten lacquered pieces
Only flinch if perfect and polite
Wink at the soulless meld of the bleakest moments when the darkest thoughts descend
When twice the age of a mental fiddler spare the scratchings or rattle the box
Gurgle on the doom laden
With race now based in Southern Italy bolt on Chinese boxes
After a boppish turn of phrase jab the caps button
Sitting at a forlorn piano burble away and call it impressionistic audio collage taken to transcendental aesthetic edginess
If the dialogue becomes exquisitely subdued call out “Adieu les jours”
As soon as the bucolic chirrups glimpse through the heaving and excitable crowd don’t hear the notes
Strum erratic junk culture
Reflect that Australian flavour and pack up your samples in your old kit bag
Careening around a small stage display shamanic multiphonics
Capsize the sound of big ugly orthodoxies
Hotly debate a drizzly grey day of composers drunk on white noise and red pessimism
[John Havelda's poems have appeared in magazines such as Chain, danDelion, West Coast Line, Open Letter and Oficina de Poesia. He is the co-editor and translator of the anthology pullllllllllllllllllllllllll: Poesia Contemporânea do Canadá. His publications include mor, a bilingual book of texts and visual work, Unparalled Candour, and Know Your Place, a collaboration Fred Wah. He also writes for the theatre. Os Considerados, a play on cd, was published by the Teatro Nacional de São João in Porto. He lives in Lisbon and teaches creative writing at the University of Coimbra.]
Copyright © 2022 by John Havelda, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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