Friday, August 1, 2014

Michael Basinski, A Visual and Eight Poems







We can’t forget (but we do, sometimes) that (whatever this means) one of the media we work in is language—whether we’re thinking of sound, of printed matter, of performance. It’s specially interesting to think about the massage of this medium—that is, touching and being touched by it—when the various resistances of language are brought to the front. Mike Basinski clearly likes to get his hands (and mind? and tongue?) dirty, as he variously squeezes, chokes, smacks around, pets, and tickles his materials, graphic, phonological, semantic, syntactic. Freud said that play is the work of the child, and it begins with some object that we can’t keep and can’t let go of—and thus the work turns into works. (JM)



















































     Trailer Endings

ol love
will not turn to you
on Wednesday

the headlights wont come off
handcuffed to cup
insert takes
singly cut cop

her one tuber
purple
not prune hard

a robin hands up
off the robin blue egg cup
yanking at the grassy
worm dick Jesus

up those of
a slipper
in pur with crimson
blotch
         very
strong scented Sleipnir
or pineapple and
knots
I forget

forgot about Ishtar
dishwater
soft hungover pig
now dance the
jackoff jig

shrub rib






    Rerun of Some Trailer Endings


dirty white
heart-shaped ship slip climb up her leg
irregularity
too ripe the shade
maid

wash rather
lather the
branching heads
dishes washed
the wash he washed
her delicate
monkey puzzles

sometimes
I don’t understand
what you are saying
as if it wernt
everyday vigorous hoop
a poetry in Rihanna's dress

tubes tied






     Moo V Trailer Endings


deciduous fire hydrant
coldsore or
small tree beer
Iroquois in Buffalo bees is
bumble bum bum
Bumble Bee tuna
I love Bumble Bee
best kept a night negligee nightingale Niagara secret
jar china white pink in cream
shades of lilac lipstick whipped
it is important Severn
to take out old heads
as soon as I die
among the slivers
infected and oily
as a slumbering ghost
the pie is o poem
the birds sang opo
andsangandsang
for the funeral of dawn announced
to the divine tavern keeper
Siduri. she said, “You will not live forever,
wove, a mountain of vines
who causes thieves
to burn to burn
the oral grapes
to burn ripe
trouble birds
at the burning dawn
of bakeries
wreck wrung
belteen,
who wore a thin ceiling fans
in so many words
viaduct, Sanka, fig wasp,
in the sea seed
sesame
rolls open o poem to the accompaniment of music
rejoicerejoyce
return toast wilt
blossom blouse
to your toes
your burn”






     Trailer EndDings: What’s a SASE?


for the poet
each is the last day
maybe
you just sent some poems to
The Parish Review
and Jacket 2 too

poetry!
I could have kicked myself in the ass






     Trailer Endings


as meteorologist of the poets
Autumn Lewandowski has noted:
“We have setting skies”

or up ever red
red small in up
to in across fruit
dark red perish
red heavy close
after all a small
early often
oven which
rarely
forms

lowewer up to
low upper
about
fufts small
but clusters
gnome
toothed striped
mon naughty
harmony

deep yellow
ripening fete
but bulb
smooth blue
blue star
large blue
seed red
open in baked
are other red

has six stamens
all the king’s horses

constant coe nymph
pyramidal
in with a
influffy thumb

thicket of sockers
see see
white sails
cherry red
two lipped spider
and is in that both

a wall ir yo ti
yellow centre
fruit glubose yellow
hard Astarte ije
with beneath
bell singly
on short beautiful
wet by a bad
fading

that she drowned
without a gown
sneeze weed
Asia araia all
ito in or obo
in wold
but much less in
cult in
pendulous rub






    Little Eye Yellow Lies


cutting appear less
in bed china
China in a

Alilac lie of flowers
foulers conjoined
howler monkeys
in the precinct of night pervfewm
bobby
my sin in your pins
heart and mine
pinned to wings cut          a cut
                          Cut!
sounds
                          produced
                          reproduced by
                          connected insects
current
jelly snap thee wings in cup
freight by a thin
rim of her train
white robe rob
robbed apressed whose his name where
arrested
charged of his skin
cut off his fingers
cut off from civilization
will remain as a memory
while spying his rosary
red red red red
red red roses ghost
red red red red
and then ghosts
hard






Refrain Most of the Time I Can’t Understand What
You’re Saying But I like to Listen


touch a time         lettuce
once
summum mim
some nood moon wedding
cutting
unwutered
under water
night disguessed pantails
cup
luxury thing
cuticular
membrane
Mimer’s well of
foam white
froth dance
frosting blue
sea thieving frosting on
thriving doughnuts
tympanic
panic parade police car
blue type
trumpet blue in
a restricted blue
blue






Michael Basinski is the Curator of the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo. He performs his work as a solo poet and in ensemble with BuffFluxus. Among his recent books of poetry are Piglittuce (Propolis Press - 2013), Learning Poem About Learning About Being A Poet (Press Board Press - 2012) and Trailers (BlazeVox - 2011). His poems and other works have appeared in many magazines including DandelionBoxKiteAntennaeOpen LetterDeluxe Rubber Chicken, First Offense, Terrible Work, Kenning, Lungfull, Tinfish, Score, Unarmed, Rampike, House Organ, Ferrum Wheel, End Note, Ur Vox, Damn the Caesars, Pilot, 1913, Filling Station, fhole, Public Illumination, Eccolinguistics, Western Humanities Review, Big Bridge, Mimeo Mimeo, Nerve Lantern, Vanitas, Talisman, Yellow Field, Staging Ground, and Poetry. Recent visual opems (yes, opems) located in: www.wordforword.info.








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