The wrathful East of smoke and iron
Crowded in a broken crown;
The Archer of the Jersey mire
Naked in a rusty gown;
Railroad creeping toward the fire
Where the carnal sun goes down.Apollo’s shining chariot’s shadow
Shudders in the mortal bourn;
Amber shores upon the meadow
Where Phaëthon falls forlorn
Fade in somber chiaroscuro,
Phantoms of the burning morn.Westward to the world’s blind gaze,
In funeral of raining cloud,
The motionles cold Heavens blaze,
BOrn out of a dying crowd;
Daybreak in the end of days,
Bloody light beneath the shroud.In vault dominion of the night
The hosts of prophecy convene,
Till, empire of the lark alight,
Their bodies waken as we dream,
And put our raiment on, and bright
Crown, still haloed though unseen.Under the earth there is an eye
Open in a sightless cave,
And the skull in Eternity
Bares indifference to the grave:
Earth turns, and the day must die,
And the sea accepts the wave.My bones are carried on the train
Westward where the sun has gone;
Night has darkened in the rain,
And the rainbow day is done;
Cities age upon the plain
And smoke rolls upward out of stone.
Ode to the Setting Sun by Allen Ginsberg
The Jersy Marshes in rain, November evening, seen from Susqehanna Railroad. New York–patterson, November 1949-1950
Because it’s 2:30 on Christmas morning and I’m not yet tired enough to go to bed. Following my oral surgery and all the happy meds that came along with it, I’ve slept through the vast majority of the last two days. Thus, I am absurdly well-rested and don’t plan on even attempting to get any sleep for at least another hour. I just wouldn’t work.
Strange how the significance of things changes for you as years fly by. As a little kid Christmas was for me, as I suppose it was for millions of other kids, the single day around wich the rest of the year revolved. In the end it didn’t even matter what presents you got – only that you got presents. It’s just the concept of getting cool shit for free that excites kids much of the time, I believe.
But now, what is Christmas to me? You’re guess is as good as mine, at least this time around. Get back to me in five years or so. I should have a better idea then.
Right now The Chilling Effect by Pelican City is perfect. As well it should be, having taken me 4 or so years to finally get a copy. Thank God for second pressings.
Once again I’m getting the feeling, nay, conviction that creative, genuinely cool people gravitate towards one another with some kind of unopposable force that only the hipsters can dig, the indie kids can roll with, and the truly mad can find peace with. There’s a vibe, some kind of frenzied energy that runs in strings, corroding souls like free radicals and connecting people in ways they can never fully understand but they cannot function without. To most people, this is an alien concept. This energy does not flow through or anywhere near them. It connects them to nobody and nobody to them. But the people who’ve felt it know it. They are more than aware of this interpersonal/intrapersonal resonance.
To some, this thing I’mm imprecisely rambling about must be something akin to phlogiston. That is, preposterous at best. And call me crazy if you must, but I believe in it 100%. One might explain it in such simple terms as common interests bringing people together, and in fact I’m sure that’s part of the bigger picture, but I’m also sure that it’s much more than that. It’s something that runs perpendicular to generations – running through them, picking out a few individuals at a time, and always rushing towards the future at such a speed that you would think it would burn out and destroy itself. But it doesn’t. I see the signs of this manic vibration in people like Kerouac, Ginsberg, Edgar Allen Poe, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Trent Reznor, Langston Huges, etc ad infinitum. It permeated the beat generation – and I maintain that the beat generation continues to this day. It created a haze in the air around Andy Warhol and his Factory. It echoes in Sonic Youth.
And I’ve felt this vibe, this thing, this random permutation of energy that has the potential to drive an individual to madness or beauty or quite possibly both. Not that I’m about to put myself in a class approaching that of the aforementioned individuals. Far from it. But I’ve felt it in myself and among some of my peers. And I cannot help but dig this crazy gone feeling that something amazing is going to happen. And when it does…
And there’s always the definite possibility I’ve just been reading too much. But probably not.
And when I think of my life so far and the hint of things to come, all the madness and all the confusion and all the happiness I can never quite hold on to, ultimately I find that there’s nothing wrong with playing a 53-card deck.
guillaume appollinaire is dead by Tristan Tzara:
He fell like the feverish “Rain” that he had so carefully composed for a Paris magazine. Will the trains, the dreadnoughts, the variety theatres and the factories raise the wind of mourning for the most enduring, the most alert, the most enthusiastic of French poets? The fog isn’t enough, nor is the tumult and the shouting. His season should have been the joy of victory, of our victory, that of the new men working in essential darkness, shaping the essential Logos. He knew the mechanism of the stars, the exact proportion of turmoil and discretion.
His spirit was a gallop of clarity, and the hail of fresh words, the escort of their crystalline kernels, were the angels.
He’ll met Henri Rousseau.
Is Apollinaire dead?
