March’s Top Five Vids

Posted on by Rocco

We have another eclectic mix of videos this month, from middle-aged men prancing in their underwear to Betrand Russell’s advice to the graduating class of the year 3000. Enjoy!
 

Also, atheists, you do not exist!
 

5. I get a sense, from this video, that there are people who actually wear pants in their own homes. Is this really true? Can anyone confirm this?


 

4. Watching this video has been scientifically proven to make you feel awesome for 24 hours.*


 

3. This one goes out to my atheist friends. Consider this a public service announcement that people like Ministry Man do, in fact, exist. Not only that, they also have a large following. Forgive me; while watching this video, there will be much face-palming.


 

2. No doubt you may need a shower after the previous video. I can provide you with the next best thing, an excerpt from a interview with Bertrand Russell, and his answer to the question of what advice he would give to the generation of people a thousand years into the future.


 
 

1. Love him or hate him as a poet, one cannot deny that Irving Layton was one hell of a charismatic speaker. Here he discusses why he moved to Toronto to further his career. The rest of Canada, cover your ears.

 
 
 

*Unfortunately, there have been reports, from some viewers, that immediately twenty-four hours after watching the video, they began to hear the song “Can’t Get You Outta My Head” over and over in their minds, and were unable to remove it for days.

Other People’s Poetry

Posted on by Rocco

 GENESIS

 
by David Day

 

Before Raven there was nothing much
It was quite dark

There was no mountain. There was no earth.
There was no sun or fish. There was
no dog or rainbow. There was no
noisy bird or tree. There
was no wind, stone or
Rain. There was no
people or
bugs.

It was pretty damn quiet
I’m telling you
I was bored

***

Then I did something – which
I’m not going to tell

Anyway, after that
Then there are things

Like the ocean, for instance
Like the earth – etcetera, for instance

And still later, there was
You – that is, humans, for instance

I make lots of other mistakes too
But at least I was not bored anymore

Which is better than nothing
As they say
And I think I know nothing
well enough to say
it also

 

 

As appeared in David Day’s collection, The Animals Within (Penumbra Press). For more information about the author, please click here.

Call to Prayer

Posted on by Rocco

 
A hammer sliding down a clay rooftop,
an old pair of leather shoes scraping over
road dust: the soft torque of breath,
a throat dry as sand, permeate the far wall
of your room with a voice that needs no echo.

Your tile floors are stung with coolness,
and the cry, whose every word is a passage
blazing a Herculean leap, rises from a dozen
hidden rooms around the city. Your sheets
are a blue shroud and the song travels
from district to district from wall to window;
your sun dawns the shadows of water tanks;
the bed is a sundial turning at the centre
of an old stenograph, words crying out as alien
as whale music scratching on your skull.
A horizon of television aerials and satellite dishes
and the relentless mammal lingers there,
its skin above you, the air its bones, the hammer
strokes the slow fury of one who utters God.

 
 

As appeared in the full-length collection, Ten Thousand Miles Between Us, the chapbook collection Leaning into the Mountain (Fooliar Press, 2006) and the literary magazine Prairie Journal (2006, No. 47).

Other People’s Poetry

Posted on by Rocco

by Gerhard Ruhm

 
Flower Piece
for gunter brus

 

the tulip shits on the lawn
the violet farts in the gardener’s hand
the forget-me-not vomits into the tissue paper
the pink sucks on it stem
the orchid masturbates between the lady’s fingers and drips on her sleeve,
the rose stinks of sweat and menstrual blood
the snow drop snots on the flesh tablecloth
the lily pisses in the vase
the hyacinth belches

 

 
Translation from the German by Rosmarie Waldrop