Assart into the 60s

60

In the next letter I did it
in my own hand
afterwards wee maye not speke
lyke wee oughte
in the sixteenth century on her hard bed
who after sunset fadeth like american ted.
They both are killing me
with 14 inches
I drove him away with ron & rod.
Ladies dead & lovely knights so long
I didn't win either
not with the lines
then we got into her hard bed together
like a brick or a broomstick whatever

Assarts are getting better

59

If you liked my photo
sorry if I'm wrong
now I write my first letter
the quiet young purposeful girl.
Once upon a time hello!
I have considered your structure.
It is awfully clean.
I like to read books &
go in for sports basically gymnastics.
It is awfully clean.
I come short and enormous not correctly.
Are glances our glances.
A man is that simple.
Dear. I look at a sundown. Good day.


58

I loved to you mike oldfield
one side of tubular bells
I moved away
to avoid the - unintelligible lyrical utterances –
of the other.
There goes my solo career.
I am nearly finished with
the sonnets of the 70s.
The ****** ***** reading group
fell apart it was the difficult
second album the whole thing it was
difficult to begin to you
again my lady it was the 1970s
do you have she's got everything by the kinks?

Assarts are getting worse

57

Thus the knights are not in
during the day they run off commerce
well met in HMV
you circa 1973
me humming tubular bells
you are not as good as doug jones
or my GCE in swan control
during the night
the british resistance organisation
take over the country
officer this is not a guide to covent garden
thus the knights take over covent garden
there's one he plays the grand piano
on side one side two is rubbish

Autumn Assart

56

king stephen or stephen king
in the assarts it doesn't
matter which no
he was the worst bond my lord
& the merchants laughed
ending in a banquet his
archiepiscopal hands
& the merchants laughed
at my new english library
I should a looked at the dates & at
the smoothy girls
I should a ran across a lady
I dorothy davis please rush to me
fighting men of the west

assart f-fifty five

55

but I want a pool
I will invite king stephen he's the one
in the castle now
he's in the pool.
During the day king stephen dominates the pool.
He allows his archers in
they spoil the high middle ages
with their flu-flu arrows
& water bombs.
I could a been a archer
in the deep end I forgot to shout
the pools unfinished the labourers left
with the watershed king stephen with
his royal fucking hands.

Addendum to last post - John O Thompson

Because of the primitive nature of my blog, John O Thompson was erased from the last post. Here he is on his own.

Xing the Line Open Mike Reading 03/09/09

Hearers 1

Hearers 2

Johan de Wit

Peter Philpott

Harry Gilonis

Tim Atkins

Luke Roberts

Frances Presley

Sean Bonney

Trini Decombe

Sophie Robinson

Rachel Lehrman

Philip Terry

Gavin Selerie

mjb

Steve Willey

Posie Rider & accomplice

Assart written listening to Current 93's Earth Covers Earth but which luckily sounds nothing like it

54

English ladies crying alas
nothing is so lovely in the countryside
as emily running through the moat.
It's not her castle
that failed some castles are just fat!
No way she is roaring ha ha ha to
major changes like the invention of
the new forest & the romance of the rose.
Alas I am inclosed
in a large nucleated midlands village
writing the tragedy of the commons
it's for sale to others
others also crying
you can put your wall there or your pool.

assart whatever

53

Not you again jeremy irons
look at my lady swimming
through the awkwardly-contriv'd opening
the british actor jeremy irons
is trying on her false hair
I'm the french lieutenants woman
no I'm the french lieutenants woman
no I'm the french lieutenants woman
etc etc I don't know how
many times I curtsey'd
he's not even the fucking king.
Love died between me & the army.
In her long loose sleeves he drown'd
displaying all the elegants of sound.

Previous Assart for the Perseids

18

He didn’t finish off my head
it's orbiting the earth.
Me & my friend singing in the gegenschein
it was so hot I forgot to shower up.
Try not to be a head on any clear night
faster than pitiful thrivers.
Objects come from the canopy & into men’s eyes.
It's probably something low as a mag
& just everyone’s milky way
when a shower is active.
Anyone watching instead you need to star who,
heads which are bright,
tails which are dark,
the best part is jets 3 & 5.

Xing the Line pics - readers + a somewhat bedraggled Laurie Duggan in great t-shirt

Johan de Wit

Alan Hay

Nat Raha

Laurie Duggan

Dog Day Assart

52

I thought I caught my ladylove not
far away not
now my ladylove
touch-me-not in shady places attenborough
in the dunes
with small alison I'm
in the dunes again
to escape the annual report
of the district field club and naturalists union
nothing for you here attenborough
away from the pavements
where late my lady sang
about the difference between
unh-hunh unh-hunh & unh-hunh unh-hunh unh-hunh

The Collars of Johan de Wit - no.4 (incorporating GBBF)

a fifty-first assart

51

Farmers on acid farmers on oldfashioned fours.
They can hardly be good king henry.
In the long grass his heart
shaped head is wide spread.
Half of england ride in anglias.
On the roadside your downy hips above you
so undaisylike your ladylove
my pale mauve lip follows a wet spring.
I'm a man orchid
in kent I turned
back again to make my lip look round.
5 new guys want to hang out
spreading white male cum locally.
The anglias in the compound.

50th Assart!

50

Hey we're still 'in' In the Assarts!
Not 'The' Assarts or 'From' the Assarts -
In the Assarts!
I'm always 'reading it out loud' at readings.
It’s a romance.
I wish a maiden was reading it.
This is 'the fiftieth poem!'
They're fake medieval poems
but 'realer' than
The Reality Street Book of Sonnets.
I stole that line from
a student's poem it 'mentioned
cocks' too but modern
ones like the ones in this ________ room.

Assart XLIX

49

Look at my library it's in latin
I made it of flowers
to hold up the structure
o. reclinata!
unlike goldilocks I never was the same again.
Who's been sleeping in my library
I made it of wattle-&-daub.
Look at my anthologies
there's frank kermode the pervert
there goes my library
o. reticulata!
I draw cocks in books
frank kermode's cock obviously
it was smaller than the pantry!

The Collars of Johan de Wit - no. 3

assart w/ clothes

48

It happened I just
broke my axe I was
in your wardrobe in
summer pumps or mock croc peepers
(I go with anything
like I forgot I
Don't look closely at my
boy friend!
who ever loved thy property)
I was making one of those ready-to-wear dresses,
a little bit different,
one of those ready-to-wear dresses looks good
over an awesome cami,
& I broke my axe.

rainy day assart no 47

47

The ladies-in-waiting overnight
in the best early modern hotels.
I'm checking out
your lovely fucking mistresses
they say no to it later
I don't know what to do the
ladies-in-waiting are feeding busily at the minibar
the ladies-in-waiting youtube if they want to.
O mistress thou art all behind
I want a partybag to perish in
& open emails from my polish wives.
"Write to me a letter
that have interested you"
I love my structure & go in for waiting too.

dedicatory assart

46

(for Sharon & Paul)

To run out of rymans singing
its so sunny in my cunny
hazel the weather is not important
if your only home.
Knock knock me list no longer or
I may no more
thrash you like a doorbell.
Ring ring I lost my time.
If I put my finger in a second line
you know I did
put her hand up first.
Once there were three million bears
overnight
three million sums or cums or light

The Collars of Johan de Wit - no. 2

a mid may assart

45

Here on the air base
I rarely see young hazel
& her giant guns.
Bonjour constable
we hath only adjusted rymans
for love
of aerial bombardment
& the smell of burning
smaller branches.
How shall I then leave hazel I do intend
soon after the time of
constable I arrive?
How shall I then leave hazel, rymans,
half its branches are alive?

Xing the Line, May 7, 2009

Xing the Line yesterday featured Richard Parker and Gareth Farmer, both writing (up) theses at Sussex University, Richard on Zukofsky and Pound, Gareth on Veronica Forrest-Thomson. Two very different readings - Gareth confident, measured, punctilious, using to my ears what seemed like a long line; Richard by contrast hesitant, nervy, elliptical, echoes of Zukofsky apparent but with humour. The highlight for me was his "Heaney to Waterstones" [sic?] which was a hilarious take (surely) on the opening of Zukofsky's "A"-15 which begins "An/hinny/by/stallion/out of/she-ass...He neigh ha lie low h'who y'he gall mood..." Richard is putting together a mag called Crater which features some of Gareth's work and Gareth's sequence "Mock into the Brazen Day" is coming out with yt communications over the summer. One of the longer poems Richard read last night ("The Egg"?) will appear, I understand, in the next onedit.

Some pics below...

Richard Parker

Gareth Farmer

Laurie Duggan

Antony John & Edmund Hardy

Tim Atkins

Richard Parker's trainer

2 Ts

etc

44

(for Harry Godwin)

red like the red deer I mean
I know where is an hind
right here in an line
I am a bad red deer
& dropped its balls
chasing poetry beaver
through the fields of england
ken I love another too poor
deirdre the middle ages
exploded in her hands o
the brilliant poets in britain
black dots ate my readers wives
dear deirdre hello its 1360 AD
every day since the internet I died

Cobbing, Claire, Nuttall

Three pics I took at the first Eric Mottram 'celebration' held at King's College, London in 1996. They are photos of slides so the quality leaves a little to be desired...


Bob Cobbing

Paula Claire

Jeff Nuttall

I had no idea...

1.)

Sexual fetishism in a quail (Coturnix japonica) model system: Test of reproductive success.
Çetinkaya, Hakan; Domjan, Michael

Journal of Comparative Psychology. Vol 120(4), Nov 2006, 427-432.

In the present study, the authors explored the reproductive consequences of fetishistic behavior in a previously developed animal model of sexual fetishism (F. Köksal et al., 2004). Male domesticated quail (Coturnix japonica) received sexual conditioning trials in which a terrycloth object (the conditioned stimulus [CS]) was paired with the opportunity to copulate with a female quail (the unconditioned stimulus). Approximately half of the male quail came to copulate with the CS object and were considered to have developed fetishistic behavior. Each of the male quail was then tested with a female quail, whose eggs were incubated to determine rates of fertilization. The CS object was present for 30 s before and during the copulation test. Fetishistic male quail were slower to achieve cloacal contact with the female quail and showed less efficient copulatory behavior. However, they fertilized a greater proportion of eggs than nonfetishistic male quail. These results are unexpected from previous studies of the relationship between reproductive success and copulatory behavior and are discussed in terms of how fetishistic behavior directed toward an inanimate object may modify male-female interactions.



2.)

from Bird bird

Coturnix coturnix (quail)

A man and a quail descend to farmland. Forget cellophane this mister wants to see some quail on quail. For which he wears my nellie boots. His cock-petite & on my lips it was quick quick & I obey to ‘lift up your cups’ on the way in. His wild end was snow on snow & robins cutting in. I have no escape pattern. Some ornithologists moving away. Robins for most people. Ovens you need. At the hay nets the prose is clumsy. Sŏme órnĭthólŏgísts thĕy móve ăwáy. Bare ruined choirs etc. Kitten heels. Dolly pockets. Knee-high flats.

the poetics of shite

In a gesture of friendly plagiarism - see the recent and magnificent http://peckhaminfurs.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-shit-in-peckham.html - I post 3 pictures of the shat-on pavements of Walworth, southeast London (an area named not, apparently, after the murderer of Wat Tyler before London Bridge in 1381 (the vile Lord Walworth he thrust a blade into the hero's heart) but it means 'welsh wood' or something hmmm). A little nexus of poo has emerged over the last week. At the Canting Academy reading last Thursday, Vahni Capildeo very accurately described the persons of this nation as walking "with dog-beshitten and street-wetted footwear into their private living spaces" - vide pic no 2 below and the probable teleology of that trainer. A conversation then ensued between myself and Harry Gilonis (as Harry Godwin rightly asserts at http://thedailyfilth.blogspot.com/2009/04/when-harry-met-harry-or-recrossing-line.html) on the late Ivor Cutler's habit of drawing chalk flowers around the offending mounds to highlight his annoyance. A few years ago in the preface to my book stretchers (oh yes) I talked about Iain Sinclair's complaint that the Isle of Dogs contained no graffiti and suggested he look at the smears of dogshit there as a kind of script, one that Bob Cobbing would certainly have been happy to perform. From the first stretcher: "for graffiti there's dogshit it's a kind/of writing can be scried an inventory/taken of say colour consistency..." Alas I failed to follow up my comments but I would suggest that the crap on our paths take its place as a part of the general economy of signification. The examples below are all shapely - moreso once a foot or pram wheel has slid through as in pic no 1 - as well as colourful and smelly though these latter are surely more indicators of the present state of the dogfood industry.

been listening to...

Bright Phoebus (1972) by Lal & Mike Waterson. It begins with the Sergeant Pepper-like "Rubber Band" (not everyone makes it past this track) and visits some very dark places on the way. Highlights are the sudden unaccompanied voice - that of Bob Davenport - on "Child Among the Weeds" - astonishing - it 'wheels and turns' on 'riven/ribbon wing' like the bird he's singing about - and the whole of "Red Wine and Promises" which is sung not by Lal but by her sister Norma apparently. Four tracks from youtube posted below (no videos as such though some nice postcards of Hull) but these are no substitute for listening to the album from start to finish.

Red Wine and Promises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IGDXDOXRNs&feature=related

Child Among the Weeds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZfgnKIeGRg&feature=related

Fine Horseman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eh1acHyhe0

Bright Phoebus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP_F4YbK1sY&feature=related

An Occasional Series: The Collars of Johan de Wit - no. 1