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Reviewing The Tape
Anselm Hollo
i.m. Piero Heliczer
I
calling 1959 calling 1959 what does he know
a red piano a fragmentary tusk
he sees men and women preparing themselves
for the long journey across room
he is in love with the world
it's got a face like a horse
her hair is 365 poems a tent & into it
that tune it's 1790! oops he stops goes back
sleeping is any handful earth
waking returns the toothbrush clack to the beaker
"her anger has caused me great pain"
can't tell which she he is talking about
brown photo legend
man's reliance on fossil fuels but a short episode
II
no junipers no shouldn't think so no
he wrote somewhere inside
so slow a broken nose repeating itself
into this hole in the ground
no connectives or interval music
it was hot in the dream hole
above the brick town with its captive dogs
the first time you saw it acres of watery sand
ah to be funny in bed in writing
to be in our bodies
maybe it was just his old difficulty
of remaining in the upright position
of the higher primates
their glimmering moments of loving
III
the instruction manual lay soaking in the bilge
I'm yours I'm all yours but the signals were garbled
one who looked tall rode away
didn't have much to say
narrative pomp and pleasure
time in shore zones
ahead of the water they came
wrapped round a stick of incense
he'll sleep a long time
the day your son comes home
a flute and a spine in the grass
too dark a raving madman
persistent cigarette burns on his hand and arm
november 1967 a hundred farmers plow to lucid murmurs
IV
to disappear on the floor
in the other room closing the book
"I'll be back in a minute" flowers out there
over them reigned a red personage
in autumn some sponges "i am moving
a fraction to the weaker taking"
this deep a breath is ardent
ultimate consummation of long ethereal affair
sit listening to the gods
approach her their cries
it is peaceful peaceful
the people go crazy
the manager of this cinema
wears a big floppy heart ha ha
V
branching like any body
but here have some wine
& exhale heaven snug against her skin
kiss her ill with love
"him now" in his sleep he walks past it again
to one who to one who lives there
in the rented satellite
with Officer No Quarter
enters another plane
of the new world or drives the big white car
through savage people and frozen gases
still taping his thoughts ran much upon this
wrote the works ever known as
the features of gods
VI
on the horse's back and into a hall
then son simply expressing in his own way
that I was wrong 6-9:00 a.m.
through customs in Hong Kong
all the way to her navel
a single large crystal
thinks of Don Giovanni
with no interference from tree-cutting crane
smileful girl they used to spend maybe an hour
in glamorous roles
in a little while it won't exist
red mists of rage
plate glass breaks snow streels in thoughts
across a green roof
VII
"of Aegypt"
there is a light on prudent alchemist
laughs like Leo the sun
crocodile curbs dangerous onslaught
Iaia of Kyzikos her pagan will to realize
life in the sky she saw
a tapir do the tango
prance from his mother's house
back where the night begins
in a seven foot urn
I move about the beetle wakes up
temporarily in charge of the 1920s
the surface extends all the way out to the core
wherever there is a hole distributed in space
cave equals room equals window
Notes
1. Ninety-nine per cent of the lines in this text were selected by
random numerical methods from my Sojourner Microcosms: Poems 1959-77.
2. Piero Heliczer (1937-1993), Italian-born American poet, Personist
Surrealist, author of You Could Hear the Snow Dripping and Falling into
the Deer's Mouth, The First Battle of the Marne, The Soap Opera, and
other poetic and cinematic works.
3. what do generations
whose earliest moments have been recorded
on film or videotape
learn from those images sounds
when they review them later in life?
what if one recorded every waking (possibly even sleeping)
moment of one's life up to, say, thirty-five
then spent one's remaining years
watching the tape?
lingo 4
 Books in print by Anselm Hollo
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