Wednesday, April 4, 2018

I Trust the Spoor of Botch








THE PRIVACY OF TYPEWRITERS

Les Murray

I am an old book troglodyte
one who composes on paper
and types up the result
as many times as need be.
  
The computer scares me,
its crashes and codes,
its links with spies and gunshot,
its text that looks pre-published
  
and perhaps has been.
I don’t know who is reading
what I write on a carriage
that doesn’t move or ding.
   
I trust the spoor of botch,
whiteouts where thought deepened,
wise freedom from Spell Check,
sheets to sell the National Library.
  
I fear the lore
of that baleful misstruck key
that fills a whiskered screen
with a writhe of child pornography
   
and the doors smashing in
and the cops handcuffing me
to a gristlier video culture
coralline in an ever colder sea. 



3 comments:

  1. 1)the singer of the januaries - debra diament - now describes herself as "wardrobe stylist/musician/songwriter" - has a youtube channel and linkedin page

    on her youtube channel is featured a video of john lennon singing instant karma with the plastic ono band playing along, with yoko sitting there knitting - a comment on the video, probably from yoko herself, explains the symbolism of her action - it's sort of humorous, in a way


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLy2SaSQAtA

    2) at linh dinh's site, postcards from the end of america/the american empire, he has posted a video of himself and his nine month old nephew

    he refers to himself as being in saigon, a name still much used, our friends at wikipedia inform us, although it has officially been ho chi minh city since the end of the war

    3)speaking of tourniquet, as i believe you do in your poem if i read your handwriting correctly, a bungee cord tourniquet featured in the events yesterday at youtube headquarters

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5577475/Carls-Jr-supervisor-21-hero-helping-woman-wonded-YouTube-attack.html

    in a comment posted there, someone writes

    as mr rogers' mother told him when he was a child and disturbed to see scenes of tragedy and cruelty, "look for the helpers" - this guy is one of the helpers














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  2. (A Philosophical Moment, For Herr v. D.:) Thought I would be a real, clever Dog, so fired up Big Google Earth for a Flaneur-eye view of 1 Gabriel-Max-Str., to see how it appears today. And so I did, and so there it was. Clever, me; Ha Ha.

    Then, by accident, I cursored-over the 1935 image, saw the result, and reflected on how often We are a prime factor in the over-complication of Things. Also, while I was there, went looking for the current state of the Berliner Universitäts-Frauenkliniken (I did have a good reason for this) -- but discovered that Google Earth will not allow a street-level view of the first block of Monbijou-Str., the Ida-Simon-Haus on your left, after crossing the Spree. Bummer.

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  3. In fairness, it could be me who overcomplicates it by trying to piece the modern version together. Click the category "Friedrichshain-Vergleiche" in the right column for all of the same from my annual calendar of my district.

    There was a stinkt here shortly post-Google ab-fotographing the streets whereupon the regulation was laid down on Googs that any resident can have their address fogged. Someone in my building did so. I'm over it either way.

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