Marks with Acid Fine Edge

When I listen to that at lunch today it will be the eleventh time since Monday. I'm listening to it the tenth time since Monday as I write this post. Demis Roussos recently died. I'd never heard of Demis Roussos, but he was a member of Aphrodite's Child, a band I thought of as a Vangelis vehicle. Various WFMU djs have been playing 666 in remembrance. A brief reiteration of personal history: first and foremost, 666 is my favorite just as the acid is kicking in album of all time. One cannot underestimate the importance of the just as the acid is kicking in album in the overall joy of the trip - this is why I hate The Motherfucking Doors. It is also one of the albums that was required listening on all Major Epods - a group of us (Elric 7 was one, but he won't comment since he no longer reads this blog since I offended him in a retort to something he'd said about Chelsea Manning, and Landru attended some minor Epods but never a Major Epod) split sheets and bought ounces and grams of combustibles and cases of been and fifths of rum and bourbon, got ourselves places safe and unsafe, and brained our trips out. So the past three days have rendered me nostalgic. I'd only heard the album sporadically since - I want my albums back, Blondie, I want my fucking albums back - so I associated my appreciation of 666 with the heightened ears of the blissfully lit. But here's the thing: this is an insanely good album. Thirteenth time since Monday tonight.

Epod: dope spelled backwards. Three more Major Epod songs below.

• Creeley on acid.
• Click the Creeley tag for much more.
• Cat update, and send the coins in your pocket to Arthur, please.
• Is declining violence only a good thing?
• The one way forward.
• The enduring sorrows of the savvy Liberal.
• Szymborska, for those of you who do, for those of you who don't but should.
• Click the Szymborska tag for much more.
• Terry Riley's In C in Mali.
• We Have Heaven is the best Yes song ever.
• Also too: fuck this, inching closer. Fuck this.

HELSINKI WINDOW

Robert Creeley

Go out into brightened   

space out there the fainter   

yellowish place it

makes for eye to enter out   

to greyed penumbra all the   

way to thoughtful searching   

sight of all beyond that

solid red both brick and seeming   

metal roof or higher black   

beyond the genial slope I   

look at daily house top on   

my own way up to heaven.

         *

Same roof, light’s gone   

down back of it, behind   

the crying end of day, “I   

need something to do,” it’s   

been again those other   

things, what’s out there,   

sodden edge of sea’s   

bay, city’s graveyard, park   

deserted, flattened aspect,   

leaves gone colored fall   

to sidewalk, street, the end   

of all these days but   

still this regal light.

         *

Trees stripped, rather shed

of leaves, the black solid trunks up

to fibrous mesh of smaller   

branches, it is weather’s window,   

weather’s particular echo, here   

as if this place had been once,   

now vacant, a door that had had   

hinges swung in air’s peculiar   

emptiness, greyed, slumped elsewhere,   

asphalt blank of sidewalks, line of   

linearly absolute black metal fence.

         *

Old sky freshened with cloud bulk   

slides over frame of window the   

shadings of softened greys a light   

of air up out of this dense high   

structured enclosure of buildings   

top or pushed up flat of bricked roof   

frame I love I love the safety of   

small world this door frame back   

of me the panes of simple glass yet   

airy up sweep of birch trees sit in   

flat below all designation declaration   

here as clouds move so simply away.

         *

Windows now lit close out the   

upper dark the night’s a face   

three eyes far fainter than   

the day all faced with light   

inside the room makes eye re-

flective see the common world   

as one again no outside coming   

in no more than walls and post-

card pictures place faces across   

that cautious dark the tree no   

longer seen more than black edge   

close branches somehow still between.

         *

He was at the edge of this

reflective echo the words blown   

back in air a bubble of suddenly   

apparent person who walked to

sit down by the familiar brook and   

thought about his fading life

all “fading life” in tremulous airy   

perspect saw it hover in the surface   

of that moving darkness at the edge   

of sun’s passing water’s sudden depth   

his own hands’ knotted surface the   

sounding in himself of some other.

         *

One forty five afternoon red   

car parked left hand side   

of street no distinguishing   

feature still wet day a bicycle   

across the way a green door-

way with arched upper window   

a backyard edge of back wall

to enclosed alley low down small   

windows and two other cars green   

and blue parked too and miles   

and more miles still to go.

         *

This early still sunless morning when a chair’s   

creak translates to cat’s cry a blackness still

out the window might be apparent night when the

house still sleeping behind me seems a bag of   

immense empty silence and I feel the children   

still breathing still shifting their dreams an   

enigma will soon arrive here and the loved one   

centers all in her heavy sleeping arm out the   

leg pushed down bedclothes this body unseen un-

known placed out there in night I can feel all   

about me still sitting in this small spare pool of   

light watching the letters the words try to speak.

         *

Classic emptiness it

sits out there edge of   

hierarchic roof top it

marks with acid fine edge   

of apparent difference it   

is there here here that

sky so up and out and where   

it wants to be no birds no   

other thing can for a   

moment distract it be   

beyond its simple space.