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Mother, the root of this little yellow flower

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A poem by Edward Thomas (1878-1917):

Mother, the root of this little yellow flower
Among the stones has the taste of quinine.
Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright,
And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machine
So hard. Here's one on my hand, mother, look;
I lie so still. There's one on your book.

But I have something to tell more strange. So leave
Your book to the grasshopper, mother dear, --
Like a green knight in a dazzling market-place, --
And listen now. Can you hear what I hear
Far out? Now and then the foam there curls
And stretches a white arm out like a girl's.

Fishes and gulls ring no bells. There cannot be
A chapel or church between here and Devon,
With fishes and gulls ringing its bell,--hark!--
Somewhere under the sea or up in heaven.
'It's the bell, my son, out in the bay
On the buoy. It does sound sweet to-day.'

Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales.
I should like to be lying under that foam,
Dead, but able to hear the sound of the bell,
And certain that you would often come
And rest, listening happily.
I should be happy if that could be.

poem

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while measuring my blood pressure
(disappointing numbers)
through the biggest window
I saw a hummingbird land for a moment
on the leafless January dogwood

a black silhouette against
the next-door beige Brutalist behemoth
built after demolishing this humble house's twin
after Steve and Eydie (their real names!) left
and moved their lives across town

the hummingbird wasn't there tomorrow
(but my numbers were a little better)

Moving Breakfast

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Moving Breakfast (by Sidney Goldfarb)

I get out of bed without breaking anything
I give my daughter Cheerios and bananas for breakfast
First I let her stand on the table
Then I let her put her foot into the cereal
I look into the mirror and say, "Sidney, you're no criminal."
I put on a necktie because I have one
I go outside and find myself in Chicago
I say, "Boston, you faker, cut that out!"
Then I see Lake Michigan boiling up at me like a billion white birds
And clouds of soot talking to one another above the skyscrapers
So I yell up to my daughter,
"Sara! Take your foot out of the cereal, you're in Chicago now!"
And she answers back,
"Cheer-i-ooos!"

(from Speech, for Instance, p. 53)

concrete poetry and old-school image manipulation

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Some things I've made recently.

Fire - a concrete poem

A photomosaic made with band-limited (?) scaled images: me as daisies, a daisy as mes

At Flickr you can download the original size (20000x10000px) for better in-zooming.

Self-portrait via an old-school image generation technique: self portrait - pseudocontours

Benjamin Peret poem

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GROWN OLD THE DEVIL BECOMES A HERMIT

Louis-Phillipe is tall for his age
Give him some pennies
his cap will be too small
Give him two neckties
he'll lie every day
Give him another pipe
his mother will cry
Give him a pair of gloves
he'll lose his shoes
Give him coffee
he'll have blisters
Give him a corset
he'll wear a collar
Give him suspenders
he'll heal mice
Give him a club
he'll board a plane
Give him soup
he'll make a statue of it
Give him shoelaces
he'll eat gooseberries

It's Monsieur Phillipe
who lives on pills and blotting-paper
eats his mother
and forgets time walking

--Benjamin Peret (trans. Marilyn Kallet)