Remixed Poetry

Love of Dirty Hands, of Imperfection

by
Pauneth Elusmith

Start making sense. The fragment which ruled
has left the building, out of sight in the direction
of my body. Those images of one day and the next,
fixed ideas virgin-lipped, but not in ways you
would imagine. Repurposed from the great mass
of free-floating language out there: the vices,
the virtues that are so imperfect. Shovel the stuff
into towers of words. We’re delighted to get
our hands dirty. What does it mean to be a poet?
The movement of identity is recycling the words,
the attitudes, and the ideas. Eyes consenting,
the confusion of bodies will continually morph
from flux to celebration. Uncertainty is sculpted
from the poetic machine, resembling the eyes.
Traditional tropes will turn the leaden heart
inside out. Hilarious writing is butter on the box.
Choose your vices, embrace your virtues.
Be guilty of love, of imperfection, unfinished.

Jane Røken, 2014

Remixed works:
Flarf is Dionysus. Conceptual Writing is Apollo, by Kenneth Goldsmith
Out of Sight in the Direction of My Body, by Paul Éluard

Soft, When It Rains

I work, often,
in cheap hardback,
maybe a hundred pages
writing with biro,

or question
or method
or felt tip
or in third reading
or pencil
or similar nights
or eat
or just enjoy notebooks
or to read someone’s work
soft, when it rains.

I was (wrong
I wanted to mirror
I concerned myself
I once wished
I can be forgiven
I gravitated towards the page
I was thinking
I can’t remember
I have written for many years
I like that sensation
I do not regret
I was very struck by light
I felt like a ghost
I made the decision not to talk very much

as a kind of haunting length
Lashing out at others
at dry hollow heads of thistles
physically reflecting animals

I immediately understand it all now
walking very slowly into the night.

Winston Plowes, 2014

Remixed work:
interview on Write Out Loud, 27 March 2013

To Shade and Knit Anew
the Patch of Words

A Cento

In the torrent salmon sun
the mouth of time sucked, like a sponge,
wind in me leaped, the hellborn dew
tread like a naked Venus
through salt and root and roe.

With doom in the bulb, spring unravels,
greenwood dying as deer fall in their tracks.

We in our Eden knew the secret guardian –
no tell-tale lover has an end more certain,
dumbly and divinely stumbling,
for half of love was planted in the lost
worm in the scalp. Now at my sheet

goes the same crooked worm,
how light sleeping in this soily star.

It shall be said that gods are stone.

Mary Bast, 2014

Remixed works:
Various from The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas

[‘Tearful sludge’ (…)]

‘Tearful sludge’ has been looked up 325 times, added to 2 lists, and is not a valid
Scrabble word.
There appear to be people that are totally uninvolved in what the rest of us
usually think of sex.
Sydney Greenstreet played the psychiatrist who figured it out.
The ultimate acting is to destroy yourself.
No, I was not born with a monocle in my eye.
Such cases will be fairly common.
Topic A is abandoned.
Destroy the paper safely when you have exhausted your emotion in the writing.
Conduct due diligence.
Fat lot of good that does.

from 555 by John Lowther, 2014

Remixed works:
“‘Tearful sludge’ …”, from a Google search
“Sydney Greenstreet …”, from Amazon’s “askville”
“The ultimate acting is to destroy yourself”, from a quote by Klaus Kinski
“No, I was not born with a monocle in my eye”, from a quote by Conrad Veidt
“Such cases will be fairly common”, from Fallacies by Nizkor
“Topic A is abandoned”, from Fallacies by ALF
“Destroy the paper safely”, from Pain Support
“Fat lot of good that does”, from The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner

[Nudity is our weapon]

Nudity is our weapon.
But words — words are not enough.
I pissed on the man who called me a dog.
There’s a knack to getting what you want.
Rest in between.
Punch when you have to punch.
Until the nineteenth century ‘normal’ was primarily a geometrical term.
I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to
believe.
Yep, a fetish for invisible people or invisible clothes, or invisible body parts or
some variation.
Do not hesitate to repeat yourself when you consider the point very important.

from 555 by John Lowther, 2014

Remixed works:
“Nudity is our weapon”, by Inna Shevchenko, FEMEN
“But words — words are not enough”, from a quote by Klaus Kinski
“I pissed on the man who called me a dog”, from a quote by Diogenes of Sinope
“There’s a knack to getting what you want”, from Pain Support
“Punch when you have to punch”, from a quote by Bruce Lee
The Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture, by Roger N. Lancaster
Everybody’s Autobiography, by Gertrude Stein
Forum post by AltZilla

Head Brass by Owl-Light on the Farm

by
The Thomas Brothers

There was Dai Puw. He was no good.
They put him in the fields to dock swedes,
And altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies.

There was Llew Puw, and he was no good.
Every evening after the ploughing
With the big tractor he would sit in his chair,
Opening his slow lips like a snail.
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies.

There was Huw Puw, too. What shall I say?
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven’s egg,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
I have heard him whistling in the hedges
On and on. In France they killed him,
back in March, the very night of the blizzard, too.

Seth Crook, 2014

Remixed works:
On the Farm, by R.S. Thomas
Altarwise by Owl-Light, by Dylan Thomas
As the Team’s Head Brass, by Edward Thomas

The Force That
like a Red, Red Rose

by
Rabbie and Dylan

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

like a red, red rose
that’s newly sprung in June;

that blasts the roots of trees

is like the melodie
that’s sweetly play’d in tune.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

till a’ the seas gang dry:
till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

is like the hand that whirls the water in the pool.

Seth Crook, 2014

Remixed works:
A Red, Red Rose, by Robert Burns
The Force that through the Green Fuse, by Dylan Thomas

To Ensure Success
On a First Date…

Avoid
Profanities such as FUCK or TWAT.
Licentious or suggestive nudity-
in fact or in silhouette.
The burning of national flags.
The use of firearms.
Ridicule of the clergy.
And apparent cruelty to children and animals.

Eliminate vulgarity and suggestiveness such as:-
Scenes of actual childbirth –
in fact or in silhouette.
Surgical operations.
Branding of people or animals at the dining table.
The use of drugs.
Actual hangings or electrocutions.
Excessive or lustful kissing.
And  absolutely no horizontal embracing –
one of the four participating feet
should always be on the floor.

Shadwell Smith, 2014

Remixed work:
The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Hays Code)

If You Don’t Care
Where You Are,
Then You Ain’t Lost

by
Moomin Strugatsky

The houses in the Plague Quarter are peeling
and lifeless, but the windows are mostly intact,
only so dirty that they look opaque. Now at night
when you crawl by, you can see the glow inside,
as if alcohol were burning in bluish tongues.

On the very top of the jagged peak above them
stands the Observatory. Inside, scientists make
thousands of remarkable observations, smoke
thousands of cigarettes, and live alone with the stars.

In the middle of the floor a giant telescope revolves
slowly, keeping watch on the sky, and there is
the constant whirring sound of a machine.
There it is, their cable, hanging down almost
to the ground and covered with hair . . .

That’s how they always do it around here,
so that everyone can see: There they go, the heroes
of science, to lay themselves down on the altar
to mankind, knowledge, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Jane Røken, 2014

Remixed works:
Quote attributed to Robert Anton Wilson
Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson
Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Gun(two)point(zero)

1
God naked. And, seeing all that for the first time,
I move on to the next point, which, of course,
has a slightly different color, shades of brown –
the autumn of 1970, or Vienna during the Nazi period.
Around it I feel the skin burning. I mean, something happens,
something I don’t actually see, the light not good,
although I didn’t necessarily intend it that way.

2
Someone comes along
with a machine and thinks he’s a god,
and I don’t need that.

But he’s certainly an emperor, a king.
After the war, we see the view
from his left eye as he lies on a chaise longue,
the view out over his moustache.

How terrible. No colors. Green light without colors.
Because a feeling has no form.
It has a blurred quality, a kind of flailing about.

I’ll paint it red.
And so surrealism came to our small town.
Hundreds of people lined up outside to enter,
although there was no wait.

3
You push a button
with the palm of your hand
and still fail to disappear.
I have other problems –
X-rays, a pig’s red nose,
loads of ghosts and aura.
But what appeals to me
is precisely this difficulty.
That’s to say, I’m totally normal,
although even today,
the grinning man in the moon
whose skull was open at the back
was beginning to catch up.

Howie Good, 2014

Remixed work:
Maria Lassnig in conversation with Frieze co-editor Joerg Heiser,
Frieze: Issue 103