trembling ladders #4 
"ALCHEMICAL CHILDREN"  


 


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1998 
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2. Beograd Restaurant

Midnight
the high wail
of a Macedonian violin

"I wake at 6:30
                 smoke a cigarette
9 o'clock a cigarette
11:30 a cigarette"

says black stocking'd American lady
across from the
samovar

"I was so pure "

her lovely African ladyfriend laughing
the violinist has quietly
vanished

 

3. Karen

with her wiled little poems

                "catfur"

even in Europe the coefficient of weirdness
tiny breasts
               in black lace cups
when she leans forward
catfur

 

4. St. Urbani Keller

Down
the crumbled masonry
                    a staircase
angled tight
this far under the street
thing smell musty, even the food......
a man pumps his
                     accordian

It was a wine cellar?
how old?

16th century built as a
                      how you call it
when the Turks attack?

a bomb shelter
good dry wine
                      from Wachau.

 

5. [Old Tongues]

               
To carry content
                 as in epic or drama
                (digging the square pit for blood)

Homer, Aeschylus, Parsifal

to be destroyed, to perish
but in the causative

                 "violate, deflower"

                  a girl 

 

6. Written on a Return Flight over the Atlantic

Last night in the Urbani Keller for wine and soup after
Die Zauberflaute, Anne with odd vehemence
picks a flight over Mozart
questioning her , I find she's contesting a ghost.
Old lover's insinuated himself, stone Habsburg angel between us.
So many phantoms from Viennese cobbles.
Schoenburg. Wittgenstein. Ottoman Empire.
Food from Hungary, Czech beer.
                   Despair over Bosnia deepens

Was it Vienna where the Knights Templar
were defeated by a coalition of
bankers?
Swarming up from the cobbles
                   Dropping from St. Stephans' arches
                   mists and vapors
                                          of the unknown woods
                                           (Thoreau)
                    and back to N America

three bows to Willendorf Venus
                     mother of all

                                            (1993)

 

CONTENTS (list of all poets featured in "trembling ladders #4")

NAME

Page
Number
TERENCE MCKENNA - on Magic, Mushrooms and the "little clowns" of language. 1
ANNE WALDMAN -  Charnel Ground 7
JEREMY REED - Leaving the world 8
HELEN ADAM - 3 Poems 10
Essay: ANDREW SCHELLING - Avolokiteshvara, Rocky Flats, and the New York Times 17
MAHMOUD DARWISH - 5 Poems 21
TIM ATKINS - Poem 27
JAMES TAYLOR - 2 Poems 30
BERNADETTE MAYER - 4 Poems 33
ARTHUR SPYROU - 2 Poems 35
JACKSON MACLOW - 4 Poems from FORTIES 40
ELENI SIKELIANOS - from THE BLUE COAT 48
TANIA ELIZOV - 5 Poems from TEST THE GOLD 53
JEREMY REED - 4 Poems 60
ANIA WALWICZ - Castle 64
ANNE TARDOS - 2 Poems 67
SARAH COINGTON - A-23 69
CLAYTON ESHLEMAN - 2 Poems 73
ENRIQUE CHAGOYA - 3 Artworks 76
TANIA ELIZOV - Invocation To the goddess, Who is Multiple and Restless 79
ZAN ROSS - 2 Poems 83
ADONIS A Grave for New York 87
LISA JARNOT - 2 Poems 97
REPORT FROM DELPHI: ELENI SIKELIANOS - "ETERNALS" 98
ANDROW SCHELLING - Fragments from the Plains of Europa 104
MURAT NEMET- NEJAT - from IO'S SONG 107
ANNE WALDMAN - No Child's Utopia 112
DENNIS TEDLOCK - Zuni work 114
ANSELM HOLLO - Blok / Schwitters / De La Vega 123
TED JOANS - Poem 128
HAKIM BEY -Wild Children and Paganism 129
ALICE NOTLEY - 3 Poems from DISOBEDIENCE 131
NISA ASOKAN - 2 Poems 140
Essay: PETER LAMBORN WILSON - Ploughing the Clouds: 
The Soma Sacrifice in Ancient Ireland 
141