Written in the 70s — I admit

Posted on May 1, 2018 by JMN

I admit that’s bad, but not *that* bad. I may breach decorum occasionally (like now), but I try mightily not to breach good taste. I’m sure you can handle the above; being a diffident sort, I wasn’t sure *I* could (the translation, that is; the neck I could handle!). Isn’t this fun? Languages are a dodge.
Darling, you touched me so deeply; your loving is as generous as the description of dying on the lips of an agonist. Unspoken tears claw your eyes; the undertow –; I would simply break in you and leave my best[.]
Clouds like white poodles in the windows.
Carter: “Love must be aggressively translated into simple justice.”
Arrived Detroit Thurs. July 15, 1976.

70s-11

Written in the 70s, 70s-11. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Written in the 70s, 70s-11. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“Woman With Automatic”

Posted on May 1, 2018 by JMN

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Woman With Automatic.

More Galleries | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Five Quotes About …

Posted on May 1, 2018 by JMN

“What I teach you is nothing. What you learn by doing over and over is where the learning begins.” (Simon Michael)

“Writing poetry is much easier than reading it.” (Guy Davenport)

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” (Hemingway)

“It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.” (Plato)

“…And continuing to occupy our chambers in the Faubourg Saint Germain, we gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.” (Poe, The Mystery of Marie Roget)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , | Leave a comment

From Memory

Posted on May 1, 2018 by JMN

“A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London,” poem by Dylan Thomas
poetryfoundation.org

This poem is an antidote to the “thoughts and prayers” mantra. It reminds me of Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” in that it challenges shopworn formulas of mourning. When I discovered it — lo many moons ago — I was captivated, first, by its syntax: Four sentences  with their periods.

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Social Math — UK

Posted on April 29, 2018 by JMN

Gerry Rattigan is the publican who operates the Thane of Thoth, the watering hole popular among the better sort of denizens of Chichesterton-Upon-Hogg — though, to be sure, it’s also the only such establishment in the village. Gerry customarily nicks for himself a generous tip from the large-denomination note Sir Alistair Chichester drops nonchalantly on the countertop to cover his daily consumption of bitter. The purloined gratuity comes to thrice the wholesale cost of bitter (three shillings tuppence the pint — toss the tuppence in odd years owing to the Regency Levy exemptions for baronial preserves) summed to twice again that multiple.

Question: What does Gerry’s outrageous windfall for his simpering service amount to in a fortnight?

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Didactic Doggerel

Posted on April 29, 2018 by JMN

The Smallest Black Hole

You wonder what you’d find in a black hole?
Your other sock? A dime? A baby mole?

I’ll tell you where you will find none of those:
In Cygnus X-1 only darkness shows.

A star one hundred times our own Sun’s mass
Collapsed upon itself and turned to gas.

It tore a hole in space I cannot find
A way to understand in my own mind.

A place I cannot draw or get my eyes on,
Where all is lost on its event horizon.

A place where things fall in and go bye bye.
No peep, no burble, not even a sigh

Comes back to notify us of their plight.
Nothing gets out from there, not even light.

Things disappeared for eons. No one missed ’em.
They had been swallowed by a binary system!

Now they’ve found a hole that’s just a baby,
The smallest yet, the smallest ever, maybe.

An X-ray pattern comes from gas white-hot.
It lets them hear the “heartbeat” of the tot.

They hear its heartbeat. Just imagine that!
If only they knew where your sock is at!

References
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/12/17/nasa-satellite-may-have-found-the-smallest-known-
black-hole/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/11/19/new-data-provides-a-complete-description-of-a-black-
hole/

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Idle Doggerel

Posted on April 29, 2018 by JMN

Drawn and Quartered

“Everything was everywhere.” (Joplin, MO tornado survivor)

It was as if Mother Nature
Had thrown the town under a train.
It skidded hard for good measure,
Smearing acreage with guts and brain.

Uncle Alvin would do a snake
Encountered in the road that way.
He said, “Swerve quick and put a back
Wheel on it, brake on that bad boy.”

Half hanged, cock-chopped, de-balled, headless,
Pulled apart is how they died
In Merry Olde England’s justice,
Braked on alive and liquefied.

Nature taught Alvin and the Queen
How to make a good disaster:
Be thorough, merciless, and mean —
Fuck the town, the snake, the bastard.

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Written in the 70s — He worked

Posted on April 28, 2018 by JMN

He worked on her [***], balled into a striving that sweated their two bodies [***], past caring where she was, if she had [***] [***]. She was beginning to signal [***] in her eyes, her [***] was tensing. But all that mattered was the [***] he was [***] toward, the fall. He shifted forward, making the angle more [***], drowning in [***]. Guiding on the [***] [***] of her [***] [***], he felt at last a loss, a dispersion, and dragged with a shiver the [***] slow [***] deep from [***] [***] [***]. When the [***] [***] he was already [***].

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

70s-5a redacted

Written in the 70s, 70s-5a redacted. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Five Quotes About Poetry

Posted on April 28, 2018 by JMN

“It’s the poet’s business to make poetry out of the unexplored resources of the unpoetical.” (T.S. Eliot)

“I would sooner give the laurel to vigorous error than to any orthodoxy not inspired.” (W.B. Yeats)

“A poem by its nature operates beyond rational control.” (Kay Ryan)

“Ezra Pound’s caked and crusted erudition…” (I forget who said this, but God it’s true.)

“Poetry is always dying, always going to hell.” (Donald Hall)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | Leave a comment

From Memory

Posted on April 28, 2018 by JMN

“Ozymandias,” poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, http://www.poetryfoundation.org

This sonnet triggers a puff of schadenfreude. It’s fun to imagine that, given time, the desert swallows braggarts.

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , | Leave a comment