Wintersun in Ozland

There is nothing left but old cars and rock'n roll
because all the best cars have already been built
and all the best songs have already been sang...

Allen,s Text 4896

Sun breaks through I put the pliers on the floor along with the scissors
that’s so they don’t fall off the desk from all the typing
non violent placing is best when possible
the bottle of glue maintains a risk but it moves more slowly however, my little daybook is about to fall.
Coins I leave lying, for even if they strike the floor, the sound isn’t jarring
anyway there’s no guarantee they’ll fall

Pieces of paper float effortlessly, noiselessly, touch down with a distinctive sound, not exactly rustling, not shufflin, it is the sound of all their own, pleasing, it has little or nothing to do with words.

I have noticed it makes no difference / if the paper is blank
though that is not to say words don’t weigh
only that theirs is a different sound
entirely unrelated to the material they’re on
(when the big metal sign fell into the street
it wasn’t “Bijou” that sounded)

The streetcars are still horses in my window
they come so quickly this time of day
they don’t stop long
the doors open, people get on and off, usually anyway
sometimes not
even that is not predictable
that is its power, one of its powers, the scene
always changing and full of movement
noisy but one really hears the silence when it happens
and the sun moves in and out crossing the sky my windows face
the sun now shining

Carousel...

©2006-Richard Carlton

This is a lonely life, no matter how we try to push that fact away, how can we make it better? Only love can show the way.

Its the melody of laughter, the caring smile, the wit in some sweet stranger ‘s eyes that brings a glow into our days.

Yet in our secret hearts we know we’re all together all alone, and the comforts that we give each other, a touch, a hug sometimes a gift, a knowing glance that shows we understand, is the best there is…

Yes, it is the golden flame of friendship’s heart that lights the darkest dark, the harmony of friendship’s grace, friendship’s hands, a friendly face…

As the carousel of life goes round and round, the painted hours gleam and dance, the moments pass on music’s wings, the moment’s chance!

In our hearts true love sings with honest thanks, yes the jeweled hours flash away, and we may miss lost magic in forgotten hands… yesterday is far away!

The gleaming waves… the Sunhot sand… the perfume of the one you love… a laughing smile, that haunting kiss…

The fancies of the random breeze, a sacred secret ecstasy in Moonlight’s blue… the only real love you knew… This is a lonely life. ...

Allen's Text 4900

Uriel Ruddock, Keeper of Lions, walked the beastesses to town and back, a lax leash, the sight of wayfarers on the highway, the delight of those on the low road: they marked the furniture, did the cats, with deliberate ease, ripping to shreds ancient inexpensive sofas, wide-winged chairs, leather DAVENPORTS and scrawling poems in the wood that only future lions could or would read: he was evicted time and again

“NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO HAVE PETS IN THIS BUILDING!’

--the relationship was scarcely that but Uriel knew the ears he must speak into, and so he simply moved in and out, smuggling in in trunks, refrigerators crates and giant sleeping bags the tawny females and one immensely maned roarer of a male, no longer jealous having had his good lot—only to be evicted when discovered, necessitating new charades until someone
IT WOULD NOT BE URIEL
stopped looking, stopped saying, and always he moved back in in graces: he was that sort, even with landlords: here, an old English lady. (Everyone of course knew she kept a secret tiger in the cellar.)

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

Allen's Text 21

There was a man going out to get water. He carried a wooden bucket squeaking an a bale. Who could not have heard? Darkness. Night birds were singing. An opulent star. The faceless moon was close. Where could he possibly have gotten to? There was a certain breeze. The trees shook their green fruit. One, two, thuds upon the earth, and the earth opened. the bucket, too was never found.

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

Eliot in Waste Land

The following is an excerpt from a 1923 magazine or newspaper:

Everyone interested in poetry is talking about The Waste Land, T S Eliot’s long poem published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, after first being printed last year in Mr Eliot’s new magazine, The Criterion.

Many cannot recognize it as poetry. It is a collage of quotations and echoes other writers, Shakespeare, Dante, St. Augustine and the Buddha among them, as well as sexual episodes, jazz-like rhythms, and Cockney vulgarities in a public house at closing time. It calls up a desolate picture of spiritual emptiness and aridity. It has outraged lovers of “Georgian” poetry as much as Joyce and Stravinsky have outraged traditionalists. Sir John Squire calls it “incomprehensible” and F L Lucas damned it as “one of the maggots that breed in the corruption of poetry….

Eliot, an American with an English wife, works in a London bank (Lloyds Foreign and Colonial). He dedicates the poem to his fellow-American poet, Ezra Pound, who severely cut it before publication. Despite its difficulty it has become a cult among undergraduates.

Arthur's Text Game

Moef was delighted when Arthur made a game of the Unfinished Book in order to let her become involved in it. Arthur’s personal uneasiness about her reading his writing resolved itself imaginatively in this way. He decided he would let Moef choose any eight texts out of the several thousand that existed, all of which were numbered, Pythagoras was a reigning spirit in Arthur’s private pantheon. He would then ask her, indeed require of her, a written response to each chosen text. Who knew where things might lead beyond that?

Moef thought only a few minutes about the numbers she would choose. Fixed on “8” as she was, it was not very difficult. She chose: 8, 88, 888, 26, 1943, 71, 808, and 4888. that night, searching through his many boxes of texts, Arthur was continually surprised at how uncannily apropos their own circumstances her choices were. He was resolved to offer no commentary on any or the game itself until after she made her responses. Still, unknowingly he had thrust HIMSELF into an entirely new and unexpected relation with his own book, and he felt the chill if the vast spaces he had experienced so vividly during the first years of the Book, in Turkey. Was the “game” only a new immersion in the bracing waters of Created Time?

Bus Stop

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

Is that where I want to stop? One hates bus rides but finds himself just beginning to enjoy this one when suddenly the town chosen as destination arrives and one is faced with getting off HERE, knowing it’s not the place, that this travel cannot end here and that if one knows what is good he will stay put and, hunkering down, try to ride on unnoticed for awhile…

Allen's Text 954

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

I have not known such a cold moon. hung on a patch of cloud, full, white, unwrinkled: all the light of the sky seems drawn into it, and all that is in that light.

I have not known desperate men to ignore all signs natural and beautiful, even in a senseless slaughter: old sailors on wooden decks sighting the moon (such a moon!)--what was in their eyes?

I have not known beautiful women more terrible for their beauty than those condemn to plain things—a compensation, rather, the destruction by the beautiful.

I have not known books to end, nor dreams to end, merely because they were not attained, nor could be: rather, the being is the book and the dream. How can we cross unnecessary boundaries?

I have not known more days than nights deserving; nor minutes than hours: nor moons than suns: oh Christ! I have known the heart to fail forever.

Allen's Text 988

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

There is something inside, something in my breast, tangled among reeds, crying out for release—perhaps a white bird, lifting itself in a fluttering arc across a sea of infinite sorrow. A voice, a voice like a white bird, hovering in my throat, inching at the roots of my brain, aiming itself at the red roof of my mouth, wanting out, away, into…a real world, a real world.