Wednesday, December 31, 2008

ideas on a manifesto for urban literary guerilla warfare


First of all, if we put Che Guervara on the cover we will sell a shitload, even if few of the people who buy his merchandise feel the irony in his pop-star status, he is so hip!

Ok, i was thinking about newspapers a bit and a comment that the v/clever Ms Toa (see the body of crime listings) made on my first post which spurred me on a bit,

"don't you wish we could write like this all the time? Instead of essays and thesis and newspaper articles? Wouldn't everyone want to read again instead of zoning out to the box, if we wrote like this all the time?"


yes god please,  please help me if i could( write, like that, anytime, at all really), but if i am honest, most of the time i don't need assistance from the box to zone out  

if i could only write like below

Pastoral


WHEN I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.

William Carlos Williams

and this man delivered 2000 babies, over about 40 years, covering both world wars and the great depression  

I wish this stuff was in the papers somewhere....... sometime...... instead of real estate and cars that no one wants or can afford.

Guerilla idea #1  :Pay for poetry space in paper, hold chook raffle to cover costs and print "i am a lit chick" t shirt to go with said chicken! ( phew..and this is only one beer and a little puff!)


so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

 

Guerilla idea #2 :When i die i shall take a full page for my self in a paper where someone knows me still and print the following. And you are right Sarah, it is the transition which is problematic, not after, on more considered thought. i will however leave my name off the page.( Shall not be a problem as I am paying. See #3)


Tract

I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be whethered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God—glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the lack of them—
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass—
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom—
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.

No wreathes please—
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes—a few books perhaps—
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople—
something will be found—anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.

For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him—
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down—bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all—damn him!—
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind—as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly—
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What—from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us—it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.

Williams Carlos Williams 

Guerilla idea #3: Tone a topic down a little and send letter to paper.
(click below for big image)



Guerilla idea #4 : reply and politely ask editoral staff of paper to publish their names and positions or direct me to the page where it is written and i shall do similar.  

Guerilla idea #5 : bribe paper's potentially subversive staff with beer to place haiku's amongst the births and deaths.....

Anyhow
Happy New Year 
to all
and most of all
especially
the sharks amongst us


my new murakami 2009 diary
is good for one good idea a day
its 2nd inside cover
the one before the days start
and the page past the one with  
a black cat with green eyes i seem to recognise
has a big crimson dot in the right lower 
this dot has a another inside
front and centre 
a little pinker 
like oxygenated blood 
in a blood shot eye

above this 
 in small 
clean type 


Again and again  I called out for Midori from the
dead centre of this place that was no place. 
                                                                                                
                                     Norwegian Wood


now there's an idea.....

 a midori that is




3 comments:

sarah toa said...

May we yearn for Midori whenever we gaze into the green eyes of a black cat...
I know a certain subversive type at the paper who may be persuaded to print Haiku. (He likes red wine and lollies.)
(From messi)

sarah toa said...

"I wish this stuff was in the papers somewhere....... sometime...... instead of real estate and cars that no one wants or can afford."

Yes.

And another thing. Murakami ran a jazz bar and could 'call' for Midori whenever he wanted!

C.Q Walker said...

yes.... he was the one i was thinking about .... ( though it seems your friend Dylan would have been good for a headline or two) the paper needs a food and wine critic come to think of it( with reviews and recipes of his particular bent) Has to be a free meal and glass of red somewhere there!

do you think Albany is ready for coltrane or monk?

i would love to do a small bar, ( melbourne hole in the wall sort of thing) would have done one in the freemasons if I had the half mill they wanted at the time....

if you are into jazz at all Troy Roberts is playing on the 16th at the Dome and is probably the hottest ticket out of the Con in recent years