larvatus prodeo
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Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Michael Zeleny" journal:
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12:10 pm
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HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE
Welcome to the online journal of larvatus. Stable texts are open to the general public. Squibs and sallies, schemes and stratagems, jaunts and taunts, are restricted to friends. Please note that locked texts subject to third party copyright are provided to my friends under the doctrine of fair use, subject to implied consent by all their readers to abstain from redistribution. Reciprocal friendship shall be extended to all sane, sound, and disinterested personae. Comments and critique are always welcome. Marriage proposals and death threats shall be entertained in the order received.
The House Rules are few and lax. All anonymous comments are initially screened. They shall be revealed or answered at your host’s discretion. All signed comments are initially presumed welcome, until and unless they cause an affront to your host. Thereupon their author shall become banned from further contributions to this journal. Otherwise, anything goes. SAY WHAT?
ÇA ?
Tristan Corbière
A treatise? You don’t say! I haven’t treated squat!
A study? Slothful wretch, my culture fetid rot.
A volume? Random heap, sheets stacked in disarray.
Good copy? Not with me enmired in the fray.
A poem? Not today, my lyre is being cleaned.
A book? Of fusty tomes far better to be weaned.
A song? Would that it were, my ear is made of tin.
Fun pastime? Sordid den, dire boredom dwells within.
A cadence? Rhythmic flow is broken by dull grind.
A product? I divide what others multiplied.
A story? Handicapped, my lame and laggard Muse.
Clear proof? My mind is fraught by grief and lit by booze.
High fashion? Wealth and style inform nowhere my dress.
Grandstanding or grand mal? My spasms fail to impress.
Evicted from the hall, I lurk behind the stage,
In transit, poised to choose: a joy house or a cage.
Too old? But to retire, my tenure won’t suffice.
Too young? My hectic life will rid me of this vice.
A sage, a slob, an ace, a master, and a clown,
A stud without a flock, a king without a crown.
THIS is without pretense, and yet a blatant pose.
It’s life and nothing but, confessed in deathless prose.
A masterpiece? Could be, I never made one yet!
A farce? A waste? A bomb? Decide and place your bet!
I bet… and I shall sign herewith my humble name;
My child shall overcome each tainted libel claim.
Through chance it will prevail, its fate a stroke of luck…
Art knows me not at all — and I don’t give a fuck.
— traduced by MZ, 6 September 2005
Tags: doggerel, vanity
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02:15 pm
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благотворительно
Догола разоблачась,
Выдрочив сию новинку,
Быков фыркает, но Глинку
Затоптать не может в грязь.
Tags: doggerel, jews, russian, russians, stupidity
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02:54 am
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the next round
The last time I stood next to my father, he was ringing your doorbell and telling you that we loved you. The next day you scraped our child out of your womb.
Leonardo da Vinci, Feto umano nell’utero, 1511
That was nearly five years ago. Now you complain that I am harming you. You have failed at forcing the issue. You are begging me to desist. But I am not doing anything wrong. Nor am I harming you. If you want me to do your bidding, you must understand my reasons and convince me of your understanding. If you can feel remorse, we may benefit from conversation. If you stand on your rights, we have nothing to discuss.
You offer my survival in some good memories. You offer kindness and a possible friendship. But how you remember me is your business. Your kindness last screeched at me amid 57th Street. Neither of us is good at friendship. I am sorry to hear about your father’s recent death. I offer you my condolences and appreciation of your effort to be responsible. But responsibility is impossible without remorse. You will be responsible for people who love you; you are sorry if you have hurt me; you are deeply sorry for the baby; but you obsess about your reputation. You will say anything to forget our catastrophe. Is that what you call making peace with the past? You seem to be susceptible to shame. Think of it as your medicine meant to elicit remorse in regard to our common history.
There are two innocent victims in our story. Neither of us is one. But my guilt is not an issue in what you want from me. Refusal is my right. You have two ways of getting past it: either persuade me that satisfying you is the right thing to do or offer me something I want in return. You want to move on. You claim that my account deters you from doing so. It does nothing of the sort. I am nowise deterred by Usenet libel claiming that I fucked a dog. You are displeased with my versiculi. But pleasure is not your right. You need to be jarred from complacency. You have cancer of the soul. Your anguish is its symptom. I live with your disparagement. You could live with my diagnosis. Your discomfort stems from recognizing its truth. You suffer from a spiritual malignancy. Seek to cure the disease, not to palliate the symptom.
I mean to be therapeutic for both of us. I could be wrong. But you haven’t begun to persuade me of my error. As to your offers, I doubt that you have anything I want. But it doesn’t hurt to try. This is not an issue of sexual deviance. Your love of pain was entertaining. Its frustration of your own aims did not stand between us. Nor am I concerned with your failure to live up to your role models of Sex in the City, that bevy of time-worn bags traipsing around Manhattan in search of a steady regimen of penetration. You relate to women even more tenuously than you do to men. You could have friends through interest in people for their own sake, or through interests shared with other people. Neither of us is good at caring for people. But you also lack concerns that might ally you with others. You fail at concentration. Your attractions are notional. You imagine yourself in life and work without realizing any role. You have dabbled in marriage and yearned after motherhood, just as you have dabbled in design and yearned after commerce. You avoid sustained effort. You must work for a living, and you are content with the minimum of work that will keep you alive. Millions of others live like that. Unlike them, you refuse to make peace with mediocrity. You admire the drive towards betterment but fail to keep up on its path. Things get too complicated. Progress is too much to bear. It’s fun to whine about aimlessness and regret childlessness. It’s a drag to create a business or stay the course to become a mother.
Johanna Schwarzbeck, AFTER ABORTION, 1993
You might look up Johanna. She is your kindred soul, supplementing sex in the city with syringes. Even closer to your home comes a movie about a Chinese woman who seeks to reverse the effects of aging by consuming her own foetus. The only side effect of her success is a fishy body odor. George Orwell observed that in the West we are divided from our downtrodden fellows by our sense of smell. As an exile from ideology, I prefer to divide myself from the advocates of class struggle and gender privilege. Tyranny stinks. I accept the attribution of foetal cannibalism to domination by the Chinese Communist regime. The party rules you to this day. In your doctrinary moods, you always had issues with my material comforts. But the roots of your resentment may be more ancient. Think of Euripides’ Medea 1396, which David Kovacs translates as: “Your mourning has yet to begin. Wait until old age.” The Greek original is twice as concise:Μήδεια οὔπω θρηνεῖς: μένε καὶ γῆρας.
[not yet adv] [sing a dirge, wail verb 2nd sg pres ind act]: [await, expect verb 2nd sg pres imperat act] [and conj] [old age noun sg neut acc] You may have fancied yourself unwittingly, Medea to my Jason. Perhaps you deserve to address me as ψευδόρκου καὶ ξειναπάτου, breaker of [my] own oath and deceiver of a stranger. For my part, I broke nothing and deceived no one. Perhaps you fear running out of chances upon reaching your fifth decade. For my part, every day brings new beginnings. Your dirge is unripe. Oupô thrêneis: mene kai gêras.
Perhaps Latin will suit you better than Greek. As Cicero wrote to Atticus, ut aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur. It is said that for a sick man, there is hope as long as there is life. Set aside the rest of the story, from Pompey’s flight from Italy to the display of Cicero’s hands and head on the Rostra in the Forum. You may yet redeem your errors. If you could save three lives, you would restore the balance. Let me know how it goes. If you can take my help, I will give it.
Tags: death, doggerel, insanity, love, memory
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09:07 pm
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golly, how truth will out!
Discourses and aphorisms on truth and lies, in an anaesthetic sense, with a sound disclaimer.
Tags: doggerel, history, lies, philosophy
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01:18 am
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ой мама роди меня обратно
Вставьте мне в сердечко звёздочку, звёздочку,
Вместо ушек вставьте ракушки, ракушки,
А заместо глазок — шарики, шарики,
Вместо брючек дайте штаники, штаники,
Положите меня в ясельки, в ясельки,
Чтобы я лежал бы в люлечке, в люлечке
И пускал из носа сопельки, сопельки,
Издая при этом вопельки, вопельки.
А потом постройте радугу, радугу,
Чтоб по ней бежали гномики, гномики
Чтобы в ней бы жили кошечки, кошечки,
И кормите меня с ложечки, с ложечки.
Но вы этого не можете, не можете.
Ну так что ж вы блядь меня не уничтожите?
—Шиш Брянский
Current Location: в пизде
Current Mood:  nostalgic
Current Music: Django Reinhardt et le Quintette du Hot Club de France, J’Attendrai
Tags: bullshit, django, doggerel, poetry, russian
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03:39 am
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metagraph to misogyny
Misogynistic? Moi? ( Read more... )
Tags: bullshit, doggerel, lawyers, metagraph, women
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12:04 pm
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craniorectal coincidence
The popping sound you never hear:
Your head departing from your rear.
Donald Pleasence and Françoise Dorléac in Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-sac
Tags: asshat, bullshit, doggerel, friends, sex, sodomy, tasteless, violence
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11:25 am
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amours de voyage
 — for Rachel Y.... W... cum suis vivat valeatque moechis,
quos simul complexa tenet trecentos,
nullum amans vere, sed identidem omnium
ilia rumpens;
nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem,
qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati
ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
tactus aratro est.
— Gaius Valerius Catullus, carmen 11, 17-24 City bustle. Fading light.
You’ll have company tonight.
At your service, all your men.
They will make you whole again.
Rig your hopes and tell you lies.
Bust a nut between your thighs.
Fart and snore and pay no heed
While dreams dwindle and recede.
Others not so long ago
Lit you up and made you glow,
Nights fulfilled you, but the dawn
Found you wan and woebegone.
Lest your gloom ensued in spawn
Its conclusion got withdrawn:
Scrape the foetus from within,
Glom more solace for your skin.
................................................
City bustle. Fading light.
You will sleep alone tonight.
One good woman, no good men.
Love can’t make you whole again. “Amours de voyage I have allowed myself to call them, as distinguished from the love we may have for localities wherein our everyday lot is cast.” — Vernon Lee, Genius Loci, 1898
Tags: catullus, death, doggerel, insanity, love, memory, sodomy, traducement
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09:55 am
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as may yields to december
Trophies and Rewards
True measure of compatibility,
Their happiness, a secret clause:
He will surrender to senility
Before she reaches menopause. 
Tags: bullshit, doggerel, love
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03:18 pm
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metagraph redux
— for Chien-Ling Liu  In a Time of Cuisine
A fact the gourmet
euphemism can’t silence:
vegetarians eat sex,
carnivores eat violence.
— Les Murray, April 2004
Fair Play
Herbivorous scruples
betoken the coward —
men eat flesh on credit
ere they get devour’d.
Tags: death, doggerel, food, les murray, metagraph
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05:05 pm
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metagraph
 Marriage
My wife and I — we’re pals. Marriage is fun.
Yes: two can live as stupidly as one.
— Philip Larkin, January 1954 Poesy
My readers are my friends, my verses true enough.
If I can fool myself, the world will buy my bluff.
Tags: doggerel, larkin, metagraph, poets, vanity
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10:20 am
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happy centenary, samuel
Le Concentrisme
Monsieur
Vous êtes le premier à vous intéresser à cet imbécile. Voici tout ce que j’en sais : j’ai fait sa connaissance ou, plus exactement, il m’a imposé cette incommodité, la veille de sa mort, à Marseille. Il s’est cramponné à moi dans un sombre bistrot où, à cette époque, j’avais l’excellente habitude d’aller me soûler deux fois par semaine. « Vous avez l’air » me dit-il « suffisamment idiot pour m’inspirer une confiance extrême. Enfin » poursuivit-il — (je ne change rien à ses logogriphes) — « enfin et pour la première fois je tombe sur un animal qui, si j’ose en croire mes yeux, est totalement et idéalement dépourvu d’intelligence, plongé dans une divine et parfaite nullité. » Il s’interrompit, se découvrit, et puis, d’une voix vibrante : « Je vous embrasse, mon frère ! » s’écria-t-il. Je le repoussai vivement. Il faillit tomber, pâlit, et se mit à tousser d’une façon si douloureuse que je ne pus m’empêcher de regretter la violence de mon geste. Mais il se reprit bientôt et m’adressa de nouveau, maintenant d’une voix à peine perceptible.
« Monsieur » dit-il, « permettez-vous que je vous pose une question ? » ( Read more... ) Gnome
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.
— written after Samuel Beckett’s resignation from Trinity College; published in the Dublin Magazine IX 3 (July-September 1934); reproduced from Samuel Beckett, Collected Poems in English & French, Grove Press, 1977, p. 7 ( Read more... ) Dotage
When your mind’s no longer flowing
Through the conduits of knowing,
Train yourself to forgo fretting
Over things not worth forgetting.
—MZ, 13 April 2006, 10:20 PST |
Tags: beckett, comedy, doggerel, dotage, french, translation
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07:51 pm
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vers d’occasion
A topical traducement:
Tags: death, doggerel, memory, traducement
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11:35 pm
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petit mort pour rire
― in memoriam Cosmo of the Magnificent Sunrise
February 26, 1994 ― January 6, 2006
| Petit mort pour rire |
A small death for giggles |
Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes !
Les herbes au vent seront tes cheveux ;
De ton œil béant jailliront les feux
Follets, prisonniers dans les pauvres têtes… |
Take off, agile currier of comets!
These weeds wind-swept will stand in for your fur;
Your gaping orbs will shoot forth will-
o-wisps, locked up inside the noggin of a cur… |
Les fleurs de tombeau qu’on nomme Amourettes
Foisonneront plein ton rire terreux…
Et les myosotis, ces fleurs d’oubliettes… |
The ornaments called lilies of the valley
Will burgeon over your terrestrial woof…
Emboldened mice that trace your hillside grounds… |
Ne fais pas le lourd : cercueils de poètes
Pour les croque-morts sont de simples jeux,
Boîtes à violon qui sonnent le creux…
Ils te croiront mort ― Les bourgeois sont bêtes ―
Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes ! |
Let’s go, friend: the crate that shelters poets,
A worn-out plaything proffered for a proof,
A violin boxed up, its echo thrown aloof…
They think you dead ― mistaken for a goof ―
Take off, agile currier of comets! |
| ― Tristan Corbière |
― traduced by MZ |
Tags: animals, cosmo, death, doggerel, friends, memory, poetry, tough guys
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08:55 am
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say what?
― for David W. Affeld
“Art must be despised and considered to be completely worthless before anything can be derived from it again, or else it must be applied to everything. It is therefore ridiculous to try for any kind of personal success.”
« Quand j’aurai inspiré le dégoût et l’horreur universels, j’aurai conquis la solitude. »
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“Once I have inspired universal disgust and horror, I will have conquered solitude.”
― translated by MZ |
« Ma carrière n'avait pas été un échec, commercialement tout du moins : si l’on agresse le monde avec une violence suffisante, il finit par le cracher, son sale fric ; mais jamais, jamais il ne vous redonne la joie. »
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“My career had not been a failure, at least commercially: if you assail the world with sufficient violence, it ends up spewing its filthy lucre; but never, never does it give you back any joy.”
― translated by MZ |
( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, comedy, corbière, doggerel, french, houellebecq, poetry, traducement
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