Ryoanji

Poem, and a photo of myself at the Ryoanji rock garden in Kyoto, Japan from 1995 -- one of those photos where you give the camera over to a stranger to snap.

Saw Clint Eastwood's latest, Gran Torino, a couple weeks ago. I liked the film quite a bit, with its presentation of a sort of fey Dirty Harry. Involving the Hmong as characters gave the film more depth than a lot of contemporary movies.

Also recently watched Arrabal's And I will walk like a Crazy Horse, another sick and inventive surrealist work. I liked a brief non sequitur shot of what appeared to be a giant spider against the sky.

The Bums

by Jonathan Falk

8-31-2008



Shoulders buzzed under a shade tree, they threw at us crabapples, boysenberries, marionberries, wine spilled into shade of fiery trees. We walked off from the hobos, children seeking sweets, tired of home.

& Angels tread the gateway, skunks roam the hay, cisterns clang.

The tyres take one to the child is father of the man, mountains' hem -- adumbrated through eyelid & hazel, I've seen squirrels before.

Horseless carriage moaning up the track, nutmeg and lycanthropes, shoulder shadows scoriac, proto-Autumn sun horizon & nadir.

Oddities 6 -- Final

The last installment of Oddities 6. I'm generally not one for suppressing the written word, but here is an exception that tests the rule -- British poet Terry Cuthbert's barbed wire poem. You'll have to use your imagination on the part I obscured. Apparently, Cuthbert died a few years ago. And work by myself, Marc Myers, and others.

continued

I forgot to mention that the geographic range of the artists in Oddities 6 extended to the Midwest. Here is a work by the exalted Clark Dissmeyer of Nebraska (also known as "CAD"). In addition, a Scrach n' sniff page, featuring such luminaries as Gurdjieff and Tex Ritter.

And yes, somewhere Dorian Harewood is screaming as a bullet splits his foot. And Rade Sherbedgia is ever stealing the show: "A cloak, with a hood. Ok doctor."

Ik been reading The Stolen Sun, a novel by Emil Petaja, a correspondent from late in the life of H.P. Lovecraft. Space opera with depth, inspired by the Finnish epic the Kalevala. This is probably about as close as I'll get to the Kalevala; I doubt I'll ever read it.