POETS FOREVER – JOYOUS ODE TO VERLAINE et al

The night before the votes came in…

Was my pleasure to MC amid left-bank optimism in the wilds of Brixton.  Johny Brown – frontman of legendary folk-punk heroes, Band of Holy Joy invited the gorgeously French band over, A Singer Must Die 

– so it all went pretty indie.

Packed crowd also got to hear Morton Valence.  Love.  Robert ‘Hacker’ Jessett looks like George Michael undercover, Anne Gilpin’s more bonnie than her Hacker Clyde.  

When doing my homework, I discovered how poetic translations can be – finding zillions of versions of Baudelaire, Rimbaud & Verlaine.  Being the kind of girl who has to order the first thing she sees on a menu, in fear of indecision, I went freestyle and opted to make my own really bad translations below…

—-

Enemy.  Baudelaire. Kirsty translation v1.

My youth was nothing but a tempest storm

Broken brilliant with sun rays

The thunder and the rain have ravaged me

And sickened fruit in my garden lays

Voila – touched by the autumn of my creative life

I prepare my shovel and pick

To reassemble the earth and soils

Arrêt – this water must not lick through cracks to tombs beneath

And who knows if the flowers that I dream

of finding in this sun will root or wash away, a tragedy,

Never finding the mystic thing which offers their vigorous beauty

O doulear! Alas – time eats life

and the obscure enemy locked to our heart is blood lost,

growing from this fortified dust…

In response to my enemy

Time is my enemy

Not nature

I fight in bars

On dancefloors

In praise of love

Of life raw

Lost

At the aftershow

Before there was Burroughs, shooting his wife, Rimbaud shot Verlaine.  

And after Rimbaud came Penny Rimbaud (creator of anarchic band, Crass)

Penny for your Rimbaud (based on this video interview with Ian F Svenonius on Vice)

Despair.

Go military.  Go Defense.

Give me a penny for your Rimbaud.

Those left behind

Must get out of bed

McLaren, Branson, cash from chaos.

Exit the existential mess

Take action

Get out of bed.

Time and space are the replacement of place

The holocaust is the spirit of displacement

Accepted face

Of a corporate seditionary policy

Anarchy is rage not rave

Get out of bed

Get out of love

Our price is now

Insurrection, mutiny – see treason.

How does it feel to be mother of a thousand dead

No agitprop to Iraq half a million dead

5 years prep to make the platform blow

SantaClausification of dead rockstars

Dead philosophers

Dead myths

Full Marx Mythomania

There ain’t gonna be a revolution

We have to go sideways so we can’t be seen, he said

The true dimension will be like a prairie fire

Conrad’s anarchist will destroy GMT  – universal time…

Anarchists get out of bed.

We shall be moved

We must not bemoan the loss of dinosaurs

Or the concentration camp we live in now

As long as I can remain outside of it

And get out of bed

WE’VE GOT THE SYSTEM

Vote symbolism

Vote dada

Vote surreal

Vote metaphysical

Vote rock n roll

Vote for the commodification of music
Vote disco

Vote anarchy

Vote punk

Vote religion

Vote politics

Vote homo

Vote labels

Vote The Band Of Holy Joy​

Vote Gainsbourg

Vote Russell Brand​

Vote

Vote Kardashian

Vote vagabond

Vote war

Vote rave

Vote pagan light

Vote silk

Vote nylon

Vote outsider

Vote for death

Vote for soil

Vote for now

Vote for the future

Vote for the past

Vote cancer

Vote hallucinogenic

Vote psychedelic

Vote adolescent

Vote child

Vote baby

Vote death

Vote?

—

What did one socialist lobster say to another socialist lobster when it went to the voting station alone?

Stop being so shellfish

A very popular translation of Paul VERLAINE’s – THE BULLY – ‘lesser poet’

Through Interminable Land…

(Romances Sans Paroles: Arriettes Oubliées VIII)

Through interminable land

Ennui of the plain,

Vague snow once again

Gleams like sand.

The sky is copper

Devoid of any light,

You might almost gather

The moon had lived and died.

Floating clouds

Grey oak-trees lift

In near-by woods

Among the mists.

The sky is copper

Devoid of any light,

You might almost gather

The moon had lived and died.

Wheezing crow

You gaunt wolves too,

When north winds blow

How do you do?

Through interminable land

Ennui of the plain,

Vague snow once again

Gleams like sand.

— [this was riffed on the back ]

Devoid of light

Avoid the light

a void of light

Metal sky

Bullet hole stars w

Slate oak

Roots remain underground

Sheltered from wheezing city crows

Hunted by gaunt smacked up wolves

Queens of the night

Slumberous reward of narcolepsy

The warmth of dreams

Light – remove it

Through interminable land

Ennui of the plain,

Vague snow once again

Gleams like sand.

Condemned Women  – BAUDELAIRE [didn’t read this, or translate it – lifted from the amazing http://fleursdumal.org]

Like thoughtful cattle on the yellow sands reclined,

They turn their eyes towards the horizon of the sea,

Their feet towards each other stretched, their hands entwined,

They tell of gentle yearning, frigid misery.

A few, with heart-confiding faith of old, imbued

Amid the darkling grove, where silver streamlets flow,

Unfold to each their loves of tender infanthood,

And carve the verdant stems of the vine-kissed portico.

And others like unto nuns with footsteps slow and grave,

Ascend the hallowed rocks of ancient mystic lore,

Where long ago St. Anthony, like a surging wave,

The naked purpled breasts of his temptation saw.

And still some more, that ‘neath the shimmering masses

stroll,

Among the silent chasm of some pagan caves,

To soothe their burning fevers unto thee they call

O Bacchus ! who all ancient wounds and sorrow laves.

And others again, whose necks in scapulars delight,

Who hide a whip beneath their garments secretly,

Commingling, in the sombre wood and lonesome night,

The foam of torments and of tears with ecstasy.

Kirsty’s ODE TO BAUDELAIRE:  

We walked through cows lost after milking – confused as the clouds rushing past the moon

Suitcase of books

Sleeping in sacks

Most people get three chances – I got FIVE

Light over flatus, ignus, aqua, terra, and me

Misty lake – babtism with nature

who wrapped like ivy pulling to her core

Beneath the soil

Buried in stolen black vinyl

And everyday I fight nature

From Babylonia, to the path of Venus across the Wiccan sky

Israel where jesus drives a Fiat Lux (let there be light)

To blood of Guenavere

Changing from clown to pallbearer

choking on the rust of gargoyle’s lungs

—

RIMBAUD – RAMBO – the shooter, the midnight looter – rebel poet, walked out on words by 20,

Dying in Marseille – a leg less than he was born with.

But who cares? Poets live forever.