Labberneck

Canto 25

As a storyteller, Ruhl marches to Ovid’s drum rather than Aristotle’s. ‘Aristotle has held sway for many centuries, but I feel our culture is hungry for Ovid’s way of telling stories,’ she said, describing Ovid’s narrative strategy as ‘one thing transforming into another.’ She went on, ‘His is not the neat Aristotelian arc but, instead, small transformations that are delightful and tragic.’ And she added, ‘The Aristotelian model—a person wants something, comes close to getting it but is smashed down, then finally gets it, or not, then learns something from the experience—I don’t find helpful. It’s a strange way to look at experience.’ —Sarah Ruhl, as profiled by John Lahr in The New Yorker, March 17, 2008

1
Within the world of perfection birds sing to one another
the roof does not leak
birds sing to one another and the doors do not rot

windows pour pure sunshine
walls hug the frame as if bonded and the birds sing
to one and all—

rooms have plenty of fresh, clean air
and twin beds wood carved and full of many colored pillows
and naked Publius Ovidius Naso perhaps

all the way to Maramures
safe with Dacii liberi in their beds
perhaps at Bogdan Voda

no Tartars then no cuirass then no fur no arrows no steeds
where villagers prance in their sweet
little slippers and sip plum brandy

sheep’s milk drips from bird beaks
chop fir oak pine beech
come to death in funny straw hats

transforming into a sombrero
that tops Jose Guadalupe Posada
as he dances with Granny Rose

tiny bones clicking against each other
—come to song like Danny Boy
clicking bones like reels like Sligo

boys like Wren Boys on St. Stephen’s Day
posture of vibrant life
—wait softly for nearly perfect beings

to recline steadfast in their solidity
the birds sing to us, “Come in”
Within the world of perfection

crocus yields precious saffron and cranes fly
cranes fly and hawks pretend the world and the world begets
its aristocrats hidden away on a boat in the Seine

or buried beneath a brownstone in New Amsterdam
eating sprouts on rye smothered in chopped liver
with onions

2
Annie Hall flies mashed yeast flies
Moses rounds the corner and collides with Andy Devine
yada yada yada

wisdom takes a holiday with Tati
Tzara springs Abel Gance from the deep
Tzara springs Andre Gide from the deep

1:1 numbers you can’t measure
surfers were global before global was cool
but # of waves and points don’t cover

the intangibles metrics cause
rebellion magical realism affects
mysticism somewhere in Alaska an old man drops a stone

into the lake and that ripple becomes a swell
that circles the world
hits islands

breaks
reforms
and moves to the next reef

breaks
and Tzara gonna be there to ride that wave
where Wall Street analysts begin to find a way to quantify

intangibles
and build collateralized debt obligations to comfort
themselves

in the wake of socialized financial investments by autonomous
entities otherwise referred to as DICTATORSHIPS
who cut the mustard in Break Bulk

my backyard
jumping squirrels Break Bulk
in my backyard

and chase hawks away from their Crows Nests
[free solar energy] under rain
[free desalinization] aesthetic response

versus knowledge
yahoo versus microsoft
versus

3
Socrates does not lecture
when he takes flight it’s like Powerpoint—see Cave, Myth of
plasticity

of the brain in response to music
“the ocean refuses no river”
docent tapes

mighty iftar/feast of fools
mighty hijabs/black chadors
najess=bad/halah=good

sahari=predawn ramadan meal
sifting through information for new trend=learning
but also discovery

knowing the right=predicting the right outcome
but you can’t introspect the other
—even then could you predict the right action?

curiosity=what we actually die from
disease or event
setting=learning about a world

Red Ken=Said in central London
with his finger on the trigger
Get Thirty People in a Room and then What?

entertainment as in Prospero is a pirate
in that he causes the Duke’s ship to wreck on Caliban
“Salvaging a ship before it wrecks”

keen idea=Said in Tunis or applied arts versus science
rubric versus law
boot camp is not camp

O course is not A course
narnovitch is a great kid
vivorito is always wonderful

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when hawks pretend that the world of perfection
begets aristocrats

4
Victoria falls, “And I can’t get up!”
because helium will be gone by 2017
sonoluminescence

Black Keys Danger Mouse Gnarls Barkley
hafnium-infused development paradigms
David Cone, “Get out of my dugout!”

The Book of Pythia: The Cycle of Time
hive-minded drone-bot ass-kicking
wind-driven portable charger

When Kalatozov pretends that cranes fly
When Renoir pretends that planes fly
When Stonehenge digs digs