I enjoyed the shift in metre between these two pieces - one to me redolent
of the vocabulary of suburban banality and the voice of the bbc, the other
(this second one) seeming more intimate and circling around family......
(the family car/furniture/entertainment.......?)
is there a structure here we are glimpsing? A relation between 'psalm' and
'broadcast' that emerges over a longer space/piece?
I didn't like the 'screaming gates' in the penult line - the verb seemed at
odds with the tone so far 'parading' 'listening' 'barging' and so on -
would prefer a word more damp and shabby......
some cold-ridden thoughts from late on Sunday night anyhow - thanks for
showing this
Liz
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Hamilton-Emery [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 9:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: still another draft
from RADIO NOSTALGIE
Broadcasts
Take the smell of those creatures
Parading in fuel or lying
In gold mud beside the yew trees
From which in shame-shards
Sound's incandescent worms rang out
We loved it / bright bones lapping
Up the soiled water charging
For an hour above the regional blaze
Each one asking for the gilded queue
Tired from the staves of wires
Or spurning the approved argot
To burn troops and kiss each glove
Listening then or barging in
Among leather fanfares foisting off
A thousand tonnes of limbs
Each night aborts its remedy
Tense and tidy as a carcass
With rented cars flourishing
Where we sat pent-up like muscles
The guidelines preferred betrayal
Quavering in the dance cabinet
Lumped-in as tapes spewed on
About the buoyant feasting
Was it grace stripping Mother
Fingering the total wreck
We blamed the shadows in unison
Pale arms above the mono crop
Go go my shitty metal future
Sweating on drifting skirts
As pale ducts flare with teeth
The sick brigades all empty
The fan stinks beside the children
Wheels spinning where bearings
Continuously squeal vis-a-vis
Offal and headscarves a razor
Or needle scraping the valves of
Slow fucking divertimentos
Whose blue ears destroyed the cell
As each foetal lung broadcasts
Over white eiderdowns
Over the brightest informants
With tiny faces shaved off
Upholding the smoking Secretariat
The screaming gates still
Miles beyond each perfect meal
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