R Young
One morning @ home
R Young Photographs by Diana Young
One morning @ home
A book of texts, drawings, and collages by R Young with photographs by Diana Young. Published in e-chapbook format by Domaine du Réal St. Paul de Fenouillet Pyrénées-Orientales Occitanie France 2017 All work is copyrighted and all rights are reserved by R Young and Diana Young. Share freely. Any work which is re-published should give a credit line to the authors. Otherwise, the reader is encouraged to pass the book along at no charge.
Olivetti Lettera EfGdddFPLç@AXXx4466))) I am the grocery man. This is the best typewriter of them all. I don’t know why I quit using it.??s Something about it just works. Reminds me of my first typewriter ,;,‼! ! a WWII battle-front scuffed, dented Smith-Corona spitting flames and smoke like a rummy crook free basing thoughts like this is the way to go.&””” MAYBE THIS IS BETTER &&&MAYBE 66 - - @:: VNVNVN6DKDKD Well and also good. This is the beginning Doc Sportello’s got nothing on me crusin g zee Harbor Freeee - - - - ‼§§? way long time gone typey writers gonna jam up someday, José fjf what is the difference. between this and the other thing This is one of the Great Questions. Wish we had vnhrvyud answer; only if we had the ANsswdkjrer time would stand still maybe for a wile. Thisis the best.
Belle du Jour Diana planted morning glory seeds yesterday. Before long the seeds will sprout. Over the coming spring to autumn months the sprouts will grow into proper plants sending out vines leafy and flowery. Then glories will insinuate the trellis for many meters three, four, maybe even five, who knows. Then icy days will come and the glories will surely shrivel and turn brown. The leaves will wither and fall, the vines will shrink to dry lines on the trellis only to be erased next spring to make way for a new composition. Sowing those seeds was today. Drawing tomorrow takes time. 11.5.17
The Great Speckled Bird HeRe is the the ONe You ed for tR EE watchiNg while Y Wasted a SuM Wild With N a LiVe to ey Budd YOU Are tota Lite RVed with te Of MaShed a NGry foR Good ReaSons Lo TS of TieR
Bird Not t hank
Ou MeR O
BoDy
SaY h y CaN SP Me lity Se a pla POets NO But N as OneS
The New Hat One mor ning he woke up frantic about the state of his head so he wra pped it in bandages and slapped on a
hat big as a bu cket for slopping whatever needed to be slop ped then forgot about it un til his girl friend asked what he was doing with a bucket of slop on his head my new hat, he said, what’d you think it was
Clou de la Fou I’m walking down rue Voltaire under a bright blue mountain sky. It’s spring equinox. The world turns. And I’m thinking that Home has many meanings for the wanderer. He admires the cliffs where the Agly River slices through granite hills to form the narrow defile called Crazy hereabouts. Vernal light paints the granite silver, a wall implacable, unyielding . . . but crazy? Around the corner on Avenue Bonnefoi a man is at work painting a wrought iron driveway gate spotted with terracotta red primer. He holds a can of paint, dark green vert foncé. He is serious as a tailor focused on his glistening brush spreading enamel sticky as molasses — no, stickier, like streams of pine sap oozing from the rosin sapper’s V cut in the scaly trunk of longleaf pines in forests far
from here, an ocean and a gulf away, stuck in time and memory, that time, my memory. The time is gone, but I am here, stricken. The painter’s jeans are spotted with terracotta red primer, so too his long-sleeve work shirt, a plaid red, white, black, blue. His expression does not change. Dip, brush, brush. Dip, brush. Dip brush, brush, brush. Dip, brush brush. No hat. Thick brushy hair the color of the granite cliffs over above the Clou de la Fou. The handyman does not see me. He was always here. I walk on.
Death at the Voodoo Doughnut Shop Last seen loaded on Pass Road we think we know more than Iko CHIEF POWER SALES offer no more punishment for a death at the Voodoo Doe Nut Shop, oh what a night the plaid agents step in while the Governor signs his shark bait bill and Chopper Mike bites one humongous Voodoo Doe Nut in front of the heavy equipment operators strike,,, Dog deppity tases. You tasted good & you always have! Accounting and beekeeping 80 seconds don’t forget to get Now excluding disabled students from the corporal slappings paddlings make up your own trip. To see Dr. Ed’s Laser Treatment. toenail fungus You depitty dog you taste. before/after Win a badge. so what if every thing is from ashes to horn and back wake me in the morn. You know I ain’t gonna trip, baby. But this? oh!
The coast blinded by science
if thinking it through was ever enough to expose truth all the effort all the wrangling and surreptitious posing while bathers get sanctified for the future end that recedes the closer you get the farther it goes away yes that’s what he means goads away oh
if it’s all just a big mistake a reading of it sleeping wrongly just supposing ingratitude lies cons where they never grew among the fishermen and songsters up and down the coast where all lived among the heathen savages dolled up counting days on saturnine calendars revealing places where the martyr is bulled through the streets of d’iberville until well you know the end oh
if that’s not all not by a long shot just look red-eyed go on at the evidence chiseled into hydrocarb pungent swamp marl at the fishcamp the refuge from dangeroso tweeters and bloggers miscreants all who pour hot bile upon cold acidity claiming righteousness and goodness far into the unforeseeable future whirled without end denying the tomes the massive countereffects explained in lost texts still unrecovered yet dreaded locked and credited with miraculous powers snagged like mutant mullet in the nets spun out upon the toxic waters oh
if what blameless credences all did pursue pondering where endless sheaves of spikenard and fennel foxglove and oleander would lead pressed there upon the bosom of francis every brother and sister squandering wagered detoxed salvation transmigration doctored and medicated as if perfumed radiant clouds might transport all pain and joy to the alien cyborg spies hiding in boneyards of the unseen craters of the moon oh if where oh where has my little dream gone and all who gape and fret unable to calm turbid waters where the flying mullet play oh
Deadly Cruise (April 9, 2017) Beach riding traffic at a standstill wake up wake for crime isn’t cool throw yourself off a cliff decide which foods are healthier Dick fled officials urging motorists arrested on 2 counts go deaf revisit Anselm Kieffer learn the benefits of pickles give orders carry the weight of the archery state deny every request, shoot cool breezes poke fun wear good shoes reconsider your ties with the ancient dead download unicorn trails retell the saga of Billy T.K. in vehicle and on foot he downloaded child porn in Lucedale possession with intent distribute forged fermented foods lie down, take aim operate yourself who else will intercept, yet traffic not, nor be wake up wake trafficked catch fugitives eat them raw, or else inspire hope now he’s going to jail or find alternative routes mainly stop doing, be on your own need to know a woman helps have good reflexes venture into a mosquito jungle drown yourself die the wallpaper arsenic green
Fugue state He’s a junky. He can’t kick it, the kick he gets, like one Saturday — he was ten — and the Governor came to town to see his father, Big Mike Malone, drove all the way from the capital like he would do once in a while ’cause they were friends, pals really, the Governor and Big Mike Malone, horny pals from the old days, boyhood days, before they both lost their innocence. That was the Saturday Ray and his daddy Big Mike nearly killed the Governor out in the Gulf. Hours spent fishing for sailfish but catching only sharks. Ray was still just dreamy “Ray-boy the Piano Kid” with this ethereal — even, you might say, godly — way with the Beckwith Empire his mother had installed for him in the parlor of her boarding house, Malone’s Court, a haven for odd-balls of every sort, such as Pelican Bill the Fisherman, Mister Magic the Stupendous, Rose the French chanteuse, and Gustavo the Engineer (father of the folding flypaper tent), just to name the most notorious, the ones with criminal records, various scars, and obscene wounds, who were always in her kitchen fixing mustard and boloney sandwiches while he is forever fingering his beloved A Minor Fugue, the Chopin, to this day.
I, Constance Malone, was born forty years ago today, during the the last year of freedom, as my mother and father put it. Does this mean I’ve been a slave all my life? Not really. As my mother always said, They XXXXXXXX Louis and Margaret Malone died the year I turned eighteen. Both were victims of Raphael. We retrieved most of mother from a storm surge mass over near the Loup River Bridge. Father’s body was never found. I am writing this last will and testament for myself. It is no legal document. I do not intend to have it witnessed and notarized by the State. My purpose is strictly personal, an act of silent resistance. One day I will send this testament into the stream where it will flow to other deviants like myself, us rational few. Or irrational? Why don’t we just give up and believe? If I believe in anything, it’s soft voices resounding. Whispers thundering. This will and testament is not my last. Even so, I want to dispense with the bequeathing of my inheritance part. Everything I own, including this house, fish camp, and my share of Salvage World, all this goes to my daughter Alice. Good luck finding her. Hello, Alice? If you happen to read my testament in the UR press, you will know my will. Come home, if you can — or want to. But if not, whisper me back.
Sunday School Lesson What were you trying to teach me when you taught me to sing about miracle-working lamb’s blood precious blood of the lamb? power power wonder-working power What should be done with the power what wonders to work with it? Is the blood of the lamb rifle bullets shot cannon balls fired ordnance tomahawked to erase a man a woman children a mosque a church a village an idea hope entire of the future?
RECYCLED LIVESTOCK WASTE Billions of tons of slaughterhouse and livestock waste (plus remains of euthanized cats and dogs) are rendered into recycled meat, bone meal, and animal fat used as feed for dairy animals, livestock feed, pet food . . . and human food. Without rendering plants, cities would fill with diseased and rotting carcasses leading to uncontrolled spread of deadly viruses and bacteria. “If you burned all the carcasses, you’d get a terrible air pollution problem. If you pit it all into landfills, you’d have a colossal public health problem, not to mention the stench.” (Dr. William Houston, Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine). BIO-MINING Fish sperm (milt) is used for extracting and recycling rare earth elements (REES) from magnets and electronic waste (electric circuitry, mobile phones, hard drives, etc.), a process sold to us as “a way of replacing environmentally-damaging metal extracting methods with more eco-friendly ones.” The argument ran like this: Milt is cheap. Thousands of tons are discarded by the fishing industry every year. It is easily collected, powdered, and added to solutions containing metals used in making batteries (neodymium, dysprosium, and trivalent iron). The metals adhere to the DNA of the milt powder and is then recovered with acids in a centrifugation process. As it turned out, the milt from Gulf-spawned fish, is highly toxic, which means that collecting it is highly dangerous for the workers who have to handle the contaminated fish and milt. The factory down on Beach Road is owned by PetroChem, so the working conditions are dismal, the line crews are undocumented slaves, the pollution is extensive (much of it being airborne). Gulf breezes not only stink, they are carcinogenic and cause nerve and brain ailments.
Notes for a future history of Mirabeau County.
Misc. typescript The past has to be seen as dead; or the past will kill. —V.S. Naipaul We are not afraid of work, we just ain’t gonna do it. —Old song from the Gulag The Ring in the Window A tuning fork ping whenever the window’s shutter is released. The prisoner knows this pure ring is not a ghost or a message from any god. The Ring triggers memories and emotions which are real and remind the prisoner of beauty and truth, ideas revealed in the mind, not in the laws that slammed shut the cell door. The Ring in the Window reminds you that you are not a slave to irrational rules or to the past. The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. —Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future The best way to predict your future is to create it. —Anon. (attributed to Abraham Lincoln) Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself. —Vladimir Bukovsky
Notes for a future history of Mirabeau County.
Light in the Darkness (On an untitled photograph by Diana Young) Does light in the darkness speak to you? Do the hues, the values, the shapes whisper a story, choke you with a curse, or do they permit you to breathe the ignited air? No direction, only lust? It’s all about photons, isn’t it, and how they jazz up the leaves? But who can read the messages delivered by photons screaming? What’s to be made of what the elaborate conjuring photons posit, set forth — dare? Nothing’s to be made. Photons do not conjure, display, posit, or dare. It’s up to you to scream, to touch the light, caress skin crush folds crunch dried leaves between your eye teeth, chew on the message until it comes to you straight and singed by fire. (March 2017)
Whispering Thunder on a clear blue day? No, they’re just dragging garbage bins down the street, the garbage guys, yet they rumble thunderous as missiles over Aleppo, 50,000,000 bucks of bile slashing the sky of Homs, Damascus while long-haul trucks groan up Avenue Jean Moulin and beer barrels clang at the Bar-Café de la Paix. Friday prayers for our refugees begin at the petite mosquée on the corner, the men and boys whispering as the day goes on and then goes on and on. (April 2017)
One morning @ home Wait, I hear them. There they are. The Garbage Guys are on the street. Those who wait are either patient, or not, so. Rough truck rumbles from the corner. Avenue Jean Moulin. Resistance hero. Place Florentine Pla. Men shot. Boys deported. They rumble and they roar. This is not the Wabash Cannonball. No shots aimed at St. Martin or Caudiès. It’s a good bit cooler today. She assembles the pot of azuki beans, celery, onions, curcumin, pepper. Don’t forget the pepper, it jukes the curcumin. Air redolent. Red beans and rice with andouille sausages on Monday, like in our New Orleans days. Crepe myrtle syrup on the flagstones. Dancing cockroaches. Go down to the garden room. Find the cube box, neat design. Pack the terracotta heater for the summer. Wonder where they are, the celestials. Moon and stars have given up. A car parks. Car door opens and shuts. Who? What are they up to? Imagined acts become memories. But what went on when the light went out, Mary Jane, Mary Jane? Forgot that ditty. Flimsy excuse, but aren’t they all? The evidence shows only scrambled pieces. Work the puzzle. Make up a story. It’s a lie, but you remember. Keep making the same mistakes.
The way it is. What comfort in that? Tyrants ruled, bankers screwed the markets. The surfing masses drudged in deep shit with no good way to get out or get clean. Mister Clean. Monsieur Propre. Change the costumes. Change the scenery. Repaint the grocery store. Do all that, but the roles in the play don’t get re-written. Banging on the street. They’re unloading crates. Animals, maybe. Dogs are always hungry. Watch your watermelon rinds. Toby ate the rinds. Toby is dead these sixty years. Ugliest and meanest mutt you ever met. Tell the same stories until you exit stage left. Fill the washer with dirty socks and what you forgot. Children laughing their way to school on rue Voltaire. Beer barrels roll at the Café de la Paix. PMU. Pay. Em. Oooo. Bet the nags at Valenciennes. The Hippodrome. Bathe in the muddy Congo; wiggle your tiny ears. Switch off the light before mounting the stairs. Left knee aches. Mary Jane, Mary Jane. Tell the same stories until you exit stage left. Fill the washer with dirty socks and what you forgot. Children laughing their way to school on rue Voltaire. Beer barrels roll at the Café de la Paix. PMU. Pay. Em. Oooo. Bet the nags at Valenciennes. Hippodrome. Bathe in the muddy Congo; wiggle your tiny ears. Switch off the light before mounting the stairs. Left knee aches. Mary Jane, Mary Jane.
April 21, 2017, the anniversary of Jean Tinguely