Personal Style: Sun Ablution
Posts
Poetry: From Chapter A by Christian Bök
From Chapter A
Awkward grammar appals a craftman. A Dada bard
as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an
alpha (a slapdash arc and a backward zag) that mars
all stanzas and jams all ballads (what a scandal). A
madcap vandal crafts a small black ankh —— a hand-
stamp that can stamp a wax pad and at last plant a
mark that sparks an ars magna (an abstract art that
charts a phrasal anagram). A pagan skald chants a dark
saga (a Mahabharata), as papal cabal blackballs all
annals and tracts, all dramas and psalms: Kant and
Kafka, Marx and Marat. A law as harsh as a fatwa bans
all paragraphs that lack an A as a standard hallmark.
Christian Bök
Awkward grammar appals a craftman. A Dada bard
as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an
alpha (a slapdash arc and a backward zag) that mars
all stanzas and jams all ballads (what a scandal). A
madcap vandal crafts a small black ankh —— a hand-
stamp that can stamp a wax pad and at last plant a
mark that sparks an ars magna (an abstract art that
charts a phrasal anagram). A pagan skald chants a dark
saga (a Mahabharata), as papal cabal blackballs all
annals and tracts, all dramas and psalms: Kant and
Kafka, Marx and Marat. A law as harsh as a fatwa bans
all paragraphs that lack an A as a standard hallmark.
Christian Bök
Observation: Reserved Seats
Since everyone is traveling I decided to allow myself to be peer-pressured into taking advantage of a standing invitation to visit my best friend in Virginia. When I bought my tickets, there was an offering for seat reservation. Some seats were an additional dollar and others, two. The seats in front, on top of the double decker bus, were two dollars. I opted out for I had no need of any special seating and thought it more exciting to leave things to chance.
On the way back, I sat right behind the first seats in front, on the upper level. Initially I wanted to sit further back because I was afraid. I had been imagining the bus crushing several times on our way from NY, and my mind was full of vivid images of broken glasses, blood, and myself either dead or dying. So it felt like sitting in front would be a bit too daring. But then I thought again, what is the point? No matter where I sat if the bus goes down, so would I. And if the bus were to crash from the front, I would at least …
On the way back, I sat right behind the first seats in front, on the upper level. Initially I wanted to sit further back because I was afraid. I had been imagining the bus crushing several times on our way from NY, and my mind was full of vivid images of broken glasses, blood, and myself either dead or dying. So it felt like sitting in front would be a bit too daring. But then I thought again, what is the point? No matter where I sat if the bus goes down, so would I. And if the bus were to crash from the front, I would at least …