Sunday, October 20, 2013

Subsets of the Spectacle (The Life & Times Of Don Pancho Villa)


                             "De ninguna manera volveré a México.
                              No soporto estar en un país más surrealista
                              que mis pinturas."
                                                               (Salvador Dalí)

(1)

Sentences spread slowly
like ink in water
birthing tentacles
that touch and test.

Body reaches out
in colorless cloud
melting moonlight.

It is second sight
moist with flowers
blooming one night

husbanding nothing
evening the world
drinking and being drunk...


(2)

The dogs of zero hill
disappear into murmur:

one month
one moment
one eye....


All facts are past.
Goal is nothing.
Hunger is nothing.

Venus is last and only time.



(4)

Dearest seer see, dearest hearer hear:

Do you demand common use and conventional conversation?
Plain language and prosaic rose?

Are you looking for explanations?

To you there is really very little to say except:
Nietzsche knows

(his feet walking piano conciertos in the mountains):

the nose knows

Jimmy Durante knows

unmown and antic hay knows

Antarctic knows

Atlantic knows

Pancho Villa knows....

Muchas gracias Francisco.

Muchas gracias José Doroteo.

Muchas gracias, Don Pancho.

No hay falla....



(5)

On one level it is a climax of fragments
melding into a solar system of black suns.

On a another level it is the negation of figments
as if the ladder were a scale.

On the level of levels it is an ascent of time

like Vallejo rising from the center of the earth
under miner's hardhat:

replete with bread and butter
replete with French

free of blows

with a nose
that smells the conqueror
and inquires

(as daintily as an ancient Persian unfolding the last folio):

Cay coritacho micunqui? Is this the gold you chevaliers eat?



(6)

Her body reaches out
in colorless blood
melting moonlight.

It is second sight
moist with flowers
blooming in the night

husbanding nothing
evening the world
inhaling and being inhaled

inhaling self.

Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem...

This is the lost terrible middle

unlost in the steppe

unlost in village dance

unlost in night song

unlost in gallop.

This is one of the many lives and wives and mounts of Pancho Villa.



(7)

Pancho Villa is the first surrealist film-maker:
he films revolution filming revolution live.

Villa films for money.

Villa moneys for arms.

Villa arms as Mexicans laugh
cackling and cursing and rolling double R's.

Villa chairs.

Villa centaurs.

Zapata wants a still life

wants RR's be sealed
with a miniature of satraps'  kiss
under raised cup drunk and sober.

Don Pancho stiffens over the stirrups of his invisible mount
and complies.

!Viva truth! !Viva lies! !Viva Mexico!



(8)

The dogs of zero hill
disappear into stillness

one moment...one eye...one flash of powder:

Cay coritacho micunqui? Is this the gold by which chevaliers live and die?

[E. A. Costa 20 October 2013]










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