Maurice Scully

The oldest seed ever known to germinate
was a 2,000-year-old date-palm seed
retrieved from archaeological excavations
of King Herod's palace. Seeds found during
the excavations lay in a drawer for 30 years
or more until someone thought they might try
to germinate them: one did.


The oldest seed ever known to germinate
was a 2,000 year old date- alm seed
ved om archaelog tions
of K lace. nd d
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...

Artists
in their
factories
are

working
hard now
filling in
steel

boxloads
of grant
application
forms

on an
ongoing
shift
basis

through the
generations
beyond
making.

Life is
good.

There is
breathing
space.
The

galleries
are show
ing the
normal.

Formal.
The avant
garde. The
pig in a

poke.

Elderly ladies
eyes closed
heads lifted
listen to

mell
if
luous

poetry
& no
body's
bitter.

.

Dips from
its pergola
touching yr
head as you

pass a rose by
way of caress
on a chill bright
winter morning

turning on its
stem pale
cream along a
black path

into the
park

sometimes
the slits
of an owl's
lids open

to watch a
drop

falling from a
horn of lime
hanging from the

underarch
of a bridge.

.

O
come dance
with me
ye

prety maidens
& hark the foulys
song along an
avenue

of Boojum where
huge pyramids of
crystal new-fangled
interwoven

logics laugh at
the little people
tiny down there
among the

latest splashes
of the
hyper-baroque.

It's good
to be
dead.

Past the
pastoral fascists
& gallery
thugs.

Pluck that
string. It
really feels
like this …

cycles
within
cycles.

And a dog
out there in
the dark going
Art! Art-Art!

Art!
...

That job application
returned unopened
with a covering letter
thanking you for yr interest
and wishing you every
success in yr future
career Gaudate Deum
close window close it
tight (well) with finality
and panache you know
how it is in the Temple of
Echoes of Work Once Done
and return to the main case …

Symbol-evolving pattern-
obsessed idealistic creature
of cruelty and kindness in the
frustrating chaotic illogical
fantastic meaningless muck of
life you … stop and cede to
close window and return
to main page.

Strike a match, hold it steady,
things ignite the way you say
day goes into night, twist that
and scratch even if things are not
what they seem then close window
to return to main phase.

Look, mark it with yr pen,
the calendar says the 27th
dot dot, a glint, in series,
in eternity, a tiny life -
look up - cold, heat, light -
that tendril following sun
through air rippled around a
stick thinking tra-la beyond thought …

seems to read the blurred
print on the back of the
packet on the table amid
the racket.

In reading something about
a 'linguistic event' I spotted
a misprint and went to pencil
it in but pencilled the same
word a line below by mistake
(in which that word was not
a misprint) - is that a linguistic
event or just a snippet from
a drifter's ballet? Bullet
snug in its chamber, quiet.

Is blazoned on the back
of the packet on the table.
Stir the soup, tug the cable.

Did Goethe privilege a grand
bourgeois outlook and combine
it with an art which cosmetically
screens out the wrinkles of reality?
I wonder, shaving this morning,
moonlight a delight, but red
a warning.

Is streaming down the side
of the packet. A million
things happen at once. Can
you hack it? Dogs barking …

Which brings us round again -
ladies step forward as the gents
fall back - to that job application
returned unopened this morning
thanking you for yr interest and
wishing you every success in yr
future career tra-la not so much
that you've just arrived but that
you'll never get there.

I look, you look, you look, I do.
Dance. A berry drops from a tree.
Here we are. Now. Put that in yr CV.
Engendering a systemic glytch in
the catalyst-catharsis matrix over
the Give/Receive pattern dynamic
so that it is impossible for us at
this moment in time to offer you a
dipped the brush-tip in then let fly
to receptive paper listening-thinking
impossible to offer you a offer you a
stamp those feet
& good.
...

simper
skit
wad
snag

Just the stitches in the fabric - scuffle, snug, scrub, spatter,
reef, snip, split, frolic - particularly the stitches in the fabric,
a bridge I know, a little house under it … what is that sound I'm
hearing, a somehow draped structure around a core? The beetle's
upturned body in the sink. My hands waiting for something to happen …

Do you like it?
Yes, I do.
Your shed
your books
your notebooks
your time.

Most populations hardly notice the alphabets they live through,
but when oral cultures come into contact with cultures that write,
'literate' culture - as we say - the oral culture, learning that
alphabet, can move across its symmetries and strangenesses with a
certain … sensitivity. So

cride é
daire cnó
ócán é
pócán dó

is oral, and lettrist - every word rhyming, every syllable
rhyming, every letter finding its repetition (except the kiss,
a plosive), a sort of spasm of self-conscious design, (Celtic,
bardic, academic even) from far away, in silence, and the Roman
alphabet on goat's skin to the side of a Gospel, in Latin. There.
Just the stitches in the fabric. But a girl's kiss too carrying
across centuries in a handful of received letters. Nine of them
in fact. Now, do the same in English.
...

[drums]


I have taken
the stones
that were on
the rice box

by the coloured
glass on the
windowledge
& put them in

the small ceramic
pot you made
what a decade
ago now with

its blue dots &
emphatic rim
fingertips a-tingle
in yr pocket

now that I look
noticing a note
under the magnet
on the fridge door

plumb the shadowy
dailiness sliced side-
ways into the career-
ing shiver of the actual

the that in which
probably forgive
thanks breakfast
sweet sweet sweet

& turned into English
what I thought I could
a common deviser of
slaunderous Pasquelles

nibb-
ling another
unbidden fruit
was

on the dice
box - what's that? -
a dish dashed
against

a plastic pane -
hidden in the
Brittle Institute of
the World

I used to deem
the Paradigm
of the Obvious -
we did - yes -

pop!

so cold
so old
so bold
& so sweet.

Good.
...