Category Archives: POETIC NONSENSE

Poetry by Lawrence R. Spencer. Poetic nonsense by Lawrence R. Spencer and others. Haiku poems by Lawrence R. Spencer.

CHANNELING VISIONS OF JOHANNA

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

As long as I’m having a Dylan Concert, let’s Channel some “Visions Of Johanna”.  Visions are a spiritual adventure, my friends. Dream on, dream on….

LYRICS:
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet ?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handfull of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing really nothing to turn of
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watcman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise she’s all right she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
Oh, how can I explain ?
It’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn.

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.

The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Saying, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man ”

As she, herself prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.

BREATHLESS IN 524 FRAMES PER SECOND

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“Experimental film maker Gerard Courant has taken Jean-Luc Godard’s classic  French film from 1960 Breathless, and sped up it (or compressed it as he prefers to call it) into a four minute movie.

The French title of Godard’s debut film is À bout de souffle which translates to English as “out of breath.” Courant’s compression is most likely a play on the title.

What I find interesting about the compression is the way it brings Godard’s style and the American noir films he was inspired by to the foreground. The nervous energy of the film, the pans and tracking shots, cigarettes smoked, automobiles in motion, zooms, jump-cuts, and close-ups, all create an angular yet fluid motion that seems driven by forces of destiny – the movie is tumbling into a dark void of betrayal and its opposite – yin and yanging to the beat beat beat of a heart in the throes of atrial tachycardia. No time to catch your breath – you’re breathless.

Fucking with Godard’s masterpiece is very Godardian.  If, as Godard claims, “cinema is truth at 24 frames per second” what is cinema at 524 frames per second”

— va Dangerous Minds

SOLITUDE

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Emil Cioran 8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. Cioran was born in Resinár (Rășinari), Szeben County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, and frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. Among his best known works are On the Heights of Despair (1934) and The Trouble with Being Born (1973). Cioran’s first French book, A Short History of Decay, was awarded the prestigious Rivarol Prize in 1950. The Latin Quarter of Paris was his permanent residence and he lived much of his life in isolation with his partner Simone Boué.  (Wikipedia.org)