Situation Comedy

Right

So listen:

There's this situation

saying to this other

situation, "Hi.

How are you?"

And the other situation goes

"I. Miss. You."

satisfaction

kicks
keep getting harder
to find

why we are not fooled

by attempts to make our nationality twee and marketable, with the caveat that this WAS in the Guardian (todays equivalent probably of the crimes they describe) and also the admission that i was indeed fooled; it was news to me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/19/scotland

Scan, Scanner, Scunnered

Back at the typewriter I
am remembering how to place
one's manhood on the shelter
of paper in front of fire.

Mendelssohn plays on
vinyl, spiralling
Christ! What are you
doing on the cover

lying on my hard wood
floor. I was simply
bowled over down the alley
in Silverburn, formerly known
as Pollock. Then again
I AM from Newlands
just up the road
from Auldhouse.

For Philip Larkin, (winks) (nudges) (giggles) xxx

not groping but slinking

slinking back to bed after a pee,
(the curtains are already open)
i stand in the window looking out;
there are cars and i'm staring at
them and imagining them staring
back, winking as they dash past
railings, ('o how the rapid clouds') maybe loosely
blowing me a kiss. where i live has traffic,
even at 4.27 am: when it is getting later and earlier
simultaneously but i'm not usually awake at this hour;

i'm here and i'm preposterous
because i notice (now THERE'S something laughable)
that the hardness and the brightness have
returned, undiminished. my glances are twitched back and
i can't make sense of the responses; i turn around
( the moon's cleanliness).

Lines

a sonnet

the first line is

a demi-sonnet set in hunter sq, edinburgh

the first time ever i sawed your wrist
i wished i’d taken more care
‘i won’t take any prisoners’

the first time ever i
the last time ever i
wanted to say
i’m sorry

the art i face

"I can't tell the difference
between life and art,"
she said, roughly.

"I can't believe I'm thinking
about imagining myself
crying out
on the 2nd floor
of our Good Room,"
I thought.

Conversion takes place.

"I tell the difference."

"How far do you have to go
to visualise the music?"

"It doesn't matter. This poem never happened."

A True Scot? by Scott McTavern

Assignment: Write A Personal Essay On The Subject Of Being A Scottish Jew or A Jewish Scot.

Today, Mrs Hamburger said something interesting.

She said McTavern, (she always calls me that), show me your true colours.

I took off my football strip and pulled down ma pants.

Collateral damage, she replied.

I was confused. So I sat back down.

Mrs Hamburger said if I didn't get dressed she'd send me to Mrs Stern.

I was scared. Barbara Bland held my hand under the desk. It has a hole for my inkpot but I keep my pens in a pencil case and the inkpot is full of chewing gum covered with dust.

She said McTavern, you're the sort of fellow who'll end up smoking American Spirit.

Perhaps, I replied, letting go of Barbara's hand and standing up. I looked down at Mrs Hamburger and said, This the climactic turning point.

And the rest of the story just kinda fizzled out

what is to be done

i can’t think because this is a party
is anybody watching bruce labruce
why is it on my favourite movie
should not be ignored and someone is
telling me that ‘i need funding for a
novel i want to write’ right you
are not, what’s inversion and does it relate to me
because poetry already came in MY heart though
i screamed and said fuck off i
asked you to pull out
o it gets me angry because
i sense at the very point the exact point your chin pops

the sky over wholly rude panic-sucks:
THE SCOTTISH POETRY LIBRARY IS COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY

grannies, buses, and space bars: poetry in the brown/salmond era

[this is an email-complaint i received this evening]

what HAS alec salmond been up to in washington?
there ARE tensions between john swinney and westminster
(but of course there are)
whether they made progress is a moot point; swinney has remaining concerns.
tartan week no more; it's scotland week!

these are the sort of strings of words that are swirling in the background, not just as i am writing this (newsnight), but as a new group of poets are forming, floated by the bandwiths of scotland. Calling themselves the 'New Scotland Language Poets', they have appeared at a curious moment in Scottish history (as curious as any other, you may say, but curiously deserving of being singled out).

at points such as this, when, EVEN with a SCOTTISH NATIONALIST GOVERNMENT in scotland, there remains little chance of an independent scotland, you might expect the poets to be stressing their nationality. this is absent from their poetries, which if anything parody, dilute and dissolve their national identity in tricks and quips.

whose poetries? this is another issue- pseudonyms abound.

and the poetry obviously nods to american predecessors.

what possible use/purpose can this verse have?

yours, derek delphino xxx