When the Smoke & Cameras Disappear

Elvis Presley, Eccles

2008-05-07T21:25:00.001Z

Worsley Man

2008-05-06T19:21:00.002Z

A Wonderful Pig Man

2008-04-30T20:20:00.002Z

Joseph Ducreux

Davyhulme Sewage Works

2008-04-29T20:30:00.004Z

The Beach in August

2008-04-29T20:22:00.000Z

By Weldon Kees

The day the fat woman
In the bright blue bathing suit
Walked into the water and died,
I thought about the human
Condition. Pieces of old fruit
Came in and were left by the tide.

What I thought about the human
Condition was this: old fruit
Comes in and is left, and dries
In the sun. Another fat woman
In a dull green bathing suit
Dives into the water and dies.
The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun
While the seascape arranges old fruit,
Coming in with the tide, glistening
At noon. A woman, moderately stout,
In a nondescript bathing suit,
Swims to a pier. A tall woman
Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human
Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.

The Tollund Man

2008-04-25T22:03:00.007Z

By Seamus Heaney

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

II

I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

Tollund Man

2008-04-25T22:00:00.002Z

Royal Exchange

2008-04-24T21:45:00.004Z

When the world was filled with a river light, everyone wore hats and you could hear Sidney Bechet & the New Orleans Feetwarmers from the radio in the ironmonger's shop. The last generation of chainsmokers who woke the world in the morning with their coughing, performed obsolete dance steps like "the Cleveland Chicken", set sail on ships, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are.

What is better than Suckoid 499?

2008-04-24T21:26:00.008Z

Harry Malt draws pictures with the compulsion of a compulsive child and the talent of a talented man. He also makes music with the compulsion of a talented man and the talent of a compulsive child, all the time bearing a doozy of a helmet on the top of his melon. Oooooooo, break it down, break it down & say a prayer for the souls of Suckoid 500.

Rocky Balboa, Žitište, Serbia

2008-04-22T19:54:00.005Z

The unveiling, during ChickenFest 07:

How do you tittilate an ocelot?

2008-04-22T19:35:00.001Z

You oscillate its tits a lot.

Manchester 1936

2008-04-21T21:42:00.004Z

Valparaiso

2008-04-21T18:54:00.004Z

The Grauballe Man

2008-04-20T17:35:00.005Z

By Seamus Heaney

As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep

the black river of himself.
The grain of his wrists
is like bog oak,
the ball of his heel

like a basalt egg.
His instep has shrunk
cold as a swan’s foot
or a wet swamp root.

His hips are the ridge
and purse of a mussel,
his spine an eel arrested
under a glisten of mud.

The head lifts,
the chin is a visor
raised above the vent
of his slashed throat

that has tanned and toughened.
The cured wound
opens inwards to a dark
elderberry place.

Who will say ‘corpse’
to his vivid cast?
Who will say ‘body’
to his opaque repose?

And his rusted hair,
a mat unlikely
as a foetus’s.
I first saw his twisted face

in a photograph,
a head and shoulder
out of the peat,
bruised like a forceps baby,

but now he lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,

hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed

on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.

Grauballe Man

2008-04-20T17:19:00.003Z

In a nudist stance since 290BC.

Harry Malt draws pictures.

2008-04-18T19:25:00.002Z

What the fuck do you do?

Frank Zappa, Vilnius

2008-04-16T18:44:00.001Z

I was thinking about Weldon Kees

2008-04-15T20:48:00.002Z

& I couldn't keep from crying. When he disappeared in San Francisco, it was a bit before my time. I couldn't help but wonder where in the world Weldon Kees could be. I been looking for him, even clean through Timperley.

I told you once. I told you twice. Do Not Eat the Marmite Slice.

2008-04-14T19:42:00.003Z

& the man, hearing the ghostly voice, ran from the room. His friend, peckish and even more crazy bastard cocksure, entered. The ghostly voice repeated, "I told you once. I told you twice. Do not eat the marmite slice." He stood with a buffalo stance and he ate the marmite slice. The ghostly voice continued. "I told you once. I told you twice. I wiped my bum on the marmite slice."