Peter Finch: 'Old' and 'Young'
Old
Now I was old and believe me
I was older than need
I was spun ah yes I had been spinning
I had been deep and dark making
my mark cut and groove smear
splash and outrage talking some talking
some thinking some singing invented
remembered calcification and callisthenic
frottage rip and spit tuck and glue smudge
wreck scan and copy look up and spark and
make it your own your very your so much
splicing tape in backwards and repeating now
there is no tape no splice just digital air and compress
ion
)))))
listen to old things too much pre-beat Auden and
the great swathe of pale white unfashion.
Duane Eddy The Crystals Terry Riley Doug Sham
Dakotas Spotnick Moondog Stephen Spender Big Bill
Drifter Spinner Shadow Top Ralph Stanley Stan Kenton
The stones in my tower are utterly satisfied still with their weight
they are worn careless flower fallen paper foxed when
the books themselves have become shelveless stars and ideas shower like
a river in spate
up there in Pontneddfechan there’s old silence the
old bus doesn’t run down here the past keeps coming back
tsunami you have to deal with the things so many
what is it but in things
old thing cholesterol stuck to
fragment chol more of
found chol fondly
sought chol loved and shining
pissed chol laughed saved so much of this
chol stuck to the back of the eyes not enough light
residue of a lifetime’s seeing
chol paste tyre rim chol breath hold the highway
Cob chol Kerou chol Franz Mon Raoul Hausmann François
Dufrêne Ernst Jandl et la destruction de votre code génétique
par âge, masse et fréquence. I beat him said Mottram 1995
on his dying bed tubes and suffering left more processed data for
his circle to manage than they’d ever produced themselves. Chol
garbage shored against. Microparticles. Chol glue on the eight track.
Static hum.
There are things that should be avoided:
glow
familiar
shake
the drawer full
can’t find the
grain
noise
recall wrote it rewrite it mash
it’ll take time
I can see the future but it is crowded with reason shored with
chol accumulated considerations history hanes long lists
and catalogues passages from recalling their own parts unbent
and still dirty before cleaning yet often it is the dirt which made
them and the future trying to glow and failing for all the
camouflage of new generations. Patterns that cannot be readily
replicated. You resemble the background. I can see the
future but my. I have touched and can’t. I can speak all
these. Can’t hear too much rushing in.
Talked about the House of Blazes, had we been there, what
was its real name? No one could remember.
Saw Vic Parker playing, out of tune, tarts
lined up on stools along the bar smoking super kings.
Man in a suit like an oldtime blues singer.
Did you read your poems in there? No.
“However far I’d gone it was still where it had all begun”1
What do the old want bones still and thinking for sure that it
is not belief and old anything. I was on the verge always been on
the verge just out of reach lifetime reaching lifetime yearning
and if this is it as an answer
then hell on earth the bones won’t stop nor the searching.
Old Blind Dogs, Old Joe Clark, Old Hickory, Good Old Boys,
Oldfield Mike, I see a Darkness Will Oldham, higher cholesterol the
more you keep stacks of newsprint paper fading not to
confront but sidestep aikido gate stuff the ideas together and glue hope.
Sky watch. Big Palaeozoic brightness always a glory. More of those
in the sky now than I ever remember. Hard to listen.
Radio moving out of range.
I wanted to paint this up old face up to victory know
just by starting know auto will get there do the smile
with the cracks in the face but ignore them the old already
walked the path through the bardo pond met Blake and waved his ideas
like flags Turner had done this didn’t need to did anyway
I assembled joins without a crack after time only the glue itself
failing Gulf kept coming back like a tape loop holocaust
up for grabs and more than one of them you want you plot
hundreds like you painted it up painted it up painted
couldn’t put the paint brush down
Dear Ed
Hello. No one checks
it is all too easy new faces a
flicker of Photoshop saying anything
anything lifted and anything got
two thousand when there used to be
merely a hundred
do I worry I used to. Heroes the
ones outside this rush to the sales
dead in their letterpress and their
liquid ink why bother
they don’t anymore
old wisdom is hard to find.
heart statistics:
Excess winter mortality 8,960
no ink 29
Chi factor 32
energy 3
repeat 1
young blue among a great blueness
young an armada all of them pushing
young no weight don’t die but think they do
only the young write about death full of wonder
young made of light like Willem de Kooning
painting at the end of his Alzheimer’s, mind empty
all he made were thin lines and immense white space
Most modern (post dada) magnetic tape (type) systems use reels (rolled) that are much smaller (smiler) than the old (old) 10.5 inch (failure) open (old) (older) reels and are fixed (facilitated) (fornicated) (philosophised) inside a cartridge (cartilage) (cholesterol) (corrugated) to protect (precept) the tape (bend) and facilitate (erection) (failure) (fantasy) handling (holding). A tape drive (death) or transport (triumvirate) or deck (depressed) (dildo) (dub) uses precisely (presently) (pleasant) controlled motors to wind (wind) (wind) the tape (age) (augmented) (old) from one reel (real) (rip) (risk) to the other (older), passing (pressing) (pissing) a hard (hold) (head) (heat) (hold) (old) (old) (older) read/write (real right) as it does. Modern (modem) cartilage (cartridge) formats (firmament) (filament) include fade, fix, fume, and already. Already2 is of larger incidence. Already is must.
invented anyway
found the passage
Picasso on overdrive filling the galleries with the same pot
each one with a brush mark in a different place
all this comes back simultaneously
Milton Auden Chopin Stein Fisher Mac Low Williams
Ashbery Thomas Creeley Dion di Mucci Marcel Duchamp
Damien Hirst Cohen Apollinaire Old Poet Laureate
life and little life your life
believe me
maybe more dust and
old ink
but still full of light
far as I can see
Peter Finch 2007
----------------------------------------------------
1 Robert Creeley A Feeling, Life & Death.
2 The poet John Ormond insisted to Peter Finch that he had made these things many times better and in greater quantity decades earlier, no new suns and nothing under them.
Young
Now as I was young and believe me
I was young enough young
I was lilting
I was once rich and young I
knew how much myself I was
spinning so passionate so help me
full of wanting make a mark my
mark not a borrowed mark passion alone
is not enough got to cutting call it mine
but this generation bucks I tell
them all told a lot of heydays
without ears hummed myself
blank eyes disabilities and guesses
no history hovering how
hung among fastmen and pill benders
hurled among fishmongers and pall bearers
hoisted among Finnegan and big Portnoy
hoorayed among fibrillators and Pontneddfechan unbenders
homberged among Humbert and hollow horses
hoomed along humming and hummed honking
young humming not hissing not whistling
humming humming not thinking
now I was young and believe me often
I was young and I was often I was always
I was full of new noises and big mouths singing
Why is it not like it should?
Why can’t it be shining?
Why if it is, is it so little?
Why isn’t it young, always young?
Why is it rich and uneasily easy?
Why does it never tell us it knows?
Why does it stutter coming?
Why can’t it come fresh young, and not like paper?
Why is it all through me, dying?
item: Satriani Hendrix cloak
item: Ashbery Stevens Ashbery Stevens
Ashbery Stevens Ashbery Stevens
item: we decide we do do we?
or do we look it up?
item: ( i*-!*=+@@
unreadable - overtaken
by a visible universe like a
trouser leg)
item: Youngblood, Young Bones, Mighty Joe Young
What do the young want bones and my maybe thinking maybe is not belief and young anything. I am on the verge of discovery.
I want to paint this up young everybody done it.
It’s an image work at it like in a greenhouse or a boathut could read it.
I want to tell heard a lot so boring.
I could assemble the joins so illegible.
Gulf didn’t exist no holocaust diaspora a conspiracy.
You want you just plot with the like minded.
Dear Ed
I like what I know
half tired and so beautiful a bored pogo.
Change happens so fast I don’t bother.
Thought of everything
everything thought up. No heroes.
Directories are free. Why bother.
Young thinking young anything could
be life and little and little life
little easy I love my life.
Peter Finch 1991
