In the beginning there was nothing
but it was kind of fun watching nothing grow


Pierre Huyghe, One Million Kingdoms, 2001. Video installation with sound

When I First Saw
-- Leonard Nathan

When I first saw my new-born son, I saw
life would be somewhat different now for me,
as Schopenhauer warned us that it would
if we gave in to mere biology.
Of course, there was pity--pity, seed of love,
but there was more: a grown-up feel, quite new,
of separation. I saw it when my son
looked at his own first son; when he was first
shown me, I guess my father felt it too.
And so the hunter, after his freelance chase,
comes home to find another mouth to feed,
and, watching the woman lift it to her breast,
feels useless, yes, but more responsible,
and growls and frowns, and kneels to skin the kill.


Throwaway
-- Edmund Berrigan

Another milkman stitched
His portico in shower silk
A daily slog of chemical activity
Mourn o falsetto would you be xtian
Where down by the wheel we all like to kneel
Joint cut plastic kiss on the potable edge
This is where hallucinations struggle to lose
A hill patched with flowers and bees
Diffident strides a-pondering
Crying to the mothridden archetypes of Seth
For subjects with whom to objectify with death
To decipher the ornament I retrieve my mount
When alcohol was a nation with a drawer full of stallions


Blonde on Blonde
-- Liam Ferney

enchanted by fisherman/ the sun
accelerates through the sky/ we dream
of villas & rearrange abandoned netting/
coarse cords/ trailed along the beach/
like human tissue/ boys throw frisbees
& footballs with doosra wrists/
seagulls ignore economies/ dive bombs
shattering jade panes/ nickel
& dime moments/ where you’re singing
for your supper/ or dancing to
amphetamine tunes/ psychosis takes over/
like a souvenir store novel/ grains of sand
wedged between the pages/ the big kahunas
who rule our waves/ the duke turns up
on our shores/ rough & ready/ like an auteur’s
first rape revenge video nasty / formulas can’t
advise it/ nine out of ten dentists don’t
recommend it/ the visionary writes/ his first novel
on postcards/ scratches haiku in taut sand/ motorcycles
chainsaw along the ridge/ rituals of holiday
& tide/ ain’t it hard to stumble/ when you’re
riffing like keith richards/ rejoice in the ocean/
when the junk blows across some driftwood/
or an errant seagull/ lifting on an updraught


i.m. Laura Riding
-- Grace Lake

if thought be woven from the brain wished ill may learn to love again
a moonlit dusk by lamplight’s side a less anxious life
where proof of purse is not in pride nor strife a jokey vendetta
beginning twice more to examine extremes of sanctioned shapes
which knew to lighten mechanics with previewed disfunction
once the essentials are proven and normalities intergraved
it will not be mine to decide who are the damned and who the saved.