23: Mike Cannell

“loud humming lazarus”: 
a sequence of 4 small poems
based on
“Gedichte 1853 Und 1854: 
Zum Lazarus: ‘Einst sah ich viele’”


eyes

earnestness, acute prickle shroud. witch without. be to deceive. don’t can’t if you are putrid. watch our moron. full prod snaffle of the. mark scum ire. still tennis of the. thought (or… the tide see balm. stub muff – weep hebraic set the. (lubrication fitting on to the material). (or… the stump – like brandy sets the smog side view to the tape reel). i am deceptively melancholic. , and, how an old ballad born infrequently violent. head like a surfeiting hymn. never completely closed.


mouth

aperture, were more optic, rabbit ears, opening. knows should be regret never on light in my bad. a banjo, a mammary, a regret. another surfeiting poem thing has a stupid heart. what this means. does sweet, forgetful midnight s-words. veiled that you made in tore safe can. if you are putrefied and the membrane is. proud snaffle of the type like tennis of the thought. (or… tomes eye like herbier). places the point of greasing at truth). (or… the section - as does brandy of wine place the side view of smog at the reel.)

nose

is full melange choleric in a misleading way, and, as an old poem frequently burns. fill heed in my head like reams. completely supersaturating in blocks. never doors where. my ire , ores, the moot, wood net oh not. me men on light egrets. in my bed a banjo, a meme orgy, a rug red ago them poem supersaturating. forever a stupid heart. what this average corner, forgetful words of soft midnight. wet cane yoda. white aim ban she.


ears

wed your lacy and migraine into a full band prod snaffle. the smudge-like tennis of thought. (here …the banshee’s snag-like hebrew puts the smudge to the real). (or…the snag -like brandy puts the smog leer to the reel). i’m me, anchovy. and be guiding, like an hold puma. (often a void burns inside my head). like a toying hymen. never fully clothed. doors where my ears should be. river regress on night. no more bed. a banjo, a memo orb, a rug yet ago. there clod eying poe thing. i hate a food ash art. who at that moan. sweat, forge full mid innate words.



*

with this sequence of poems i ran the given text through the process of various homolinguistic techniques from the oulipo technique of n7 ( looking each noun up in the dictionary, counting down to the seventh word after it and replacing it with that.) to the strange garbling of language afforded by feeding it through babel fish ( i chose to translate it into german and then back to english) and by looking through a thesaurus and replacing words, word by word with synonyms amongst many others. You will see the occasional repetition and re-wording but the variety is in some ways surprising.