Author: gabrielsmy

Not given to imagination

Mummy, I’m not afraid to die.
Why do you talk of dying
and you so young
do you want a lollipop?

No, but I shall be with Peter and June.

Mummy, let me tell you about my dream last night.
Darling, I’ve no time now. Tell me again later.

No, Mummy, you must listen.
I dreamt I went to school
and there was no school there.
Something black had come down all over it.
You mustn’t have chips for supper for a bit.

The next day off to school went her daughter
as happy as ever.
In the communal grave she was buried
with Peter on one side
and June on the other.

(From an account of 10-year-old Eryl Mai’s premonition of the 1966 Aberfan avalanche disaster)

A year ago last September

A YEAR AGO LAST SEPTEMBER TWO ladies with a child
were travelling on the Hudson River cars,
one of whom offered a seat to a middle aged gentleman
with light whiskers or goatee

slightly gray, who kindly pointed out to her
the red leaved trees
and said he had a number of them on his place
and made himself otherwise agreeable;

and when she was leaving him
(ten miles this side of where he stopped)
gave her a parting embrace, which she has never
been able to forget.

(A personal ad from the New York Herald, 25 January 1862)

This shawl

This shawl is brand new and has never been used. If you have just given birth to a new baby girl or boy or you are expecting a new baby and you are looking for that extra special shawl to bring your new baby home from the hospital then this could be the very shawl you could be looking for. It measures 72 inches in diameter and is made from white baby double knitting wool and was hand crocheted by myself. If you are going to have your new baby christened then this will make a really beautiful christening shawl. Just think when you will be taking pictures of your new baby the shawl would look lovely with your baby laying down on it or you could spread it over the back of a settee with your baby sitting up or laying down it would look really adorable in the background. The shawl has a really beautiful pattern which starts off in the center with a number of rows which looks like a spider web design. Then followed by 16 pretty pineapple designs with a “v” shape pattern above each of the pineapple designs. Then after that there are 16 lacy designs which are inbetween the “v” shape patterns followed by another 16 pretty pineapple designs which are slighty larger than the other row with 16 pineapple designs with another 16 “v” shape patterns above each of the pineapple designs. Then after that there are another 16 “v” shape designs that are inbetween each of the 16 larger pineapple designs with a lacy pattern inbetween each of the “v” shape designs. Then finally there is a beautiful frilled edging which really sets the shawl off. If you look closely at the design of the shawl you will see on 4 of the rows there are cluster stitches inbetween the pattern design which is unusual. This is a very large shawl and will look really beautiful on your baby boy or girl and will keep he or she lovely and warm when you will be taking he or she out for a walk in the pram. A lot of shawls being sold today in various baby shops only measure up to about 45 inches my shawl is half that size again so it is a very large shawl. It is made from 100% white acrylic baby double knitting wool and can be either hand washed or machine washed on a delicate program. As soon as payment is made the shawl will be sent out to you the same day or the next working class day by 1st. class recorded delivery. Thank you for looking and why not take a look at the other baby items i have for sale

(Ebay item description, saved from many years ago. Submitted by Jain Gawne)

A brutal nadir

I took my seat
at the microfilm reader
and began to scroll
slowly
through the archives.

For the first hundred years,
as far as I could tell,
all that happened in America
was that various people
named Nathaniel
had purchased land
near rivers.

I scrolled faster,
finally reaching an account
of an early Colonial-era shaming.

On July 15, 1742,
a woman named Abigail,
her husband at sea,
had been found
“naked in bed
with one John Russell.”

They were to be
“whipped at the public post
20 stripes each.”

Abigail
was appealing the ruling,
but it wasn’t the whipping itself she wished to avoid.
She was begging the judge
to be whipped early,
before the town awoke.

From How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life. Submitted by Daniel Galef.

Jeep for sale

Calls only, I don’t do mores code
I don’t text
be a man and call me.

No title no title no title
don ask

yes it is a 1986
so yes
it may have some rust
if that bugs dont buy it
that how It is

no you may not come work on it
if you buy it take it home do what you want
may run May not,
i don’t know

Will not drive jeep to your place
no joy rides
no cash no test drive

Trades welcome
need to be man stuff
no toy race cars,
or over price atvs,
or rolls of used carpet
or doll houses
no junk

Jeep not for a teenage girl’s first jeep,
jeep built to be driven by a man

offers ok.

(From Craigslist sales posts, Charlotte, NC. Submitted by Carlos Pelay)

Fossil

In this quiet inlet,
some eddy has collected
and drowned at the bottom
of the mire, now turned into marl,
enormous heaps of shells
of every shape and size.
It is a molluscs’ burying ground
with hills for tumuli.

I dig up oysters a cubit long
and weighing five or six pounds a piece.
One could shovel up in the immense pile,
Scallops, Cones, Cylheridae,
Mactridae, Murices,
Turretellidae, Mitridae
and others too numerous,
too innumerable to mention

You stand stupefied before the vital ardour
of the days of old, which was able
to supply such a pile of relics
in a mere nook of earth.

(Jean-Henri Fabre on fossils in The Faber Book of Science. Submitted by Taidgh Lynch)

Tell him we love him

He has just gone in.
I am on a chair just outside.
The nurse promised to hold his hand.

They do it in the theatre
but I expect he will be sedated.
Others coming out have been.

Done. Full sedation.
I am with him in recovery.
He is snoring.

In the waiting area.
They will give him tea and toast.
He is a bit unsteady at the moment.

Everything ok.

(Texts from a hospital waiting room. Submitted by Angi Holden)

auto-destructive art

Man In Regent Street
is auto-destructive.
Rockets, nuclear weapons,
are auto-destructive.
Auto-destructive art.

The drop
drop
dropping

of HH bombs.

Not interested in ruins, (the picturesque)

Auto-destructive art
re-enacts the obsession with destruction, the pummeling to which individuals and masses are subjected.
Auto-destructive art
demonstrates man’s power to accelerate disintegrative processes of nature and to order them.
Auto-destructive art
mirrors the compulsive perfectionism of arms manufacture – polishing to destruction point.
Auto-destructive art
is the transformation of technology into public art.

The immense productive capacity, the chaos of
capitalism and of
Soviet communism,
the co-existence of surplus and starvation;

the increasing stock-piling of nuclear weapons – more than enough to destroy technological societies;

the d i s i n t e g r a t i v e effect of machinery and of life in vast built-up areas on the
person,…

Auto-destructive art
is art
which contains within itself an agent which automatically leads to its destruction
within a period of time not to exceed twenty years.

Other forms of
auto-destructive art
involve manual manipulation.

There are forms of auto-destructive art where
the artist
has a tight control over the nature and timing of
the
disintegrative
process,

and there are other forms where the artist’s control is slight.

Materials and techniques used in creating
auto-destructive art
include:

Acid, Adhesives,
Ballistics,
Canvas, Clay, Combustion, Compression, Concrete, Corrosion, Cybernetics,
Drop,
Elasticity, Electricity, Electrolysis,
Feed-Back,
Glass,
Heat, Human Energy,
Ice,
Jet,
Light, Load,
Mass-production, Metal, Motion Picture,
Natural Forces, Nuclear Energy,
Paint, Paper, Photography, Plaster, Plastics, Pressure,
Radiation,
Sand, Solar Energy, Sound, Steam, Stress,
Terra-cotta,
Vibration,
Water, Welding, Wire, Wood.

(From Gustav Metzler selections. Submitted by David Verghese)

The very last of something

Sudan doesn’t know how precious he is,
his eye a sad black dot in his wrinkled face
his head a marvellous thing, a majestic rectangle
of strong bone and leathery flesh,
a head that expresses pure strength.
How terrible that such a mighty head
can be so vulnerable, lowered melancholically
beneath the sinister sky, as if weighed down by fate.
This is the noble head of an old warrior,
armour battered, appetite for struggle fading.

(From A picture of loneliness: you are looking at the last male northern white rhino. Submitted by Angi Holden)