Book Review: The Proteus by Christophe Casamassima

The Proteus by Christophe Casamassima
ISBN: 978-0-9816733-0-1
Publisher: Moria Poetry
Order the book.


The Proteus at once twice three times three times hiroshima shimmy shum—a saucy salsa language bubblebath in an ocean that will be drained in a thousand years and the skeleton of a new creature will be discovered: the thesaurusosaurus. Much like the stegosaurus, but with libraries on its back instead of shields.

Or perhaps it is a singing thesaurus, or what a thesaurus would sound like if it were an opera. Not that Casamassima is using a thesaurus to construct a text like a freshman composition class may overuse; no, the sounds of words to Christophe are musical notes that he has clearly memorized (or purloined from other literary purloiners) and we are a lucky audience at the debut of a concerto that has no fixed address: not in a hall, or even in a time or space.

Casamassima proves he is a master debater in the field of intertextualcourse, and an ahimsa scribe of space, white space, and grey blends from the black symbols us simple folk call words.

Casamassima shows us that sometimes you have to bore through a text to get to a reader; sometimes you have to knock down a context to speak to a reader; sometimes you have to swat away subtext to captivate the reader; and sometimes you have to do all three simultaneously with power tools made from moth wings, moths that had the temerity to eat every bible the gideons left sitting around like pigeon droppings on a deposed dictator.

The Proteus is a fascinating thought experiment of what happens if you try to juggle chainsaws and infants: the buzzing remains long after you have slid the book on your shelf or dropped it off at The Book Thing or left on a subway seat. If the language Casamassima is working through doesn’t make your inner ear itch, then at least the book makes for an interesting hat.

viviparous blenny

viviparous blenny volume one: synchronicity is available for order.

http://www.twentythreebooks.com/vivi.htm

Poem inspired by the last lines of a Bukowski poem

of all the trips
to outer space and
of those few trips
to the moon and
of those forays
to the international space station,

didn’t anybody ever
think about,
or attempt
to have,
a little zero gravity sacrifice to Venus,
a little intergalactic twatting,
a little cosmic dipping of the wick,
a little interstellar tube-snake boogie?

that would be:

one small orgasm for a man;
one fantastic Penthouse Forum for mankind.






© douglas william mowbray

Variation on Danielle's Poem

First grade, fifth grade, something something 101, entry level, 401 K, Roth IRA:
rough timeline of reduction in the amount of questions asked in your life, like:

Would you party like an old man if she said chocolate?

Exactly how do hungry kids dance today? (they start with this simple truth: don’t walk tonight where music is)

What are day? (as opposed to ‘Which ain’t night?’)

Why did he?

How does love eat house?

To reverse the timeline, do not wait on Doc Brown,
follow these simple steps:

Smile big at her
Ask him or have dinner
Need bad ugly car
(Remember it will make them look)
Ride up the thing going on time
Tell the day go take me
Clean tomorrow and you could get mother
Little talk when we want money please
Drive out for good shopping

Follow these and you will get back to being who you were before you were:

a beautiful wild woman kissing hot food.

danielle's poem

would you party like an old man if she said chocolate?

I'm crazy now so smile at her big

little talk when we want money please

I live to need bad ugly car

beautiful wild woman kiss hot food

let's clean tomorrow and you could get mother

remember it will make them look

don't walk tonight where music is

how do hungry kids dance today

love can eat house

ride up the thing going on time

ask him or have dinner

tell the day go take me

what are day

why did he

they drive out for good shopping

La Phew, Hooah

I was fuckin’ around

and now my knee

smelts like jasmine.

Which aint so bad.

Now’s there this faint

scent of a woman about me.

Yeah, yeah, I know,

yuck it up.

I smell like a sgirl

and now you’re

thinking about Al Pacino.

But this is loneliness talking.

And loneliness

has a French accent.

Least, that’s what I been told,

and other things like,

apparently, you might want

to be scentless in France.

But all I got is this blindness.

That’s all this man’s Army ever gave me.

Sun of a Bitcher

I picked up a sock that

wasn’t mine and it

started to snow.

The difference between

my heart and your heart

is the difference between

an interpreter and a translator.

Stop playing with your cancer, she says.

Burma poet held for secret insult

By Steve Jackson BBC News

The Burmese authorities have arrested a well known poet, who published a love poem with a hidden message criticising the country's military leader.

Poet Saw Wai's work - titled February the Fourteenth - was published in a Rangoon magazine, The Love Journal.

Taken together, the first words of each line read: "General Than Shwe is crazy with power."

Dissidents in Burma have used similar techniques before to get their messages past government censors.

Authorities 'sensitive'

At first sight it appeared to be a straightforward love poem looking ahead to Valentine's Day, but eagle-eyed readers soon noticed what the Burmese government censors had missed.

It was not long before the authorities became aware of the poem and Saw Wai was arrested.

It is not clear what will happen to him now.

Burma's military government is highly sensitive to any criticism, especially since the pro-democracy demonstrations last September which were put down by force.

The authorities closely monitor the media and dissidents have resorted to increasingly elaborate methods to get their messages across.

Last year an advertisement was placed in one of Burma's main newspapers in the name of a Swedish travel company which contained the hidden message "Killer Than Shwe".

The company did not really exist.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7205216.stm

Published: 2008/01/23 16:36:03 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

poem #23

it’s dark at night

it’s light during the day

we’ve harnessed electricity

we’ve pulled down the shades

we attempt an expertise

at making what is

what is not—

until we let be

it’s the getting we won’t got.

a house divvied up

reading Camus again on the can, my life does not not does not need to be legitimated by a father, step or otherwise, but my thoughts could use a companion father, a father companion, Padre Compañero, just as Africa needs twentythree more free presses, or just some Free Press, and free press, and America needs another hole in its bedfellows, needs a noose, though some have taken that too litcherally. you know - we all live in the past, but carrying strange fruit relics around these days puts you outside the fence of Sisyphean philosophy, so if you're gonna tie a noose, please do us all a favor and tie it around your own neck

and jump.

THEM

twentythreebooks is proud to announce that Omar Shapli's newest selection of poetry is available for purchase.

at the drop of a fedora

she's not too bad after sandwiches and magazines, even though her pet rabbit has a cocky ego, and "ID" begins simply as plastic magnetic letter for childrens learnings alphabets, until the day they notice an arrow pointing right under the "6" in a keyboard, the proverbial of end of child hoodies, and while they know what the arrow means and know how to use it, they stop caring and a certain kind of suicide occurs, but they'll come back to the office tomorrow because lazarus is drawn to the cubicle like frogs are drawn to rain puddles and jesus is drawn to look like an american. eventually, absolutely everything will make no sense (not "nonsense") and they may just maybe be able to stop worrying about johnny paycheck.

Sleet picks at the window screen—

an out-of-tune harp—

I am trying to hum along.

I am trying to hum along gone.

Spalding Grey

Spalding Grey

Balding, or grey.

Not no more.

That’s not very nice.

I apologize.

How can a man who makes froths

at the mouth telling a story

end up suicide?

What frailty this network of synapses.

What strength, what endurance,

but what, ultimately, frailty, what little

we can do when frailty calls the shots.

Laughable the pills, the books, the shrinks, the drinks, the drugs, the Robin Williams hugs.

What frailty.

We cannot end war.

Stop marching.

We cannot end death.

Stop trying so hard. But you already know that. Because what makes you you is ignoring sentiments like these.

What frailty.

When the only thing that keeps your

life in balance are Post-It notes

with doctor-scrawled to-do’s.

What frailty.

Will you march against dust?

Will you march against rust?

Will you march against sand?

Will you march against bland?

Some day it will come out that

George W. Bush was shtupping Anna Nicole Smith

(and perhaps one of his brothers was too; this isn’t the place for such yellow speculation spread)—

the tragedy of it all: she never got to sing Happy Birthday for him.

Gerald Stern, University of Baltimore, April 25, 2007

In a Maggot Nation

Now imagine there’s no song called Imagine,

I wonder even if you could.

Now imagine that your are John Lennon

in bed with three Yokos

and you have to answer questions from reporters

who think your name is aptly homonymical,

especially when it echoes in Strom Thurmond’s hollow heart.

Now imagine you cannot count to five

and you do not care

and no one makes fun of you for it.

Now imagine that plastic cups cost three dollars a gallon

and the gas stations start giving cigarettes away for free

and the water fountains in all the high schools in Tennessee

convert to Blood of Christ fountains overnight.

Now imagine being stuck in a crib with a lobster who is an expert on Miró

and you feel so ashamed at not having anything to add to the conversation

and you just curl up into a ball, suck on your thumb, and your mother

de-ascends, picks you up, drops you on your head for the fourth and final time,

and all is well in the detergent isle again.

Now imagine a place called the Detergent Isle.

Would you go there? What one book what you bring? Not counting your wife,

what one girlfriend from your past would you bring?

Be careful how you answer that question.

Therapy is expensive. So is divorce.

Prison Poem

A friend of mine who had a short stint in the Big House shared this poem from a fellow inmate:

Somebody get me out of here

The fun has been over shadowed by the fear

That I may never find my way out

Seems that I’m stuck on this deadend route

They’re never gonna leave me alone

As if I really wanna give up my thrown

What is it that prevents me from letting go

Guess I’ve yet to hit my all time low

Numb to any type of feeling

With some of my problems I better start dealing

I’m in quick sand up to my neck

The results of all the responsibilities I chose to neglect

Everything is catching up to me

Not to much longer before I’m unable to breath

No one is coming to rescue me

The pressure so tight don’t think i’ll ever get free

Somebody get me out of here

All this sand isn’t going to just disappear

But everyone knows there’s only one way out of quicksand

And thats by someone grabbing your hand

So no matter how much I hate to admit

My own wrong decisions have landed me in this pit

Vulnerable, tired and almost out of hope

Praying someone finds me and throws me a rope

The sand pit is a perfect example

There are situations in life not meant for one person to handle.

Art Officially

In the December of my youth,

I fucked a giraffe

when my parents weren’t looking

(when were they ever?);

it tasted like chicken.

I once paid two dozen duckets

for a Stan Yerkes baseball card.

It was only worth one ducket, at most,

but I walked around like God Rockefella himself

for weeks after that.

Theresa has bulges you wouldn’t believe.

She’s got a fly’s life and only complains

when the cat food is stale.

I’d marry Theresa, but she reminds me of nuns.

And I, last time I checked, am

not Jesus, nor even Jesus-like.

I’ve got a belly full of shoes.

My paintings won’t sell anymore.

Inevitability is the only thing that haunts me.

That

and all the different kinds of knots.

Soroughly Thoused

I am where

my eye is not.

Welching faces, welping Macy’s—

I’m all full of lament.

Raising an Army of Sisyphi,

thin out their ranks a little with waffle ball bats.

Willing to feel pain,

but unwilling to accept it as a gift from anyone but me.

Never come between a man

and his stripper.

Nanny nanny boo-boo,

I can make dreams from the lint in my pocket.

20-year-old wisdom:

“The key to life is to never have a door.”

A hand in the stomach

married to a mouth in the heart.

I got a date!

I got a date!

w/ Cindi who is 28!

I feel so great!

I got a date!

Whoa—that’s something you’ll never see on a bathroom stall.

Yet.

My father used to talk about some place

called xanax xanadu; heard of it?

Prisoner #2+2=5, please report to

metaphorical river by the idyllic tide.

Let’s catch no birds with no stones

for a change.

Gertrudes of Devotion

Had Aristotle focused a little

more on Legos, or even Legolas,

Alexander wouldn’t have grown up to star

in Oliver Stone’s worst movie,

but it all depends on the definition

of isthmus, which is the name of

the icicle used in the perfect crime—

take notes, wait for winter, don’t get fat—

one neighbor smells like fart; the

other, basement.