#198 La Trahison des images

En anglais cette
        fois, but it
  still won't give
you lip cancer.

#197 Perpetual Motion (1)

So far the circus
strongman has
eaten a tiger (&
now wears its
skin), Alice, Albert
Einstein, & Annie
Edson Taylor, the first
person to go over
Niagara Falls in a
barrel—the evidence
is all around. He
feels no shame, is
still able to hold
his head up high.

#196 Le Retour de Flamme

His immense shadow spreads out
Over Paris and the world.....
Robert Desnos: La Complainte de Fantômas

The world asleep &
dreaming out loud.

Emanations cohere;
fear personified. In-

stead of rain falling
sur les toits de Paris

it is the shadow of
Fantômas. Dressed

for his own on-going
opera, as large as the

life he lives in others'
dreams. They would

have him with a knife
in hand, but this is his

reality so he carries a
flower. It is a rose. They

would have him dead
but it is their dreams

that keep him alive. He
does not dream of them.

A THEATRICAL EVENT. Juve has been on the trail of Fantômas for quite some time. He crawls along the broken cobblestones of a mysterious passage. To guide himself he gropes along the walls with his fingers. Suddenly, a whiff of hot air hits him in the face. He comes nearer...His eyes adjust to the darkness. Juve distinguishes a door with loose boards a few feet in front of him. He undoes his overcoat in order to wrap it around his left arm, and gets his revolver ready. As soon as he has cleared the door, Juve realizes that his precautions were unnecessary: Fantômas is close by, sleeping deeply. In a matter of seconds Juve has tied up the sleeper. Fantômas continues to dream — of his disguises, perhaps, as usual. Juve, in the highest of spirits, pronounces some regrettable words. They cause the prisoner to start. He wakes up, and once awake, Fantômas is no longer Juve's captive. Juve has failed again. One means remains for him to achieve his end: Juve will have to get into one of Fantômas's dreams — he will try to take part as one of its characters. —René Magritte.

#195 The Spring Tide

The pre-
diction of
tides on an
a priori basis
is not possible.
Local conditions
apply. One works
from charts & tables—
how far the fall between
high & low, the positioning
of rocks, the shape of the sky.
What the weather is doing. Are
the Moon & Sun colinear with the
Earth? Do clouds collide with bells?

#194 The Poet Recompensed

Implied self-
praise, inflated
self-worth. Used
dragon imagery
in his poetry—the
dragon guardian
of gold, & gold,
believed the poet,
was suitable
recompense
for all his work. For-
got the bit about
fire-breath & flame.
The dragon didn't.

Just out from Bill Allegrezza's Moria Books,

a second selection from Series Magritte.



Available as a free downloadable pdf from here (about halfway down the page).

Available for purchase in print form from here.

#193 La Plaine de l'air

Cellulose
per se
has a slow
metabolic
rate of
decay
so that
a leaf
separated
from the
tree will
still hold
its form, &
a fallen leaf
still vert or
held vert-
ically in
an unseen
web or by
the earth
creates a
tree in
space.

#192 Le mariage de minuit

All questions have
been abolished
since no-one
is certain of the
answers anymore. The
Oscar winner weds
her boyfriend under
a candy-striped
tent somewhere
in the tames of
Alaska. He has
left parts of him-
self—his wig, his
face—on the table
back at the New
Mexico ranch. She
is annoyed, tears
out trees & plunges
the branches into
the earth where the
roots used to be. No
blindness like snow
blindness. He says
"I do." Still five &
a half months to
go before Spring
rolls around. You
may kiss the bride.

#191 Les muscles célestes

The cavity in the
skull over-
flows with
the training routines
of Italian body-
builders. But where
is its zenith in
relation to the observer?

#190 Titanic Days

Torn from Picasso, &
further torn—bather
from sea, or mother

from baby. The clothes
torn from her. Then
ravaged. About to be.

Victim & aggressor. A
classic dialectic. Shadow
given substance, form

taken on. Is classical.
Modern. Zeus in a
business suit? No

less likely than white
bull, white swan, a
shower of gold. He

falls across her, he falls
upon her. One outline.
The form taken on is

taken from Goya, Kronos
devouring one of his
children. Titanic days.

#189 The Use of Speech

"A nondescript
form can often
replace the
image of an
object." &. "Some-
times the name
of an object
can replace an
image." Linnaeus
double-coded.
A personal
taxonomy.