The Animal of Time – 4 Excerpts: Sound and Text

Excerpt 1: John Who Dances a Cadence to the World Exiting:

Got two big eyes inside my skull
Two big ol’ whites behind them holes
How they abominably bawl
Each time I pluck one o’ them balls

Got two big blues inside my bags
Two big white holes full of empty
How they cough insufferable ayes
Each time I gobble one o’ them two

Got two big eyes they come with me
How they cut everyone in two
Two big eyes two plucked into two

Got two big eyes one is guilty
I don’t know which one o’ them two

Excerpt 2: The Gallivanter

Then I met a guy who signed F.F.P.: he told me we’re children of the comical hole moving forward from the behind within. Though I believe we’re children of the past moving forward the last. I asked the world that it sign all my desires in my absence. To be who is, I felt your material inside me like a wave of spirit piercing the flesh like no nothing.

Then I swallowed some white, then I made my own being’s epitaph: “Here lies he who passed through whose-hole.” White Friday: last night I bumped into little Hughes January in the ferry, I ate his hand and then I assasigned him his flesh from the exit. He always carried a nothing backpack-bag and a mushy cardboard-hole. I killed and digested him to feed on his spirit. Then I took outside my gallivanting body, and since it wanted to break loose, I told my spirit to keep it on a noose.

Red Thursday: I met this very night or almost met a man or a woman whose name was Lucretia or Lucret: their hats being exactly the same sized identical. Saturday fifteen: yesterday I took again out of my body like I took it out to be. Eight fourteen: nothing. Twenty-four: I strolled like I’s strolling like I’s gallivanting meself in somebody. Twenty three: met a Brit, he told me: “If I should ever die by chance I’d like this to be said of me: This man died when there was no one left inside him for a long time.” I said back to him: it’s the same thing for all o’ us on this side of the Atlantic.

Manimals, Manimals,

We’ve forgotten the walk ‘cause the air’s so low, the earth’s so low, the miles cut in six, the seconds cut in trillionds and the lives in paces, the lights in phocion, the dances in sounds, the songs in bags and all the Ones cut in number.

Amnimaines, Manmnimines,

Already of age, I’s sized by profound stupidity, and by wisdom in infancy; I split myself up into all the world’s songs and ended with them: animals amid animals and men of Adam, built of tills, lead by tolls. Built of tills of llits. Lived alive in discovery and ideas throughout the years hanging from my nostrils. Your name? Nah native. First name? Lot. Ideas? Naught. Exiting through the exit.

Excerpt 3: The Song of John Who Nothing Befell

“My name’s Johnny ‘n my comical acts

Made me the guy everybody laughs at

I’m the only son my daddy ever had

Though in family we were eleven brats

Came one evening I heard rise my daddy

Who came to me and said get on up Johnny

Go get mommy some of them butter

Cause she’s gotten sick in this tiny kettle.

I barge in running inside Uncle Nicole’s

And says to him Uncle lickety-split

Throw a hat on that tri-horn head o’ yours

N’ come take a stroll to our place for a bit

 When I returned mommy was already replete

And everybody had just begun to sit

There was goose with cod for everyone to eat

And the evening mash that went with it.

Next thin’ ya know to show off my address

I’s knocking over the dishes n’ the meals

I made a stain of grease on my dress

N’ on my pants n’ on my legs of sheets

And on my arms that my grand-daddy of wool

Sewed up for me ‘fore he turned a dead owl

He died from a migraine that dear ol’ fool

Clinching a bone ‘tween his teeth o’ fowl

The next day,

Craving to spill the beans.

He saw there’s

No more meals to eat

And so I saw.

Through this worthy gift.

Thanks to which.

I’ve lasted quite a bit.

Wherefrom he did

Dug a hole in his likeness.

We cherish.

That which does not exist.”

Excerpt 4: Repeat The Same Thing

Bring in the doctor who hasn’t revealed diddly-squat in ten years followed by the dog who’s shown methodically that not one thing among things can last more than one single day under the light without knowing its words, that not things among one thing wouldn’t last here without knowing its own name in secret, even things without language.

And repeat the whole thing exactly another way, for not one thing among things wouldn’t last here without knowing its own name, even the things without language.

And repeat the whole thing exactly another way, for not one thing among things can last more than a day under the light without sullying its purity, and drawing to its end, and be altered by its end; for all things here, named and unnamed, suffer tremendously from nothing if it weren’t from the comic passion of being here. Which theory was named: stupid theory of the dog that is. And the dog left with its tail hanging and said: “children of animals, love the world like it didn’t exist.” I says to the dog: “If you are dog, I am not Adam methodically, nor born from a woman, nor revealed to a father’s beard, nor from a father’s mere word of this father whose, but from the mere word of he who’s just faking to be, nor without flesh, nor without spirit, but in the earth which comes and goes.”

Fr more Novarina translations, click here.