BY STEVEN WALING AND JOHN CALVERT

- - - -

The stranger rode on a Mexican pinto into the town of Patriarchy,
where previously there had been reports of sporadic post-individualism
breaking out in the barrios. The sheriff, filled with logocentrism,
had rounded up the leaders in order of signification,
all except for Hosé, who had escaped by night to Slippage
and even now was making free passage to the state of Textuality,

where he would find himself once again in the arms of Miss Textuality.
An expert in the devious arts of acute patriarchy,
she could charm him with her secret wiles into post-individualism,
all liberally administered with copious amounts of logocentrism
in a long tall glass, mixed with Coca-Cola and a dash of signification.
After several of these, there was always the tendency of slippage

between this world and the next. Her real name was Ella. Slippage
into something more comfortable—she knew how he liked the textuality
of her curves—enabled her ably to rouse her lover's patriarchy,
which she knew would inevitably lead to post-individualism
in the big brass bed of her room in the Hotel Logocentrism.
Thus, they spent many long afternoons in a state of signification.

Meanwhile, the posse rode into town searching for Signification,
who, rumors said, was hiding under the guise of Thaddeus Slippage,
barber and undertaker. He was up to his eyes in textuality,
but that had not prevented him from dealing in unlicensed patriarchy
round the back of his premises. Hosé, still deep in post-individualism,
knowing full well he operated under the shadow of logocentrism,

heard the commotion, and would have fled but his latent logocentrism
prevented him from joining in the hunt and ensured Signification
would escape his fate. So it was he who succumbed to the slippage
that he knew full well would probably end in textuality
and a long stay in the caboose at Fort Patriarchy
with no chance of a reprieve, unless found innocent of post-individualism,

which wasn't on the cards. However, it was finally Ella's own post-individualism
that led her to betray her man, on account of his logocentrism
with another woman. This was the cowgirl at the Rio Signification
who, so legend had it, had a particular habit of slippage
into something less comfortable, whilst stroking a man's textuality,
so it was no surprise when our story ended in patriarchy

and moral turpitude. Patriarchy rode away on a horse called Post-individualism
and no one learned from the slippage that settled on the plain of Textuality
whilst the stranger's own logocentrism was largely without signification.


Note: all the end words are used in contemporary lit-crit/critical theory. Don't ask me what they mean, your guess is as good as mine.

Oh yes, this one big whooppee for me.
So full (I was once accused on a MA course of overegging my work, and replying that I find most poems way under-egged. Didn't go down well with the egg scrimpers) which is how I prefer poetry: make me work - we all have fantastic minds if we'd get off sitting on them and do something with them.

The patternings are so well handled: it's the rhythms used, and the sense of technique. I sense refrains and villanelles, where the neurones strew their connections: webs of wordages that refract and reflect and extend.

And do I also detect (this is where I get embarrasing and come up with skewed stuff) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid? If not that then definately B Dylan.

All this is straight-off-the-cuff response; suffice it to say this is one huge exciting read for me.

creative
visual
stunning.

intelligent work.

I am not suprised.

Just put me in a duster coat and point my laughing face at Laramy! I guess this is a Mexican stand-off between ‘the factual certainty and its interpretive reconsideration’ and I guess it isn't as well – Richard Brautigan would throw his sombrero in the air and shoot a water melon grin into it. The poem even has product placement, parable parody, a big sky, and a hand of aesthetic category Poker, and those minx metaphors, pluralisation saloon girls. As the Confederate General From Big Sur might comment, the generality of the law is the condition of liberty. Oh bring on the lawless frontier.

I don't usually comment on comments, Sophie, but...

It's not that my poetry doesn't say anything, it's that what it says is not me with something urgent that I have to get across to you, a message. But it's more about me discovering what there is to be said, using language rather like a painter or a musician to create pictures that hopefully will illuminate something about being human, or me, or part of the universe...

I usually have a "tune" in my head rather than a theme.

And this particular poem (which is a collaboration with a friend - one line's mine, one line's his etc) is not my most serious work... It's supposed to be fun...