Racing with the Moon, Barking at Austria. Jambalaya very much.
Overlapping Orange Thought Balloons
by Cocteau
easily GLAM as volcanic ash whipped-by-the-wind into
passionately aeolian contours.
And, keeping that in mind:
because she went off on the tu form, her second phone call
was exponentially more intimate than envisioned. Imagined.
BEACH CLOSED. Previously, Austria was a disjunctive
of Prussia. And those were dark, dark days. Yet
days when felicity successfully might bridge dissonance.
Or/ vice versa, by masterful
use of gutter space and incrustation, depicted here
in a sweet series of frames, like bombast, over Tokio.
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS.
Their third conversation, more or less, levitated.
Images of CITROËN, transOceanic, intransitive
as untamed pheromones.
Strong, strange, antiphonal, crazy-out-of-tune!
Theater seats going click. click, click. Tock, tock…
Time/ shift. EN-JOY COKE. FALL BACK,
SPRING FORWARD. Trust/ in me
when things go wrong.
* * * * * *
Curieusement, la première page ouverte
avec un chien qui aboie: WOOF! Ouaf ouaf! Woof!
–jc2/mge
A frolic, probably not meant to be taken seriously, although there are some warning signals: “like bombast, over Tokio,” “LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS.” It’s freeing but doesn’t get me anywhere other than memories of French class. It does have an air of surrealism about it, a la Cocteau. I do take “days when felicity successfully might bridge dissonance” to heart.
When I read this poem of Cocteau’s I think a number of things about the idiom: experimental, avante-garde, abstract, subconcious… I think this piece is an expression of elation where 2 people (from the ‘phone calls/conversations’) emerge from the lonely dank crevices of the world to find companionship and what follows is a colorful ode to joy menagerie of imagery depicting those emotions. I take it seriously. It’s such a happy feeling to come across a kindred spirit and know that we are not alone. But as with so many of Cocteau’s poems, the piece is laden with erudition. And since I’m just a simple truck driver, I have to look up some of these words used:
*jambalaya: (Cookery) a Creole dish made of shrimps, ham, rice, onions, etc.[from Louisiana French, from Provençal jambalaia chicken and rice stew].
*aeolian: of or relating to the wind; produced or carried by the wind [from Aeolus, god of the winds].
*disjunctive:Serving to separate or divide.
*felicity:
1. a. Great happiness; bliss.
b. An instance of great happiness.
2. A cause or source of happiness.
*dis·so·nance
1. A harsh, disagreeable combination of sounds; discord.
2. Lack of agreement, consistency, or harmony; conflict.
*incrustation: A crust or coating.
*Citroën: is a major French automobile manufacturer, part of the PSA Peugeot Citroën group.Founded in 1919 by André-Gustave Citroën, Citroën was the first mass-production car company outside of the USA and pioneered the modern concept of creating a sales and services network that complements the motor car. Within eight years Citroën had become Europe’s largest car manufacturer, and the 4th largest in the world.
Citroën earned a reputation for innovation and revolutionary engineering, which is reflected in the company’s slogan “Créative Technologie”.
*Intransitive: In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that is associated with only one noun or noun phrase. The number of noun phrases associated with a verb is known in linguistics as its valency, and so an intransitive verb is also called a univalent verb. In English, this one noun is the subject and so an intransitive verb is commonly said to have no object; this distinguishes it from a transitive verb, which has a valency greater than one. Examples of intransitive verbs include to die and to sleep. Transitive verbs include to kill and to buy.
*pheromones: is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting outside the body of the secreting individual to impact the behavior of the receiving individual.
*antiphonal: An Antiphonary, Antiphonal, or Antiphoner is one of the present Catholic liturgical books. It is intended for use in choro (i. e. in the liturgical choir), and originally characterized, as its name implies, by the assignment to it principally of the antiphons used in various parts of the Roman liturgy.
****”Curieusement, la première page ouverte
avec un chien qui aboie: WOOF! Ouaf ouaf! Woof!” :
I’m getting a friend of mine to translate this but I believe it is a reference to the title of the poem “Racing with the Moon, Barking at Austria. Jambalaya very much”;
Well done sir! bravo!