DC's

Santa is the incomplete
Embodiment of our charity. Poor Santa,
His many bodies minted
Of human waste, his voice the choir
Of his own need. I feel so empty,
By myself, whispering my lists
In Santa’s spiral ear, while he lists
Slightly to one side like skeet
Propelled into the air by a device
No human hand has touched, so obsolete
Is effort when a dime skims ice.
Emit a cry for every useless thing:
Abundant padding so contrived
No one of us shall feel deprived.

Ranting
by Megan Green

ranting, pathetic insecurities, overwhelm the Christmas tree, and you promise
me a utopia, a sort of subsequential America,
where we’ll fuck & eat & play the craps, Las
Vegas is the only place it’ll happen, &
yet the nameless, intrude like a swarm of fucking locusts
feasting upon the Satin drape of my finest
face, I believe your chest most of all, that’s where
the dragon begins, & the sigh
spills from my eyes. Dead petals favour the corners. Gathering
like they have plans.

Making the Best of the Holidays
by James Tate

Justine called on Christmas day to say she
was thinking of killing herself. I said, “We’re
in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could
you possibly call back later, that is, if you’re
still alive.” She was furious with me and called
me all sorts of names which I refuse to dignify
by repeating them. I hung up on her and returned
to the joyful task of opening presents. Everyone
seemed delighted with what they got, and that
definitely included me. I placed a few more logs
on the fire, and then the phone rang again. This
time it was Hugh and he had just taken all of his
pills and washed them down with a quart of gin.
“Sleep it off, Hugh,” I said, “I can barely under-
stand you, you’re slurring so badly. Call me
tomorrow, Hugh, and Merry Christmas.” The roast
in the oven smelled delicious. The kids were playing
with their new toys. Loni was giving me a big
Christmas kiss when the phone rang again. It was
Debbie. “I hate you,” she said. “You’re the most
disgusting human being on the planet.” “You’re
absolutely right,” I said, “and I’ve always been
aware of this. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, Debbie.”
Halfway through dinner the phone rang again, but
this time Loni answered it. When she came back
to the table she looked pale. “Who was it?” I
asked. “It was my mother,” she said. “And what
did she say?” I asked. “She said she wasn’t my
mother,” she said.

[older I get]
by Wayne Koestenbaum

older I get, more serious I become
—-about wearing
—-makeup and wig.
caftan, too. always interested in a rub, kind sir:
—-love yr eyebrows.
—-admittedly, my pix
—-disguise age.
mix turquoise, king’s blue, bluish purple: impose mix
—-on passive quinacridone
—-violet’s impersonality.
try to figure out how clearly delineated
—-“subject positions” find
—-angles of mutual
—-pleasurable engagement without
—-destroying each other.

Joan Rivers baking Xmas cookies seen sideways
—-through tunnel window’s
—-mirror lake Simi-
—-lac® simulacrum.
“this administration is the worst thing to happen
—-to orange since
—-Agent Orange,” quips pundit.
every novel I love is fragile. red stars
—-on black duffel bag
—-triangulate with
—-Lynn Redgrave’s in-
—-dependent sources of self-
—-esteem, not harvested from Lear.
wrongly seeking sublimity in barn-roof gutter crevice.

lucent ceiling corrugations a dauphinois
—-potato when his Pompeii
—-gaze claims me, then disappears.
kouros-carved lips, stone lingerie, scandal
—-pudding: congregated
—-shames comprise a menu.
hives on my calves, awaiting Purim-Benadryl’s
—-alleviation: sob-collapse
—-throws ash on coffin
—-lowered: crowded town
—-car back from cemetery
—-to capers, cream cheese.

abstract expressionism is what happened at the hospital:
—-fools disputing climate
—-change, Tiffany
—-blue establishing shot’s
—-concentrated inattention.
“I’m glad you gave up the figure,” she said:
—-but I haven’t
—-stopped pursuing nudes.
to be the dread golem, aloof in Prague, boning
—-up on feuilletonisme,
—-Eton pea-coat toggles
—-unclasping gelt-Jocasta.

Balloons
by Sylvia Plath

Since Christmas they have lived with us,
Guileless and clear,
Oval soul-animals,
Taking up half the space,
Moving and rubbing on the silk

Invisible air drifts,
Giving a shriek and pop
When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
Yellow cathead, blue fish—
Such queer moons we live with

Instead of dead furniture!
Straw mats, white walls
And these traveling
Globes of thin air, red, green,
Delighting

The heart like wishes or free
Peacocks blessing
Old ground with a feather
Beaten in starry metals.
Your small

Brother is making
His balloon squeak like a cat.
Seeming to see
A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it,
He bites,

Then sits
Back, fat jug
Contemplating a world clear as water.
A red
Shred in his little fist.

Sonnet 8
by Edwin Denby

Three old sheepherders so filthy in their ways
Whores wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole
Saw once the Christmas star which in a blaze
Pierced like delight into the secret soul.

They later also stood with their same faces
Around a baby male and there were shown
The heart caressing with millennial graces
A beauty which in love is all its own.

These three were the first according to the story
But unbaptized they never will reach heaven
In an eternal hell tortured and gory
They can recall the joy that they were given,

This savage torture by the law of love
Of Christmas shepherds I like thinking of.

I’ll Be Me and You Be Goethe
by Heather Christie

I want it to be winter and I want to change
the color of this room This room should be
a blue room and it should be freezing
but ventilated and I in my medium snowsuit
irresistible I know because everything I do
I do to get more beautiful so you will want
to love me in the cold and indoor morning

Christmas Poem
by Dick Gallup

Your eyes give a little bit
—————-You know
Though your hands
Take you away
Into a distance filling with blue fir trees
Cool and fragrant as the sea
Vacationing in an upland meadow
You have a magical green necklace
When You put it on you are like a tree

Today I call you Lady Santa
From your firm green breasts
Spring Christmas Tree nipples!
Lady Santa!
I call your name wildly in the night
You are the one who brings Fortune to poets
You fill the kids’ stockings
You are the ink in my pen
The yeast in my bread
The best in my bed
You have a giant living room
And you don’t even have a house
I’m going to call you on the telephone
I’m going to call you on a real telephone

When you go away
—–It’s time for the horror show
Time to hang around weird scenes
Time to fuck up the machinery
—–Like big hairy factories
I end up making smoke
And finally going out
—–On strike
And you are the most beautiful of the scabs
And put me back to just walking down the street

There is a blue fire in the wheels of your eyes
Deep blue flaming night lights
You hold comfort and easy dreams
No leaky faucets in your kitchen
You give me screaming fits of sheer adulation
You come toward me on the winter streets
—–Ringing your bell
And you are all the bells ringing
Christmas and New Years in a clean shirt
You make me think of padded cells on the moon
And going to the Excelsior Hotel
—–In Venice
————–In a balloon
You are a goddess on a god’s birthday
Your voice is on the radio when I turn it off
You are your own electricity
And you turn me on

What I’d Like For Christmas, 1970
by Ted Berrigan

Black brothers to get happy
The Puerto Ricans to say hello
The old folks to take it easy &
as it comes
The United States to get straight
Power to butt out
Money to fuck off
Business with honor
Religion
& Art
Love
A home
A typewriter
A GUN.

Advent
by Rae Armantrout

In front of the craft shop,
a small nativity,
mother, baby, sheep
made of white
and blue balloons.

Sky
god
girl.

Pick out the one
that doesn’t belong.

Some thing

close to nothing
flat
from which,

fatherless,
everything has come.

Look at My Head, It’s a Pumpkin with a Candle in It
by Keegan Crawford

What is on your bed right now?
I laid there for fifteen minutes with my face down into the pillow.
I imagined how I looked from another person’s point of view
and I looked dead, in a humorous way.
What is your favorite holiday?
The tree was fake and everyone was acting like the tree.
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
The drop was five stories, so I didn’t look down. I just looked forward.
Have you ever been camping?
I don’t know why people are scared of wolves. ‘Blood thirsty killing machine’ is a false phrase. They are not robots and they drink water.
What was the last thing you ate?
I am not a blood thirsty killing machine. I just wanted to clarify that.
Do you have any regrets?
Flowers die 100% percent of the time. I still like flowers, though.

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy (Excerpt)
by Jack Spicer

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer
As slow getting started
As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza
After a lot of unusual rain
California seems long in the summer.
I would like to write a poem as long as California
And as slow as a summer.
Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow
As the very tip of summer.
As slow as the summer seems
On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside
Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road
Between Bakersfield and Hell
Waiting for Santa Claus.

Christmas at the Orphanage
by Bill Knott

But if they’d give us toys and twice the stuff
most parents splurge on the average kid,
orphans, I submit, need more than enough;
in fact, stacks wrapped with our names nearly hid
the tree where sparkling allotments yearly
guaranteed a lack of—what?—family?—

I knew exactly what it was I missed:
(did each boy there feel the same denials?)
to share my pals’ tearing open their piles
meant sealing the self, the child that wanted
to scream at all You stole those gifts from me;
whose birthday is worth such words? The wish-lists
they’d made us write out in May lay granted
against starred branches. I said I’m sorry.

Nearing Christmas
by Tony Towle

Not to have a mistaken notion of your biography;
no event in your life is of the slightest importance,
but there is nothing you cannot use;
the unceasing events of your boring life
occur only for the success of a particular poem
awaiting your efforts on a horizon.

For instance, it is supposed that I am drunk at a party;
I walk unsteadily into the foyer
where Joe, Jane, and John are putting on their coats.
I stand there for a moment, breaking the alliteration.

Season’s Greetings
by Ron Padgett

The holidays are said
to give one a chance
to get in touch with others
but what held back that chance
the rest of the year?
What it means is
that the holidays are a time
when we should behave
like other people, as if
in junior high school,
jury duty, or the Army,
whereas what Philip Whalen
wanted was to take a holiday
from holidays, and then
he wavered, beautifully.

Kage’s First Xmas
by Ben Mirov

I am thinking of him and her having sex. I am thinking of them having really great sex, probably in front of a mirror. I am alone in the house. The TV is on, but everyone is asleep. I am about to turn twenty-one. When I turn twenty-one I am going to put on snowshoes. I am going to put on snowshoes and walk as far as I can into the snow. Once I am out in the snow I am going to sit down. I will probably sit in the snow for a long time. I’ll bring a sandwich and some juice. When I return to the house it will be Xmas morning. I will take off my snowshoes and I will tell my family my new name. I will say, On advent of my twenty-first birthday I have taken a new name. Henceforth I shall be called Kage. Kage with a K and not a C. From now on I will only answer to the name Kage. Thank you very much, and then I will walk out of the room. Then I will probably take a shower because I will be cold from sitting in the snow. I will walk into the bathroom and take off all my clothes and look at my body in the mirror. I will probably flex a little. Kage likes his new body. Then I will take a long shower. I will wash every part of my body, including my asshole and my ears and toes. Every part of my body will be clean. Then I will get out of the shower and go have Xmas. I will open my presents and say, Kage does not want this. Kage has no use for a Playstation. Kage does wear sweaters.

untitled
by Megan Boyle

everything i touch is going to be a fossil some day my dad still hasn’t taken down his christmas decorations

i walked to his refrigerator and immediately unwrapped and ate a square of american cheese

if i drop a toothpick i’m pretty sure it will remain where it fell for three days

not sure what happens after that.

Xmas Poem: Bolinas
by Robert Creeley

All around
the snow
don’t fall.

Come Christmas
we’ll get high
and go find it.

Christmas Tree
by James Merrill

To be
Brought down at last
From the cold sighing mountain
Where I and the others
Had been fed, looked after, kept still,
Meant, I knew—of course I knew—
That it would be only a matter of weeks,
That there was nothing more to do.
Warmly they took me in, made much of me,
The point from the start was to keep my spirits up.
I could assent to that. For honestly,
It did help to be wound in jewels, to send
Their colors flashing forth from vents in the deep
Fragrant sables that cloaked me head to foot.
Over me then they wove a spell of shining—
Purple and silver chains, eavesdropping tinsel,
Amulets, milagros: software of silver,
A heart, a little girl, a Model T,
Two staring eyes. Then angles, trumpets, BUD and BEA
(The children’s names) in clownlike capitals,
Somewhere a music box whose tiny song
Played and replayed I ended before long
By loving. And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV
To keep the show going. Yes, yes, what lay ahead
Was clear: the stripping, the cold street, my chemicals
Plowed back into the Earth for lives to come—
No doubt a blessing, a harvest, but one that doesn’t bear,
Now or ever, dwelling upon. To have grown so thin.
Needles and bone. The little boy’s hands meeting
About my spine. The mother’s voice: Holding up wonderfully!
No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today’s
Dusk room aglow
For the last time
With candlelight.
Faces love-lit
Gifts underfoot.
Still to be so poised, so
Receptive. Still to recall, praise.

Love Poem
by Louise Glück

There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits.
She turns out scarves in every shade of red.
They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm
while she married over and over, taking you
along. How could it work,
when all those years she stored her widowed heart
as though the dead come back.
No wonder you are the way you are,
afraid of blood, your women
like one brick wall after another.

THE BLIND SEE ONLY THIS WORLD (A Christmas Card)
by John Wieners

Today the Lamb of God arrives in the mail
above the Cross, beside the Handsome Sailor
from Russia
in his turtleneck sweater. Today we make love
in our minds.
And women come to fore, winning the field.

It is Christmas, Hanukkah,–heritages we leave
behind
in israel.

There is a new cross in the wind, and it is our

minds, imagination, will

where the discovery is made

of how to pass the night, how to share the gift

of love, our bodies, which is true
illumination
of the present instant.

There is no other journey to make. We receive all
we need.

Without insight, we remain blind.
Without vision, we see only this world.

Drivers Dividers
by Bernadette Mayer

D R I V E R S white of white line 10 to 6
shut off line this coach is TOLL MACHINE
motors white restroom equipped
while loading line for your convenience
buses white cigarette smoking
S A V E T I R E S line permitted
Keep wheels on white unless prohibited
Straight line un line by law
til passing over white we’re getting
treadle before line there you’re out of
cutting left white drinking intoxicants
P A S S E N G E R S line on coach prohibited
are met in the white on the
main waiting room line way
U P S T A I R S white express lane
SHELTER SHELTER SH line No Standing
Back in U.S.S.R. white W. 41 St.
chipped Martha, My line One Way
Dear chipped, as if white Tow
eaten line It is now 5:25 Away
Departures … for … white Zone
W O R K line Your Operator
A R E A white Safe Reliable
A H E A D line Courteous CHECK OUT
Free Baggage white PAY here
checking line LEFT THAN
No Tipping Required white and buses only
D.O.T. regulations line THIS LANE
require passengers white Season’s
to stand back line Greetings
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House of Chrome line u u Mr. Milk
tinted green white v v Keeps your car
50¢ makeup line w w on the go Atlantic
cars only sleep white x x Cable TV
HOBOKEN green line y y 12 channels
THIS LANE sleep white z z Special Offer
$6.25 green line Xmas Xmas placemats
When you’re out of Holiday House white Count your LEE
Schlitz line two lights are Change AS YOU
the same two lights white Keep Right TRAVEL
beer a a line Pass Left Only ASK US
To a smoker b b white Here she said
it’s a c c line her is a tube from one
Ken d d white less cigar You to the
PARK AVE. e e line know how she other
UNION CITY f f white explained that but one
a whole g g line one to me Its a is more
new kind h h white cigar she said than the other
of bag i i line that hasn’t got STOP LINE
GIVE THE j j white anything left STOP LINE
WASHED VODKA k k line to it de cinquante
DONT 8:45 l l white LETOM cinq
WALK Rose Garden m m line I cant swipe the
I like your skirt n n white great American
so do I o o line hunchback horses Get back
your sash is p p white where you were before
beautiful q q line The Rest
RIDGE DODGE r r white Get Back
Fiesta Banquet s s line LENOX—-
Room t t white toll booth no. 1

All the Lovers
by Kevin Killian

Outside the Disney Concert Hall,
Kylie has summoned a clutch of cold models in white underwear,

They clamber on white boxes pitching for the sky

Somehow she appears in a dream sequence,

Boys and girls kiss and poke and struggle for love

In California, where the major candidates for governor and senator
live the lavish lives of Roman emperors,

Carly Fiorina, like Nero, bought a violin
for everyone on her Christmas list, from Cremona,

her wood golden and thin as hair,

81 per cent of voters don’t care how wealthy a
candidate is

You have to be rich to flourish

What came first, the wifebeater or the social system
that allowed ever and ever more flourish

In the face of a liverish social despair
all the lovers who have gone before

they don’t compare to you

i am a big dumbass bear on christmas morning
by partrik

holy shit a house

im gonna look inside the fucking window

who the fuck is this dumbass family in this house

if i wanted to i could bust in there and eat every one of these fuckers

look at this little fucker opening a present

oh look its a fire truck big deal ass monkey

when are these shit hats gonna fucking notice the bear at their window

hey bitch you forgot to look in your stocking

there you go

lol bubba wubba and chocolate give her a fucking toothbrush mom and dad

when are they gonna see me and chase me away

damn thats a lot of wrapping paper

lol that kitten is playing in it what a retard

oh shit they see me

“im not gonna hurt you or eat you”

but it sounds like “roar roar roar” to them cause im a big dumbass fucking bear

dad thats a big ass gun

dont shoot me think of all the fun times

like when watched your lovely family open presents on christmas

oh shit he took a warning shot im gonna run away

there is no presents under any of the trees of the woods of the world for me

why arent i hibernating

in a string of christmas lights that is blinking all year long
by Diana Salier

for christmas i get a new magic set and a big plastic stealth bomber that opens up and holds fifty little metal stealth bombers. i wear footie pajamas that zip all the way to my neck. the big plastic stealth bomber has a runway to practice takeoffs and landings. i sit on the carpet in my onesie and make the grey and green stealth bombers crash into each other so that all the pilots inside will die. i can’t finish card tricks or make the red balls disappear so i wear my black felt magician’s hat and walk around pulling rabbits out of things. i drive to my first girlfriend’s house. we drink wine and leave the bottles in the door of her parents’ car. on the way back to my house i text her all i want for christmas is you. at home a string of christmas lights blinks erratically. i fall asleep clearing the rubble off the runway.

December
by James Schuyler

The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound,
this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center.
I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs
the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments
recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey.
Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event”
and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance
to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all
the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops
and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation
of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids,
Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends
It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West
Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it.
A smile in the street may be loads! you don’t have to undress everybody.
“You didn’t visit the Alps?”
“No, but I saw from the train they were black
and streaked with snow.”
Having and giving but also catching glimpses
hints that are revelations: to have been so happy is a promise
and if it isn’t kept that doesn’t matter. It may snow
falling softly on lashes of eyes you love and a cold cheek
grow warm next to your own in hushed dark familial December.

Molly Is Asked
by Ron Koertge

to be in the Christmas pageant. She tells
me this standing in the door of what we
laughingly call my study.

“But I don’t want to be Mary,” she says.
“I want to be the guy.”

That makes me look up from my bills.
“Joseph?”

“The innkeeper. I want to slam the door
in Joseph’s face.”

She’s eight. I wonder if we’ll look back
on this next year and laugh. Or will she
want to be Herod and we’ll have to take
her little brother and flee.

Talking Turkeys
by Benjamin Zephaniah

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.
I got lots of friends who are turkeys
An all of dem fear christmas time,
Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
An humans are out of dere mind,
Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
Dey all hav a right to a life,
Not to be caged up an genetically made up
By any farmer an his wife.

Turkeys just wanna play reggae
Turkeys just wanna hip-hop
Can yu imagine a nice young turkey saying,
‘I cannot wait for de chop’,
Turkeys like getting presents, dey wanna watch christmas TV,
Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain
In many ways like yu an me.

I once knew a turkey called…Turkey
He said “Benji explain to me please,
Who put de turkey in christmas
An what happens to christmas trees?”,
I said “I am not too sure turkey
But itÕs nothing to do wid Christ Mass
Humans get greedy an waste more dan need be
An business men mek loadsa cash’.

Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
Invite dem indoors fe sum greens
Let dem eat cake an let dem partake
In a plate of organic grown beans,
Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
An spare dem de cut of de knife,
Join Turkeys United an dey’ll be delighted
An yu will mek new friends ‘FOR LIFE’.

Pretty Convincing
by Tim Dlugos

Talking to my friend Emily, whose drinking
patterns and extravagance of personal
feeling are a lot like mine, I’m pretty
convinced when she explains the things we do
while drinking (a cocktail to celebrate the new
account turns into a party that lasts till 3
a.m. and a terrific hangover) indicate
a problem of a sort I’d not considered.
I’ve been worried about how I metabolize
the sauce for four years, since my second bout
of hepatitis, when I kissed all the girls
at Christmas dinner and turned bright yellow
Christmas night, but never about whether
I could handle it. It’s been more of a given,
the stage set for my life as an artistic queer,
as much of a tradition in these New York circles
as incense for Catholics or German
shepherds for the blind. We re-enact
the rituals, and our faces, like smoky icons
in a certain light, seem to learn nothing
but understand all. It comforts me
yet isn’t all that pleasant, like drinking
Ripple to remember high school. A friend
of mine has been drinking in the same bar for decades,
talking to the same types, but progressively
fewer blonds. Joe LeSueur says he’s glad
to have been a young man in the Fifties with his
Tab Hunter good looks, because that was the image
men desired; now it’s the Puerto Rican
angel with great eyes and a fierce fidelity
that springs out of machismo, rather than a moral
choice. His argument is pretty convincing, too,
except lots of the pretty blonds I’ve known
default by dying young, leaving the field
to the swarthy. Cameron Burke, the dancer
and waiter at Magoo’s, killed on his way home from
the Pines when a car hit his bike on the Sunrise Highway.
Henry Post dead of AIDS, a man I thought would be around
forever, surprising me by his mortality the way
I was surprised when I heard he was not
the grandson of Emily Post at all, just pretending,
like the friend he wrote about in Playgirl, Blair Meehan,
was faking when he crashed every A List party for a year
by pretending to be Kay Meehan’s son, a masquerade
that ended when a hostess told him “Your mother’s here”
and led him by the hand to the dowager—Woman, behold
thy son—underneath a darkening conviction that all,
if not wrong, was not right. By now Henry may have faced
the same embarrassment at some cocktail party in the sky.
Stay as outrageously nasty as you were. And Patrick
Mack, locked into memory as he held court in the Anvil
by the downstairs pinball machine, and writhing
as he danced in Lita Hornick’s parlor when the Stimulators
played her party, dead last week of causes I don’t know,
as if the cause and not the effect were the problem.
My blond friend Chuck Shaw refers to the Bone-
crusher in the Sky, and I’m starting to
imagine a road to his castle lit by radiant
heads of blonds on poles as streetlamps for the gods,
flickering on at twilight as I used to do
in the years when I crashed more parties and acted
more outrageously and met more beauties and made
more enemies than ever before or ever again, I pray.
It’s spring and there’s another crop of kids
with haircuts from my childhood and inflated self-esteem
from my arrival in New York, who plug into the history
of prettiness, convincing to themselves and the devout.
We who are about to catch the eye of someone
new salute as the cotillion passes, led by blonds
and followed by the rest of us, a formal march
to the dark edge of the ballroom where we step out
onto the terrace and the buds of the forsythia
that hides the trash sprout magically
at our approach. I toast it
as memorial to dreams as fragile and persistent
as a blond in love. My clothes smell like the smoky
bar, but the sweetness of the April air’s
delicious when I step outside and fill
my lungs, leaning my head back
in a first-class seat on the shuttle
between the rowdy celebration of the great deeds
to come and an enormous Irish wake in which
the corpses change but the party goes on forever.

Christmas Lists
by Jim Carroll

It’s Christmas time don’t forget that…
like falling in love with a cane,
tears will become worse than forbidden raiders:
does any one here remember the true meaning of this day?

the phone tree had already melted, suddenly a white christmas
a lack of supplies, later eating candles on the circular
say of her pause. Lautrec entered the room, “all this
holiday reasoning” the table contained red pineapple juice,
merry christmas says me, soon every one went out to sing
“good songs” and we felt as warm as she had:
the little miss fussy doll… down there, near the lakes.

That night with the green sky
by Tao Lin

It was snowing and you were kind of beautiful
We were in the city and every time I looked up
Someone was leaning out a window, staring at me

I could tell you liked me a lot or maybe even loved me
But you kept walking at this strange speed
You kept going in angles and it was confusing me

I think maybe you were thinking that you’d make me disappear
By walking at strange speeds and in a strange, curvy way
But how would that cause me to vanish from the planet Earth?

And that hurts
Why did you want me gone?
That hurts
Why?
Why?
I don’t know
Some things can’t be explained, I guess
The sky, for example, was green that night

Our Lady of Knock
by Fanny Howe

Was in the month of Mary
That I lost my desire to pray.
It seeped away like yellow.
As blurred as sorrow.
It was me singing hope as a solo.
God growing weak and subtle.
Birdsong was my last communion.
The burn of karma was the loss
Of sureness and of eros,
Mental delirium, the triumph of the strong,
A sacred heart in iron,
It was the end of an eon, winter
Was coming. The seeds were fires
Inside the children… . Knock, knock, Mary.

Music
by Frank O’Hara

If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf’s
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35¢, it’s so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,
I must tighten my belt.
It’s like a locomotive on the march, the season
of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter’s
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.
As they’re putting, up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!
But no more fountains and no more rain,
and the stores stay open terribly late.

At Christmas
by Barbara Eknoian

on sunday we took the train to the city and we each went home for one night and i saw my parents and my bedroom and my cat and you saw your ex boyfriend and his parents and his bedroom and his dog and when i called you i heard you ask me to go back to sleep and i said is everything okay and you told me to please go back to sleep
by Spencer Madsen

not sure if you
ever told me how
you felt about
christmas lights

i said i’d wrap them around our room
and put popcorn in your mouth

a few weeks ago i
walked onto a street
and sat prepared

lets
sleep like two hands
caught
in each other’s fingers

lets be demonstrative
of that image
in an earnest way
lets forget i wrote it down
or else it won’t feel genuine

yesterday i googled:
homemade fleshlight

Hand Over Heart
by David Trinidad

I look up at the clock.
It’s time to go, so
I cover the typewriter
and calculator, lock my radio
in the file cabinet
and straighten my desk.
On the way out, I unplug
the Christmas tree lights.
I am rarely the last one
to leave the office.

Alone in the elevator,
I listen to a lilting
rendition of “Frosty
The Snowman.” The door
slides open. Outside,
it’s already dark. I say
good night to the guard
in the parking lot, wait
for my car to warm up.
It does and I drive off.

Halfway home
I turn on the radio
Madonna sings
her new hit, “Open
Your Heart.” At
the same time, on
another station,
Cyndi Lauper sings
her latest song, “Change
Of Heart”. Not that long
ago, it might have
been Brenda Lee
singing “Heart In Hand”
and Connie Francis
Belting out any number
of her most popular
tunes: “My Heart
Has A Mind Of Its
Own,” “Breakin’ In
A Brand New Broken
Heart,” “When
The Boy In Your Arms
(Is The Boy In Your
Heart)” or “Don’t
Break The Heart
That Loves You.”
I Don’t know why
I think about
such things.

Christmas on Telegraph
by Tom Clark

Shoppers rush past frozen images unseen,
In bright synthetics Sierra skiers ski
Through snowdead woods on blurred storewindow TV.
In the forest it is cold. How can it be
Colder in the cities? Street people crouched
Under Amoeba’s protective arcade mouth
Such big round starving O’s: oxygen balloons
Lifting off to perfect freedom, no strings —
A pity they can’t float off in them.
Peace, brother. I can spare the buck or pass it.
Just breathing commits one to everything —
To life — which can’t be purchased on this street
Where ravenous as sheer presence Christmas lights
Up human appetites for guilty pleasures.

Literary Lipsticks
by Elaine Equi

The Best American Poetry
Red Wheelbarrow
I Have Eaten the Plums
Poppies in October
Pink Christmas
Red Weather
A Rose Is a Rose
Jaffa Juice
Watermelon Sugar
Frost at Midnight

Is This a Poem For the Year 2219?
by Mike Young

Yes, this is a poem for the year 2219
about the fact my bathroom is above
my neighbors’ bedroom, and I sing
Roy Orbison songs at immaculate volumes
during my routines, which is partly my love
of song and partly my obsession with the idea
of audience. Dear 2219, a bathroom is a private
chlorinated water repository filled with hair gel
and other methods of impression insurance,
like sleeping pills. Neighbors are people who
lock the downstairs door just because some
random bro started fingerpainting their door-
bell Sunday night. Oops, he said. You’re not my
parents. Neighbors leave notes asking you to park
considerately and curbside boxes of giveaway bins
to judge them by. In bedrooms, 2219, what you do is
sniff a cowboy shirt you’ve plucked off the floor to see
if it’s okay to wear for teaching the kids I guess you call
First Moroccan Restauranteer in Space and Single Season
Small Needle Home Run Record Holder. You leave the mandarin
peels on your bed after having awesome sex with your girlfriend
but throw them away when she leaves for work. In 2219, you may
instead want to rub the peels all over your chest. If so, history
repeats itself. Golly. Singing is a method of generating inside
you a logging road, dawn-ish, swards of sugar beets, after driving
all night, knowing it’s about to rain but it’s not raining yet, thanks
sky! Singing may also be catalogued as Christmas underwater
and hiking slowly along the railroad ties with the best candy bar
but no home. For the sub-category of song known as Roy Orbison,
ditch your footnotes, 2219! 1936-1988, popular for soaring R&B;
and indoor sunglasses: that’s not Roy Orbison! Roy Orbison is a
naked knee so lovely you’d cry if you weren’t afraid of the knee
getting wet. Other things you need to know, 2219: I am afraid of
everything. We would rake the stars into piles to say what’s after
us. Happiness without certain phone calls is impossible. Your father
will die. Last Christmas, I ran into my friend Reggie at the cineplex.
His kid was cute. Me and my other friend were making fun of the movie
Reggie wanted to see. Reggie and I cussed together for the first time I can
remember, but I think we’re made of different smoke. 2219, I might be
above you or something. But I’m probably just below you. I take so many
multivitamins. Sometimes I try to make sure the best songs in my iTunes
have the most plays, but I don’t know why. Carolyn’s a better singer than
I am, and Dorothy told me that when I sing Bridge Over Troubled Water
it sounds like I’m falling apart. Is that a good thing? Wouldn’t it be more
considerate to just spend my time recycling cartons of apple cider for
you, 2219? Instead I carry a pillowcase full of laundry to the laundromat
and try to memorize my life enough to remember my life. I walk streets
named after people too dead to meet and try to sing loud enough to get
stuck in strangers’ heads. Carolyn and I go down on each other to hear the
other make their sounds. One time I saw my downstairs neighbor in a
line, and she smiled, waved at me. I couldn’t remember who she was.
She left her place to come talk. Then I remembered. 2219, they just
found water on the moon. Your love will only count before it’s gone.

Christmas Eve
by Bill Berkson

for Vincent Warren

Behind the black water tower

under the grey
of the sky that feeds it
smoke speeds to where a pigeon
spreads its wings

This is no great feat
Cold pushes out its lust
We walk we drink we cast
our giggling insults

Would you please
leave the $2.50 you owe me
I would rather not talk about it
just now Money bores me I would like
to visit someone who will stay
in bed all day A forest is rising
imperceptibly in my head
not a civilized park

I think it would be nice this “new
moral odor” no it would not mean
“everything marching to its tomb”
The water tower
watches over us Is there someone
you would like to invite no one.

from I Remember
by Joe Brainard

I remember Christmas tree lights reflected on the ceiling.

I remember Christmas cards arriving from people my parents forgot to send cards to.

I remember mistletoe.

I remember Christmas carols. And car lots.

I remember Aunt Cleora who lived in Hollywood. Every year for Christmas she sent my brother and me a joint present of one book.

Connie’s Scared
by Clark Coolidge

The wind came up, the radishes died and
the peelings continued. No one could be
more hostile than a species enclosed in
a chimney for a century or so they told me.
The lighter fluid on the other hand might warm
your nails. We deserve overtime
for dealing daily with these mistreated burdens.
The milkweed pods for no reason in the world
we could see ignited and the frog is loose.
The mail at last arrived but you had better
proceed to lick your envelopes more heartily
as they all came empty. No one exactly states
but everybody thinks the whole world level
has been lowered and continues. If the flame
goes out the food will spoil, remember?

Then there is the problem of the stray moose
to be seen from the road or better not, bring
apples, take pictures, but the village idiot
had his son throw rocks. The later thunder
around the sleeping household was a mere
five minutes herd of cows. And Rip Rowan thought that
thunder was produced by two crickets banging
garbage cans together. Tomorrow the snow will
be higher and the school fail to attract. I pay
for entrance to this life by my exit, can’t wait
each morning to treat of impossible questions and
have never been depressed. Makes you wonder,
all these seacows spitting on their tails,
flashing lights on the spaceride and even in my dreams.
Claimed I awoke from the fight I couldn’t win.
Chained my warts to a snowcone.

Across the street are many stray dogs but whose
fault are the cats. Something terrible’s going on
in the woods the rabbit is screaming, the cat
distinctly calling your name, nothing that can’t
be solved with golf club and pistol empty. Lock
your house when you leave for the auto. The company
that brought you pasteboard frowns on too many
fallen trees. Check your son’s teeth when he eats
or he’ll end a blimp. A crib death when a baby’s
network lapses mid-breath. The television not collapse
but slowly burn out. And that cooking by radar might cost
you a few meals. There goes another roast beast.

The adult book human gunned down as he left. Seems
the nature of crime to go unsolved, covered up,
never caught. Sal Mineo, for one. If so, wouldn’t
you want your kids to stop it. A gay couple hated
for their foul language not their sex. But the fat weather
woman terminated as a lesbian. Stamp out discomfort
and lift a heel for bliss. Heaven more attractive
now that harps are out of style. One arm in a sling
and the other in a bear. At the loss of life and
limb remain cool. Their son last seen chewed by
croc in pool of steam.

There is no longer any Florida and Christmas nowhere.
The men removed our home sometime lastnite while
we shook. Asked me how I felt and what he could do
with his mike. All my girlfriends have been raped,
some in basements, some by families. Even in the movies
they don’t know they can complain. Reels mixed, eyesight
tearing. Heard they’ve even left the lights on in space.
The dawning hastes and subsequent vagueries.
Never a morning wake but I congeal.

Some kind of nut
by Charles Bukowski

the best Christmas I can remember
I was in a tiny room in
Philadelphia
and I pulled down all the
shades
and went to bed
and pulled up the
covers.

there was no telephone.
there were no Christmas cards.
there was no family.
there were no gifts

and I believe that I felt better
than anybody in that
city
and almost anybody
in any of the
cities.

and I celebrated New Year’s
Eve in the same
manner.

Holes
by Eileen Myles

Once when I passed East Fourth Street off First Avenue,
I think it was in early fall and I had a small hole
in the shoulder of my white shirt, and another on
the back–I looked just beautiful. There was a
whole moment in the 70s when it was beautiful
to have holes in your shirts and sweaters.
By now it was 1981, but I carried that 70s style
around like a torch. There was a whole way of
feeling about yourself that was more European
than American, unless it was American around
1910 when it was beautiful to be a strong
starving immigrant who believed so much
in herself and she was part of a movement
as big as history and it explained the
hole in her shirt. It’s the beginning
of summer tonight, and every season has
cracks through which winter
or fall might leak out. The most perfect
flavor of it, oddly in June. Oh remember
when I was an immigrant. I took a black
beauty and got up from the pile of poems
around my knees and just had too much
energy for thought and walked over to
your house where there was continuous
beer. Finally we were just drinking
Rheingold, a hell of a beer. At the
door I mentioned I had a crush on both
of you, what you say to a couple. By
now the kids were in bed. I can’t
even say clearly now that I wanted
the woman, though it seemed to be
the driving principle then, wanting
one of everything. I was part of
a generation of people who went to
the bars on 7th street and drank the
cheap whiskey and the ale on tap and dreamed
about when I would get you alone. Those
big breasts. I carried slim notebooks which only
permitted two or three-word lines. I need you.
“Nearing the Horse.” There was blood in all my
titles, and milk. I had two bright blue pills
in my pocket. I loved you so much. It was
the last young thing I ever did, the end of
my renaissance, an immigration into my
dream world which even my grandparents
had not dared to live, being prisoners
of schizophrenia and alcohol, though
I was lovers with the two. The beauty
of the story is that it happened.
It was the last thing that happened
in New York. Everything else happened
while I was stopping it from happening.
Everything else had a life of
its own. I don’t think I owe
them an apology, though at least
one of their kids hates my guts.
She can eat my guts for all
I care. I had a small hole in
the front of my black sleeveless
sweater. It was just something
that happened. It got larger
and larger. I liked to put
my finger in it. In the month
of December I couldn’t get
out of bed. I kept waking
up at 6PM and it was Christmas
or New Year’s and I had
started drinking & eating. I remember
you handing me the most beautiful
red plate of pasta. It was like your cunt
on a plate. I met people in your house
even found people to go out and fuck,
regrettably, not knowing about
the forbidden fruit. I forget
what the only sin is. Somebody
told me recently. I have so
many holes in my memory. Between
me and the things I’m separated
from. I pick up a book and
another book and memory
and separation seem to
be all anyone writes
about. Or all they
seem to let me read.
But I remember those
beautiful holes on
my back like a
beautiful cloak
of feeling.

A Severe Lack of Holiday Spirit
by Amy Gerstler

I dread the icy white concussion
of winter. Each snowfall demands
panic, like a kidnapper’s hand
clapped over my chapped mouth.
Ice noms everywhere, a plague
of glass. Christmas ornaments’
sickly tinkle makes my molars ache.
One pities the anemic sun
come January. Trees go skeletal.
Children born in the chilly months
are apt to stammer. People hit
the sauce in a big way all winter.
Amidst blizzards they wrestle
unsuccessfully with the dark comedy
of their lives, laughter trapped
in their frigid gizzards. Meanwhile,
the mercury just plummets,
like a migrating duck blasted
out of the sky by some hunter
in a cap with fur earflaps.

On his reluctance to take down the Christmas ornaments
by John Ashbery

A nice, normal morning:
feet setting out as though in a trance,
doubling the yesterdays, a doubled man
under the stairs, and strange surrealist fish
from so much disappearance, damaged in the mail.

Or the spry cutting edge of another day.
Here, we have these in
sizes and colors —
day goes fluttering by.

Like ivy behind a chimney
it grows and grows in ropes.
Mouse teams unsay it,
yeoman can’t hear yet.

A shadow purling,
up into the sky.
Silence in the vandalised vomitorium.

It’s great that you can be here too.
Passivity rests its case.

giphy

p.s. Hey. I’m still too sick to do the p.s., but I wanted to give you a Xmas thing. My hope is to be able to start doing the blog in a regular way again maybe tomorrow, but that could be overly optimistic, we’ll see. Avoid this flu that’s going around if you possibly can. It’s brutal. Happy Xmas!

Kosten Koper presents … Bill Nelson : Acquitted By Mirrors (1982 – 1987)

December 23, 2025 / DC / 38 Comments

Body of a boy, mind of a monster
A thing of beauty is a joy forever…forever…

Bill Nelson – Flesh, ‘The Love That Whirls (Diary Of A Thinking Heart)’ LP (1982)

“Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.” – Emil Cioran

Bill Nelson has been making music since the early 1970s, with his creative output continuing until recently, when a sudden hearing loss in one ear brought it to a stop. I’m approaching his story by focusing on the period when he published the fanzine Acquitted by Mirrors, each issue accompanied by a 7-inch single. It was an intensely productive phase in his career, and one that offers a revealing fragment of his creative world.”

“A biography, in the strict sense, is never only the life of someone; it is also the fragment of a life.” Jacques Derrida

____
A Preamble

“Something glittered in the dusk behind me. I turned to see a brilliant chimera, a man with incandescent arms and chest, race past among the trees, a cascade of particles diffusing in the air behind him. I flinched back behind the cross, but he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, whirling himself away among the crystal vaults. As his luminous wake faded I heard his voice echoing across the frosted air, the plaintive words jewelled and ornamented like everything else in that transmogrified world.” , The Illuminated Man, J. G. Ballard, 1964

Zinoviy came up to me in the bar and pulled me to a table. He gestured a lot, like his body had to attack the air to make meaning. “Do you know who is this Bill Nelson, why he so important?” he asks me, like he’s pushing the question into my guts. His accent is thick, but sharp. “He is… how you say… opposite of stupid rock man. Not beer-drinking idiot, not guitar-smash crazy boy, not always smoking pot and talking only about sex-sex-sex.” He leans closer, eyes too bright, he’s selling me black market truth. “Bill Nelson show rock & roll can be art, real art. Not only drugs and dirty stories. More big, more deep… like book, sculpture, classical music.” He nods hard, as if his head might break off. “He is… how you say… proof rock can grow up.”

He waits, breathing too fast, waiting for me to understand or agree or surrender.

Zinoviy continued to bend my ear, his voice sliding in and out of sense.

“He is man who never stay still. Always shifting skin like snake. Come from Yorkshire grey skies… hatched 1948… pick up guitar like some kids pick up cigarette. Glitter Bowie days there is Be Bop Deluxe, all chrome dreams and future shock melodies. One moment they fly high, big stages, bright lights. Next moment – poof – he suicide the whole thing. He need new form, new escape route. Then come ‘79… Red Noise, sharp angles, nervous machines clicking behind him like haptic robot. He push rock until it snap and fall apart in his hands. After, he dive solo, electronics, strange atmospheres, soundtracks for cities that don’t exist. Every album like small experiment performed in deserted hospital corridor. A Proto-vapor legend. He release so much music you think maybe he is running from something – or running toward something, but he never tell what. People try to follow him, but they get lost. Too many turns. Too many versions of the man. ”

____
Collaborations

The Associates – ‘Take Me To The Girl’ 7’’ (1985)

My courage in a glass
‘Ich liebe’, was ist das?
Are you my only friend?
Temptation drives me round the bend

Bill had a sad postscript to add to the story: “Later, in the ’90s, and not long before Billy sadly committed suicide, he called me up wanting to collaborate with me on songwriting and playing. He had no studio budget but, at that time, I had no proper home studio set-up either, (living in a rented apartment after my divorce,) so had to explain that it was extremely difficult for me to provide him with the right recording facilities. We left it at that, but not so long after, he was gone. A great talent who should have been served, and advised, better.” Billy Mackenzie died on January 22nd, 1997. – Bill Nelson | Dreamsville

Masami Tsuchiya – ‘Rice Music’ LP (1982)

It seems to me that before the photograph can exist as art it must, by its very nature choose whether it is to be a record or a testimony. – Yukio Mishima, from the introduction to Eikoh Hosoe’s ‘Ordeal by Roses’ (1971)

The guest list here was beyond impeccable with Bill Nelson, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Percy Jones, and Mick Karn and Steve Jansen of Japan, along for the adventure. The attention to Art Rock detail was such that Bowie’s lensman Masayoshi Sukita shot the cover photos. The title track featured Japanese instrumentation like koto and traditional percussion with modern accoutrements woven into the mix like Nelson’s eBow and Tsuchiya’s guitar duetting along with Karn’s fretless bass. The resulting track was like a more cheerful late period JAPAN instrumental. Much more angular was the frantic “Se! Se! Se!” with Percy Jones laying down languid clouds of fretless bass over the hyperkinetic music bed that saw Tsuchiya puncturing the New Wave vibe with roaring, metallic solos. – postpunkmonk

Masami Tsuchiya – ‘Rice Music’, ST LP (1982)

Yukihiro Takahashi (Yellow Magic Orchestra)

I am familiar with CSNY’s “Helpless” from “Déjà Vu”… but I could not have been prepared for the stunning cinematic makeover that the tune received at the hand of Takahashi and Bill Nelson, who duetted on the vocals here … Nelson played guitar and eBow here and right from the start it will rip your heart out. The hissing, industrial percussion suggested steam engines and anvils. Yukihiro took the first verse and Bill Nelson took the lead from there. This was genuinely spine tingling and more than a bit redolent of where Nelson’s head was at in much the same time period. The character of the song changed to leaner, synth and drum aggression at the midpoint and the multi tracked vocals simply soared. The song was transported from Laurel Canyon to Silicon Valley and I simply cannot get it out of my head. I am also asking myself if this is the first time I’ve ever heard Bill Nelson perform a cover and I think the answer was “yes!” – postpunkmonk

Yukihiro Takahashi – ‘Helpless’, Wild & Moody +1 LP (1984)

Yukihiro Takahashi – ‘My Bright Tomorrow’ live 1983. Bill Nelson on guitar.

Yellow Magic Orchestra

Here is a quote from host Don Cornelius while interviewing Yellow Magic Orchestra during their Soul Train performance: ‘In case you folks out there in television land are wondering what’s going on… I haven’t the slightest idea. – sabukaru

YMO – ‘Focus’, Naughty Boys LP (1983). Bill Nelson on guitar.

Monsoon – Tomorrow Never Knows 7’’ (1982)

Bill Nelson on Guitar / E-bow.

“There was a very fine line to draw between how loud the vocals should be, so that people who weren’t tuned into harmonics could actually hear the subtle things going on, and how far we were drowning out natural harmonics that occurred. And the other kind of balance to be reached was that when I hear a drone as it’s played, unmagnified, untreated, and I hear all these harmonic dances in it and then play it five minutes later, I’ll hear a different dance. I’ll hear South Indian carnatic violins, I’ll even hear rhythm. This performance is going on, and I’ll hear it clear as a bell, very quietly, and it’s in this drone. So, to freeze what I was hearing magnified was also a dilemma, because I didn’t want to make it a static, dead experience. So what we’ve done is layer so many things that you’ll only hear some on different systems and some at different volumes or in different acoustic spaces. There are some things you’ll only hear on the twelfth listen. And it’s like a living experience then.” – Sheila Chandra (Monsoon), interview in The Wire

Monsoon – Tomorrow Never Knows (1982)

Cabaret Voltaire – ‘Code’ LP (1987)

Richard H Kirk cites LL Cool J: “That guy is selling millions of records in America, but if you look at the album it’s far more avant-garde than a lot of so-called experimental things round at the moment. Yet people seem to have opened up to it, I suppose because the dance base is so strong.” – Music Technology interview with Cabaret Voltaire

Bill Nelson – Guitar on five songs: ‘Don’t Argue’, ‘Here To Go’, ‘Trouble (Won’t Stop)’, ‘White Car’ and ‘No One Here’.

Cabaret Voltaire – Don’t Argue (LP Version), CODE LP (1987)

Gary Numan – Warriors LP (1983)

Nick Smith (Engineer album): “It was a difficult time both in and out of the studio. The biggest change was that Gary had agreed to get in a co-producer – Bill Nelson, ex-Be Bop Deluxe.”Gary Numan: “I thought Bill Nelson was the right man for the album. I’d gone to see Be Bop Deluxe years before, without knowing a single song and had enjoyed every second.”

Bill Nelson, 1983: “Gary and I have a very different way of working. I like to build songs out of different melody parts, all working off each other and going in opposite directions. Gary prefers to layer his songs in one direction, so that he creates the kind of power he likes. I think the tension created by our two approaches produced some really interesting results. We felt that we were really getting somewhere and producing something that was different for both of us.”

Gary Numan: “Bill Nelson told me that all creative people pick up beams of inspiration from across the cosmos and we channel it into creative art and we do what we do for the people. I said, ‘That’s complete bollocks’, and it all went downhill from then on really.”

Nick Smith (Engineer on the album): “Bill took Gary in a direction that Gary did not want to go in. It was more poppy, up-beat, not so dark or hardcore. I have to tell you something, I thought that album was fantastic and that Bill did a brilliant job on it. Gary will totally contradict me on this because he hated it.” – Alien Gary Numan Magazine

Gary Numan – Warriors (1983)

Scala Featuring Bill Nelson & Daryl Runswick – Secret Ceremony (Theme From Brond) 12’’ (1987)

Bill Nelson and Daryl Runswick? Never heard of either. Scala? Brond? No idea. And yet due to the technological marvel known as Internet, I can quickly glean not only abundant information about all of these things, but even experience them in real time! Nelson and Runswick appear to be fascinating figures in English music spanning over the past half-century or soIn 1987 they collaborated to write the theme to a Channel Four three-part series called Brond (based on a book I’d never heard of by Frederic Lindsay, a writer I’d never heard of). In case you’d like to hear the theme, you could do so right here . . . or right here, in context, as you watch the actual dang show. (And holy crap, just try to watch the first four minutes and not get sucked into this madness.)

“Cue past the big click on side B then fade up. The music sounds like the picture looks.”

“This is beautiful. Oh, excuse me . . . heavenly.”

“This is lush!”

“Lovely!”

“Sublime. (I learned that word in art history.)”

“LAH! LAH!! LAH!!!”

“Cheese. Golly. Shucks.”

“If a picture is worth a thousand words is it worth a thousand notes, too? Let’s count ’em.” – Review Revue

Brond Episode 1 Part 1, Channel 4, 1987

David Sylvian (Japan)

Eight Days a Week was an arts review programme broadcast on BBC2. The show had a relatively short run in 1983 and 1984, but that timing allowed for the release of David Sylvian’s debut solo LP, Brilliant Trees, to be a subject of discussion. Among the guests that evening was former Be-Bop Deluxe front-man and guitarist, Bill Nelson.

A little provocatively, Denslow proposed to Nelson that Sylvian was ‘trying to be taken very very seriously after being a pop singer with Japan?’ ‘I think perhaps David’s always wanted to be taken very seriously,’ Nelson responded. ‘There is evidence on the Tin Drum album particularly the direction this album would go.

Sylvian would pinpoint the BBC programme as a catalyst leading towards his invitation to Bill Nelson to participate in the recordings for ‘Gone to Earth’ (Sylvian’s second solo album, released 1986).

David Sylvian – ‘Before The Bullfight’, Gone To Earth 2xLP (1986)

David Sylvian – ‘Silver Moon, Gone To Earth 2xLP (1986)

Among Sylvian and Nelson’s shared interests was a common fascination for the work of Jean Cocteau. Bill had named his own music label after Cocteau and the imprint’s aesthetic was heavily influenced by the Frenchman’s work. It was an interest ‘that started way back in the late ‘60s,’ Nelson explained on a 2019 podcast. ‘I was at art college when I was a teenager and I came across a book of his screenplays in the art college library. And the images that were reproduced in this, I immediately took a shine to. And I then started investigating further and found out that he was an artist in terms of painting and drawing, he was a filmmaker, he was a poet and a writer, he collaborated with musicians, a set-designer. And I just got really fascinated with the kind of thing he did, so he was an inspiration… Some of his films are quite amazing… One of his first ones is called Blood of a Poet, it’s very surreal, very strange. I mean it’s the kind of thing that you would imagine David Lynch would do today. He was doing this back in the ‘30s. Incredible.’ – thevistablogger

A Flock of Seagulls – Telecommunication 7’’ (1982)

“Telecommunication” was also released prior to their self-titled album proper, and was also produced by Bill Nelson. While structurally similar to “Modern Love Is Automatic,” with an oft-repeated title, brief verses, and a generally repetitive musical structure full of meandering guitar, its text quite plainly discusses the titular field of technology, in a seemingly non-judgmental fashion–though it could be argued that the fairly upbeat music suggests a positive outlook on things like radio and TV. The one hitch in all of it is the very end of the last verse, which sets the song in the “nuclear age”–a nod, perhaps, to the darker applications of 20th Century technology. “Telecommunication” is perhaps indebted less to figures like Moroder, and moreso to Kraftwerk, who first solidified the rich tradition of stoic synth thumpers about everyday machines like cars, trains, and, of course, nuclear energy. I’m also tempted to compare it to an earlier work of Bill Nelson’s group Be-Bop Deluxe, “Electrical Language,” another bubbly number that playfully bats this concept back and forth. – r/LetsTalkMusic

A Flock of Seagulls – ‘Telecommunication’ (Single)

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Major Label Last Gasps

Bill Nelson – The Love That Whirls (Diary Of A Thinking Heart) LP (1982)

“Let me explain the title. It’s actually based on a fact, rather than a poetic fantasy. It has two direct connections…the first is to the ‘whirling dervishes.’ These are Sufi dancers who use the whirling dance as a form of prayer and worship. They are taught to love everything and their whirling dance is an expression of that love and a means of attaining divine ecstasy. Hence ‘The Love That Whirls.’

“The other connection is to avant-garde film maker and occultist Kenneth Anger who, in 1949, made a film titled ‘The Love That Whirls.’ The film was destroyed by the film processing laboratory who took it upon themselves to judge the film ‘obscene.’ – Bill Nelson | Dreamsville

Bill Nelson – ‘Flaming Desire’ (from the album), self produced music video + interview, 1982

Bill Nelson – Chimera LP (1983)

She laughs as the pains begin
I swoon in the grip of sin
Alone with her burning skin
For a moment, this room is aglow…

If you aren’t familiar with Bill Nelson, I, and many other enthusiasts of his work, would be quick to recommend Chimera as an ideal introduction. Its brevity and tight aesthetic focus certainly make it an accessible listen, for one thing. And for another, Chimera captured Nelson at the arguable peak of his career, while he enjoyed the unfettered creative freedom that came with releasing music on his own private record label, Cocteau Records. Nelson’s early 80s releases were all over the map: he experimented with ambient electronic music, scores for stage and screen, and the continuation of his previous work in the 70s: New Wave art rock with a substantial synthesiser component. “Glow World,” the second track on side two, features the bass guitar work of Mick Karn, formerly of Japan. I like to think “Glow World” approaches the same sort of misty, beguiling exoticism that Japan had been aiming for on their final LP, 1981’s Tin Drum. – r/LetsTalkMusic

Bill Nelson – ‘Glow World’, Chimera LP, 1982

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Cocteau Records

Bill Nelson – ‘Trial By Intimacy (The Book Splendours)’ 4xLP (1985)

“The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one’s preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them” – Jean Cocteau

‘Trial By Intimacy’ was initially issued as a 4 LP boxed set, limited to 5000 copies, containing four previously unreleased instrumental albums, a set of 8 postcards, and a book of Nelson’s photography entitled, ‘The Arcane Eye’.

“I have often found a painter’s sketchbook and his finished work to be of equal interest. Despite their apparent lack of sophistication, sketches invariably posses a simplicity and freshness encapsulating all the essential qualities of an idea. It is with this promise in mind that I release ‘Trial By Intimacy’, a musical sketchbook of instrumental moods captured during many private moments over the last few years.

“Although recorded on ‘low-tech’ domestic equipment, these eighty-three pieces of music are not to be confused with ‘demo-tapes’ but as a continuation of the process begun in 1979-1980 with my “Sounding The Ritual Echo” album. The set is presented unpolished and complete with all its technical deformities for which I offer no apology. Despite or perhaps because of this, these previously unreleased pieces have become very dear to my heart.

“Intuition, spontaneity and the high disregard for error correction were the only rules adhered to during the recording process (Laziness sometimes possessing its own virtue). Each piece of music was dealt with as an infant deals with building-blocks and instinct was always given precedence over reason.

“A great deal of time has been spent editing the material into the four albums contained here although there are as yet another forty or so pieces not represented. I acknowledge the difficulties presented to the listener by such a large volume of music and can only suggest that listening should not be rushed in any way. Time and patience will, I hope unveil the innocent charm of what for me has been both a labour of love and a personal exorcism.” – Bill Nelson | Dreamsville

“It was an interesting period of my life and I devoted a lot of time to collecting and reading books on occult philosophy, magical practices, mystical secret societies, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Martinism, Gnosticism, The Golden Dawn and obscure branches of esoteric Freemasonry. I have retained most of these books, some of them quite rare.

“I also became involved in a Rosicrucian Chapter in Leeds in which I eventually served for one year as Master of the Chapter. I was initiated into a French Freemasonic Lodge in London and into a French Martinist Order, (which also had a UK branch in London). I brought almost as much energy and passion to these pursuits as I did to my music and the ‘journey’ I undertook helped shape some of the music I made at that time…particularly Sounding the Ritual Echo, Trial by Intimacy and Chance Encounters in the Garden of Lights.

“I was involved with such things in a practical sense throughout the 1980’s although I’d begun researching these subjects back in the early 70’s.” -Bill Nelson | Dreamsville

Bill Nelson – Chamber of Dreams (1984) (Trial By Intimacy The Book of Splendours 2/4)

Bill Nelson – Pavilions of the Heart and Soul (1984) (Trial By Intimacy The Book of Splendours 3/4)

Bill Nelson – ‘Chance Encounters In The Garden Of Lights’ LP (1986)

“The one law of Art is its own spontaneity, its pleasure and freedom. How mystic, pure and simple is its wish; it has no idea of potential divinity! Decoration is its creed and vital allegory is its belief. Being the ‘Free Morality,’ it has no sin – then most assuredly Art is all we dare express without excuse.” – Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“The music presented on these 2 albums marks the consolidation of several years of musical & philosophical practice. Almost every piece was conceived during moments of intense stillness or ‘magical vacuity’.

For this I acknowledge the influence of the late Austin Osman Spare, whose technique for creating ‘automatic drawing’ has found a sympathetic resonance in my own work.

Of all the music I have made, this is, perhaps, the most personal & yet the least demonstrative. Attempting nothing & existing purely for itself, it is, nevertheless, a practical music, ideally suited to the occultist in search of ritual atmosphere or serene meditation. With such a purpose in mind I offer this work to my fellow initiates as a testament to the Gnosis & a confirmation of The World Within.” Bill Nelson, 1987.

Bill Nelson – Demon Raising

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Acquitted by Mirrors

So where then are these murdered angels
Where are their white, exquisite corpses
Show me the instruments of torture
That I am said to hold

Acquitted By Mirrors, Bill Nelson’s Red Noise – Sound On Sound LP (1979)

Acquitted By Mirrors’ was a Bill Nelson Fan Club magazine published between 1982 and 1990. By its 13th issue in 1986, seven EPs – all of which were recorded on either 4-track or 8-track analogue recording equipment at The Echo Observatory (Bill’s home studio) – were issued exclusively to fan club members in conjunction with alternating issues of the magazine.

All images in this section from editions 1-14 (1982-1987) – Bill Nelson | Dreamsville

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Acquitted by Mirrors – 7’’s selected tracks

Bill Nelson – Sleepcycle (1982) from 7’’ that accompanied ‘Acquitted by Mirrors’ Issue 2

Bill Nelson – The beat that can´t go wrong today (1982) from 7’’ that accompanied ‘Acquitted by Mirrors’ Issue 2

Bill Nelson – King of the cowboys (1982) from 7’’ that accompanied ‘Acquitted by Mirrors’ Issue 3

Bill Nelson – The world and his wife (1983) from 7’’ that accompanied ‘Acquitted by Mirrors’ Issue 7

____
Speaking

Interview on “Riverside” October 10th 1983

Interview Tyne Tees TX45, 1985

Interview – From the channel 4 series ‘Knocking on the door, 1986

____
Further

Bill Nelson @ Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nelson_(musician)

Bill Nelson @ Bandcamp
https://billnelson.bandcamp.com/

Bill Nelson @ Discogs
https://www.discogs.com/artist/22882-Bill-Nelson

Acquitted By Mirrors archive
https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/bill-nelson/6121

Article from Electronics & Music Maker, August 1983
https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/bill-nelson/6121

P.s. Hey. Today the honorable Kosten Koper has put together a survey and possible introduction to the composer/musician/producer/etc. Bill Nelson, another key figure in recent music whose adventurousness and restlessness has left him far less acknowledged than his work deserves. It’s an excellent overview, and please use it to find everything you can want about him. Thank you, and major thanks to Kosten. As for me, what I had hoped was an irksome head cold exploded yesterday into a bad flu, and I am sick as a dog, as they say. So I’m not going to be able to do much more than say hi to you today, and I apologize for that. Hopefully by tomorrow I will have risen above. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, indeed. Great film. My favorite Herzog, I think. ** Laura, Hi. I am virtually nothing but haze. Lovely thoughts and writing that I will have to return to when I can actually absorb them. Thank you. ** Wulf Solence, Hi, Wulf Solence. Wecome, and thank you. That does sound very ‘me’, and I’ll read it carefully as soon my brain is working again. Really, thanks. All the best. How’s the holidays hanging? ** Dev, Hi, Dev. My email is denniscooper72@outlook.com. Thanks so much! I’m going try to re-see Bruno Ganz in that light, wow. ** Carsten, Hi. I think I strongly disagree with you about Herzog, but I lack the mind and energy to try to make a point, so maybe next time he’s referenced. I think probably a doctor would be required to isolate an illness as bronchitis? Thanks a lot for the missing Connors. Everyone, Carsten has found ways for you to see three Bruce Connor films that weren’t available in the recent post about him. Here’s ‘Breakaway’. Here’s ‘Take the 5:10 to Dreamland’. And here’s ‘Report’. ** Nicholas., Hey, man. I so envy your brightness today. I’m a slug. Everyone, Here, courtesy of Nicholas, and apropos of Herzog, is a no doubt cool trailer for the game ‘Warframe’. Cold, ideally snowy Xmas absolutely for sure is my pick. I remember being pretty psyched as a kid getting a go-kart as a Xmas gift, but then I accidentally crashed and destroyed it within an hour. Thanks for perking me up. ** Hugo, I’m sorry about the dumps and relationship end. Hugs. Enjoy Gluck. Let’s both upswing, what do you say? ** HaRpEr //, Let me know if ‘Wicked’ is good. I can’t seem to build any enthusiasm to see it. I think we’ve talked about our mutual ‘Oz’ love. ** Uday, Hi. Uh, you would just have to say you’d like to organise a screening and let me know what your idea/plan is. We love showing the film. Hi to your friends. The Coltranes: John and Alice, you mean? I like them, of course. There was a very interesting exhibition in LA about Alice last year. Surprisingly good. ** Okay, sincerest apologies for that p.s. Let’s see if I can pull through a bit more tomorrow. Enjoy Kosten’s paean to Bill Nelson to your fullest. See you tomorrow.

Kosten Koper presents … Bill Nelson : Acquitted By Mirrors (1982 – 1987)

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