James Joyce

This is a site for ReJoycing. For all things Joycean.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Siren and Seaweed

I sang and I sang and I sang. Once more onto the rocks we cracked. Laughing at mermaids and trilling. The 'O' of the high just rang. Sometimes the sound of our voices even made us tring. When we were all there together it was enough to make you go on your knees. Wrapping our hair around ourselves. I wanted to see what it would do to me, to you. To our waxy ears. Open, curved. Beautiful ears, that would burst, if only they could. We pushed ourselves with beatings and lashings to see if we could make new noises. New croaks and gasps. Lashing la-la-la. We knew that the best moments were created like that. Crotchets and minims formed in our throats in fear and longing. The songs of sadness and a thousand goodbyes. I waited until the dusk came and thought of all the lush seaweed that bladderwracked my hair. China skin that was covered in the swollen eyes of it. Just the thought of it was enough to send them to madness. Lying on the rocks, looking for the gutteral swirls of sounds. New natural rhythms that mingled with salt. The grey hot-rocks of sounds in the throat. The delicate throat. It was only in that dark, secret place that we could create the best sounds. Sometimes they sang together. High notes. Getting their pitch exactly right. So we were together at that time. All three of us. Linked and dipping and Summersummerlunglipstogetherhigh. What was this new sound?

It was the sound known to all men. The upper lips. The tongue-throat sounds. Hearty and low. Glottal stop fingery sounds. Tripped up and swing sounds. 1926 and rubbed knees. Gentle kiss-slopes of sound. Oh, how I love my siren voice and what it holds.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Le Batard


Gromwells Von Julep

Strumuwell Bracket did paperwork for James A.A. Joyce with an ivory cusped pen and an inkpot made from racing stubs and lard. He scribbled and penned letters-ex-epistolary, Fidel’s get you ten stamps and God’s fleetingness’ O so, so he said, saying he said from front to back round juniper heckle von Jackleg, that paltry no-do-gooder with a nose like a rotten cabbage, sad bastard bustard braggart coalmen stave Tilley’s boater upside the brow-comb of his head where nary a bulb or egg-stay lay settled or in lieu. It’s been some time, more so than some, since we ate coke-sausage tripe with blue-cheese and custard. Me mama made wee tiramisu in a doable-boiler, then relayed a lemon sauce on the crisp outer ends, some more brittle and crackled then more. Then with fists fustics and tinctoria she made me swear up and down that I won’t nor wouldn’t tell a sole or me papa who sat rereading the paper in a potter’s smock and no tie or socks. Time’s a filching, said Gromwells Cliffy, where that rotter Buell made a henpecks a million on hedges and orange julep.