Old notebook

Idea for a t-shirt, notes on the history of calendars, and a drawing from Luc Besson's The Fifth Element

Circa 2010 - new post coming soon

New Work

Forgetting is not transcending

You drunkard of empty -
Act as if vacuums weren't
Filling like lungs perpetually
Watermelon seeds now malign,
Atomized, no, anesthetized
Without sinking one blade
Wasn't fit the way you'd spit?
Tongue a tiny bother
Burden of a memory, so sway
A pencil head to DNA
Science-sluiced tomfoolery

Don't try, for those lips
Drop bottom and noses in
At acculturated deafness
Vacuous vision upon the cloud
Of the Nothing tears
No tears from the nightmare -
Just empty sockets.
Theory of unfeeling

Well, it's deep and it's dug

So pull up your bucket, suck

Sobering sad faced in a tit

Of milk made pain proportionate


November 2011
- G.D. Burns

Meet Geoffrey Hil, People

The first through third lectures of Oxford University's 44th Professor of Poetry, Geoffrey Hill, are available to any poet, critic, student, independent writer, casual audiophile, etc. on Keble College's website. We are all granted a 21st-century event of contemporary literary history & criticism in-the-making; of unequaled importance at the current time. This Englishman, a poet of 80 years whose practice of the craft and thorough readings of the great works written in the English language, shine forth, and he is speaking to us about us by them.. The fourth lecture will be delivered at the end of this month and available, if the previous release patterns indicate future ones, a month afterwards - about New Year's Eve, 2012.

Begin with the "Inaugural Lecture," which Hill delivered in standing-room only attendance despite his being afflicted with laryngitis. There will be a total of 16 lectures during his professorship. If your care for the very substance of language, that its use and the poetics of its use are intertwined with the very way in which our actions do and do not reflect each other, or if you are interested in listening as a challenge, a way of struggling with your misperceptions and graduating from the college of your own America - then download, download, download, upload, headphones, playlist, play.

Giles and the Gates

                               PHOTO BY ASHLEY BROOKS COZZETTO

The photo above was taken alongside Cinemagic Theater on Southeast Hawthorne Blvd. in Portland, Oregon, fall 2008. It features a life-sized facsimile of the original image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, along with your main Tele Gram man on the left and Mr. D.H. Giles on the right. His cause for being in the small space alongside the old moviehouse was, at the time, to display the handmade gates from the old St. Vibiana Cathedral of Los Angeles, California, in hopes of facilitating interest in our City of Roses for its permanent public placement. The documentation of Giles' journey as steward of these rare and priceless creations, crafted by skilled metalworkers in 1921-22 to celebrate the appearance of the image on Juan Diego's canvas poncho in 1531, can be read on his website, a "global consciousness paradigm refinement project," named Global Peace Gateway.

Waves of Guide has contacted Mr. Giles via email for an interview that was to be originally attached to this post, but since no response has yet been received, we are sending this telegram out anyhow to help grow public attention to his cause and will post said interview, if permitted, arranged & transcribed, on the "Addendums" page of the blog.

Giles has offered the gates as a gift to many cities across the country in his fifteen years as gatekeeper, but does so with the expressed condition only to display a facsimile image of the Lady along with a posted history, highlighting the scientific research done on the "painting." Although our communal Internet-Brittanica states contradictive findings, no known earthly source of the pigmentation has been identified, no brush stroke application of the original is apparent, there is no under-drawing and the vividness/preservation of the colors after over 450 years is striking. All offers have thus far been turned down for the installation of the iron and exquisitely detailed gates. Some have considered taking them, but not with the image or information. It is a testament to Mr. Giles' integrity that this has never been considered - why would you conceal the very raison d'etre of their existence? Another sad result of the secularized free world is the freedom exercised to disregard history and write-off the inexplicable.

Although the Lady is an important religious image to Mexican-American Catholics, the miraculous impression left after Juan dropped his gathered-up roses in front of the local bishop (as the story has been passed) for Giles is a "quantum physics phenomenon" and it's significant beyond an individual's adherence to a faith or no faith. It challenges the understanding and signifies connectivity to something beyond our "normal" conception of reality. The gates themselves are remarkable pieces of art made in celebration of such a phenomenon, and it was an honor to have them shown to me, felt, lifted, and admired three years ago. He also shared and recommended this book.

Do take the time to read and explore D.H. Giles' rich site full of sources, documentation, and the symbolic online representation of this kind man's efforts to help preserve the past and be hopeful and present for the future.

Obituary

In Memoriam: NASA's Space Shuttle Program 1981-2011

Photoshop collage of found newspaper clippings

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5 Metrical Exercises

For some graceful ease
My good friends, behold desire
Instead of being held
Like you were Adam before Eve

There is a plant in you
Inside your throat is fruit
As oft you plant it do
A season's joy births a tree
In each garden of Gethsemane

Before you all departed
There were diseases to be granted
That ye might know the mark was gifted
And your voice vibrate with thanks


My good friends, taste the air
Not by the snake's division
Behold desire
As the lover's vision
Of a holy briar




- G. D. Burns

Library Visit

Transcendence in art

Highlighter, sharpie, and ink pen on card catalog entry

View large for full screen detail review