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Thursday 11 April 2013

Clark Coolidge: Library of Hay (at Manikin Lake, with Onyx Dolls)


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Possum Kingdom Bikini Mannequin, Pickwick, Texas. In this image, you have a plastic mannequin with blonde hair, and a bikini, standing outside the La Vida Loca Beach Wear store on Possum Kingdom Lake. Alternatively, she could be a nice young model with a lot of plastic surgery. Insert Dallas Blonde, Fort Worth Oil woman, Los Angeles Female or male etc.: photo by Rhettwp, 27 August 2011



So slow death oft the onyx dolls
each in its own lab colors rollicking encores
who's there? do you want your museum
room infiltrated? only the singing parts
terrible loss of air raid powder
entanglements poled on kapok
the last to be heard? this ploy of dolls
irradiated heads and curls of coffin wood
death is always plural here? stolid
anyway someway still enters the frontway
through the water door to Manikin Lake
the throttles held down there you went to
hair school against my wisdom thus the
remnants spelled out there then coded there



Clark Coolidge: Library of Hay, from 88 Sonnets, 2013




Lake Elsinore Antique Store Manikin: photo by Rhettwp, 27 August 2011

 

Ereshkigal (Soom Shadow Onyx): photo by Ashbet, 29 March 2009


Soom Shadow Onyx Doll: photo by dolls of milena, 3 February 2012


Soom Shadow Onyx Doll: photo by dolls of milena, 19 August 2012


Soom Onyx / Vesuvia / Beryl hybrid: photo by Damasquerade, 13 May 2012

11 comments:

TC said...

And here, direct from the EPC onyx-doll labs:

Beautiful BJD's (A Tribute)

Hello Soul Kitty, can it be you are the material manifestation of the ghost of Hans Bellmer??

TC said...

I guess it's the preternaturally large eyes of those BJDs that really spooks me... couldn't help wondering what they're looking for, the poor dead things... could it possibly be...??

Nin Andrews said...

I love these dolls! Creepy. And I have this collaborative book of Ron Padgett and Coolidge. It looks like lumpy nonsense or LANGUAGE poems written by one, interpreted by the other as sic-fi films by the other.

Funny, but I am beginning not to know the dif between sci fi and reality.

Mose23 said...

through the water door to Manikin Lake

Wet threshold, always back to that made up world like we can't help ourselves.

This sonnet calls for a good many "rollicking encores". Needs to be read aloud.

The dolls look like they've just walked from the set of a Dario Argento film. Creepy doesn't get close.

VINCENT FARNSWORTH said...

I couldn't take more that 30 seconds of the BJD, and that's something because I lasted a full minute with this http://video.pbs.org/video/1422378497/

TC said...

Sorry WB, I hadn't seen that. Such are the effects of Moderation in all things.

But me too, Nin.

And me too, WB.

About the dolls, I don't know if it's because I'm old, or because the world is insane, or because the world is young and insane and...

No, it must be a cultural rift.

There is a woman (American, old enough to have stopped playing with dolls), who orders every "edition" of the "exclusive series" of these dolls, and posts videos of filming herself (with her computer of course) as she sits, with gawky appendages akimbo, in a long skirt, on her bed opening the boxes as they arrive and what is there to say?

High drama.

Scary boxcutters.

TC said...

Sorry Vincent, Moderation in all things ate my homework.

But... me too.

Thirty seconds for the dolls, possibly even too generous, but still.

(The videos of geeks from space assembling their own BJDs at home were so terrifying I could not post them for fear of losing my religion.)

VINCENT FARNSWORTH said...

As a poet I stare into the abyss
but I can't hardly even glance at
BJD or Celtic Thunder videos

Mose23 said...

The dolls is horrid. Still, I'm safe enough here in my hand-me-down dress from who knows where.

Marie W said...

Reigning over Possum Kingdom
Princesses Immobile
living la VIda Loca Immotile
Smokey eyes open now
Now open
Prince Charmin will be
here
Any minute now
Any day if He

TC said...

And that's a big IF, all right.

Charmin Chatty Cathy was a doll from another epoch, a time when things were a bit more... repressed, would that be the word?

She could say all sorts of crazy stuff, 120 different things, in fact. And she could even make animal noises.

For those interested in origins...

How Possum Kingdom got its name.

Can you blame this scared deer at Possum Kingdom Lake for seeming a bit wary? Chances are a two-legged critter pointing something at you in this neck of the woods may have something other than your welfare in mind.

Was karmic retribution being exacted in 2011-2012 when terrible wild fires swept through the Possum Kingdom Lake area?