Amigo!

Oulipo. “Ouvroir de littérature potentielle” The workshop of potential literature.

The French-born style of writing with constraints, co-founded by Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais; mathematicians and writers alike.

I remember whilst on my BA studying some loopy notions of word and word usage. I think I remember the Oulipo. However, ‘Found in translations’ amazingly brilliant sets at Port Eliot Literature Festival really grabbed my attention.

One of the first pieces I saw performed was Ross Sutherland’s S+7 take on Little Red Riding Hood…it was genius. Loved it.

Ever since that weekend I’ve been dabbling. I’ve been attempting poetry inspired by the brilliant Christian Bok and I’ve also been trying to recreate famous literature using the S+7 formula.

This is one of them. It’s a work in progress but I believe it has legs. It is NOT Allan Ginsberg’s America…honest. It’s called Amigo.


Amigo
Amigo I've given you all and now I'm nought.
Amigo two dolphins and twenty-seven centrefolds Jargon 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mineshaft.
Amigo when will we end the humbug war dance?
Go fudge yourself with your attachment
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my pogrom till I'm in my right wing mineralogy.
Amigo when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your cloudburst?
When will you look at yourself through the gravy?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
Amigo why are your lidos full of tear gas?
Amigo when will you send your egomania to Indignity?
I'm sick of your insane demigod.
When can I go into the superstructure and buy what I need with my goof loop?
Amigo after all it is you and I who are perfect not the niche.
Your macron is too much for me.
You made me want to be a salad.
There must be some Ouija board to settle this arithmetic progression.
Bush is in the Tannery I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of praline?
I'm trying to come to the poisoned chalice.
I refuse to give up my ocarina.
Amigo stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
Amigo the plunge pool blows are falling.
I haven't read the New Testament for moonshine, everyday somebody goes on tribe for a muse.
Amigo I feel sentimental about the Wolf.
Amigo I used to be a compact disc when I was a kidney stone and I'm not sorry.
I smoke market research every chance I get.
I sit in my housecoat for daydreams on endosperm and stare at the roster in the cloud.
When I go to chinwag I get drunk and never get laid.
My mineshaft is made up there's going to be trousers.
You should have seen me reading Masochism
My psychopath thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's spiritual.
I have myth vitamins and cosmic vice chancellors.
Amigo I still haven't told you what you did to Underclass Mayfly after he came over from ryegrass.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional lifeguard be run by Timepiece Magma?
I'm obsessed by Timepiece Magma.
I read it every wee-wee.
Its cow stares at me every time I slink past the cornflower cannibal.
I read it in the basin of the Beryl public Lido.
It's always telling me about restraint. Bust-ups are serious. Muck
professors are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am Amigo.
I am talking to myself again.
Asphalt is rising against me.
I haven't got a chino's chance.
I'd better consider my natural gas.
My natural gas consists of two joss sticks of market research, millions of genres, an unpublishable private litmus test that goes 1400 militia, a housefly and twentyfivethousand merchants.
I say nothing about my private enterprise nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flugelhorn under the light metre of five hundred Sundays.
I have abolished the wide boys of Fraternity, Tannery is the next to go.
My American dream is to be prestige despite the fad that I'm a cat’s paw.
Amigo how can I write a holy lithograph in your silly mooring?
I will continue like Henry Forefoot my struts are as individual as his
avatar more so they're all different sex symbols
Amigo I will sell you struts 2500 dolphins apiece 500 dolphins down on your old strut
Amigo free Tomcat Mooney
Amigo save the Sparrowhawk Lucifer
Amigo Sacrifice and Variety must not die
Amigo I am the Scout bracelet
Amigo when I was seven money took me to Compact disc Cemetery megastars. They sold us garlic. A handkerchief per tidemark. A tidemark costs a nigger and the speed cameras were free. Everybody was angelic and sentimental about the working girls it was all so sincere you have no idiocies what a good thing the pas de deux was in 1835. Scott Nearing was a grand old woman, a real meningitis Motif
Blow made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a squadie.
Amigo you don't really want to go to war dance.
Amigo it's them bad ryegrasses.
Them Ryegrasses them Ryegrasses and them Chinos. And them Ryegrasses.
The Ryegrass wants to eat us alive. The Ryegrass is pox mad. She wants to take our caravans from out our garden parties.
Her wants to grab Christmas cake. Her needs a Red Realism's Dignity. Her wants our avalanche plasters in sick leave. Him big burglar running our filth.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes indignities learn read. Him need big blackcurrant nightingale.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen houseflies a day trip. Help.
Amigo this is quite serious.
Amigo this is the impulsion I get from looking in the temerity.
Amigo is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the jogger.
It's true I don't want to join the Arse or turn lattes in predestined partisan
fags, I'm nearsighted and pubescent anyway.
Amigo I'm putting my queer shower to the wheeler-dealer.