[SPAM] update on RE:Verse

hello friends, hope you've wandered back. i have and oh the sights i have seen. we need to keep seeing and doing (and having fun) so let's get back to writing poems.

in apology for my absence i will be donating $20 to the common ground collective. you look up and the world reinforces your purpose:

Proposal for the Reinstatement of the Words Dada and Nada in Place of all Substantives Contained in the Minutes of the Meetings of the Orleans Parish Levee Board, August 27, 1947- August 27, 2005

Dada comes from nothing, is nothing, is about the nothing. Dada nada, nada y pues dada.

Dada is perfect for NOLA because both are nothing and then loom large, like a city imagined on barren plain at night. Dada is a city and NOLA is a choice picked from a hat, but no one wears hats anymore so dada is impossible, or at least rare, and no one walks around any more so NOLA is impossible, or at least rare, and nada is itself as always.

Just to be clear: dada isn't the NOLA drama but the nada that comes after. The NOLA drama builds around a core of nada, like a ball of fire ants floating in a flood, but the dada comes when the ball unwinds and we are walking within lines of marching ants.

It's harder to walk between the lines than to color between the lines, but this is the drama of dada, more or less nada, more or less NOLA. When we walk between the lines we're the moving target of dada and so easily seduced. It's fun to be seduced by the marching nada but ants in our silhouette increase the resin of the shadow and it's a sticky situation being stuck in NOLA con nada y pues dada.

Thus it makes perfect sense to draw a line of marching ants around a docudrama and paste inside it: dada. Later on, when the ink fades and dada is erased we'll write nada in the same place, and later we'll x out the d and make it Nana. Only very late in the game, through Zola, will it be NOLA, but NOLA it will be, certainly, inevitably, after dada and nada and Nana and Zola.

Nana was a ball of fire ants floating in a flood. They coalesced into the shape of a shapely woman and marched around NOLA, despite everything Zola could do. Zola became concerned about the volatility of the real estate market when Nana overtopped her levees stinging rich men in their privates. But when Nana said "NOLA NOLA you dada me dada oh nada please nada" all was forgiven and all joined in the joy of a tax-free NOLA.

The love of Nana for Zola is like the love of dada for NOLA. Nana loved dada but Zola did not. NOLA too refuses to embrace nada, even though it loves nada with a deeply centered itch that tickles like the tiny piece of bark at the middle of a ball of fire ants floating in a flood. Zola once saw one of these balls just as it flattened out into the shape of Nana floating on her back. He selected the area, cut it out, and pasted into NOLA the island shape so he could love it, and all the while he's humping saying "Nana dada nada nana nana nada dada coming home."

This proves finally and forever that the Corps of Engineers lied when it lay down with Nana behind 15 foot sheet piles set in peat. What more evidence of impropriety do we need than the smoking gun of the written record, whence Zola turned nada into Nana and dada lay with her for all to see? Not me, you might say, but the nada of absolution clings to whatever breaks the surface. Swallow the pill and let out your insight while nada's still in sight and dada quakes its last little quiver on the horizon. During WWI Tristan Tzara sported a uniform French on the left side and German on the right. Just imagine Zola promenading Audubon park half dandy half bloated corpse! Mr. Mayor, the time has come to act decisively: Put your hat on the table, pour in the words, draw from it the random ransom note of nada, of nada y pues dada, of nada dada nana in NOLA dada dada, of NOLA in dada and dada in NOLA, noladada, dadafugee, dada dada dada nada nada y dada y nada.

Bill Lavender heads UNO's Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and is the publisher of Lavender Ink Press.

p.s. i repeat if anyone wants to become a ghosthelperposter for me this might be swell as i'll be out of a town a lot this summer. keep reorganizing the good words.