Some music for psaltery and harpsichord: a diatonic melody with chromatic accompaniment.

The new expanded edition of Merde à la Belle Époque is now available from Black Scat Books! I’ve selected, translated, annotated, and introduced scatological songs, stories, poems, and playlets from some of the most inventive and eccentric writers of the golden age of Parisian Bohemia: Alphonse Allais, George Auriol, Georges Courteline, Charles Cros, J. Eschbach, André Gill, Edmond Haraucourt, Vincent Hyspa, Alfred Jarry, Jules Jouy, Maurice Mac-Nab, Armand Masson, Arthur Rimbaud, Rodolphe Salis, Erik Satie, and Henry Somm. Included is a complete translation of Jouy’s relentlessly pottymouth paper Le Journal des Merdeux, which was quickly seized by the police.

This collection was first published as a chapbook in 2014, and now has more stuff in it. It’s designed by Norman Conquest, and is available on Amazon.

A lively piece all in the treble register, for sopranino recorder, piano, and desk bell. “Yet” is a word with many meanings; among other things, it’s the antonym of “not yet.”

For the upcoming new edition of Merde à la Belle Époque, here’s some early Rimbaud. This poem has been translated before, but this may be the first attempt in rhyming verse. And I was careful to preserve Rimbaud’s alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes as well.

THE ACCURSED CHERUB
(Arthur Rimbaud, 1871)

The roofs are bluish, doors are whitish,
Like when a Sunday’s turning nightish,

Upon the outskirts, all is mum,
The Street is white, and night has come.

Strange houses rise above the gutters,
Embellished with Angelic shutters.

But, near a border stone, behold
Come running, poor and numb with cold,

A dusky Cherub, who then tarries
Because he ate too many berries.

He takes a dump: and runs away:
But his accursed dump will stay

Beneath the holy moon that watches,
A cesspit specked with bloody blotches!

A quiet piece for Bb whistle and percussion. The Bb whistle is lower than the standard instrument in D; it’s like the viola to the D’s violin. No percussion sound is repeated.

For a revised and expanded edition of the collection Merde à la Belle Époque, a sonnet by Armand Masson. A rhymed translation like this inevitably requires some paraphrase, but often comes closer to the original poem. Besides, it’s what the poets of 1887 would have expected.

THE EYE
(Armand Masson, 1887)

The eye was in the pot. The artist’s flair
Endowed it with a purple eyebrow too.
Its painted scarlet pupil gazed at you
Intently, with a melancholy air.

We won it at the county fair that day:
A lucky spin, and then it was our own.
Fifine declared the china finest bone,
And said she’d like to try it right away.

But back at home, it looked so new and clean,
She couldn’t soil a surface so pristine,
And pensively returned it to the rack.

It’s silly, but it took her several days:
That eye that stared so mercilessly back
Unnerved her with its penetrating gaze.

The 26th issue of Black Scat Review is now available! I contributed an alphabet, “Partners in Crime,” and my translation of “Upside-Down Stories: Mineral Waters,” by Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau (from my edition of those stories). The other contributors are a fine bunch: Tim Newton Anderson, Tom Barrett,  Margot Block, Robert James Cross, Farewell Debut,  Debra Di Blasi, Fernando Fidanza, Larry Fondation, Peter Gambaccini, Eckhard Gerdes, Rhys Hughes, Harold Jaffe, Amy Kurman, Michael Leigh, Martha McCollough, Jim McMenamin, Michael Pollentine, Frank Pulaski, Paul Rosheim, Saira Viola, and Tom Whalen.

And you can find it on Amazon.

Three songs with words by Edna St. Vincent Millay: “Song of Shattering,” “Spring,” and “The True Encounter.” Here’s the beginning of “Song of Shattering.”

An alphabet for an upcoming issue of the Black Scat Review, devoted to “Crime Wave.”

PARTNERS IN CRIME

When the Arsonist torched the house the Burglar was rifling, the Counterfeiter in the cellar fled with a sack of phonies, which was swiped by a Drifter desperate to pay off an Extortionist, whose last mark, a notoriously crooked Fixer, had hired a Gunsel to rub him out, but that little weasel had another Hitman on his trail, bankrolled by an unscrupulous Impersonator replacing a corrupt Judge held captive by an underworld Kingpin, whose son, a Lowlife in cahoots with the Murderer who had fingered a powerful Number-baron and a few associated Outlaws, was blackmailing a Pedophile caught diddling a much-reviled Quisling’s daughter, herself already an expert Rustler who had fleeced a Stoolie who had squealed on another small-time Tipster, himself in debt to a vicious Usurer, whose two feeble-minded kids, a Vagrant and a Whore, performed small demeaning tasks for the criminal mastermind known only as Mr. X, who had just sent a Yegg to ransack the safe of a stinking rich Zoophile whom he hoped to shake down for every penny he had. 

My novel Nominata is now available from Black Scat Books! You can get it on Amazon! I’ve been working on it for years: it’s not long, but it took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to do with it. Here’s the blurb from Black Scat Books:

Nominata has gone missing, and her old friend Antonima is looking for her. Can the seven regulars in the Taproom help? Why are there strange lights and noises in the abandoned observatory? And what does the number 5040 have to do with all this?

Doug Skinner describes his novel as “an interactive verbal toy,” and Black Scat Books urges caution in handling. On the surface, the text is playful, comic, and wayward. Further immersion, however, reveals elaborate constraints, cross references, and parallels, all creating an artificial world in which everything is a reflection of everything else, including itself. All that and slapstick too! And a dashing cover design by Norman Conquest!   

And there’s a contest, for you competitive types: