ivres.
141 Femmes! faux chevaux sous vos cheveux de feu.
142 Dites les transes de la confusion et non pas les contusions de la France.
143 De quelle plaine les reines de platine monteront-elles dans nos rétines?
144 La peur, c’est une hanche pure sous un granit ingrat.
145 Les menteurs et les rhéteurs perdent leurs manches dans le vent rêche quand les regarde Man Ray.
146 Si vous avez des peines de cœur, amoureux, n’ayez plus peur de la Seine.
147 À cœur payant un rien vaut cible.
148 Plus fait violeur que doux sens.
149 Jeux des mots jets mous.
150 Aimable souvent est sable mouvants.
151 Robert Delaunay: de l’eau naît, gare à hameçon.
152 Ma peur se reflète sur le verre comme un vapeur sur la mer.
153 DÉFINITION DE L’ART PAR RROSE SÉLAVY: La vache tuberculeuse traite sans pitié jusqu’à perdre par mois la moitié d’un pis.
154 Sans pâlir, Desnos a fait mourir sur son pal bien des désirs.
155 Monte à l’échelle, Drieu la Rochelle, pour étonner Dieu.
156 Est-ce que Rrose Sélavy découvrira en Amérique le fleuve d’alcool où boivent les lamas cholériques?
157 Aller jeter ses prières à l’église, autant jeter ses pierres à l’éclipse.
158 Dans le crâne de l’abbesse se livre le combat du crabe et de l’ânesse.
159 Rrose Sélavy a découvert que la particule des nobles n’est pas la partie noble du cul.
160 C’est dans l’art que les pions se taillent leur part du lion.
161 Pourquoi le problème de la vie est-il la proie des vis blêmes?
162 Rrose Sélavy fonde une banque antarctique sur la banquise antiartistique.
163 Rrose Sélavy met du fard au destin puis de son dard
assure ses festins.
164 L’heure du stupre prévaut sur la stupeur des pauvres hères.
165 Les pensées des hommes aiment les pensums.
166 Le dogme fatal du Christ ce n’est après tout que le cristal des fats.
167 Assassin des luths as-tu tué le salut des saints?
168 Les yeux caves de Max Ernst estiment les cavernes où s’amusent les statues et où s’inscrivent les maximes de sa muse: Ernestine.
169 La dilection des femmes est-elle le dilemme de la fiction et des nombres?
170 Les enfants des hommes sont une somme de fantômes et de sang un peu.
171 Juchés sur des éléphants les fantômes femelles inscrivent au ciel l’oméga mystérieux égal des équations planétaires.
172 L’orgueil de Rrose Sélavy sait s’évader du cercle qui peut se clore comme un cercueil.
173 Le gras légat sorti du cloître a vraiment l’éclat d’un goitre.
174 Les fats ignorent la vertu des glas quand les glaces refusent de refléter leur face.
175 Au gala des astres s’inscrit en astragales ce nom: Gala.
176 La lame qui tranche l’affliction des âmes dévoile-t-elle aux amis la fiction de l’affection?
177 À l’ironie des pages blanches oppose, sans rage agonie, le silence pire que le rire.
178 Les orages qui masquent Orion à nos visages n’en suppriment pourtant pas la vision.
179 Qu’il est fragile ce mur! flots mulots agiles qui cherchez votre lot dans la nuit.
180 Gastronomes! les rêves des astronomes vous noieront-ils sur les grèves?
181 DÉFINITIONS DE LA POÉSIE POUR: Paul Éluard: Affres de l’amour dans quelle nuit ai-je savouré votre fruit âpre?
182 André Breton: Le plus beau titre des hommes, c’est de jeter
à la hotte (hopp!) les pitres coiffés de mitres.
183 Robert Desnos: Corps d’amour, quel jour me pendrai-je à la corde d’amour?
184 Jacques Baron: Les corps des femmes comme des camées le corps des forts comme des camées de femmes.
185 Simone Breton: Daniel de Foe inventez un simoun fou pour Simone.
186 123 appelle immédiatement le chiffre 1234 pour les esprits épris de lucidité. Esaü est mort, manque d’eau.
187 C’est encore infiniment plus commode que de regarder la poitrine, encornée de seins clairvoyants en cornée, des étoiles non encore nées.
188 Pleurs ébahis, pelures des abbayes, vous trompez les abeilles.
189 Où est la Parysi’s est la paralysie.
190 Rails d’émail, vous passez comme des rois sur nos émois.
191 Que secrète la glande secrète du périnée de l’aigle des Andes ou des Pyrénées?
192 Les miracles de Rrose Sélavy sont des aveux mauves comme les éclairs.
193 Télémaque, tel est camée.
194 Qu’importe au repos de nos oiseaux sur les roseaux le loir, aux yeux comme de l’or, qui dort?
195 Quand Man Ray is coming away…: on pourra voir un Far West war festin.
196 Dans les stalles de glace râle Tristan Tzara.
197 Amour aux mains hostiles, quel malin déroba les hosties?
198 Les malheurs des concitoyens n’influent pas sur la chaleur des cons mitoyens?
199 Amour! homard dans les fjords froids.
RROSE SÉLAVY
1 In an apple-plaster temple the pastor distilled the sap of psalms.
2 Rrose Sélavy asks if Baudelaire’s ‘The Wicked Blooms’ hath unblockéd wombs: hopefully, Omphalé, you’ve a view.
3 Travellers, pamper the Pamplona fillies with peafowl feathers.
4 Is the solution of a sage the pollution of a page? [un page, a page-boy.]
5 I love sir’s bosom that wears opossum.
6 QUESTION FOR ASTRONOMERS: Will Rrose Sélavy for decades enter the annual cadastre in the astral quadrant?
7 Oh, my knackered noddle, star-struck nacreous nodule.
8 Where Rrose Sélavy lives, they love wolves and fools who are heaven’s and all men’s outlaws.
9 Will you harass Rrose Sélavy as far as the decimal numbers nothing dismal encumbers?
10 Rrose Sélavy wonders if the demise of seasons decides the destiny of demesnes.
11 Pass me my Barbary quiver, says the barbaric vizier.
12 Thunderous planets above scare the quails, lovers of Rrose Sélavy’s wondrous plants whose leaves are scales.
13 Marcel Duchamp, marchand du sel: Rrose Sélavy knows the salt-seller well.
14 EPITAPH: Torment Rrose Sélavy no more, for enigma’s my genius. Nor can Caron con it.
15 Adrift on endless waters, will Rrose Sélavy eat first her hands, then her fetters?
16 Aragon harvests in extremis the spirit of Aramis on a bed of tarragon.
17 André Breton doesn’t come dressed as a mage to combat an image of the thunder-hydra, bitter and barking.
18 Francis Picabia, too frank for
A confidant of beavers, or,
Red-caped and draped in toison d’or,
A prancing Cassis picador.
19 Rrose Sélavy wonders if love is the fly-paper that prepares
soft sofas for foreplay.
20 What set your complexion withering, little girl, boarding where your eye came by another ring?
21 The riverside diversion of a racecourse, there’s Rrose Sélavy’s resource.
22 Rrose Sélavy may don prison’s drab garb, yet her mount ranges on mountain-ranges.
23 Rrose Sélavy passes the palm that lacks the glamour of martyrs to Lakmé the lamb-herd of Chartres on the Beauce’s flat metal calm, by name beauty.
24 Do you think Rrose Sélavy knows those ticklish jokes that make for tingling cheeks?
25 Rrose Sélavy is perhaps the apprentice apache who flanned his brat with the flat of his hand.
26 Does the
canoodling of shoddy wenches condone the idling of shady haunches?
27 Time is an agile eagle in a temple.
28 What if Rrose Sélavy, on a night of Yule, steers for the snare of the snow-white pole?
29 Ah, lover! All over!
30 Why’s it my luck to pick from the pack, at hazard, a friend more fickle than the lizard?
31 A curate in a chalet sees the cachet of delicacy in the lees of his chalice: does he meet his celestial match with malice?
32 This crater affords the Missouri its source and Sarah’s court its mystery.
33 Nomads en route for the North, do not pause at the port to trade your pomades.
34 Rrose Sélavy sleeps well as a small fellow out of a well wolfs her loaf at twelve.
35 If silence is golden, Rrose Sélavy lowers her eyelids for close-down.
36 Craning on the careen, the poet seeks a rhyme: do you see Rrose Sélavy as the queen of crime?
37 When caravels were making fast at La Havana, were
caravans snaking past Laval?
38 EASTERN QUESTION: At Santa Sophia a kirkstall of cork’s a seat of insanity.
39 Rrose Sélavy proposes that the perishing compost of passions become the nourishing repast of nations.
40 What is this unfounded tide whose sour flow floods Rrose’s steely soul?
41 Benjamin Péret’s regimen is perfect: his early bath is his yearly bath.
42 Paul Éluard, poet, the élite of the sheets.
43 Epitaph for Apollinaire: Weep dirges, giants and geniuses, on the void’s edges.
44 Amorous voyager on the tender chart, why nourish your nights on a cinder tart?
45 THE MARTYRDOM OF ST SEBASTIAN: The garters suit him but his bust’s wrong.
46 Rrose Sélavy has seen the archipelago where sea-queen Irene with an ash-sprig rules her isles.
47 From Everest mountain I am falling down to your feet for ever, Mrs Everling. [Desnos composed this one in English.]
48 Would André Breton be already damned to tonsure in hell cats of jade and amber?
49 Rrose Sélavy calls on you not to mistake the verrucas of the breast for the virtues of the blest.
50 Rrose Sélavy wouldn’t bet egotism gets you a wet bottom.
51 Rrose Sélavy can’t believe the religion of catholics arose from the contagion of relics.
52 Seized with reckless love, the Alpine parson spreads his frocks to the rocks to ease his loins.
53 RROSE SÉLAVY’S MOTTO:
Beyond the polite to be decent
Beyond the poet to be dishonoured.
54 Forego the absurd parabolas, go for Rrose Sélavy’s misheard parables.
55 EPIPHANY: In the small hours, dreams moor at the mole to
unload beans.
56 In the paradise of diamonds the carats are amorous, the spiral is crystal.
57 Roman persimmons taste to pages as if gnawed in rages by jaws of Moors.
58 Let rockets be fired, the crooked-faced races are tired!
59 Rrose Sélavy declares her skull’s nectar is the elixir that bitters the sky’s bile.
60 At Rrose Sélavy’s ‘agapê’ or love-feast, papal paste is tasted in an agate-glazed sauce.
61 Learn that Rrose Sélavy’s celebrated gesture is etched in celestial algebra.
62 People of Sodom, fear the fire of heaven, prefer the fever of the rear.
63 Keep to the ramp, rulers and rules braving the cellar with no lamp.
64 Is your tribe forever at a tribunal, dear downhearted departed?
65 Rrose Sélavy can trace black ancestors back to the Tropic of Cancer.
66 Classy torsos on tables of nurses, you will be carcases in hearses!
67 Maladies issue from every orifice of cadavers’ palaces.
68 Rocambole blows his cornet to start carnage and swims clear, cartwheeling off a lofty crag.
69 Rrose’s desire of love for ever dies of cirrhosis of the liver.
70 Lovers with tuberculosis, use your phthisical advantages.
71 In the Elysian fields, Rrose Sélavy wears deceaseful weeds.
72 Savage gales range over Rrose Sélavy, who reaches without outrage the age of oranges.
73 Jacques Baron’s fun, bayonet-jerks on gun!
74 Morise’s ideas are iridescent with obsolescent promise.
75 Simone’s silences launch the crunch of demonesses’ lances.
76 Mad broads with eyes undaubed sail through yards and yards of fire in yawls.
77 Evil opinions of singsongs prise open villains’ prisons.
78 The sport of the departed is to spread and be rotted.
79 Janine, we do all love her, the day-lily’s such a wheedler.
80 On what pole does the ice-pack splinter the poets’ smack?
81 Rrose Sélavy knows the goblin of gloom cannot gobble the globe.
82 Rrose Sélavy tells us the world’s rattle is the ruse of male rulers embattled in the whirl of the monthly muse.
83 LA RROSE DICTIONARY: Latinity: the five Latin nations. The Trinity: latrine emanations.
84 To command all the magic of boules, imagine the candle of the males. [Boules: the lobbing game.]
85 Rrose Sélavy submerged the moral wheedler in a mere of mineral water.
86 Into the sport of every Croesus Rrose Sélavy slips the very heart of Jesus.
87 ADVICE TO CATHOLICS: Sagely await the day of faith when death shall have you enjoy the scythe.
88 Rrose Sélavy’s going down a mine, making ready for Armageddon.
89 Ernest, says his pretty sister, by your third right digit, buy my birthright.
90 Cravan wends on the wave and his cravat waves in the wind.
91 In Vaché’s roguish drawls, words crashed like waves on rocky shores.
92 Give some alms to the rich and etch in the rocks the effigy of Simone.
93 QUESTION: Mystical cancer, how long will your song be a mystery canticle?
94 ANSWER: Aren’t you aware your misery preens like a queen on this mystery’s train?
95 Is a watery death a wreath for the doughty?
96 The act of the sexes is the axis of the sects.
97 Sweeter than glory are the shrouds and shadows of the globe.
98 Our brows harbour cemeteries that a maze of boundaries on summits omits.
99 Will the morning of caresses reveal to us the carmine of goddesses?
100 The eyeliners of goddesses lull the idleness of goners.
101 The militias of goddesses disregard the delights of missals.
102 On her trapeze see Rrose Sélavy appease the distresses of our divine mistresses.
103 Do poesy’s Vestals take you for vesicles, Petals?
104 Love’s images, fishes, will your poisonless kisses make me lower my eyes?
105 In the land of Rrose Sélavy, males scour the shores in warships, females pick and scratch at sores.
106 [À tout péché, miséricorde: for every sin, there is mercy.]For all malefactors, atonement; for all male punters, an ointment. [Ricord: famous doctor.]
107 Words, are you myths which match the myrtles of death?
108 Can Rrose Sélavy’s artful talk turn a swan into a stork?
109 The laws of our desires are leisureless dice.
110 Impatient heirs, usher your forebears into the chamber of thunders.
111 I live where you live, urchin whose mug is the magic of journeys.
112 Phalanx of angels, prefer the phallus to the angelus.
113 Do you know the jolly lovely faun of folly? She is yellow.
114 Does your bloodstream carry cowbells at your blubbing’s beck and call?
115 Does piety in dogma consist in pitying dogs?
116 For th
e fleshly calèche it’s a long lane, will the carnal car go far?
117 What are cuckolds thinking? Hints for women cooking: Don’t mimic the apostrophagic madeleine, copy the cornivorous virgin.
118 You crows rifling fine torsos’ haunches, when will you
stifle your torches?
119 Prometheuth! Promitheth, promitheth!
120 O laugh, the waves, coachmen are chortling! Olaf, the waves, catch many rattling! All of the waves crash ricochetting!
121 The species of fair fools loves phials and false pieces.
122 DEFINITIONS OF POETRY FOR: Louis Aragon: Hear the scales play hopscotch at the edge of souls.
123 Benjamin Péret: Belly of flesh, flurry of brush.
124 Tristan Tzara: What harms earth worse than a glass-work or a verse-work? What say you, earthworm?
125 Max Ernst: Max points! The red ball rolled and bowled.
126 Max Morise: For a disappointed fig, dig a fascinating dyke.
127 Georges Auric: Isn’t this the import of the muses: behind the museums’ portals, the bed-rolls of mortals?
128 Philippe Soupault: Geese and zebus are neguses in this rebus.
129 Roger Vitrac: Don’t take the moon’s halo hung to light the lagoon for the poets’ hallo sung too like the moon.
130 Georges Limbour: The Normans’ destiny is the North’s mendacity.
131 Francis Picabia: Numbers in bronze make a ragamuffin bonze: I rubbed out the second reverend, are you ready, Rrose Sélavy?
132 Marcel Duchamp: On the road was a blue bull by a blanched bench. Tell me now, what reasons for white mittens?
133 G. de Chirico: Remit your outrage twenty times on your métier.
134 Paul Éluard, when will you call repetitions Preteritions?
135 O lapse of senses, wager years on wordless pensées.
136 Rivers! Come and bring the pawnbrokers the poor broken bridge-crumbs.
137 Fairies’ faces burn as a bonfire blazes.
138 Mysterious are the hysterias of foundered mortals under nettles.
139 In the silence of highland snows, Rrose Sélavy smiles at the science of filing nails.
140 Our misfortunes are hair-combs of hoar-frost in fuddled tresses.
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