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Where directly or indirectly inspired by some poet's signature style, I give due credit. |
| grace & wildness [2nd edition w/ new introduction] [edited & abridged] (2011) (e e cummings) I hereby banish Apollonian and Dionysian from my kingdom. Here are two new words. Grace & wildness, not Mutually Exclusive Meta-Categories of All Ultra-Aesthetic Being-Ing Just two pretty words That make more pretty words grace: there is holy grace for the lovers of a god or goddess, but there is a private, secular grace in the delicate hands of a prince or princess. Grace is a pristine, fluid order, sheer and crystalline but not brittle. Grace the song wraps back into the beginning, playing itself, grace the perfectly documented, perfectly executed experiment, establishing perfect certainty of perfect truth, grace the epithet of the dancer, and the pianist, and the mother, and the well-oiled machine. A pyramid in a sphere in a cube in a dodecahedron. Falling from the clouds into a pair of slippers. wildness: nothing merely destructive or dismal like chaos or discord or anarchy, not base and savage, but sublimely inscrutable. The wildness of love & nature & pathos & drenched dreams & muddy inebriation, that is the surrender to the whims of every possible future. Wild the windy whirl of leaves, melodic gibberish of the baby, dogs barking at walls. Voluntary blindness, bargaining with invisible currents, roar ing roar ing roar ing tirades passionate about their own passion, directed in every direction, testing the patience of heaven and earth. Worms ravishing peaches, peaches swallowing worms. flimsy fable (2011) (Cy Twombly) ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand. Ladies and lords, hoho this This most sacroficiosanctual Nine o-clock no-news o-boy But this Friday night couch confuzed Is Best this time Better even than before Black oil in his veins Eyes glazed in angry fumes Let's hate some being Little Hitler noggin Mohawk vigilante Rocking on a couch Rocking the fine making of Powertypes in exciting directions Prototype for a much larger system Ten o-clock where-now what-boy Burning meat and lightning sudoku Make me a mannikin decoy dynamite Always thinking thinking thinking Logistics heuristics hermeneutics Fantastically reintegrating mighty mighty microdata Internalize synthesize stranger faces Innocuous nanomotions Hyperconstruct metacosmo-paranoiamatrix Schizomanufact terror-narrative Imploding falling into preconceived Archetypal plot points Constricting constructing Retroactive retcon Sad sad persecution story Sad sad coconspirocomplex Long long story stretching backwards and forwards Perfect perfect story making every sense to story un til deconstructo striketo maindown unberavelsome nightweave chockock full of swiss holes silly frilly neurosystem many meetings talkdown takedown stepdown thinknow waitnow hate?--no! let go sit slow brain-know eleven o-clock row-row po-boy river river quite contriver down the slowly lilting slumbing inplace selfsame wherefrom whatfor sake of make from intown deep cold makeshift complex womb-talk tough box downdowndowning roundroundroundand story seeding weeping rooting deeper & deeper & creeper & creeper & wetty-mold cave of cramped unconscious unbecoming undertow here we row twelve o-clock down-side deep-boy and... and....... and-and-and.............. nothing, bumboy. toys & tales & puppy-wails but no great mis'ry, mys'try, blis'try badness, madness, proof of sadness; boy got nothing no excuse and no excitement, not exceptional ineffectual empty glassful hot air foment angsty ambiance no-cause, yes-chalance, everybody say humdrumly "oh, oh... well now" pack up homenow one o-clock new-day bore-boy plays with toys steps on tails hammers nails in coffee tables. Mostly stable. (flimsy fable) Arete (2011) If nature should curse one And thus reimburse one She'd burden one under a wonderful yoke: To glow one and only! A noble and lonely Long road; such an honor, this onerous joke. Samson Delilah Sestina (2011) (Elizabeth Bishop) Samson slowly, sadly stroked his hair. Delilah lay broken on the barren earth. Like weak memory hung a cotton fog. His upward eyes found no trace of God. He cast her body in a shallow grave. Heavy feet carried him an uncertain distance. Forever they had held pain at an uncertain distance. With grateful fingers they braided each other's hair. Unnatural satisfaction sprang as a ghost from a grave. Bare feet bore them rhythmically in waltzes across the earth. Everything they had, they gave in fires to God. The wish-bearing smoke rose thick like a murky fog. He was dizzy in her heavy breath, an intoxicating fog. He was not mindful of the storm in the uncertain distance. Their future wound around the fingers of a silent God Like Delilah's sweetly tangled hands in Samson's hair. But the distant storm tore a wound in the earth That gaped patiently like a ready grave. Delilah spoke first and her voice was grave. Like a cyclone her harsh words whipped away the fog And they clearly saw the worms in the ugly earth. Her cries followed the fleeing Samson an uncertain distance. When he could no longer hear her, he wept in his hair, Sheared it off, burned it, offered it to God. But Samson found numb succor in time, not in God, Time that entombed his sorrow in a shallow grave; And the years returned to him his fabled flowing hair, And the cooler seasons lifted soft seas of fog That shrouded and clouded the uncertain distance Between each and each as each waltzed alone across the earth. But every path meets that crosses the earth And earth and path and cross meet in God Whose gaze knows no uncertain distance From sea to star and from womb to grave. With rage He dampened Samson's lingering love in fog, Measured, severed Delilah's lifeline like a lock of hair. Her lover's fresh hair flashed like lightning as he broke her on the earth. Like weak memory, a cotton fog hid the heavy-lidded eyes of God. Limply she tumbled into her grave, as her soul flew an uncertain distance. Haikus From Under an Aluminum Sun (2011) (Jack Kerouac) 1. The question is there--- Do I dare to eat a peach? ---is there in her thighs. 2. No man's an isle; and yet I delude myself autotrophically. 3. I broke every bone of this ragdoll body I threw against the wall. 4. The world's tallest man can look right over my head and see my shadow. 5. In the gym I find pain brings me closer to God; close to a mad god. 6. With his scarf he hides bite marks all over his face; she loves him fiercely. 7. Kiss me--- kiss me now--- I go to do the business you would fain look on. 8. An eight-point compass merits this odd distinction: it spins without ways. 9. Watch with amusement as the stumped economists climb their burning rope! 10. What desperate hope lies at the bottom of the box? A decoder ring. 11. There are no angels; only wild, impatient eyes and feverish minds. 12. Here's the flower pot where he keeps his power tools and feeds them sawdust. 13. Be wary of clues--- they host infectious motives and lurk everywhere. 14. The feast is boundless--- these days barren, empty plates are rare as blue food. 15. On a rainy day--- How many haikus begin on a rainy day? 16. On a rainy day you're either alone with warmth or only alone. 17. Try as I might, I--- bitter I can't do justice to a rainy day. 18. You can say a lot buried in your weird haikus while smiling smugly. 19. This one's for Kerouac to read in his boyish voice; They're all for Kerouac. 20. Ladies and laddies, you've been tolerable gracious! Good night! Dream grandly. Open Letter to Everyone (2010- from the archives) (Allen Ginsberg) "I wish that I had spoken only of it all." -Gertrude Stein, "Stanzas in Meditation: Stanza LXIII" I don't get to talk to you enough and I don't get to see you enough and that's a damn shame because you Fascinate me. You are an Enigma, a beautiful Enigma like a thousand-piece puzzle set and each piece is painted by a famous painter, by Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Kandinsky, Dali, Renoir, Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, and yet they all fit together according to a Great Design of some Architect I cannot fathom but they're a bitch to put together because each tiny piece is its own independent work of art and there's no picture on the box showing what the finished work will look like and I cannot fathom what it will look like and the edges are all flowy and harsh and non-Euclidean and Omnidimensional and I don't even have all the pieces, they drop out of the faucet occasionally once in a very great time or a handful may or may not be at the bottom of the cereal box or I may wrestle with a hobo who found a piece stuck to his shoe or I may bid outrageous prices at auction for these tiny masterpieces or I may feel sick one morning and cough up a puzzle piece or roll my eye back into my head so far I find a piece stuck to my eyeball and I have to pry it off with a clawed hammer or I have to synthesize a piece by combining two parts chlorine with seven parts spaghetti sauce or I have to write a song to find three pieces hanging off the highest note or I have to die and rise again to find ten puzzle pieces shoved deep underneath my fingernails and still I am so far away from having the one thousand puzzle pieces and cannot fathom what I will have to put myself through, what I will have to accomplish and fabricate and suffer to acquire them all and then what will I have but a great big pile of art that refuses to be put together but I can't even ask you, I can't even ask you what you are because your own eyes are puzzle pieces, the left one is an elegant and precise sketch by Leonardo da Vinci and the right one is a cartoon from the New Yorker, a dry satirical depiction of an eye drawn on an Eyelid and you cannot see yourself with these eyes because they are part of the puzzle, they look out instead of in and they see right through mirrors and you have no idea what you look like, do you, you have no idea what you are and you cannot fathom what you will become when I have completed you, all you can do is blink and tell me about the insides of your eyelids which is Fascinating but it doesn't help me a damn bit because I'm talking about the Bigger Picture here, I'm sick of the damn Details, any fool can get lost in your beautiful Details but what's the point of taunting me with this notion that somehow these multifarious works of art come together into a Grand Design that I cannot Fathom and then insisting that I abandon this project for Even a second to linger on some subtle shade that Vermeer casts on what Might Be a cheek or a ripe peach or a bishop's hat or a thick gasp of fog or a thigh or a bulb or the neuron clouds in the brain of a young Gardener or a toasted bun or Jupiter or a soft proton or a dollop of cream or-- what does it matter, damnable distraction, in all your meanings and suggestions you are empty, reaffirming your Confusion with beautiful excuses, like the circuits of a computer you are complicated and cold and empty until exactly the right assortment and arrangement causes lightning to arc through every cable, every membrane, every node and take the shape of a Divine Fire that we didn't have until we absolutely Had it, a Program, a Rendering, a Function, a gorgeous ghost leaping out of a sculpture who puts every sculptor to shame, a ghost whose Face I cannot Fathom no matter how long I ponder this or that piece, though I do confess I've wasted more minutes than I care to confess getting lost in your beautiful Details, and sometimes when I climb a lightning bolt to grasp some piece in the heavens I kiss it and want to love it wholly and whole centuries have gone by like this so do not Judge me a Philistine when I finally shove it in my back pocket and slide back down the lightning bolt, I have lingered on the subtlest shades that a ghost can cast, and when I pry up the seventh fingernail, the eighth fingernail, the ninth fingernail, the Final Fingernail, with raw bloody fingertips and infinite patience, I do not do it for the love of some crumb of the Great Cake that is promised me, no I promise you I do not tear myself to pieces for the love of some crumb, I tear myself to pieces to find the thousand pieces wrought by the thousand artists to complete the One masterpiece who will leap from my artifice like a ghost from a cold body and laugh the most sublime Laugh of sincere congratulation and take my hand as I freeze with bliss and fall twenty thousand Fathoms into a dark place with pleasant smells and No Wind. Yes! That is what you remind me of! You remind me of Life! Waiting Calls the Macabre Macaw (2011) (E.A. Poe) "Don't believe in yourself, Don't deceive with belief; Knowledge comes with death's release..." -David Bowie, "Quicksand" Waiting calls the macabre macaw to rest on the breast of the cold un-quick; the wary woman's extinguished wick smolders against his feathered craw. "Watch me," calls the macabre macaw as his wings flap broadly across a sky unraveled by her dewy cry of tears that smear the light un-drawn. Waving, she calls the macabre macaw: "Watch me," she weeps into the air, until her stare is carried there, and traces the arcs of his swoops and yaws. "Weary?" calls the macabre macaw, to her weak eyes flying far behind. "Weary," she answers his query in kind, unwinding a sigh from her yawning jaws. Whisper-winds call the macabre macaw along an un-seeable sky-wise road, winding toward his upward abode; at last he points a curving claw. "Wondrous!" calls the macabre macaw as her gaze is swallowed in the sun; "Wondrous," she murmurs, her questions un-spun, her glacial memory graciously thawed. Electron Clouds Bearing God (2011) (Greg Williamson) The material of God is my mind: the author of primal causes, some scrupulous order guiding every piece of the messages that I receive, and the memories that I keep, and the motives that I follow, filling the world with some invisible providence , some manifest and inexorable direction. Confessional Medley (Useless) (Wallace Stevens) Two bottles rest on the end table. One is full of sweat and raw eggs. The other is dark and murky. Did I say it wrong? This one is hungry, That one is tired. The thirsty throat throbs in between gulps. Carelessly we wander, wondering about him. He meticulously ignores us With his metric march to private motives. No, I Pack the hours with sawdust Craving exhaustion and endless accomplishment. The brink of death is closest to the House of God. Let me tune the public radio From time to time; let me Finish what I am about to say, What I would never let myself hear myself say. I won't lay these things out to dry. Better this than listen mute to The public radio with an awkward, aimless face: Slice the moment in abrupt retreat, Leap into the broadening gap and retire. Worse than molten metal in my ears, Whispers drip slowly, drop lowly Forcing a new duet with my thoughts. It is as if Looking into a mirror the face you see is Subtly perverted, Strange to your shoulders, Buts you cannot remember the way It used to be. Am I wrong to dine alone On the sausage stuffed with memories and neuroses At a table set for two? This diet of fear Has my skin sticking to my ribs. I am a vain hunger artist. I despise satisfaction. The beast that scrambles in circles Cannot lift a finger in the right direction. I have left out but little. I Hate You Prufrock (2011) (Allen Ginsberg) Like tearing down the road at three a.m. so boozed up my thoughts run in a strange loop Like ghost of a possum slick dark whatever and my ribs are all over the dashboard Like clawed out of a smoking clusterfuck with a punctured lung car and tree all twisted together in angry sex Like months getting fat and sleepy on a sterile cot with a stale feeling in my throat Like miracle all the king's men stitch back together what all the king's horses drawn and quartered Like new and healthy six million dollars but shivering flawless delusional Like phantom retching throbbing the perfect body still wracked in a perpetual wreck Like psychological pulpy bleeding on a bursting day drowned in sunny silky golden Like that I bark at walls and snap the hands that pet me. I'm a broken dog and I don't take well to leashes and I'm no "woman's best friend" and I run omega lonely and feral. I hear a gunshot when I see a sweet smile. Frozen in the headlights and I can already see myself all over the road. I tease the way a child waves a gun like a toy I cook the stew and pour it all down the sink with a shudder God, I won't even try a bite but my mouth waters but I'm sick and gagging I'm a will'o'wisp I lead women into empty alleys and disappear in a trashcan I'm an accidental misogynist I'm an accident waiting to happen I'm the weakest I'm the freakest Even when I'm sweetest and dazzling I can't help it and I don't know what I want So maybe I was born to love tender But I died in a crash and I died chaste and burning and resentful in every direction Bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter The word drives nail after nail into my tongue And when the occasion rolls together I choke on old blood I choke on that bitter bitter blood oh the sour stew And a wet wild fear like a rabid ape biting my back. Messy Manifesto: The Riddle of Gratitude (this is not a poem) (2011) (Aristotle) It is impossible to feel fear and gratitude at the same time. I was told this twice by a man who was told this twice. I did not understand it until one morning when I felt fear and I remembered what he said. As soon as it began to sink in, I wanted to apologize for being rude and uncaring when I was afraid. I knew this apologetic sentiment, this remorse, was intimately connected to gratitude, but I couldn't understand how it followed. So I explored gratitude. Fear is the anticipation of bad. But everything ultimately moves towards the good. The future holds the good, and the present is separated from the contemplation of the past by being imbued with this potentiality. Whatever the past, (for the past has no potential, it only is, [or was,]) the present always contains the potency of good. Human beings, (or rather experiential, feeling beings,) have the capacity to recognize that potentiality, and this is imagination. Imagination is so truly ubiquitous because it is an ingredient of action. Every action contains the conception of the goal. Joy may be derived from the potentiality of good; this joy we all can tap into, no matter how far we are from the good. It is a "window", a "postcard" from the final destination. Imagination is a window into the final destination. But the potential should not be confused with the actual. Contemplating potency gives one the strength, the potency, to act. That's very important. Fear is the absence of gratitude. But this means it is imbued with the potential for gratitude. One need merely be grateful for that potential, and then follow that potential to learn to be grateful for the outcome of the fear-causing circumstance, both the actual outcome and the opportunities, the potentialities latent in the outcome, and in the latter case, one need earnestly pursue the potentialities and not merely give them lip service, and this is how to conquer fear. Fear is a puzzle-wrapped package containing gratitude. There is much gratitude in the act of apologizing. The easiest way to deduce this is that apologizing is scary, and fear is the absence of gratitude, and the only way to overcome that fear and apologize, is to fill up that space with gratitude, or to actualize that potential gratitude. Quod erat demonstrandum. But more precisely, apologizing is a wonderful power whereby one can recognize an existing situation and bring it closer to the good by pronouncing it, by declaring the intent to correct it, and by demonstrating compassion through remorse. To love is to be so grateful for someone's happiness that it hurts to see them suffer. Apology is the cry of pain that attests to love. It is not the pain, the pain is there with or without the cry, but the cry salves the pain, advances the potential to knit the mutual wound. Aristotle says there are levels of potentiality. The man who knows how to farm is a latent farmer, but the man who is farming is an actual farmer. Technically, anyone is a latent farmer, as only time stands between them and successful farming. But actually, the knowing farmer is much further along his potential to actually farm. Likewise, recognizing potential is not the same as actualizing potential. But recognized potential is much closer to actuality than unrecognized potential. If, then, gratitude is the secret of happiness, let it be clear that it is not the open door but the key. It is the beginning of happiness. To master the Riddle of Gratitude is to have the general principle, the know-how of happiness, the recognized potential of happiness. Let the exercise emanate from the tools and the will and the power. Counter-Sermon (2011) (James Joyce) "Sickness will surely take the mind where minds can't usually go..." -The Who, "Amazing Journey" "In desolation boldness lies," the puffy-breasted mystics said; "in sickness we will find our eyes." With platitudes they ape the wise, these charlatans who mock our dread. In desolation boldness lies: and by our boldness will we rise and tame the torturous tides? And when in sickness we will find our eyes, will we guffaw and slap our thighs and see the fountain in the fen? "In desolation boldness--" Lies! They hide abuse in crude disguise while blaming us for feeling dead. In sickness we will find our eyes grow bleary, tears metastasize like tumors, but they'll turn their heads and chant, "In all this, boldness lies..." while we're left with the sickened eyes. love is like a lump (2011) (Frank O'Hara) love is like a lump it hurts a bit and you're nervous it might be infected but you can't help but touch it and pick it apart so it swells and inflames and it hurts now it's bleeding and weeping and you knew it would get bad but stubbornly tensely ignored it while absently nursing it worriedly waiting til it started killing you and by the time they tore it open and drained it all and drugged you silly you spoke in tongues your eyelids fluttered it was close and you were left with a pulpy scar and a dull vestige that flares up sometimes when you feel weak and now you know these things linger invisibly all over and seep in through tiny wounds so you scrub and sterilize and terrified you wait for the next outbreak child finding Magic losing (2011) (e e cummings) realful settled placid lay the child swathed in dawny sheets as cloudly motes of drowsy dust be- specked the air and mottled hung. the sharpness dreary present Being slipped in slowly like a scalpel Saturday and clumsy hunger settled on him as a mist un- til a splash of feeling lashed him: massive dumbing tall unrightness-- followed by a staggering knowing: nothing old was sure this morning! yesterday trickled piecemeal driply cat suspended in the air; that cat that dangled in the air had mangled every certain science. and then it sauntered through the air and licked its legs and chased a bird and as it pounced and snapped the neck the feathers fell a half a mile and as it hung and mocked the air while gorging on its startled catch the child knew a new Begin and counted all the unfound things; for what all history once had found was lost in quiet simple brilliance as a cat with magic hung a- bove a powerless patch of ground and child leapt and slammed his shoes on dashed against the humble morning looking for some glowing tree, some fecklessly enchanted thing. he tore the day apart and counted every piece from every angle everything was as the setting sun had left it lifeless docile. he sobbed and shook with all his matter kicked the trees until his feet bled climbed their every leafy peak and finding only naked science screamed and barked and filled the air with only wiggling air and knew that everything was as it was and airborne cats and dreams no more but every morning underneath the dawny sheets he wakes and knows that magic had been hanging there like drying clothes lost in a storm. it does not slip in like the scalpel Memory that bears facts and names; the day that Being dreamed Beginning pounces like a mocking cat An Overdue Thank-you To the Musicians: In Memory of Clarence Clemons (1942-2011) When I wilt in loathing puddles, splash them with your lively dance; and when I slouch in dumb Nirvana, kiss me with a second chance; and if I find the silence grates upon my mystic sullen bones, play a catching tune upon your brassy jazzy saxophone. I don't want a Trojan fortress. I don't want to haunt a peak. I want to be a billion polyps and the coral and the sea. I want to be the clay you squeeze, mâché you moisten, glass you blow; melt me in the melody of your brassy waxy saxophone. But these nights I can't help but count the "might be's" that I think I've lost, and ponder all the bleaker "will be's" creeping like the coming frost. So while I pine for hair to hide in and I shiver, bald, alone, sing me memories as you comb your brassy flaxen saxophone. When memory resurrects the dead it only shows me silhouettes, fastidiously frozen moments, dances sans the pirouettes. And what if what I want to see is what I never will be shown? Blind me, blind me, blight my eyes, you brassy dazzling saxophone! Oh, don't let me go on like this with my kaleidoscope laments which tumble through this harping riff that won't resolve and won't relent. Please, if you ever tire of my selfish sappy bitch-and-moan, slap me to my senses with your brassy sassy saxophone. It's funny how I know my folly yet I fully feel it bite, as if I'm waiting for your fine fortissimo to force its flight; for though to other fingers I'm as mute as mud and stiff as stone, yet you deftly play me like a brass elastic saxophone. So when I wilt in loathing puddles, splash them with your lively dance; and when I slouch in dumb Nirvana, kiss me with a second chance; and if I find the silence grates upon my mystic sullen bones, play a catching tune upon your brassy jazzy saxophone. Found this in a Health journal from my freshman year in high school. (2007) Assignment: write a poem entitled 'I Wish...'. 'I Wish...' Curled up in a corner Under a table The wind smells of mice Colors flash from the shelves Like peonies and dandelions In the corner of my eye, 100% organic marshmellows Meet spilled milk and rise with yeast In a sea of gently faded forget-me-nots. Hard butter chafes my coat, Studded with cheap diamonds, marred with dry rivers, A rosewood stretches its branches above me; Its scent mingles with the mice To make Kroger-brand vanilla Heavy on the kelp, With Aspartame and sucralose substitutes. A goat just sat down, Squealing like a cut rope; The tadpole reads a parts manual For a Japanese car; maybe Toyota? Two giant acorns, One dipped in cheese, Blood-cheese, with the Cheeto-powder, The other suspended from a golf-lawn, Hanging from the rusty telephone pole to dry. There's a xylophone in the cheese, And a ghost and an angel making love. They do not like the xylophone. The cymbals below them feel left out. Little sacs of methane are pricked by the needles. A water-tower rises from the cheese; Lee J. Cobb sits in it Like a Looney Tunes villain, Surveying his once-domain; The IRS seized his kingdom After he refused to pay his respects To the Don. The flounder has forgotten how to breathe. Flapping frantically, in slow motion, He has fallen into a time-warp; He will swish his right arm in a curve, Upper right, partially following the side, To bottom left, for all eternity. Egads! The flaming, bubbling gnome Has made his way into my back; He just replaced my left thumb With a wooden plank. Arg! The murder weapon lies Untouched, unquestioned. It is old; who has it killed? Did the water bottle deserve it? Cut down in his prime... Bah. It was his time. He was empty anyway. There's a wormlike gopher with two heads Emerging from my thumb; He must have been hiding in the wood. I wish that life was chiseled From the same ice as my Kremlin. Los Tres Maderos (2008) Habia tres maderos, suave y plata Venderón seguridad, libertad, y justicia Su trabajo estuvieron rápido, fluido y tranquilo Y siempre sonrieron, y a veces risaron Pero nunca estuvieron bromistas Habia cuatros ratas, viejo y cansado Quien quisieron un último recuerdo inolvidable Quien se tuvieron orgullo, y culpa, y asusto Fueron a hacer su atraco ambicioso Pero maderos tienen narizes astutos Habia cincos monos, joven y tonto Quien quisieron crecer como sus padres Quien seguieron sus padres al banco Ellos pensaron mirar el atraco y aclamaron Pero no prepararon por tragedia Habia seis disparos, fuerte y frio No habia nada advertencia Dispararon rápidamente, fluidamente y sin una palabra Cuatros cadáveres caieron suavamente Pero los monos miraron todos Habia siete segundos, largo y doloroso Los monos fijaron sus ojos en los maderos Sus risas ásperos rasgaron los orejas Vueltaron sus espaldas y caminaron al carro Pero cinco monos huérfanos quisieron su sangre Habia ochenta cuchilladas, frenético y despiadado Entre los maderos muy muy muertos La polícia fueron muy triste porque Sus hermanos morieron en la linea de tarea Pero nadie sabían que pasó ese noche. Balder's Song (2010) (James Joyce) "I'll eat the moon with a wicked tune, I'll swim through May to beach in June, I'll chant in a gay way the names of Muses, Enthused by the games of children in suits. I've got the right eyes to find the prize, I've got the mind that rhymes "sublime" With "time" and "all time" like a million chimes And I know this joy's not only mine. I'm rolling up rhomboids and orphan tales, Rorschach blots and polka-dots, Rodents and dentists and Istanbul Into a new tale with a favorite tool. I know the fools are only alone, But soon their tunes will collide in a song, A thousand wrong bromides, a symphony one, A story I'll read with my smile on. And I'll find the prize where X marks the spot With a map full of dots scattered all about Like darters and blips and children and gods, And I'll tip my crown to the journey--" This is a poem about artists. It's called Perverts (2011) and it starts with a quote: "...We find in children at a very early age manifestations of those instinctual components of sexual pleasure... which presuppose the taking of an extraneous person as an object. ... I may mention... the active and passive desire for looking, from the former of which curiosity branches off later on and from the latter the impulsion to artistic and theatrical display." That's Sigmund Freud. Monkeys monkeys monkeys parading in a glassbound corridor Ferociously fapping monkeys breathing damply against the pane Bubbling bursting dreams heaving into the horizon while Ten thousand pine-cone idols burn under the sunset Whispers that ooze back out of penetrated ear canals Great burly dogs chained to a cradle Light is a sexual medium watch me swim It ripples around your hips when you're rocking on the train And the monkeys breathing damply against the pane Catch every undulant splash watch me swim You might ask one of them, What would you do with a million dollars? And he'd say Even heaven is a place where they line you up and shoot you And there's everything to fear except myself Because when the birds dance with the bees One leads and one follows And they shoot you so watch me swim in my sexual medium and it might shine pale and feeble But the light the light is ever so gentle like sickly puppies bound in burly chains bursted dreams oozing out the nose a monkey and a mirror trick and ninety-nine panes and a hundred monkeys a gallery of fantastical costumes like the wardrobe of the Village People a feeble light smothered in a monstrous bushel a corner, a spotlight-- indulgent religion with a microphone five faces like faces in the mud and contours in the sky (oh god I'm sorry) and a quintet of vultures and a iron bell that rings whenever I open my mouth When it rings you can hear the summer of ninety-nine As my cousins shoved me in the river and I couldn't swim It clamors like that gargling child You can hear the crackle of burning pines In my lovehungry stomach You can hear the undulant splashes Of vomit striking the bowl You can hear me kicking the bedframe in the predawn gloom And fiery tears flying like thrashing limbs But you can put any battered old bird to sleep By throwing a blanket over its cage You know, if you throw light obliquely against the river It skips like a stone And you'll never know how deep it goes So don't let the streaker trick you He's never really naked And nevermind the eyes pressed against the glass They only see reflections Don't Believe Anything I Say I'm Only Here For a Good Time (2011) "Sir, I am vex'd; Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled: Be not disturb'd with my infirmity: If you be pleased, retire into my cell And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind. " --Prospero, The Tempest (4:1) At the northeast corner of 18th and Bishop there's a sewer grate with the municipal stamp worn off and if you lift with the legs not the back or bring a friend it goes right into the parlor of a pissneck old troll with a nosering in his lip who sits at his easel all day painting impressions of the cars passing overhead that he never sees only hears and if you ever wondered what the sound of a car might look like in the mind's eye of a troglodytic brushworker I highly recommend the excursion however I hasten to add the subterranean aesthetes of the city (and yes they do dine and dance together on Friday nights beneath the old Clayton theater) have grown increasingly enamored of surface dwellers in the dragging seasons of their exile and I would not put it past them to strap you down in chairs and draw your tongues out like taffy strips and thumb your ears down to nubs and mist your eyeballs with tinglish fungal juice and other suchlike rude ways to transform a guest into a bobbity old grouch of grottoskesque demeanor though an unemployed peoplologist might speculate whether such alienation from a priori imperiosymmetrical banality is such a tisk tisked thing all in all what with the declining cohesion of the socio-systemic patriosymbolic sui generis zeiten geisten scheiten in our post --- irregular rivets in the handhewn woodshed post --- marshmallows over the crunchy fire post --- two hundred words for dirt post --- participatory construction of pig-locating rituals post --- whirlwind of generous malice post --- naked post --- proud post --- pre-production postponed consumption lazy unfair et cetera et Saturna ad nauseum vomitum abstractum subtractum but be that as it may I'd say the idle commentationist has a smallish tongue intact ears and disinfected corneae and has not perhaps submerged to the covens of the cavernous community in question and my advice if I may if you please should you show show you will is such as follows that perhaps you might remain in the nest in the penthouse in the belfry of the metropolitan mammoth of phallic infallibility and perhaps buy a high-powered telescope with four hundred rosy colored lenses for palatable precision and perhaps buy the book by Dr. Abel Rheingarten with glossy centerfolds of tattooed natives in tasteful and culturally relevant exploitative poses and perhaps buy an ant farm and name this one Adam and that one Steve and extrapolate whatever habituosymbiolic systems you like from their insectile skitterings sui chelicerae sans patternae sub culturae some Saturday and write an abstract on Sunday as perhaps titled "Is Ant to Man as Analogy is to Cogent Argument?" and as you shake hands with your eminent colleagues I shall remain down here and play saxophone In the savage society of these incognito autocthonous unwashed untamed undaunted bohemians And if at the dawn of the dusk of the day Noone should understand anyone anybetter than yesterday What of it? The paint drys, the notes linger in the air, the cars roll by and everybody grumbles and mutters. this one has not got a title (2011) Every morning when I wake up one of two things happens: either I glance at the clock and yell FUCK SHIT and as I bolt out the door I know it's going to be a rough day or I find Death staring at me and I don't have anything to show it, so I lie there, staring back until I can't bear to look at it any longer and I crawl out of bed in the middle of the afternoon. |
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