"Living in a mailbox with a rattlesnake"
Excuse me
That's my poem
I mean, it was
It's over by now
Just wanted to rent a moment's moment
For a moment there
Insert the poem in the place where
Scuse me while I say bye-bye
Hotfoot and hightail it
Buzzrattlebuzzle
Rattlebuzz it
Whilst I say goodbye dust dust dust
3.
3 minute limit in a 6 workday town
3 minute mile run upside down
3 minute rocker on top o' the charts
3 minute funnel tunnelin your hearts
3 minute catastroph mumbled monologue
Meaning what maybe yes maybe tail wag a dog
Part III
I wrote it
They won't let me say....
_________________________________________________
A funny thing happened today, Mother said.
A woman I barely know came up to me at work.
She was waving a magazine or something.
Not like Time or National Enquirer,
Not like a real magazine, Mother said.
But something like some kids would make
And call it a magazine.
Then this woman showed me
A so-called poem in this magazine
And the funny thing was,
It was written by somebody with your name
And it was spelled the same, too.
Don't get upset, Mother said,
These things happen in life.
It only means you have to be careful.
Someday you might be introduced to this person
With the exact same name as you.
And then you have to tell them
To stop writing those so-called poems,
Or could they change their name to something else,
Because someone might see them,
And be embarrassed or maybe even angry,
Thinking they were written by you.
You have to be careful what you say, Mother said,
To people with the same name as you.
They might be related.
But along those same lines
There is something I've been meaning to tell you.
I hope this doesn't hurt your feelings,
But I think this might just be the right time.
Your father is not really your father,
So actually you have a different last name,
Which is lucky for you,
Because you wouldn't want anyone thinking
That you wrote so-called poems in a magazine
That looks like something some children put together.
_________________________________________________
Arcata, I have found it the beep
Of the earthmover backing up over
And over we reshape the earth to our likeness
Disliking what parents slammed the food bowl down
Samoa Cookhouse lumbering range away echo hello
Surely goodness and seconds on goodness
Will enflame the gesso artists of Humboldt State
Lickety lackety splits art, pure art
In a Grove of Silent Giants, connifers
Freely espousing, the sssstumps of mystery
Stump me as I fall asleep mid-orgasm
Verify my meal ticket willya? I'm escaping
Real and wiping my ass with a spotted owl
Perhaps my daughters can cash the check,
Grap the keys from under the trompe l'oeil steps
Ask the pay phone for directions, eel the river
Whoa. Back at the "escape reality" part,
"Pure art" part, shape the earth part... All
Sums up the same sum do or don't die or
Tell, vision cracks on the back of a woman
Approaching, asking for a quarter for the first time
In her life, Ralph's parking lot, San Francisco,
July 20, 1992. My poems are flying, disorganized
In the trunk of the rented Chevy, my wife cannot find
The right toothpaste, her hand outstretched as her story
Stretches out up the Coast of Wind, the Coast of Loss,
Truly America's story, reshaping the Coast of Pain,
As I gently pay off what is never truly paid.
_________________________________________________
Time stops. Everybody's dead, but you can't tell.
Who would you tell anyway? Thoughts impale on spiky floor
Where a layer of calk keeps the wind below your feet
From spreading the word that was news and fleet fist
The single remark crossing itself off the list
Because it is done very slowly before the eyes
Of the young woman become the eyes of the old woman
_________________________________________________
& in conclusion
Let me begin
This is that poem you had in that notebook you lost
This the poem that won't sit still on the page, gets up,
walks out, stretches, leaves the zoo
This is a secret spy camera snapshot of a poem, taken by
satellite
This is the poem that lost it
& found it
But it had changed it had become it was now
This is a poem of
& then again, fuck it
This poem words don't make it
& they don't
They won't
They will
Be there lying awake in bed waiting in bed for you
Poem wants to dress up fancy
Fine, you say
Now that you're gone
Maybe you'll finally get an answering machine
"Hello, Bimbo here. Please leave a message, but don't worry, I'll be running into you soon on the block."
Bimbo in Limbo, Lala Ola
On the block that never corners
Not like some salsa rhythm
That comes and goes wicked steam summer
But on and on the way life is
Until it isn't
Great timing Memorial on Memorial Time
Bimbo had it listed for years in his big appointment book
Loisaida was Bimbo's appointment book
These are the words you would say them
Under and over the truth over and over
Feeling the feeling
Flowing that flow
Feeling the flow
Flowing the feel
You were the first to see buffoonery
As Slam Artistry, legitimizing
The whimsicality with the humor of earth
On our knees at Irma, our improv poem duet
Ended as a prayer
Bimbo in Limbo, the poet who spoke only in verbs
Keep it going, the History of Boricua as told by
Everybody's Poppy
Loisaida cries like a puppy tied outside
The Bodega Sold Dreams, Bimbo gave 'em away
You invented it
Invested it
Protested it
Resisted it
Insisted it
Kissed it buenos noches
The sun like an iris dims
Goes gray and tiny tinier pops gone
Nothing to say in the all-gray day
Sparks of air from his mouth
A poem forever being born
Come ta bro, how you be
You had the vision to
Allow others to create it
Chuckleliltdance down the avenida
The street that is the world
So he gave away his poems and his heart
Jorge dancing with your photo
Beautiful man, at the Nuyorican
Poets Cafe your mother listens
To poems of grief and lesbian love poems
To the tearing soul of Edwin Torres
Writing the SciFi Spanglish Lexicographertonguilization
Riffing the dictionary into one orgasmic shrieking grunt
For the Slam is on and the elbows are corners
And the coffin is big enough
We all jump in
And Jorge dances with your photo
Down the Eternal Cafe Hallway
Music that tears the heart
Vying with con dios
As love and sex melt poetry into
Flexishape anticontrol unit
Like the shopping cart you'd wheel your kid in
La Carreta made a complete 360 and is driving you home
The Living Theater breathes, the bricks
Tumble into the alley to take a pee but the lights blare
The cops are busting the poem heads
As the Bimbo Angel is lowered from the top of the theater
Whose play is it Bro
What part
Why part
Only the whole
Don't leave your message here
I'll see you on the avenue
Passing through passing through
We all join you
_________________________________________________
Capture scripture rapture Nuyoricano
Poetry - the Lingo de la Futuro, no sueno!
Champion Slammers! Yo what's a Slam?
Spread the word around like tomorrowland jam.
Bite of sound pumps with multi-culti vitamino
In the air it's apparent: poetry is in-betweeno.
No homogeneous meaningless spittle!
Hone the nonpolemic dynamic with a little
Meaningful hatch dash o' utopia
Cryin out loud dictionary cornucopia!
Can you imagine Word in your hometown?
This crew delivers solid Truth - no letdown!
Blazing the bases for poetry's survival
Celebrate the Nuyorican Poets Live arrival.
_________________________________________________
No boiler plate
But plenty of boilers
To heat up those plates
Eat those dogs
And call up those numb numbers
To steam the sterile century
To the tune o'clock whistle sos
SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS
I pour the sauce
On top of your sauce
But you say you want
Still more sauce
Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear
Isn't everything true?
Christ, what are patterns for!
Because that's what you told me
Glub glub (spoken by Sauce Drownee)
Translation: "Everything is true"
Once the boiler talks back
That is the end of lynching
Now you Americans just keep moving
To forget what's buried everywhere
Well, it's a thought
So please save it fax it xerox it
Well, there you go, you
Are right again as always:
It's not just a thought
It's an opinion poll
So please shimmy up and sit on it
Wave it damply in the polluted breeze
Wave it wave it wave it wave it wave it wave it wave it
Wave it damply in the polluted breeze
To forget what's buried everywhere
_________________________________________________
COMMITTED TO USING POST-CONSUMER WASTE
Answer
Quickly quickly
Before the disposall
Digests the compactor
On its way to the incinerator
That leads to the landfill
A soft turd of cafe grounds and veggie shreddings
Stinky up rear of recycling mod
Last week's trash
Labelled and weighed
Neatly stacked on the Concord
Guaranteed crash landing in Eritrea
Ah! Distribution problem solver!
You mention unusual tendencies unusually
Clobbering logic barfomatically
I sat in on the cafeteria slop
Stranded interface, tension, dry
Heaves with no antilock device
Death sex knocked em negative'em space
All alone am I, the Masturbator,
Ever since your goodbye, Skeeter
I Married My Therapist Instead
Married A Clock
Kindred symptoms laid out
Like Christmas blankets for the poor
Do you recognize my invisibility
A possible tour de farce, slid
Laughter past the maven nevermore
Swampy jokes the partially dedecorated
The Better World: There's always been Dread
4,000 Year-old Frozen People Dating Service
They find each other in the East Village
This Bustling Cultural Mecca
Handing out coupons to the homeless
Over the transom with it: progress
_________________________________________________
Manatee mi manatee
Sloppy, no telephone arock that cradle
Many lions make roar
My father's notebooks - they drown
Still I sit with burrito and Kathy Acker
A node of events: Enemies
Last time AIDS will scratch my heart out
Bicycling crazy-ass me,
At my age
Who else
"Mother!"
_________________________________________________
for Deacon Lunchbox, 1951-1992
I'm gonna take a walk
Through the carwash tonight
Gonna think my thoughts
Neath the flappin rubber straps
I'm gonna bang my head
On the whirling hoses
Tryin to figure out what
You'd think of this
O! Deacon! It's NY Springtime
Sweet li'l rushes of Georgia Swingtime
Bubble pop big
On a wilderness thought
Queer ol' Deacon
In your cigar bra
Catchin fire
In the carwash tonight
The bums found my soul
And it's only a quarter
Queer ol' Deacon
Drying in the water
_________________________________________________
It sucked itself into the coffin spasm
It was no beauty there
It was enforced tradition of emptiness
The newspaper of truth did not exist
A table with six learned peoples
Picking up the pay like any old worker
Reading the leftovers for the Monday night crowd
How was anybody to know?
Sure I sit on the ledge
And keep my feet in midair
You in your whiny highchairs
Think us as Disappeared
A thing or two perhaps like your eyes
Make It New fr chrissake it snaps
Your vision's elasticity cracks
Make It New Language no habla ingles
Nobody came to the Death of Poetry
Musta happened long long time ago
Musta have been forgotten
As you hand shovels out your funeral
I had a dream but who wouldn't
Casually tossing the modalities of Milton
Hey, amigos, let's go for it
Right out here in public
We, the starving people,
We dig for sustenance
_________________________________________________
We begin each SLAM! with a Disclaimer:
As Dr. Willie used to say,
We are gathered here today
because we are not gathered
somewhere else today, and
we don't know what we're doing
so you do - the Purpose of SLAM!
being to fill your hungry ears
with Nutritious Sound/Meaning Constructs,
Space Shots into Consciousness
known hereafter as Poems, and
not to provide a Last Toehold
for Dying Free Enterprise Fuck 'em
for a Buck'em Capitalism'em. We disdain
competition and its ally war
and are fighting for our lives
and the spinning
of poetry's cocoon of action
in your dailiness. We refuse
to meld the contradictions but
will always walk the razor
for your love. "The best poet
always loses" is no truism of SLAM!
but is something for you
to take home with you like an image
of a giant condor leering over
a salty rock. Yes, we must destroy
ourselves in the constant
reformation that is this very moment,
and propel you to write the poems
as the poets read them, urge you
to rate the judges as they trudge
to their solitary and lonely numbers,
and bid you dance or die between sets.
_________________________________________________
A radura
A radura symbol of
A radura symbol of
food treated with radiation
To make it safe
To make it longer-lasting
A radura
_________________________________________________
George Bush has a boyfriend
Everybody knows that
Bush has a boyfriend so what
Betcha never thought you'd catch me
Defending the presidency
Think again, Twin
Let's tiptoe out the bedroom
And run screaming into the Boardroom
Then we'll see who's really been
Really been
Who's been fuckin whom
It's you and me, Friend
We're the ones who always get it in the end
Ain't sophistication rude?
When you're in the nude to collude
To make love with an Idea
Hey! What's the idea?!
I will tell you
With my eyes closed
And lips body brushing whole body
One idea's about the same as another
Here in the Dark Land of
I have No Idea
Harumph.
(That was our All New National Anthem
We got it pared to point 2 second point
Nothin but a unsound-bitten
Place holder for patriotism
Like) please hold my place
I'll be back when freedom rings
The doorbell
I'll be back when patriotism is natural inclusive
Of the mix and match popularlization
Of a No War nation
Where we wheel in our wheel chairs everywhere
And sign poems in the language of the hand
That laughs like birds wing
Free Thought Time/Make Up Your Own Poem Space:
Dear people holding my place in line
I don't mean to be rude
I don't mean to be mean
I just mean to mean
And what I mean is
George Bush does have a boyfriend
But I'm still not going to vote for him
Because I'm voting for You for President!
I want you to run, not jog,
For the nearest available job
We are all President now because
No poem is complete until you read it
President Poetry! the contact sport,
Contact 50% of the work from Reader Voter
Dive into vitamin-o-packed package
Bombs bursting in air poems
Disguised water balloon voting booths
Outting the fires of Insanity
To rebegin lands' green regrowth
Not moss on my eye-yi-yi-lids, Pard
We are Mutual Bard
Connect living tissue
From our next exciting issue
Of Dry Crick Review
Whose waters run still and deep and spew
Even as the nation's asleep
A land of embattled cattlemen and cattlewomen
Finding uses for the sheep they've been given
To figure out how to enter heaven
When it's the land's a-savin
About which I'm a ravin
Pan the whole country.
Zoom in on table set with plenty:
275 million asleep in the Oval Living Room
Roll over, George --
You'll never have to sleep alone again
_________________________________________________
Dream of AG's arrival from
hospital at St. Mark's Poetry
Project New Years Marathon 1992
Ginsberg convertible cuts New Years curb little tear
In the eye corner yes whoosh whoosh crowd confetti
And heart yes big thump of the heart roar as sweet
Sweet smell of acceleration into smooth glide rollup
Of the all clear gyre and the tire the tire tire the tire
And the fire the tie and the fly that flies the eye's eye
Caroming planet to planet, it is the landing of the moon
Moon's eye eyes moon's moon blue convertible Ginsberg
Blinking tears back the past howling green turns blue 92
_________________________________________________
for Chicago
Chipped in the limestone
The artist signed it Trouble Was Here
Outside Wicker Park he used chunks of concrete,
Urban Fieldstone, to fence in his ramshack
His ramshackle turn buckle no fake the lake
Backyard, a design unimproved upon Robert Frost
(We call him Bob)
_________________________________________________
Not to Love
Not to Hate
Not to Understand
_________________________________________________
HAS THERE EVER BEEN ANYTHING BUT INFOTAINMENT?!
Purpose of headline is to sell the paper
Purpose of the anchor is to keep you from the zap
Best-seller found in a hotel drawer:
Miracle Man Whomps Apostle Upside Head
Read all about it!
Twixt thumba and afore fing a girl twirls
A tiny globe, we are shaking, which way
Is up anymore! Lugubrious comfort
Who can keep the Faith that insists you
Learn History instead of Become It,
A Giant Can opens,
heartless lover,
Making you quit the job that held it all together
(You equals seam of Can, holding Can closed.).
The world's foundation is quicksand
And is getting quicker. Out back at Le Brea, it's humans
On exhibition, hyperstacked moments of "Actual
Occurrence" brain pattern display: there, in amber,
La belle Amherst sans merci realizing
That fly buzzing by breaks all news
Like water bag readying birth! Light bulb pops on
On Sir Newton's skull, as grave Apple of Pure Reason
Rumbas air.
Sure, we know Chaucer ripped off Boccaccio,
But that didn't stop Braque and Picassio from cubing
That square, so now everyone can reverse screed
And check all sides simultaneously! Racism
Dies. I marry a hologram.
At midnight the cobbler's shop
Will become the fifth video store
In this town of 8200.
And just yesterday I was complaining
That resoling now costs more
Than buying a brand new pair of shoes.
_________________________________________________
from: HOW CHRISTOPHER CUCUMBER SAILED UP THE MISSISSLOPPI RIVER
We seed em li'l ol' Brownies theyuh
Diggin' arteries of yogurt up
Also strange dwelling yurts
Far's our blue eyes could be seein'
My men and me we were so hunnigry
We ate the worms right out they head
Almost as if they was one and same same
Civilization's sanctitty we brought it to 'em
Much was made of their terbacky
Poison love apples and fish fotta fly
We drank their youth and slugged 'em
It was a New World for them alright
Chilluns litterin the trailsides with footprints
I urged upon 'em a regal autocracy
We coulda done better I suppose
Exposing ourselves and God to 'em heathens
It was round bout midnight that we crept off
Taking the sweet yogurt, breaking the breads
Built little altars outen their boney bones
Proudly did we hail the banners emblazoning
It was centerfold time that we returned
I couldn't have expected as much attention as all that
It was a miserable miracle that we did it at all
Passed this way and took it over for laughs
Part II
The above tells the general, but I likes partickiler
What we did to the strangers who lived here before
Damn, the land was a beauty, I had my hands full
Dosin' out discipline mongst the brainless brats
Invented languages kept creeping like wind snakes
The three boats in the harbor like God had sent 'em
I'll never believe that it wasn't a mission
I discovered 'em - they was waiting for me
No shoes, no unnerwears, no socks no guns
They were lucky we found em as quick's we did
The mates wanted to slaughter 'em, I thought better
We had a sure stock of labor and they knew the land
Littler breezes swabbed the decks as we made ship
Departure, return, - shit we been there before
I took notes on everything, got em right here
I give you a reason and you throw it back
So long's we sail we gotta get sommers
Bring on the pipe and the bowl and bannaner
The law's in the seed - all people are equal
Ha. They'll believe anything as long as it's me
Crack me a cold one, shore up your ass
Radiance and ecstasy crawling like lice
Slobber the tortured Truth of the land ho's
Cut back 'er sails - let's discover some mo'
_________________________________________________
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT A POEM!
There's no bidness
In Po-bidness
No bidness
At all!!!!
That's the beauty of Beauty
Not bottled Absolut
In seductive Designer-designed container Container
But pouring gusher freely, absolutely
Eureka! I have found it!
And it's Absolutely Everything!
Drilling for purity in the muck
You happen across a little relay
A nugget of meaning is panned out of the Russian River
Formerly the Soviet Union River formerly the Russian River
Grabbing the lever
You settle in for the rest of your days
Right there at the switch
The rest of your days
As in the "sleep" or "nap"
Of your days
Because you rest in a nest of action
You are electric cocoon
Spark molecules explode from you
You are electric cocoon
Tiny words balloon from you
Become crusaders for you
Everything you say steps right up
And shakes hands
With those with whom
You are speaking
Your commingling conversation
Sets up camp and prepares a good dinner
For some strangers invited randomly
Words caressing
Everything swooning
Ei ei o
For after all
There is something after all
The Myth of the Other is Real
And Folks -
As folks folksily have it -
It's all there
And there is here
The great thing about language see
Is when you are just about ready to perform
Triple bypass surgery on the dictionary
You somehow figure out
You don't have to use an IV
Because IV is already in the dictionary
Perhaps you, the Reader
(That is if you are still listening)
Perhaps you, whoever you are, however you got here
I love you. You are thinking
Why does the dictionary need a triple
By now quadruple bypass operation?
BECAUSE MEANING HAS BEEN STRIPPED
FROM LANGUAGE BY MEAN-SPIRITED MEANINGLESSNESS MONGERS!
By Greed Blob Blot Demi-humans who wring the Neck of Meaning
As if it were a washcloth, and all we do
Is stand helplessly by as the Liquer of Understanding
Swirls steadily down the drain
Into the Maw of Moneyitis Midases
What's a bunch of tryin to change the world utopic up's the only direction free-spirited teenager poets sposed to do at this juncture?
Is there not an alternative, another party perhaps where one can go to think and play
Rather than drink and bray?
And I, personally, am not talking about such parties as the Reburpblican Dunkeys nor Demofrantic Oliphants
What I, personally am talking about
Is the fact that
I, personally, am
PISSED OFF AND MY FRIENDS ARE ALL CRAZY
AND WE, THE SPOKEN WORD SAVAGES, ARE RUNNING
DOWN EVERY STREET IN AMERICA
SHOUTING THE WORDS WHICH YOU NEVER HEAR
YOU ON TELEVISION HORIZONTAL HOLD
MUMBO "I JUST DON'T GET IT" TO
WORDS T-O REVOLUTIONIZE
MESS PLACE USA
!
Words of simple reminder, simply
TO DO SOMETHING BECAUSE WE KNOW INFINITIVE!
We know the "to" part!
We know the t-o "to" part because we are u-p t-o SOMETHING
We are up to here with the meaningless verbiage
Garbage dreck that has usurped sweet poetry!
So po is dead so we shall bury po
So we shall eat po at special reduced bargain basement rates
And we are the vegetables
Cannibal vegetarian vegetables
Carrots eating carrots with carrots
And onions eating onions with onions
We are motherfucking at harmony with the earth
Beacause we are fatherfucking at war
With the destroyers
We are the liberated imaginations of armies of individuals
We are soon to be seen on television
Turning our backs on television
As they roll in the camera with the magic zoom locus
That brings into absolute and horrible focus
The detail of the detail of the detail to choke us
The pseudoquasisemi aggrrrreeeed upon
Single freeze-frame image-reductor image
That has been boiler-plated down from the expansive
Breath life continual zap create reality
That used to be Word
That once was Beauty
The glory that was Po
The powership government has conveniently
Misplaced or forgotten completely
The meaning of t-o govern
The No Think No Thank Tankers refuse to truck in verbs
They think t-o d-o is a noun
And they make a big fuckin to do over it too!
While meanwhile of course
Nothing ever gets done
While meanwhile little boy walks down road
Creating image grapple that image remembers
That road image that
The road seems to be going somewhere
You go too
Follow the image to the allegory
Follow the metaphor to the myth
Here is the dictionary
Here is the noose
And here is the crossroads
The intersection of Dictionary and Noose
Either way you tie
Get all tied up in knots
Except for famous Untie Knot
I give you permission
I am exhilirated as you throw permission back at me
Permission does double back-life goosetstep flipoutover -
Permission is rated 10 by the Poetry Slam Dunk Judging Commission
I refuse to bunt
I will never slide my hand down the hickory
And half-hunker
To top-spin a slider into an image dying half-way t-o third
As the reader inches around a distant bag
To be moved into so-called scoring position
Because there are too many of because or leads to
The road leads to another road
The land is a map of itself
What is this - the industrialization of the single breath?
Once again, Love steps u-p t-o the plate
The Love Diner is now accepting reservations with an acceptable photo-id credit card and a quick phone verification of your Emotional Bank Account
Whoops. Sorry buddy, you are overdrawn
At the First National Heart of No Tax Return Insecurity Deposits Savings and All Alone
It's not only the only thing
It's not only the thing to do
It's only the only thing to do with the only thing
It's only alone because it's everything
Everything is everything
Deep in the thicket
The purples and blue
Are impenetrable
We are march marching along
On our search for a way
To get out of here
And you happen across a little relay
A nugget of meaning is panned out of the Russian River
Formerly the Soviet Union River formerly the Russian River
Some people watch snow all night on a box
As poets recycle definitions
As we sit around the campfire
Fire is our TV
The purples and blue
Are impenetrable
As a nugget of meaning
The boy continues down the road merrily
Adding adverbs at every step
Do we follow?
The purples and blue
Are impenetrable
Kill the poets and their lies
But never say kill the poems because poems never lie
I am a poor wayfarin stranger
A-travelin through this world of woe
Ain't nobody here who can help me
This is the only thing I know
Hey hey hey it's gonna be ok
We got God's cheerleaders on the sidelines
And Emily Dickinson wasn't writing for nothing
We gotcha papaya salads with iceberg and of course
We got a ten scale of grey fax machine
Ei ei o
Did you fall in love yet today?
Dial a number any number spout the love number
Roll over, o mighty whale, and go back to sleep
That's a great last line, Moby:
Roll over, o mighty whale and go to sleep
Where the whale is a metaphor
For all of us
Looking for the rest
Of us
Who haven't been born yet
Let's all take this same deep breath
Let's all take care
As we push a moral dilemma into crowded elevator
Going up down and up down up
And nobody ever gets off
The decision of birth from her body is solely and privately that of the woman herself
I'm looking for a job
While all around there's work that needs to be done
I'm sitting by the side of the long and dusty road
And I cry cry cry
As the television cameras continue to roll
Just me, my jaws quiverin,
Stammerin and yammerin
This is not a poem
_________________________________________________