Night funnels into ear -- crow
calls, first reappearance
of the year. 1996. March 10.
Here, we go loopty lou, carefully.
Snow with ice under, branches
heaving to the earth, trees look
down, shocked at what's going on.
Without my glasses, the soft world dances,
edges break, planes jump. At 48, tempo
accelerates. Striding purposefully through
the world, finding -- the world. And you
are in it, death's short step crows' call.
Smoke tendrils from enemy campfires
rise and drift in the distance. They speak:
Everything is closer,
love's body presses deeper,
here we go loopity lie.
_________________________________________________
all the prepositional advantages
wreak motion, secure moon
of and by would battle
for and to you
_________________________________________________
<< a long, long letter to a friend in Geneva >>
Title of poem
Body of poem
Tail of poem
Refrain from Poem
Poem Coda
Reprise
Surprise rereprise
Tale of Tailing Offa Poem
Cup of Tea apres poem
Neverending poem, Other poem, Another Poem,
That ol poem again
The poem
_________________________________________________
A New Instance of the Same Old Thing
The sound of wood breaks my brain
in twain
Adds up
To a good laugh
I must go -- the sky is open
You stay here and guard
My ever-loving body.
But
Before I go, one last song for Clarity
No. You sing it. I'll comb my hair,
and pretend not to hear you.
*
Meadowlark Poet, don't
You just love it!
Beauty doesn't lie --
Truth does.
That's the truth
In song, now --
You sing it. Don't
Change a beat, don't alter
A tone, don't move anything
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye.
*
Both of you clowns stand over here.
I've gotten some bad reports on you Bozos.
You didn't listen, you never learn,
You change things for no good reason.
So give me back the food. Even if
It's shit, deposit it. Get it out
Of your system. And when
You're empty, you're outta here.
*
The rain ruins the fountain.
It's all effect -- sunglasses?
And as for the delicate flowers,
They run for cover when they see us
Approach. Giddy and beloved, youth's
Refrain, what's a song without words?
A love without break?
A story without death?
A wind without ear?
(Refine this dynamic.
Bring it to an end.
Write your own damn poem.
I will love hearing it --
My air-conditioned grave!)
*
Familiar lips parted
By familiar tongue
But whose is whose
Tastes you everywhere
_________________________________________________
A Thing's Not Finished Till You Give It Away
You were sitting on your ass
My ass was sitting on you
Our tongues darting out like morays
Of the eel variety
Exploring the caverns of our teeth
Juicing the synapse, clobbering
The pronominal distinctors
I'm in love with you like at 18
When you told me how the show should be
Political and risky and funny
And I didn't know how and you had no power
Now you're the big CheezWhiz at a major record label
And I'm political and risky and funny in front of people every night
Swagging break down and exploring with word headlights
The way our tongues did the smoky dance
I'm in your lap again, Lover
Did it all for you
And I love your wife, too, Lover
And your children, I adore them
And I know I've got this cynical overbite
So you don't believe me, you'd like not to
But our toss in the hay is metaphysical now, Lover
We're in the Householder Phase, heading to the Monk
And my other lover, I told him all about you
And he loves you too, like totally
And yeah this must be heaven
Because its all Sunchronicity Street, you're having set him up
With his own label imprint, for Spoken Word
I'm rambling like the way our fingers lived their own
Electric rain sparking to the deep spot, the fragile hair,
The burn, read me in a wash of orgasm, Lover
Into your ear can you hear the tear
How we suffered like the workers we are for years
Nobody listening, licking stamps with tongues
Thinking of mouths and navels, doing mailings
Sorting and press release airplanes to the abyss
Till now we've become who we knew we would
Survived to an economy of wholeness
The deaths of our friends, a new ocean
And maybe I'll be on the Label, and I don't even care
I'm just working, not for the Happy Ending, Lover
But here, naked in your lap, you hard naked
We're still clothed enough for television
Cause we're always on now, it's cool,
We rule, to set the rules, explode them
What the whispers crescendo about
Is how it's never an ending, never-ending
And how it's never done till you give it away
_________________________________________________
for Larry Eigner
The tree siting
the birds coming
Biting
but what about the tree of water
On the floor
foot
Larry is no more
likely to write
what you say
then roll the sun than
stop
_________________________________________________
Now, as I was saying, where
Was I, where am I Something like a horse
With antlers flies by a plaid Something and
A cup of most delicately perfumed tea
But not a perfume, which implies sweetness, a depth
Of smell-pestering aroma. And some liquid more liquid
Than tea. The only form being the one where the tongue,
Working in concert with the lips, embraces the teeth to exhale
Actual vocables, etc, before cynicism rusts meaning.
_________________________________________________
After eliminating everything
What is left
Is the poem
Before
Poetry precedes language
Precedes life.
Can I go
To sleep now?
Without Boundary
No life. No time. No place.
No no no. Speak up
With your no no no.
_________________________________________________
You get old, you get enemies, you
love them the way you love your lovers,
which is to say, continually. Little lights
sparkle above the Con Ed tower -- music
from an alien orb kicking in telephone on
a leash, hello? hello? My kickstand holds
up the enterprise. It is 1996, after all. Think
I mean just think. The evolving tissue wanted
land lungs so I'll comply. What music knows,
leaves. As I plug away on everyone else's social
security, my children raise me to see the
importance of being breakfast. Buzz buzz!
the bullets have names, only upon explosion
they change, as everything changes, life
itself proclaiming, "Next!" Breathlessly,
the door opens, revealing the door -- Yours!
_________________________________________________
As soon as we've rebuilt it
Your capacity can be stretched into shape
I am proud of you and your lowered standards
We call it the Tolerance of the Gods
But what it really is is a lengthening of the excuses
Tender Carcass, what can you spray?
How many lives in disarray because of your insistence
_________________________________________________
Listen, before the alphabet were where
Could you start? A was hard,
A tent pushing itself apart to hold
Itself up. What is it like? asked Cricket
With No Legs, fiddling up a Concoction
Of Unlimited Delight. Ol Froggy knew better,
Better hook up a meal deal creel and a singsong
Racket. These symbioses never falter, but we'da
Got blisters by noon if we coulda. Thought. Had a
Thought or to think without benefit of Love
Symphony, written pre-alpha pre-beta I'm sure
Of nothing anymore. Clear throat, bite
Lip, prepare barrage of blank leaves.
Kill me, but first invent the letter of bold intent.
Astonish disturb seduce convince
All the comforts of home
Soon as we've rebuilt it
The capacity of stretched shape
The Tolerance of the Gods
The Lengthening of Excuses
Tender Carcass, what do you spray?
How many lives in disarray because of your clamoring
_________________________________________________
Top of the 8th, after
four fouled off Gentry, still
2 and 2 a plastic bag
blows over home plate, Dave
Cash of the Pirates steps
out of the box, steps
back in, after speeding the plastic
on its way
with his bat, fouls
two more off, then 3 & 2, then
infield bounce to the shortstop, out at first.
--Paul Blackburn
_________________________________________________
I am so embarrassed
But because I am in love
With you, Big Al, I
Will live in the blush
Thinking of us
Passing on the stairs
Brushing past the future
_________________________________________________
This poem is called "Morning." Spell it any way you want.
Thin sharp rays of early morning edge
Towards me, a cat flowing towards its prey
I shift
The pressure of the pillow against my back
Gives me pleasure when the dream
Won't let go. My lover pulls
Open the blue curtain, taking
On the full warmth of new dawn
She tells me come and look --
"It's the most beautiful sunrise! a gigabyte of colors!"
I watch the colors play over her, and reach
Down to adjust my morning hard-on...
She motions me to join her --
"Come and see, Lazyhead."
I stumble the sheet to the window
She takes my face in the light, directs my focus
From her to the morning outside
"Isn't it beautiful?" she asks
I see a person tossing in sleep on the sidewalk
The weathered blanket creased,
Folded into the shadow of the eave of the tobacco shop
Across the street. A bicycle cop pulls up,
Barks no lullaby, the body stirs. Is the voice a dream?
"Isn't it beautiful?" she repeats
"I don't know," I say I don't know
The cop nudges the sleeper with his night stick
As my lover grabs my hard-on and laughs
Water rushes through the walls of the apartment
Fantasy-busting, life-flowing, dust-kicking, mourning morning
My eyes locked on the homeless dreamer across the street
"What do you see?" she asks
"Not the same thing as you" I say
_________________________________________________
We lift the gravy and reach the top
The bandage on Artaud is lifted
And his head comes off too
To mourn the public in public.
Displayed. Jeered at. Superstition
Denied, Superperson blinking --
The body rises. The closure period
The unimaginable Creation fucking
The body of the Forbidden to life.
What's no legs out of nomad?
_________________________________________________
Hey morning
It's afternoon
Daisy's eleven soon
Hey night
It's morning's line
The day's eyes will shine
The birth of day
The rise of night
The double one's delight
A thoughtful penny
On eve of May
Night becomes the day
_________________________________________________
Epithalamion for Lisanne Dakota
To the Future with Dakota and Lisanne
But we've got the church, we've got the priest, and there's still a few moments before the feast
So upon this occasion if you're a poet (and I am)
You get called upon to find some words that jam
A gleaning of meaning and maybe some breathing in-betweening
That at best might say it all about that which cannot be said
A poem for a wedding is an Epithalamion
Having more than rhyme in common with an Onion
But whether it's for layers of significance, or shed a tear for innocence, the poem must be read
So hear these words try to trace where hearts live to the infinite iota, this:
Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today because it finally is today today, and no other.
We know because we are penguins on parade,
Partnered with the Snowflake Corps of the Nutcracker Ballet.
Yesterday you rushed round the corner of the revolving door and jug-handled
Smack into yourself, your twin.
Today it's the door of a church -- a door that leads everywhere.
Tomorrow's an open field, a grassy path -- hooray, you traded the cow for 3 beans!
Seeds that grow into an Interstate.
Nations erupt! Italy and Ireland
Have histories as intricate as your mate's DNA.... (This is what you think
About when you are married, while stirring the pasta e figole.)
The frontier towns of America rise up in the West!
Shimmering in dust, an abrupt beauty, this volcano you call home.
How extraordinary, the way the topaz sky follows every detail of the mahogany earth,
Like a couple touching at every part. The way parents must live the lesson which teaches itself,
The way children make sure you never forget.
But wait, this is now the Blessed Now, a cigar lights the candle.
The Past isn't going anywhere, and the Future is whatever we make of it.
A vast rumble is heard -- it is the heating system kicking on, the door opening to let the dog in,
A 3-pointer lacing the net, the church organ booming a commercial for angels.
It is the middle of winter, stillness melting on a frozen lake. It is December 29, 1996,
This day fixed forever between the rushing mobs of Nativity, and the brittle midnight
When the year comes up for renewal, alone and not so alone. Dearly Beloved, gathered in elation
To nod, laugh, cry and dance to music that hearts make when time goes on vacation.
And now, Epithalamion, dear Onion, get along, join the wedding. Let words of love bring
An end where love itself begins. Let ceremony fall silent. Let love's echo ring.
_________________________________________________
2/1/96, 10:30, PBS. A cummerbund-wrapped channel zapper
and the screen is white as snow which upon closer exam
ination is black-and-whitied from the heaving techno-whore
overdrama to most precious fried abstraction
of bliss -- rewind and start over. Ahem.
99.8% of all American homes have Cyclops in a Corner,
We are gathered here today because we no longer need to gather
anywhere outside our individually-canned livingrooms, networked,
overworked, worked. Our connection. The broadcast unites states,
sprinkles literature liberally into individual
abodes, as the road outside still flickers
the tongue that surrounds us. And when we are swallowed,
what do we become? LOUDER And when we are swallowed...
Objections need their own distribution system.
The next morning a child
Awakes refreshed in Omaha
Packs a pen in every pocket
Walks out into a new dawn
_________________________________________________
FOLLOWING THE THREAD TO THE TOOTH OF CRIME
(Or, Heaven's Knock Knock) (Knot a joke!)
Raggedy lace weaving itself into my bridal shroud
Dear lily heart
Carom the boingboing homeless tragedy whee salamander leash
Sleeping rough
Waking painfully shattering the shower curtain
Nonreferential is the sole
impossibility on its own line
All hung up on
Civilization's teacup demands the system contain revolution
Put the Chihuahua back in that teacup,
Young man! I mean, woman
The night of the iguana poem curls its tail, I mean tongue
I mean, you mean tongue
You!
Whose beautiful Nouns refuse to resist, so places, as in the Verb "places" as in simply leaves something somewhere and there it would be there it in fact is perfectly at home for generations. We do not evolve -- the air around us re-forms and we become in fact are that shape (first use of the word shape, second use of the word word I mean third)
((I mean, you mean third)
Or, we)
Yes, a ray of confusion in the overbearing glut of repression
My contusion or yours?
Whose parenthesis is this parenthesis in parenthesis? Ours,
Our tux. Our mandela. Our tofu cake. Our spurs. Might as well just say it: Our Noun
In the center, crashing down
The doughnut will not cannot the crown clown's frown silly subset
Inverted safety net
Pours through like silk milk on a mike a voice of choice -- psyche!
There's a fly in the g'bye, the neverending rending
Currently locatable in the crier tower, Empower
The bitter battle over the baby's rattling demand
For a hand to help and slap some sense into I needed that hat
To pull the hare from where from my chum the dumb crumb sits
Waiting for us to catch up with its intention
Which is not to mention
What I mentioned until -- still waiting?
Hating waiting? Creating a debating syntax
Might relax the cracks before the quake shakes
Whatever antique replays you'd relay today
I'll take it, just to give it back
Give it away
The dead giveaway
Of what you say
_________________________________________________
You lead the Perfect Life
This is what happens
Rocking the caucasian dawn
In a rickshaw past the OJ/Nicole slime
And all readings are slams now
Because you lead the Perfect Life
And I love you
_________________________________________________
For My Friends in San Francisco
It's a bbbird, a plane, it's poetry. Shadow
of a bird passing over a crowd demonstrating
we all grow old. Fly on! Our placards
are poems too, aiming voices at the International
Hotel. It is 1977. It is a basic human right.
Shelter. These actions so right
can't be contained, become history. A body
placing itself, step step, in the path
of power that kills. Kills itself.
We must accept our successes as what they
were. How lost can we be, inside
each other. So many heads we live in, to go on
living. Sun shines through moon, seasons
slide. To you, my friends, boots and hats, pants and
socks, shirts after shirts, as our dailiness dies.
_________________________________________________
from: Vale Diction, October 27, 1996
("Greetings, Participants/In this poetical experiment!")
Meanwhile, back at the Mouth,
(Mouth Almighty that is), I cycle daily up the Hudson
To toil at my humble desk beside Bill,
With Deirdre and Sekou and Jim, we who hammer
The phones with admonitions that Poetry Must Live!
And proceed to enter into contractual relations with poets
To create new discs of beauty, I can honestly
Scream "I do not understand!" we even call them records,
Though records are now extinct, "Words on Wheels!"
Gary who tours with product to lecture on how poetry
Resists productification as it considers its
Own existence utterly shattering the old with
Possibilities so grand I sneeze
"I must be allergic to capitalism," the poet said
To the Hit "Record" made by ancient bard with Beatle backup
MTV Buzz Clip where is Dr. Williams I feel faint
Only his soft white hands can pull me through now
Born over a good sign, over and over
And if it's Tuesday then Rap says wassup to the Poem
At Fez. And Sekou's and Maggie's new albums recreate
Head to the Future. My children no longer need a Father,
Which means I am required to be home every night
To be not needed, and I am, as sentry to love,
The all-seeing lighthouse to you're grounded.
_________________________________________________
"Compas", Spanish, means, in Flamenco terms, "time" or "metre". The compas
is dictated by the guitarist and/or the person doing the cantos ("song")
and the palmas ("clapping"). The basis of it all.
Oh if only the grain elevator could talk what tall tales might be heard!
I am snoozing on the roadside and you are the tire tracks.
and I hope I hope your hangover to be the mellow curve of the shadow of last night's exuberance
shaking booty's tail feather beating the dawn off
this City like a dog moon and watch sun poised for your arrival
_________________________________________________
To begin a story that's never been told, you must start at a place where nobody's been. luckily, none had ever been inside Jolene Murphy's skin except Jolene Murphy herself, thought Jolene Murphy as she began to settle her bulky body around Sam's old typewriter. Sam had left two days ago to buy a pack of cigarettes, and while Jolene had patiently waited for the old fart, enough was probably enough. She could no longer control herself. She sat down at the beloved Remington, and began banging like a drum ljfguiytq lkjherifuy 34kjhtriu14[598yurlkeng! Her tale, by God, wouldn't be like anyone else's tale! Hers would be completely random, just the way she felt. lkjhfoidfkjhiu y;eoghinum hefuh..
There was a knock was what she was writing but it didn't come out that way. Nothing ever comes out the way you think it, nobody's ever at the fuckin door. That's your tiny ear drilling, Jolene, that's the lectric guy or the dog-catcher but Sam Sam where are you Sam was all she thought, clumps of fingers jamming the keys.
_________________________________________________
Living is easy.
Green shoots show through snow haha!
Seed life. Reap more seeds.
Watch the watch watch. Who
Tells time knows what to say. Why
Everything grows old.
Eating breakfast words
Family cereal box
Conversation flakes
Help! I am stuck here
On the page in a haiku
Now I'm in you. Thanks.
Music was lonely,
Wanted to speak -- had no mouth.
A poem heard it.
Get out of my way!
I am flying but cannot control
Every hole in the sky.
_________________________________________________
Smooth like water, dipping my hand into him. Dry water. Not dry, more like molding itself around my fingers, his giving himself to me, I call him him, although he implies me that he male/female, the line, he says, between them, the place where they come together. I do not care, floating in him, I have come to accept him as my mind needs to, and he is fine with this, so he can be both sexes or, as he implies, all sexes. To me, he's him, he is my man, this being who gives meaning to my life, who is life itself.
To dip into him, the way he surrounds my hand, like a glove creating itself around me.
_________________________________________________
I am the Librarian, your hand
On the sheets
Of paper
The ink
of your fingers dry
Lines across a sea of tiny ferries
hewing the spirited oak
_________________________________________________
for Neeli Cheerkovski
Touch
Ouch!
Each!
Ach!
Ah!
_________________________________________________
Something someone said
Reminded me of something
You once said
You said to forget what everyone said
And just say what had to be said
You said it like an unfurling of your mind
Words catching air like sails
Blooming into action, pressing
On the listener like fingers, little guides
Screaming from the sides to take sides
To choose, to risk and lose and try again
A graphic example -- music unleashed
on a cool demonstrative willingness
_________________________________________________
The Land of Missed Opportunities
You won't be missed
In the Land of Missed Opportunities
There's no one gonna miss you there
So just go on with yourself
And get bitterer and whine
Set up your own shop
In the Land of Missed Ops
_________________________________________________
To clean the desk
to look for Larry's letters there
I love you, Larry
Maybe if I write the poem the desk will be clean
Oh. It's not. Oh
so what oh
_________________________________________________
Bird whistles worms dance
I am your little survivor, Baby.
The delicate penumbra of you
And your family's belief system
Rocks me like the sea, deep
And deadly. Who needs narcotics
When I can make up with you
Or wake up and see you and wake you
Beside me. Wake up wake up
The emergency bellows of heaven
Are crying for a quick Apocalypse
Over your dead body. I will wake you
Because the Jews 30 A.D. wrapped the dying
And when he said the magic poem, up rose
Ol Lazarus like the so-called brain-dead
For a last slab of ecstasy.
Plunking on the banjo with you
On my knee. Digging up the jar
We planted in Tennessee.
_________________________________________________
It is night. Simple light,
a cat on a line. Your body
twins to mine. I'd shout
but there is no need, your ear
nestling a walnut seashell.
Fragrant love, anticipation,
I am an elevator to whatever
floor you want to go to, say
"build," and I will scrape the sky
apart with your tongue, your
eye. Crazy love, how little
we know about the recesses
of the heart. The body goes this way
and that, the blood moves around
like a room. Will I walk out
to meet you, and when we meet
and turn into the room is there room
enough there for every memory
we insist to put there a dream. Your
tears or mine, whose dry first cries.
I know. I know nothing. I will put
you first in front of me, on top
of me, all round me. Surround a whisper
of your lip, a ship atop a bridge.
Who would put water in the riverbed?
All the beds, you here on my shoulder,
I hear on yours. There. A star
By any other sun. Hush love comes.
_________________________________________________
Mad Alex Presents at Biblio's: THE BIG ONE
"I'm all ears for Bob."
Prof. Steve Cannon
2 Hours Straight From Bob Holman's Mouth
Bob will read new work. He will read old work. He will read middle-aged work. Work, work work! That's all he seems to do. Now he's got two new jobs, besides his full-time job of being a poet: working for the new Spoken Word record label, MOUTH ALMIGHTY, and creating the poetry page for a new Internet server, iGUIDE. This reading takes place a week before his series, The United States of Poetry, premieres on PBS (Channel 13, Feb. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 10:30). There will be intermittent discussion, no rambling (psyche!), and selections from his new book, The Collect Call of the Wild (Henry Holt). Tea, coffee, etc. Nutritional verbal outpourings. Bob will honor audience requests. Ask for your favorites, or demand something you've never heard before. This is your chance to be alone with Bob and everybody else.
Biblio's
Writer's Retrospective Series
Thursday, January 25 6:30-8:30 Five Bucks
317 Church (one block S. of Canal, between Lispenard & Walker)
212-334-6990
_________________________________________________
Marriage -- It's a Dirty Little Secret
Elizabeth and I taxied down
to City Hall to get married
Last year my mother eloped
with Howard to Key West.
I hear through the grapevine
my brother Stu is set to marry
Anne whom I've never met.
My sister Amy married Jerry
at a cult ceremony in Kansas
along with 499 other couples.
My other brother Lewis and Steve
had their picture in the paper
as they waited in line to be the first
gay couple to legally conjoin in NYC.
_________________________________________________
One day where the sea ends
Land slithers out into the melting
Land ho! shouts the sea
As giggly block of night
Chomps mercilessly. What a battle!
Only a tiny glow
Fish replies, here comes a tiny
Glowfish, and a tiny
Glowfish, and the clouds slow up
And slower lower down with a gulp
Of now you don't see it now you
Do creamy and cool cool blue.
_________________________________________________
Morning
You are awake. Morning is happening
All around you birds sing. Like a dot
On a map you are part of Morning World,
You are in it. This is comforting, the sun
Entering, invited or not, the tide on the sand.
What else? Everything slowly returning,
Positioning, chairs and rugs and bedside tables.
Gray and ghosty, your eyes are unfocussed,
focus on nothing, drifting. Sleep leaves
like breath from someone dying.
The idea of getting up, out
Of bed, is a thought that crosses the river
On a raft. What you will do is this:
the big pants, the long rubber coat,
The hard red hat that covers your neck.
Step into the boots, slide down the pole
To the barking Dalmatian, hop aboard.
Off you go to fight the fires of morning.
_________________________________________________
The two sat
In opposite corners
And let their bodies
Drape cross the ring
Tragedy and deepest tragedy
Echoed back
Ran back and forth between them
An animal
A bloody tiger in a cage
The day beckons, so sleep into it.
Time is a rocket, let's watch it disappear.
Tiny bellows, when our lips meet
They never part.
I will slowly go through the racket, like a waffle.
The river is white
Curled in your yawn
Sleep into the beckoning day
It is night. Simple light,
a cat on a line. Your body
twins to mine. I'd shout
but there is no need, your ear
nestling a walnut seashell.
Fragrant love, anticipation,
I am an elevator to whatever
floor you want to go to, say
"build," and I will scrape the sky
apart with your tongue, your
eye. Crazy love, how little
we know about the recesses
of the heart. The body goes this way
and that, the blood moves around
like a room. Will I walk out
to meet you, and when we meet
and turn into the room is there room
enough there for every memory
we insist to put there a dream. Your
tears or mine, whose dry first cries.
I know. I know nothing. I will put
you first in front of me, on top
of me, all round me. Surround a whisper
of your lip, a ship atop a bridge.
Who would put water in the riverbed?
All the beds, you here on my shoulder,
I hear on yours. There. A star
By any other sun. Hush love comes.
_________________________________________________
Young chap in funny hat marches
Every street in Paris only to find
No corners.
Children sparkle the sidewalk awake
With piercing laughs, shaping negative space
To grow in, flash illuminating fully a fish
As poison, a store as a magazine, and the gray
Street, itself neverending, stars the river. He rues
The day, but it will be his forever, Lucky Pierre-
Style. Clocking, traversing
The city like a Lilliputian across a giant body --
So beautiful he cries. Time passes, there goes
Time! He waves, who is flying, he cannot see
It's who he will become because suddenly a carnival
And a blinding ray of light direct from The Tower,
Halting the accordion accordingly, boning the dream.
_________________________________________________
Didn't wake up this morning
Poem on my mind -- Life
Rhymes with Death. And one
Last Thing. To my children, I leave
And to my wife, a walk with you
Ahead as I slip into the horizon
At the outer fringe of love, voices
And a cloth covering the voices
Rises. Active yeast, walkin' in
A coffin, this funny funeral is
Brought to you by everything
That dropped you off surprised
In the midst of tubes in a room
With a single green light. The love
Given to me slides over my face
Like a sheet, the evil slides off
My feet like a sole. Now I lay me down
To sleep one more time watch me now hey.
_________________________________________________
On the verge of understanding
On the verge of a crash landing
On the verge of don't you mention
On the verge of nonintention
On the verge of blacking out and waking up another person
On the verge of starting fresh and making up another version
On the edge
On the other side of mourning
On the thought that dies a -borning
On the preacher's sentiment
And your lovers subtle hint
On the crossroads of the alley
And the interstate of folly
On the edge
Can you keep the pace forever stopping never changing horses in the middle of the stream of racing consciousness and dreams
Out their window with the window and your narrow blindered vision allows the light to fracture glass and pitch you back upon the grass
You're just passing through
Excuse me, are you through
Outta my way, I'm coming through
Now that you're through
How do you do
On the edge
On the verge of a discovery
On the verge of full recovery
On the verge of falling over
On the verge of growing older
On the verge of comprehension
On the verge of full retention
On the edge
There's nothing you can do but what you're doing when you're through with what you're doing then the one you face is you
So climb onto the ride of time the one that doesn't slow to climb the freefall total flight of intricacy
On the edge
On the edge's of the edge
On the verge of waking up
On the verge of making love
On the verge of of of of
_________________________________________________
--for Kathy Acker
Tender morning, diesel Gauloise
The thick hint of impossibility
Sweetly leaning from behind into
Possibility. A tender body aging,
Would the sun run the risk of burning
All paper blinds, slicing the siren
Into even shadows? Love rules,
The heart stops often if briefly
To check the mirror. Who is looking?
The blue becomes the work, the street
Curves back into a new name. I will
Never leave you, you are never the same.
Kept in a blank book, the reassurance
Of everything, settling down to dawn.
_________________________________________________
In Antarctica live King Penguins
Who patrol the borders of the seas.
Resigned, disgruntled, with bugs
In the tips of their oily feathers,
These once regal creatures have learned
What regal really means. The start
Of bitter, the tart of loss, their dives
Bungee and grope for substance,
A depth to depths. Get at political bop.
Segue the individual penguin IRS-wise,
A faux system in which God hollers "Dante!"
Who abruptly tosses his stylus down
To dance God's ministrations. I pulled
These crusty cases out of the docket holder:
The twelve per cent of US population
That is Black, the fringes around my lover's
Lovely cunt to sing the language that seduces
I will beat you up I will beat you
Up drum drum to grow old upon love
To curse in numerous languages to
Enumerate numerous to whip
Elephants over Alps to proclaim
Victory the triumph of science
Is history. Penguins rule!
In Antarctica live King Penguins
Who patrol the borders of the seas.
They busily adjudicate the line twixt
Indian Ocean and Pacific, the two Chinese
Seas, how far the nets' economy deeds
The shirr-run of cod. Now about that Retirement
Account -- the Pension Plan was put into
Mutuals, see, looking for the best return,
Spreading risk, demanding return, little
Risk, even invested in the company you work for
(Have retirement account from), so to do the best
To get the dividend and increase profit
They downsized you, I am sorry for irony.
I mean, sorry for everything. We know everything
Seeing that we watch TV constantly, "monitor
The monitor," I believe is the phrase, the truth is
We so busily watch we do not see
The two candidates are twin-headed
Monsters of the same faux system, capitalist
Body, which locks the whole thing in place. This
Is ok since you are rich and control the media which gives
Us shows like "Martin" and "Roseann" that delude
Things are basically ok. Are they? It is a question,
The Penguins answer "Aye aye," and I, I sign off here.
-- The Penguin Poet (cf. Poetic Penguins by Wm Boyd)
_________________________________________________
Open letter to Bob Hass, Poet Laureate
It is Monday again, the third one since we were to do a phone interview. This is the week prior to the big Water Shed Festival in Washington, there must be a tons of details to attend to, no doubt. But all the Poetry is keeping you from poetry. Meanwhile, here in New York all this poetry enflames me about you, your poetry, others', and I write to seek your permission to either 1. go public with your blowing off our interview 2. get you a list of specific questions which you could make specific responses to (email is great for this) or 3. just make up an interview like Ted B. did for John Cage.
How is Poetry Month going?
It's been a great success from my vantage point, allowing me to see all the other vantage points, from which its been, in general, somewhat less of a success. Still, for the first-ever National Poetry Month, for us as a nation, it was good, it was great.
Would you do it again?
Definitely, and try to improve it. too. A lot of new poems were written in April 96. You can quote me on that.
You say you would "improve" things. What would you "improve"?
What would you improve? I'd ask people what they would improve, and then I'd work towards improving those things. Probably some of the poems that were written could have been improved a little. Certainly enough things happened, and they weren't all perfect, and not enough people heard about them, to decide what was great, inspiring, and what about then could have used Sodom improvement. It was hard, with the Unabomber and Ron Brown's death right at the beginning of the month, we were hurt right there by these major events that we had no way of predicting. Still that piece in the New York Times Sunday Magazine that quoted me quoting William Carlos Williams, that piece Adrienne (Rich) used as a title and The United States of Poetry used between Ai and Besmilr Brigham, that was a high point. And Jonathan Galassi wrote a super response to a critic in the Village Voice.
Any Final words?
I thought our month was right up there with African History Month, Gay Pride Month, Women's Month, Hispanic Heritage Month (which actually spans two months). I think it was basically a pretty good month. Whoever's the next Poet Laureate, I hope they'll hang it there with this Month idea, and I'd urge them to keep April, for continuity's sake. Although it is true the warmer months could make for more outdoor activities, and as you know, being outdoors more is part of my agenda as the ecological Poet Laureate.
_________________________________________________
Tatters and chains
Jubilation and brains
The coming of the swwwwwwwweeet Apocalypse
words themselves sitting at the boulevard table
chatting people with you your mouth (mouth in air no bod)
A present of the present you present
Many sides of the same same side of the learning
Towards the word where virus is communication you
The pretender sweat droplets a tiny mustache mucilaged on
You she and he and all the other pronouns await breathlessly
Here at the cafe table on the boulevard where words speak
For themselves and you are about speaking and you are about to speak
The UFO's are landing and the squirrels hold acorns in their cheeks
A dog walks by announcing it is night
What were you about to say all sides your cubist world you
The making of sense and the replication of truth
All shoddy notions of a kiss
Meanwhile all over the cafe
Cluckers and nodders
Pinochle patrons and girls with bubbles for hair
Are reading with eyes and fingers the poem you wrote
That day when the words sat up and laughed
Cigar and wine, a hand slid under the table
The garcon said fagiiddabout it the check
Just remember the pourboire
As you drank deep of the day that then became night with dog
And lolled it on the tongue
The poem that wrote itself you called it
And then edited to The Poem That Writes Itself
As the words put arms carousingly around you
Drowning in the air and walking home to book
_________________________________________________
Peanut Butter Rice Cake:
Still the twilight's last gleaming
The molecules of Francis flip like a minnow in a gullet
How very Japanese, live food
Who is being eaten? Capitalism is cannibalism
Which is why I eat peanut butter on rice cakes
My friend Hank started me on it
Though there were no rice cakes then. This
Was rural Midwest, the early 60s. Toast
Was what he put it on, which shocked Ohioan breakfast
Haikus too we borrow from the Japanese
Re-form completely, steal em, no one cares
The air we wheeze with to hit the high
Cracking operatic indefensible g# of the Starry
Banana, which occasionally Hank would layer
Atop the peanut butter. If we couldn't sleep
He'd say Just lie real still and close
Your eyes and your body will rest and then, awake,
I'd have the best dreams
He'd use an old sock
On his records
A homemade turntable apparatus
With a top quality tone arm
Cartridge and stylus
Very hi-fi
Letting the revolution
Of the vinyl
Pull the dust
To the sock
A van de Graf generator in the barn up the hill
Beside the spot he'd build
His yurt, first yurt in all New Richmond
Laugh laugh laugh
And rub the nose of self-consciousness
Tracie Morris when winning Haiku Slam Champ-
ionship in 1993, San Francisco, told me
the syllables were what counted. Laugh laugh
laugh. Placing the poem
in season, she said, was solely a Japanese distinction. Laughing
Like with Hank, with Tracie, I ate the rice cake plain.
Sophisticated poet-talk: in Japanese the haikus are 17
characters. Characters are words. They should be words
In English, eh?
Seventeen words.
What's the difference
Between translation
and theft?
Embouchure, the three syllables of lip breath
Around a mouthpiece. A kiss. Till Eulenspiegal, Hank
on the edge of the ridge, horn poised, fist in bell,
sending the covered call cross the smoky mounts
I left New Richmond, I never returned, I became
a native New Yorker. Placed in season, it is 1996, first
stirrings of spring,
at the computer with the soft keys, Greenwich Village,
where Marilyn Trees told me, pronouncing the which,
I was headed. 1966, New Richmond. You were right, Marilyn.
In 1981, Bernadette and I did a mailing for the Poetry Project,
the first direct mail campaign at St. Marks, asking for funds.
I had a rubber stamp made up,
We stamped in red on an oblique this haiku by Paul Violi:
Haiku
This is a stickup
Give us money or your life
This is a haiku
The president of the Haiku Society wrote back enraged
He had circled the offensive words on the envelope
And declared, in red ink, This is not a haiku.
Used our No Stamp Necessary Postage Paid return envelope.
Did not enclose a check.
Was it the syllables, Mario? Or the lack of
Nature? Not PLACED in season? What is nature in New York anyway.
Give me your money or else is nature in New York
I would say, having lived here enough years that my
Tennessee-Kentucky-Ohio roots rarely show through.
Once a doctor, listening with his stethoscope,
Heard the Ohio River in my lungs. Hank and I lived there,
beside Route 52, beside the broad Ohio,
best friends. His science project was building
an embouchure, controlled by levers and pulleys, that regulated airflow and pressure
so the horn would never play a wrong note. He and I traveled back
to Harlan to visit Roxie Pope, my grandmother. The woman who raised my mother,
Therefore, grandmother. We interviewed her, slept in the same bed, men.
He built a harpsichord from a kit. We played Ping-Pong,
which was never anything but Gnip-Gnop to us,
in the basement, the long afternoons of adolescence..
Now you understand.
The monk, with pen, lies beneath the tree, lies waiting.
He is waiting the poem. He is waiting death. Which
will come first? Death is a poem, it is exactly 17 syllables and
it places you in the season. 1992.
Rochester, New York. American Sign Language
Literary Conference. Silent poetry, gestural poetry. I can't sign a word of ASL.
I write everything with a video camera. I am learning
"The Signed Poem as a Medium for Poetry." A phone call so noisy
it breaks the heart to hear
Of Hank's death. Cancer.
Cape Cod, 1974.
Hank had made outrageous, beautiful silk-screen posters
For the Wizard
of Oz I had adapted/directed
and across the top
my name
emblazoned as if
Orson Welles
Estranged for years by love and marriage:
His love for Cindy, as marvelous as he as she
he equated to be a requirement for marriage. The faith
of the agnostic. A moralistic turn which offended my hippie
iconoclasm. Karen and I were not allowed
to bed down in his house. What are you, my
mother? When I married Elizabeth,
Cindy and he sent us a riotous picnic basket.
His death came because
he told no one about the pain creeping
and the cancer had spread too far to
chemo with. Couldn't be bothered! His family, the model of
a family, had lost the father some years before, Prof. Alf Kuhn,
creator of a unified social sciences curriculum, who
defended me publicly, the atheist each preacher from Locust Corner Methodist Church
tried to convert. I loved him. His older brother, died in a classic autos' race wreck.
At a demonstration, Columbia 1970, he was a journalism student taking photos for
the college paper -- I thrust my hand over the lens, to protect fellow protesters
from being id'ed and charged. The shock of recognition.
The remaining brother lives in the old house by the river,
with Bobbie and their family, the yurt up the hill, generator in the barn.
Nina, the mother, I love her, she who cast Hank with his French horn and I with my bassoon
in a production of Behan's "The Hostage," Cincinnati,
Playhouse in the Park, 1964, my first theater.
A trip to hear Pete Seeger in concert, my first liberalism.
Trips to see "The Crucible" and "Beyond the Fringe," my
first taste of art and politics and intellectualism
I owe everything
Except Hank cannot accept
The fresh spring wind's kiss.
_________________________________________________
Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only
saints have listened; until the gigantic call lifted them
off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly,
kneeling and didn't notice at all:
so complete was their listening.
--Rilke
He's diving off the front of the stage!
You better bring the house lights up some,
The audience can't see him.
He's still screaming,
Screaming and dancing
And he's twirling the mic --
I dunno, should we turn off the mic?
I dunno, turn it up?
He's running around, he's twirling and
He's still like reading.
The book is in his hands, sort of, the people
Seem to like it, they're into it --
Maybe it's part of the act.
If it's part of the act he shoulda told us!
Now he's in the back of the house -- he's
Still going strong. This is pretty
Amazing. I've never seen anything
Like this! He's running out
Of the theater -- I can still hear him screaming
In the lobby. He's back in the house!
(What's he saying? -- It's something about
It sounds like "lake snore freedom"....
I dunno. "Breaking down reason"?)
Oh shit! Oh shit oh shit -- he's got a gun!
Christ! wait -- awww, it's just one of those pop guns.
Shoots like firecrackers or popcorn or --
What about the hat? Still wearing the hat.
Holy -- he's dying now, I mean he's acting like that,
Like he's dying. This is it for poetry in this house man,
I've had it.
He's just lying there.
The audience is wailing, they're keening
You know, like at a wake. No, I do not think
He's really dead. He's getting back up, see, I told
You -- it's all part of the act!
It's all part of the end of the world.
What am I, the guy's father?
Come here! Look at the monitor yourself
He's ditched the mic somewhere,
Should I go get the mic?
Look! oh my God -- he's, what's it called,
He's going up, he's levitating!
Holy shit! The roof, the roof is going up
Music is coming in
The crowd's up outta the chairs, man this is it
This is it I'm telling you --
Raising the fucking roof is what he's doing!
Now he's back on the stage with his poetry stuff
Yeah heh heh yeah,
He never left the stage
It's what his poem was about
I'm just saying what he's saying
Through the headset
Yeah, he's good
He's pretty good alright
But I could write something like that
Anybody could write something like that
_________________________________________________
Here is a poem I found on the inside cover of Russell Banks's RULE OF THE BONE while listening to Mark Knopfler sing "Golden Heart." It is called "The Pink Morning"
Time to wake up and die
In the pink morning
Leave your life like pushing back
From the dinner table unable to eat you
See the windowless window sun
Hauling ass round the corner
To witness more brilliant human activity
Your hand belongs to someone else
Naked would be cool
A bird you've never heard before
Starts in on a crosscut caw
Sticks cracked together, bones
Dangling from trees, nuts bursting
Wrong kind of trees
How did trees get here?
To hold the birds up, Stupid!
Stupid stupid! the pink morning cannot hold
You who is me
I who am dead
The sea is making progress, foaming in the sand
The evergreens dance fiery on the land
Sun's latent fury ascending above
Forwards and on words, forever our love
Last night was our last night, we both concur
Tomorrow's today and then the blur
I see you so clearly, mazel tov
Forwards and on words, forever our love
_________________________________________________
For here you are
Not you but everyone
_________________________________________________
On the back
of the cereal box
It says to be continued
The cat jumps
up on the breakfast table
The crooked painting beckons
Like your next lover
Light bulb pops
toaster crackles
phone just won't shut up
All over there is everything
While here sit you still
As the hole
in the metal eyepatch
Doctors wear on elastic bands
Round their foreheads
When I was five, I made Mom promise
To put a teeny tiny headstone on my grave
The easier to push it off
And come back to you
_________________________________________________
It's become somewhat fragile in this interior
Might we have some bestirring?
Now
Where were we
_________________________________________________
It was late
& I had sat down under a tree to rest
The breeze started up, very lightly
Cool on my skin, the hairs on my arm quivered
I was in the middle years of my life
& the sun was running a race with me
I was full of dreams, unrealized selves
& felt melancholic, of an even despair
I wrote myself a note
Actually, it was a recipe
For a pudding
I would never make
Nor taste
It was so 14th Century
It was a jewel, the pen flew
An enigma: how much sugar if any
& suddenly the present was everywhere
Youthful, florid, & apprised
I was a tourist, & the tree was my border guard
Soon the hated birds would be pecking the earth again
I would make the pudding!
I would make the pudding!
_________________________________________________
--for Sandra Vreeland
Today we moved. There are boxes
Everywhere with everything in them.
We are living on love and newspapers,
The children work the phones. The dog
And the cats are away, rescued from
Chaos. That is the way we like
It. Uh huh. My wife is a good woman
With many parts, none are in a box.
And yes in the olden tymes when none
was always singular and you were always
alive, I could sing simple songs in a key
that twirled the constellations, comb-
Inations that would lock in a guarantee.
What sea in yonder winder brakes?
The sand is being brought in, pail by pail.
I wish for a light and the bulb glows.
It is you, calming the world's mane,
Letting the wind whistle through
The clenched teeth of your eternal smile.
_________________________________________________
You've got that slam feel
That suicide reel
That bullet that's loaded with a bullet
The zeal unpeeled
Everything you've done is laid out a surface, a skin
And it's all being misinterpreted by those who
Use the waltz-imprinted linoleum as an interstate to traffic in
To move the cover to get over
Face the face
Space the space
Race the race
Just in case
I couldn't get back to you
The war's spring up here
Things are shitty out there
You have probably noticed
Things suck. It's awful.
I've got this scrambling world view
Let my whoosh rush over you like sneak creek
Crap image crash klondike
Of course I'll kick you off the mailing list
Of course I'll sculpt the mashed potatoes in your ear
Of course the potholes are visions of our history to be maintained
Of course everyone's on drugggie lugs
Fucketh thou , Beast Yeast
All over yr sad little world
_________________________________________________
In my ear you wanna leave
Whole cakes that must be decompressed
You suggest
(Or, you jest?)
Levels of Understanding as if you were somewhere
And I am not here with you because I do not
Blue is blue I would say to apple-bearing Snake
Because of poetry
You want huh? You(?) Want (?)
Me to understand there are levels of understanding I say
Excuse me I clear my throat say
I am nervous say you listen me say I talk now say Please Shuttup!
I (?) want (?) to understand
Maybe if you tell a little story
It will not break copyright and it is a right
Copy, right
Of what yr momma, what what
What a coin
What a coincidence that we both have mothers
Let's start right there
Where we started starting now
_________________________________________________
A brick of hope! a poem
Calls from the wall: stone cloud,
A home for the kiss of bullets.
They always miss! Our flesh
Is truth. We build walls
As the home for our poetry.
_________________________________________________
Listen. Listen close
What do you think it is, Hiroshima?
It is snow. Landing on earth
Flake after monstrous flake
Pounding the refrain with its beauty
And what is it saying?
Listen. Listen close
It's not saying a thing
It's covering the terrain
It's layering drifts, creating a new land above the land
That refers to the land but is not the land
That's where you come in, you and your suitcase
It's twelve o'clock midnight
Or noon as the case may be
Sweat across your forehead and a ton of burning thoughts
You, the busy one, with important things all lined up
Each of your thoughts opens a brand-new book
Machetes its own path through the brush
Lifts the big black boot and scoots through the snow covering what once was city, now is desert
What do you think it is, Hiroshima?
What would you say if someone told you they all existed
All your thoughts made real, world after world
Thoughts become soldiers and maids, parking lot attendants and risk arbitrageurs
Politicos and every day joes and josies, doers and don'ters,
That you and your suitcase are just one story twisting like a morning glory
Vine towards the sun (hold that sun), each story
Equal and democratic, erratic and filled with chance, water streaming
Through an intricate network of silver pipes, finding its way
Into the balloon of choice, the balloon of chance,
Filling the balloon like a parent at a birthday party, all eyes on you
You step into the line that has suddenly, effortlessly materialized before you,
A line drawn by a painter who forgot to go to sleep and painted a dream for you
A land of cups and brushes
Orange dingbats on a page of breeze
Filigrees of fancy light and heavy earth tones grinding your toes into topsoil
The body you wish you had you do, spread before you like a map
Everybody needs a body, a home base memory creation
The palette of love makes touch possible to set down your suitcase
And strip back all your thought lives into this tree bed where everything goes
Sudden blank dark
Listen, listen close
What do you think it is, Hiroshima?
The land itself is cracking under the relentless weight of its occupiers
As your thoughts arise from their dreams to replenish the storylines
The inventors struggling to keeping pace with the needs of the thieves who hustle grab Product from beneath the sleeping collector grasp of the citizenry
Needs springboarding advertisers keep their jobs because
The lawyers are all lined up to liberate you from the iron choke of your daily responsibility chart
And your children, all 1500 of them, counting past lives and onenight stands
Are sitting there with that hunger look and the snow piles sand and
Here's where the sun comes in, glowing gas and heat, a caldera in a universal volcano
And here's where the sun steps out, your dancing partner, your collar, your grandparents' last breath, the never-ending night of slight breeze
The story divides and twists back, the line curls and lays out in front of you a prescient shadow
Listen. Listen close.
What do you think it is, Hiroshima?
Yet the moonlight on the snow, and your suitcase getting heavier,
Will lead you back to the Land of Cups and Brushes, trust it,
Where you kiss each vegetable before you peel it and the stove is presteaming, hear honk,
Race after car, learn to ride bicycle, get driver's license, diploma
Call in to telephone repair service discover they haven't invented
The telephone yet. History sits in a corner reading a book
About how people used to sing together round the campfire at night
Form bands of homemade instruments, and the players become the music,
Their beings speak right through the instruments weaving storylines
Pushing music out like an orange dingbat slivered by a filigree of light
A moment of understanding clarity, things falling up into place, remarkable love vents
Then too many paths blocked by the soldiers as you turn back
Suitcase so heavy you can barely lift it
Your last child, emerging out of nowhere like a ghost, picks up the suitcase
And asks where you've been, what's wrong with you that you can't remember
Then you remember that it's not that you don't remember
It's the language that is different, you've got the facts you recall it all so clearly
Each of the stories and their inevitability and their dingbat filigree
If you could only speak the language of your children what you could tell them
The sun so bright and brilliant it must be midnight, and why doesn't the snow melt
Swirling all around the land heaving up like lava, exploding the eye of the sun
The eternal noon of Hiroshima on this day when the body you always return to isn't there
The expectant look on the face of your child carrying your suitcase
The body home disappeared, dematerialized like the invisible line that divides the world
Day from night, east from west and the ash that drifts like snow
Listen how the word silence breaks silence
Listen. Listen close.
_________________________________________________
Ten Things I Do Every Day 11/4/96
Gray typique Nueva York kinda fall day, coffee break!
Drill thoughts into tedium, scotch tape blister, Lunch!
Nap and roll, rile the tadpoles, tea,
Trembling ease, casual touch, ringa dinga dindin,
Flu shot, caboose cinch, boiled chocolate,
All dream all the time you're tuned too
_________________________________________________
Obliterating the subtle text a blot of ink from Godsquid
At the bottom of the page a footnote pounds a brute beat
Meaning a willow with a small stone that reads
"Here Lies Lies"
while the soul is convinced there's no such thing as soul
Only the word soul, read by a girl in pigtails and braces
The turtles need convincing
They keep wandering offffff
They may be slow but they go
and we stay waiting appointments with very important jails
At the bottom of the page a flame flamenco's jump-up
Let's go to the show
They are still playing the Death of Poetry
Even though nobody comes
Everybody's seen it
Even though the subtitles are retranslated
On a daily basis by a poet who actually has a paying job
Making these new poems so beautiful the bottom of the screen
_________________________________________________
all vowels, I urge you
the word you spoke of
the wheeled spoke you wrote of
the you you you of
now what what to word you
just what I heard you say you
thought the thought itself
an exhalation no explanation
necessitates another
wondered what
you'd say
so dear let's wheel
tear the fear a mere
torn rental tux redux
I found her gown
upon the ground
I coulda sworn
the song, the storm
was what she'd worn
will I will I wait till late
the frozen moment, memory's gate
until she is you with me
the flower's call questions consonants
Constantly
_________________________________________________
May I suggest a life of trembling ease
On the brink of breaking, the next human
You meet will be human, alien, all wrapped
Up in a blanket of admirable precaution and still
As a calf just born. Big nose and morning
Smells of intrepid swollen passion. Ahem.
Please take your seat next to the blackout
Triumphant swallow, you can eat like a horse
let's see you eat a horse! It's contagious,
Thinking about sidewalks and the day
So fraught with possibility, all spring
Scraps and a torch of brilliant precognition.
Dear Heart, I will conduct the autopsy.
Dear Heart, I will swoon over your terrible find.
The ache lasts a long time? Let me be the first
To hold your hand, and once over the finish line
You can finish the line, tear it up, and start over.
_________________________________________________
I useta think
Well let's start right there
I useta think
Now I don't know whata you'd calmly current brain activity
Or lack thereof but I can tell you this much
We used to but now we and o the other hand
The other hand -lordy -- how many other hands are there
I have enough hands to get em all on board I guess I'd guess
When you stand up, I'll sit down
It's kind of up and down
Kind of an up and down kind of up an down
One just doesn't anymore
Doesn't what you may well ask
Well asking does not necessitate an answer
However as the case may be I shall reply in kind
What was that you said?
_________________________________________________
better than Posterity! A little Now!
You see what you don't say, see,
Or, you say what you don't see.
Or, there are "languages in air (trees)
You do not see them (You are insects) and
Then you cannot speak the language anyway
so you Are stuck forever inside your head
Seeing most amazing Thing, of Danger to change
The whole world and you go : Mffla Prakalakashakatakalulu
You are not even Finnish yet
But see ing as how ev er y th ing
Changes so called changes into other things You
Cannot make a tape of it because the batteries are lost in this "alternate universe"
You have stirred up bee's hornet's and people are looking wisely
Or, as wisely as praying manti can look at you
The stick the walking stick the shelaily
Not even knowing how to spell shellayly
The door stopper is (or, becomes) the dictionary
Dictionary becomes (is) (you were born with dictionary as)
Your favorite word
because it is all words
God breathes slowly
God is a solitary salsero in the Bronx with a bottle of Don Q on the mantle
And all the poems are in the fireplace
Kindling and and the book of Love is propping the window open
Only the fire escape is broken so the fire does/does not pick one
Escape
So they open the refrigerator and there you are
Still waiting for them to understand the crucial
Mffla Prakalakashakatakalulu You forgot to die
Frozen so perfectly blued and life like (they think "Dead")
Luckily Madame Tussaud is right there to bid on your cryogenically preserved salsero voice
Singing about the "peck peck" of the pigeons
As if we all did that Pecking
We all all day just peck peck like the pigeons do do
Is that bourgeois enough for you
Everybody wants the comforts of the middle class but nobody can pay for them
Another deep political philosophical conundrum from the voice of Christy Turlington
wearing a bikini made of Kleenex speaking through Gertrude Stein's brain
Stuck on the prairie, the desert,
Stuck in the ocean, the river
Stuck on the subway, the token rider and her staff of mighty beings
I wouldn't be so sure about that, sir
The captain of the committee to form the institution clenched the dagger twixt his mustache hairs
And plunged like a safe
Out the seductive window
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If you wanna ask me what I'm thinking about
You better have the time to stick around
& I'm not talkin about a couple of minutes
What's on my mind is miles of years & you
So all I got to say about what I got to say
is
Let me at your ears
Let me at your mouth
Let me reciprocate your tongue
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What if They Gave a National Poetry Month and Nobody Came?
June, 1981, Ted Berrigan responds to the St. Marks Poetry Project Message Machine announcement that the Project is closed for the summer, the next reading is October.
The Poetry Project is closed.
But all over New York, poets
Are writing poems. What does
this mean?
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champagning texture, threat
Of existence. Ears fill with music substance,
Everything transmutating into physical
And simultaneously (is it time?) liquidesque.
Whatever...
Your own history plays back a note
At a time, just post-happening, back
To the normal that, of course, never
Was the invention of language.
Whatever...
Some kids did, they ran to the Patent-Office-with-
No-Name-Yet, and taught language quickly to everybody,
So now every time you say something, whatever,
You pay this guy a little something. Whatever.
It is the inside of Bill Gates's brain, egads, is
What, where all the art of the world exists
In contractual form. It is an underpopulated
Branch of Now, winds, a rocket launch, shards
Of you Own Private Alzheimer's blending
Into the muckraked surface critique. What you say,
Indeed, and whatever, and over, and eyetrack. Year by
Year, to hell with it, sloppy sloppy sloppy. You've
Heard of those things called books, go find you one
Or write it yourself. Whatever. Now stand alone,
there, and ask me what I'm doing? I sit on window
Sill so's not to have to pay usage on the word "chair,"
But I'm sure I still owe you the rent on everything
And everywhere. Whatever. They have people who tell
You these things, I'm sure. Too late for encyclopedists,
Too early to make it all up again. Just boss. Whatever. What
Followed by ever. Memories orbiting like Little Lulu's
Good and Bad Consciences. Would you like to see Frank?
He's laid out so nice. Yes, it was a terrible accident.
Are there ever accidents. But of course, I have them
All the time, I mean, today already, I am having
One right now, even (I am a dream). And to my daughters I leave
A songbird trill, and the waves of tree in childhood
Breeze. There by the swing, when you touch the tree touches the sky.
Go fly there in life with all your loves I'll never know.
_________________________________________________
I am patient as the windshield I look through
For you
Here Goes Nothing
>Sleep into the beckoning day
>
Sleep into me.
You, on the other hand--
are out of hand.
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A Word to the Wise
How'd you get so wise?
A Word to the Wise
Up
Running a Business on Roller Skates
(after Hopkins)
The key issue
Completely surrounds the heel
For a meal
Humanize the Face
Stared at long enough,
A pile of coats --
A school of shadows
Still After Basho
Frog jumps into night
Night envelops frog -- devel-
Ops indigestion
Winter
Feet of stone lift world
Upside I "under"stand down
Frozen silent beat
Internet Rag
Stuck in dumb chat group
When a bird hits the window
I am kissing screen
Prison
More drugs in than out
Licking sex, tossing salad
So much to learn here!
Parking Meter
I am a happy
Parking meter tickticktick
Feed me, Muthfukka
Brilliant Poem Shit
You say many great things
Luckily I remember nothing
Make them up myself
Whatever You Say, Bob
Once it was green air
Now it's hairy everywhere
I have no care to care
Principal Reason
I am in love with you
I want to rub feet in bed
Please invent beds
Because of You
Everything is you
Especially our children
Please pay the rent
Flickering words light
Shivery remembrances
You make up the rest
How to Fuck Up
Buying house in snow,
Quiet energy churns. Spring
Brings what I wonder.
Big Hound Moans
Red keens cross't the swamp
Stars slop underfoot. That's music.
You can smell it.
Inside Silence
Put the hat over the yawn
To make it dawn
To She
Who stands up
To hear the air
To speak the verb
That keeps spinning
going
To be
(when she is Alexx LaRosa)
Bob Holman sez pick one or more (or he will)
See 7 States from Rock City!
Grumpy
The American Way
You're either on the way
Or in the way
I'm on the way
So get outta my way
That's the way
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