Yes, it's true, nearly two years after its publication, and despite the dissemination of forty or so copies among a few friends, family members, and strangers beating off the night, I have come to accept the fact that I write in such a powerfully dull way as to render this special class of improbable bibliophiliacs completely and utterly devastated to the point of unleashing their inner mute upon the very grains of sand upon which I stand. Now, I have not given this book away to just anybody with a cap size or a big gulp to spare, but only to those who pleaded, cajoled, and, if cool beans are a good source of protein, threatened my well-being for a personal copy of this collection of visceral sweat and tears, bloody for the twenty-five years it stewed in the making, usually a signed copy, and usually accompanied by some petty insolence that they loved poetry, or some such glad-handing gush as that.
The heartbreak of the silent rejection, notwithstanding, my book, The Silent Cull & Other Mechanical Ideas, Collected Poems 1980-2005 is not your usual book of poetry, but is four hundred pages of seething political arrest, and I use the word "political" and "arrest" in all their usual connotations plus a few more that I insist are both political and arrested within the pages themselves, banking on subtleties of style and insight that are only coming apparent to the ill-prepared general public in these, our own spectacular terror-driven chaotic times. Well-minced words are a swallower's delight, and this book rarely portrays paradise, or other romantic follies of the past or future tense of mankind, but in its own galloping way tackles the physics of time and thought itself.
But this blog entry is not about describing the book. It has been aptly described elsewhere.
Here I wish to fan myself with those few words of praise, or words of any kind that have wafted my way in the context of this inpenetrable book. The following paragraph was sent to me by a local artist, a young painter of some early renown, still in his late twenties, named James Coleman:
I really like the book man, I read it out loud to Christie at night when we go to bed, they say the baby can hear it and its good to read to him, but I dont know. I really love it man they say if you reach one person, blah blah blah, well thats me. I can sit on the roof and smoke a cigarette, lay in bed at night, damn i would even take it to the beach. It flows it pulsates, it moves me. Im not kissing your ass, I have no reason to. Just wanted to give you an honest opinion, and for whatever reason, it speaks to me. When I read it I feel like I did when I was in college smoking opium and reading boulbelaire or at the coffee shops reading dylan thomas, thinking I should start a fight. What I am trying to say is that at this point in my life your book works for me. Great job man, Im not a literary figure or even a good writer but just wanted to tell you. If I see you and I am drinking and tried to tell you all this, you would think I was full of shit.
What can I say? For all the silent pretenders haunting my crude ambitions, this single boast is just about the most stirring string of thoughts an old poet, fat on the failures of inertia, far past his gameface prime, could ever hope to absorb.
Thanks J...
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
WORLD OF MOUTH
I. Avenue of the Americas
Who killed the hippie prep post-paranoia
preamble program where kitchen prophets
diddled themselves to famous quotes,
humpback quotas, and honorable prices sucked off
the mainstream poisoned ingluttonous, proud to be American
pubic? Was it Delilah Day strutting around in Great Plains
of economic theory gone sour like toadstools anonymous some mediocre
Prince of Peace was fed right before bedtime,
incensed, begging for more and more frequently with gutter regards
to her thousand and one Iranian tales leaning on the elocutionist’s
thug-tight polish sausages still unkempt but at least
Europe wails on about tiny hotdog explosions
and the absence of Mr. Monroe’s lost doctrine Cuba defies, Afghanistan
survives.....oh say can you see Beirut as revelation in the flesh,
endangered pigeons dancing in the eyebrow of Khomeini like sweat on
a burning Bush left to shake down the nations,
floods of panic warriors taking to the hills to defend
k-rations and dead ideals—
no new ones available.
II. Safety First
Did every new model doff Costello Elvis eyewear, uranium flags
sewn by prisoners of groundhog conservatives composing
fly-away pinstripes and swearing off fashion
for fifteen full and pepsident minutes until the xeroxed
Andy Warhol coughed and made it ‘real raisin’
enough for all turds of all race rats and cat classes from Cleveland
to Willacoochee, from DuPont to Berkeley, from La Crosse to Corpus
Christi, from Vincennes to Window Rock, from Boise to Times
Beach, from the Columbia Pipeline stealing from the rich to give to the rich,
from dead sunglasses and bricklayer entry level pocket positions
to call on the name of our holy hardware to save us
from the Law of Spic and Span Soup Flies? Incorrigible navy buoyancy
tests failed to shock the 80’s into an alternative issue,
so a new Neo-Manic emerges for the year 1991, for a blast,
whipping out scab groin vexation, irritated fort
albino annoy boy sandles forked exchanging kickoff boot fingers
and skinhead scissors that touch the spine of every real American band, braids
for starch to scorch brotherhood hypocrisy with gangslang goulash ‘stop
on a nickel nuke.’ The cities are purple
now ripe with renaissance resistance, cool cocks for kingdom’s cum,
AIDS an irony blanket, a bingo butcher passed around like
a snooky smile baby kangaroo. NYC has pissed one more
rat factory cursed infection, harDCore Washington—
the murder capital of America where bloody black as night and black power
have merged into one long filthy look into the confusion coersive
power drips sloppily into the sludge bucket decency secretes as remnants
of thy will be done, thy will be done.…
III. Buckhead and the Symbolic Mode
Why did the FDR lock up all the yellow bodies he could smell a scandal
hidden beneath five thousand years of eating raw fish and turning
out sensual art for the masses to mourn? Was Huey Long really
the enemy of the old cripple or could Ezra Pound spell
“encyclopedia” in forty-three languages and conjure up images
sick and disgusting to Mussolini’s headwaiter, St. Elizabeth’s no
prison but just a stopping place to feed the whales,
hunter agony curling the breasts every beauty bounces beneath
the best literacy test available in nightowl zones, corporate zions
offering zany dough illusions, nimrod solutions,
virginity restoring money back operations while
the punks go off to college to crucify
everyone but themselves…who
killed off purposes? Who authorized
this moron-anarchy, capital publishing,
stay-at-home-buy-’em-in-the-bleachers Ted Turner America’s
Cup Runneth Over sold by Soho into Egyptian slavery, walk
don’t talk or stare-at-my-supple-body nurf axioms
anyway? Jack London and his klondyke
pussy widowers and northern territory aristocratic devotion
to the weak and petrified? Why do the rich get richer
and the poor get more numerous? Is this really a poem
or can this page be classified as the answer to the eternal
quiz show dilemma, do commercials really sell soap?
IV. Creative Loafing And Other Tax Deductible Weather Patterns
Boho is dead! Poetry is dead! Ditto the poets!
…their mouths are full of boiled salted peanuts, ears of cob-roasted corn
stuffed in auto-eroticistic voices in from mainland factories,
broken excuses the sparing questions stiff, pockets in handle—
carry on Jack Nimble, piss
your unfettered mind away in cheap detective stories about man and god and war,
piss your unbuttered ambition away to rewrite the bible for MTV, piss
your Nielsen numbers away and tarry with the Ramones
in marchfest thimble standards, refusing to party hardy
with Il Dulce and Sicky Wifebeater where Mentorism
is rampant in the minds of the mindless, dark ages, and neon cages,
John Cage, John Cave, Nick Cave, and no cave, living
for the bookstore; Henry Miller! my old dusty friend! the stomach’s
losing out and I can’t seem to borrow, the new craving for passion pit
panache prize yarns and cystic fibrosis cushions my latest act
of imaginary sedition beggars not worth the cotton I’m wearing,
but then I read a fortune cookie yesterday that said I would never
think another thought without first counting the cost
orgasm brings to the homeless who steal a glance at the White House, but
then we all can’t be married to our work & know better than they (the safe),
the passive worth of strangers who serve
and will be served on a silver platter plateau
than those who steal zero from itself. First silence, then the flood of agents,
then postmarked bodyguards for the worthy famous filibuster sleeves
populating the risk of record vinyl, oy
Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, hip Corso
“where have all the visions gone
long time America?…”
slip it in dear—
part it here, don’t forget the mustard, erase words
ugly pimplexiproblematicist in heavenly heat quacking
candid fear of fornication offering complications by proxy
or pale comparison to last night’s doubt
and the cruisers
who snatch their talk boxes
and pump them half-full to fool talent
scouts from the Bronx, pretty
pink tourists carrying the card & earring vendorships
laughing in high bank notes left in grandfather’s will be done
and attaché unions of the newly post-Kerouac free,
the wise and sexless. Author’s Note: What I mean is—
that special creature who sees neither male nor female,
nor considers the game itself a matter of faith.
V. Aging Where Exposed to Temporary Eye
across the sober horny husk of Jersey night
sour rhythms snap a vulgar breath in two on orders from my feet
and I recant the last mile of hard nail poetries—
there is no breeze catacombs offer
to return the gesture & who is there
to remind me of social stares? Finally the fix of friendship
buries its own in the same hole seabreeze whores love a token chance
in the midst of a crowd of strangers petrified green too cold to bark
enema grips or nothingness sores plucking their lungs
from fairy tales great and grim
left in our daily bread paychecks and variety packs
of wolves and fanny plantations, oh Ginsberg go home!
eat a damn spicy onion from Georgia, not the sweet one all
have been waiting for, for those days are tucked away for now¬—
our feet hang on a line
a quote we commit as our own salvationary process
no new innovations can caress
no new insights into kaddish are made available
by the tiny presses
that liken us as to their own,
furnaces well-stoked with mindworker autojerk crowds
lip their motives
and I bow in recognition yet move circulatory
on past open doors closed to drafts, because!I refuse to confer, blood…
blood, blood, blood cells attacking
hair fashion pugalists
hung out on a dare
missing major poet tripping Denver says Rothschild, his mammon-saint,
this holy August. I hitchhiked all the fucking way
to Big Apple Momma Sucka My Explanation cos I am punk
just to chat seriously about coping
with this emerging generation of wild-haired cats
hung out on a bet, not yours but you know who…yep
who took all our Jobs and spoke to us in whale! Holy granoli
Americo-Russo whale!
VI. I Am—Pronoun City
no new purposes in this wertimer clan
the old issues not stale enough to use
as newspaper headlining spunk
fishwrapper glorified shipwiper stunt & punt quarters
no new intellectualisms
junkies or jeepsters, clunkers or keepsters
death rates by opulent characters
hung out to lie cockstill but hardly sure
to sacred students
crab telephone users
resisting another strike against him and her
mayhem in fashion-wave restaurants
bills toppling yet another pay t.v. eros
rights to America banned
episodes fragile famous poet busy
tired removed costly insiders only
need apply
necessary credentials shaved & groomable beards know
who I’m complaining about
with American
Express card you baffle me
now that you knocked off a few salaried
positions, gave speeches to the adoring zealots
now you don’t have to but you do, so don’t
tell me you’ve done it all when all you’ve done is
crack parking zones with Chrysler
imperialism.
[ 1983, Washington DC ]
Who killed the hippie prep post-paranoia
preamble program where kitchen prophets
diddled themselves to famous quotes,
humpback quotas, and honorable prices sucked off
the mainstream poisoned ingluttonous, proud to be American
pubic? Was it Delilah Day strutting around in Great Plains
of economic theory gone sour like toadstools anonymous some mediocre
Prince of Peace was fed right before bedtime,
incensed, begging for more and more frequently with gutter regards
to her thousand and one Iranian tales leaning on the elocutionist’s
thug-tight polish sausages still unkempt but at least
Europe wails on about tiny hotdog explosions
and the absence of Mr. Monroe’s lost doctrine Cuba defies, Afghanistan
survives.....oh say can you see Beirut as revelation in the flesh,
endangered pigeons dancing in the eyebrow of Khomeini like sweat on
a burning Bush left to shake down the nations,
floods of panic warriors taking to the hills to defend
k-rations and dead ideals—
no new ones available.
II. Safety First
Did every new model doff Costello Elvis eyewear, uranium flags
sewn by prisoners of groundhog conservatives composing
fly-away pinstripes and swearing off fashion
for fifteen full and pepsident minutes until the xeroxed
Andy Warhol coughed and made it ‘real raisin’
enough for all turds of all race rats and cat classes from Cleveland
to Willacoochee, from DuPont to Berkeley, from La Crosse to Corpus
Christi, from Vincennes to Window Rock, from Boise to Times
Beach, from the Columbia Pipeline stealing from the rich to give to the rich,
from dead sunglasses and bricklayer entry level pocket positions
to call on the name of our holy hardware to save us
from the Law of Spic and Span Soup Flies? Incorrigible navy buoyancy
tests failed to shock the 80’s into an alternative issue,
so a new Neo-Manic emerges for the year 1991, for a blast,
whipping out scab groin vexation, irritated fort
albino annoy boy sandles forked exchanging kickoff boot fingers
and skinhead scissors that touch the spine of every real American band, braids
for starch to scorch brotherhood hypocrisy with gangslang goulash ‘stop
on a nickel nuke.’ The cities are purple
now ripe with renaissance resistance, cool cocks for kingdom’s cum,
AIDS an irony blanket, a bingo butcher passed around like
a snooky smile baby kangaroo. NYC has pissed one more
rat factory cursed infection, harDCore Washington—
the murder capital of America where bloody black as night and black power
have merged into one long filthy look into the confusion coersive
power drips sloppily into the sludge bucket decency secretes as remnants
of thy will be done, thy will be done.…
III. Buckhead and the Symbolic Mode
Why did the FDR lock up all the yellow bodies he could smell a scandal
hidden beneath five thousand years of eating raw fish and turning
out sensual art for the masses to mourn? Was Huey Long really
the enemy of the old cripple or could Ezra Pound spell
“encyclopedia” in forty-three languages and conjure up images
sick and disgusting to Mussolini’s headwaiter, St. Elizabeth’s no
prison but just a stopping place to feed the whales,
hunter agony curling the breasts every beauty bounces beneath
the best literacy test available in nightowl zones, corporate zions
offering zany dough illusions, nimrod solutions,
virginity restoring money back operations while
the punks go off to college to crucify
everyone but themselves…who
killed off purposes? Who authorized
this moron-anarchy, capital publishing,
stay-at-home-buy-’em-in-the-bleachers Ted Turner America’s
Cup Runneth Over sold by Soho into Egyptian slavery, walk
don’t talk or stare-at-my-supple-body nurf axioms
anyway? Jack London and his klondyke
pussy widowers and northern territory aristocratic devotion
to the weak and petrified? Why do the rich get richer
and the poor get more numerous? Is this really a poem
or can this page be classified as the answer to the eternal
quiz show dilemma, do commercials really sell soap?
IV. Creative Loafing And Other Tax Deductible Weather Patterns
Boho is dead! Poetry is dead! Ditto the poets!
…their mouths are full of boiled salted peanuts, ears of cob-roasted corn
stuffed in auto-eroticistic voices in from mainland factories,
broken excuses the sparing questions stiff, pockets in handle—
carry on Jack Nimble, piss
your unfettered mind away in cheap detective stories about man and god and war,
piss your unbuttered ambition away to rewrite the bible for MTV, piss
your Nielsen numbers away and tarry with the Ramones
in marchfest thimble standards, refusing to party hardy
with Il Dulce and Sicky Wifebeater where Mentorism
is rampant in the minds of the mindless, dark ages, and neon cages,
John Cage, John Cave, Nick Cave, and no cave, living
for the bookstore; Henry Miller! my old dusty friend! the stomach’s
losing out and I can’t seem to borrow, the new craving for passion pit
panache prize yarns and cystic fibrosis cushions my latest act
of imaginary sedition beggars not worth the cotton I’m wearing,
but then I read a fortune cookie yesterday that said I would never
think another thought without first counting the cost
orgasm brings to the homeless who steal a glance at the White House, but
then we all can’t be married to our work & know better than they (the safe),
the passive worth of strangers who serve
and will be served on a silver platter plateau
than those who steal zero from itself. First silence, then the flood of agents,
then postmarked bodyguards for the worthy famous filibuster sleeves
populating the risk of record vinyl, oy
Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, hip Corso
“where have all the visions gone
long time America?…”
slip it in dear—
part it here, don’t forget the mustard, erase words
ugly pimplexiproblematicist in heavenly heat quacking
candid fear of fornication offering complications by proxy
or pale comparison to last night’s doubt
and the cruisers
who snatch their talk boxes
and pump them half-full to fool talent
scouts from the Bronx, pretty
pink tourists carrying the card & earring vendorships
laughing in high bank notes left in grandfather’s will be done
and attaché unions of the newly post-Kerouac free,
the wise and sexless. Author’s Note: What I mean is—
that special creature who sees neither male nor female,
nor considers the game itself a matter of faith.
V. Aging Where Exposed to Temporary Eye
across the sober horny husk of Jersey night
sour rhythms snap a vulgar breath in two on orders from my feet
and I recant the last mile of hard nail poetries—
there is no breeze catacombs offer
to return the gesture & who is there
to remind me of social stares? Finally the fix of friendship
buries its own in the same hole seabreeze whores love a token chance
in the midst of a crowd of strangers petrified green too cold to bark
enema grips or nothingness sores plucking their lungs
from fairy tales great and grim
left in our daily bread paychecks and variety packs
of wolves and fanny plantations, oh Ginsberg go home!
eat a damn spicy onion from Georgia, not the sweet one all
have been waiting for, for those days are tucked away for now¬—
our feet hang on a line
a quote we commit as our own salvationary process
no new innovations can caress
no new insights into kaddish are made available
by the tiny presses
that liken us as to their own,
furnaces well-stoked with mindworker autojerk crowds
lip their motives
and I bow in recognition yet move circulatory
on past open doors closed to drafts, because!I refuse to confer, blood…
blood, blood, blood cells attacking
hair fashion pugalists
hung out on a dare
missing major poet tripping Denver says Rothschild, his mammon-saint,
this holy August. I hitchhiked all the fucking way
to Big Apple Momma Sucka My Explanation cos I am punk
just to chat seriously about coping
with this emerging generation of wild-haired cats
hung out on a bet, not yours but you know who…yep
who took all our Jobs and spoke to us in whale! Holy granoli
Americo-Russo whale!
VI. I Am—Pronoun City
no new purposes in this wertimer clan
the old issues not stale enough to use
as newspaper headlining spunk
fishwrapper glorified shipwiper stunt & punt quarters
no new intellectualisms
junkies or jeepsters, clunkers or keepsters
death rates by opulent characters
hung out to lie cockstill but hardly sure
to sacred students
crab telephone users
resisting another strike against him and her
mayhem in fashion-wave restaurants
bills toppling yet another pay t.v. eros
rights to America banned
episodes fragile famous poet busy
tired removed costly insiders only
need apply
necessary credentials shaved & groomable beards know
who I’m complaining about
with American
Express card you baffle me
now that you knocked off a few salaried
positions, gave speeches to the adoring zealots
now you don’t have to but you do, so don’t
tell me you’ve done it all when all you’ve done is
crack parking zones with Chrysler
imperialism.
[ 1983, Washington DC ]
Monday, October 08, 2007
SCANDINAVIAN JAZZ
"There are some people one loves best,
and others whom one would almost always
rather have as companions."
—Henrik Ibsen
Throw away that awful ticket stub I said. None of us
here need that can of starch. We know by heart
the meaning of fuss. Baby and the Pacifiers
are playing a gig at the Bistro to start.
Roaring inclinations.
Singsoldier.
We worked out long wars, healing our oyster eyes
with the sweaty breath of evergreen night.
That Lebanon dirt. Manic contours
agreeable to random odor,
magnificently kite.
We knew we couldn't write about
it so we danced.
The proud crystalline swans of our age,
obscuring shades,
sex and stereotype,
wars and rumors of wars,
strikes, balks, and numb nuts,
say hello every sort of way,
wrapping like a nursing maiden’s delicate hands
around the seat of our desires,
our strategic pyres,
in place of inspirational jeep: glances
just aren't enough glands.
II.
She handled
my buttocks and its karma,
so tight and competitively elite,
as I cracked the bloody march.
New Wave Morals.
Immediately I loved her, pledged
a plowboy's pitch acoss the pink passage
into backyard frenzies. I mulled eloquently
to myself, caught in a whim of fashion,
if I might ought caress the knotted warchest
she portrayed. Her boyfriend's face
I don't recall.
Baby, the pacifiers,
and our wormlike mirrors
responding like thoroughbred
strangers caught in the loosening moods of dawn
were mere constructions of belief.
I worried about my nature to be
direct and innocent. It drove
me to silence.
We never traded namesakes alive.
My boldness froze in cockmassacre
and toes, I twisted & smiled
acres and acres of wilted smiles
planted deeply tapping
her punk nerves sponsoring
my soaring terrain.
Her ravishionary spherical absolutes
aroused my superior being,
those victory moon bavarian breasts
(honorarium of the beasts...)
provoking the shape of things and substance,
my superior being shy,
companionless.
I danced. She rubbed her baubled paws
again along the fine tight lines my crib
drew against hocus evening shadows,
showing there can be no pretense
denying afresh the vital statistic,
no silly discourteous cocktease
stranding scalps and flirting
humor, hunger, hoary
religions that the idle
refuse to prosper.
We easily could have
made each other blank members
of a riper version, gambling
on last night's cruise into sane
Richard Hell's visitation,
a vanity cruise highlighting
winning girls wearing nothing
but furs,
idols and onan. We became the idea
and did.
And I felt our mutual flash,
hornspun and cursive,
realizing the mediocrity
a poem of words
offers—splash—
beginning of the world
tigers and baboons
thunderbirds and the dung beetle
biting off more than a scientist
can chew,
open clash,
the meaning of her friendship ritual.
She and He
Rocking to and from
in pop style punctuated punk
continuing to
rock to and from
her unannounceable tokens
sheer succulence
well pronounced
shocking my demands on reality,
to and from, rubbing
my arm, now as important
as any zone
I could hope oversimplifyingly
would release me. Graceful
dancer bombardier
balancing virtue
and free baggage. Likelier
choices bait our laughter.
Especially in a gig
of young punk artists
rocking.
She felt herself.
Above the arms of her date.
The three of us knew the heathen pains
of fate which haunt
heaven and the pawnbroker's
pavilion. And
white hawkish sweaters
bulging through nervous nicotined
smoky husks
in the Bistro late hours.
and others whom one would almost always
rather have as companions."
—Henrik Ibsen
Throw away that awful ticket stub I said. None of us
here need that can of starch. We know by heart
the meaning of fuss. Baby and the Pacifiers
are playing a gig at the Bistro to start.
Roaring inclinations.
Singsoldier.
We worked out long wars, healing our oyster eyes
with the sweaty breath of evergreen night.
That Lebanon dirt. Manic contours
agreeable to random odor,
magnificently kite.
We knew we couldn't write about
it so we danced.
The proud crystalline swans of our age,
obscuring shades,
sex and stereotype,
wars and rumors of wars,
strikes, balks, and numb nuts,
say hello every sort of way,
wrapping like a nursing maiden’s delicate hands
around the seat of our desires,
our strategic pyres,
in place of inspirational jeep: glances
just aren't enough glands.
II.
She handled
my buttocks and its karma,
so tight and competitively elite,
as I cracked the bloody march.
New Wave Morals.
Immediately I loved her, pledged
a plowboy's pitch acoss the pink passage
into backyard frenzies. I mulled eloquently
to myself, caught in a whim of fashion,
if I might ought caress the knotted warchest
she portrayed. Her boyfriend's face
I don't recall.
Baby, the pacifiers,
and our wormlike mirrors
responding like thoroughbred
strangers caught in the loosening moods of dawn
were mere constructions of belief.
I worried about my nature to be
direct and innocent. It drove
me to silence.
We never traded namesakes alive.
My boldness froze in cockmassacre
and toes, I twisted & smiled
acres and acres of wilted smiles
planted deeply tapping
her punk nerves sponsoring
my soaring terrain.
Her ravishionary spherical absolutes
aroused my superior being,
those victory moon bavarian breasts
(honorarium of the beasts...)
provoking the shape of things and substance,
my superior being shy,
companionless.
I danced. She rubbed her baubled paws
again along the fine tight lines my crib
drew against hocus evening shadows,
showing there can be no pretense
denying afresh the vital statistic,
no silly discourteous cocktease
stranding scalps and flirting
humor, hunger, hoary
religions that the idle
refuse to prosper.
We easily could have
made each other blank members
of a riper version, gambling
on last night's cruise into sane
Richard Hell's visitation,
a vanity cruise highlighting
winning girls wearing nothing
but furs,
idols and onan. We became the idea
and did.
And I felt our mutual flash,
hornspun and cursive,
realizing the mediocrity
a poem of words
offers—splash—
beginning of the world
tigers and baboons
thunderbirds and the dung beetle
biting off more than a scientist
can chew,
open clash,
the meaning of her friendship ritual.
She and He
Rocking to and from
in pop style punctuated punk
continuing to
rock to and from
her unannounceable tokens
sheer succulence
well pronounced
shocking my demands on reality,
to and from, rubbing
my arm, now as important
as any zone
I could hope oversimplifyingly
would release me. Graceful
dancer bombardier
balancing virtue
and free baggage. Likelier
choices bait our laughter.
Especially in a gig
of young punk artists
rocking.
She felt herself.
Above the arms of her date.
The three of us knew the heathen pains
of fate which haunt
heaven and the pawnbroker's
pavilion. And
white hawkish sweaters
bulging through nervous nicotined
smoky husks
in the Bistro late hours.
EVIDENCE OF NEW YORK ALREADY
A form of rural perfection, Avondale
Estates, Georgia, hitching a ride to meet Ginsberg,
the Big Apple gizzard, it’s a scorcher, my balls sweaty,
hair down to my chin blondie, no Avondale mistakes,
no women to crack my halo or burn their bras,
hugging, sucking, tucking rugged red clay
construction sites bare to eyes without scruples,
New Worship cornerstone erections in latter days, oh thanking
nine heavens for seven elevens and the beliefs of Hippocrates,
and a beveled glass art-factory, original, vaginal, marginal cool
Georgia State Highway Patrol office, town of Avondale
protected from itself by gunpowder deterrents, thanking
God of Billions, the courtyard sports manger silver lining
flagpole, vacant of colored cloth, yet commands slaves
of the Texaco Star, guts holding down the fort,
stocks and bonds and spies, oh thanking
the Amoco Boy—our unwilted concern
while I beg to swallow cold fountain water kept
safe in your keeping—heard on the radio, the Heat God
killed eight suffering unair-conditioned zekes in the state
of the Cracker last week. Then I left the road one more
time before setting sail with my nearer to thee Eagle Scout thumb.
Left to get a Big Mac and dry fish sandwich. Left
me with fifteen cents and only 873 miles
to Manhattan where I hoped to share my book
of dead poems with a famous asshole.
[1983, Atlanta, GA ]
Estates, Georgia, hitching a ride to meet Ginsberg,
the Big Apple gizzard, it’s a scorcher, my balls sweaty,
hair down to my chin blondie, no Avondale mistakes,
no women to crack my halo or burn their bras,
hugging, sucking, tucking rugged red clay
construction sites bare to eyes without scruples,
New Worship cornerstone erections in latter days, oh thanking
nine heavens for seven elevens and the beliefs of Hippocrates,
and a beveled glass art-factory, original, vaginal, marginal cool
Georgia State Highway Patrol office, town of Avondale
protected from itself by gunpowder deterrents, thanking
God of Billions, the courtyard sports manger silver lining
flagpole, vacant of colored cloth, yet commands slaves
of the Texaco Star, guts holding down the fort,
stocks and bonds and spies, oh thanking
the Amoco Boy—our unwilted concern
while I beg to swallow cold fountain water kept
safe in your keeping—heard on the radio, the Heat God
killed eight suffering unair-conditioned zekes in the state
of the Cracker last week. Then I left the road one more
time before setting sail with my nearer to thee Eagle Scout thumb.
Left to get a Big Mac and dry fish sandwich. Left
me with fifteen cents and only 873 miles
to Manhattan where I hoped to share my book
of dead poems with a famous asshole.
[1983, Atlanta, GA ]
YIKES! MY TAROT CARD READING
You are The Hierophant
Divine Wisdom. Manifestation. Explanation. Teaching. All things relating to education, patience, help from superiors. The Hierophant is often considered to be a Guardian Angel.
The Hierophant's purpose is to bring the spiritual down to Earth. Where the High Priestess between her two pillars deals with realms beyond this Earth, the Hierophant (or High Priest) deals with worldly problems. He is well suited to do this because he strives to create harmony and peace in the midst of a crisis. The Hierophant's only problem is that he can be stubborn and hidebound. At his best, he is wise and soothing, at his worst, he is an unbending traditionalist.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
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