First thing wake up
Look out window
Write poem beginning
"There is no window..."
So you think there is no light.
Light plays in a hollow place.
To face one face with so many legs,
Try them all in a single embrace.
This one's childish, this adultish,
Delicious, coltish... Smoothing
The forehead from sleep's foolish
Palette, waking up dancing together.
Wow. Yeah. C'mon Baby
Wake up and dance with me.
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A cold wind blows under the door
Who cares. Though I grow old, I care, carefully
Keeping beside me, as I do, a sore, light,
And a big slick lick. As much rumor as riddle, to
Wit, the sore is my body, the light is another soul
Down the brown hall, and the lick, the lick
That night we had, my Dear, trading diseases
And sperm, so thick and good, I call our special night
BLASTOFF, and I never come back, I am not here
You can't find me and no, I am not a victim
I did it all with my sex which is where the body parts
Come together and follow the nerves to home
But it is the sex that leads, slowly sipping
Your lips, dipping a tongue to your nipple
And all the slicing precious rings placed round
Through parts hooked and would not let up on me
A lurched remains, leather cracking to the pink
It was a mindfuckful of pink black and jerking wet
I was walking naked down the crowded street
Because you made me until I turned torrid
To find crowds of hands led by you until
I turned torrid and a button on your pants
Fell with agonizing slowness, a stiff light stiff
Dear sweet elegance mouth
And married too
The tiny sweat
Of teeth
Has marked me
Beyond the tats
And skin borrowed
Just to provide a layer
Of protection
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Her name
Was Dickstein
That's it
One name
Dickstein
The lawyer
She could do anything
She was Andy
Warhol's lawyer
I'm not getting tough
I'm just trying
To get my rights
That's why
I called her
Dickstein
Her name was
Dickstein
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The Birds are whispering
Tweets into my ears
Tweet tweet
Tweet tweet
I must be a Saint
St. All of a Sudden
What are they tweeting?
That is between
Me and the Birds
Now I am in The Birds
And they are in me
They are dive-bombing me
They seem no longer
To regard me as saint
And I seem to be running
As St. Alfred Lord Hitchcock
Screams out "Cut! Cut!"
However the Birds are not cutting
They are not whispering Tweets anymore either
They are slicing and diving
And I am running across the desert
Is it because I would not tell my own people
The secrets of the Birds?
Who are my people, anyway, I ponder
Now that I am a movie star
As I stumble on in the desert
Upon the answers I receive
Divine illumination and I see
Tiny insects swarm round the heads
Of the Birds that swarm round me
Tiny insects dive-bomb Birds
Birds dive-bomb me
I can no longer translate
Tweet tweet into Bzz bzz
Why do you hate me so
I wrote this in the movies
Even in the dark these thoughts
Do not stop dive-bombing
It is dark here
It is hard to write in the dark
It is hard to think in the dark
The bombing outside takes on a steady rhythm
As I pull down my mask, get runway clearance
And take off with my babies under my wings
Claws extended, bill open and screaming
Tweet tweet
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The subtlety of a tank on your toes
The subtlety of a tongue in your eye
The subtlety of rows of Death Row
Everything you do is your Last Thing
The subtlety of poetry searching
For war's meatafor
There is no image of war
So put on a human face
What is news
What is noise
Who knows what
Propaganda poetry employs
Chained to the anchor, ACT UP demonstrator
Fight AIDS, not Arabs
This is the news
Live on TV
Fags suck dick
Dykes lick labia
US out of Saudi Arabia
Dear Nation:
I resign as poetry editor because of the war
Signed,
Grace Schulman
Poets on every street corner
Hawking the real news
Demystification poetry posses
Read all about it
As subjective as Reality
As radical as Life
A map of the palm of your head
Disappearing into Madness Avenue
Hole in your head
Knifed meaning
Try piss-in-the-air bomb
(New nude variety)
Complete with nose camera
Dear Bob:
Sorry. Cannot SLAM Friday because of the war
Signed,
John Ashbery
Dear Bob:
Happy to read an Anti-war poem. All my poems are Anti-war Poems.
Goodbye.
Pedro Pietri
This has been brought to you by Peace
not the absence of war
FLASH: Cromagnon just whipped Austrilopithicus's ass!!!
Here we go again
No Winners War
No Thought War
No Shit War
No War
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I was just sitting down
When the world blew up
When the gun burped
When the bald guy's head blew off
And you can't usurp the poem
The power of the seemingly
The so-called forget-about-it meaningless
Beauty of beauty thing poem
That dashes the hopes of the dogmen
And lies in wait at supermarket checkout counters
And is broadcast so live it's skin
I was kissing my daughter when my heart
Pounded right out of my body
I was seeing double, the Future was only part
I was no longer panicked
The streets were red
Jazz was the anthem and a big box
Had enough lunch for the world
There was no more teaching and Who Cares
Was not a put down
Because you didn't have to care
Things cared for you
And guess what, I'm a bitter failure
And I feel pain and I'm happy baking
Flour into lives and a nutritious
Momentary collapse is all I ask for
So translate these whistles of spit
Whipping through the airless void
And bring back Life itself,
You, Missionary of Chaos and Joy
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for India Hixon
Invisible slips
Out of the Dictionary
I slip in
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Get in line to be bored
It's your turn now - bore on
Ah life in a rocking chair
Please get ex-lover to fix kitchen table
Wouldn't you rather be dead, dear
Such a pleasure that suicide is #1 Best seller
Ah to be in orbit for 3 months weightless and pissing in a straw
Then you have no country and they are selling your spaceship
Perhaps puppets for a fascinating hobby
More people talking about themselves
Please serve more sliced snore baloney on bread
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SPENDING MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY AS A CAMERA IN A NOSECONE OF A BOMB DROPPED ON BAGHDAD
Blessed am I, the Peacemaker
ending back black and white
Transmissions to all you Happy
Holidayers in homeland Big USA.
Yet us not be cynical, let us
Not mince - of the half million
Or so civil deaths in Iraq, not
A single face shall appear on time,
Primetime, anytime at all. Not very
Multicultural of us, I would say.
Crack your frozen eyes on collateral
Damage. No tears - I'm cross-haired
Acute and proud, down the chimney
With presents all the empty rooms.
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WHAT LOVE IS AND WHERE IT WENT
Being A Love Poem At The End Of The 20th Century, Yet Still Full Of Do, Move And I Mean It, Sans Cynicism, Nihilism, Or BS, Guaranteed Emphatic With 100% Validity, Fidelity, And I Don't Even Have To Tell You What Else, What It Is, Was And Shall Be, Because The Very Smell Of You, Inserted Here In The Lingoland Language Of Poetry's Essence Is Simply A Resonance Of Your Absolute Quintessence, And I As The Poet Or Perhaps Signified Herewith As "The Lover," Cannot Leave Well Enough Alone, It All Being Naught But A Metaphor For What Happens Every Night On Your Side Of The Bed, And In My Head, Where The Dream Is Realized, Where I Can Say Love And Signify In The Same Breath, And No Pretense, Because I'm Holding My Breath So Tight I Could Squeeze My Heart Out, Out Here, Where You Can See It And Comment On It, But What The Fuck, Thank God You Always Forgive My Hoopla Scruple Faux Pas, Like My Orgasmimg When You Walk In The Room, Like Sweating External Arteries And Picking Up Blindisms When You Look My Way, Like Falling On The Floor And Rolling On My Back Until I'm All-Fours Reversed, Tongue Out And Lolling, Letting Out With A Mighty "Woof Woof" As You Run By, Glancing Down As I Actually Utter Something Quite Intelligible, Like A "Like To Pet My Tummy?" Kind Of Thing, So Many Faux Pas I Realize I Pluralize, Now It's Faux Pases, But I Can't Stop, That's When I Realize That It's Ok Not To Have Anything To Say, To Just Lie There That Way, Somebody's Head On Somebody Else's Shoulder, And Hair Flowing Out And Over And Covering Like The Sea, Well, That's When I Think I Should Maybe Ahem Sing A Ring Do The Thing Thing, Let It Out With A Shout No Doubt About All Smell Sight Sound Of You, That's He That's She That's You That's Me That's We, As If The Other (You) Were Really The Real Me, No Duplicity, To Duplicate The City That Is, What? The Masterpiece Of Pre-rot? The Essence Of The Opposite Of The Ultimate In Construction? Realizing That We Walk, We Just Walk Into It, That We Keep On Moving Into It, Then, "Frontward, There!" "Get That Nose Prow Out There," For Even When You Move In A So-called Backward Direction Time Still Carries You Forward, And There, Suddenly, There It Is, The Notion That Time Carries Forward, And Love, What Time Carries Is Love, And That's Maybe Getting Closer But Maybe Not Because It Was Just A Thought I Had Alone One Night That Went From I Couldn't Imagine Your Being Here To I Couldn't Imagine Your Not Being Here, And That Was How It All Began
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You walk on stage.
Right.
Zap.
You walk on stage, there is no stage, it's just a stage you're going through, right? The whole world's a page. You turn it, you bend at the corner, you turn yourself in.
You turn yourself into your lover, like wow. Zip. Like now. Zap.
No sense.
Chapter 2: The Wandering Neandrathal
Censorship vs. editing, or what the cave paintings told my producer.
Did you ever notice how (walk to other side) you like certain things? But other things you do not?
Maybe this is a little bit too much to take in all at once. Maybe we should just start with (begin to bleed from mouth) the entire art industry. For what is to make but to make art, I mean money?
Dear Reader, the Cynical Author has been shot. Won't have to deal with cave paintings or producers anymore anymore.
It is not raining.
Chapter 3 Tra La La
Blithely aswat
All suns fall at once
Ah morning
Tangent videos
Clobber the socket
Nomo nomo
Rest in rip, Quip
Quandry out to dry
Leftover outtakes
! The pleasure was mine, ours really, and all at once. Thanks for the visit, the art, the goose. We'll be your way soon - watch for us!
Chapter 4
The sun also takes vacations.
Love on a quite kind of current (rushes across stage) rushes across stage. Ain't it sweet?
Frankly, I'll sing the Love Light for Lite Love
Frankly I'll sit down here [Do not sit own]
The sun? Did someone repeat a thought?
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try another year?