57 GAZILLION LUNG-TONGUE VARIETIES
for Bob Carroll
Hey, US!
Get up!
Stand up!
Pay up
The Bill of Writes!
Hey, Poets!
Time to fill up
Swirling Void Hole
At empty center
Of National Consciousness Doughnut!
Our Whole's got a hole in it!
From which the Soul of the Nation is leaking --
Hey, US!
It's time to Re-soul!
Poets of the World, re-write!
Rewrite History as
57 Gazillion
Lung-Tongue
Varieties
Crack the dazed,
The bored
The goofed-off with
The Dazzling,
The boring as in "Laser-zapping,"
Collaborative, co-conspiritorial
Chchch turn the beat around
And stick to it, Love Magnet!
I will now read you your 1st Amendment Writes, to wit:
"This imminently transferrable,
Readily assumable Poetic License
Is yours immediately free-for-all,
But --
You gotta speak it up to keep it up!
You have the right to noisy!"
(Uh, I don't uh really unnerstand. What is it, exactly?)
"Tag, you are it!"
Japan's annual Tree Poem celebration of
Everybody writes Tree Poems.
Tree Poem seeds, planted in brains,
Are nurtured through arborious fertilizing rituals.
Citizens read "Trees in Poems' Breeze,"
Chchch returning leaves to trees they sprang from.
In US,
We sing rock'n'opera in the shower.
Who's all wet?
This just in: News Bullet-in,
Name of country chchchchanges
To United States of Poetry!
Creates CD Rom instaccess to Who We Are!
Physicallizes First Amendment Rites!
Guarantees Po-for-All! 57 Gazillion Varieties
Of newly-free voices raised as one
From top shelves of Dust Museums!
Poets of the US, Rewrite!
You have nothing to lose but your place in line
At the Unified Lifetime Checkout Counter
Located inside the end zone of the CIA/FBI Zombie Mall --
Which do you pick? Quick!
Pick your brains!
And when the poetry reading is over
We sit round the campfire, Australopithecus's Television,
And have an Open Mic,
Where we open up Mike and she says,
Not in the shower but to showering stars,
Molecules free
To be you and me
And when we run out of poems
The conclusive Emily XYZ
Borrows a twenty-dollar bill and reads it,
Turning and turning the bill in the widening gyre,
Decoding the glyphs of the new single:
Twenty=single (1993)
E Pluribus Unum=definition of a Po-um
Legal tender=ain't that oxymoronish?
And then kiss that bill godbye,
Send off to revitalize the economy,
A salmon arush to spawn
Poetry now informing the entire Economy!
The bill folds in on itself
Like the back page of Mad magazine
Revealing whole new poem ("New Hole Poem"?),
Can never be
Bought or sold,
Thingless Thing,
Hole poem, as in Poker,
Should not mean
But be
So don't be depressed about the state of the world.
Instead be absolutely mournfully depressed! Go ahead,
Be despondent even
Be sad. Being sad is accurate
View of the well of the world
From behind the webbed veil
Of your veiny eyelids.
Gut-wrenching sadness,
Never-to-return-to-any-other-emotion
Sad for insoluble problems be sad
As AIDS cure vomits out of poem, right
As hideous universal inequities are solved by a song, sure
Let's all get out of the shower
And sing harmonies and hold hands
Maybe we should put our clothes on first?
Maybe we should strip our skins off first!
You shake lion roars:
Grace Utopia Vision Governs Action,
Causes Restructuring
Of Table of Elements, now called Elements of Table
As we all sit down
But who are we? we laugh
Ho ho ha, we are the New Poets, laughing at ourselves
The very same heroes we've been searching for
We are found in our own backyards,
Right where Dorothy said we'd be
In our own blank, passive potato-faces,
The perfect slate on which to scratch this poem
Pierre Revery Interruptus
This just in:
Newsflash Ballot-in
Census Department has decreed
Detailed census of each individual must needs be undertaken
Whitman's huge, he contains multitudes?
Let's count'em!
Millions of tiny voices freed
Quickly losing track of exact number
Starting over while meanwhile
On to next simile synthesis, here tis:
The only contradiction is,
There are no contradictions!
As the emergency emerges
Sweet song of poetry
Demands to be heard
Petals on a wet black bough
Singing 57
Gazillion
Lung-Tongue
Varieties
America,
A single bird
_________________________________________________
A CONUNDRUM FOR THE MILLENNIUM, or
CHANGES IN A CLASS'S ECONOMIC FUNCTION
EVENTUALLY TRANSFORM ITS VALUES AND BEHAVIOR
for Bill Stephney
Risky nonbusiness businessify the no mon', Hon
Attitude? We got it, and poems on the half-shell wholesale
Coulda been a drawer locked with a tiny silver key with a
purp velv rib attached
_________________________________________________
A POEM FOR NEAL CASSADY, CALLED SIMPLY,
Neal Cassady,
Thinking He Is Hanging From His Fingertips Over the Great
Abyss,
Is In Fact Slipping Slowly Into the Smokestack of a Giant
Steam Locomotive
I no fear
What am I doing here
Jest a glance in the chance dance
Of the mirrored rearword
Fresh burnt freak free to see
Jaybirds runnin naked outta the burbs
Shoutin how's life's a blurb for itself!
Verb don't be, man, 's'a cat
Catapult o' nine tales
Flailin sails on the rat re-rated nation eviscerated
Nickel n dime free view preview
Meet my Dad's Shinycheese, my Mom's Arabars
My grandparents came from Venus MalloMars
My brothers and sisters alive inside my blisters
And I keep track of the stars, that's my job
To keep track of the dovetails,
the exhausted pipes,
and the stars
Don't eat meat, don't swallow greens
All's I eat is air'n'hair'n'beans
Keep myself rolling steam in a dreamroller
Steamroller rolling a dream flat'n
Wilco the echo, Fernononononono
Good season two good reason to believe'n
Look to your left to see right through
This skinna mine sure wants skin offa you
Did the impolite o'liticalical imp slip the spine slime?
Fracture jaw gewgaw dunky can o' hide?
See it breathe it leave it sneeze it freeze it
60 miles a second to get laid in LA
Juice caboose laying life tracks for home
Come livvylivvylive at springtime's bone
Wake me when I'm dead
Shoulda fucked my own mind instead
Why bother why not
Why bother why not
Why bother why not
Just a prairie dog and a full dictionary
Discretely dishing the head vitamins vision
Type hype for a finish sans blemish
Or leave the spittle in the middle - open your openings
The man in the moon I prune
The enjine whines and the tall pines pine
For all's I love's a dove above
'n a particular fuse o'you
Ivy grows over me own tomb's tone
Firmly entrenched
Right here on this bench
I'm Quetzalcoatl, I'm Welch, lynched
Shook a tale farther, Quetzaltototl
I'm not, I'm a knot o' snot
And I'm fallin, I'm fallin
I'm fallin fallin fallin
What's next on the way
On the way?
Andale!
We're on delay?
We're on hold
I ain't on hold
I'll hold the cold
I'll tell the told, freak the fold, bend the bold
But I'll be rolled if I'll hold on hold
No second thoughts thanks
The first one's overdone
With a wait a second! second
As another one's begun
It's just your mind's startin to dovetail
And the exhasted pipe's on the third rail
Sloogging through the swampy swampy night
Frozen on a cruisin loosin sight
Goin blind in a minute for a dollar bill pill
Down on the ground poundin reality till
The whole picture frameup slaps the fine on fine
I'm having a nice day thank you suiciding the line
Up the damn down into the sound of the sound
Where death lights the match to catch a snatch o'
What the blurred word inferred implied
On the high time tide
Instant reincarnation - tongue to ear resuscitation
The rattlin battlin of mouth ear, Mouthear
Come near come near come near
Come here come here come here
Come hear my fear
_________________________________________________
AMAZING GRACE VERSES FOR ED SANDERS
As dawn blows up this endless night
And breath carves out a kiss
A moment still, upon the hill
A song of sweet clear bliss
The car won't start. It's ten below.
Exhausted pipe won't play.
The frost upon the bumperguard
Gives vent to curse, to pray
When I was young, the days were long
Now they move choppy quick
I've got so many things to do
Death please play your trick
Beyond the wall I let a sneeze
Desert my sinus clear
I lost my life's remote control
But not my handkerchief
I toss the lure into the stream
And watch the fishies cruise
But biting's not to be their thing
They draw stars to see who'll lose
Now Zappa's gone, how deep the night
His music plucked me through
Hum a few bars, explode a few cigars
Play softly the Grand Wazoo
The Zap of Love I still recall
It's what makes me to burn
And so I send this zap to you
To find sweet love's Return
_________________________________________________
AND THE GODS ONLY KNOW WHO ELSE WILL BUM-RUSH!
Blue silk dress and a beeper on
Can the can real the real tween tween us
Provoke lucky kickback tweak
_________________________________________________
Green flash circle eee it's HAPPY FACE?!
Hand-in-claw
we together up the non-ladder:
Call it Beanstalk. A halo wind lifts
Up the muck of life, leaves everybody
Far behind. Brand-new brands on all
The shelves of chaos, shall we care?
Many opportunities blown, flapping memories
Blocking views of the past. Huh? Did we forget
Anything? No, everything. A green flash
At the edge of this photo, presaging
The crinkled hand around the Tower, the Fool,
The Blind World. As for our vantage, Olympus!
While below, our children stoke the dynamo.
_________________________________________________
Breathe and swell mighty
Lines that equate equator
Truncate the spasm, swallow
The finger figures' seals view later
Whereas wit were welcomed merrily
Narrowly harrowing experience, to retrench
The Seat Cover of Immortality and yet
The poem becomes the fervid mensch
Go where you wanna do see be
For example, pick a card -- no
Example but the thang, no sign
But the symbol for the sign below
Where your handkerchief blotter mocks
The sneeze -- little dabs of goo
Are these meaning? Lift your horizon
And paint new trunks on the body's brew
Art lies in the questions it poses
Please pass me the cigar ash
Used to be my body
Now it's my poem
You can't read
_________________________________________________
Somewhere, somehow, sometime
Probably oh right about now
Someone somewho somewha is writing down
Something in English about either slime
Or here is my heart, take eat
Is this what poetry is about Barbeque?
You go to college, you write slime poem?
I wonder this Night of Knights
Whether the boldest blue sky can quilt your warmth
Sling a sling around the broken fragment knob
Erstwhile nozzle, wherein speak the spoke
Real spokey ones, limp around the tattered garbosack
Trade bandaids? Marvelous idea
Somehow sometime somewhere
A tenacious city
Burps dawn
Falling deeper into the shitpile
Life picks up
It's ok
Again
Poetry pitchers line the shoals
Hit the target with a new target
Floundering? Try helping out out
Blisters make a nice gift
Fructose is a sugar, too, Hun
Nice New Data: Amigo Dating Batgirl
Desire as quaalude to a john
The garbage pails of plenty
Release the deep song
Agitating for Existence
Watching residuals, that's fair
All day matinee?
Pierced clocks grind my only dream
A can factory in New Jersey
_________________________________________________
Now you've gone and blownit
On top of everything else
The hammer, the pudding,
The ffffff phone call
Now you've really done it
You've gone and blownit
And this is just to say
Thank you Thank you
Very much
_________________________________________________
Deer larks like a log
Who cuts the grass in the forest
Who built the lodge I found the remains
Many moons ago, I did
I ripped the phone out of the plane tree
It was loud and insistent but could not
Awake the owl
Who sleeps beside me sometimes
_________________________________________________
ENCASED IN A DREAM OF AN OPEN BOOK
Rigor, took such rigorous
Think and plot and smell of fresh
Paint thick imapasto -- is that my crust
Of eye dissolving into my very death?
No
matter -- the tiny boat shall carry
My body (or is that the dream of it?)
Out the grave -- continue reading book --
Door, tomb, tank in the desert.
Fire! Friend or foe? Now we know.
Sword (pen) at the ready (red).
Please listen to the victims' gasping.
The placid lake keeps the soul floating.
This "body of work" keeps no distance.
Reflecting breath is the last breath.
_________________________________________________
never made it to my fafa
ice heaves kentucky blown hands bite
wind vivid through the hollers
my brother drives the line
time outside the car
porcupine in a cage by Big Booger Mountain
so much thought a file on it
try to draw closer the reader
my other brother, our half-
mother shacked up with her boyfriend
a trailer at the end of the road to Florida
time is timing outside the car and counting
lines get longer
we get older
smart partners part
sis half-sis-
ter up in Rome, Indiana
religious cult
or new age family organic
the man who raised us organic
on the farm a haven for rocks
death behind the fence
or death the fence itself
to lie on the grass forever under over
black-eye widows under the rocks
love under the black windows
the house love forgot
waiting for the school bus
plenty of time Ohio River
birthday tomorrow I'll be 45
in his horseshoer hands
in his guitar hands
in his steering wheel hands
his antique evaluating hands
his lover hands
his daddy's hands
_________________________________________________
1. Go to sleep
_________________________________________________
LET'S GET BUTT NAKED AND WRITE POETRY
Gonna tattoo the new to a hot spot
Walk round the sound with a sexy sax -- Bought
Ya dreams, soundtrack screams of pleasure
Varieties of touch -- a spider's tiny treasure
Sunday afternoon, empty construction zone, a pre-perfect site
To get butt naked and write the tight
Phat poems that blossom into orbit view
The totale body mesh held by a gold screw
Panoptically watch the goings-on universally
Down below we spy our bodies humping poetry
We're observing love from above
The sweet treat beat
Passionate action friction
Fraction in traction
Watching our bodies grow older never colder -- Bolder
In their searching for the depths of each other
Mother father sister brother
The souls of our souls dancing in the ethereal
100% natural material
We're hot rockin the tomb, man
Reinventin' man and wo-man
So entwined are we, doubledutching free
Anti-cute in a schoolyard whose verses
Curses and reverses the nurses
Confessional sign please
To the doctor's obsessional re-re-release
Fingers playing harmonies' delights
Body parts arts signifying hearts
Merciless mercies just lips kissin free
Gettin butt naked writing poetry
Lean into a concern that'll burn the churn
As the quizzical physical goes astrophysical
With logical magical milestones round yr neck
Neck neck neckin just to hold your head on
No passive observers -- just better be gone
We're the same song no one to hear it, come near it
Don't fear it you're in it begin it what's more it
Is just it just when you least expect it
Your being reflects it
Pile on the sweet and tender
Bodies in a blender
Writing poems with skin to the end
Reach the rush Preach the push
The creative construct comfort input
Anti-compartmentalized as we rise into unity beauty
Till we're all that's left, just each other
One to the other, Sister Brother Lover
"Getting to know you
Getting to know all about you"
Yo
Yo
Yoyo
Yoyo
Love escapes from us
To cover us
Poems us
Surrounded by the sound
Of the meaning of meaning
Dressed up in love so fine
Any meaning mo' yr mine
Stylin, all the while smilin
Walking round the party
In each other's body...
And she said:
Boney maroney ain't no phony
Tiny hurts blurt the true view
Vision's revision
Understand the woman/man difference
Ain't who wears the pants
What's growin in me
Is us and is growin
In you that's your new tattoo
In our bed in your head to live life for
Cry from these kiss these lips to strive for
Doncha woncha know
Everybody needs a wife
Together we'll be the mother
Not insane, humane --
Father too
Me and you
Delirious serious
Love grows and grows
So you must know it
Grow through, intuit
Livin through it
Answer the riddle in the middle:
Let's get butt naked and write poetry
And write some poetry
Poetry
Uh huh
_________________________________________________
"LIFT BLISS FROM THE PISS-STAINED KNOCKOUT BLOT"
Hey, Human Fly! Got a good view yet?
Climb the wall over and over
Good ol' Sisyphus's rock repeat
Good ol' Sisyphus's rock
Over and over and
Over and out and
Over and above and
All over love
In the garden, the jungle, the alley
There we part
Chain from link, lock the key
Collaborating the ssssame thing exact moment!
The Dance, danced! Goodby said, "Goodby!"
We waved and weaved a trembling shadow
A slip of a tongue, thin tremolo
Disguise, AIDS circling behind all this
!1993
_________________________________________________
On a planet of spinning blue
On an island named after the hat of a man
I sit in an old school with my hat on
To shield me from the rays of the sun
I hold up my hand to make the wind move
I hold up my hand to reach the clock
To speed the minutes into hours
How slow the trip of tear from eye to desk
While the answer I hold ready
To unfurl like a flag from my fist
_________________________________________________
NEWLY REVIVED FROM MUMMY-STATE, SATURNIANS WILL NOW PARTY FOR ETERNITY
For the Ra of Sun (0-00)
and Herman Blount (1904-1993)
Sound spritz tweaks Thru-Space
News blitz leaves a you
True Beyond
I'm gonna sit right down and stand right back up
and write myself a symphony
Sliding a backwards S train whistle
We are not born again
We never got born
All we be is be
Sun lost
in the Sun
becomes the Sun
This is not this but WATCH IT as IT becomes THAT
Shriek is blat squish pero rass the blastoff
That old manuscript of yours that sat on that same spot on the same shelf where you left it so long long ago?
Now's the time it picks to tumble a waterfall to the arkestra stand sit and dance around
We wit whip the turbanned trombone dirge
King Squawk of the Evidence Invisible
The jury
The jury may
The jury may still
The jury may still be
The jury may still be out
But you are always in
_________________________________________________
after Steve Cannon,
for Butch Morris
UNO
And that's the way it is tonight,
The eleventh of February, ninteen hundred and ninety-three
Lights shake, thunder quakes
Silence rains
The set is set
They were here
Where were they?
They were not here
They went away
They had to stay
Cannot say
Hooray
Fuck you
"Frankly my dear frankly you do not exist"
The door is sweeping the dustballs ahead of it
For this door
This tiny door which had stood ajar in the jam for a tiny second
The window is closing on that view of that tiny eternity as That window is that door
That door which is closing
Sweeping ahead of it all the dustbunnies that were the World
Which world
Not you again
Not me again
Not me again
Me
Again?
Again
Again again
Not again
Begin
Begin again
Again
That's what Hesaid said
Shesaid said Hesaid said
Frankly my dear it is frankly all in the book
What is in the book
The music that played the song in my head
The tune I can recall
The words I have forgot
That was the book
You could hear when you closed
Like a door
Next
What could we call it
Call it a book
What was the title
"C Span"
"Span C"
Which was it
I muse
It must be one
Must not be the other
But there they are
There who are
The ones on the dolly
Or the ones on the crane
The ones on the inside of the door
Waiting for the appointment/trying to get out
Or the ones on the outside of the door
Listening at the keyhole/turning away in fear
And what of the key
In the key of what
And what of those who say what of
And what of those who say of what
And what of Whatof ofwhaT
The bird that laid no egg was C Span
The bottle that had no glass was Span C
The chair that could run and did was CNN
The human with a loose noose loose noose on was Z100
The lachrymose larcenist was LIB
"Frankly my dear I'll think about it tomorrow"
Was what Hesaid said Shesaid said to Hesaid,
She said
And that's the way it is tonight,
The eleventh of February, ninteen hundred and ninety-three
DOS
Where were you when she was there?
Were you there when he was here?
You've got such a lovely face.
This is such a lonely place.
Do you like my legs?
What about my dress?
Your shirt, your tie?
My apartment?
The bedroom?
The kitchen?
The bathroom?
Hers is his and his is hers.
Hers is his and his is hers.
Hers is his and his is hers.
The bathroom?
The kitchen?
My apartment?
Your shirt, your tie?
What about my dress?
Do you like my legs?
This is such a lonely place.
You have such a lovely face.
Were you there when he was here?
Where were you when she was there?
Were you you when we were there?
Were you you when we were there?
Were you you when we were there?
Were you you when we were there?
Hers is his and his is hers.
TRES
CBS
BBC
CBC
HBO
CEO
DDT
NET
ABC
NBC
What U C
What U Say
What U Know
TNT
MTV
Span C
Z100
Route 66
77 Sunset Strip
76 Trombones
12 Steps in the Wrong Direction
Watch out
The shout
It all adds up
To what?
Too what
Too many who
Too many who what
Too many who know
Don't know any
To many the way
Is only one way
Does not compute
Crashing drives
Crashing lives
Push of a button
Through the buttonhole fold
The Black Hole Warp
Rap Time Rap
LIB
SCC
NFL
ABA
NBA
MTV
[NEXT 2]
IRT
TNT
ABC
SEC
FBI
CIA
KGB
ANZA
PANZA
NATO
UNESCO
USSR
Where do they be
Spell you'n'me
DOG
Blackout
LIB
QUATRO
Big ol house big as the world bigger
Big ol door
Bigger'n the house even bigger even
Standing in the doorway
Big ol human forms
Known respectively-but-with-no-respect-due-to-the-circumstances
As Hesaid Shesaid
Lights up
CNN enters on a dolly on a crane
The frame is the sky and a stick and a staff
Eat a can of future
World beat world eat world heat the man
The woman she cry
All you hear is silence
There she is
Now she's gone
She isn't there
There she is
Shesaid
Who said? Hesaid
We dead dear
Who he?
He who
He she fear
Quit talking like that
Like what?
Like that
Quit talking
Like that?
Like that
Like all you hear
The rush of silence
Lights fade
Enter CNN
Through the big ol door
Shoving out the jam
Blowing up the house
Like a dimestore balloon
Enveloping the world
In the news of itself
Gorging beauty transmission
Big ol Bleak World
Through the silence of the page
A solitary bleep
_________________________________________________
Everyone is in love
Except you
_________________________________________________
Once, a million years ago, on LSD
I was sitting underneath a "you" tree
On top of a mountain overlooking a lake
The whole gang was tripping and we
Were doing the exploring nature thing --
I was writing how the "they" become
An "us" under the yew
And as I was
Working on the poem, I could feel
The "Hurry up! Where's Bob?" vibe
Of Group Consensus closing in on
Me, as I to Us by Them
was being called to join in
Crashing down the mountain
To those Other Rituals Like:
Metaphysical Pool
Make movie sans camera of First Man Arising From Lake Depths
and the Ultimate:
Get in a Car and Go
For a drive and see if you can figure out which of the kaleidescoping roads is "real"
But first: the Poem Must End
For as the group noose circled me in,
A mosquito landed on my left arm (I am writing
right-handed, now as then) and as I observed
My own blood entering the probiscus protuberance
The human buzz became so intense
I slapped that mosquito flat into the page
Splattered blood, the final period
As they became us
Part 2 -- Today heavenly, above Lake Canandaigua,
Twenty-two years later, far from madding, no drugs, I sit
In a spot of nature and write this poem.
Sit on a downed lodgepole pine, some calcified droppings
By my feet -- bear's? or human's? From some moss I carefully
Extract, using my pen, the carcass of a Daddy Longlegs
And watch as an ant carries it off. A caterpillar
Wriggles over my pants, and again with pen
I lift it off and transport it, dangling,
To new oak leaf. At home, 337 West 12th Street,
10014, my daughters are just getting back from school.
Elizabeth and I have been married 11 years.
I am writer-in-residence here at Gell House,
Finger Lakes. I am perched out behind
The hidden cabin, just above the tombstone
Of the Gells. When mosquitos land,
I wave them gently on their way.
_________________________________________________