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 --