"In the beginning was silence" C.S. Thomas
Once the o was/circled
The dot expanded to the capacious circle
Which Einstein’s retinas encircle
Frozen thought, I will skate a figure eight
Not to confuse, but return, the eight
Doubling, deepening to infinity, slender expansing eight
_________________________________________________
When the pleasure of the poem
Fails, what replaces love?
A child's fingers slide the wrong key
Into music, the watch is on strike.
Like bare feet, like scuffing along
A path too little walked, a lost
Road. Truth may bowl or be a bowl
Or be in a bowl. Who’s drinking?
It’s Jew McGinnity, the sweet Kentuck
With a sense of humor that leaves
Him all to himself while the town
Howls with suffering. If only he’d write
It up. Get a job usin the words he’d heard
Before, clean out the coop like the rest
Of the roosters. Cain’t even call him Jew
Anymore, so sensitive we’ve become. He’s
Lost in his integrity, untranslateable.
Give him a hand, he’s ready or not. True
To his heritage, climbing the Wailin Wall
Comfort will come the last time hie eyes open
_________________________________________________
APPROACHING 47, FATHER SUICIDE AT 2, MOTHER STILL IN PLACE
Nothing
Changes
Life is a breath
At a time
I useta
But now
Never
All your support
Has kept
Me afloat over
The drowning man
Says, hello
Tomorrow the breakage
Will be evaluated
By the Adjudicators
How does
Everyone get paid
For doing what
They do
Except me
I was a sun blazing trails
In Old Kentucky
Now as a simple soul
I beg Budhha
To replace my
Windshields
What is the poet
On top
Of? Nothing
I send you love, Mom
What we know
We should tell
Everyone
_________________________________________________
—for Ezra Teitelbaum
April 8, 1995
One morning wake up stand
Before Family, Friends, Total
Strangers words fly out mouth
Lava at the volcano party Hebrew
Learned to say "Hello" word
"World" shoulda stood in bed
Body simply voice-carrier no-
Body hears my feet which say
Going down South Going down South
Yesterday's boy no more to see
Not to worry, Mother, Father, Brother
I will find him and return him
Sudan Milan Japan Pacman Yucatan
Speaking words that rhyme with "Man"
_________________________________________________
--for Sonia Lopez
Death does not enter aimlessly,
But appears to, settling down
In the corner, a forgotten relative.
You don’t even notice, so many tiny
Angels hover over your father’s
Face. Everything is a dream anyway.
You need to hire a mover, to shove
You back into your body. The day
You ran through the surf the first time,
He looked so proud and scared,
He would always be there. Death
Mutters something, politely departs,
Claiming with a ticket. You sit forever
By the now empty bed. Nothing musses.
Life musses. The pillows and sheets are
Waves now and you are always running,
It is Death who leaves. Life stays. Fear
Becomes Love, says your father. Always.
_________________________________________________
Papa Lunacy, the Giving Over of Familiarity to rouse a sense of sweet
well-being, to be kaplowed with,
That's the first step, teetering, a jetski on the Evenrude outboard tip
Yes, it was Clue, for no good season
Fighting the Happily Ever After Crew with a hair curling iron, zipstered
Bar -b-Qed cattle brands tattooed on her tender sweaty lip, or his
_________________________________________________
It was grandiose it was the most
It was absomotelymentous
On the tip of the top where the crocked cricket hopped
The plain fear dropped
I stopped
Shut everthing up in everywhere
Kicked over the house to set the cleared
Breath to bringing a breathing intuition
Into remission so the mission I woulda accomplished it
Except for the bozo who wrinkled it
Caught the shirt tail on the third rail
While the fifth column ate the sixth sense
It was a riot! You gotta try it
And see what the mixed up mix aughta be
Once set free
The way it sent me
The way it aughta be
The way in the way way outta the way
Where there ain’t no way left
Cept the way out way out
So far it’s so far
Too far to be sure
Too pure to be your indefatigueable response
Yours truly,
Eternal Dissonance
PS in prose, your LongShot Resonse which I saw in orig issue meant everything to a guy who likes to give everything for great god Poesy!
Bless you, Hersch, and all yr projectiles: poems, bits o’spit, human consciousness mobiles, etc.
_________________________________________________
Two words yearn to tell a story
Sit up late hearts on plate dust in sky
Rust from cry
The story is their child
The child grows can’t take your eyes off
Plays, friends, pets, fights, offshoot stories
Read me a story, Daddy
The one about the goddesses and gods
The one about the dragon
Two words, defy and define,
Sitting on a bench waiting
For a bus to take them out of here
Riling deisel smoke to the story
Personal as pen, solid as voice
Engaging in orbit around this child,
Only now it’s children, each
With a story. And a story each.
To defy the tale you must define it
To define possibility defies possibility
An abstract key, the bus circles back
A harmony, the dragon’s tiny, who
Needs it. Words looking out window
Taste and touch, lapidary reposes,
A racoon’s moon. Will you define
Them, within reason? Without
Reason -- or defy them.
The solitary vulture makes good story.
Read the flight above the dead tree.
The bus slows, hedlights frozen.
I’ll be there at a quarter till three
Bring more words -- we’ll party!
All grown up now, are ye?
Your mother and I are fine
Defy define.
_________________________________________________
If you can hear the poem
In the subway
Your earshave been retooled adequately
_________________________________________________
To be or not to be
What's the difference
Not much, according to our survey
Conducted totally by us, the Living
Without benefit of consulting the Dead
Whether 'tis realer to yawn and surf the channels
Or walk outside and get bumped off
Sure there's a difference between buying all the air you'll need for an average lifespan at birth
And lying in a pine box with your arms crossed and your eyes closed as if to say Duh
While, when you were alive
You actually said Duh
No matter
The Baby Boomers will eventually die out
Spelling will become a quaint decoration
There will be arbiters at poetry readings to explain things
Children to be sold to highest bidders
And this hotbed of a planet will crack and sprout some new beast
You think I'm ding I wish I were
Because the snakes in my head sing poetent hammers
A gold swell, a smack between a fist and a kiss
A terrific idea is forgotten
And what you remember isn't worth remembering
I sound whiny, or, if I'm lucky, desperate
What are we, playing charades? 1st syllable yes
2nd syllable turd 3rd syllable eye
All my troubles seemed so far awhy
What a brackish brew is blood
I used to but I never was
Moo cows wandering the cemetery
They are sacred creatures, the milk sack metaphors
As a matter of math, everything I see is a metaphor
You, watching me look at metaphor, what am I metaphor for?
Though I cannot see you. I know you watch
And I may be raving paranoiac trying to palm myself off as agoraphobic
Maybe fear of phobias
But when was the last time you put me in one of your poems?
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
_________________________________________________
--“El Coco Que Habla,” 1902-1995
Before the Beginning of Time
When you could rhyme Sublime with Sublime
Because Because was a gag
In the mouth, a laughing flag
In the Land where the Coconuts Talked
Where to move was to dance was to walk
Where sing would answer seek
There Jorge stayed up all week
To catalog the Beginning of the Scene
That was the Neverending Dream
"Nevermore!" he cackled to Poe
“Wheelbarrows!” to Williams he'd flow
And the Sun's horizon was rising and falling
In oceanic frenzy and crawling
Sandy beaches were deserts becoming
Birds of No Feather were buzzily humming
He ennumerated the words
The syllables became birds
Off he flew to the Promised Land
Borincua grew a palm in his hand
His vision was his voice
Your ears had to rejoice
He'd wickedly splinter
the meaning of center
Into atoms of busted dust
and rust and trust
Padre Jorge the Master of Sound
The creation of sidewalks the streets surround
The conductor of trains to reality's brains
The wheelchair of dictionary aeroplanes
This quivering quaver
Piraguero's flavor....
A friend of mines interviewed
Stopped late at Jorge's stoop
The world was Jorge's stoop
Life was Jorge's loop
He circled the block many times
His cries would always rhyme
The patron Saint of the Barrio
The Oldest New Age Jibaro
We cry now on your bier
We thought you would always be here
Your poems are spread over Loisaida
Miky Bimbo beside beside
The poems don't stop Jorge
You did not die yesterday
Roberto Clemente hits home runs
Jorge Brandon the World's Greatest Poem
Wherever I go you have been
I see you there always again
_________________________________________________
for Gaston Neal
The has been poet is back
The over-the-hill poet suddenly is not only not over it
But king of it queen of it prince and princess kiss the frog
Royalty of it be damned of it shouting lungsful from far atop
Mount Poem where you never been hell you never seen
It so shrouded in the cloudy foggy do-do
Of your own shortsighted need contacts to look in the mirror
Steam face clearing and what do you finally see see see
Samo samo samo samo
That’s you-o,
Somewhere in there-o
Holding on to the scraps of your control panel
Attached to goddamn
Ain’t attached whahappen whahappen
While the usta be poet, why
The usta be poet never went away
And all your workshops and accreditation programs
All your grants and fundraising gala soirees wait till it’s served
Before you touch it goddamn don’t drink it all in the first half-hour
All the be home in time to let the sitter go home
But where is home?
Now you see it’s not that I’m anti-family
I am pro-family
I just think you better redefine what constitutes your own goddamn family
Cause when you say whatever crossed the transom goes before the committee
I say guess who’s coming to dinner? Why, it’s the has-been poet
And guess what? he’s staying over for breakfast too
And guess what else she’ s making you your lunch as well because
Guess what, she’s a transgender transgenerational mixed-race motherfucker of a has-been poet
And I’m back cause guess what
I never went away
Where you been, fool?
_________________________________________________
HORVACI UND HALTERTOP @ DIXON 4/15/95
PRESET: GENERAL LIGHTS + 1/2 UPON AUDIENCE.
1. Horvaci enters happily alone
HalterTop screaming misery backstage
2. Q: after HT peaks, HV: "My shoe is untied"
HT enters w/ shoecrash
3. HV ties shoe, trades shoecrash for Dots
HV adjusts props etc
4. Theatrical Transition of Sound & Lights
"Sound! Lights!" [Repeat 3X,] Bathe in SLQ1
SLQ1: TAPE 1 AND LIGHTS GO CRAZY, END WITH NO CHANGE,
(SAME AS
BEGINNING). 10-15 SECONDS.
5. Healthy Pause ala "Fritata"
HV: "Script" hands notebook to HT
HV/HT El Classico
6. "Some little thing"
7. HT gets in place, in front of mic
SLQ2: LIGHTS (SPECIAL ON MIC) + TAPE 2
"Feelings"
8. SLQ3: WHEN TAPE ENDS, BO, IMMEDIATE RETURN TO PRESET MINUS HOUSE
Edwin's poem (Bob off)
Bob's poem (Edwin off)
9. Edwin reenters w/ "Stepping in...."
10. SLQ4: WHEN BOB HITS FLOOR, CROSSFADE TO SPECIAL. BEGIN AGONIZINGLY SLOW FADE TO BLACK ON "TOGETHER"* :
Fly fly fly fly fly away
Is that the way
That is the way
To begin the end
To end the begin
And how about the beguine
Yup, now hat you mention it, the beguine, too, will begin
As the end ends
The way it begins
*[Together] Together
Again
Again
[Together] The End
[Freeze]
We can go now
[Between grit teeth, sotto voce] No! Not yet you fool!
[Leaves]
For my next poem, I'd like to tail off in a comet's trail
BLACKOUT WHEN ONSTAGE TAPE (CONTROLLED BY EDWIN) ENDS
_________________________________________________
for Lynne Beyer
Your legs catalogued miles
And the flutter of eyes
Like where to go, dear Friend
A smile you would always tweak
When no one (especially you)
Was watching. God, poems, love,
Definitely everything. Fears
Raced to the close, smashed
Definitely everything. Miles
To go we'd keep saying, even
Now I say it as you stop.
_________________________________________________
"All directions simultaneously"
I remember you
Carving the foreshadowing wind
Scratching back at Nature
Where it itches
Where it lives
_________________________________________________
LATE NITE DANCE MIX @ THE BLUE NOTE
(w/ DJ Attica Blue aka Charlie)
Blue is the color of my true love’s skin
And all the life that glistens there mirrors my death
You cain’t stand still you fracture gesture nothing
Frantic in the panic sweat block tastes strain like a hip
Hop thrust into the body rejoining beat of tender swelling
Creaking birth in a smoky whisper of abrupt calm settling
A bird in flight frozen there now dive to floor rolls hands
Her hands braceleted orchestrated beringed bejeweled
Deep tattoos of movement xrayed exploded into beings
Physical sandwich physical tasting physical hair found slide
Slide smelling touch a circling the fire is cold
Everybody to everybody’s body makes an orb from it
Corpus loses weight and floats sheer sensuous blend
Till beat blasts explode the break down’s up again
_________________________________________________
Went down to Brighton
Thought I'd do a little writin'
But the waves themselves was just too excitin'
So I grabbed tight to my beer
Jumped off the pier
& disappeared...
Stop!
Hold it!
The End!
Never again shall such clapdoodle arise
From the boiling petrie dish of blank pages
A preprimal scream floods the heavens
I LOST MY NOTEBOOK YESTERDAY!
with all my poems in there
and an essay about How To Survive as A Poet
Exercises, like the local color ditty above
(Which, thank God, is now lost forever)
Aiee. (Trans: "It is over.")
I lost it
My lovely Berlin poems
hard-eyed and stern
with a denseness to the darkness
crawling over the page like
Well, like glue of sunset, fires
Burning out at Techeles
Like a pill, fr chrissake
I need a pill to calm down Help!
Guy who lost notebook here
Mouth agape, sounds emerge, news is
I lost it I lost it
Notebook Notebook
It's 8 1/2" by 11"
W/ black cover and
an embossed quill
and ink bottle on
the cover hand me
The megaphone, please!
And let me dangle madly from the bungee
Screaming with every rubbery
Bounce and rebounce
I lost my notebook in Brighton
Where it is is not lost
But here, feet tied, lips blistered
Swole up eyelids and punky cheeks
The view (I lost my glasses that last dive)
Blurred at end of bungee of sorrow
And, did I mention I lost my notebook
I must run screaming to the International Operator
To call home to anounce my loss, my grief
Aiee. Now,
My Telephobe Calling Card has been cancelled!
Someone's intelligence and criminal bent lifted
My Secret PIN and with criminal intent made calls
to Gambia, Algeria, Australia and 24 other international sites
Leaving me stranded in Great Britain with the Brighton Blues again
Yes, it's raining
No, I'm not shitting you
My Lost Notebook phone calls stick inside like an inner layer of phlegm.
Dissociating me from what used to be Reality
I am He
Of Lost Notebook
Standing in phone booth
Attempting International Calls via coinage
A pocketful of quid and I still get the damn answering machine
Screaming into the digital tape,
BOOK NOTE LOST I! CAR A ON IT LEFT!
AM I JERK STUPID A WHAT!
I've become dyslexia incarnate
I've lost my poem about screwing on top of the roof (a fantasy, darling)
Lost 2 page essay on How I Made a Million Writing Poetry
The only poem I remember in toto is one called:
10 Things I Do Every Day
1. Suicide
YES -- at last -- the Answer
As it says in the Good Book,
When You die and go to Heaven
There shall Ye be rojoined with
All Lost Notebooks, and ye shall
Set about revising the sonnet re:
Friendship, Bicycling, and
Mellowing Ex-Communists
NO! The Good Book
Saith not that! --
(For, indeed, is not
THE LOST NOTEBOOK
in actuality The Good Book itself!?
Idea Number 1: Sell
Publication rights to The
Lost Notebook by Bob Holman, retire on advance, never write another word
Idea Number 1 1/2: Same as Number 1, but kill yourself
Idea Number I've lost track on my way to the second idea because The Lost Notebook Obsesion has taken over all ability to count
Another idea (and then la pistola en la boca) is
To detail narrative, complete with inherent unconscious clues.
I was being interviewed on the Pier at Brighton with Samantha Coerbell. Joanne Goode, Sussex BBC, had the broadcast system in her car trunk, and invited me to sit in said car to await interview moment. I set the aforementioned Notebook on the roof of her car. It's her fault. The name is Joanne Goode. She's driven off with L10,000 worth of pure poem on top of her little Renault and I am suing BBC.
NoNoNoNo,
I must image NOTEBOOK
into my possession
THIS book into which I pour
feelings of loss for That book
becomes That book
What crap.
This is not that goddamn book!
Image here is physicalization of Deconstructivist Theory
Where my Notebook
Flies from Joanne Goode's Renault
On the motorway
And is run over by
Station wagon full of baying dauchshunds
A raving lunitic unreconstructed Communist stockbroker
On a Harley
A lorry full of live export animals
Whose big eyes fill with tears
Maggie Thatcher on deisel broomstick
Nuyorican Poets Cafe Live fan club busses
Until
The Notebook
Line by line
Shreds and ribbons
A shower of Beauty Meaning
A downy blitz of Truth seedlings
A fine rain of poetry
Gently gently drift onto the windsheild
of motorists all over Britain
With
an occasional rare verse straying to Gambia, Australia,
and Tampa, Florida
Where my mother picks up a line, and says to her new
husband, Howard,
"It's from Robert, but I never could read his handwriting"
Calm now, and satisfied
Of grief
I conclude with a plea
God -- if there is a God,
And even if there's not --
SEND MY NOTEBOOK BACK TO ME!
_________________________________________________
I see you reflected in the mirror ball
Just as it starts to fall
Guilty is what I think it’s called
Not that it matters at all
_________________________________________________
They were on love
No problem
They were all over it
A jet stream's piece of paper
Even a paper clip to hold it all on with
Would their bodies ever quit? Love,
A Handyman's Special,
A Handywoman's Special
They were equivalent when it came
To sex, burrowing like rabid worms
Seeping like Superman through lead
Surely goodness and mercy will follow
All the days of their life at least
We can turn the page
The writer has become a tour guide
For the reader to look at the Lovers
Trading male and female, inventing a new gender
Call it "may fail" Pretty little may fail
Why do we cluck? On their piece of paper
In the jetstream with everything
Clipped on -- Love is ever so fragile,
Love is ever so strong. It's
Amazing we wake up with our selves intact
Let alone recognize the face of the Other, who,
By breath alone impregnates, births
And eats freedom up, burning
The sun, shattering the planets,
May fail in the freezing emptiness.
_________________________________________________
I saw so many things
I wanted all of it mine
I busted the glass
_________________________________________________
She thought she'd solved
Him like a Problem
A book, an inscription, like a wisp
Of smoke casually crossing
The moon. He took the book, its wrapper
Falling off like a robe covering
The sea. Enchantment's double, she
could take it and disenchant, leave
Him as he stumbled back
Into his childhood. The way her breasts
Pushed out at him, forcing him back
Step by locked step, while his desire
Locked into her, a beam electric blue shower.
And when she was gone she was gone
She was gone all over, rocks and refrigerators
A cellist forever replacing string after string
In the jet hangar, down the supermarket aisles
In the terror of night she was so gone
A blanket shredded and wrapped, a mummy
Bound to itself with heat and a heart
That was the loudest thing, the alarm
Was set off she was gone the air tactile
He was a burn victim and sound was touch
What was it that made him finally
He was coming to, his senses were coordinating
His nose back on his face, good skin all over,
Tongue lushly filling the center of his mouth
A good drubbing, a processed word cranked
Over to the dry cleaners for some advice
And clean clothes. It wasn't till he forgot
The book that he remembered and how he got
Her back was he pressed his lips to her inscripting
The moon again, the sea slowing in mid-wave
Whatever it was she was there
Until he started to actually read it
Something she never thought to actually read it
And as he read she materialized, a poem is meaning
Something, meaning immediate, a plot she had thought
She'd already taught. She'd forgot. She gave it all away
Too many too often this time no backsies
Dressed up for dinner, ready to sweet
The phone begins to ring its passion dance
The story unspools, the phone cord wraps
Her arm a bracelet, her necklace, mask
A rug to roll around in. They were words
But they were set free. They invented a memory
So fulfilling her birth records evaporated,
Hate would have but didn't and love
To her this game was to stay but fractured
Like money you save and should have spent
It's like you give it away but you can't
You have to keep a copy of your love
On the disc at the printer to bind
O, sweet going to love him now
Love her now that they never met
A book at the library, nobody will
Ever check it out, music and a coat of arms
_________________________________________________
Fight each inch or flight -- heavy
Road clouds below, Mazda
Overheating like teenage passion
The juju of air beats step
By step, moving useless steel
Now returning, elemental, final
Push, top level, leaping in
First descent to Taos, 1995
_________________________________________________
POEM FOR MY DAUGHTERS IN THE NEW YEAR
Diving straight down at our red chimney
The green is powering up at me
Electric lines are giving off blue sparks
The clouds are layers of white and pink sharks
I see the City like Oz over my wing
What can I give you now, anything?
Sophie, you are twelve and making up a world brashly
Daisy, you are nine and dreaming in an envelope cozily
I have a poem for each of you, with love and your name
Because to me they mean the same
_________________________________________________
(for Evelyn McDonald)
How hard it is to breathe
In a guerrilla mask with a guitar
Surgically grafted onto wrist stump
Learn to control your passions
Is the songlike thing you emit
(Words now come out as text
Streaming from what was once a tongue)
Tape vomit spooling round -- hello?
Someone “says” “something” sounds like
Hello? You are talking to yourself too bad
You cannot translate how confusing condition
Smash amps, eat the feedback. Gotta gotta
Instant evolution is screaming from genitals
This is politics, Sweetheart, revote and postal.
_________________________________________________
"It is the spectator, and not life,
that art really mirrors."
--Wilde
Identity is a mask foisted upon Pure (unsuspecting) Individuals by Fascist Power Mongers
Actually, in our ideal state, we’re all a-quivery slugs of a jelly-like density
Awaiting a single electrical impulse
To do something like eat
Or figure out why or something, breathe
It’s great to be in Swansea
Now I’m a Welsh poet
If I tell you where I’m from
You’ve never heard of it
Like you, I’m from Mum and Da, yes, and where they’re from etc.
A common DNA pool only 270,000 years ago,**
When our Common Ancestors,
All the Major Arcana of the tarot deck,
This Commune-Tribe-One-Happy-Family,
Sat down and said --
We are tired of sitting down on dirt!
Let’s invent the sofa!
No no replied another (the Fool?)
How about newspapers? You can sit
On the newspapers -- that’s recycling!
Thus begat civilization (someone else said
If it’s a sofa, let’s have it fold out
To become a bed etc.)
The only question left is
Who made up the language
And what language was it,
English or Welsh?
Saesneg o Cymraeng?
*today’s NY Times headline !
_________________________________________________
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
_________________________________________________
(for Edwin Torres)
Piano On Street
Parked illegally
Everyone playing rainy
Night in New York City
10009
Some Little Thing Jan 8
Something
Some little thing
Representing CHANGE
In effect representing CHANGE
Being CHANGE -- we don't say
We don't know until
Someone says
You're changing
I like what you're doing
Do me
_________________________________________________
Sorry -- I feel need of a poem coming on
I must write. May I rest here
In this puddle of purple gold?
The sun sets twice over Munich tonight
Once on the old Germany
And once on the East, the Turks, The African Germans, the DeutschRicans
Separate suns to dance into fire
The computers still hum, with no one to hear
Trust me, the’ll keep autofaxing diligently
Linking u and down, file to fragment
Machines of Grace, they pave over prejudice
And await your poems
All they ever wanted was a chance to connect
To the Future Forever
Enveloping madness like a harp
In the lullabye of night
_________________________________________________
Winds wind through Taos are history
Refresh, make it up, kick back
Put the air in a bottle of air in a container
And just toss the thing into a storage space
Not from sphere
Not from anywhere
From here for here
Winds born here make this place
Of this place where wind is a fur
Softer touch than vision
_________________________________________________
Like to thank all those who made this reading
Possible! There’s Rich from the bookstore who
Lugged the damn things in a box up the hill &
If you don’t lend a hand or a buck it’s gonna
Be back down the same damn hill. Read me?
_________________________________________________
Bring me the winner! My one claw
Entices the air, your eye cast inward
Burping a blessing. Yes, running clear in
The cold gray coalfield, a river of meat --
The bitter spit of Pennsylvania. What all
Was lost in the Great Depression? Every
Thing. Except for hardscrabble cruelty of sur
Vival, a competitive warp that trashes ci
Vilization. It's Chaos out here! In there,
My father, "the man who raised me," finds
More shade for the caladia. Leaving you
Always feels something unsaid -- no love,
No matter. Walk into the fridge. A wave of tin.
_________________________________________________
walk into the room
more like detonate
what is walk
what is room
at least we are into into
so deep
so far
so watch
so out
_________________________________________________
Sam Coerbell, Reg Gaines, Will Perdomo, Bob Holman
Gazing as the cows graze
I bite haphazardly into this Big Mac
Am I biting the cow’s ass?
But the bovine bites back
_________________________________________________
(for Anne MacNaughton)
Most Consecutive Somersaults at a Single Poetry Reading, to Anne McNaughton
For her ability to keep deep desert toes
While all about her poets, tacos
fax machines, land developers, pueblos,
text, late night assignations,
early morning beauty blurbs, silence
and that dove over there in the corner
Orbit and crease the Heavens with their demands
We come not to ask how you do it
We don’t want to know
We come to praise the Being that allows it
Sky cracks open 4 am
Face of Anne
Beguiling smiles
OK you motherfuckers time to sleep!
I’m the one who stills the beast
I’m the one who sleeps the least
So slide back into your dream furrow
And write the poems for tomorrow
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"The Complete "United States of Poetry"
(American Sign Language Version)
in a Minute and a Half"
by
Peter Cook translated by Bob Holman
Ahem
Translate every poem in the series into ASL?
and
I get a minute and a half to do it!
Better start by spelling it out for you Hearies
"Welcome to the United States of Poetry!"
In a poem the words don't stand still
The "y" of poetry
flies into meaning
collides with the ear of
the huddled masses yearning to hear
got a Brand New Dictionary
and a Flame of Truth to read it by....
but the poem takes flight outta sight
a winged "Y"
first stop: Down South
polin' down Word River
don't need to say it
let the band play it
watch the music
the poet makes a microphone out of air
and just as the massive croon is ready to erupt
tiny "y" of poetry flies out
the poem is inside the music, see
and once set free
rides the wild ride
in perpetuity
rides it like a buckin bronc
a jeep honk
in a honky tonk
let those cowboy poets
take us out way out West
those are poem bullets
strapped to my vest
a shot in the air
is a caption for [**!@#!##!!*&%!]
(Well, I swear
Whadaya do when you hit Vegas
Let the slot machine windows spin
Spinnish to finish the poem
That's the jackpot!
Riding the wave of a poem all the way to the Pacific
Not even the ocean can stop us!
Surfing the streams of consciousness
My surfboard head in the dryer at the laundromat
Can this be Hollywood?
Poetry's "Y" finds a home in the HOLLYWOOD sign
I was in Hollywood, where all the poems go
To be turned into boxoffice smash hits
Poets sure get treated great out here
Make-up is the same as editing
The crowd roars and the cameras roll
As I smoosh a haiku into the cement:
New definition
For a concrete poem writ
Ten in flashbulb light
Hightail it out, fast as a trout,
The poem flies up the coast
The arc of Truth is the Bridge to Beauty
Get the City to hold still long enough
To have a cuppa poetry
Where stimuli rise from the wisps
Weave a beret goatee
Explode into brainstorms
Drenching the City with poetry
The poem becomes the thing itself!
You know, writing could be allegorized as
Scaling the mountain of Pure Understanding
And the bird I see
Is the bird I be
Flying free
The trout below mimics my flight
I want to be
The diving point
Where Meaning claws into me
Clinging to understanding all you can say is
[WOW!]
Sight touches -- is that sound I see?
Wild wolf howls transcend harmonies
Poem travels back in time
Indian appears -- original rhyme
Vision snares a hurricane of antlers
The bow is the poem, the arrow is the poem
The elk is the poem
And their union creates the earth
And who is this,
Harvesting his crop of poetry
Can you dig it
The poet hisself
And my personal Muse,
Er, I mean "moo-se"
My cow
Blow those horns of Poetry, Mooster
Your "little letter y" bird
Motors the ink link, and peanut butters
Face to life in the Capital of US of Poetry,
Washington, DC, Lincoln's Memorial,
Note Abe's fingers sign his initials, "AL"
A deaf artist sculpted him!
Crash land on Lincoln's mole
Speechless poetry speaks with Lincoln's voice...
(Deaf sculptor put an "A" and "L" on his fingers)
Time to wave the wave.
Poetry flies into its shadow
The last image is the sound of poetry's shadow
As everything's shadow disappears back into your TV
May I direct you please
Back to your journey
Through "The United States of Poetry"
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
WEBSTERS NETZINE MANIFESTOTATION PO!!
I proclaim no I!
Language itself weaves the Web, proclaim exclam Blam
Some thing new thing this is righting
The sinking world, what drain are we spinning
Alice’s rabbit hole direct to Plato’s cave
I am a mighty orange buffalo
“This screen!” everybody screams, “is the cavewall!”
Hey hey hey
Text text text
It is your text
To alter on the altar of whatever you tink
Tinker the Thinker
To add a single note is to change the entire symphony
Now, it is your symphony
Too much passivity makes the Doodles bag empty
Honey, the peach salsa has green on it
The catfood from the snaptop can has green on it
The silken tofu has green on it
The Compaq Presario you wanted, it is covered
With moss and seaweed, creepy Kudzu
Mold mold mold
My olde My olde My olde
Why hast thou repetified amplified blown all out
Until the words themselves begin dancing
A social circle of dancing to eat the fears of the cannot communicate
‘Deeper into the It of It
I will sit’
Ahem -- Readers, Write!
Writers, Read!
The gorgeous thing, the fantastic rainbow of tears
The magnificent library
The archbishop of rock
The quick response
The ultimate repose
The question of answers
The who should be in the band that kind of day
When the brutal winds of technology blotted all with green moss...
(WE have been there backaways boss --
--ah, but this is the buildup to ze Grande Finale,
You crazy youth!)
Where the jangling ganglia play and the fly rumors roam
Where hirstory is something you make up as you make up
What is important to remember is respect
Respect respect
If we do not respect respect what will we respect
Loyalty?
That is a good rockin answer to a wake me quick query
I am separating my soul to get it interviewed by the Search Committee
Will you be there
To analyze the DNA of my hair
With your new machine made of glottal imprecations,
Nothing but thought, words, and a buzz bomb?
_________________________________________________
for Bill Adler, 12/18/95
Music is cool like my Dad
Can’t mask beauty, sings Ruthie
To Tina on a wintry dayof pos-
Sibility. There’s no problem with
Having a birthday today when you
Are born every day anyway.
That’s the story! And now, for the rumors
Behind the news: when IT’S the dead
Of night and the blue tongue rings
It must be your brother, the schizy
Suicidal poet fuck-up one, who wants
To remind you it’s all your fault.
Ho hum. It was just a dream,. I mean
A scheme hatched out the rooster egg.
One day, and once upon a time, like always
Like right now -- what I say opens everywhere,
Moses’ last breath in a bottle. Amazed to see
The writer grow a typewriter out the window
In a blinding snowstorm! Aiee, it’s all words!
The poets on their crazed course look up,
Then plow ahead. No one there is who
Can keep them from their pointed rounds
Cept you, the poem, icicle tin can melody.
Voracious tigers, touch typing melting frozen air.
_________________________________________________
--after Wally McRae wondered aloud if he'd been
paid for appearing in "The United States of Poetry"
Now, don't get me wrong. (I coulda been wrong.
I surely am often enough.)
But in this instance, despite your insistence --
Well, let's say I got caught in a bluff.
The dough in your pocket lit up like a socket,
And plugged those bills lickety-split.
It was simply a pass through. I'm hopin' it will do
To send you a xerox of it.
Money for po'try -- hell, it aughta be free!
It's enough to give Faust a complex.
Keepin' books and the score, and mindin' the store,
Is that how you define success?
Myself I'll say golly, the situation here, Wally,
Is rather like one's weddin' night --
The first one was as good as you knew it would,
So, Polygamists of the World, Unite!
To end the story, no reason for "sorry"
The whole thing's an accident.
There's nothin' to learn from what poems can earn
No matter how much -- it's been spent.
_________________________________________________
for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mighta been a place we’d all be welcome
Hello, c’mon sit down a spell
Mighta been a world we’d all be smilin
Content to remember when
Now I can’t get past the present
The present’s a prison, a cell
A block, a number, a clock
A gun, some keys, a chair
When they come to the door
I’ll blow righht through it
Gun, breath, not waiting
Their lie to the root
I’ll take out the bell
They could never hear
This hell they created
Will ring their ears exploding
What kind of violence
Does wisdom bring
I’ll breathe doom sound
The shriek sing
I’m positive, too, kick
The door and you are dead
I’ve suffocated your anti-life
I am fire, slicing rock
How can I be so sure
Where were you yesterday
Everyone knows my address
Your walls quake, can’t hold
Everyone knows I have gone
I’ll not return
Take my body
It’s useless, and all you want
How can I be sure?
You come to me for answers!
I will not answer
I am not the dancer
Piled up body parts by the door
That’s the headline
Couldn’t push the door open
Body parts stacked and labelled
Body parts alpabeticized
Divided by color and weight
Put the puzzle to life
I am not that mass
What parts did I hide
Did I throw to a thief
Strapped into a cradle
The birds took their pick
My writings, I broadcast
To air, my thoughts I
Sing to my people and flyy
Sing while I flyy
Use my words
It’s the only bullet left
Hope emerges, shyly,
Generics burst
Ax knife hammer
Claw to bone
Kill hunger
Save home
Move move move move
Love love love love
Give give give give
Live live live live
_________________________________________________
You hate me. It's OK. I'm old
And remember hating me too. Now,
Not. Someday, perhaps. Your love
Looks me in the eye. No Blink.
I am Thought, and breath my
Children. A gungho rapture
And a weeder of substance
Claw the castle portal. I would
N't because I'm you, slightly off
To the side with a fragrant view.
How did the reading go, Friend?
If I may call you friend, I do.
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