Theory & Safari

2 Poems by Cindy Hunter Morgan

2012-02-08T16:02:00.003-07:00

Cindy Hunter Morgan's poems have appeared in West Branch, Tar River Poetry, Bateau, Sugar House Review, Weave, The Christian Science Monitor, A cappella Zoo, and elsewhere. Her chapbook manuscript, “The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker,” has been a finalist in the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition (Hudson Valley Writers Center) and the Hill-Stead Museum's Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. For ten years, she worked in the orchestra field, directing publicity for the Grand Rapids Symphony and, later, the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. She lives in East Lansing.

‘The Ringmaster’ by Cindy Hunter Morgan

2012-02-08T16:01:00.002-07:00

He wanted a marching band

to follow the street sweeper,

a barrel organ in every bank lobby,

a shooting gallery at the public library,

a trained bear to deliver mail,

booths of sweets on every street corner.

He thought, with all of this, he might

come to crave silence,

to appreciate bird song and green tea,

pleasures which had always eluded him.

Excess was the only path to simplicity

he could imagine, though he searched

every day for what he expected

the entrance to tranquility might look like:

a narrow trail tiled with tarot cards,

lined with flickering candles,

leading to a glade in Sri Lanka

where elephants roll in wild grass,

and a boy from the tea factory

sits quietly, eating cotton candy

and listening to stars.

This poem appeared in Sugar House Review (Volume 3, Spring/Summer 2011)

‘The Pawnbroker’ by Cindy Hunter Morgan

2012-02-08T16:00:00.004-07:00

On Sunday, the pawnbroker

closes his shop and spends

the morning in the park

feeding ducks, trying to

redistribute the wealth

of this world in ragged

cubes of bread. At noon,

he naps in a tent of spruce boughs,

his sleep addled with unfamiliar

rustlings and wild dreams filled

with peculiar transactions

with woodland creatures:

a squirrel begging to trade

the bones of his mother

for a handful of nuts,

a robin pleading to exchange

her nest for three worms.

Later, he walks through

the park, staring at everyone,

wondering what each person

has bartered for her life,

how much men have traded

for an afternoon of

chess and sunshine.

This poem appeared in Sugar House Review (Volume 3, Spring/Summer 2011)

3 Poems by Helen Vitoria

2012-01-09T16:38:00.000-07:00

Helen Vitoria’s work can be found in many journals: elimae, PANK, MudLuscious Press, Foundling Review, Rougarou, FRIGG Magazine, Dark Sky Magazine and others. She is the author of three chapbooks and a full length poetry collection: Corn Exchange forthcoming from Scrambler Books. Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets & the Pushcart Prize. She is the Founding Editor & Editor in Chief of THRUSH Poetry Journal & THRUSH Press. Find her here:

http://helenvitoria-lexis.blogspot.com/

'Barbie cuts herself, again' by Helen Vitoria

2012-01-09T16:02:00.001-07:00

While Barbie cleans up blood in the kitchen, after having nearly severed her index finger, I have the same iron taste in my mouth as when I watched his face as he lied to me. A hurried rush of Red on Black, streaming & violent, a stoned-dogma, a splayed bend at the knee to quickly clean a mess up: gauze-like, thin-bandaged, blood-soaked ephemera flung aside. I light a cigarette, watch her tend to the wound. I will not. I will not. I will not. Swallow this again. Barbie goes loose & shadowlike, falls hard on the kitchen floor, just like the first time.

[first published at killauthor.com]

'Preparing the Body' by Helen Vitoria

2012-01-09T16:01:00.002-07:00

We will meet the body under the stairs and tell no one what we touch there

We will envision the mouth of the body moving in strange song

We will touch the body as if a delicate sand castle blown over

We will let the body be a shade tree, crawling with spiders

We will smear it with honey and wait for it to crack its legs open

We will allow the body to skim water, to come undone

We will teach it the definition of lost and dark wine

We will let it run in Central Park with lambs

We will reach its lungs in a rage of whispers

We will teach it prayer and how to work its way back into the world

We will welcome it onto a green windowsill filled with death

We will write it inscriptions while weeping under fireworks

We will watch the body be beaten into disgrace

We will teach the body bone silence and call it witchcraft

We will take its dignity and arrange it in snow

We will recognize the body in traffic lights and be reminded of carnivals

We will spread the body, use thumb and palm and say: here, be happy

[first published at EXCLUSIVE Magazine, exclusive4.weebly.com/poetry.html]

'Buddha' by Helen Vitoria

2012-01-09T16:00:00.018-07:00

I meet him on the internet. Then I meet him in an artsy cafe in South Philadelphia. He brings his dog, Buddha, an Akita, who has been fed too much. Buddha loves this man. Buddha has secrets in his teeth. We sit next to a giant poster that reads: Once you go Black you never go back. He says he is a true modern day renaissance man. I do not know what that means and I do not think I care. He appeals to my creative side, tells me he’s a photographer, and pulls out his iPhone to show me his portfolio. I trace the outline of his cock through denim with my eyes. The photos are of mostly unattractive people smiling in faraway places. Places he says he’s been. Also, still life shots of large steel things, buildings, and sculptures, one of a well hung man peeing in a fountain. He wears diamond stud earrings and every sentence starts with I. He notices a tattoo on my wrist. He wants a portrait of Jimi Hendrix on his back, but has not found the right artist who will tattoo him perfectly. Says: I always wanted to photograph a woman with ink. I tell him I have 40 tattoos. Buddha licks gently at the sac that used to hold his balls.

[First published at darkskymagazine.com]

Excerpt from IMMACULATE by Jennifer Harris

2011-12-01T15:31:00.002-07:00

Jennifer’s first novel, PINK, was published in January 2006 by Haworth Press and reprinted in 2007 by Bold Strokes Books. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies nationwide. She is an active literary organizer in Chicago and recently served on the Board of Trustees for the Poetry Center of Chicago. She earned her MFA in Writing from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from the University of Arizona. She is a PhD candidate in Community Psychology (spring 2012) at National Louis. Currently Jennifer is the founder of JackLeg Press and is the poetry editor at kissedbyvenus.ca.

'A Song for Sophie' by Jennifer Harris

2011-12-01T15:30:00.003-07:00

The fear I always had was that my parents would die.

I remember my first funeral was Pop’s, my father’s

father, who died of a heart attack in Ohio, 1973.

I was four and kept looking for sand, asking

Where is it? Where is all the sand? I was looking for seagulls

and shells and other things I remembered from Mother’s Beach

in Kennebunk, where we would bury people on a temporary basis.

But of course, we weren’t going to the beach and

the burial would be final. No resurrection involved.

At least not one we could see, like at the beach

when you simply jump back up all sand-covered and run

to the waves and let yourself be immersed in all that rage

and churning water. That’s what you think at four.

That a burial is a summer vacation. That your Grandfather

is just playing games. You have no comprehension

of permanence. Of the world un-manifest.

It was the perfect name for a beach, Mother’s Beach.

Because of course, that’s what it was. Mothers and children

playing bocce ball or chasing the surf back and forth as the moon

transitioned pulling the tide along with it. I remember a private

club at the north end, just across the street, there was a small

playground with swings and we would run over the asphalt

in bare feet burning our skin crusted with Coppertone 15.

Even at four, we knew we didn’t belong. We snuck in

to use the bathroom. I remember because I often had accidents

at the beach. And the shame and humiliation of pooping

in my bathing suit stung. Like getting stung by jelly fish,

which was common enough. But it’s something you remember.

Sharp. Livid. Exposed. That is, I suppose, the trauma of growing up.

Not realizing everyone goes through it. Everyone has accidents.

Dies. Gets buried. It’s hard to think of my childhood without

remembering the beach and all that sand. Wiping up to go home,

sand stuck on me everywhere washing off before we go inside

my grandparents’ home. Carrying sand in my hands, making

balls of wet sand. Wondering where it all came from.

And why Pop’s wouldn’t get back up. Wondering why people

had to die at all. I remember at his funeral running into a big glass wall,

because I have no depth perception and couldn’t tell it was glass at all

or how far away it was from where I was and running and smacking face first

into the glass and falling over. And everyone who was crying came running

up to me. To see if I was alright. I was, of course, dazed and a momentary

distraction to the fact that Pop’s was really gone. That death was

what was meant by impermanence. And that I wasn’t immune.

ii.

So here’s what I want you to know: You’re not alone.

As small and as alone as you might feel on some future occasion(s),

when I am not there, when Susan is not there, when no one you love

or know is there: to put their arms around you, to comfort you.

To whisper to you that it is alright, that everything is.

Our absence is only circumstance. A tangible result of the world

and all the obstacles that present themselves, but we are here.

If not in being, in sprit. If not in reality, then in mind. If not of the world,

then of the world beyond this world: that intangible thing that is life beyond living―

that is inexplicable except in terms of faith.

This is what I want you to know.

That you will lose someone. That you will lose many a someone

you love or like or hate or fear or desire or want. If I could protect you

from this series of facts it would be my greatest and most unfortunate feat.

It’s what we do: lose, fail, surrender, defeat, gain, die, fail, succeed.

Synonyms and antonyms―becoming in the terrible doing.

iii.

Sophie, we are not just one person. We are the people embedded

in the history of our story. In the history of what we choose to do.

How we carry something forward. No matter the field, the study.

One body in a cycle of thoughts, words, and deeds…

iv.

I pray I am the first to go in our family

I know it’s selfish, but one can only grieve so much.

Because there is a part of me that thinks

I would become something of a nova.

That I would simply implode with my own weight.

And someday perhaps, you will understand that.

Someday perhaps you will give birth and understand

that odd gravity between mother and child.

I never did understand before.

Even though, of course, you hear stories

you see it in your own mother’s eyes―

but the weight is easy to overlook.

It’s almost as if you want to shield your eyes

from so much love. Such a glare.

It has come to my attention that I am inadequate.

I keep waking up with the same song in my head

the same beat beat and thumping of guitar and bass.

I like old country tunes best, the ones where you think

it must always be raining wherever the singer is from.

Some sad place like Seattle, where suicide outnumbers

accidental deaths. I’m not sure this is accurate, but with all that rain

I would bet I’m not far off. What is it about rain that makes us feel

so much? For years I have tried to feel less, not more.

I have avoided areas with heavy downpours, I have plotted against

nature. And then there was you, this beautiful, glorious thing:

from me, of me, from the world around us, space ad infinitum.

vi.

Do you know you were born completely intact, full of this core being

4.9 pounds of body, mind, spirit―traits that only now at three

seem normal for a child. But you were fully self-possessed.

I’m not making this up. Your eyes were sharp focused. You trailed

every move, glance, touch. You watched everything you could.

The way I danced with the radio turned way up, the blinds shut

closing my eyes, hips swaying, head rolling. The constant

drumming of rain against the window. I could see you struggling

wanting to cry out to anyone who would listen. So impatient to begin.

So impatient to get on with it: learning and falling and soaring.

vii.

You have been sick for a week now. Amidst an epidemic

it is terrifying to consider. Last week a girl died. She was ten

not even old enough to ovulate for the first time. She missed

her first kiss, acne, raging hormones, crying because she

wasn’t allowed to go to whatever heartthrob concert it was.

It was the flu. And you are feverish and coughing and I can’t

do anything. I am helpless and sick too, but don’t care.

It no longer matters what I do or do not feel or experience

this is the curse of being a mother. To feel so much.

Buddhists call it attachment to the world, Samsara. The world

of suffering. Of clinging. Of words, thought, sensation.

viii.

It’s true. It is a suffering of our own invention―the pulling

of gravity on our bodies, of weight without end, of madness.

Everlasting. Eclipsing. Ecclesiastic. A sweetness.

A letting of blood. A letting of hands, letting it all go.

This is the truth: there will never be a circumstance too great

or too painful or too sweet in which I will not love you.

I watch you sweat and cough and I pray it will pass.

You will flower again, you will, you will, you will.

ix.

I am a wrathful deity: I am my mother, my father’s mother

who killed herself in an insane asylum, 1967. Two years

before I was born she hung herself from the rafters

thinking At long last, I will have peace! But there is no

peace for mothers, is there? There is only worry and

more worrying. Pieces, rather than peace.

Pieces of it. Glimpses of calm. Glimpses into a future

where you can take care of yourself when I will no longer worry.

I resented my mother for so many years for her worrying.

It made me feel so inadequate as if nothing I could do

was good enough but it’s not that. I get it now.

A mother’s love is a fierce thing. I need to be so careful―

to always be gentle about it. To cultivate only the most gentle

of touches, not to let worry turn into something ugly

something controlling and strangling where love becomes

this terrible gravity. Where love becomes something

that makes me need to climb onto a chair and tie a noose

around my neck because I can no longer tolerate what is called “love.”

I wonder if she knew what she did―Louise, the one who hung herself.

I wonder if she knows that her granddaughter missed her

looks just like her, that her son cannot even bring himself

to talk about his mother. To say her name. For years I didn’t know her name.

Is this what love does? Does it turn into a nova and simply implode

so that no one can bear its touch?

Let me be wrathful. Let me burn all the fetters away.

Burn so bright that all you feel is the leftover embers

a sort of pinkish glow. Orange in the dimming light.

Before we ever met, my lover was told by a gypsy

a sun was coming her way, a giant red colored sun.

I think this was you, Sophie. I would say you―

there is a lightness about you, your entire being is

light light light. Such a gentleness, you hint of pure joy.

Something unbridled, something innocent like a monk

who spends hours sweeping sidewalks so as to avoid

stepping on ants. It’s this sort of gentility

I hope keeps in your heart, always, that you

let nothing deter you, that you blossom, bring comfort

to the comfortless. That you never turn cold.

I want to keep you safe so your heart is nothing but wildflowers.

Pure joy, a sort of gold among the ruble of broken parts.

But we are human and part of that is to feel it all,

not just this joy of being but the pain of it, the sorrow too.

Suffering is not just about sadness and aching and fear.

Suffering is joy as well, to feel so much your heart burns with it

throbs deep inside you burning and burning and burning.

To shield you would rob you of who you are

beyond the skin and bones. Beyond the body of self.

I want you to feel all of it, not to avoid things the way I did.

Running as fast as I could. I carried bricks. I carried

concrete, dirt, ash. I made a mess of it. I felt nothing.

xi.

I surrendered. I let go absolutely…

Let go completely, even when you think you can’t

When you think you have given every bit of yourself

Sophie, yield and yield and yield.

(I hope you understand this some day

I hope someday you will burn with it.)

xii.

Yesterday “Jesus and crackers” was your description of going church

I can’t help but think how appropriate it is that you equate church with doing

eating the wafer, taking God deep down into you. It’s what you see.

Of course I’m a Buddhist and have a certain bend. I’ve heard it said God

is either everything or nothing. Buddhist or no, it’s true.

For so long I’ve let language alienate me:

THERE IS NO GOD.

You should know, I sometimes think I’m just trying to cover the bases.

I am terrified of dying and finding out I was wrong. That all along

I was just too stubborn to consider the possibility. I hope you are never

conflicted about this. I hope for you, faith is an immediate thing.

That you can have faith always, forever, without doubt or fear or recriminations.

(Originally published in the Venus Salon at www.kissedbyvenus.ca)

5 Excerpts from SWEET SPOT by Lorene Delany-Ullman

2011-10-26T15:46:00.000-06:00

Lorene Delany-Ullman is a native Californian, and received her M.F.A. in English from the University of California, Irvine. She formerly worked as a technical writer for the Boeing Company and Impulse Research, a public opinion and marketing research firm. Her book of prose poems, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, is forthcoming from Firewheel Editions in Summer 2012. She currently teaches composition at UC Irvine.

The five posts excerpted here are from a work in progress tentatively titled, Sweet Spot.

Lorene writes: ‘Sweet Spot is the memoir of my life as the wife of a minor league baseball player during the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. As a hybrid form of short prose pieces, this collection endeavors to tell the story from the wife’s perspective in language that is both lyrical and candid. The vignettes strive to address not only the domesticity, but also the adventure and tragedy of minor league life—from food stamps and league championships to murder and divorce.’

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Spring Training)

2011-10-26T15:40:00.001-06:00

Spring Training

St. Pete, Florida, 1979

For the first week, we rented a motel room with a kitchenette. No sink, a stove with two burners enough to warm the baby’s bottles. An hour into our stay, Denis left for practice, hitched a ride with another ballplayer. The woman who showed us the place told me to keep the screen door shut or the chameleons would get in. I didn’t know she was talking about lizards. I took the baby for a walk, pushed the stroller to the end of the lot, into the new world—flat and feverish

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Good Cotton)

2011-10-26T15:36:00.001-06:00

Good Cotton

Little Rock, Arkansas, 1979

Marie’s pregnancy sent her home to Savannah. Her left-fielder husband was a power hitter; carried the gentleman of himself in his pocket. I borrowed his car just to smell his cologne. I let loose a sigh—it was easy—we were all hungry for something. His clothes were heaped in the front seat, freshly laundered. Fingering one of his cotton sleeves, I remembered what Marie said: it all comes out in the wash.

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Sinker)

2011-10-26T15:34:00.003-06:00

Sinker

Little Rock, Arkansas, 1979

Hand over hand, I lathered and rubbed with water and soap, my kid climbing my leg. The groupie next to me washed, too, then smacked gloss between her lips. I’m gonna sleep with every player on the team, she drawled. I checked out the sink—its white notion of enamel and cast iron, the fine crack near the drain—listening hard. She and her friend giggled like girls getting ready for their Debutante ball. The sink being fine and all, I picked up my child, and quit.

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Sacrifice)

2011-10-26T15:32:00.006-06:00

Sacrifice

St Petersburg, Florida, 1980

In St. Pete we studied the Bible. A dentist and his Mrs. called the players and wives together for devotionals. Because we rented a house with two couches, the lessons were held at our home. The shortstop came clean—he was looking for dope near a fence, and found a palm-sized Bible instead. His girl, Mary, came all the way from California to wed in a fan’s backyard.

The more schooling we had, the less we’d believe, the dentist said. He pinned a map of the holy land on our living room wall, pointed and smiled while we followed the feet of Jesus. That summer I asked Him to forgive me—we bowed our heads, held hands, and prayed to win.

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Road Trip)

2011-10-26T15:30:00.004-06:00

Road Trip

August 31, 1981

His mother was murdered—I called our Little Rock neighbors first, asked Liz to check on Denis. His older brother phoned him with the news. After nine innings behind the plate, Denis was alone, probably smokin’ a jay, a frozen bag of peas on his left quad. I was in California with our daughter and infant son. That night he drove straight through—Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico—must’ve stopped somewhere for gas—maybe all cried out by Arizona. Before Denis hit our state line, husband number seven had her cremated; later, Ray showed us her plans for their new house.

We never talked about her—only the yellow nylon rope around her neck, carpet fibers in her hair, the Arizona desert road where a man riding a scooter found her. How she was robbed of her cash and credit cards. Later, the words that meant the most were “circumstantial evidence.”

She’d bought life insurance a few weeks before. We bought a Volkswagen bus with the money she left us. The orange-brown plaid curtains swung with every turn.

'Guzzle' by Amorak Huey

2011-10-13T16:01:00.001-06:00

There’s a saying about the wisdom of being drunk in a small boat.

There’s another about sex under a full moon, possibly also on a small boat.

Or is it sex with an ex? Or breakup sex? Or a bottle of Boone’s Farm Kountry Kwencher.

You can’t believe it’ll be that bad. Until you’re puking over the side of a small boat.

1989, her driveway. She said we were ruining our friendship. She was right.

At Scott’s lakehouse in Pell City, she stayed ashore. It was, after all, a small boat.

My favorite summer: the year I worked at a bait shop. Learned to talk like a fisherman.

Didn’t write a word. Got a good tan and my first muscles, from dragging around small boats.

A question of ethics: When you break up with someone, should you be honest about why?

What if it isn’t very nice, or makes you look bad? It’s a long way from here to a small boat.

Ghazal, I’m told, is Arabic for “talking to women.” The couplets should be linked, like couples.

They should also be detachable units. Like, for instance, a series of small boats.

If I said I was never very good at talking to women, I would want you to think me a liar.

I once drank a bottle of wine while nightfishing. The story ends like that, in a small boat

in the dark – I’m breaking the rules here; detachment isn’t as easy as it sounds –

where was I? Oh, yes: in the moonless dark, moaning her name from the bottom of a small boat.

"Guzzle" appeared in Gargoyle 56 (2010)

'Short History of the American South' by Amorak Huey

2011-10-13T16:00:00.002-06:00

“Blood where the sky has opened.”

– Jorie Graham

“You may bury my body, ooh

down by the highway side

So my old evil spirit

can catch a Greyhound bus and ride”

– Robert Johnson

Up early. Water level low enough to walk

a hundred yards toward horizon: mud flats

crack and squelch underfoot. No one

else is here

this morning. Unfamiliar sun awaits,

hungry dark lingers against gulf’s goodbye kiss,

last girl in the dance hall, first one

to meet your eye. A wink is a promise

and a threat: follow or sit down.

In this part of the world we are never

alone and this is not my story.

How many songs before you understand

why a body must keep moving?

That when you stop, you die. This is said

of certain sharks, though it might be untrue –

but we do all of us sense blood. Imagine:

single drop: one million gallons of saltwater. Still,

there is nothing evil in this world –

your chances

of being divine so small as to be invisible –

to peel back

what is known about the visible

requires a sort of wisdom,

an awareness of danger – you find yourself

in this spot where the last rivers end

and sky folds into ocean –

closer & closer, then farther away.

"Short History of the American South" appeared in Blue Earth Review 8.2 (Spring 2010).

'Sept. 11, 2004' by Amorak Huey

2011-10-13T15:59:00.003-06:00

For a while, in the newsroom, we stopped

using words like “bomb” and “slaughter”

in sports headlines. We complained

less about micro-managing editors,

weak coffee, system crashes,

incompetence in the composing room,

we pitched in and made our deadlines.

We felt like, no, not quite a family,

but a team, at least. We looked around and were glad

no one in this room believed

in anything with enough fury

to shave his earthly body clean

and plunge us all headlong into the milky fire.

It was an exciting time. We did not pity the planet,

we felt renewed with possibility, knowing

all our best love stories

have a backdrop of crisis, calamity, cholera.

We counted our blessings,

counted our fingers and toes,

counted ourselves lucky

to survive, we felt proud

we were first to see this date as the proper noun

it would become, we were responsible

for its becoming, we were patriotic

because we didn’t flinch

at the risen cost of gasoline. We were resilient.

We kept the Friday Doughnut Club alive, fearing

to do otherwise was to let someone else win,

all we had to do was wait

for time to pass, for a holiday, even a somber one

the kind marked with a slow parade

and black crepe paper,

to be born in tragedy’s muck. Three years,

turns out, suffices for most of us. We made love

and war, we had babies due in June,

we miscarried on Thanksgiving,

football on TV downstairs and our future

bleeding into a cold toilet one purple clot at a time,

our bodies helpless with cramps.

There’s more than one anniversary today.

Twenty years ago in Leicester, England,

before that Monday’s first cup of coffee was gone,

someone unlocked DNA’s inner chamber,

uncovering the unique self

written in that knotted helix,

the double strand that determines

guilt or innocence, that decides before birth

whether we are strong enough

to live in the first place

or to meet death with the angry word

of god burning like jet fuel on our tongues.

"Sept. 11, 2004" appeared in Crab Orchard Revew 13.1 (Winter/Spring 2008).

'I Give You Back' by Joy Harjo

2011-08-14T15:11:00.000-06:00

3 Tubes of Muriel Rukeyser

2011-08-03T15:54:00.000-06:00

'Super Moon' by Neil de la Flor

2011-08-01T15:55:00.000-06:00

FYI #1: This is the moon, not the sun, nor an imposter.

FYI #2: That is my shadow to the left of the landing strip of light.

FYI #3: Light travels at the speed of kissing.

FYI #4: In lieu of the super moon, we mooned the moon.

FYI #5: We mooed, too.

FYI #6: Where is the moon when I’m in school?

FYI #7: The periapsis is the shortest distance between my body from one of the foci of his elliptical orbit.

FYI #8: Even though he is the apoapsis to my periapsis, we both end in s.

FYI #9: I want to lick the photons off the super moon so that I can dream of fire-breathing dragons again.

FYI #10: When I sleep, I’m a dragon.

FYI #11: I’m also a queen.

FYI #12: He said we should make an offering to the super moon and then he hugged me like a big gay football player might after winning the Super Bowl.

FYI #13: I love the trajectory of madness.

FYI #14: Before he jumped in, he took off his pretty hat.

Olga Broumas, 1988

2011-08-01T15:38:00.000-06:00

http://poetry.arizona.edu/promotion/2011/07/im-still-listening

3 Tubes of Charles Bukowski

2011-04-28T10:20:00.000-06:00

4 Tubes of 13th Century Sufi Poet Rumi, Read by Translator Coleman Barks

2011-04-22T10:03:00.000-06:00

'What Do Women Want?' by Kim Addonizio

2011-04-21T17:34:00.000-06:00

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16213

'Frog and Toad Confront the Alterity of Otherness' by Dean Rader

2011-04-20T16:35:00.000-06:00

The sun was hot in the sky

like a muffin in a bright blue tin.

The day was just the day.

The wind was nothing more

than wind, the leaves were leaves

and kept on being leaves.

Frog, however, wondered why

he was Frog and Toad was Toad.

Frog knew who he was,

but this strange morning

he feared he was the wrong one.

His skin felt too clammy,

his eyes too bulgy.

Even his pajamas seemed

that of another creature.

Everything was wrong:

the trees overhead; the birds in them.

Toad, on the other hand,

woke up troubled by how

different he was than Frog.

To him, Frog, was wholly

unknown and unknowable.

The yellow flowers outside his window,

the waterbirds down by the lake

that arrived only in winter,

the dreams of alligators and snakes

that swam through his sleeping,

all made more sense to him

than this Frog in his threadbare

suit and flappy feet.

How odd they both wanted to fold

into the foreign skin of the familiar,

inhabit the Frog and Toadness

of the other—

It is Toad who will understand

to love the unknown is to say yes

to the ineffability of difference.

And Frog shall find himself

stunned with a recognition

that to love the miasma of mystery

is to say yes to sorrow,

yes to the presence of absence,

yes to the chance that alethia

may never rise out of the pond.

Frog makes Toad some toast

with strawberry jam.

He waddles across the room,

sets down the plate,

pours Toad a cup of coffee.

The sun is hot in the sky

like a scone on a sky blue table.

Toad looks over at Frog.

Good old Frog, he thinks.

That bastard knows I hate toast.

Toad spreads the jam like a man

might smooth mortar on a brick

for which there is no building.

Thank you, he says,

Thank you Frog.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Dean Rader's 10 Greatest Poets Project for the San Francisco Chronicle was covered by The New Yorker and the New York Times.

'Self Portrait: Rejected Inaugural' by Dean Rader

2011-04-20T16:26:00.000-06:00

The land was land before we were us.

Our regret, freshly cut, clumps in the front yard.

History, memory’s buttonhole, needs a new suit:

Its shoes, scuffed and spit-shined, wait by the door.

We wear ourselves as though it means something,

As if identity’s moustache and glasses were made

To order. We are who we show others we

Should be, at least this is what we told

Ourselves as we dragged our whiteness across

The plains. We are what God wants us to be,

At least, this is what God told us as we dragged

Our blackness along the field. We are what

Our treaties say we are, at least this is what

Our fathers told us as we dragged our redness

Into the forests. As we did that first day,

We walk out onto the yard in our bare feet.

Today, though, we keep the mower in the

Garage. It’s raining and it is going to rain.

Today, we wait for the sun, sky’s

Only coin, to drop itself into the slot

Of America’s phone: we ask who might

Answer when the other millennium

Calls to check in. We reply as we did then:

Look in your window. We are whomever

We are when we answer that phone. We are

What we say into the silence on the other end.

We are, as we always have been, the little chain

That dangles from mercy’s bulb. We are,

As we always will be, the bulb at the end

Of conquest’s wire, at least that’s what

The soldier told us as we touched the switch.

We are what we say we might be. We are

Neither invention nor anodyne. As we

Walk across the yard, we say to ourselves:

We are what God asked us to be,

But we know that’s never been true.

We are who we ask to be us.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

'Talking Points [Love Poem]' by Dean Rader

2011-04-19T17:40:00.000-06:00

• And the way the light crawls up the side of the sky at dawn;

• the room [the sky] when you open the curtains after a long morning in bed;

• the sun splashing on the sheets [a bowl of lightning];

• a flame: your face: the palms of Jesus in an El Greco painting;

• and the way the stars in their wool coats shine inward;

• the time I drew back your blouse [&] [kissed the light of your skin]

• the light crashing down your spine;

• the light curving [off] the curve of your hip;

• the light from the _____, the light in your mouth;

• the light on your body that says [this way]

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Three poems from Works and Days are nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

'A Geneology of Unfinished Love Poems' by Dean Rader

2011-04-19T17:39:00.000-06:00

[elegy]

I don’t know

what the dead

_____ about love,

if, for instance,

they remember it

the way an amputee

recalls a missing _____—

a necessary part

of the body found

only in a memory

of _____ slick

in water, hot

over flame, delicate

on thigh, in a mouth—

or if the ____ is just sorrow.

[comedy]

Your eyes are so _____.

There is no way

they can be glass,

though the left one

is always a bit

off center.

I wonder if your body

is already on the lookout

for the first _____

of my ear hair.

Your feet are so _____,

I don’t care that they’re webbed.

You’re my duck.

My beautiful little duck.

You can’t imagine the ways

I want to _____ you quack.

And then there is your _____.

_____!

I really like it.

In fact, I wish

I could carry it

around in my knapsack.

I’d _____ it the way

an archeologist

handles a sacred vase,

the way a cop grabs

the most dangerous felon.

I’d handcuff it to my belt loop.

I’d wear it like it was

Two loaded _____.

[haiku]

With the _____ union

even holy men forget

it is God they _____

[epistolary]

Dear _____,

I want to _____ for lying to you about that Home Ec. teacher. She meant nothing to me. And I need to come clean about the trapeze artist, the pool boy, your _____. What was I thinking?

I hope you realize that I have forgiven you for pushing me into the _____ of that classics scholar. She’s ancient history. That’s a little joke, but I’m not joking about how ____ I feel: Your cousin Sophie. Really … my mistake.

And about the palm reader. All she did was _____ my hand. Honest. But when she traced the creases, the narrow _____ on the map of the future world, she made me think: I want to know you the way she knows these lines. I want you to _____ me the way she knows how to lie.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

A poem from the book (Twilight at Ocean Beach: 14) was named by Verse Daily as one of the Best Poems of 2010.

'How to Buy a Gun in Havana' by Dean Rader

2011-04-18T18:00:00.000-06:00

First, never say the word gun.

Or pistolero or buy.

Talk instead about platanos. And smile.

You’ll know the bodega;

it’s the one in Los Sitios with the wooden

parrot clipped to the wire on

the left side of the door. When the wind

springs up off the sidewalk,

the parrot bobs slightly, banging its crimson

head against the building’s wooden slats.

Go inside. On the far wall above the shelves

of candles and tilty stacks of shirts,

you’ll see the blackboard. It’s the

same in every store: an inventory

of frijoles negros, arroz, and leche de coco,

menued in chalk. You will

scan the inventory for platanos, hoping

they are in stock. You never know.

You will have brought with you

a pouch of powdered milk. Inside

will be powdered milk and eight hundred

fifty Euros. No dollars. No sterling.

The pouch will be glued shut. No tape. No

staples. You will, as you do with

your wife, your children, your boss, barter.

There is no baby formula in Cuba;

no cow’s milk. You will hand over

the pouch and ask for platanos.

It is said that at a similar bodega in Vedado,

you look the man behind the counter

in the eye. But here, you are supposed to settle on

the framed photo of the Catedral

de San Cristobal nailed to the wall above

the shirts. The woman will place the

platanos in a plastic bag. You will take them.

You will not say thank you.

No one knows the precise chain of events,

not even you, because, as you are told,

you turn away. You walk over to the shelves

next to the old Coke cooler and ruffle

through Frisbees, pantyhose, and postcards of

Che playing golf in army fatigues.

By the time you are finished, your bag of

platanos will feel heavy. At that point,

you walk out of the store, and out

of Los Sitios, and make your way to

the Malecón, and you gaze at the lovers lounging

on the wall and you stop

for mango ice, and you ask yourself,

as you have done with everything

meaningful in your life, what happens now?

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Works and Days is a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters First Book Prize.

'The Poem You Ordered' by Dean Rader

2011-04-18T17:55:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, you ordered a poem. You were considering throw pillows, a new ferret, or a hatchet, but a poem had been on your mind for months. You were finally ready to pull the trigger.

As for the details, you were certain what you wanted: something longer than a hammer; simpler than Soduko. On the pull-down menu, you selected quatrains but then, after much deliberation, you changed your order to couplets. You paid extra for the stirrups, the tattoo but said no to the eye patch, the hammock, and all warranties.

You were tempted to ask for rhyme (it was included), but in the end, you declined. For you, it was all about story, and you worried rhymes wouldetract from the poem’s flow. If it contained people, all the better: you preferred a tailor, the Russian woman from the bakery down the street, and your grandfather on your mother’s side. But, you said to yourself, who gets everything?

As for the title, you chose the option Surprise Me.

Most of all, you thought, the poem would have to be about mercy, which

would, of course, encompass loss. It must address war, and it must be open

to closure. You didn’t need controlling metaphor, and you had no interest in splurging for metonymy.

There is no anticipation like waiting for the poem you ordered to arrive.

When the poem you ordered ambled up the walk, you were caught off guard by the limp but nothing else—not its body cleaved in two, not the cowlick, not the delicate accretion of its form. You asked for this poem because for you, beginnings are never enough. It has always been about the ending.

To the window, foggy with your breath, you admit that you were never actually surprised by the limp. You knew the gun in the poem’s pocket was loaded, and you knew where it was going. You had, after all, ticked the box marked bullet.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Dean Rader is a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Louis Hammer Award (judged by David Lehman.)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening : Poetry Everywhere : Video : The Poetry Foundation

2011-04-18T12:11:00.000-06:00

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening : Poetry Everywhere : Video : The Poetry Foundation

'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost

2011-04-18T12:06:00.000-06:00

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717

Caroline Kennedy 'Walks' Through Favorite Poems : NPR

2011-04-13T23:42:00.000-06:00

Caroline Kennedy 'Walks' Through Favorite Poems : NPR

NPR -- Talk of the Nation -- Science Friday -- with Cormac McCarthy, Werner Herzog and Lawrence Krauss

2011-04-13T17:39:00.000-06:00

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scifri-040811-hour-2-the-intersection/id73329284?i=92901628

Levi's - America (Go Forth) Commercial

2011-04-10T22:58:00.000-06:00

from Helsinki by Peter Richards

2011-04-09T16:00:00.001-06:00

+++

He wore a tight aqua t-shirt which signifies

to me at least the end of June actually

the whole of March bears out in a reasonable

way my recollections of a well-known cellist

still playing at home her mat was made of horsehair

her mat was made of green horse feathers

and much to her disgust I sometimes wore

my uniform and sometimes I bit her seneca lobe

which has every appearance of being modern

and contrite but contains the initial error

I sometimes see behind Mohammedan curtains

or the magazine said to contain 70 of the world’s

most beautiful men they seem timid at first

but just start in with a little Portuguese and you

will soon find no man is a better authority than

any other man any divinity as the low end estimate

of a number some arbiters regard as a trick for it does

not record the fact nor contain action requiring

thought in clear view my recent attempt was like

my first in that I neither consulted the highest

nor was I ever truly released from Helsinki

+++

I do remember as a small boy being brushed

by a black man in the courtyard feeling the small

of my back lightly brushed so that it sank deep

into my imagination and partly the initial deathblow

Helsinki prepared for my boyhood drawing an invisible

orange line at the base of my skull leading to this villa

my parents shared between them each room holding

a portrait of one of my parts and one room wrongly

represents the cyst in my knee another captures my chin

before it was mended a third stretches to the evil side

of the room where this tear sits hard and white and so

I think it must be cold so cold the cold outnumbers ice

from when the ice was young no tear has taken its place

so it must live beyond the great doors of winter and sing

as many flesh and blood songs as a frozen tear can sing

+++

Providing these consultations

remain unsaid if he kissed me

he kissed me in fugitive droves

and disappearing were the soldiers

surrounding us both except they

were ably and frank and as soon

as undone he refused to do other

man bidding knowing our night

made for that negative evidence

compared to his eyes lesser black

was the lozenge shouting disinterest

in the ship in its spatial authority

some other being must have left

open and in places wantonly split

+++

My tube was never removed so this painting depicts

the continuation of sound passing through one boundary

wall to the next on and out into space where I still have

a more or less decent view of the villa though it looks small

and perversely flat and pink like a tile or patch of laminated

foil on the head of a rat still it seems fairly represented and I

can still make out a little bit of me huffing in the wrongly placed

foreground where there is no eyewitness save for the disordered

fellow himself I suspect to be overwritten and miserably white

inside his chamber even the spirit of the hour won’t convulse

in his bed fatalist to excess he uses small bodies and forgetfulness

+++

I myself forget how my death was privately tended

it lasted about three minutes I awoke in a villa

to the sensation gently brushing my back I could see

his face looking down at me through masses of hair

then we started quarreling I don’t know something

malpractice or shirts until gradually I was no longer free

or prevented from seeing his face the locus for innumerable

variants elders volume rug pouting muscatels

I mean the variants were everywhere and they went on

forever even my first step was drawn from his face

but that I myself was rumor and whether or not we actually

went together I leave for you to decide because I don’t really

want to talk about that anymore not here anyways

where I can honestly say I know what it feels like to be

roasted forever on green spits in a cool halted valley

of repeating presence where no weather is the kingdom itself

(from his book Helsinki, Action Books, 2011)

from Helsinki by Peter Richards

2011-04-08T16:00:00.001-06:00

+++

In time I came to see death was the hay

binding one soldier to another and my own

death would appear partially lit as during

a nighttime operation the moon barely attends

whereas I with new density carry on as before

again I go razing Tanagra so plainly familiar

to me that it does sit upon my own reflection

and all about me on deck where my double

does well so the spoils and I can finally make

it just this or that way for a while never mind

the snipers the charges and this loose cloud

of animal gadgetry eating air and chrome alike

until absent any ship garrison or wish to remain

we set out with our lancets on idle command

+++

When we came upon this large orange hide

staked to the ground by three orange feathers

I knew one of our boys lay headless beneath it

but from the air who could tell he was one

of my own or that I would come to remember

his face what restraint he brought to my tent

at night his anxiety that seemed to smile upon

me same way a white dot begins to ripen inside

this one mountain of Nice a face of sad orange

decorative stone where I lay surviving the prattle

but losing the kiss until finally I gave his name

to the mountain the campaign all night the full

story how for sixteen hours I hung from the beams

of the parliament ceiling and while the jeering

population looked on I could hear in the blackout

the plan for one day holding their lives in my hand

+++

Possibly a human face grows intensely black

when excited for I was carried inside a blackened

little ship of playing fields and hives involving

practical guides to civilization in the white dot’s

presence I felt this ongoing chance to be neglected

I was being photographed by a flag of especially

crying six-thousand men each one having deserted

the patriotic part of a lion for now on they study

my life as a papal state and consider it my duty

to maintain a forcibly shaved militia between two

families there’s a ball we can touch together during

the party one of the oarsmen rolled me a cigarette

when he stood up I could see his waist was enchanted

+++

For gulls sitting a score at a time

my mouth carried a broad arcade

and so rich was the slaughter

afterwards nothing could imagine

my body a late plentiful number

saying would that I was your true

cause to love your rose so deep

was the torchlight in consultation

with itself that dawn was that

twice tied odious trumpet

my tent did fetch itself a city

and to his mood I let out the gulls

thinking it unnatural as his mouth

sought out my fingers in the metals

ribbons and bright hooks I undid

+++

Or if the large body of a boatswain

had come to my assistance but I was

shot down and plied with a spade

or that I go to a hospital to see how

a body might suffer in life I suffered

very little I had no idea how terrible

a body could be mostly what I recall

is taking great pleasure being your hand

especially your hand which is the mean

flower of Italian youth day and night

I follow you like a mound of falconry

that cannot follow or stand being

regarded until passing a solitary farm

house I burst a mild burst and flew out

over the mound filling your hair

with backbreaking nearness it was

impossible to be held for 200 times

and when the boatswain’s large body

wept ceaselessly into my body I felt

afterwards faithfully observed and never

to be abandoned by gods or the 300

north’s where I can stretch out my body

and enjoy equally assailants and combs

(from his book Helsinki, Action Books, 2011)

2011-04-08T15:55:00.000-06:00

HELSINKI: part erotic, part nuclear, entirely mutagenic, dangerously Sublime. HELSINKI: a fort, a hospital bed, an escape pod, the mind, and memory itself. "[A] word chain peppered with strange, colorful ciphers"—Boston Review.

Footnote To Howl by Allen Ginsberg (Read By James Franco)

2011-04-06T19:21:00.000-06:00

'Near the Wall of a House' by Yehuda Amichai

2011-04-05T18:50:00.000-06:00

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/074.html

Little Furnace by Brenda Hillman : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

2011-04-05T18:28:00.000-06:00

Little Furnace by Brenda Hillman : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

‘This Is It’ by James C. Frank

2011-04-04T18:45:00.000-06:00

3 planets align: where? you

don’t know yet. Just point

at what you might think

is Venus. Go

on, you were curious already

and he is more in tune with

you than you will believe.

A suburban sky, cloudless,

is pretty much as perfect

for this than one could hope for.

Do it. Prophesy

is too dumb a word, but let me

tell ya “this is it.” Yeah: you

are doing it. Here,

taste my sunspot: this star

shot its last load of light

a billion years ago in both

of your eyes at this same time

and he is that many more

light years full of what you

half-believe.

There is no denying it.

I am the cosmos speaking.

(2005)

‘At One Point, I Even Manned the Grill’ by James C. Frank

2011-04-04T18:00:00.000-06:00

Either the fireworks were worse

or the trees grew. There’s no

two ways about it. I was

standing in the same exact place:

351 paces from the asbestos-ridden

headquarters of the extinct

Bethlehem Steel Corp. So

sunburned and peeling, skin

under my cotton t-shirt assumed

the fiber had travelled back in time

through a wormhole and regained its

field-like coarseness and seeds.

Ouch. And this after a family

picnic where nobody ever asks

you anything. I waded in

the pool as an apparition of the distorted

propaganda they ginned up

against me during the decade I spent

out West trying to get famous.

I went to the fireworks after

the picnic with my family

alone because they give my

honey panic attacks. They did

not ask why she was not there.

But if they had, would I have

given them the real or the

fake answer? That I won’t know

because they don’t believe in ghosts.

(2010)

Life, Friends, is Boring by John Berryman

2011-04-03T20:41:00.000-06:00

Dream Song 14 by John Berryman : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

2011-04-03T20:36:00.000-06:00

Dream Song 14 by John Berryman : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

"I am the last . . ." by Charles Simic : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

2011-04-02T19:27:00.000-06:00

"I am the last . . ." by Charles Simic : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Antimatter by Russell Edson : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

2011-04-01T10:20:00.000-06:00

Antimatter by Russell Edson : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

'American Sestina' by Brian Clements

2011-03-31T19:00:00.000-06:00

Why not just say what the street says? Or the jungle? Why not be not afraid instead of weaving so many figures into the fabric until you know nothing but figures? Why not just make a few simple shapes? Or add text about how good it is to be lost, how flexible we have to be to get through each day, how the fish for dinner would really like to be in the Gulf of Mexico?

By opening a window, against whom do we trespass? By pointing out the ribbed texture of dung beetles? By remembering the grapefruits we ate south of the border? By being fluid enough to have multiple biographies? The books already talk among themselves.

As though anyone were really interested in textiles... Everyone just wants to think they’re getting away with a small crime. We pretend to hate plastic and are sure to get plenty of fiber, but we cook our lunch in microwaves and form small societies for praising the Rio Grande as the symbol of the authentic.

We like to point to the America south of our America. So pretending you’re someone else is a rite of passage where you’re forced to erect false gods in the name of your self, then fall into them never to be seen again, your woof and warp absorbed in a quilt of soft tissue.

Then you’re gathered at the edges with strong elastic and sent on your way. They laugh at this in Latin America. But here, we post our histories on the world wide web and take pains to document every momentary lapse into desire for the center, every error of hurt, until eventually we build a keep of myth.

We gawk at the one in the corner who has assembled a pile of lint and is giving it to passersby--his private ritual against evildoing, his own little version of Metl-xictli, which he dreams up each night and records in a little manuscript.

When he has enough material, he’ll put together a Society Even Smaller Than Himself, whose only mistake will be collecting it all in one book which describes the Society so completely that everything else that can be said about it is inscribed on a small piece of cloth, which at this moment is drifting to the bottom of a puddle in the jungle of Central America.

(from his book Jargon, Quale Press, 2010)

'Still Life with Supernova' by Brian Clements

2011-03-30T19:00:00.000-06:00

Direct your attention beneath the winged fruits of the tree on the left, where King David dances with all his might before the Ark of the Covenant. On the branch above, the Kirov Ballet is established. Call this kind of development an improvisation and you begin to see how the trees turn red, the flesh turns blue, and the frequency of their shift remains constant. Each time an electron goes into orbit, you begin to sense the movement of the triangle. The human figure is necessary only as an object of composition.

Position is where you find it. Do you, for example, know of a word that refers to all people yet discriminates among them? There is no need to introduce mystification. These bits of nature remind us that the fact of the newspaper hides a total dead silence that you can see there in the face of the burdened Madonna. Just beyond the bananas, you can detect with sensitive equipment more fairy tale narrative material coming on.

It’s hard to tell with all of this starstuff scattered about who is ahead. The golden light on the foreground of the foliage suggests allegory, while the rose prints and décolleté necklines argue that there really is an objective reality out there. Half the time it goes one way, half the time the other. What you need is a view to the inside of something that is as invisible as Autolycus.

It is no common thing to develop faith in the fluid moment. It is more perfect not to exist. Standing in the rain, you are an aleatory experiment in the duration of breath. This is an example of the technique of remaining attached until spring, then bursting. Just so, the foxtrot developed from the two-step. And just so, the figures in the upper left corner are producing abstract forms and concrete sounds from industrial materials. Are they aware of what has already happened in the lower right corner, where--billion of years before--spasms of math spun out hydrogen and theorems into the folds of every thing?

Not to worry--they have plenty of time, which is a finite surface with no beginning or end. But how long will it be before they come up with a nice theory of how ESP might work, fix their old pickups, spin a few discs, make a little something to remember them by? Soon enough, changes in the weather will be less noticeable than the changes in the orange background. Their artists will start to seek clarity and to order the principles of human motion against the backdrop of bebop and 24-ton calendars. The steel lattice of their bridges will become like wafers on the tongue of the earth. The atonal winds will encourage fractal accounts of the struggle to live outside the canvas. And the nature of their real estate will remain speculative, like the forgotten emblems under their doorsteps, where a mountain and a river unroll their two dimensions across a sunless map.

(from his book Jargon, Quale Press, 2010)

'Killer App' by Brian Clements

2011-03-29T19:00:00.000-06:00

Mid-flight, the plane lurched and for a second I forgot where I was going. But this isn’t about that. Whatever happens, it’s not enough to call it an end. This while neurons flash and eyes roll back.

Or I am watching a movie about whatever happens when the Holy Grail becomes starlight, or equivalent to a circle, as eternal as breakfast, and gives us an answer to the problem of relationships.

In other words, I’m not done yet, which is a common experience, like visions of Necropolis at the funeral. I have an endless supply of patience.

Whatever it is, it happens among people buried in schedules. If you make an appointment, you can trail your girlfriend until she tongues your suspicion. You can shoot through the walls. But you can’t live in the new until you move there.

Once it reaches critical mass, information wants to be free, prints itself onto trees. Not even the flux of leaf-turn and commerce speaks louder than that bristled quiet. The loud coyotes flash and disappear against sagebrush on the sidewalk.

Not even language’s back and forth nor its echoes, nor the mind’s sly do-overs prepare anyone. Everyone wants to start fresh--the heart jolts, its reflection bearing down, the clock a manifesto.

Not even a superhero flying into the wide expanse of his corpse, branded by power lines and logoed with string theories of natural love can head home after all that work.

Perhaps the most important performance lies in the universe of dirt, sycamores dug-in, the firmament fox-holed in spite of itself. And how long will that take?

A good rule of thumb is two days for your grandmother’s funeral, a day for a cold, half a day for the doctor, and an hour and a half for your sanity. Cold is another word for absence of feeling.

Whatever it is, it all works out to faster, cheaper, smaller. Which is all to say that death is a data catalyst. Not unlike Xmas--all new!

Whatever it is, it happens every time you wake up. You need an endless supply of language to talk about it, and you have to keep talking about it or it gets away. It is equivalent to, perhaps, a medieval era of longing, but faster.

(from his book Jargon, Quale Press, 2010)

'Political Poem' by Brian Clements

2011-03-28T19:00:00.000-06:00

Some think Castro is a yahoo and some think his power comes from his mistakes. It’s a rancorous debate that will either influence major officials or create throngs of pre-owned opinions, both of which are a bit uncomfortable and hard on our bodies and on agents embarrassed by the price of intelligence.

But, hell, bigger cost is the thing. It’s hotter than satellites and educational programs, and it’s going all national. Isn’t increase measured by having babies, giving thanks? What else is there to look for?

We are here cooking and reading and napping. It’s only the representatives who are acting like buggy software or shoppers cut off from caffeine. I want to call them jackasses and lazy bastards. But...

Against this backdrop, labor is just a ditto. The traffic is directed in whole or in part into time and space, it’s harried partners. It will crash deadlines and promise July. Next year, double it. Thousands will get hacked, their own private stashes of porn bugged, and the firewalls will jump up faster than you can bomb Baghdad.

But, still, there is some value in trade, and in suffering, which is a kind of daily justice. Those of us in the plains want the mountains and the sea, while those on the coasts want nothing other than their salt-cured selves. We all want money. The implication is that we will probably all kill each other and everything around us. It’s not getting any cooler.

It’s grown past the point of toys designed to school terrorists. Not much rises above the system of looking inside. Everyone’s head is their own new government, and getting out of bed makes me feel like my stomach is going to pop open and make me reluctant mother-, absentee father-, disowned brother-, and weeping sister-in-flight to my one-and-only country gone postal.

(from his book Jargon, Quale Press, 2010)

'Natural Jesus' by Brian Clements

2011-03-27T19:15:00.000-06:00

Throughout October and into November, the certainty that objects fall reassured us more than belief. Religions exhaust themselves, and something else rises up from the rubble--maybe slugflower, meatweed, selfshrub, people like lamps floating in the twilight of a noon 6,000 years ago, ex corde ecclesiae.

Each day inscribed itself on available things--rocks, timber, brain cells--and confused us all about exactly what “essences” means. You ask the Essenes and all you get is salt.

But something will come again. The etiology of accidents uses the cogito as a point of departure, and I have no present use for that. All that logos comes from a lost unit on Social Theory. They need more detail in the chapter on the Architecture of Experience, in my book, which enables every reader to chant like Tibetan women lallalating their yearning for a Messiah.

One guy even tried to track down his rebbe in India and found that no matter how long he stood at the top of that crazy cliff, there was no way he was going to escape time. But when nothing is certain, everything is possible.

If the modern age ended in 1969, then we’re elevated above the truth, waiting for a rush down the slope into certain warned-about meteorological conditions that can also be caused by dying the ice caps and whose acoustics are supposed to sound the great shofar of the still-to-unfold future.

When you think of it, transcendence usually isn’t a wilted leaf. But it may be a new articulation on the subject of impotence: old people actually recognize time in their own eyes and are able to view the destruction of temples that could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm to novices. It’s certainly not enacted in a text. It’s more like a carousel scene. In a baptismal setting.

Tadyatha: To tell you the truth, some of us will not taste death but will be totally emptied. Learning to see means going out front and realizing that Shiva lives next door, Zed across the street. Zed reminds us of where we stand, and there are his dogs--Signless, Uncreated, Unceased, Unincreased--playing in the street again.

Then at a certain time you start to forget--no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no hand--and when you come back to, you want to sue for damages and reinstatement. What’s wrong with immanence and maybe? When you use the defense of necessity, they have nothing in common with each other, nor with the Sutras revising each day’s entry, with the exception that each of them whispers hymns behind your ear.

Listen, no one wants you to be uninformed about those who are asleep. But the only rapture came just a minute ago. It was on the other calendar, the one the creator gave the particles in their lunch boxes.

O holy moment ago, O long lost jihad.

(from his book Jargon, Quale Press, 2010)