After reading some Alice Notley, I started writing again. My biggest conflict is trying to merge imagery and style with content. I can usually get one or the other, but combining both without being one billion percent imaginative is trying indeed. I'm not feeling like any are winners, but they are moving in a winning direction. I've also started keeping recording and converting to verse certain diarist / electronic nonfiction bits and pieces, derived from online letters, postings, and conversations. My next goal is to relearn rhythmic skills from oration and performance.
Written on 12-29:
Label Calls
The cat shaped as satin shooting-starred
the rosebush, pretending not to look my way;
corks left in the wine bottles wave like leaves,
their image a trance-signal catching certain
sobrieties, and coaxing fingers along: dance of
the merlot. Would it be fair to remember
cable cars and collars too tight to come off?
I too pretend, the stone giant standing dumb,
lips stained bright purple marked in a circle,
a ghoulish improv hum going unanswered,
another momentary mating call
exploding in secret.
Vision: Lips
Strange is bending to look at light
cascading off inseparable lips,
a pair dry from kleenex-rub upon
urine clean, duties we do not remember
when bending over to give those lips
a little kiss, and this is normal,
those lips, are freed from multiple
meaning, staring red and shined
somewhere.
Written on 12-30:
Apprentice
I am the apprentice,
the one you want,
the chance
for bringing
home dinner.
Turkeys fear
my wrath
just as bullets
fear my courage,
knowing too
(yes, they do know)
that as flesh seekers,
they never signed
up for the job.
I dreamed of white curtains.
I dreamed them all.
Beat hmm.
I smoked too much
these past days
and I am worried,
about all the haze,
all the affectations,
affecting my mind's processes.
And it's true, you
can't get your oil change
in this town, or that town,
on brittle Sunday afternoons--
the horror, just horror.
All you wanted was
one oil change.
And now we must go together,
tomorrow, to Carter's where
we can get our cars fixed
and head to the coffeeshop
and pretend
on brittle wooden seats
that we are kids again,
always will be.
Three Frames
Earlier today mindfield pangs grabbed body
threw body into gumlike transition familiar
texture bussing busily into clothings tight
and worn, from all those before-times
(yes, believe, please believe it to be yesterday)
movement toward breakfast
two eggs scrambled Red Hot from Red Hot sauce
and deep-dreamed eggnog as beverage, how thick, this
body, as on fire, scooped seeds from pomegranite
dreaming of dorm room jewels and cute artist
named Cait, short for nothing just Cait thanks,
another one missed, should've tugged around with
but no, much better in theory not practice,
mind's splinter eye dancing jingles all days and nights
ignored by the by and through turntable synergy so
windswept Cait swept away and now look at this
this sticky red pom-blood varnishing
peaceful blue of quilt up and down shaded countertop
(it better not stain it better not stain
we believed this happened yesterday
but the patterns on the sky oval-shaped
and growing much bigger scream: deception.)
Churning stomach downs soy milk heartily
and grabs broom handle with admission,
the chance of a lifetime blooming into
butterfly precision, the joys of deep voice
echoing into latenight shower stall,
splicing one period of time into two.
accusation coldly creeping:
"You didn't move around
your furniture in your room today
did you?"
response rough and sugary sweet:
"Don't try to make me
the culprate of this
phone debacle."
Vision: Jogging
Dozens of cubist croquet players
dance the wild jack rabbit
across rhombus-shaped greens,
and thouigh shaded by the sun,
swarming black grass blades brush
up the feet of bulbuous-bellied
brawn, the earth-limbs pumping
and padding strangely, those
heavy lights blanketing dusk.
To Sam
Four things:
1) Hello hotstuff.
2) Did you get my message?
3) If not: I'll be in Bristol
the 2nd or 3rd of this month
(ie. a few days) to escape Maine
and look for a fourth job,
and I live in a house now
so if you want to visit you'll
get to see more than just DORM.
4) Why is "RWU Police" on your
interests list? That's just weird.
Vision: Garment
The cold wraps itself around necks
like a scarf or scarves or pile of
bandages, mint and blue, a band
trailing off into the thick sky.
This cold is criss-crossed with our
air, liquid gaseous and volatile,
the change of matter mourning its
own spirited existence as ghost spit,
the kind of tricky stumbling hash
dreams and blistering nights in Maine
redeem these chapped throats with.
The American and the Bidet
After the rise there was the fall:
a burbon binge, a belching bidet,
and trickling peach-colored streams
waterfall across the crux of cheeks,
the stage (yes this is a shit poem),
while millions of American tourists
in Japan hear from darkened Tokyo Mariot
bedrooms one screeching surprise
from the assailed, the man, woman, victim,
with underwear around ankles, and there,
several feet up, the bidet's second speed,
the second intensity level, levels
marked only in the Engrish picture language,
is selected, do not be alarmed:
the asshole is clean, the job is done.
To Amanda
Don't be sketchy. Be bronze brawn
under the majestic vision of
rainbow oil droplets!
Vision: Digital Birds in Conflict
I wake up
and understand
that these parrots,
these squawking
distractions
have been designed
by our lord
(God or Man
or Death itself)
to dislodge me
from my proper
place. I will
them gone and
they remain,
I will them
here and they
are gone, so
I lay still,
waiting for
their beauty
to be drowned
out by plane,
or volcanic
explosion.
