The Blackbook
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| Collection of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]] (2002) | Collection of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]] (2002) | ||
| - | '''Part 1 | [[The Blackbook (part 2)]]|Part 2''' | + | '''Part 1 | [[The Blackbook (part 2)|Part 2]]''' |
| ''Being a continuation of The Redbook, i.e. the irregular journals of Mordecai Adkins'' | ''Being a continuation of The Redbook, i.e. the irregular journals of Mordecai Adkins'' | ||
| <pre> | <pre> | ||
| Line 1745: | Line 1745: | ||
| wince | wince | ||
| </pre> | </pre> | ||
| - | '''Part 1 | [[The Blackbook (part 2)]]|Part 2''' | + | '''Part 1 | [[The Blackbook (part 2)|Part 2]]''' |
| == See Also == | == See Also == | ||
| *[[The Redbook]] | *[[The Redbook]] | ||
| *[[The Bluebook]] | *[[The Bluebook]] | ||
| *[[The Greenbook]] | *[[The Greenbook]] | ||
Revision as of 12:38, 20 Feb 2005
Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2002)
Part 1 | Part 2 Being a continuation of The Redbook, i.e. the irregular journals of Mordecai Adkins
January
Tampa
Dude,
Where’s my home?
I can barely stand this crapshoot
any longer
A visit to sun-drenched slums
is a liquid castle of memory
it tumbles into puddle
New York dropped
New Mexico is about one pylon away from
being a burnt bridge
This is the backdrop to the BLACKBOOK
sneaking bowls on the golf course
or in the attic
Hiding out in my bedroom with De Quincy
and Noel Gordon
(the lusty adventures I luv’d so well
when performed in monologue
in full Regency attire)
The Opium-Eater’s escapades
Heretofore unknown to me
These Romantics
Appeal to my palate
Whisking me away on small journeys
Brief respite from this alien feeling
One of my lines is:
“If I’m gonna feel like an alien,
I may as well be abroad,
Have a reason for it;
It’s a lot better than feeling this way at home;”
So, Romantics
You are like jet planes
Capable of great feats of motion
Fraught with peril
Classic case of Escape through
Literature
escape into home
London
In the lounge of the hoity-toit
Away from the glaring neon
And blaring techno of the hoi polloi
(Of course I sat there for 6 hours
until boarding; our plane had
mechanical problems; we were sent
back to wait; and I was made
aware that my ticket came with
certain “privileges”-- I thought the
price was high!)
So I languish in luxury,
Late for Toulouse
Wouldn’t you know the last
Passenger on the flight from
Tampa was a dead-ringer
For a small Saddam Hussein?
And me, taken behind the
screen for a second search of
the shoes and bag along
all the people with Arab-
sounding names – made me
proud – and now sipping
complimentary sparkling water in
a quiet lounge, analogue light,
a view and a desire to
get on with it
Toulouse – Croix Daurade
One faucet for hot
one for cold
pisser in one room
shower in the other
radiator heating
as opposed to central
these are superficial
differences
a million make the
whole
If people really think
I can write a line like
“sun-drenched streets” without a wink
then fuck ‘em
clichés are damn funny
and humor is not incompatible
with melancholy
I laugh less than I used to
but when I do I laugh
al the harder for it
an orange cat sits beside me
I’m in Toulouse
It is 2002 and I’ve nothing to lose
Eggs
in a heart
made of twigs
A malevolent doctor
Implants babies
Thru slits in the skin
his clinic is a bullet
made of stainless steel
after the accident
(I could not sit right
and lost it in the curve,
the truck skidding
thru pine and palmetto)
I could not tell the officers
where I had been going
February
tall trees in a stockade : a frying
pan from the fire we made
not much better this rhythmic go-getter
bedwetter cigarette more and more
the town
rocked to sleep by explosions
dreams of Sicily
and that is a poor excuse
for a poem
it’s easy
it’s complicated
there’s a template
there’s a shower
his uncle with the remington nightshade
abandons ship in the dark of day
aborat a rusty-nailed plank
Floating across to Hoboken
it’s complicated
IN lift lamp
insensate
elbow cramped on IKEA couch
Idea
I ain’t a novelist but I do have some
interesting anecdotes
I can’t say it’s all true but
most of it is and that which isn’t
I usually just applied the three times rule to
the listener or reader will never feel
the feeling you fell
so jack it up three times for effect
ACTION VIDEO
there’s a template
there’s a shower
there’s a templar
there’s a tower
there’s a tempo
there’s a flower
there’s a temper
there’s a bower
there’s a boy
that’s it
dance on the table
get ‘im outta jail
stop the car
the cross is the centerpiece
of the target
the whole story being told
in ominous pictographs
hysterical neon cartoons upon the clerestory
a stained-glass gluttony
upon the pox
the black dance
the circle of buboes
ashes to ashes
black tar to poppy
this is the deintegration
of decay
the end result of decomposition
a sizzling jump back into form
snowmelt upon grass
it is too warm for sugarplums
bird pecks ground – he squawks!
And if I overstay my functions
the acid bath is a travesty of fountains
Let’s recruit for the negative army
and diminish soul
ignore that Marquis de LaFayette
black dance with death
upon the Mall
D.C. a desperately unforlorn
squall, a
squalor
yelling over the treetops & the band
charmed senseless
still suffering the missionary greed
alex cuts lettuce
and lets it fly
with amiable generosity
and an open soul
wiccan
which is not to say
or much better than
or a sound uttered madly from above
this canister
beaten by a metal whisk
the shared structure
and realization of autonomy
that conjunction
stilted and delicate
blazing like candles
in a darkened cold
room
and if I seem somewhat
ambivalent
I am
then maybe throw a log on the
fire
Burning and jumping rope
I died there on the stairs
(a broken neck?)
a tudor nightmare in flames
the words that floor the chamber
echo in the heat
a clumsy value
a unit of geodesic measurement
the pressure of the earth
vast flat plates of lead
being compressed over millennia
trapped gas and pressure
turn coal into diamonds
I can shove no more down
your gullet
so I put them in thru your
ass
Will this be decoded to
mean I kill and eat children?
Hardly.
I prefer grandparents’ gristle
They look backwards and
obsess over ailments
they see a dark tomb
thru the pills and
letters from AARP
a drizzling shit of binary
numbers falling thru flat blue sky
I send out drones
like a Japanese robot
I am humanoid
but my arms pop off
like pork that has been
sitting out for an hour
my line breaks are bad
off to the horizon
the surf breaks off to the left
you can peek thru the half-closed
door of my brain into the
startled whip-poor-will of my
heart
my hackneyed "heart" a rotator taxi:
a chinese boy with a heart of gold
and a magical rickshaw:
and he elegantly
stumbles
a loose cobble has threatened his toe
his teeth wince in anticipation
of crack to floor
a bedtimes' no time to watch
parents disappear
re-amazed by the simplest
remembrance
a doleful remonstrance
with a reality that
is fast-closing in
on
all
of
us
and sloaking
we all tumbled
into the baled oak
turning watermill
at the fast spot in the river
we can hear thru the lush green
river growth
it sparkles like a thin net of gold
upon each mackling crest
a net that could be a cleopatra
garment thru which nipple pokes
bronze breast
heaving
intimidates the greatest men of the
day
caesar, spurned
she throws her lot in w/Antony
bronze breast bitten
iS thAt mEat cOOked yEt?
NO?!
How ‘bout that rice
the floor, cold
a dumping ground of
musical detritus
and the whirlwing
of two-year-old boy
it’s too bad I don’t have fresh ginger
that would have been a riot
are you guys ready?
are you really sure you’re ready?
satie and frying pork
Croix Daurade 2002-03-27 the sky pale blue
under the somewhat glowering cold
there is a forlorn aspect
to the green moss covering the rocks
the concrete
the edges of walls
the small frontiers left us
an adventure upon the claggéd plain
fruit filled
and darkening
too much pressure from under bulbous digits
an imprint of a thumb and forefinger
upon my field of vision
small bruises
that don’t let me forget….
a picture in his head
while he’s fighting in the jungle
a picture in his jungle
while he’s fighting in the head
lay down a suppressing fire
get that napalm in there
hurry it up soldier
there’s a war on
bread and cheese
bread and honey
ravioli
pound cake
goldfish
salami
bread and cheese
cereal
rice
TWO POEMS WRITTEN ON TOILET PAPER
WHILE WAITING FOR MY BOWELS TO
EVACUATE, L’ALLIANCE FRANCAIS,
19.2.2
I.
He wrote his poems
on toilet paper
so that they would
feel at home
shit goes on toilet
paper, doesn’t it?
why is it that the
black onion must
suffer for the indiscretions
of the brain that orders
the hand to stuff
the gullet so that
it might fill the stomach
(even though the hunger
comes from some
place a little lower?
II.
I make a flying saucer
on my leg (of ink)
thru thin paper its
fine lines are reduced to
inadvertent pixels
I have stayed up
‘til wee hours
rehashing old events
that are no longer
wounds, but touchstones
How many more days until
the fall of France
my moods color the walls
I see that everyone is
terse, grumpy, on edge
but then I see, that’s me
fragile machinations
with the green-shirted
the blue rabbit
joins together with elaborate monkeys
a barren pussy waggles on the couch
like a hilltop against a blue sky
buffeted by a strong spring breeze from the South
rising again the alligator pinion
rides the wind like an alien
these are not flying saucers over New Mexico
but wheatcakes
capable of incredible speeds
and acrobatic feats to
defy the imaginations
their pilots give wheatcakes
as gifts to special couriers
ignorant of their function
and more than likely, bewildered
confused and afraid
(a tilted body, supine floats into
the light thru a breach in the
hull)
somewhere a great machine
pumps out numbers based upon
the inadvertent transmissions
of the Lee Harvey Couriers
numbers which in turn govern their
movement
a closed loop a system of feedback
and echo chamber
a circle closing in upon itself
rippling out in epileptic shockwaves
would-be cosmic tantruths
lonely, petty tirades
soured scandal of acquisition
security
greed the given
demanding and driven
dividing not uniting
deriding craven riven
there is a slow river
in a cross-hatched dusk
it is black
so much so that we call it the PAST
and look to a future beyond the edge
of the page
code speaking
talking
tourettic deliverance
cryptography of the soul
influenced by patriarchus
communication disorder
the simultaneous please
and disobey
the boy who would be emperor
twice passed over
retired unto death
killed by microwaves
a small planet of germs
implanted
like grain is implanted into
the September
Eleusinian splendour
Androgynous surprise
A descent in cosmic disorder
the period of death
and surfacing
that “little death”
preceded by the
bulbous rush of blood
and followed by the dizzy stars of splendour
splent dour
a stent sour
1 little valve to release the
steam
A shot of milk and a great combustion;
minerals die with cries of delight
two bodies outlined in double lines
and filled in like a cellular cross-section
<found in a>
lost biology textbook
a basement musty a severed
finger behind the boiler
the finger was bit off by that
crazy kid from Missoula
in that fight with Chad Brown
lost in the ensuing fracas
the school cat carried [it] to its
current resting place
TOWN
a place to convene
on weak end
bottles guzzled to gullet
a thromatine flick of the wrist
a coin in a hat
a beggar’s [delight?]
shopping
quick shuffle
and eyeversion
shit sonar on full blast
check to avoid
(AN)
unpleasant
encounter
ROCKETS!
Chas Baudelaire declaims
in between bouts of melancholy
setting aside for a moment
a letter to his mother
he is asking for money – again –
he is feeling a strange thickness
about the groin
A slight but persistent fever
has him annoyed
ROCKETS!
dust sneezes broadcast
disturbance of cranial meteorography
aka climate aka “the weather”
ROCKETS!
every day now, new impertinent arrows
the stars, my destination
have slide rule will travel
AD ASTRUM and beyond
strange elevators to the
13th floor of the universe
a universe revealed to be
nothing more than a whirl-a-gig
and nothing less
and nothingness is
which is hard to wrap the mind around
can you have a burrito with the
tortilla on the inside?
apparently
you can
like beads in tapioca
dark spheres
on whose inner surface rides infinity
stars pulsing outwards like thin
smoke illuminated by RGB hues
swirling “out there”
where infinity meets
and forms its own boundary
against the greater space
in which it floats
the distillate which IS
ISNESS
champing
we go mad – like
horses on the
merry-go-round
reaching for rings
but you can’t grab
the sound of a bell
and that one goes out to
Lew Welch
who sits on a rock in the
Sierra Madres with a rusty
rifle and beard made
of heaven
BROTHERS and SISTERS-
A circle that is a square
inhabits the dwelling place of hirondelles
they cast spells on each other
with beaks overflowing
into disembodied gullets
transparent throats hover
persistent motes made visible
only when they glint
as when the eye of a dragon
leers upon the hobbit on the gold-pile
strange, nay, incredible
that the floor of the Mediterranean
could be the desert of the past
when telepathic warriors
roamed with cats
and one man
a bridge
to lead them beyond the heights
to where the crack in the
earth cannot disgorge enough
water to catch them
a kind of sabre-toothed Moses,
stars, at least 10,000 of them
fill the windshield
as the nose shudders beyond the
liminal and the eyes
glimpse, for the first time,
not sea
but land
A people,
living under vast oceans
adapt themselves to land with
suits, their biospheres are
aquariums
tentative encroachment upon the soil
there is talk of vast mountains
amid places which are the depths
elicit shudders the horror
which by their very nature they
are imbued with
A people with underwater skin
pass by in slow parade
their eyes pale, luminous….
waking up is hard to do
ocular bulbs designed for gloom
Damaged brain from 39-year old shrew
an old maid who withers
the medusa
turn you to stone with a glance
perfect methodologies for everything
thus an excuse to criticise @
every turn
Forbid if a word of praise
escaped from those purséd lips
Advancing by exponential proportions
the paralysis
Don’t want to do something wrong
Hence inaction – a
self-fulfilling prophecy to
refer to
A map by which to define
A literal mind
an incomprehension
A glass house
is a bourgeois pretension
The only thing without fault
is that little replica to call her own
A perverse
focal point;
as if that
thing which
dropped out of
her legs was the
1st, and last, of its kind
And control by the much less
recognisable method
of withholding emotion
So the uneasiness it feels
later
won’t be so easy to pin
down
Just a distance to be reconciled
an “I didn’t try hard enough….
it must be my fault;”
Here is the fate of
the faultless
DISTANT UTOPIA
ochre nuts under umber sun
the bottom of a glazed mug
pressing thru the patina of the
sky
Toiling, dust clings to
skin as if it comes out
of the pores
“You, my “friend,”
are a double-edged sword
You cannot learn when you know it all
Already”
The plants bend over their heads
are scornful flowers
Half-guilty, half indifferent
100% human
A Distant type of human
but still human,
sort of
12,000 jump
back into
time it is an ancient
cube to be sphered it
is an ancient drug to be consumed
slaves chanting in unison along their
circular march, attached to posts
jutting out like spokes from a
central column –
the shaft an enormous mushroom
squeaking as it twists into
the soil
getting shorter as it is
ground away
a giant mortar
a giant pestle
an exclusive milk drained away
stored in vats
for future consumption
“I’ll do it my way, or no way at all….
bludgeon you with persistence until you,
um, compromise”
I wouldn’t have to write about
giant soma mills if I didn’t
need to escape this generosity
My weakness engenders resentment
this reliance
It’s not the conscious jabs
But the one’s they don’t know they’re making
They’re the ones uncalculated
Thus more true
A more naked contempt
glimpsed beneath a flimsy garment
A ramrod
A toilet bowl
A fishery
A broken soul
I am not a fisher of men
but a tallyer of ocean fauna
pick ‘em up just to watch ‘em drop
When I open up my fingers
A glazed wing
a trick of graft
an unearthly shadow
pierced by a shaft
of dusty light
a cone of motes
A parasite
A plume of smoke
It disappears
As nighttime falls
The dripping stops
then starts, then stalls
all is quiet anticipation
all is expectant
a release is imminent
after that, who knows?
SANS TITRE
toujours
je sais
que faire
j’écris
poèmes
je mange
du fromage
je mange
de la viande
je vais
à la ville
tous les jours
dans les rues
dans les allées
dans les places
dans les boulevards
la vie
quelque chose
que je veaux
en repose
je siffle
AND DIXIE IT AIN’T
A romantic saint
a glissage of poetry
A bande dessinée
que travaille
pour le soleil
et aussi
la lune
les Etoiles
pour les azures
les noirs incroyables
les bleus sans limite
et quand
je me promène
(ou je fais promenade)
ou quelque chose
toujours
c’est un choix
Oui
ou
Non ?
Un billet pour la main
n’est pas la vérité
il y a autres choses
pour la
ATROCIOUS
As it may sound the dictations
streaming forth from this place and
time has a lot to do with
it being Sunday
a new red light which
gives the ring of bordello
strange luminescence
intoxicating herbal click
My comrades include an induced
familiarity
One a peculiar fellow
a changed name
a couplet of angels
Gabriel
Raphael
namedropper of cosmic intoxication
does he or doesn’t he
he may just be a madman
with a flair for scam
a passion for audio
and just enough knowledge to
make himself believable
or then again, perhaps not
I think he is for real
perhaps too real
I honestly haven’t a clue
but I sense a strange metric system afoot
The there is His Woman
a mousy little
thing with heaps of trouble
the kind of girly you must be
careful with
lest you ignore her
solicitous attention
is required of you
Then there is Marijan
the Beograd Bomber
Yugoslav he insists
but not Serb
there is a mischievous-ness to him
a girl in every port
he has papers
and talent
I like his girlfriend Julie
She speaks English like a champ
which makes it hard to improve the French
Between these two friends I frequent
the quartier
called the Matabiau
a seedy area
with an edge
I have seen plenty of whores
pimps and
felt the tingle
of potential violence
My place, the Capitole, is quieter
it is another bohemian
quartier
same maze of shops and eateries
but here the buildings are older
the shops more abundant
students abound….
slow seeping tentacle
a poem is an excuse
a release for pent-up mind
a mad mistake hand-written
to the point of delivery, when
and how it is
I cannot say and
you are not
it
can in one day the aluminum saint be bound
to try and skew dramatically
what we have learned
into a favourable promotion of
arcane theories
marbles
destructive and coarse
rusted steel along the cage
made of implied lines rising arising
from a gridwork of leads
inscribed upon the weath’rd old wood
the equivalent of scrimshaw
upon the titanic trees
he got upon his knees
he prayed and felt foolish
there were never any
good gods left
This thundering swine called Yahweh
makes me want to puke
shuddering in a pile of absent
memories a smouldering
BOY SCOUT FIRE
upon large logs burning
they were the ashes
of Babylon
belched out upon the streets by a volcano
called wormwood
a vast effluvient apocalypse
river of souls
red coals smillowing against the inky
dark
and the rhetoric of refinanced
revelation
(paid for in full, seems like
forever now ---- but I
still keep owing for
something….)
A WINDOW
a doorway
a headspace
a floorway
long-standing rhythm this open
form
no padre!
AND that
as they say
is that
(AS sure a shot at
peace
as yer ever gonna get)
there is a need
to re-shoot the moon
to send it all backwards
to a time when we are all
robots
remember those days
those nitroglycerin days?
when any step could produce
a million explosions
in turn which might never stop?
the vast undulating wave of space
stops for no man
and for every Heisenberg
there are a million Snuffy
Smiths to join him on
that march
that children’s crusade
the buboes of ’27
Awash in uncertainty
A vast array of theists and
demagogues of every stripe
and every persuasion
(and there is a whispering atop the
stairs)
they will be glad to have
courted disaster and won
to take part in RITUAL
a disaster waiting to happen
old men despondent
disappeared
and engendered
fading out
fading out
fading out
NIPS of cheese
sausage
bread and honey
sausage
cereal
sausage
5 cups of coffee since morning
BOILED HIS head
in chicken fat
tabs kept for years
sad nymphs fallen
hang out by piss-fountains and pout
these are the forgotten princesses
those that just didn’t quite have the
brains or the open mind
to adapt and evolve
while shaping what is around them
you should ask
you should ask
He took a chance
a little dance
and fell off the edge of the table
A DISTANT UTOPIA
within grasp
fingers bent
stipulations hidden like reefs
TODAY I AWOKE
Did homework
Did dishes
made coffee
did laundry
commenced to sanding and spackling
and somehow
wrote
and wrote
and wrote
one long microscopic program
anti-teleological
if only for the hell of it
and an ignorance
of the meaning of the word
AND I ATE
cannon thunder in the distance
they do not split the years
but rumble as in billow outwards
the canopy of a minaret of silkcloth
arising twice
a crescent moon atop a turpentine
a cosmic measure
cleaned up and out
The hint no hint
great sigh of relief,
beginning early
Though I had a sack full of them
I could not find the proper scarf
to wear
there were too many missing
It comes unstoppable and
still
not a rhythm
and
still
not a rhyme
and
still
not a reason
and
still
out of time
they fornicate in the sun, ears
wiggling like legs wiggling
The visions spoken of evolve
this way, and that
the chicken-fat memories
of a time stood still
a bed scraping across
the floor
announces something,
maybe?
the jangling
which is played out upon your nerves
each tiny filament strung out upon a
heart
a receptacle for the climate
an instrument for the indelicate
I cannot seem to forget
to remember
and am thus caught
in the tautology of Narcissus
closed circle
wounded knee
radiator click
friendly against the closet door upstairs
being open and closed all over again
punctuated by frustrated sighs
Irreverent they weep
they are not allowed to talk
to eat to walk to sleep
they must slide on over
and forget
biscuits fall from the sky
that is too blue
over grass that is too green
slow-wise
gin song
rip-roar
long dong
surprise fortitude among the French
they supply the armies of shopkeepers
with an obsession with their food
(Needless to say, the tartelline aux
pomme I had the other day was
a goldmine and more – but
Charlton Heston
didn’t die there)
and
also
there
is
a
creeping
insatiable
doom
which rubs in everything
as the inevitable
approaches
like
light
falling
in long
tubes
across
the 1980’s
as concrete
stairwells
flicker
under the fluorescent jittering
and only hunger will bring them
out of that room,
tonight
in bed where I hope
to be
sooner
than
later
Alligator
insatiable
falling,
still
even
after
all
these
years
Disrobing in the antechamber
the red monks
in the maroon adobe
the scent of crushed flowers wafts
in on a soft chant
the clouds rush overhead
in clear, crisp progression
their shadows flit across
the ground
like hummingbirds
what
for this furtive conclave?
what purpose under the stars
where indifferent obedience is waved about
like a baton
like a judgment from a friend on the company you keep
which is always,
questionable
You are weakening
the spirit willing
the mind weak
some transcription
for the oculist
witnesses?
séance deliverance
of mad hymns
dithyrambs
and rhythms
damaged, likely!
the script is getting poor
the brain
delivers
(no
longer)
the technology of Narcissus
an elaborate machinery
silvered pistons pumping
and the cat on my lap forms a desk
Toulouse. You fair city
I want to eat the sky
under a blood-red canopy
which is a much better word than “awning”
which is ugly and speaks
of bougy hotels
and doormen
as opposed to the delicious splendour
of the canopy
One gets the sense of a giant
pear in the middle
of the dessert
What a find!
Many a man’s life saved by the pear
of the Sahara
like the dolphin’s you hear
about with them sailors
after all “the ocean is
a dessert with its life
underground”
TOULOUSE. I am that full of a) life b)shit because of you
J’ai les dents qui poussent
A short journey
to the Motherland
They all went over there on boats
Where it all could have happened
And almost did
Somewhere along the road
A conglomerate, er, uh,
a concrete block
Was thrown into the
oncoming rush of possibility
And a conglomerate is like
a tangle of arms
Some monstrous pattern
on the books of playing cards
Laid down to be used
By a gambler who
is
remarkably indifferent
Theatres
tumbling
down
LATER,
stoned (again)
You don’t understand the nature of my problem
Because I am a mystic
without Certainty
or conviction
masticating all
my strange predilections
I don’t wear black
I am somewhat nonplussed by it
That promenade isn’t me
Lost in the mystical henhouse
But not put on the cross for it
a bad dye job
a low-end theory
an alleyway hummer
by a hag full of beer
and a lube job besides
with light smeared and bleared
across the oil the attraction
a texan leers
and with him the bare ass
of a drunken nation
juts up into the air
a prostrate position
a target fair and square
but where there’s oil
there’s flow
imagine a piston packing a tube
of a pistol-packing dude
that’s how George Bush takes it
As they all do
except in Maine they imagine
being fist-fucked by a lobsterman
with a mitt full of claws
But politicians are pretty much
all the same
wherever you go
An exhortation and chakra vibration
The gong ends the moment
and you are pulled of the stage
By a stoned Chuck Barris
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
I read it when it was still out of print
and Gee Willie read it when it still was in print
You could say we were ahead of our time
like me with the goatee, but that’s another story
March
Hempstead Valley
Turnabout
I hear you say
You’re here to stay
Don’t say it again
I know you’re playing
Cuz the shadows they’re saying
You don’t mean it
Foolish to stay
In a shadow dance
Your personal game
I know you shan’t
You don’t understand, I know it
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah
I fed you
I led you
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah
You say I’m afraid
But I’ll be coming down your walk
In the sun
To say
How it will be:
That I can’t stay
Without any reason
You shadow me
Don’t say
You’re saying the truth
Cuz that I don’t see
Ah yeah, yeah yeah
You’re standing their naked
You’re stood on your head
And I like it
Where I've got you
Know that
I’ve gone
And not you
And not you
Brighton
This odious flippancy
here, in Brighton
twice recalled that 7th grade
excoriation
very flip
very indifferent
that odious insult
as if overbearing PE
overbearing English
teachers
really
gave
a
fuck
Dancing in triangles
back to the same point
(lessness)
played a game and won
made erotic poems on the fridge
still,
nothing
Hempstead Valley
I have written nothing for weeks
England, bleak
my mind is aching and encumbered
I cannot destroy the things I’ve remembered
the redundant trenches I have
lumbered thru
terrible to see
again and again she and I tumble
these words about
over and over
I say I miss her and I think I do
I am calculating, honestly
A few days ago she told me she had sex
with another man
Well, it has been 7 months
When I said it didn’t bother me
I half believed it
You can tell by my script when I’m
confident got the fire
draw the wires to a close with that
certain,
that certain….
ah, I’m sure there’s a German word for it
but here
on this orange bed
the hum of a cheap portable stereo
on the shelf of children’s books and
board games
I have withered
It is the woman back home
Yeah, I ran from her
my tired refrain is I
don’t know if I miss
her or the idea of here
the memory
the dream
never mind the fact
we didn’t live together for 2 years
and barely had sex for longer
yet in my dreams
Jerry Springer plays audaciously bad sax
as couples simulate an orgy on the
floor
this English college crowd is shocked
silent until the walk out
we leave too
do we argue?
or do I just send her packing
so I can walk back
conveniently
thru the student bar
where I might as well have a pint
Since I’m there anyway….
Backdrop to this dream
is that since being in England
I have been drunk 5 times
me the crumbling alcoholic who up
until Valentine’s Day 2002
had been sober for 1.5 years
The date of my 1st foray isn’t lost on me
Nor the fact that in Brighton,
She had just told me she
had fucked another – not dated
she’d said, just had sex;
that at least
has its comic value
so here I am
uncertain of my emotional future
getting drunk circa emotionally trying events
to complicate matters
like in Brighton
staying with the wife of an old friend
they are estranged
We have a lovely time
Dinners
Almost 4 solid days of conversation, laughter
A smile to melt the cockles
and a voice to match
a supple delicacy of figure
My lust held in check
by the circumstances
and the unwillingness to risk a friendship
a closeness
with a woman
a woman I can’t just treat as a replacement
in a rush
not to mention her husband
even though a husband only in name
he is still my friend
thus I would risk two fiends to pursue
a woman who after all
lives in Brighton and is buying a flat
and though Brighton is great place to be
she is not my beloved Toulouse
nor is this specific she my beloved Kristen
and that love may not be love after all
but wounded pride
but a memory which obsesses me
like my email obsesses me
or my various ailments
and damn she had sex with another guy
so I may dress it up –
there are more complicated emotions at
play here than jealousy
aren’t there? – but some wags will
have that as the bottom line
but the sex part is the least
I don’t really have the right
what happens when the emotional
attachment grows
and I’m increasingly shut out
which is inevitable and this sex thing
is in that sense the most basic sign
of the moving along
the turning away
the pop song
hey I write those now and calculate
how much I drank over the days in
messy lists
unshaven and bolted to the floor
so the facts can’t escape my
grip
So what if I kiss a fat lass in the Volks bar
and she tells me I’m a handsome creature
so what if I kiss the peace eye at the
web center of a tall girl’s shoulder tattoo
so what if I ask a girl to marry me,
massage her foot, fondle her gams and
bite her toe
so what if this all happens in one night
I was so drunk it doesn’t count
and I’m not drinking again
am I?
Do I fall back into a puddle of my own
piss when she tells me she’s in love again
or that she’s fucking two guys in the
car park every night
or that I’m an ugly skinny fuck and goodbye
and though she is kind to me
we all need love
and I live in France
and she lives in New York
and we all need love
and it’s not a matter of kindness
her ambivalent feeling will fall away
and as they go I go
falling perhaps thru the floor
thru the puddle
thru it all
into a kind of oblivion
I don’t think that’s all the poem that
information needs
but knowing what I’ve said I don’t
think the quantity has been the issue
so forgive me
this was truly a selfish act
especially since my letters have had more poetry in their scattered lines
our lengthy chat sessions
my aggrieved discussion
Just searching for an end
a way to leave off without looking ridiculous
and of course I mean that
both ways
My blackest hour
has been two weeks
punctuated by a desperate,
unfulfilled longing
penning naught
drifting sitting
emotions a tumult
a ragtag jumble
very little initiative
very little soul
character
humour
passion,
deadened
geographically
that happens in places where I need a car
to get anywhere
where the shops are a mall
and the bars and cafés cheap simulacra
the city of the present
spawning suburbs
like bonking Frogs and disposable spawn
lift it out
toss it aside
bring it back
let it ride
banking on a future
that
may not
be
here
The snake strikes
an endless build-up
of conversation
a free-range chicken to call our own
I thought we might not have anything
to say to one another
but after four days my voice was hoarse
honestly, the best policy
I spoke of the booze, the drugs
the lost love
my endless elf-doubt self-evident
and not heaven sent
but heavenly,
you smiled
your two front teeth
cut at crazy angles
like the bottom of a blue ribbon
the beach of pebbles
endless rolling sea
pushes the skin of water
around globes
we voyage
standing still
an hour of dance
a millennium of desire
a memory ‘til my death
a cherished regret
that we parted
too soon
running to stand still
hangin’ round this torture chamber
looking for a piece of gum
“if the sun explodes, get out of here”
that isn’t reassuring
to a man bound hand and foot
to the wall
this wall of memories
it seems to tumble
it is the illusion of monotony
a trick of the shadows
their short paths
their crude lines upon the floor
rats dance mambos and scurry off to grad school
write a poem in the dust with their tails
crime in this castle
is a desperate game of chance
it is quite lenient
allowed to make the same mistakes twice
before being tossed into this hole in the ground
and you wonder why
because you’ve gotten away with it before
hangin’ round this torture chamber
like being mocked by toads on the doorstep
you fished them out of the pond
but they kept coming back
you fished them out again
It shoots a wicked flame
this music
in comes the red monkey
having dropped bombs into hornets’ nests
he gloats
and capers
makes the world
wince
Part 1 | Part 2
