The Blackbook

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Revision as of 12:43, 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



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

-Collection of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]] (2002)
+[[Category:Extant Works]]Collection of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]] (2002)
 '''Part 1 | [[The Blackbook (part 2)|Part 2]]'''
 ''Being a continuation of The Redbook, i.e. the irregular journals of Mordecai Adkins''
 <pre>
 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

The Blackbook

From Plastic Tub

Revision as of 12:43, 20 Feb 2005

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