The Greenbook (part 4)
From Plastic Tub
Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2003-2004).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
an animal dying
- the wind was wailing....
- no!
(it was the animal)
Anyone’s guess is as good as a pogrom
beautiful lovely
ovaloid face
full lips
hair streaked and a-tumble
eyes pale-blue, arched frown fun and so unlike a pencil
a Mediterranean rarity
thin arms
long ass apex in pert bum
I almost forgot my station (!) my place
envisioned throwing down on the meeting room-
sized table
buggering the shy student of language
under the pot-bellied moon hidden
in the fluorescent lights
stalking the truth
what was it I said about the moon?
we gotta blow it up
it menaces us:
secret lair of the evil-doers
in crescent it forms the thumbnail
print impressed on the sand:
walk away
it oozes petroleum
and blood
plant and egg on the end of a stick
from the dolmen of flowers a chicken’s
head peeks….
the system had me, the speed, some
kind of invocation:
a concrete dwelling
where thousands live, hive-life
the unhealthy flipside
of the Anasazi Great House
the umber shadow of a nightmare
Who’d have thought the desert
would bloom under a flood of ink?
take time, chuck it all out
ripping out the seat of one’s pants
in a precious slide
slipping something in where it
shouldn’t be:
black-market minutes
on sale at prices….
forget it: dulcet tones ring
When people fall down tumbling
the physical act in this sense holding
the leash of “intellection”: a rather
piss-poor election, and that is
the mangled phrase of a cartoon Nip
California Style 1942
internment never looked so good
He put his lips on the wool
he stole fire and hid it
in the reflection of an incredibly
pure steel….
the glow seems to come from
within….
This is face down in a ditch outside
of Orange City, Fla., Granada
“la hermosa infamosa”
Sad to think I’m hearing things....
and at such an early age
There are a lot of things to buy
unfortunately it’s all so cheap
so it gets bought
We always get a deal on the
things no one needs....
Freckled, confused, brain like a
swiss cheese, wine spores in
twisting green clouds
Apparently there are zombies about
and full light in bloom, a sun-torch
which melts ocular bulbs and griddles
them on the cheek
This is how it happened:
The sky fell open
the thumbnail pierced the thin veil of
heaven and poured down therein a
bucket of fire. For a bucket of
mire you fired your thorn. For a
pocket of lucre you sold your lord
No gold low enough,
no valley high motion of hills which
can’t get enough
(Self-assured squire, gored, storing malice
like one bites the tongue on a
good joke among dull folk)
Nevermind: he is a stock character: sulking
Called: Mizzy Moo
And boy, are we calling: Finding heroes in
a poppy of dwarves, sticking wicked on
weakness of will: bearing right, ‘round
Rikkenbach hill: There of the skull-planted
The infant foreigner’s cry:
Coming of Age in poverty and confusion,
laziness, alcoholism: Can I still raise
a son full of love and ready to make
his stand, plant his “flag” in the
seed hills of Babylon
Staking claims
Marking fields: Demon industry of civilization
The complexity of feeding, pacifying a
densely-packed population
Organizing into city blocks, guilds parties
and what is all this barren history but
a kind of humiliating death?
‘Twasn’t always this way,
always, neither
forgetting itself in undulous sound waves
the ridiculous tho’ hardboiled P.I. makes
his way thru the pancreatic action of the city
(i.e.)
Not freely given
This weak umbrage of the sky,
and I will write until the
(bitter) death of this quiet moment
You have to render me homage:
For all the banal drivel I
let loose from upon my tongue
(forth from my vulgar mouth)
Do they heap themselves into bones?
Are charnel fires glowing steadily under
the domed surface layer of blackened
sand?
you sold your head
your hills of tuna
And going to bed, rocking
a free world
the ironic leer
of an earnest
livewire on wheels....
We salute this human lightning,
this greased snail
Forthwith:
And hereby:
Known as: The Salted Hand
27 scouts searching
thru the bean
parade
a thin glade
ever fresh
springy
vaguely content whose acrobats
commonly called “the corners of the mouth”
are rarely flipping upwards:
Zen in the static, we find a silky
smoothness in the increasingly large-scale
rupture in his neck, when looking
@ it 30 years from now, after the divorce
When his stocky physique turned to flubber
This only insures that it will take
longer to eat him alive
(He is curiously cold, his eyelids as heavy as
penny-farthings)
Never any good
Think black adolescents rapping nerd
rap but really, with only
the slung, rusted metal part of
fire in the gums of detention
Sing with pinched nose,
geek-rock to explode
bread, blow-up the
small feature,
exam,
send it away
We’ve lost all sense of the guarded
optimism inherent
in putting a pencil
to paper
we’re not gonna be bossed around
in 1970 I was born on MacDill A.F.B., Tampa
in 1980 I was in the 6th grade in Naples
Italy, Pinetamare, near Castelvolturno
in 1990 I was a student in Florida, Stetson
Deland
in 2000 I rang in the year in Jemez, NM and
ended up in Ithaca, NY
A sleek life in the Provinces
A provincial lad. I don’t want to bring
back anything, I’d like to
survive with
a minimum of hassle
But who’s talking about dying, anyway?!
Tall tales from the tundra:
You must protect yourself from
fiery interlopers ready to jump
your claim
(A meaningful pause while the kibble is
ranged and the bits are put....as the song
goes: everything in its right place)
· · · ·
Find your peach
Pull it out
twist its neck
make it shout
be real mean
lick not boots
kick in teeth
avoid “cahoots”
· · · ·
Hydrogen bombs
explode like cherry bombs
small godling cackles gleefully
as worlds turn to ask
or blow away on solar winds
to ditches dug by fingernails clawing
at the earth on the road to the tomb
(plastic tub carrying soil samples)
plants grow from these hidden seeds:
allegro
andante
al dente
pianissimo
stolen command
a range of feeling expressed by
a simple letter
(those who are motivated instantly
become good)
(a martyr’s paw; a dying lionysus)
flipping pennies in the wind
She is better than the wind
“Sometimes it’s better to write
one good phrase, than a lot....”
(a call in the night, a favored
(half) uncle is dead; other, distant
relatives answer the phone: You
have been squeezed out
Your whole life reduced to
a bet over dimes!)
God’s party
flipping whiskers
whisky drops
stool
foolscap
Let the dreary arpeggio
wind down....
It should’ve ended months
ago under the sad twist,
no, the twist
which leads into
character studies
Sketches of fingers
(hose that claw at gravesides)
The Gilded Cross
is a kind of fish’s head
Slinking down God’s corridors
Shimmering wet: a wooden head
decorated in Gold leaf,
worn on a small head
the light of fires,
fat tallow candles
grotesque shadows in the angles
flipping around corners
from wall to roof
a crafty dance of drunks in pelts
crap meads, ales, sticky wines
tumbling onto floors
The Dead send their envoys for murder
Maybe there is serious purpose
Maybe they are just bored
And the pages keep multiplying
stretching into infinity
(That infinity which is everyone’s time
until death....)
Dramatic score, lighting, flashes
an exploding door
What lies behind?
poor, poor casks:
they are empty
thus alone
Impotence, uselessness, polite tranquility
in the face of those who have made
you angry
These are the eggs, carried in a fugue state
by frozen spirits
Which have been laid here at my door
After their service in the
rain
for me to collect
crack of same as I may
throw against walls....prepare the
inevitable omelette,
gotta crack a few eggs
even if these are babies’ heads,
pregnant women,
soldiers....
The little climber will persist
despite my inability to sustain a metaphor
to maintain a dubious attainment
Cut out of the womb in a mundane heatwave
We hope this will be as good a year for babies,
as for wine
(he says with a fine blend of gravitas and
humor—the kind of bourgeois expectancy—laughter
of the interlocutors—almost fawning)
[Small blond hand plucks at the fallen guitar]
· · · ·
One year in the making
this child
and this book
· · · ·
Incomplete thoughts lie writhing on
the page
What do we want of doubt and chagrin?
We want ice fires and liquid smoke
Impossible shimmering curtain drawn back
from the North Pole:
We all have the best views!
Finish it, kill it quick before
it moves on
this strumpet in a trunk
is the unfortunate lawyer turned sailor:
(expel the old black man from the island!
We don’t appreciate his liberty!)
If I have found a heated pathway into your heart
you must excuse me
If I have burrowed in that bore and inflamed your tissues
you must abuse me
If I have excavated a tunnel to connect your core to
my solar fire
There is nothing you can do
If I’d have had, in my hand, gripped by the hair, your
severed head
I would have flung it,
So I haven’t
Because it’s still on your neck
Long and tender: A vampire’s eyes grow large
Bronzino seems timid, an ostrich grows confused
If on a plate, like St. Anne, you step towards me
presenting your severed breasts
I will not accept them
I have no desire to see you mutilated
If you stand, straddling an imaginary hole, and
reach into your uterus and pull it inside-out,
depositing a thousand screaming children, tadpole-sized,
dripping a kind of luminescent ooze, I will not
put them back and I will let the Ram’s head
flap: (This is not safe)
Why or how these thing have happened, are
happening or will happen is unknown to me
With why or how we add “if”: all is merely
an intersection of opposing probabilities: each
to his ability; quite simpler, he who doesn’t
pull his weight, dies by a hand far less
merciless than our own: Nature is a cruel mistress
Love is a nest of frogs
Deliverance a stone’s throw from damnation
We see each other over the sandbar:
cinnamon and gold
spices are the petroleum of luxury
The tender entrails of deer are the warm mittens
we give to our children
They warm themselves over the barrel of a gun!
It is ever so far
No coast of Montenegro
Just explosions, a raped sister
a brother’s head found in a refrigerator
A sickness of powerful mutants
psychopaths with a propensity to spill
When in clouds, under the fire, jocular hypertension
causing muscles to bulge and penile heads to glow red
Waving scimitars
Bienvenue au Moyen Âge
Ca marche pas ça, trop
mais....
ça suffit
Colonies in my bowels
A small intelligent life-form
empathic and crowding [ ] with mildly
telepathic voices—
it gets to be a confusing babble
But occasionally the chorus hits a high note
and rings a gong!
there is a [ ]-charged [ ] which
gives vapors a bee-line to the fingers
the scent lingers
of lightning
emitting incandescent yellow
This is my dark impish secret
forgetting splendor
the [ ] in the grass
the crack of a bird
and insect buzzing
Traffic
Wind
A cat, no! A squalling kid
A bloated empire heating up the sky
Brown cans,
rusted emitting flames of flat
yellow, sparkling
“Real Greenbook: Further Adventures of
the family Atkyns, Pt. 4” or,
“Rudolph Adkins and his Pains” or,
“Diaries of a Dunce.” The text is herein
presented, reticently, on a Calligraphic 7000
spiral-bound notebook, size A4, or for our
foreign colleagues 21 x 29.7 cm. A Pilot V7
fine has proven the writing implement most
suited to the diarist’s style
Anyone who profits from the use of this text, reproduction
or distribution in any format, should send a share to:
7, rue Belle Paule 31500 Tolosa.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
