The Bluebook (part 2)

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Revision as of 13:08, 20 Feb 2005

Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2002-2003). It is also known as Half-Told Tales.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Section 3:  The Complexities

		Complex, this
	a maze we wander without string
	strange games of memory playing [played by?]
	monochrome silhouettes	(the games play the children)
		two chessmen chessmasters
		who haven’t really eaten in months
	roosters fornicate in the yard
	a strange tapping comes thru the walls
	overhead, the sonic tail of a jet
In distant fields they sing of something we have 
almost forgotten
	It makes the recognition that much more
	    startling and delightful
		I hope we aren’t disturbing the neighbours
		but I really don’t care

a storeroom full of broken bottles,
	grime-caked saucepans, mousetraps
	brittle cuspidors, old paintings by
	children, mismatched socks, thimbles,
	a hatrack….
We lock it up and let it burn up with
	the rest of the house we have left behind



My ebullience has trapped me
    I have said too much
    gone too far
    not played it quite cool enough
    disconcerted
Carrying water pails
around the ring-road
like a monkey on methedrine
splashing water on wooden feet

I attempt to reconstruct the 
past I have razed
and raise only spectres
and there are other people
who eat dirt in this world
feel the cycle
run the gauntlet and throw down gauntlets
jump aboard  scared  trains
and mark  the run away
run away
	run away

We are unruly and rude
but we are not unkind



AND then there are
those times where
I must ask myself:
Who am I?
And sometimes the question
is sparked by the feeling
of having just (come) coming just around
from the dreams of a monkey
and that
from the thought
that words are
insects pinned under glass

somewhere in between having
realized I have prefaced
for the end

that by talking it out
I have trapped the insect
thoughts and gassed them
but a dead bug is not a 
living bug
and I find myself examining
not life but its’ shell:
an exo-skeleton of SURFACE

of course I moved about in a 
state of exaltation
when I met her
but instead of feeling the feeling
I blurted out crude
    and premature confessions

lightning bug
	        dead in a jar
	not glowing



WE eat bones
life rears a head
and jalopies full of envy
      burden us with stagnant wonder
	lean on me
	when you’re not strong
	when a crutch made of rubber
	gives way
       glad not to
	but wishing I was
	Fingers bleed in harmony
	a waterspout
		and I don’t write
		what can I see?
	stopping just this side of insight
		marking the hours
	making time
		making blood rise
		no reasons
Connect these simping malgrots
		to IDEAS
		jump around
without connection
		then pretend
it was all otherwise

		flame-dragon of purple flower
		long stalks
		        hunting down prey and jumping
					gums to death with teeth
		(that are guns with gums)
		 It has always happened
				     this way

		(sounds good, anyway)



exclusive dope haunts villagers of stone
bears are falling from the sky
like rain in summer
they sizzle on the pavement
eggs fry in the dimples of fedoras
patterns of sweat under the
armpits
a wine stain around the belly
looks like a stab-wound
a reservoir of pain to trot out
upon unlikely occasions

sitting by the river at night
one forgets these things
throws them like otters
throw oysters after cracking
them open upon their bellies,
pull out the pearl of the world
and sink it to the sand below
the sea where the tide ebbs
and flows twice every 24
hours

(Nazi Madonna killing her
infants  --  
	have mercy on us		X
as you walk the waves
your glowing head the lighthouse	?
that protects ships
X	and sleeping children
	remember us with a smile
	spread your gown
?	drop roses upon us
	and walk away satisfied
	     ¯
	  ?
	It comes and goes
this heavy breathing
this uncertainty
tongues tied with string
jumping ship in Tahiti
dropping onto the waves
a heavy splash into
the waves and a long
swim to shore
the moon a glowing fingernail
spots in the sky called stars
burn themselves out
with abandon
gas streaks across the
universe and alights
on the nibs of frantic pens
You lie there in the heat,
breasts supple and pert
a lovely sight in the
dim glow of my chamber 
you have hung a towel
in the skylight
to block out the sun
the fan oscillates
like it was meant to

everywhere around us
people are dying for
a little bit of this –
a pot to piss in
a plot of land in
which to bury seeds
woman or man by one’s side
-- as you prefer -- 
and some wine on the shelf
indolent and satisfied
cheeky insolence without violence
no exploding heads
couldn’t ask for much more



subject # 1
    white cone of light
    no
    I’m not explaining 
    it



Vraiment Super Cool

a familiar feeling of exhaustion
white walls which do not
close in
but neither do they grow
(like these teeth) we’ve heard so much about lately
and I imagine the future
built upon the foundation of the past
and Flat boulder climb into the sky
upon the sides of crested peaks 
eyelids crackling open upon gluey hinges
recognizing the same roof
being happy that there is someone
beside them to regard

an approach of cavalry thunders
on the horizon
kind of like clouds in fat motion
a gap is closed
	the note of a trumpet
in the haze over a
dull roar you can feel as
much as hear
quaking then, trembling ministers
upon the floorboards,
soft orisons in the night
Mongol Hordes have swept across the plain
they bring death, mayhem and fear
It seems to happen every other year
Troubled and unclear
    how in fact do you live?

Under pools in the garden
looking up at the light on the ripples
a giant mouth of sorts
ululating at the approach of death

      So what would one do at such a moment?
      ¯
      Draining rivers into giant saucepans
      something to keep the bedbugs away
      ¯
      Saying “ahhh-ahhh-ahhh” alla time and
			incognito jumping
		spaceships bound for the colonies



Foreign particles
emitting shrieks….
       ….still familiar like atoms
smashing round the echo chamber
“something in there about ping-pong balls
a word or two from our sponsors,
and we’ve got our show”



I tell myself something
      in the middle of the night
But I forget what it is
      (Quand nous sommes ensemble il y a un
      soleil dans le ciel qui crie)

And there is a sun in the sky….
Sometimes it is a big fat bird
And sometimes  that’s just the way
it is
	One day yer “looking over bridges
	and measuring rope” 
	the other yer careening down the highway
	on wings that are translucent,
	daring joyous and FUN

FUN.  Find Unity Now?  Forget unnecessary needs?
	All in all
	Not a bad word to extol
A universe lies 
	waiting
	a sun rises like
	a dead man and cries
What’s the difference or the matter
friends ring the river on a park of music
hedged in for the moment by gates whose
apertures are  men and women who take things
seriously
		A defeated Universe



Who is your elf?
	and should you be telling it those things?
This is not a quotidian account book
But I must record my jealousy and insecurity
[but even then,]
	even now….
“Regarde la lune!” she suddenly exclaimed
and yeah, nearly full it hung low in
the sky, plump and delicious
a luminescent fruit….the sky an infinite
bed of violet calm
and in that light one side of her face glowed blue
a part of nose; the crest of a cheek
an eye
I’m almost sure her mouth was smiling

after she came she just kind of gave up
and let me fuck her until I did too.
and even though I asked “tu vas
venir encore?” before I let the door flood
open I still felt selfish.  I was fucking
for me at that point.

This morning
all said and done
she was smiling and we embraced and kissed
and my spirit was not as heavy as before
these morning snoggings are just the trick
I walk around with a near perpetual
erection

I suppose in order to salvage my
tired outpouring I should throw in
a car chase, a battle, and exploding
starship……..
something is lacking I just
can’t say what
Feeling ugly
nap-needed
the final telescoping
brain transmission
collapses into itself
and pants softly before
dropping off
into silence



Standing around in a flat barren plain
the sky, earth, minimal vegetation,
various hues of sickly yellow
	all is silent
	for now



I should say
	      	something is up
    	yes
   	 I stammered something about
    	having such strong feelings I was
    	afraid
		(I guard my heart)
and she said
“nous sommes en la même bateau”
and I had to give a little laugh
these expressions….I was of course,
overjoyed and frightened, for her too

today my face lights up at her entrance
we kiss just a little kiss and she 
plants one on my cheek, cool and moist

“tu vas passer chez moi ce soir,
j’espere ?” and risking, again
“je ne sais pas si je peux
être sans toi pour deux
nuits....” and making a noise of contentment and arousal
she said “moi non plus”
And the chest heaves with the joy of it all!
Such simple things can cause me to
stand bemused at the precipice
of rapture
	I know she could stamp me out
crackling underfoot like a dried-up
maple-leaf
I don’t want to think about it
but when I sit sour for one night
alone I wonder at my own frailty



There are christians in the road
they hatch plans in the land of
unrepentant non-believers
I like them despite it all....
my disregard for the Protestant
redactions of Roman redactions
of original mystery syncretism
with Judaism in crisis
A religion formed out of Apocalyptic
Expectations				It’s
No wonder TIME magazine speaks of
“generation apocalypse”
BORN AGAIN christians
with access to a nuclear arsenal
expecting the end any moment
AND you wonder why we vigilantly
strive to maintain separation of
church and state?
John Ashcroft, George Bush
all them other fuckers be gone
can’t be bothered to listen
though we all must, should
and will pay for ignoring 
you



Joining the ranks 
of obsessed 
disembowellings
A roof above an abattoir
It has memories and they are
not good!



“Oh God,
      I’m wasted now”
after an afternoon
of beer and wine
    sausages and hope
    pains in the chest
      lewd conversation
         conviviality
         and lost hashish
found
        we are pleased
and stoned
    dr’nk more wine
march the streets
and await
The happiness
she will get laid
(a pal)
and you will get
a happy robot to throw down
before the feet of a fresh miracle
not so endearing perhaps
but she will come like a rocket
and I am happy / goats prance
on the stags of mountains
they are perching antlers
      and clouds sing
upon the gobies of raindrops
	each with a small
		head
	and an entire universe
		inside
basking
	balking
balkan
	    unopened
		  and therefore
		  pure



SHE
    is a basking antelope
    is a reed in snow
    is a need that has no bounds
    is a refrigerator in the dump,
        if only because its “thereness” so
        real makes it better than olivoid
    rainbows dripping gold
    I write this for you
I have nothing to give but time
adorations an announcements of a 
country
    Yes, wreckage burns and drops like 
    flaming plastic
    My form is a model of a body held
    together with velcro
some kind of modern cast
for bringing broken bones together



and
the 
power of
heart
like a
puzzle
changes for
nothing 



Le Fut
 Marches on
in hands molded by clay
with an electric tenor
the crenulated movement
of an african tongue
a sterility that enters the teutonic
			    argument
			    footprint
She moulds clay into heads
drafts exquisite lips upon
bleached foliage

Jumping, as if inside a giant bean
Le Fut 
  marches on
and with it
(the history of a million fragments of
    an empire)
(an empire desiccated / fragmented into
	       dissected
    a million pieces)

The jump up glockenspiel
has no part other than its
inexplicable appearance
the palm tree, though adequate
lacks the precision of the pine
the colonial malfeasance
the golden ducks on golden fronds
(Peter Fonda filming a flower
	on acid
	for an hour)
Jumping, as you may have heard
as if inside a giant bean
Jettisoning, as it were, 
the golden anomaly
¯
she feels like a plastic surgeon:
pino guarda la apartamente
“pobres clientos”
“contento; pobres enemigos en
mis manos”
for all that 
	a sigh....
Le Fut
  Marches on
its television emission
competes with the staggered
barking of dogs
everything crackles in a brief pinecone of surge
like a mouth squirting water
a hose grows bigger
it wanders in limped pools
on wobbly legs
speaking towards the hoofs
of palm trees

again, under the virgin’s wool
stars etoiling upon the Danube
a cult spread wider than legs in
spring
receiving universal god-seed
on the wind from a trumpet[’s][bell]

clay, adam
        amanidab
        a man, a daub
oh, man of clay!
    taking dictations from the sperm mind
wiggling testicular castanets
and making rhumba like the
thunder-god of the tribe across
    the mountain

meanwhile,
Le Fut
  Marches on
gonna plant a fooot right in it
			an ass
			a mouth
			a pile of shit
The Foot
   Marches
   Marches
   Marches
    /also dies/

	       AS IN this
	       momentum	thru fault fissures
	       spitting		    of boredom
           steam



“¡Oh mi amor, que lindo!”
Jumping up and down
in wider arcs than I ever
imagined possible
leaping tall buildings in a single bound
faster than a feeding mullet
grand ospreys with Marines in
their beaks
cutting down Italian tourists
like a swift machete thru
sugarcane
Visions of Cuba dance on the tips 
of cigars
visions of sex in the heat
sweat like a film of embryonic
fluid glistens in the rectangles
of light cast upon the bed  by
the holes in the blinds
(but what kind of blinding?)
Do I see more clearly than ever
When I do not see at all?
Yes, how beautiful
like insects backs glistening
razor-wire blue under the Klieg lights
of the prison yard
A prison we welcome
      almost grateful



At 9 o’clock j’attende
	    for an 8 o’clock rendezvous
	well could be like me and make
	a 2 o’ clock phonecall at 5
	paidback, I suppose
	    as in full….

I chartered hookers, ran up
	incredible phonebills to mollify
	 a sullen loneliness born of insoluble
	loneliness ? sugar ?
	No tears would evaporate it
	    I almost think I may have
	    been very, very bad
	    to many women in these
	    selfish perambulations
    LANTZ		*
STU			*	Where are you now?
    CORNWELL	*
HESLIN		*

	(AND also to many fine men,
	         who deserved better
		     than this)
________    ________  ________  ______

	AND	 always running
	    sometimes feel like I got the whole world
	    staring down my pee-hole
	    pestered
	    I say “no” and always it’s taken for a “maybe”….



Running into the mammalian hullabaloo
	serpents raised like daggers above
	sleeping kings
	the black lips of arsenic
	spluttering out final, indignant words
These are the reveries we wait for?
	How disappointing!



N.D. de la Daurade
	of the fish caught in sunlight
	covering a grey essence
	rewarding the plague memory
The music ululates
and oscillates wildly
it spins æthereal contortions
breathy in pipes
Notes hang then tilt and careen
over one another like multicolored
glass plates in a tube
An authority occasionally gives
a barrel-chested heave
as the terrified children 
tumble

I see urban streets menaced by
a black creeping doom
it forms itself in gutters and around
tires, signposts, bits of broken glass,
cigarette packages, detritus of macadam
	My chest heaves under sonic pressure
and when the final notes give way
to silence the air allows it to
hang there,
	but only for a moment



To make love in cuspidors dreaming….
	To burn a hole in the sky
	with the invented
	magnifying glass of prisons
	squandered ceaselessly
♥
Jumping fences, chasing cars, barking
at passersby as if in the middle of
rapacious dreams

Magnificent sigils alight on the forehead
as if branded there by hot
irons

The cakewalk of the sky drops hot rose
petals upon the heads of crucified strangers

Arabs, sipping tea, bringing in Algerian
politics;
	There was a war with France once

Jacking the lobe.  One phrase keeps circling
about in my head, like a piece of polished
stone in the worried hands of fishermen

“Evitez la tache”		Avoid the stain!
Ever-widening blood pooling on the
floor from the guts

	A stinky, rancid mélange of gastric juice
	and shit

Evidence of a crime committed, a bloody blade
a circumspect admission
We jump up upon bandwagons which
careen
They are set in motion of ON inclines
of various degrees
		the drivers have steering wheels
		with too much play
And then, sparkling in the Wilderness
the small mirror of a hiker stranded
upon an inlet in the snow melt swollen
Yukon, brave horizon upon
      umpteenth footpath
Johnny-come-lately
		frog schooner jumping

Gimme wunna them euros
He is all-too-intelligent
	      and likes to show it
      valedictorian at 16 and an
      abandoned career in
      architecture
      The texture of arches
	The textiles of archers:
			green leggings,
			longbows
		feathers in elfcaps
		jangling, muscled toes
		adorned with rings and digging
		gypsy holes in forgotten beaches
	Waves crashing in crescendo-succession,
	useless and degenerate waves allowing
	for no mistakes as the impotent
	shade of would-be Hemingway
	snorkels off to oblivion in a happy drowning
	in a bottle of Port
	I liked him in his my own way
	Shot in the gut by a 
	flying blade from a zip gun
	Insanity can be profitable
	Magic markers on walls of
	incredible wonderwork
sham poetry 	│    Bedeviled Irishmen
│    frowning
	Her body is very supple, her hair
	wiry and crisp
	We were too tired to make love
	properly and I couldn’t seem to get it
	stiff enough
	Where had all the blood gone too?

	Telegram from the cemetery,
	burning ossuaries of midnight
	candles humping on the backstretch
we could go on for hours
my powers
my desire is to write for 
24 hours solid
fill up a bluebook in the space of
43 seconds
Job steadily upon the gimping pastures
Make little sense or no goddam sense
at all
(Alexander Hamilton you precious fuck;
I never understood anything)

Yeah.  Gone tomorrow.  Here
		today
Grinding horseflesh upon the girders
of the temple
		he stopped to address
		the adulators dressed in
[and she	crimson, the
      is there] 	serpentine masses
		a conundrum upon lips
		bulbous
Curiously, desire strikes spark and
	plays the harp of mind
	in ridiculous theatre.  She
	jumps upon him like a cat
Sadly, no one is there to witness
They will never believe him and he
has forgotten his camera

Is it sane to ask if horse-
flower falling equals jasmine
tortoi  ascending?

Is it off-colour to ask the
lesbian minister if please
may I slip a finger or two
into your cunt?
	Probably

There is music in the plague church
It comes from California and laughs out-
loud in French
	What could be finer but
	a cup of pussy juice to
	help take it all
	in?
    Nothing it would seem
	We trade a small
	finger in the asshole for
	a beautiful lendemain orgasm
    For what will we trade my clumsy
	movements, flaccid cock, and
	dominantly flipping her
	onto her stomach?



Cut!  Cut!

A.	Automatic fingerlift of worn-out discourse
	Merguez frying on the pan
	        entombed on digital videotape
	I write some dumb shit for the sake of posterity
	Ham around baking for the benefit of posterity
	There is no reason or purpose for this
	        subtle movements of fingers
	        indicate the best position for lighting
	ACTION VIDEO
		somehow it registered
		before I even moved to Rue Jean Suau
		and now -- 			



B.	Why is it necessary to cut the chicken?
	        the obsession of a free-range animal
	All the world’s a cut
	        he exclaimed
			and
			filled with arsenic
			dripping fat upon the brainpan
	He keels and dips ominously
	Wheeling around the drunken ocean of sky like an albatross
	He hosts priestly conclaves and fills temple w/ cake
	He jumps up running at the first rays of sun at dawn
	He, too, is poultry
	a poltroon
	a wicked spitfire belching wounds upon the night….

C.	And even this way, it is BAD



I invite you to destroy me daily
but you never do
you arrive
a mademoiselle “qui me demande”
such a thrill to see you standing there
in your black sweater,
	        a thin bundle of curves
	        illuminated by		 rays of desire
					 which shoot forth
When we sit by the river, later	 from my
    your special archetype 	 soap-sud eyes
	    emerges from the waves
	    like the Kraken 
	    and the puma eats the priest
	    and we kiss until we 
	    are horizontal
	    you drunker than I realized
	    and we are voluminously happy
Cohabitation is presented and accepted
and reasons for staying in Toulouse
are made apparent
“T’es une exhibitioniste” I venture
“Oui, un poco” and we laugh



Stood up before a judge in court
    I am asked to plead
Okay!  it is so:  you are an ominous
fiction which bedevils the guilty
and terrifies the innocent
I’m taking my toys
and going home

Yeah, so we commence with the cattle prods
and the swinging lightbulbs
the blunt socks to kidney and parade of
intimate brutality
you let me live so that I might
be there to practice upon
    unkempt surgeons
    drunken dentists
    miscreant justice –
	will crack down on the excesses
	get tough on those who don’t play fair
Was it Capt. Willard who said,
    “Charging someone with murder here is like
    handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500”
Whoever it was, he was right
    Put the mallet of justice in the hand
    of a monkey and in a million years
    he may bang out the Bill of Rights
    in Braille
			  In the meantime
    all we got is broken skulls, brains,
	jaws, and lives
    Not much consolation, is it?



The Miller’s Tale				I have a tool with which to communicate		never sounded				across the city						so good				It operates on the same
You saying it backwards			energy which heats up
Has a special charm					meals in boxes
	all its very own				a magic catch-all hoodoo
	        					And if I try, I can invent 
worlds



		Don’t know
		What means the red knife
		the rolled-up sleeve
I think it’s a country in Europe
		No one is especially eager
		to see me….
			│Wyrdart….
│the plenary solution?



When you are away my eyes turn to butter
When you kiss my chest a small atmosphere is formed
        ….1.5 mm thick and composed of quivering wind      milk
____│sub-lingual │  little pellets with obscure purpose      blown
        │radioactive  	     definitely good		            iN talc
							            breaths

She is a brusque flame 
our lovemaking turns the radio to static



an X in the sky
    marks the spot
reflected in water
    the moon in its crook
it is the puckered bunghole of the universe

a red X hanging softly over my shoulder
a flame bursts upwards from the building  across the river
it is a bird in the lights

there are lights
on the bridge

lights in the
cupola

lights in the bricks
lights in the sky
→
and the swallows  are thick
why do the swallows 	come alive at dusk?
because the bugs 	come alive at dusk
why do the bugs 	come alive at dusk?



	│give me hysterical
│malaria
│w/ props to the paved milkman



A little bear
is a ventriloquist
his human puppet

lusts and rears a head
holds strange conversations
at the edge of light
on a darkened porch
at night….

the tea-round of funerals
or the funerary round of tea
what’s the difference?

there is a complete lock
on fraudulent combat
arms sales,
races
nuclear triggers
trigger-fingers
General Electric
smarmo flag waved upon deserted
hill-top bunkers

She is a Mexican Piñata
Spilling candy like guts
Spilling seed like fruit
Spilling juices like a water gourd

She accepts (the usual) gifts from
strangers
candy
in infant infantry intimate
intimidation of intifada
(Hello mudda, hello fadda)
we mock Christians w/ teeth
and jump upon the agile heels
of rabbits
(and to think we began with bears)



Rocks stagger out of the sea

incredible sharks purloin letters of
	introduction
they will make lives easier
like when in dreams one glides
thru walls….
isn’t this obvious….?
rot gut staggers on temples of China

Kentucky Bourbon smootheling upon
	the clay 
	raw earth toning cities for speed



It began as a night without much promise
but ended fine
	we climbed scaffolding
	I carried you standing
	on the baggage rack of an ancient
	and ridiculous lovely bicycle
singing songs in fake Italian
while the last patrons cheered from
the terrace on the right
and the aimless kids hooted from
their perpetual perches on the left
We curl up naked and steaming like a pair
of giddy but worn-out fetuses
New to the world each time

Sometimes in my eagerness
I almost spoil these moments
by attempting to bring about
an unnecessary second round
but my chagrin is the only castigation
a naked navigation
stewing in juices of delicious fornication
Our talk of marriage and babies
swift full lips upon the bed
the bed we seem to have made a home of
It is forbidden to leave the bed?
Square-armed robots standing watch
The last two examples of humanity
carefully and sternly protected
If these mechanical sentinels were human
we could almost say “lovingly”

Yet I feel sick and hot in the dawn
malarial, deranged
Waiting
Sometimes I still feel like I am the subject of
a guarded observation
a conversation which clips suddenly as
I enter the room
Leaving me perplexed and insecure
Thus, angry

And when she doesn’t call I wonder….
And why so eager to let me go….
To continue that conversation
I cannot be part of?



To stumble home
thru the Streets of Salamanca
To eat chocolate pudding							like a sacrament
from between her thighs
her breasts
the cheeks of her ass

To fall down at her
feet and lick an ankle
after dancing in a
chupería like newly-formed twins						minted
Salamanca you regenerative icon
I will shave under your beacon
and throw dust at giants
What else matters when 
I am in her pubic nest?
Nothing, nada, rien



Graffiti

CHIRAC = DEATH OF NIGHT

GANGSTERS WANTED FOR ASIATIC
SECRET SERVICE



I watched a group of figures across
	the lake
The sun a flat broad plain
	metallic birds soaring across the ripples
	like eyebrows drawn by children
	with pens whose ink is likkid gold
I watched as their legs merged in the 
shimmer
Some kind of spider-like apparition
    moving in a funky slow dance
        somehow sticky

Ululating these women were
        last night
        A white marriage

        (for the papers)
But at this ghetto batiment
They dressed this bride as a queen
every time the groom’s mother led

her away by the hand I was
bemused and wondered what to expect next

Bellefontaine:  “Only Arab and
African people here” said Sid
“They want integration but they
put us here.  There is no
integration, this is a joke.”
He tells me this as he
leads a group of French
kids across the
leering courtyard.  I am only 
now becoming aware
that I am, we are
walking oblivious and cheerful among
a section of town alien to
us.  But we are not alien to
it.

Ululating.  Sweet breads after cous-
cous.  A traditional cake.
Loud Algerian music makes my
head swim in this cramped and
stuffed chamber.
	One woman had a tattoo
	like this
‡
I wish I had committed 
it to memory…. 



CUSTOMERS WANTED
	for the Secret army….
Division 1, 3rd Battalion
	fulla homos
	despised but highly
	effective secret legions
	made frightful by resentment

Jockey-tip on undisturbed cornpone
the senator rises, expresses his derision
		    to express his derision
he smiles wide and cracks a joke no one
but senators could laugh at

	Small of back
	jumping branches with grudges
		on back
	sac à dos – that’s backpack to you,
		son
	young buck, pardner, greenhorn
	enlivened steed

CUSTOMERS WANTED
	for the secret bedstead
	horny girls ride the knobs
as if the globes were sexual planets
revolving in dildo dreams….
orgasms, however, seem to come quickly
and especially strong
some actually prove fatal
Explosions, dreams of prison
cracked ribs and glass that cuts

	Jump onto it and pull it
	by the ears
	ride it, cowboy



A squealing comes across the sky
	that’s me
	stealing lines
	a pig who flies
	socialism
	fascism
	wedding rings from	
		        gumball machines
I look at her and smile
She looks at me and smiles
These are not smiles of joy
		or of understanding
But of “now what?”



It’s been a long time
the telegraph wires workin’ overtime

Where is she in undershirts?
evasions of time & opportunity
reading long-legged in bed
jumping boy scouts in the wilderness
feeble dreams of sodomy
rubber duckies in drains
never a participant so callow
with so callow a sales pitch
but luckily things jump backward
to please

When everything is refused
Call numbers and useless
        rehearsals
Spending dimes in nickleboats
When her blunted indifference
is a greater source of pain
than open ridicule
or pointed fingers of wounding
We jump planes and plummet
        like the rest of them

And she won’t really care
Never, ever does
Never, ever will
bigger fish to fry than that
tiny worm under the ego microscope

What distant secret does she hear?
Barely scrutable on the horizon
    twitching an eye and a lip of mockery
   
    │Just burn tongues
    │    brule the slinking labe
    │    and down it in turrets
    │    nevermind the ________.



They fabricate reality with skillful manipulation
    of language



 ♪
└┐ R.I.P.
Afraid of the Sun….  J. Lennon
The sun will never disappear		 many
	  But the earth might not have years



My bloody finger
	inserted in an asshole of delicious fragrance
I was the sailor on shore leave
She was the lascivious nun
We crossed paths like dynamite
wires crossed with  inordinate lumber
files spin out of parking lots on Friday nights
No meat
She hanging crucified with globs of semen
running down….
	(unfinished fragment)



My ability to sleep
	in the cave of red insects
			(the golden lotus bowl)
	viscous teardrops of glimmering oil
	dimb the river prison of filaments
	and there is no electricity
	but there is a radio with batteries
	and there is tuberculosis



fragments 
	from a coffin

Smile!
    It’s only forever
thought kills speed

we wrapp’d….

flutes….

she moves like a beast



speed kills				 	   ?
velocity				┤tiger wrapp’d in velvet
& tremens
        the deerpark @ dawn
hunting flaps pulled down
like shades on towers
white reflective needles
piercing the grey fog
all of the world a permanent Seattle
hungry under dusky lungs
dirty and buncular

the sun struggles
the moon almost a myth
the mushrooms have arrived
the lichens carpet the plazas
spores are not your enemy
        How I learned to Stop Hating Spores
					Rudy St. Cloud, 2047
Tikal on Manhattan Island

Transmission #27:

We are beginning the final leg of our journey.
Crew happy.

Short and iN so, cryptic.

No conversation to tailor 
“I’m exasperated”

Avoid the cyclone
	Canaries land
and become islands

bees beseech
In tiny loincloths
make dotted lines in
beehive arcs
then commence to dansing
the night gives
way to dawn
and the smoke arrives
a docile humped grill
of tranquilly angry
trembling
        a pulsing tremble
a clouded grimace
in which pleasure
is not entirely absent



Th’other day
an X marked the blue sky
above the fenêtre
where today a pallid at
times translucent grey
filled it
Laying on the couch
in mal humour
Lip a fetal curl petulant
Grazing slightly upon the wan
tempest of my troubles
Unable to look into the stratosphere
at the edge of night



A gouache member
        wrapped around the legs of night
        a purple-spotted serpent from
        the primordial Ganges
        translucent and shimmering around the edges

        Finally under the Gung-Ho Korea of
        a Jeep-infested satellite
        rusty and plinkering thru the night
hurtling one might say
showering sparks upon the dog-leg
of an antenna
        Corpse end of life hanging by a thread
        near the head
        strapped into the chair
        sparkling henna-coloured
        around the final hem haw
        of spatial revolution
        a cube corner upon an access 
        like some fabled temple
        a solid cube of granite pulled
        from the floor of the Marianas Trench
        set spinning upon of its corners in the
        heart of Atlantis

        cubes in cubits
the origin of measure
beneeth the waves
somewhere off the coast of Cuba



If it only plays itself out
      in images



Apparently widespread
& utterly indecipherable
	a cockroach
	lies on its back
	a clasp thrust thru the carapace
	of its belly

The electrified tomb
	blocks Ri·ba·teen™ engines
	long strips
	of black reflective material
	like sweaty licorice

Plunged into the dagger scabbard?			empty dagger
in the sky....						        of the sky?
	clouds left sparse
	by a levantine thrust
Plunged birds squawking
	and discombobulated
	ascend thru a cone
	into space and explode



SUBLIME CHOCKLIT
POURED FROM goblets d’or
gold, that is
stolen teeth
severed fingers
she lay on the floor of the vault,
bleeding from the stub
they had seen the luscious cluster of diamonds
and couldn’t remove the ring
at least they left her the severed part
Moon Riiverrrrr
up, out and away
up, bustle and out
She’ll let you do things to her just long enough
to show you cannot excite her
She resents that missing finger
And you’ll be the one to pay for it



The sun strangles
        	itself
	    trying
An autohypnotic asphyxiation
        	A god in love w/ itself
Narcissus on iceskates
He didn’t drown he created a
frosty mirror
Tricked the sun into staying bunkered
beyond the snowbank
Falls down laughing across the
fens and the swamps and the moors
and the brackish water of time
Slowly congealing into green and tartared
ice
rank and file, foul and filigreed,
formidable fuck of atavist nightmare
jumping bong-bong over need to
speak
It comes out as half sob half
garbled scream
Some golden delicious choking
If the apple leads us to perdition
it may as well have a trademark



It makes cold
and me sweater has holes
I have trouble with Spanish r’s
And Frenchmen have trouble w/the English H
and some hispanophones throw in a guttural J
when they say it
but we still manage
to understand        







											perdition
											      “
She squints TWINS
	and the roads are empty
	and glistening....

	it’s a trap
		a piège
		a cold glistening in the sun
	ja festa ja manga		    -- form
	snow blankets in languid	    -- repose
					    -- form 

Squalid and squamulose
		 grey squalls sheet rain
		 upon clambake coast
	Mainers, Massachusters
		 slow aristocracy
			impertinent and graceful
				....at times
	When they’re not breakin’ bats over skulls
	forgotten coast where rotting
	masts wave green beards on
		the ebb and flow of tides

Jump out with delicious repeat
		repasts which allow for the
		auto-cannibalization of the obstreperous
		obstetrician
		it jumps with gills on
slow audiochronomy
		some errant message
		from the future
	banging about with sprouts on
		dangerous tarheels
			rudolph the red
	always handy on the howitzer
	and the pipe bomb
		war cry
		    ‘gainst
	internationalisation
-- she searches CD’s
	dogs smear porn upon dogs
	always
		always
			always
	Borning:  The Art of Entering the World
			by Carlos Garcia
		Taste the chili!
		Feel it burn
		Go a lil’ crazy
		Live and learn

		The flaming shits’ll
			get you down
		But nothing like
			a year-old clown

And death comes swift for the lucky
	and there is no punishment
				for luck
				save taxes
Which brings us back to
		our original certainty
			       (cer)
	FREEDOM OF ‘76

yeah	yeah
		<quimble>

Dotted lines connect the moon
to a child’s brain
20 years into his future
in his memory it looms
large and magnificent
Some kind of immortal fruit
of the collective secular spirit
a whole flurry of multicolored
leaves being lit by a pipe
against a background of plaid

NOT quite human
	3-fingered
	exclamation points
	grow out of their heads
Still jumping into frightful
	gourds
	gourds
used as a witch’s pot
    and filled with a boiling
    brew of seed
	burbling
	    ....and unsophisticated
It leaves the whale alone
	the flaming robot
In fact he holds it
in his right hand
	how kind
	        how doctors
How fabricated....
But now I only listen to myself
			        ha!
		 ‎ answer to my own name



There is no labour upon the toadstool
        and all my clothes are green
        and brown
The brazen identity of automatism
It is what it is
	Thursday morning between
	10 and 10:30



FAITH in medication
	expressed in a crook’d smile
	like an appalachian signpost
	tilted at a crazy angle
	it is made of wood & the
	letters have been inscribed
	w/ a burning tool

	We feel bad about everything
	especially in the bed

How many times did you look at it
    before you realized it was wrong?
Perhaps you need a drunken slut
    to keep you company
Says a small
		discrete
        voice
Calling from somewhere far beyond
	the left ear
The abstraction of direction by
suggestion
	on the page
We ain’t talkin’ Jimmy
	or	  Betty
or Prince Valiant’s underling
Under things
	there are other surfacy
	slightly mildewed fibre-board

Do you walk in Peace?
Do you come across the horizon
in black silhouette against a
red setting sun?

Rome fell over in less than
	a geological day
and yet we remain so arrogant
200 years is about how long
it takes for the dream to
	become the nightmare
and 200 days may be 3 months
for all we know of time
	and its relative properties
We’re already talking about November as if
	it were a mouse’s spit away

Violence is endemic:    civil unrest
			  crime
			  war
	These onions bake together in the
	    same red fire
	    The tips of each tongue of flame spraying
	    droplets of blood
			saliva
			heliotropic splinters



ARRÊT!
    (arrest the rain)
    limited repertoire of words



Faded on an image:
	A steakhouse in the desert
She falls down in microscopic globs of amber

Malheureusement
	Bad joyously
There will be no earth-shattering revelations



The Mariner and the Nun had none
        a great big bag of delicious plums....



Exercise 27.  Plosives and rhythm

He stopped by a lamp-post to read the address.
I can’t think today.
A postcard to England doesn’t cost much.
He stopped to write the street name.
I picked nearly eight pounds of fruit to make jam.
Take care not to eat too much at the party.
I helped two doctors to start their car after it had stopped dead.
He picked the best plums from the topmost branches.
We’d picked quite the best part for ourselves.
He met me at midday to take me out to lunch.
That tap dripped twice as fast as two days ago.
He cooked two eggs and put to more in an egg-cup to eat them.



	FARMERS will like this rain
	Nobody’ll like that
	THERE’S the sea!
	WE are to blame for that!



Double-massive on the humdrum hornacope
curling  in wicker like the shoe of an elf
	a caracole smile
a cuticle curve tonight
		like looking down at an
		illuminated glass of milk
		at others
and a fuchsia feather guards the moneybox

Hallowed  weaning
of sugarmilk tit
<cold and carbuncular>
the witch’s tit
laying the foundations
for a house made of candy
Hansel & Gretel are Lewis & Clark
and get shoved into an onion (HA!) oven!
In this version they are stuffed
and eaten still twitching
red balls of witch-stuffing
oozing out of crisp-pubed assholes
Hansel & Gretel are Jack & Jill
and what are they doing up there anyway
<behind the well>
on the hill
“cuz the rabbit done died” 



He is lost in the headwaters 
			of malaise
his head disappears into the windows
				of vans
the exquisite utility of
			of melancholy
drops swords upon the tight
			strings
<< akin to heels >>
	which jump and barb
		in the night ////
there is no excuse for starts
	jumbling counters inscribed
		with wheatstalks
she sits in bed silent

I have returned late and
am just about
	to speak....

Don’t believe in capture
		icebergs
don’t believe in frozen voice



early,
as in motivational
	homily
	junketing	(toujours there in the lobe,
				    as in
smart siamese sampans	    upon)
		golden exile
		        river of piss
		        (yer in)
galloping we say strong
		forgetting
	jumped out at
		when she ain’t
			doing bettah
	(and yoo feel gill-t)
		a pinch
		      felt
	by a scream 
Salamander smile
	along the furtive kissline
			of delicate love
(we had fêtes to go to and we dissed)
	I have very
	little sympathy
Yet genuinely expect it
	a nougat symphony
	which is a small hut
Trujillo jumping sideways
		      bothering me
his sexual exploits
bedding the women 
	of his colleagues
	then joking about it
ahh, I have made love with all
	the women of Santo Domingo
	and the wife of General Sanchez
	is the best
hyuk hyuk gen’ral Sanchez
		      << il est la >>
agreeing
        d’accord
    Why ?
	create
	an
	enemy
	from a friend
She bring it up
    some hidden rape fantasy
Some need to humiliate the man
			beside her
look what this fellow has done
			dangerous
cruel
barbarous
stupid yet
clever
and way too dominant
for your 
pussy ass
You have nothing
lower than low
some null
and void cipher
cowardly
and contagious
and copycat
boring
and still not worth the punch
you--in fact--deserve

So....twelve
eyes opened
    closed
jumped or a fudgepacked
rebound
a fish dinner
so
there
        fat boy				You have
die					no talent
        givit up and			a 2-bit 
    cease			hoodlum couldn’t 
cease cease			    suss out for 
					false in a 
minit
grassed me up



$uburbs of Babylon

A prince of thieves
a riding crop
an atom bomb
a crochet hook
These are the things 
love is made of 

chin up, he said
with a wink
and a nod
things will only get
worse....then it will
all be over

cheers I said
for the cheery advice
I’ve turned up my
collar, for a dollar
of vice

thé dans un café,
ou café dans l’été?



BURNING inside your
    Prussian numbness
    like the rind
    of one of your
    whatchamacall—
    fruits of war

and the way silken webs
form themselves into ramps—
well-placed for a daredevil
motorcyclist’s death-defying
jump!  27 buses painted
burgundy and amber

Where is it all going?
Now that nervousness
has replaced surety
apathy, joy
listlessness, fevered activity
irritation, indulgence
jealousy, pride
Death dreams dangling herds of
vengeance
La revancha del pendejo



INTerlude:

Song of the Lonesome Cowboy (Viga  Home)

Let me tell you a story
‘bout a girl named Laurie
She built a viga home up in the sky
Why’d you go an’ leave me
Was it ‘cuz you couldn’t please me?
Now I’m livin’ in the home you left behind

She was runnin’ with the cattle
When I saw her in the saddle
Carryin’ two vigas on her back
Whatchoo gonna do now,
Gonna stay here with the moo-cow?
Viga home, viga home, we go home

See Also