The Greenbook

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[[Category:Extant Works]] [[Category:Extant Works]]
-Most recent book of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]]. Published in 2004 by Golden Poop Press.+== About ==
-== See Also ==+Collection of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]] (2003-2004).
 +Written between March 8, 2003 and July 25, 2004. Written over a much longer period than previous tomes, ''The Greenbook'' was begun at Jean Suau and completed at the apartment located at 7, rue Belle Paule, where Adkins and his wife had moved in May, 2003 to make room for their baby.
 +
 +==Text ==
 +'''Part 1 | [[The Greenbook (part 2)|Part 2]] | [[The Greenbook (part 3)|Part 3]] | [[The Greenbook (part 4)|Part 4]]'''
 +<pre>
 +IT begins again
 +roving, like a dead lock in space
 +mighty fur burning
 +mighty chip?
 +who the hell is that?
 +
 +And that is a small manifesto
 +its details found in cracks
 +mighty temples
 +mere conglomerates of dust
 +I am 90 years old
 +but my hair is only 5
 +I am 642 years old
 +but even though I am dead
 +my hair still grows
 +my address book still contains
 +the phone numbers of emperors
 +my wife, still pregnant….
 +
 +so this, then, is the Greenbook?
 +
 +washcloth
 +wind tunnel
 +weird viper wrangling with cowboys:
 +There will be a war soon
 +AND I have forgotten my orange jumpsuit
 +AND now I will mention it by name….
 +
 +(long pause, accompanied by sounds of
 +scuffling, the POET reappears w/black
 +eye)
 +
 +er, uh, belay that, I will not
 +be mentioning it by name
 +there is not, in fact, anything to mention
 +you see, I, uh, mis-spoke
 +(and that has nothing to do with “of the field”)
 +
 +of the field = du champ = thus, the
 +bicycle wheel = miss spoke
 +
 +my blood is cool
 +cuz my hands is cool
 +
 +“tu cherche?”
 +
 +Well, not at the moment….
 +you see, she is sleeping
 +(my wife, the one I told you about)
 +We make adequate love
 +We are very stressed
 +by the details of living
 +and the new life coming
 +
 +ha! Greenbook verdant
 +redolent of myth
 +symbols of plants – growth!
 +jungles of the stuff like
 +vegetal mind criss-crossed
 +with roots and unruly fauna
 +
 +[some time later:]
 +my wife is a stranger
 +strange union of invisible tongues
 +striking knobs upon hob-kneeled gongs
 +in hob-kneeled temples,
 +or should these temples,
 +be vicious?
 +squid likely upon the next tide
 +the horncastled horizon
 +and the dark wafer of the sea
 +the delicate emissions
 +guarded like highways are guarded
 +after snipers, dog-balloons,
 +expected beginnings
 +fervent hopes
 +whores block light
 +the international day of the lemon
 +its bitter citrus
 +betraying poems,
 +or omens
 +
 +showmen blunder
 +take a fall
 +children wonder
 +learn to call
 +sings permitting
 +we will go
 +it’s all a show
 +
 +I could go on forever like this
 +it’s neither hard to sling a rhyme
 +or structure plosives into
 +rhythms
 +teeth and tongue
 +into feet
 +
 +Do you have anything?
 +Is there anything between us?
 +“L’amour”
 + almost derisively
 +The irony not lost
 +on this day
 +when women paint
 +on translucent screens
 +“LOVE is so….”
 +What?
 +Heads explode into voluminous trees
 +and this hasn’t turned out to be
 +the perfect spot
 +as I see the frontwards
 +on the other side
 +of the reverse
 +“one” might call it the obverse
 +of one were a smartypants
 +
 +toffs doff caps
 +a malicious vibrado
 +scooping on canes
 +down chorus lines
 +in schoolboy outfits
 +it respires as one
 +and turns into Nazis
 +in concentration camps
 +pacifist posturing
 +the formations of groups
 +the left hand of the
 +same sad golem
 +
 +droll and drawling
 +slipping and dribbling
 +shits and giggles
 +are words from memory
 +to describe
 +“just for kicks”
 +
 +bone-crusher
 +wind sailor
 +it crawls upon a darkening cloud
 +and my Hawaii has a vaguely
 +horizontal edge
 +with its fair share of greytones
 +sprinkled among the
 +colors
 +
 +minefields
 +blowing off countless
 +feet
 +and thus coming across cannibals
 +destroying dozens of suns
 +George jacking upon Jefferson
 +and George
 +Washington
 +wooden teeth
 +cherry tree
 +
 +golden unhapply
 +that new kind of apple
 +the gendarmes arrive
 +and bust open
 +hesitant skulls –
 +and that is an understatement
 +you are more than undertakers
 +you are idols
 +she laughs without you
 +and with almost everyone else
 +we will never communicate
 +no real affection
 +walls like translucent cadavers burnings jelly
 +that trinity must say something
 +watch it from the other side
 +this is not a class of painting
 +but a spectacle
 +one half of a pair
 +whose isolation renders it useless
 +it moves and burns
 +but rarely makes the light-bulb glow
 +it harms itself and seeks exits
 +but cannot submit to simply expiring
 +a slow rundown until
 +the rhythm is tuckered
 +[the rigmarole, redundant]
 +
 +and it that you have an omelette
 +some dust
 +three white men
 +and a magic circle
 +
 +of light from a lamp
 +incredible contrast
 +to the palmetto blue
 +South Carolina 1975
 +your moon is humongous
 +and your sky a violet bowl of desire
 +and there in a pattern of yellow
 +conspiracies stand up to wonder
 +and formulate ways
 +to plunder
 +
 +
 +1.
 +
 +The gallows humor
 +of the uninitiated
 +awaiting the ceremony
 +
 +the grim smile
 +part of the mask
 +called “the brave face” and on sale @ the Lodge store
 +
 +there is talk of savage beatings
 +with wire brushes
 +harangues by mock priests
 +in strapons
 +backpacks strewn with jellied condoms
 +faint swaths of pink and brown
 +evoking
 +certain smells….
 +
 +there is nothing passively received
 +positively bereaved
 +however
 +having been left bereft
 +what else could they be?
 +
 +2.
 +
 +your pleasure
 +gluttonous and festive
 +pure flavor
 +the keys of equilibrium
 +
 +votre plaisir
 +gourmand et festif
 +pure saveur
 +les clés de l’équilibre
 +
 +signing in some gestural tongue
 +mute across vacuous winds
 +that is to say across the bubbles
 +of vacuums floating across
 +a Chirico landscape
 +Jacques Chirac staring out from under glass
 +draped with a dusty tricolour
 +Marseillaise of hollow tin
 +tinkling down dull over assorted grandpa objects
 +
 +
 +WHAT is it
 +that motivates me
 +in this endeavour?
 +one hopes for an extended
 +evaluation of the self
 +and its values
 +but gets evasions
 +and lazy descriptions
 +of what should happen
 +(but never seems to materialize)
 +john-jumping on
 +out-of-date scenarios
 +outmatched and overdone
 +overcooked overall
 +über alles
 +sternsnüppa falling
 +l’etoile Volant of
 +and idea
 +glimmerflick then
 +disappearing when
 +you’ve only just
 +realized it was there
 +a permanent shade of
 +“wasness”
 +images as plan
 +and sustained creativity
 +fading faster than
 +a tiny splice | a splice in film
 +
 +
 +
 +The inheritor of death:
 + he who is always waiting
 + hanging around monuments
 + to real things
 +looking up the busy street
 +the materials of construction
 +jarring a harmony which was never there
 +except in its half-planned conglomeration:
 +
 +The avenue is busy
 +old men with nothing to do
 +pregnant women pushing strollers
 +purposeful mopeds
 +insect automobiles
 +
 +The sounds of some kind of drill
 +the motor and horns
 +and above it all one persistent bird
 +regular
 +and then my name:
 + “Steven!”
 +
 +
 +
 +The lost ring
 +the news of suicide
 +he jumped thru a 9th storey window
 +the lost ring
 +seems less traumatic
 +even though to my wife
 +steeped in Lacan
 +it is highly symbolic
 +
 +shit
 +and waiting for instructions
 +how to find a job
 +to feed the woman and
 +the coming young’un
 +I can’t stop thinking about
 +milkshakes
 +c'est a dire
 +sucking it up through a straw
 +fine vapour curling over aluminum
 +and this interview,
 +this formation is becoming more of a weight
 +1st thing you learn is you always gotta wait
 +always
 +whether it’s a man
 +a woman
 +or a monkey
 +
 +
 +
 +Music percolates upwards
 +in thin sheets
 +sheet – that it is
 +no. big, no license
 +no strange dichotomies
 +upon the frozen helices of time
 +milky wisps curling against
 +the pin pricks of stars
 +punctuated by glorious grillage
 +rolling down for the evening
 +this is just the external
 +sound and does not account for
 +the trilingual chatter in my brain
 +how can I care,
 +yet flee on a free day
 +for a place to smoke
 +and nod?
 +To spend hours in gone-over ground
 +with bitter enunciations
 +amid the finality
 +while @ home
 +my pregnant wife waits patiently
 +before heading off to the pool?
 +I can put it aside
 +Still feel its weight
 +yet nonetheless
 +continue my perambulations
 +Dropping socks
 +while clocks stopped
 +by Glocks sit shattered
 +and splattered limp
 +cocks battered by
 +violence dumb science
 +obedient silence
 +then shock
 +stress reduces, more than
 +less and thumping distress
 +pushed juiced thru sluices
 +while blood gushes and
 +splooshes downtown all around
 +not ham-hockin’ or body rockin’
 +but trombonin’ corn-ponin’
 +in thick smocks set loose
 +upon produce
 + pigs
 + lamb
 + calves
 + and the ubiquitous
 + ridiculous
 + chicken
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 + The INcredible he recants
 + edible seeds and recounts
 + egg chromosomes
 + Is not credible as he bleeds….
 + as a vegetable all the while
 + The slim mammalian strumming a guitar
 + does not sprout
 + on plants
 +
 +
 +
 +Cold crooner in Père Lachaise
 +Father, the chair
 +He is very useful
 +quiet and functional
 +We clamber, grow, play, learn
 +His paint peels and his
 +straw grows thin
 +
 +Dramatize twisting guitar
 +like a pathetic nebula
 +The mouse that roared
 +An elephant pansy
 +vile green liquid leaking slowly
 +from rusty pipe
 +hidden away in forgotten sub-basement
 +blocked off in concrete and cinder
 +crèveforms 3 meters thick
 +close the last known lair
 +of the Bête Tolosan
 +it burbles up anyway
 +blobs of flesh like mercury
 +wriggling like a cutup worm
 +searching for itself
 +
 +blindly
 +yet persistent
 +
 +
 +
 +Four parolees in the wilderness
 + the open desert
 +Memories of prison in the form of vultures
 + the sound of key a squawk
 + or a slither
 +Quo Vadis?
 + other emblems priapic and shimmering
 +haunt visions of self
 +conquering and unconventional
 +but conforming rigidly to the
 +conventional expectations
 +They milk cacti
 +pricked fingers dripping
 +pulque for blood
 +Closely guarded secret
 +The old dogs playing poker
 +What do they do?
 +Hold things close to the chest
 +And wear faces made of stone
 +
 +
 +
 +Let’s go to war against the men
 + in Phrygian caps
 +Worshippers of Attis
 +Whose castrated member delivers
 +milk to the ground
 +Nourishing a tree whose fruit bleeds
 +
 +A new life from balls made of
 +dust, blood and semen
 +Hymmed over and touched by wands
 +Flames applied under song
 +
 +And when it is all over,
 + into the clouds strung
 +from high mountain pastures
 +Above the heat from where
 +these seeds have been taken
 +Something begins to wriggle
 +and emerge
 +A hand tearing open a flap in the sky
 +
 +
 +
 +Any set of figures
 +could signify anything
 +an entire topography
 +described by numbers
 +lives reduced – as they can be –
 +to a maddeningly accurate binary
 +routes taken, the road not
 +doors opened, peered thru, stepped thru
 +doors locked and keys lost
 +A metaphysical set of what-ifs
 +snaking off….
 +(unfinished)
 +
 +
 +
 +SHE’S GOT these little dolls from Ecuador
 +When you’ve got worries and woe
 +yer s’posed to place them under the pillows
 + when you sleep
 +The day I woke up to find her toothbrush gone
 + hand darting out in post-narcotic
 + hangover
 +I moved her pillow:
 +She’d put the whole lot of them down
 +little scattered figures willy-nilly
 +like Voodoo bones
 +And she whom I had pegged as an unrepentant
 +intellectual
 +Our child
 + growing in the belly
 + fruit of the womb
 +is making her catholic:
 +When she realized I had inked
 +an upside-down cross on her hand she
 +went “you” and looked like I’d
 +shit on it
 +I jokingly suggested she finish cleaning
 +it off w/some of the water we’d
 +snickeringly brought from Lourdes
 +in a little plastic Madonna
 +She half-jokingly complied
 +….
 +(unfinished)
 +
 +
 +
 +IF APRIL is the cruelest month
 + then MAY is the scrotum of an elephant
 +April is a pain in the ass
 +just like any other month
 +just like an elephant’s scrotum is
 +wrinkled like my own
 +just like the sun is a great big ball of
 +gas with spots
 +just like Mike
 +What would Jesus do?
 +He would bomb Donald Rumsfield
 +and call it a glorious victory
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +Having lived in France now for 15 and one-half
 +months
 +I am still searching for that place where these
 +“naked ladies” allegedly “dance”
 +there is said to be a hole in the wall
 +where the men can see it all
 +but, clad only in their underpants
 +they don’t care
 +Would they care otherwise?
 +And why does having stripped down to one’s knickers
 +render one so lackadaisical?
 +Having gone thru the effort, one would think
 +they were expecting something, eager even
 +To me that shows that not only do they
 +care but they care very much
 +But….maybe….they are not
 +watching
 +Just because they can see doesn’t mean they are
 +watching
 +Maybe being clad in undies is only a prelude
 +to their own nakedness
 +Where they begin to do a little dance of their
 +own
 +Will the ladies then continue dancing?
 +Or will they slip on their bras and panties
 +and watch the men, or simply wait around indifferently?
 +And would this seesaw of getting
 +undressed and dancing, then getting back into
 +underwear and standing around either watching or
 +waiting, go on for?
 +And more importantly, why?
 +Why do it on other sides of a wall, especially when there
 +is a hole in it?
 +What is the meaning of this ritual?
 +What is its origin?
 +Where exactly in France can I find this place?
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +Please send any info on this matter to stevenmadkins@hotmail.com
 +
 +
 +
 +The Films of Nick Zedd
 +
 +PROVINCIAL the denizens
 + of the
 + cosmo
 + } POLE
 + metro (shaft
 + stick
 + baton
 +You have NY wand)
 +and the rest (greasy and with humid musk)
 +is an enormous fetid
 +wilderness fœtal
 + indeterminable
 +
 +ALWAYS down for a savage beating
 + the law of love
 + is that of a jungle
 +
 +
 +
 +We gotta blow up the moon!
 +
 +
 + SAID by sad-eyed thick goggles
 + Chechnya burning over the skies of FRANCE
 + a monument erected by George FORD
 + Daddy of the American Boys
 + All six of them in granite with four eagle heads
 + an argument taking shape in Things
 + LOGGING IN OVER LONDON
 + burning towers drowning vomit
 + my tears flow thru my hair….
 +The Moon! What a fat eyesore
 +glowing selfishly like
 + some kind of fish belly-up in the tide
 +
 +(they went down in the ditch with her and they watched
 + each other pee)
 +(He grits his teeth and cries)
 +
 +
 +
 +HOLIDAYS ON MARS
 +taken like break-dancers
 +flingin’ bullets off tips of body rock fingers
 +slung low in a gung-ho
 +sweet chariot eclipsing the sun as it rides across
 +the sky
 +burning bullets in trephination
 +trepanned nation
 +brains leaking out onto floor
 +just a tittering tease in a slithering sleaze
 +we got cards in files
 +just waiting to be picked up
 +cuz we don’t deliver
 +never know
 +needle horse
 +black and white
 +linguistic pride
 +black knight white knight
 +white light and dark fright
 +long night of long knives
 +homosexual soldiers sent into the valley of the shadow
 +our hymn is played on a piece of paper and a comb
 +outta sight lil’ mites
 +burrowing like viri (platypi) (octopi)
 +pi8 a symphony played on bones
 +jones homes james browns fat clowns
 +on crack jumpin’ jillyboats ON Roglats
 +songs silent wired mired tired
 +sayyy, you got any more of them crackers?
 +them dog-shaped crackers?
 +sailing silently under the stars
 +clouds doing an accelerated sad yet gentle
 +We will let people speak of mucous
 +and vomit, homeless shenans under Irish igans
 +shileaghlies and cops bursting with jowls and red
 +whiskers, billy-club barons overtly trade
 +inadvertently and secretly racist, even indifferent:
 +the effect is the same
 +headaches thems the breaks
 +j’emmerde le France et j’encule ta mère
 +Who cares and what gives?
 +
 +
 +
 +TAKE TWO
 +ended with a bang but not a whimper
 + the banging descended into
 + a snake-like nest of viruses
 +PONTIUS FLY-BY
 + a fly-by shooting
 +A FORTUNATE LACK of preoccupation
 +with making sense
 +a notebook inviolate
 +hot taken with bullets
 + slung low in a sweet chariot arcing over the sky
 + Apollonian fruit under gilded wing
 +
 + “Don’t call me Daedalus”
 + Dido, didgeridoo or Agamemnon
 +Medea, Aeschylus, Aphrodite, Fred
 + We play “snocker” and knock balls about
 + with sugarplanes
 +sugartits
 +biplanes
 + Caught on the crest of a wave
 + licking tongues burred like a cat’s
 + sheaf-clad spears of the driveway fence
 + held up twanging in the
 + hands of pallid ones
 + cascade of clear drops pouring over
 +like facet-less diamonds
 +giants with feet on the floors of the
 +seas
 +R ‘n’ B over on the lemming parade
 +a landless shore terminating in bluffs
 +
 +
 +
 +“Vous avez eu ce type du sauce!
 + Hou-ses of Par-la-men t !”
 + (Parle laments)
 +Geoffrey pointed @ the bottle
 + accusatory
 +a cued satori
 +“action!”
 +and like movie villain of British arrogance
 +his face is twisted into an ugly,
 +almost drooling this repressed vitube,
 +a robotic flesh-model
 +made to order
 +to deliver
 +“a sour time”
 + We are broken upon wheels
 +spun around on delicious axes
 +flung to the ground on vicious ashes
 +
 +She brings about a biting
 +a mother crocodile overlooks
 +two rambunctious children –
 +baby crocs
 + fissure in clay issuing beans
 +
 + the would never understand
 + no notebook inviolate
 + no not book in vial ate
 + (eaten)
 + hydrochloric stomach
 + gurgles foam
 + pink and full of
 + soft maroon stringy bits
 + marooned in yolk of phlegm
 + waiting the isolated birth
 +
 + We are all born into spheres
 +
 +
 +
 +“The Look”
 +parading about on the streets of Lisbon
 +small white tiles
 + occasional blue sigils
 + of mariners
 + and tritons
 + deities
 +(and demigods)
 + small elf-beers sliding
 + across metacyclical bartops
 +
 + she has teeth like fangs
 + and a good outfit
 + passes for a knockout
 + but has soul-ugliness
 + betrayed in a million
 + unsubtle lies
 +
 + notice the violence….
 + the BOOM! BOOM!
 +
 +
 +
 +I’M not scared of dying
 +TERRIFIED is more like it
 + the little elf (a farfadet)
 + slinging hash along
 + ash-lines
 + rough ashlars smoothed
 + by endless ebb and flow
 + twice every 24 hours
 +it takes a thousand years
 +
 +junket on the joyride
 + smack packets
 + in humdrum dynamism
 +and if the dead can dance
 +then the bears can mete out vicious beatings
 +with dumpers
 +(as in taking one)
 +(which is an elliptical way of saying)
 +(turd)
 +
 +cutesy footwalk under clandestine
 +tables
 +
 +the spirit of the apartment is a dead little
 +boy
 + who lives in the closet and moans
 +he scrabbles his nails against the door
 +which hasn’t been locked since….
 +
 +[these motherfuckers with their
 +million dogs]
 +[and these other dogs with their
 +drunken hostility]
 +
 +….interrupt me;
 + they don’t smile but if they do
 + it’s like a slice from a very,
 + thin
 + knife
 +
 +
 +
 +Hipsters in Armageddon
 +
 +Are still capitalists
 + boning roses in graveyard brain-pans
 + slinking off to shadowy places
 + highly encumbered with S & M gear
 +
 + the vagabond fish and the crazy cat
 + climb Mt. Fuji in a tank to go
 + to the casino
 +
 + pure hair ground in a windmill
 + by a pederast
 +
 +I can see all of these things from my table;
 +can you tell me why?
 + gnat retching calamitous under
 +thunderclouds
 +funk music the specious redemption
 +saved from rain only to be
 +eviscerated by drought
 +and the sun still sizzles my spit(e)
 + on the sidewalk
 +get down! get down!
 + get ready for the New Rome
 +all the Razzle-Dazzle of a Vegas show
 +without the hangover
 + those have all been exported to
 + brown people
 + you party
 + someone else suffers for it in the morning!
 + Dee-liteful & ‘lish,
 +all 4 yoo!
 +
 +I’m spreading my disease knowingly
 +and “inculpable”
 +countdown
 +4 minutes to….
 +you know what time it is, boyeeeeez!
 + roundup for the (summer) camps
 + sweet Norwegian blowjobs
 + pinup wet dreamers
 + under unabated master racers
 +And it’s all 4 yoo
 + all for you
 + all for you
 +
 +◦◦◦◦◦◦◦◦
 +
 +
 +
 +The police are singing
 + signing
 + keening like a knife on silk
 + cut through the tissucloth air
 +He is dead
 + but no one but they are sorry
 +
 +
 +
 +Yeah,
 +and there were these mexicains, from
 +Chiapas here to gain support and build
 +bridges
 +They had cardboard machetes covered in
 +tinfoil
 +Another man walked by in a khaffiyeh
 +with a long chain padlocked around his neck
 +
 +BLIPS and beeps
 +
 + thundering static moved like drums
 + “Bon travail!”
 +
 + their shouts come across rather thin
 + (but of course
 + they carry cardboard machetes)
 +
 +Il Reste
 +du MIAM-MIAM
 +de la soirée d’Hier
 +en BAS
 +
 +
 +
 +A HALF MOON @ dawn
 +in the pale blue
 +pale yellow, pink, violet
 +then more blue – that is the
 +sea
 +
 +That is the sea
 +I hear breaking below the cliffs
 +swooning
 +and some kind of slow-moving trawler
 +and there are the lights of other boats
 +I do not hear
 +and some big white presence
 +out there towards the curve of the earth
 +
 +last night we saw three satellites
 +and no shooting stars
 +we heard the wind the surf
 +the unbroken lounge singer
 +with his Elvis-like delivery
 +an unbroken medley
 +Peggy Sue, Proud Mary, La Bamba
 +Tipperary, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Day-O
 +he must have known a million songs
 +or fragments thereof
 +
 +and plagued by mosquitoes
 +and ants in the food
 +a gull sails over
 +its underside a-blaze from the pink of
 +the rising sun
 +(illuminated by the sun
 + from below)
 +and that small moment
 +before falling back into indifference
 +is something, at least
 +isn’t it?
 +
 +
 +
 +What independence?
 +I’m not happy about having to hunt a job
 +but that doesn’t mean I’m happy getting
 +rejection letters
 + (put on your game face
 + hang ‘em up with pride)
 +Perfect cap to a crap day
 +
 +Thorazine and broken glass
 + bad security
 + in the open country
 +
 +
 +
 +BODY.
 +Jumps at the throat
 +of the passing Minister of Interior Affairs
 +Mr. Korea has no painful insights
 +other than “we’re all fucked now”
 +Scene is any given American metropolis
 +in the not-too-distant future
 +Rolling blackouts are the norm
 +The denizens of urban interiors splutter
 +along fumes chuggering in gazola
 +generators
 +n some kind of vegetable oil concoction
 +n we can call it vegetable combustion
 +Supplements
 + -- meagre-like --
 + glimly flickering bulbs above
 + sordid apartments
 +candles provide the illumination candles
 +rendered from dead animals found in alleys,
 +sewer-sorties
 + rats, tomcats
 + the
 + occasional
 + dog
 +Noily – dripping in slime sonic and that
 +excreted by smoke
 +Generators reserved for the claptrap
 +-- if effective --
 + computers any kid can slap
 + together these days
 + in these parts (D.Y.I.)
 +
 +Scene is of any given American metropolis
 +the suburbs have dissolved into cardboard
 +puddles
 +There is disease and famine,
 + periodically
 +now means once a year
 +crops up in evil summer months
 +population thinned enough
 +so that everyone
 + paradoxically –
 +has a little space to run around in
 + there are still sectors of rubble
 + to be avoided
 +orange biohazard tape fluttering
 +makeshift crosses at gruesome angles
 + in the sinking mud
 + with a thick, patient stench
 +Winter a brief respite
 + not so long anymore
 + nor cool
 +but still a relief from the Killing Days
 +
 +Mr. Korea continues his business selling
 +anything,
 +everything
 + making not a profit in
 + speculation
 +but availability
 +he has warehouses full of devoted
 +workers who can also be counted as
 +“followers”
 +A minor empire upon the dungheap
 +Yet he still takes pleasure in conducting
 +certain deals personally
 +An old-school Johnson
 + He runs
 +more drugs than the police
 +Yet never touches child slavery
 +or organ jacking
 +He likes to think of himself
 +as having “Old School values”
 +
 +
 +
 +“....whales, flies and glue fly into my mouth.”
 +-- Dream message, 9/27/03
 +
 +IN A game sorted not into winners and losers
 +but 5 stars and “everyone else”
 +1. The 1st Star is called Gogol, or Godom
 +2. The 2nd Star is called Firemouth
 +3. The 3rd , James Brown’s dead sister
 +4. The 4th , Samba of Jack
 +5. The 5th, endlessness
 +Somehow, the dead brother-in-law found open-eyed
 +in his chair became the key to interpreting the clouds
 +
 +The 28th
 +The tradition
 + in front of a fire
 +just having made exquisite
 +animal love
 +
 +A record
 +
 +Old 80’s
 + and other
 +rocks the body socks
 + of European vibration
 +there is freedom in the not so free
 +
 +
 +
 +IN The Mir Space Station
 +Rudolph the Red is shagging
 +an abortion
 +It falls apart in his hands
 +He had loved this foetus
 + since it had first beamed up at him
 + shining radiantly through a transparent womb
 +The manner in which he acquired the foetus is
 + complex
 +He was warned of the impending murder
 +by a mole planted in the abortionist’s office
 +Using his secret powers he made himself appear
 +to everyone that he was Dr. Klieg
 +After murdering the real Dr. the night before
 +The preservation of life, after all, sometimes
 +calls for a good garroting
 +Anyway, he performed the abortion, knowing
 +that he could resurrect the foetus
 +After rocketing off from his secret
 +Appalachian rocket base,
 +He headed straight for the Mir
 +After a quick gunbattle he claimed it
 +
 +Now Rudolph is chagrined, humbled
 +Skull-fucking abortions won’ resurrect them
 +Covered in blood, foetal tissue like tiny
 +torn flags floating in the breeze
 +He weeps
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +NO guns causing
 + no knives describing
 + no knuckles making swift arks
 + in the damp trash of sky
 +
 +We do it with vaseline
 + sunbeams
 +streaking towards
 + a cardboard representation of Jesus
 +He wants us for something more droll
 + than that
 + A steady sinking
 + a constant outward pressure
 + against a soul-crushing
 + mélange of spiritual vacuity,
 + anger
 + self-doubt
 + and fear
 + ! ! ! !
 + 4 soldiers on guard against the
 + encroaching broom of night
 + crawling on shadow-bellies
 + in weeds
 +deeds unspoken
 +after the summary execution
 +against
 +some dumb friggin’ wall
 +stupid
 +AND
 +mute
 +there is not glaring searchlight
 +of eager historians
 +there is just the suicide of memory
 +the vicious heart-removal
 +called forgetting
 +
 +A slip-slide in autoerotic
 +oblivion
 +An Asphyxiated
 +yet splendidly-hydrated
 +hyena
 +
 +Dark mollusk on sea bed of mollusk
 +
 +A fortunate whisper upon a
 +1. lamb-cop of dawn
 +2. daring fodder
 +3. a gloating corona around a belching mouth
 +I sing sheets of pool
 + young billiard
 + some in the x + y there is the
 + equation of geometry, talent and luck
 + mathematics can describe the arc of chance
 + which is the mathematically predictable
 + journey coupled with the anomaly
 + and the factors
 + which may merely be Chinese butterflies
 +
 +And for my son, I will break the unlawful
 +pattern established with a pilot in a sea
 +of ink
 + My dark sombre a heavier nib
 + upon a less absorbent paper
 +Plied by disgusting egg-pens on
 +spindles called the hypothetical
 +rendition of the propeller of enormous
 +sea-boats
 + hiding in a low-hued innuendo
 + smacking of late 1960’s Florida
 +That crazy point where one can rent
 +pedaloes and challenge freighters in
 +the sea-lanes
 +There is no “crazy” sea-legs
 +Daddy-o
 +No Port of Arthur to hop in
 +john-hoped under demegerol skies
 +When out of often crops Africa
 +upon heavy legs and frightened in the
 +frost,
 + qiz’mc’ly, you have a thesaurus
 + under powerful hooves being mashed
 + out in a rough-truss of blame
 +
 +The Great literatures jump hog-
 +sacked and frog-cuffed from under the
 +baleful eyes of a chimp called
 +shrubbery – something innocent yet
 +vindictive – to be unleashed on gramma
 +toot sweet
 +
 +pSalms called Salem under smocks
 + and saline solution of snails,
 + soulless and so(u)luble
 + psulpherous
 + psychotic
 +Slow-burning (upon tarheels of night)
 +What grim key to suck slut under
 +with whirlagig white·a·mow
 +whoa!
 +What weirdness writes wolly·gog
 +on wall·wood work·rider and
 +scampers off to mucate in
 +chamber, alley of TOMAHAWK
 +of seven-spiked desire
 +
 +There’s a lot of square paper dropped
 +egg-like under the fiery thunder
 +of non-recognition
 + of sitting under movement a
 + spitting out casual darkness
 + like the speed of distaste
 + and greed
 +A kind of sour fruit invented by
 +sick farmers under watermelon-
 +moon skies and with slo-mo helicopters
 +coozing silently thru the mud-slit
 +skies which is the smoke of the
 +ant-frost smudge-pot
 +The real-meaning of Halloween as
 +the earth shrivels into the disguise of....
 +(there are unhealthy candlelights
 + and garish glows
 +thundering out from under the
 +hoof-heel of the dangling
 +sky....
 +
 + Far skies over
 + far cries
 + distance [in this case]
 + =
 + emptiness within which to murder....
 +
 +2X.P frog-smock on delinquent trouser
 + the hour has turned into a new day
 + and I am weary
 +
 +Allegralto
 + under symphonic blunderbuss
 + the musical artillery of ear-thumping
 + in dull drummed
 + confusion
 + CON (un-drum)!
 + While U still can!!!!
 +No more ?’s
 + don’t like the implications of the myth soldiers
 + companion/counterpoint
 + hollow point
 +outta joint
 +atta boy
 +‘ smoke one!
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +Thesis Antithesis
 +
 +
 +
 + Sin – thesis
 + (sin-thetic)
 + (parathEtic)
 + normal, vedic
 + norma, medic!
 + pa-thetic
 + papa
 + monkey’s caw
 + lion’ paw:
 + withered craw
 +
 +The moorish window of filigreed stone
 +lifted in delicate vaults
 +like crystal chandelier would try to and
 + never be....
 +
 +Dog-strings upon harp,
 + flaccid bikinis
 +gone straight in the wind
 +
 +Comme je t’aime
 + under a cloudless cuticle
 + called the moon
 + deep as milk
 + when yellow in the cheese
 +
 +Thundering heels across
 +a mythical plain
 +spoken of in purple language
 +the new empire is young
 +and is assuming its name
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +as if I may implode under the weight
 + of my own incompetence
 +clear crystal in deep-milk formation
 +or milk in profound crystal cavern
 + cum palace....
 +Queen Victoria 1880 malfeasance....
 +
 +
 +
 +What I have destroyed in myself
 + May yet prove far greater than
 + What I have left to create
 +The sun, casting a shadow behind
 +My hand, on the paper, is indifferent
 +The cars going by, the people in them:
 + indifferent
 +The entirety of the park
 +And all the components thereof:
 + indifferent
 +Why should I be different
 +Why should I not be indifferent?
 +Is indifference a source of happiness
 +Or a flimsy trap-door into despair
 +Can the state of despair be a
 + state of indifference?
 +</pre>
 +'''Part 1 | [[The Greenbook (part 2)|Part 2]] | [[The Greenbook (part 2)|Part 3]] | [[The Greenbook (part 4)|Part 4]]'''
 +
 +== See Also ==
---- ----
-* [[Reflections on the Greenbook]]+*[[The Redbook]]
-* [[The Redbook]]+*[[The Blackbook]]
 +*[[The Bluebook]]

Current revision

About

Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2003-2004).

Written between March 8, 2003 and July 25, 2004. Written over a much longer period than previous tomes, The Greenbook was begun at Jean Suau and completed at the apartment located at 7, rue Belle Paule, where Adkins and his wife had moved in May, 2003 to make room for their baby.

Text

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

IT begins again
roving, like a dead lock in space
mighty fur burning
mighty chip?
who the hell is that?

And that is a small manifesto
its details found in cracks
mighty temples
mere conglomerates of dust
I am 90 years old
but my hair is only 5
I am 642 years old
but even though I am dead
my hair still grows
my address book still contains
the phone numbers of emperors
my wife, still pregnant….

so this, then, is the Greenbook?

washcloth
wind tunnel 
weird viper wrangling with cowboys:
There will be a war soon
AND I have forgotten my orange jumpsuit
AND now I will mention it by name….

(long pause, accompanied by sounds of
scuffling, the POET reappears w/black
eye)

er, uh, belay that, I will not
be mentioning it by name
there is not, in fact, anything to mention
you see, I, uh, mis-spoke
(and that has nothing to do with “of the field”)

of the field = du champ = thus, the
bicycle wheel = miss spoke

my blood is cool 
cuz my hands is cool

“tu cherche?”

Well, not at the moment….
you see, she is sleeping
(my wife, the one I told you about)
We make adequate love
We are very stressed
by the details of living
and the new life coming

ha!  Greenbook verdant
redolent of myth
symbols of plants – growth!
jungles of the stuff like
vegetal mind criss-crossed
with roots and unruly fauna

[some time later:]
my wife is a stranger
strange union of invisible tongues
striking knobs upon hob-kneeled gongs
in hob-kneeled temples,
or should these temples,
be vicious?
squid likely upon the next tide
the horncastled horizon
and the dark wafer of the sea
the delicate emissions
guarded like highways are guarded
after snipers, dog-balloons,
expected beginnings
fervent hopes
whores block light
the international day of the lemon
its bitter citrus
betraying poems,
or omens

showmen blunder
take a fall
children wonder
learn to call
sings permitting
we will go
it’s all a show

I could go on forever like this
it’s neither hard to sling a rhyme
or structure plosives into
rhythms
teeth and tongue
into feet

Do you have anything?
Is there anything between us?
“L’amour”
	almost derisively
The irony not lost
on this day
when women paint
on translucent screens
“LOVE is so….”
What?
Heads explode into voluminous trees
and this hasn’t turned out to be
the perfect spot
as I see the frontwards
on the other side
of the reverse
“one” might call it the obverse
of one were a smartypants

toffs doff caps
a malicious vibrado
scooping on canes
down chorus lines
in schoolboy outfits
it respires as one
and turns into Nazis
in concentration camps
pacifist posturing
the formations of groups
the left hand of the
same sad golem

droll and drawling
slipping and dribbling
shits and giggles
are words from memory
to describe
“just for kicks”

bone-crusher
wind sailor
it crawls upon a darkening cloud
and my Hawaii has a vaguely
horizontal edge
with its fair share of greytones
sprinkled among the
colors

minefields
blowing off countless
feet
and thus coming across cannibals
destroying dozens of suns
George jacking upon Jefferson
and George
Washington
wooden teeth
cherry tree

golden unhapply
that new kind of apple
the gendarmes arrive
and bust open
hesitant skulls – 
and that is an understatement
you are more than undertakers
you are idols
she laughs without you
and with almost everyone else
we will never communicate
no real affection
walls like translucent cadavers burnings jelly
that trinity must say something
watch it from the other side
this is not a class of painting
but a spectacle
one half of a pair
whose isolation renders it useless
it moves and burns
but rarely makes the light-bulb glow
it harms itself and seeks exits
but cannot submit to simply expiring
a slow rundown until
the rhythm is tuckered
[the rigmarole, redundant]

and it that you have an omelette
some dust
three white men
and a magic circle

of light from a lamp
incredible contrast
to the palmetto blue
South Carolina 1975
your moon is humongous
and your sky a violet bowl of desire
and there in a pattern of yellow
conspiracies stand up to wonder
and formulate ways
to plunder


1.

The gallows humor
of the uninitiated
awaiting the ceremony

the grim smile
part of the mask
called “the brave face” and on sale @ the Lodge store

there is talk of savage beatings
with wire brushes
harangues by mock priests
in strapons
backpacks strewn with jellied condoms
faint swaths of pink and brown
evoking
certain smells….

there is nothing passively received
positively bereaved
however
having been left bereft
what else could they be?

2.

your pleasure
gluttonous and festive
pure flavor
the keys of equilibrium

votre plaisir
gourmand et festif
pure saveur
les clés de l’équilibre

signing in some gestural tongue
mute across vacuous winds 
that is to say across the bubbles
of vacuums floating across
a Chirico landscape
Jacques Chirac staring out from under glass
draped with a dusty tricolour
Marseillaise of hollow tin
tinkling down dull over assorted grandpa objects


WHAT is it
that motivates me
in this endeavour?
one hopes for an extended
evaluation of the self
and its values
but gets evasions
and lazy descriptions
of what should happen
(but never seems to materialize)
john-jumping on
out-of-date scenarios
outmatched and overdone
overcooked overall
über alles
sternsnüppa falling
l’etoile Volant of
and idea
glimmerflick then
disappearing when
you’ve only just
realized it was there
a permanent shade of
“wasness”
images as plan
and sustained creativity
fading faster than
a tiny splice	|	a splice in film



The inheritor of death:
	he who is always waiting
	hanging around monuments
	to real things
looking up the busy street
the materials of construction
jarring a harmony which was never there
except in its half-planned conglomeration: 

The avenue is busy
old men with nothing to do
pregnant women pushing strollers
purposeful mopeds
insect automobiles

The sounds of some kind of drill
the motor and horns
and above it all one persistent bird
regular
and then my name:
	“Steven!”



The lost ring
the news of suicide
he jumped thru a 9th storey window
the lost ring
seems less traumatic
even though to my wife
steeped in Lacan
it is highly symbolic

shit
and waiting for instructions
how to find a job
to feed the woman and
the coming young’un
I can’t stop thinking about
milkshakes
c'est a dire
sucking it up through a straw
fine vapour curling over aluminum
and this interview,
this formation is becoming more of a weight
1st thing you learn is you always gotta wait
always
whether it’s a man
a woman
or a monkey



Music percolates upwards
in thin sheets
sheet – that it is
no.  big, no license 
no strange dichotomies
upon the frozen helices of time
milky wisps curling against
the pin pricks of stars
punctuated by glorious grillage
rolling down for the evening
this is just the external
sound and does not account for
the trilingual chatter in my brain
how can I care,
yet flee on a free day
for a place to smoke
and nod?
To spend hours in gone-over ground
with bitter enunciations
amid the finality
while @ home
my pregnant wife waits patiently
before heading off to the pool?
I can put it aside
Still feel its weight
yet nonetheless
continue my perambulations
Dropping socks
while clocks stopped
by Glocks sit shattered
and splattered limp
cocks battered by
violence dumb science
obedient silence
then shock
stress reduces, more than
less and thumping distress
pushed juiced thru sluices
while blood gushes and
splooshes downtown all around
not ham-hockin’ or body rockin’
but trombonin’ corn-ponin’
in thick smocks set loose
upon produce
	pigs
	lamb
	calves
	and the ubiquitous
	ridiculous
	chicken








	The INcredible				he recants 
	edible						seeds and recounts
	egg						chromosomes
	Is not credible					as he bleeds….
	as a vegetable					all the while
	The slim mammalian				strumming a guitar
	does not sprout 
	on plants 



Cold crooner in Père Lachaise
Father, the chair
He is very useful
quiet and functional
We clamber, grow, play, learn
His paint peels and his
straw grows thin

Dramatize twisting guitar
like a pathetic nebula
The mouse that roared
An elephant pansy
vile green liquid leaking slowly
from rusty pipe
hidden away in forgotten sub-basement
blocked off in concrete and cinder
crèveforms 3 meters thick
close the last known lair
of the Bête Tolosan
it burbles up anyway
blobs of flesh like mercury
wriggling like a cutup worm
searching for itself

blindly
yet persistent



Four parolees in the wilderness
	the open desert
Memories of prison in the form of vultures
	the sound of key a squawk
		or a slither
Quo Vadis?
	other emblems priapic and shimmering
haunt visions of self
conquering and unconventional
but conforming rigidly to the
conventional expectations
They milk cacti
pricked fingers dripping
pulque for blood
Closely guarded secret
The old dogs playing poker
What do they do?
Hold things close to the chest
And wear faces made of stone



Let’s go to war against the men
	in Phrygian caps
Worshippers of Attis
Whose castrated member delivers
milk to the ground
Nourishing a tree whose fruit bleeds

A new life from balls made of
dust, blood and semen
Hymmed over and touched by wands
Flames applied under song

And when it is all over,
	into the clouds strung
from high mountain pastures
Above the heat from where
these seeds have been taken
Something begins to wriggle
and emerge
A hand tearing open a flap in the sky



Any set of figures
could signify anything
an entire topography
described by numbers
lives reduced – as they can be –
to a maddeningly accurate binary
routes taken, the road not
doors opened, peered thru, stepped thru
doors locked and keys lost
A metaphysical set of what-ifs
snaking off…. 
(unfinished)



SHE’S GOT these little dolls from Ecuador
When you’ve got worries and woe
yer s’posed to place them under the pillows
	when you sleep
The day I woke up to find her toothbrush gone
	hand darting out in post-narcotic
	hangover
I moved her pillow:
She’d put the whole lot of them down
little scattered figures willy-nilly
like Voodoo bones
And she whom I had pegged as an unrepentant
intellectual
Our child
	growing in the belly
	fruit of the womb
is making her catholic:
When she realized I had inked
an upside-down cross on her hand she 
went “you” and looked like I’d
shit on it
I jokingly suggested she finish cleaning
it off w/some of the water we’d
snickeringly brought from Lourdes
in a little plastic Madonna
She half-jokingly complied
….
(unfinished)



IF APRIL is the cruelest month
	then MAY is the scrotum of an elephant
April is a pain in the ass
just like any other month
just like an elephant’s scrotum is
wrinkled like my own
just like the sun is a great big ball of
gas with spots
just like Mike
What would Jesus do?
He would bomb Donald Rumsfield 
and call it a glorious victory





Having lived in France now for 15 and one-half
months
I am still searching for that place where these
“naked ladies” allegedly “dance”
there is said to be a hole in the wall
where the men can see it all
but, clad only in their underpants
they don’t care
Would they care otherwise?
And why does having stripped down to one’s knickers
render one so lackadaisical?
Having gone thru the effort, one would think
they were expecting something, eager even
To me that shows that not only do they
care but they care very much
But….maybe….they are not
watching
Just because they can see doesn’t mean they are 
watching
Maybe being clad in undies is only a prelude
to their own nakedness
Where they begin to do a little dance of their
own
Will the ladies then continue dancing?
Or will they slip on their bras and panties
and watch the men, or simply wait around indifferently?
And would this seesaw of getting
undressed and dancing, then getting back into
underwear and standing around either watching or
waiting, go on for?
And more importantly, why?
Why do it on other sides of a wall, especially when there
is a hole in it?
What is the meaning of this ritual?
What is its origin?
Where exactly in France can I find this place?




Please send any info on this matter to stevenmadkins@hotmail.com



The Films of Nick Zedd

PROVINCIAL the denizens
	of the
	cosmo 
		} POLE
	metro		(shaft
			stick
			baton
You have NY		wand)
and the rest			(greasy and with humid musk)
is an enormous			fetid
wilderness				fœtal
					indeterminable

ALWAYS down for a savage beating
	the law of love
	is that of a jungle



We gotta blow up the moon!
			

	SAID by sad-eyed thick goggles
	Chechnya burning over the skies of FRANCE
	a monument erected by George FORD
	Daddy of the American Boys
	All six of them in granite with four eagle heads
	an argument taking shape in Things 
	LOGGING IN OVER LONDON
	burning towers drowning vomit
	my tears flow thru my hair….
The Moon!  What a fat eyesore
glowing selfishly like
	some kind of fish belly-up in the tide

(they went down in the ditch with her and they watched
	each other pee)
(He grits his teeth and cries)



HOLIDAYS ON MARS
taken like break-dancers 
flingin’ bullets off tips of body rock fingers
slung low in a gung-ho
sweet chariot eclipsing the sun as it rides across
the sky
burning bullets in trephination
trepanned nation
brains leaking out onto floor
just a tittering tease in a slithering sleaze
we got cards in files
just waiting to be picked up
cuz we don’t deliver
never know
needle horse
black and white
linguistic pride
black knight white knight
white light and dark fright
long night of long knives
homosexual soldiers sent into the valley of the shadow
our hymn is played on a piece of paper and a comb
outta sight lil’ mites
burrowing like viri (platypi) (octopi)
pi8             a symphony played on bones
jones homes james browns fat clowns
on crack jumpin’ jillyboats ON Roglats
songs silent wired mired tired
sayyy, you got any more of them crackers?
them dog-shaped crackers?
sailing silently under the stars
clouds doing an accelerated sad yet gentle
We will let people speak of mucous
and vomit, homeless shenans under Irish igans
shileaghlies and cops bursting with jowls and red
whiskers, billy-club barons overtly trade
inadvertently and secretly racist, even indifferent:
the effect is the same
headaches thems the breaks
j’emmerde le France et j’encule ta mère
Who cares and what gives?



TAKE TWO
ended with a bang but not a whimper
	the banging descended into
	a snake-like nest of viruses
PONTIUS FLY-BY
	a fly-by shooting
A FORTUNATE LACK of preoccupation
with making sense
a notebook inviolate
hot taken with bullets
    slung low in a sweet chariot arcing over the sky
    Apollonian fruit under gilded wing

	    “Don’t call me Daedalus”
	    Dido, didgeridoo or Agamemnon
Medea, Aeschylus, Aphrodite, Fred
    We play “snocker” and knock balls about
    with sugarplanes
sugartits
biplanes
	    Caught on the crest of a wave
		licking tongues burred like a cat’s
		sheaf-clad spears of the driveway fence
		held up twanging in the 
		hands of pallid ones
		cascade of clear drops pouring over
like facet-less diamonds
giants with feet on the floors of the 
seas
R ‘n’ B over on the lemming parade
a landless shore terminating in bluffs



“Vous avez eu ce type du sauce!
	Hou-ses of Par-la-men t !”
	(Parle laments)
Geoffrey pointed @ the bottle
	accusatory
a cued satori
“action!”
and like movie villain of British arrogance
his face is twisted into an ugly,
almost drooling this repressed vitube,
a robotic flesh-model 
made to order
to deliver
“a sour time”
	We are broken upon wheels
spun around on delicious axes
flung to the ground on vicious ashes

She brings about a biting
a mother crocodile overlooks
two rambunctious children –
baby crocs
	fissure in clay issuing beans

	the would never understand
	no notebook inviolate
	no not book in vial ate
			       (eaten)
	hydrochloric stomach
		gurgles foam
		pink and full of
		soft maroon stringy bits
		marooned in yolk of phlegm
		waiting the isolated birth

	We are all born into spheres



“The Look”
parading about on the streets of Lisbon
small white tiles
		occasional blue sigils
			of mariners
			and tritons
			deities
(and demigods)
	small elf-beers sliding 
	across metacyclical bartops

	she has teeth like fangs
	and a good outfit
	passes for a knockout
	but has soul-ugliness
	betrayed in a million
	unsubtle lies

	notice the violence….
	the BOOM!  BOOM!



I’M not scared of dying
TERRIFIED is more like it
	the little elf (a farfadet)
	slinging hash along
	ash-lines
	rough ashlars smoothed
	by endless ebb and flow
	twice every 24 hours
it takes a thousand years

junket on the joyride
	smack packets
	in humdrum dynamism
and if the dead can dance
then the bears can mete out vicious beatings
with dumpers
(as in taking one)
(which is an elliptical way of saying)
(turd)

cutesy footwalk under clandestine
tables

the spirit of the apartment is a dead little
boy
	who lives in the closet and moans
he scrabbles his nails against the door
which hasn’t been locked since….

[these motherfuckers with their
million dogs]
[and these other dogs with their
drunken hostility]

….interrupt me;
	they don’t smile but if they do
	it’s like a slice from a very, 
				thin
			        knife



Hipsters in Armageddon

Are still capitalists
	boning roses in graveyard brain-pans
	slinking off to shadowy places
	highly encumbered with S & M gear

	the vagabond fish and the crazy cat
	climb Mt. Fuji in a tank to go
	to the casino

	pure hair ground in a windmill
	by a pederast

I can see all of these things from my table;
can you tell me why?
	gnat retching calamitous under
thunderclouds
funk music the specious redemption
saved from rain only to be
eviscerated by drought
and the sun still sizzles my spit(e)
      on the sidewalk
get down!  get down!
      get ready for the New Rome
all the Razzle-Dazzle of a Vegas show
without the hangover
      those have all been exported to 
      brown people
      you party
      someone else suffers for it in the morning!
      Dee-liteful & ‘lish,
all 4 yoo!
	
I’m spreading my disease knowingly
and “inculpable”
countdown
4 minutes to….
you know what time it is, boyeeeeez!
	roundup for the (summer) camps
	sweet Norwegian blowjobs
	pinup wet dreamers
	under unabated master racers
And it’s all 4 yoo
	all for you
	all for you

◦◦◦◦◦◦◦◦



The police are singing
		signing
			keening like a knife on silk
			cut through the tissucloth air
He is dead
	but no one but they are sorry



Yeah,
and there were these mexicains, from
Chiapas here to gain support and build
bridges
They had cardboard machetes covered in
tinfoil
Another man walked by in a khaffiyeh
with a long chain padlocked around his neck

BLIPS and beeps

	thundering static moved like drums
	“Bon travail!”

	their shouts come across rather thin
	(but of course
		they carry cardboard machetes)

Il Reste
du MIAM-MIAM
de la soirée d’Hier
en BAS



A HALF MOON @ dawn
in the pale blue
pale yellow, pink, violet
then more blue – that is the
sea

That is the sea 
I hear breaking below the cliffs
swooning
and some kind of slow-moving trawler
and there are the lights of other boats
I do not hear
and some big white presence
out there towards the curve of the earth

last night we saw three satellites
and no shooting stars
we heard the wind the surf
the unbroken lounge singer
with his Elvis-like delivery
an unbroken medley
Peggy Sue, Proud Mary, La Bamba
Tipperary, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Day-O
he must have known a million songs
or fragments thereof

and plagued by mosquitoes
and ants in the food
a gull sails over
its underside a-blaze from the pink of
the rising sun
(illuminated by the sun
	from below)
and that small moment
before falling back into indifference
is something, at least
isn’t it?



What independence?
I’m not happy about having to hunt 	a job
but that doesn’t mean I’m happy getting 
rejection letters
	(put on your game face
	hang ‘em up with pride)
Perfect cap to a crap day

Thorazine and broken glass
	bad security
	in the open country



BODY.
Jumps at the throat
of the passing Minister of Interior Affairs
Mr. Korea has no painful insights
other than “we’re all fucked now”
Scene is any given American metropolis
in the not-too-distant future
Rolling blackouts are the norm
The denizens of urban interiors splutter
along fumes chuggering in gazola
generators
n	some kind of vegetable oil concoction
n	we can call it vegetable combustion
Supplements
	-- meagre-like -- 
	glimly flickering bulbs above
	sordid apartments
candles provide the illumination	candles
rendered from dead animals found in alleys,
sewer-sorties
	rats, tomcats
	    the
		occasional
	    dog
Noily – dripping in slime sonic and that
excreted by smoke
Generators reserved for the claptrap
-- if effective -- 
	computers any kid can slap 
	together these days
	    in these parts (D.Y.I.)

Scene is of any given American metropolis
the suburbs have dissolved into cardboard
puddles
There is disease and famine,
	periodically
now means once a year
crops up in evil summer months
population thinned enough
so that everyone
	paradoxically –
has a little space to run around in
	there are still sectors of rubble
	to be avoided
orange biohazard tape fluttering
makeshift crosses at gruesome angles
		in the sinking mud
	with a thick, patient stench
Winter a brief respite
	not so long anymore
		nor cool
but still a relief from the Killing Days

Mr. Korea continues his business selling
anything,
everything
		making not a profit in
		speculation
but availability
he has warehouses full of devoted
workers who can also be counted as
“followers”
A minor empire upon the dungheap
Yet he still takes pleasure in conducting
certain deals personally
An old-school Johnson
    He runs
more drugs than the police
Yet never touches child slavery
or organ jacking
He likes to think of himself
as having “Old School values”



“....whales, flies and glue fly into my mouth.”
-- Dream message, 9/27/03

IN A game sorted not into winners and losers
but 5 stars and “everyone else”
1.	The 1st Star is called Gogol, or Godom
2.	The 2nd Star is called Firemouth
3.	The 3rd , James Brown’s dead sister
4.	The 4th , Samba of Jack
5.	The 5th, endlessness
Somehow, the dead brother-in-law found open-eyed
in his chair became the key to interpreting the clouds

The 28th 
The tradition
	in front of a fire
just having made exquisite
animal love

A record

Old 80’s
	and other
rocks the body socks
		of European vibration
there is freedom in the not so free



IN The Mir Space Station
Rudolph the Red is shagging
an abortion
It falls apart in his hands
He had loved this foetus
    since it had first beamed up at him
    shining radiantly through a transparent womb
The manner in which he acquired the foetus is
    complex
He was warned of the impending murder
by a mole planted in the abortionist’s office
Using his secret powers he made himself appear
to everyone that he was Dr. Klieg
After murdering the real Dr. the night before
The preservation of life, after all, sometimes
calls for a good garroting
Anyway, he performed the abortion, knowing
that he could resurrect the foetus
After rocketing off from his secret 
Appalachian rocket base,
He headed straight for the Mir
After a quick gunbattle he claimed it

Now Rudolph is chagrined, humbled
Skull-fucking abortions won’ resurrect them
Covered in blood, foetal tissue like tiny
torn flags floating in the breeze
He weeps






NO guns		        causing
    no knives	describing 
    no knuckles  making  swift arks
		in the damp trash of sky

We do it with vaseline
		sunbeams
streaking towards
    a cardboard representation of Jesus
He  wants us for something more droll
		than that
	A steady sinking
	a constant outward pressure
	against a soul-crushing
	mélange of spiritual vacuity,
	anger
	self-doubt
		and fear
		 !  !  !  !
	4 soldiers on guard against the
	encroaching broom of night
	crawling on shadow-bellies
			in weeds
deeds unspoken
after the summary execution
against
some dumb friggin’ wall
stupid
AND
mute
there is not glaring searchlight
of eager historians
there is just the suicide of memory
the vicious heart-removal
called forgetting

A slip-slide in autoerotic
oblivion
An Asphyxiated
yet splendidly-hydrated
hyena

Dark mollusk on sea bed of mollusk

A fortunate whisper upon a
1.	lamb-cop of dawn
2.	daring fodder
3.	a gloating corona around a belching mouth
I sing sheets of pool
  young billiard
	some in the x + y there is the
	equation of geometry, talent and luck
	mathematics can describe the arc of chance
	which is the mathematically predictable
	journey coupled with the anomaly
	and the factors
	  which may merely be Chinese butterflies

And for my son, I will break the unlawful
pattern established with a pilot in a sea
of ink
	My dark sombre a heavier nib
	upon a less  absorbent paper
Plied by disgusting egg-pens on
spindles called the hypothetical
rendition of the propeller of enormous
sea-boats
	hiding in a low-hued innuendo
	smacking of late 1960’s Florida
That crazy point where one can rent
pedaloes and challenge freighters in
the sea-lanes
There is no “crazy” sea-legs
Daddy-o
No Port of Arthur to hop in
john-hoped under demegerol skies
When out of often crops Africa
upon heavy legs and frightened in the 
frost,
	qiz’mc’ly, you have a thesaurus
	under powerful hooves being mashed
	out in a rough-truss of blame

The Great literatures jump hog-
sacked and frog-cuffed from under the
baleful eyes of a chimp called
shrubbery – something innocent yet
vindictive – to be unleashed on gramma
toot sweet

pSalms called Salem under smocks
	and saline solution of snails,
	soulless and so(u)luble
		psulpherous
		psychotic
Slow-burning (upon tarheels of night)
What grim key to suck slut under
with whirlagig white·a·mow
whoa!
What weirdness writes wolly·gog
on wall·wood work·rider and
scampers off to mucate in
chamber, alley of TOMAHAWK
of seven-spiked desire

There’s a lot of square paper dropped
egg-like under the fiery thunder
of non-recognition
	of sitting under movement a
	spitting out casual darkness
	like the speed of distaste
	and greed
A kind of sour fruit invented by
sick farmers under watermelon-
moon skies and with slo-mo helicopters
coozing silently thru the mud-slit
skies which is the smoke of the 
ant-frost smudge-pot
The real-meaning of Halloween as
the earth shrivels into the disguise of....
(there are unhealthy candlelights
		and garish glows
thundering out from under the
hoof-heel of the dangling
sky....

		Far skies over
		    far cries
		distance [in this case]
		        =
	    emptiness within which to murder....

2X.P  	frog-smock on delinquent trouser
	the hour has turned into a new day
	and I am weary

Allegralto
        under symphonic blunderbuss
    the musical artillery of ear-thumping
    in dull drummed
        confusion
        CON (un-drum)!
        While U still can!!!!
No more ?’s
        don’t like the implications of the myth soldiers
        companion/counterpoint
        hollow point
outta joint
atta boy
‘ smoke one!
	    




Thesis		Antithesis



	Sin – thesis
	(sin-thetic)
	(parathEtic)
	    normal, vedic
	    norma, medic!
	pa-thetic
	    papa
	    monkey’s caw
	    lion’ paw:
	      withered craw

The moorish window of filigreed stone
lifted in delicate vaults
like crystal chandelier would try to and
    never be....

Dog-strings upon harp,
		flaccid bikinis
gone straight in the wind

Comme je t’aime
	under a cloudless cuticle
	called the moon
	deep as milk
	when yellow in the cheese

Thundering heels across
a mythical plain
spoken of in purple language
the new empire is young
and is assuming its name





as if I may implode under the weight
	of my own incompetence
clear crystal in deep-milk formation
or milk in profound crystal cavern
	cum palace....
Queen Victoria 1880 malfeasance....



What I have destroyed in myself
    May yet prove far greater than
    What I have left to create
The sun, casting a shadow behind
My hand, on the paper, is indifferent
The cars going by, the people in them:
			      indifferent
The entirety of the park
And all the components thereof:
			      indifferent
Why should I be different
Why should I not be indifferent?
Is indifference a source of happiness
Or a flimsy trap-door into despair
Can the state of despair be a
    state of indifference?

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

See Also