The Greenbook (part 2)
From Plastic Tub
Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2003-2004).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
NOTES FOR A POEM ON PARIS
Day afore yestiddy, we arrived
found our friend’s flat
at
156 Boulevard Magenta
(he’s lucky, she’s lucky, we’re all lucky)
settled in
took a walk and walk and walk
discovered nothing
ate overpriced Moroccan
(hey, it was Christmas Eve)
Poor kidlet woke up screaming
and distressed the wasps’ necks
which are neighbors
creeping ‘round in socks at 2:30 AM
to find out who was torturing an infant
Hail Satan!
Hail Caesar! Render unto absurdity its due
Heil Hitler! reject these impotent princelings
of the disgruntled
And so more walking
Notre Dame at Noon.
Christmas service
Gloria In Excelsius Deo
Bells tolling
Shakespeare & Co. glimpsed par hasard
brief pause at the beat Hotel
Where the if-anything but bohemian
hotel now serves the upper crust of
American tourists
but where the beats were given their
due with pictures hung on the wall –
Burroughs, Gysin, Corso, Ginsburger
with cheese, Orlovsky “the American poet”
Harold Chapman’s book in the drawer
The staff were very nice
Must’ve been our baby
We walked away towards the
Louvre, towards the “Elysian Fields,”
towards the Arc de Triomph, The Tour
Eiffel, back to the Metro.
Got home and cooked up steaks & taters
Drank some Lirac rouge
That was Christmas. In Excelsius Deo
Chr-i-ist is born!
Coal train
in Paris
black hi-way of rails
bleak house flyaway
vapor trails
sun sails reflecting light
aviator sunglasses
catching flame
“Who but “We” perpetuate this mythos”
he says
scrunching up his fingers in quotes
around the We
Wee Wee Wee
all the way home
chick-kneed
rick-rack
along Bedrock of
Stepford Wives
The Witches of Eastwick
Robert Redford
Stepford and Son
step forward
move ahead
inch along
it’s not too late
too rip it into shreds:
“I saw the best minds of my generation”
dropped like rag dolls
and kicked in the balls
for whom the bell tolls
(trolls)
starring Eric Stoltz
Schlitz more than a malt liquor
business of pee·kni notwithstanding
unaccompanied by leftist burdens of dovish doubt
we oppose all that would seek to
profit from death
may as well tax air
water to the highest bidder
clandestine desalination plants
a wicked banter chopped
down by the coast guard
The Marijuana farms of the future
desalination plants you can make with
mail-order kits
In Excelsius Deo
quel condition?
what nervous soul creep of infinite blackness
crack another beer
calm another Fear
Forget the aching want and the desert horizon
White hot of instanect memories al la le
Madeleine du Proust
Playing Kidlet upon
puppet-bright red
please don’t touch him
please don’t
that smell of poorly sterilised vomit
clou d’or
champignon luminescent
une fenêtre
Day 1: circled around Montmartre
Day 2: Metro “Cité”
Christmas Service in Notre Dame
Walked over to Shakespeare and Co.
Thru quartier latin
Git le Coeur, No. 9 saw pics of
the dead ones
heartless lying
or burnt away
the to the libanaise sammich shop
dicked about with heels on
then to the Louvre, the Pyramid
The only space in Paris – apparently –
to run a remote-controlled car
Tuileries Gardens shite brown
in December
and thru the stumpy champagne-glass
trees
within view of the Arc de Triomphe
marching thru the Champs d’Elysees
the chic madness
the frenzy of the tourists
the exaggeration of individual need
magnified into a kind of subsonic
hysteria
the gibbering madness only waiting
to
aggressive form
into a mass suicide
or a slaughter
almost diddle-fucked
in winter
a brazen horsecloud
I am sure I have heard talk of before
stumpy and grimpy upon prototype washcloth
I wished I was a luminescent mushroom
it all comes from the synchronicity
of the gibbering gibbernaut:
and just as we wonder
who this voyager of logorrhea is
we also wonder about Gavroche’s
“sky pilot”
and this coal train worked on the both of ‘em
a record of sorts of a black soul and a
disappointed one
We will carry our infants upon
grass
but will forget how to tell the difference
between a Delacroix and a Gericault
Things like chips sap the poet’s soul
but Sausage makes it Stronger
dilapidated boat-pick
campfire under freckled bridge
turned out the lamplight dancing
upon the Seine
As I grasp may ankles and get
ready to whistle
my foreground
fades to black as my Carmichael
bounces my Stokely
You never had bones for this job
Which was ever a shitter, at best
(as he walked on down the hall)
Bill Evans becomes acquainted with an errant
wind that sounds like john lennon
and the waft of scum sterile shirt vomit
emmanatin’ from the toilet
we gobble and sleep
this small space give us no room for conversation
we tumble into sleep, exhausted
I have good tunes
plenny liquor
weed
I don’t need to roll onto the
padded joke called a “bed” to have
a good time I can just crawl
in and outside of lines next to the
hyperinflated wheel of the baby carriage,
looming large to the left side of my head
what was I saying?
Footnote grabbed me critchety-crotch
of dad-blazed gum-cursers
oh blow me down under the splendid rays of a
fallen pencil
which is an exploded
gold-leaf dragon
in an area frequented by prostitutes
clinking glasses
slurred voices
(of television)
beyond the walls
where the pigs may pass
and goddess trample all of them
as one
the effervescent madness
returns in Paris
even my wife
it turns out
is annoyed
and my son no better
I am no better
than a child
gauche and lacking
class
style
hopping delightedly among
pigeons
and skidding across the floor
....while the biberon boils
across the natural boundaries of
earth
they only talk of telegraphic wires in scorn
but the satellites have them edgy
why is there this talk of dog-stars
edging into the domain of chance glimpse
which is a lisp inverted with the
double-cypher of the Faerie King
What elaborate speak I in
if not deliberate fancy
Tom Clancy
degenerate glocken-spiel
gun-totin’ talkers minimal
shoot first
pick up paycheck later
What enlightened hornograph
causes tremulous emotions upon paper
crapulous doodling
along the din-dong slate
it lies in wating
an anchored sip of a shrine gone by
we’d rather remember out felt
cutters and sell their heads for
10 cents this is the cryptographic
radio network speaking and 2-
nite we have the following
anoouncements,
now and forever,
catered to and brought to you b(u)y
the Nicholson Bros. Sweetback Plant
Macon, Ga. R·ed
they bend light into martini glasses
Yes, a grasshopper
he said with a faggoty exasperated air
go stonewall (jackson)
riots still my beating heart
And then there were five
the limerick
is more verbal
And whatever happened to Bennigan’s?
Similac = milk like it = Irish
BUT it was nonetheless fun!
Special
Treat!
To keep away from sticky side while
glue dries
we rock on to opposite
while leaves rusting outside
are black garbage bags
still a-flutter
in re-enclosed
courtyard
Baby squirms and grunts
next to me
thinks my pen and pad
are playthings
which of course they are
Hooting of Hancock
hunting heads
some tribal initiation
in analog
artifice
stylo
bébé dort
les armes de feu
étrillant
sur le froid
qu’enveloppe
Paris
comme les bras
d’un mort
enterré
sue toutes les ports
d’Afrique
d’Emile Zola
des allumettes en l’aube
gentilles berbères
sonnent les portes
de la mer
la mesa
(la table)
sur tout
sur tout
AND so it kontinues
these crazy automaton choices
blintzering about on an
unexpected slipstream
the autoconscious
attention to the lick-spittle
madness we are about to increase
if in my needier moments
I seem an empty bag
In moments of nowness I am
a born-again hog
neediness = seediness
B = brackish delight in obstreption
shunning backwards alley in Fidel Castro
(It was a dream)
(the day was sunny, dappled, dusty)
(beakers filled like crickets)
! ! ! !
Joke emblem upon the fortifications
(the fortified heart!)
♥
and Noble House
makes me groan
less than
light in August
gums downward!!
i
14th educational material
since behind scrims the scenes
play out
scenes roasted upon the clear eye of
ubiquity
the latin hope
hops left
and children are born
sparkplug
diggin’
willins
on Southern emphasis
Aummm!
U.S.S. Conasse
skulking about
on skilky peds
no slinky silk
in Denim
hybrid hydrogenized
(distance makes the heart grow fonder
closeness breeds contempt)
it is not all written out in clay
imprinted with the ends of stalks
any riverside plant chomped
and utilized, for a wedge
and that was nearly 30 years
ago
time has only stood there
in yr memory
cheap
anaphylactic garden
sodium whipworm of a collective fossil
....missing text....
forgotten something•or•other
robbed of the dramatic
these fragmenting villages
reconstruction of the Tower of Babel
In this recondite age
aghast at quick weeping
“tragedy” applied liberally
common sorrow made epic by the need to
sell sorrow
to convince a concrete world that they
still have the ability to give a damn
When, in fact, the averted eyes and
quickened step is an existential position
more than the actual fashion we avoid
the clattering bum in the doorway
and the squeletons dance
the scarecrows flap
misery a way to scare children into behavior
she was an old woman
living in a ruin where the trail
we jokingly called the Ho Chi Minh
widened
black widow’s dress and scarf
old-world peasant of any number of
countries
tomorrow the fountains of aid run dry
“oh really?” they never even offered
a trickle, here
these are what are referred to as
“simple truths”
Fountains of Heart
shoot blood –
flood-lit –
into the air about her
take a nap, take a nap
Who needs convincing?
What dangerous egg has been cracked now?
How many more can we expect to lose?
These are losses that cannot be recuperated
There is no inverse twin called “found”
in this department
Just sand and dust and emptiness
“there’s mothers cryin’ all over this world
for their poor lit’l darlin’ boys n’ girls”
Whip poor will
and ranged along the road
wherever they aren’t quickly driven away by
violence
IN the bar car
waiting for mama to put baby
into noddy land
sleep rip of wrack (she’s got a
nice one – pomegranates
placed
precariously
upon a gimcrack of wheeze
gnocchi of villages
sturmed in a pot called drang
everyday photography
captured the light coughs of a
baby’s second cough
quick,
fleeting
the milk is too cold
and he is inquiet
acceptance of this first life’s roughness
on a voyage
and mama talks to him
and our fellow passengers far away
a thin yellow wash
upon the horizon
the clouds our ceiling
low and pendulous
and blue
he does not drink the milk
we pass thru low blocks
innocuous
and inventive despite
their drab uniformity
and the lengths of their beards
denote
Forgetting
A casting aside
a leaving
(as in a parting)
(and something left behind)
(why am I in pyramids?)
There is a drunken batwing
upon the sky
an open and left-handed fornicator
bringing about the soft red rains
of an antichrist
or a pretender
safely now,
into the night
beyond the circle of light
which is a reworking of
that which has come before
let’s not go gratis into that
good night
dripping healthy
like the dappled leaves in a healthy spring
floating in a clear water
cold, crisp
Japanese
underneath the flat blue mirror
without shimmer
just thereness
and doppled leaves
dimpled knees
like knotted cheeks
fervent fervor of religious
horsewhipping
fornicating flagpoles
under homosex sky
that is war
with battling sky-pilots
Zombi Wing 127th skittering
radio hot webs of
reinvention
steel in hot lugs elongated and flying
penetration into suns
globes of truth gas
that are in a wider sEnse
known as stars
there is a demand for reaparations
the clouds lift
the dogs bark
and voila!
you have an incantation
no frustrated desire here
within the walls of the
fast-moving norm
no dick-roll of blathernathy
no incumbent vice-lord
toppled in the wildcat name of
a sheriff in hottananny hothnoo
somewhere in Pennsylvania
or Idaho
The long distance of loneliness
a millimeter is long to an atom
these degenerate screeds
whispered upon “Whicked Whinds”
and carried off into the perfumed
SoCal nights
I cannot help but revere the
fallacy
the imprinted myth
which holds the greater truth
than the trite realization
that the 18th century took
place in shabby cloth
and tenchnicolor
and wasn’t in black and white
and people didn’t move about alla time
as if doing a slow waltz
I gotta do some destructive treework
call in a dentist and simulate
desire
there in the attic, a bat!
does she expect a pennance
of pennants
docker worn shabbily
by cousins with priests
suave catholic boys among
the prep-school protestants
we shall overcome
as if it were a revolutionary
barricade
that short, fat
fleeting moment
(His feeding pattern
has been disturbed)
and writhing
we get into the ebb abd flow
break the god
you get a glimpse of the shadow
of god’s incarnation
bulb-beaked Bob
will be the Messiah returned
re-crucified by the CIA
before the intergalactic
shit-fling
called apocalypse
ever so dim and cool
in a certain light
our necks bent at curious angles
to fill a book
I will limit myself to five words a page
widely spaced
short lines
like short necks attached to
<BEAKS>
(which peck and persist)
(a little bird from North Carolina)
given away by a blood-soaked
cotton
during calm moment
When KFC managers attack
We are not afraid of this knowledge
warped out on boneboots
slogging our way thru corporeal slime
of immaterial sin
so dense and corrupt
it manifests itself
something from the septic tank
7 microbes in a can-can line
7 venereal sisters
7 chinese brothers
(a nod to the livewire)
he who can interpret the universe
with grain
with beans
with fondled bones
cast about
somehow vaguely hinting at
the memory of licentious squares
the sheer amount of it
the worthless rubble
the barney babble of blarney trouble
sing harmonies
listen in vain for frogblades
jump razors like useless
ships
and oily fires on waterslick
of gimcrack
........
shit, we’ve lost the line
bring it back
bring it all back
to the meat
sack of fruit
ties to rough twine
this is the prospect
the entire doom of a fungoïd nightmare
glim globes dim upon sampans
always there,
in the mind’s harbour
miraculously weathering
tai-fan
periodic fires
sacred lines of scared credit
upon hollow•heel
patheticisms
drifting
incontinuous
weak
presqua indecipherable
possessing of imposing
rectitude despite the obvious vulgarity
we speak not here, of being common,
or popular,
but of the raw, unbridled licentiousness
which is the dripping feces
out of mouth-corner
that delineates this rare subterfuge
this gilded tango
a dance laid out in numbered
strips
recreated after the flaming ball
of metal has splintered into a
million pieces
and each one of these somehow gimped
in prostitution of the perverse
the perversity of interjurisdictional coöperation
one week away from a job
was all it took
to take up the pen
again the quotidian bar pilfer
of socket emplugment
called poésie
Viva les cons!
When the cars stop exploding
we can hide and seek under
irradium nightmare
this is often called the clear blue sky
just as the septic sludge pit is also
called the ole water hole
go fishing
pull out a boot
go swimming
pull out a flesh-eating bacteria
suicide under open fingers
broken dumptrucks under the bridge
nothing to do with lukewarm zeppelins
work so hard to endear myself
sarcastic wrapper a bonebreak
of stinted stiltism
a “bagoo bong-bong”
gone bad
track missile indifference
under haggis-back of the sky
pitching gut-filth upon the
moors like vomit
to serene incompatibility
Chasing germans like dogs
chase just about anything
that runs
This is not amusing
This here’s a salt-lick paved with
David Hasselhoff
Castles which appear blue against
the cloud
Can admit to no bestial plan
their air-cartons of distinguished-heads
brokers calm among the entrails
entered the disheveled Professor:
“Did someone say entrails?”
J’ai faim!
(cheat tactic 1)
falling back
upon
phalanxes
of phalli (uses)
of the
term
are
variable
Frightening forward
all that was never left behind
stop! in the name of the law
the fat contradictions
of labor
strong collations
among the midnite parade
a golden demonstration
upon an aging esplanade
a cheap resuscitation
of an explanation
a hardly original inspiration
came not upon a golden ray of wind
but on a fart
this is all vomit
pass the noose
What is the date
When will mates help
The Tai-pan of this
here sampan
crawling into sheep
bed bugged
and [illegible]
cute
frightening forward
of the dimpled consternation
a film by Wm Holden
is a dark knife under bolt-heel
skies
dampening, if you will
a practical tickle
from the past
underneath the ribs
too self-attentive
to dig
stick knives into guts
automatic yet decisive
quick
with “considerated” lead-up
Make an interpretation of
a dick-sucked
tit-wither
I wasn’t long in that camp
before I stuck the grenadine
into the bull of the stomach
(It exploded –
Noble!)
Me, think obscene
dark inkling on the edge of
ecstasy
sparkling étènte
stickling
under silent feuds
fjords between minds
enemy lines
I always sought Lords
then between clans, and
all, the conflict
The eternal amalgam
enormous
and stuck with bouchon
the ½ hour is over
Rusters like sublime razors
to walk around
soiled buttocks of the workmen
something pert like an old ad for
Salems
Square Jaws abound in a plastic
ray of eternity
all that noble pigeon to yr account book
shack-out upon bedsores
tarpaper vomit shack
the illicit jack of
fiery lickers and that
twisted mojo called the blues
and where funk
and where bass became assoc
with deep profound tones blunted
under toilet humour
and jibes
____
one might say part two
begins anew
addressed with stridency urgency
from a know-nothing
(and here I refer to myself)
tilting now at windmills under
an obstreperous lenz
(I am tongue-tied twisted
just an earth-bound distant
lie)
sky-like proportion of inflated rock
gesture
what should stand for solidity + impermeable
action
stands for the off-kilter rowboat and the
tilted kills
to try
to fail
repeatedly
a psychiatric problem
or a poignant dialectic
alas
as the blood-clots
crinkle
the infant loses its voice
but the rivers do not
and I cannot go on
I cannot read
but I can write
I cannot write
but i can read
Higgamus hoggamis
hoggamis hig
I jumped in a gander
and came out a pig....
long and slow
stretched out upon the guillotine bed
there is sleep
Big atlantic
the inimitable
inanimate
mitigable
by accident popped under earthquake
Ministers of government coiffed under anuses
Milky mouths
jumping swore @ one another the
disappearing heroine which causes despair
And there are some children who are always
whining and refusing and screaming at the
merest bump of the knee or anything
Inspired beyond adventure
Massacre and desolation
so many inappropriate tears
(eclipsing........)
small cards in Catalan
linguistic shit dip-out in conundrum
condom under drum
over witch-teat
Pablo showed up for a moment
made his greetings
took his coat off
laid down his bag
to all appearances
he was staying for dinner
in the hubbub of welcomes
the confusion with the baby
between the kitchen and the living room....
where’s Pablo I asked
confusion. is his bike downstairs?
perhaps he’s making a call
searching for a bottle of wine
I dunno. Je sais pas, moi
he took his coat
and went out the door
Why are you holding onto
this holy foreign object?
an alien life-form breeding
health throughout the universe
from whence does it spring,
this history of health
this talentless searcher
ever the vehicle
of inopportune imps
the slant of a letter
old stones in a graveyard leaning
last-stand before
conscious thought
imposes the sweet definition
of chaos this hand
is so behind the eye
and it used to be keeping
up with the words in brain
but now it’s....
blank
There should be
a happy demise
I surmise that this has since long ago
become mannered
and flabbergasted
storm•whistle
and blinking head light
rough in the wind
the infernal sea wind
warm and salty
He is the teacher with the shiny pate
once-proud lock now a pathetic straggle
against extermination
exterm a nation
does he feel that this
goon merits it
a kind of diary
slip-shod and dulled
a perfect dullard
cantankerous and weird
never wholly there
he senses his distance
even as he tries to broach
it
sometimes I can’t tell
if my....?
How can we transcribe that
delirious footnote
in the winter
a cold beer
in the summer
a cold beer
There are not hot toddies in store for us
Which forbidden dichotomy are you served,
here
Long ago,
he said he didn’t
(his minarets
were broken
and the twat goddess his giant (!)
the singing blade of blue smurf
whoredom stood
And like foul cretins guard)
we dance upon their
graves graves Snake•bite
we had desecrated
and already heading down along
steep combat, a wanton diary
of my ways
Whenever I can tell of it, I
I control myself w/bitter tears
the pornographic telegraph of
my heart sends reams of fish
flying from my fingers and
I am already way behind
the line....
Dissonance stance guard against
a rockin’ bod
they may not have the first step
down, but the third may come
more quickly if the river goat
arrives
festive Monday
a jolly good crack
and I’m sorry I left you in the lurch
that night but I had to sneak
off an kill a bitch
“gruesome murder shakes neighborhood”
and just how many otherwise “normal’
people are afflicted by this
malady?
We awaken to the sounds of war
telegraphed from a distance
they have an oscillating echo
as if heard thru a long metal tube
All the young dudes
carry cans
Their cylindrical tubes
the glint of the sun
upon waves
iambic river of Lethe
the cinquefoil pulse of its flow
jump into the stream
She taught me to be ashamed
of my art
by the poor example
of being ashamed
by her own
[If only we knew what
we were talking about]
Estor: Sultan of Satanic
(his bulbous swing)
When the slow words fall down
and the devil refuses
to take the devil’s advice
the high-priest of nada
takes up with nihilists and fools
(con-artists, and artists)
noise-makers, and tools
coming across the birdbath
(otherwise known as the Pacific)
the metallic voice of Japan
coming across from history
a voice of black-and-white
sepia, even
dripping in slow crescendo
the hump-backed sun
which explodes into pus
many moons ago
as they say under the
imagined silver of the television
chomping at bulateen bits
(the squeaking door admits assassins)
their slow tread upon the stairs
the distant click of keys
tumblers thumping
a high-pitched ring like a fingernail on crystal
formidable
things:
rocks sent to space
the replacement of rings
scoffing
a laughter of tongues
(a slow riot)
1) he was on junk
2) he worked for a circus
3) he can obviously think
4) he circles up
a shark among guppies
who isn’t even a sm---
fortunate hell behind
the innocent error
they walk thru mirrors
their minions are legion
ever-present
effervescent
she did not occupy herself
with the end of a dark tunnel
and a nave is a cunt
and a narthex is a hip-set
(an oxen’s yoke)
(cock-a-doodle-doo)
the transept something hidden:
the second pair of arms
Lorraine was her name
they said she’d put out for anybody
that dogged hostility
she came across foggy
an underdeveloped picture
in a green forest in 1977
your memory of them is dim
you gaze @ your shoe and remember leprechauns
There is a Road in Spain
it is a kind of radio
people are there who
don’t wanna miss their chances
strange deltas vie with pregnant S’s
planes swarm across the sky
leaving instant cloud-welts
vapor trails some accuse of being
a kind of bubonic Raid®
some kind or aerosol equivalent
the entire continent being gassed
inoculated?
His guitar cuts thru like memory rain
not a particularly stunning departure
he thinks by adding tails he can add
dignity to the banal desperations teenage
girls muster
(he is distracted by Mammon in the form of
cheap humbucker)
Where was that memory (located)
We had so much fun together,
launched into improbable situations
by our own abstinence
I fucked up........
& I’d much rather raise a kid with
you know the excuse
and I cannot do it
I have been consumed
again and again love
Artificial suffers
teardrop
no more banal tomorrows
I have a history to maintain
(we wonder why)
and get congratulated
how can we not think of how
Wayne Pickle in Zuzax,
his VCR and TV repair store going out
silly skills when to replace is
cheaper than to repair
He lived in Edgewood with his wife
and son. His sister’s son lived
with them because both parents
had died of AIDS.
She had a horse and raised
German Shepherds. They built a
concrete area and fed them all
the best food. The children
usually ate hot dogs and white bread
in the kitchen then were sent to
bed.
The boy who’d lost his parents
was sweet and doomed.
The younger was an odd egg,
innocent and charming,
incipiently weird.
Wayne was hospitalized, eventually,
with Crohn’s disease.
And one night, after surgery
he caught her in the lap of another
man, watching TV.
He moved into Albuquerque
soon after.
Got a job as a mechanic
thru a pal,
eventually found a new lady friend
bought a truck
saw the children often
I lost touch....I had moved....
again....
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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