The Redbook (part 2)

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Collection of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]] (2002-2003) Collection of poetry by [[Steven Adkins]] (2002-2003)
-'''[[The Redbook (part 1|Part 1]] | Part 2 | [[The Redbook (part 3)|Part 3]]'''+'''[[The Redbook]] | Part 2 | [[The Redbook (part 3)|Part 3]]'''
'''Part Two''' '''Part Two'''
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at all? at all?
</pre> </pre>
-'''[[The Redbook (part 1|Part 1]] | Part 2 | [[The Redbook (part 3)|Part 3]]'''+'''[[The Redbook]] | Part 2 | [[The Redbook (part 3)|Part 3]]'''
== See Also == == See Also ==

Revision as of 11:58, 20 Feb 2005

 The Redbook from  , 2004.
Enlarge
The Redbook from T.Wilson's Mansucript Portraits, 2004.

Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2002-2003)

The Redbook | Part 2 | Part 3

Part Two

So!  there ya have a motorcycle
    A collection, printed and
    changed
    The second half promises
    twice the thrills!
Do you hear it?  The 
    rumbling?
    The city  quakes in fear from a
    million chattering knees
    at least
What next on the home front?
    Tie a line to the polestar?
    And is that just a pocket watch?
Destroy!  What happened?
    Where to, the gibbering genius?
This cat was going on about 11-9 as in
    the obverse of 9-11
    Some sorta Masonic feast day
    Kristallnacht, etc.
A whole boring parade of nonsense
Undercutting the sad fact of the real
    conspiracy going on!
    Let me tell you alll about it….



still fortified
    after all these YEARS
it is all about the pen
AND the sword
(and the shovel)



What I learned from TV news

Ken Kesey died today
    he was outspoken against authority
    and once organized and LSD-fueled
    bus trip
    he died after an operation to remove
    40% of his liver
    His book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    Was turned into a movie
    
Fox News Syracuse
your anchor can’t even say his name
right
this lil’ niggle of a blurb
then we hear of an implosion

Goddam.  Just the meanest of
redactions from the AP article
Itself not entirely too shabby
But enough!  The man is
dead and I’m dissecting
obituaries

 What to say?  My poetic awakening
 Intertwined with FURTHUR
 The blips of Cassidy
 Holy GOOF!
 entranced mysticism from
 seratonin magazines

 Kesey wad never a personal polestar
 but the pine cone
 and the greenery
 rang deeply



These paranoid perambulations
TODAY I sit on the same couch
I sat on yesterday
all day
munching chimps
smoking pot
television now and then
studying ritual
studying Mithras
(No Mithraists! No Mithraists!)
The slow sinking feeling
of inevitable defeat
A fat ship losing chug and steam
  wif a woopf
That is me on the couch
Surprised when, despite
the sinking
the current still runs:
there are terrific jolts now
and again
electric jabs
arching back

a wicked taunt
a sudden remembrance
something important forgotten
a puzzle piece falls into place

But even these, after one too 
many, become something
of a slow, static hum

A log, fallen in grass
A muddy path has been made
by tiny feet
this is the parade field of dead babies
an Elysian nook

They play right near the river of Lethe
and no one fears for them
they, ceaseless on the march
marking the mudpath in a furrow
and moving as one

These babies in spacesuits
intergalactic innocents
they are the souls of sacrifice
Thrown into the Grand Canyon
Hung from lampposts in D.C.
THEN away with the Shit Rockets!
the escape pods
mushroom clouds clap in unison as the
last fiery trail exits into the starry night
a frail hug
a naked hope
Then silence….



Elio 
Eely eely eely
(eel-like)
Sounds like black snakes
tumbling thru the ink clouds
of octopi

that is a vision of the net
falling from dark tenement roofs
lines twisting into comic-book angles
teetering skyline
furtive in the penumbra
clutching something
close to the chest
the crowd incessant
pressing and buzzing

oh eely oh
that dead-end street
you’ve already turned into



FORM defining content
    blue blazes the utensils of the cult
a cool hollow under an old, spreading tree



This rocker
After the punk tunes
s’posed to be alternaKool
This drizzling shitsong
Builds like “The Greatest Love”
           DOWN
    like Mexico is down
    (i.e. south)
    As in Gone South

They call me the Duck
My migrations are notorious
My migrations are me

Revved up poop
On two continents
It’s all the same
Pale and disheveled
  from too lil’ sleep
A fat fortress of
lies on top of the Hill

lingering,
some fall over
<sometimes,
      I still bleed>



A vision,
        of crutches
<she wants him to die>
and all he has to do
                          is die



There then:
    Milk



At 7:45 A.M.
a leaf blower
the air is cool and damp
but goddam it
that leaf blower
means there at least a few
competing brands on the market
supporting mass sales
of small combustible engines
we use to blow leaves!
all that petrol, the smoke,
the industry behind the thing

it only occurred to me 
because the noise followed me
for blocks, pestering an otherwise
blissful morn

that dipshit

I'd a liked to explained to this asshole
that a broom is a more efficient tool
when yer dealing with such trifles
It’s not as if
Pedestrians are navigating enormous wet piles
of dead leaves
stinkpot!
Wheelchairs aren’t being diverted into the
street!
Those leaves are being blown not only
away but back onto yer “work”
Dumb gamboling shit spirit!
To strap on that stupid machine
before 8 in the morning makes you
either an idiot, a slave or a 
brownnose, and fuck off ta ya
if that’s the call
just keep yer goddam leaf blowers
(subdivided, mesmerized)



“I am immune.”
	Alfred Starr Hamilton—
	some variant thereof repeated
	throughout Hamilton’s
	appearances in print 1975-1977
“War is a tyrant.”		  1.  tears
	Don’t I know it!	  2.  fears
	Paranoid hands wring:	  3.  bells
				  4. necks



	can’t grabbit
	    that thin sleeve
	    of a brown-shirt
	spread flat
diffuse light shining
		from behind
	some edge fading
	green in day with grey sidewalk



that flat sleeve backlit
a day reverie so thin
sofine        for
	hungry this image
	that escapes me like the night ride in New Jersey
	escapes me



and I will write a poem on
	her naked body
	in December Tampa won’t
	be so cold the trembling
	    will be
	    from
	    desire



    Maudlin,
	it is morn
    (the song is maudlin;
     the morn is grey)
    and I am blue



We share razor blades
to make little nicks
remind each other
how much we are still owned
by one another

even though there can be a laugh or two
now
it doesn’t mean the tomatoes have been
taken to market
it don’t mean the planets have hopped
out of orbit
no, nothing is completed
and nothing out of the ordinary has happened

so why does it feel like it is all over
and why am I writing about it?



Why can’t I capture that transparent rosepetal?
        Climbing on the corner of the wind
        out of the bellows of my eye?
        pumping forth flowers in halo
        like rats will flee a sinking ship?

        The flowers are marching across the waves
        They march on planks and driftwood
        They are looking for new horizons
        Everything is a green you can see into for miles
        Ships on the sea’s bottom in silent, resentful
                congress



Nazi Love Poem

WHAT playlist?
   Why must I take
	    these dictations
    the slow rotations
        vibrations
        and
        masturbations
(par for the course)
	Heidi!
Lederhosen in thin blue
air lie thin lips under
cold blue eyes of nazi
interrogator Heinrich Klim
        that bastard!
        he has come to give me guilt
        the end of a needle or a root canal
charred nubs of feet under the
	scintillating acid bath
        Well, maybe not….
          even Heinrich had outgrown such
          fascinations
So Klim, with Heidi
        escaping together upon a cruel
        motorcycle
Into the nebulous forests
        Where are they going?
        And why?
I don’t know the dictation’s stopped

        <wink>



	The “treatment”
	a way to make violent criminals
	sick upon impulse

	a quivering machine
	regular
	ticking

	a solid imposter
	within the family
	chases away the sun



Daily
        Whether patient needs it or not
How then to know
        (then he spins around
         then he spins around again)
On Nov. 20th
        the evolution of the spaceman
sometimes it’s just a conglomeration of junk
    space junk
        filler
    filling space
        this junk
How do they see thru the stockings?
    I woulda been a good ad-man,
    psychological warfare expert,
teacher
charismatic priest
but not a thief or a busker
or any other man w/o a net
I thrive yeah like a chaotic whirlwind
in structure
A core of discipline allows me ta act
w/ complete irresponsibility

In the rainy southern city
the air is a-glow and
age is creeping upon this mother
of mine

I leaving country of birth in
re-creation of parental wanderings
There then, Chicago is tumbling over 
Tampa and I think too bad
I have a lil’ pride in home
looking forward to family, friends
a cuban sandwich
and some seafood
I drive by the bay and
the sense that my childhood years
are tucked away in familiar places
Armenia Avenue
Harbor Club
Public Library
Ybor – well not that
See:
Ole Tom Wolfe you can never go
home indeed
But you can try
Abandon the idea of ever having a
complete capsule
    No poem, painting, film or
    novel
It’s a place defined by change
Which makes for tricky bizness
for shit like this

I will capture and release
			    Spin
    Hand up caught in light:
	water flashes in broken corolla
	dove’s neck bent gentle wrapped
	in delicate curve of paint-fixed
	wings….



Daily weather
(sky report)
yellow trouble
brave sun rises yet again
to ward off the cold
it takes a few months but it
    finally
             all
                 happens 



Can ya spare some change for an old
Buccaneer?
    --  I need some more content than that



I would love to be exhausted with you



        I had a dream last night
        I was playing a trombone
        This morning, walking to work
                  in crisp solitude
        A man playing a trombone at 10 to noon

        The irreconcilable limit
            <of the sky>
        something about her….

        Then, on the bus
        a wretched rain, cold umbrellas
        twirling in magical unison
        (a vision of Cherbourg)

        Then, later, sick
        having not eaten for three days,
        I crab and pick
        at irritated grey flesh
        mortified,
        and scratched
        raw



	So what
	does
		it all
	    add
	      up to?



Wake up slowly
        in kicking fits
body humming with ripples

went to the machine and clicked it one
pulled up the player and picked 6 sad songs
then I wept because I miss you
I don’t want to live my life without you
but will
nonetheless
live it that way
I just haven’t accepted the facts
(just the facts, ma’am)
and those are painful things facts
(facts don’t kill people, people kill people)
like knives are painful to bare
skin
the bare skin
I want to cut with razors
on my face
hands
forearms
A shallow gridwork of scablines
like a Qabbalic talisman
earth magic
man of clay
crumbling into mud
and this murky puddle
is me alone,
crumbling into the abandonment of desire



I AM not a strong man
(nor bearded lady)
I snort dope and cry sometimes



You wake up with a bang
        soft bangs
        show the pad
        get
        dizzy
        puke in the bucket
        lie down
        make a target of the sun
        w/ a muck-covered snout
        pointed upwards



and in slow revue the troops pass by
the General
shouts  from the crowd intrude upon 
his thoughts
there is pleasure in seeing this fleet of
tanks
this phalanx of missiles
and infantrymen
the ole 1-2
from afar
then it’s the Kamouflaged Kops Kome ta getcha
doorstep surprise in paranoid wonderland
USA 2001
God bless it!
In God we trust!
Allah Akhbar!
<send in the clowns>

arias drop in slow winged Nikes
they mean nothing but sound so good
as the troops pass by in slow revue



CAN’T get enough of that
        got too many
can’t find a job in the
        land of plenty

So what’s a boy s’posed to dooo?

Ya gotta step to the Alcatraz
jimmy dolan is a spaz
my country 'tis of thee
let freedom ring



Nite afore last I stood in the doorway
the light of morning made the sky a dull grey
the clouds twirled around my toes

you jumped down and away
in a yellow suit and with a smile

I could not follow



get off the set
the scene is over
your co-star has moved on

the new role that dangled
was taken
like the fish takes the worm
(and the spider takes the fish)

the spring that sprung
this year
did nothing for me

all I did this summer
was tangle with the Monkey

and this fall let him hang there
(my back still bearing claw marks)

like the body is the cheap apparel of chance
wounds can be Bedouin or Irishmen

but the production is over
and along with it the free lunch

better, then, to be from Canada
or stop griping

that being impossible
I will submit my résumé
to the ample rumpus league:
a society for big butts and 
general merriments

(the bearded butler will not approve—
have you read about that thing
called love?
he has, and it has him concerned)



Suddenly Rectum
a new show about
a freewheeling young rectum
working to make it in the
publishing biz

starring your ass as the rectum
we’ll be coming to get it
the next knock on your
door will be us



60 years ago today
america awoke to unprovoked attack
(no immediate provocation, that is)
and then, war, years of war
and cold war with warm spots
and two hot stretches that
cost us 100,000 boys and men
(and girls and women, too)
not to mention the horror of N. Vietnam’s
millions

but things aren’t dropped cold
like bombs
are hot
potatoes
but not food
nope
Cold War
hot bombs
hot flames
hot blood
what stupid parts of us want
to play that grey shroud like
it was bingo in a church basement?

when a man’s innards are
steaming in the snow
what about them
they are hot going cold

eggs are not one of the inventions
of war
they are a peculiar inversion of history
known to us as the 23rd Static Parallel
of 4:20 AM [year classified]
And in the time frames
we work in
60 years is nothing



so many punchlines
broken lines
fishing lines
broken noses
so jokey
and obscure
rare wind captured in a jar
and then released
art-house innuendos
among sophisticated sophomores
they dangle from trees by their
necks still spinning
that is what happens from touching
the “gold”
share in my grief
and risk suicide!
and yep, this was meant to be a chuckler
but it’s just plain stupid



“when you come to
face this thing you
fear, let the
creator guide you….”

We have forgotten
(the lesion and I)
the COMIC 
(meant to say cosmic)
scope of this series of exercises
the fakt that a line connects
me to a dot in the sky
the dot is my head
pouring forth armies the Spanish Armada
a pale comparison
to the armies and the level playing
field I want to chew out of the
earth I want to dislocate I and
strong-arm fate
give it up, sistah,
I’m henceforth
making demands

but of course
this is all patter
empty

a villain stands up
a bald, stiff Swede
among a dagger of thieves
( a dagger being a secret coven of
well-meaning rascals;
	    revolutionary,
	    nonetheless)
make a deal w/ the devil
shake his hand
<and say yer only kidding>

we’ve erected a maypole….
like tetherballs
are the reproductions
countless and entrenched
-- Osama’s bin noggin

I saw a Mormon family
in San Miguel de Allende
(where a dog bit me)
(where hungover, we ran with the bulls)
“I wanna beat the head!”
The piñata taken down
among vegan pacifists
Mormon avoiders of the New World Order
avoiding I say
perhaps confronting –
there was the matter of the
failed Baptism
Was it our fault?  Impure quests?
Distractions, at least….



that television background
    such cold evangelism
my faith a disgruntled bit of powder

and again with this devilish Swede
torn apart by his own dogs at last

on the eve of war
a stumbling
over snow



		-- victory (?)
		purity….
		is it still on her finger?
		what is this, a witch-hunt?
		and her tools
		hang from her belt
		(all the little chicks with the
		itty-bitty dicks sing
		Cleveland rocks, Cleveland rocks)
		(television daisy-cutter death-
		sutra 2000; Paris exposition)
		and waggling, my clementine
		falls thru and song
		still broken
		and what?
		a finger, pointing
		is it still an opportunity
		to extract from this is something
		stubborn
		were these intercepted shards
		able to tangle to take to stay withit
		long enough
		to get back
		hot sand
		intercept
		the ocean
		keeps throwing us back

		a certain abhorrence of nature on this
		first snow-struck even and I have a
		burnt forefinger
		her mom is in town
		they will drink liquor and smoke tobacco
		like Virginians
		I had tickets to the Messiah
		comps
		I gave them to a pair of young’uns
		(Mike and some junkie chick –
		        I thought they could use the
		        distraction) –
		        but now at 8 o’clock
		        Messiah time it’s me and Seinfeld
		That’s the fourth set of comps the Maestro
		has given me
		        Of the Four Seasons, Kristen & I
last thru Spring
		We cut out of the Copland, et al, altogether
		& at the last show I sat up front, barely
		        a-stagger –
			all junked
			and puked
		        after, of course
		        the need to get the
		        attendant
		        to say, Ma’am
		        yer husband
		        is ill?
		        And then from IC I puke red volumes
		Tonight then it’s Handel’s Messiah
		In the restored State Theater
		7th wonder of the Empire State
			Excelsior!
		(Oh well, gonna go join the Taliban
		just like any other kid)
		<the super-soft scars>	
		Oh the cheap tricks
		the tips apprehend the rest of the body
		James Earl Jones a select digital
		influence
		changeling,
		changeling,
		uh ah.
		Same grey soup
		Suit of four trumps and no give way
		the salt of the flower pouring
		from the liberated bloodclot of the
		eye (in the sky)

		So I edit that out upon the machine
		Scale back to reality –
		-- missing the Messiah! --
		
		and then
		(plink –
		        pipes
		clink
		        time staggers)
		Kristen calls
		we are off to a movie
		(& the Messiah’s worth missing
		for a movie with you)



all this 
all of this
     infused with you
never the flowing hair
or beautiful curvature
always the staunched wound
and triflexate skeletons
space age epoxy to replace the bones
and goofy baroque excrescence
to hide the flow of blood

Chief crick-in-neck
wake up slowly
smoke bowl see me grow
my stomach has hunger and 
my pocket has five dollars

how will I make France happen?
I could have 20 grand in the
bank but instead have a
pittance leaking out in 30, 50
100-dollar increments
marijuana cigarette
plastic baggie with folded envelope
What Afghani peril?
I’m already contemplating a dabble
and here me one day into sobriety
(again)
a sore test of will this China White
Figgers the Chinese slavemaster
Would be White, no?
The Monkey
I am more preoccupied by Love
	         or the lack thereof
it is all about the lack
the explicit hieroglyph of all my problems
it comes down to this
doggerel staunch the flow of
bleeding alphabet
leaking but still distinct
25-dollar increments
stomach cramps and the shits
raw, aching need
petulant desire
deep want
diligent manipulation
use it to make it happen
There’s a good reason, see,
that this ain’t a fragrant recap
of Jane Sez
my ticket is bought



Nothing is anything else
there is no more this is that
it’s all just a thumb in the eye



So many connections
I realize
About to be so casually severed
My interest in this place
gone
All my friends
Many
I realize
Never to be seen again

Moon over lake
edges shelves of ice
quiet heavy oxygen
clear and pure
the light turns the dew into drops of milk

your savage milk
this slowly spinning chuckler



	slowly vibrating
	my skin is electric
	the problem is ya feel too alive
	every cell waking back up
	shuddering
	the first instinct is to shut it all up
	it’s just so unpleasant!



pour on the honey
spread on the butter
please pass the grits
and the ammo

mom
a goodnight kiss
a pat on the head
our tuck-in ritual
I’ll never forget the way
she looked back before she
shut the door
framed in the hall’s light
shouldering her Winchester
sleep was never so sound

what was that madness
in my youth that compelled me
when I was lost and wretched
with lust and virginity
an intoxicating buzz of possibility
about me

what was it though
the morose questioning
maudlin preoccupation
exploding images the
canister flipping thru space

in those young days
earliest memories
it may seem incredible but at 
5 yrs old I flew an airplane
I was a frail, fragile youth
a compulsive thief
a vandal
painfully shy
and that expression has
a meaning
if you know the slow, tortured excesses
then you will know the meaning of it
the way of it
shit
motherfucker
why do you think I act so crazy?
hiding heatstroke from parents
because I thought I would get in trouble for it
thought maybe I got pushed off the slide
I never told them after all these years
I don’t know if I should

Then at some age I heard this
ghostly sounds LP
Always impressionable
it did a lot to make
me terrified
I would lay in bed trembling
covered to the chin
would quake every night and
lay awake for what seemed like hours
and run into my sister’s room
every night

this behavior stopped
now that I consider it
when my family returned
home from abroad

so there I was at 12 in 7th grade
Tampa
the dreamer who slept in his sister’s bed
grown up on Air Force Bases
and in the Italian countryside
thrust into suburban setting
maladjusted
average student
mediocre college
9 years worth of education in Tampa
6 months in D.C. at American University
another 2 years in Tampa for Film school
then it all becomes rather diffuse
New Mexico, new York
soon I will be in France
and there the razors will fly….
you know the ones?
They fly from my fingertips as I wave them
about in the air
I prepare by sitting heavily upon them
they are leaden and dull by the time I’m done
To complete the feat, I read from the
Bible at random junctions and attempt
to relate what I read to current events
I have found a great many prophecies that
way, minor ones
personal prophesies
clay mouths dribble:  one honey
one milk
one lead
they coagulate in a pointless puddle
pale and pathetic
a roundabout soup for lightning:  a
steel rod 27’ high is implanted therein
the hope is that by this assemblage
a pome or two may be produced
they are tired of tearing at their skin
the raw scratch-wounds present a delicious
quandary
attempt to reign it in with a straight razor
a delicate charm must be projected
calm,
a blip in the panic of it all
dangerous in heat the exploding tycoon
so be careful
this lightning is a dangerous tool
many a burnt nub of finger will attest to
that

and you ask how it all comes back around
to what does my journey attest?
why am I here
planting lightning rods in puddles
producing poetry
getting scorched
recording results taking strange dictations
too much H.P. Lovecraft in my acid daze
too much too much
a dramatic soul in flames with desire
a panic about me
the smell of sweat and chemicals
fornications of hand and mind the vague leer
of unfulfilled sex
a stifled phantom putting in his time
a trainer of monkeys and writer of manuals
goofball villain of frustrated hatred for the 
simping minions
the slow disgust which makes me feel like being ill?

I can’t say why I’m here or what I’m doing
these poems are all there is
my work
attestations of failure and some small
successes
definitely some excesses
but the unceasing movement I have
undertaken for years
leading somewhere
what is there of this life?
friendships severed
loss and birth
change
….you can never go home….
some legacy then!
a child
a building
a newsmaker
John Walker Lindh
a farm
this is my contribution
my shallow grain
at least I sustain myself
read someone who said they wrote poetry
so they’d have something good to read
Ha!
Can’t quite agree all the time but in my
moments of glory I break it out with
the best of them

Last night I had a vision of my own greatness
No.  Not a vision.  A feeling.
Laying down a line with smooth
confidence
A perfectly formed word the sign of
absolute surety
The concrete manifestation
A master of his craft
Almost
Then this diffuse shit
What to make of it
How to staunch the flow
Have recourse to flaming Piñatas and diadems
of steel falling in slow showers upon the earth
The man in the Turban from the middle east
Nostradamus or some such
Close it all up by saying my heart has 
been invaded by cataclysm?
Plague and war my childhood companions
the underlying object of death
fondled as though it were a piece of
whale bone inscribed with scrimshaw?
So lovingly aware of the negation of it all….
death is always near

long shadows are thin snakes
the sun setting over the Gulf
storks’ legs among reeds



a fox in fire
stolen from the moon
(yes, the moon)

slipping thru fluorescent grass
a rat in mouth
the soft cartoon squeaking out
the speeches of Winston Churchill
the worms stand at attention
they are so surprised they act as if commanded
only realizing too late
what they are doing
mutely they continue standing
for lack of anything better to do
they’ll drift off when they get bored
but the point has already been made

squeak like a rat and the worms will listen
make sure to be eaten by a fox in fire



terrorize Mike
looking for this very pen
how long before it is dry?
this current storm
elastic whirligigs of light
floating in the sky
our bodies are curved
and our hands held high

gonna pull the trigga
on a hard-hittin nigga
gonna make ya go figga
with a lil’ gold digga

can’t rap we hand-held-high’ers
we just moon along and shuffle
sit at keyboards and wax indignant
fall to our knees as the elastic
light roars say words of praise
and delight smoke a butt or
two then go back to bed



	Remembrance of an old grey head
	A living shuffler embracing magnets
	and milk bottles

	raven—corvus—circles black against
	nebulous sky
	is it day or is it night?

	the student orchestra
	their rehearsal space on the night
	of a show, empty but pensive

	impossibly high bridges
	they sway in the wind
	carrying clones they are albatrosses



Oh for a date with destiny
      the path that must be hewn
      & cannot be followed
Oval in the sky the bottle of dawn
      poured over the inky canvas of night
Dreams therein, of bitter beers and
      discombobulate fornications
The only time I step on the world
      as it was, Mississippi, 1972
Father a stern black buzzcut
      Young officer tilting beercans
A Mother, a muddle of memories, and me and
Sister
And strange dislocation and uncomfortabilities
arise
I am not feeling it not feeling the
seeing the red-cell amoeba purple blastocysts
and mitochondria
Slavish recourse without rhythm
Luckily slant the alliterate trapeze
Torn tongues talk treason, tonsures
tune in
turn on
blow up



Pure like nothing is pure
Silvery globs (mercurial)
        liquid mirror
These slingshots shooting dungballs wreak
vernacular havoc upon slave-torn recompense

Mastications
        strange chewed fragments
        torn and spat
        so vain
        forever commenting upon the process

Then where,
        the Product?
Holee.  Less back up a second!
You meet me halfway on this page
Or, 100% to the left of
my authority
my pen scribbles invitations



I bought a new blazer with my father
in high school
A real class coat for a schmoe like me
It is too small now

I am not resorting to 
cheap whimsy
			When I say it
			is time to run
			for the hills



Flames desperate flames
	claim airborne heresy
    clogging on smoke for heresy
    some kinda cosmic manta ray
	planets in foam
	spinning upon metal
	chlammydia
	        streaks in faulty abortions

A vision of hell
    strong tea
	dark leaves float on the surface
    concrete imprint of twigs:
	sex dwarf
	citizen soldier
Methought “Dwarf Citizen” a moniker of
pride for oppressed dwarves
A statement of rights
A manifesto scrawled jingowise by a
		stubby forefinger
(Hey, 9-fingered friend,
	good luck!)
He’ll need it
Orpheus descending

    Carrot dangled
    she called my cock
    a baby’s arm

<ahem>
    No more with the quimbling
A change of energy has pervaded the
    machinery of my living room



	Oh, then that’s it
	you were too busy to cry!
	
On yer downtime
	tripping stoned intensity
	looking thru old photographs
	listening to Pavement
	You left with tears and so did I
	tearing as I tear now
	
AND NOW I KNOW 
(you cry too)



that strange, implacable
           comic hitler

yore 
is killing me
it’s not my fault again
(like it was so many times)
before
when squawk was squat
when I delighted dark uncle with mad prophecy
and the comic vision of rectal fervor
working themes
working differences
the slow remembrance
the painful withdrawal
it is like a stuttered jumpcut
(see Easy Rider)
Is that a footnote?
A cowboy?
No….
What is that slow drone
that insect buzzing above the chainsaw mesa
the stone masons creeping
the fish fly thru air
    ugh
gravitate
and can’t quite hit it
can’t quite bend it	strange
	interAktions
	a cuticle waltz
	yes I know, kick it back
When do you, senile,
	reproduce the same line unrealizing
	uncomprehending
	should I invest in that
	web-based interface
	Now is the time
	you cannot haggle with hell
	release that
	orphic grip
	she is ripe like poemgranates
	-granados-
	are ripe
	    ripped and dripping
	    a juicy tonic
	    a tonic of tunis
	    a tannic tomorry
		tinted
		theurgical
		candled
DROP NOTE:  ass assin	neck-book from the frontlines of war
		 we seemed to have eliminated
		 the human face
		 (as he reclines back upon his opium
		 couch  ;
		 	we have afghanistan by herb
			and by polvo
		it streams across the borders like the
			panicked destruction of mail
			is real and the fascist
			insertion of right-wing partyboy
    			cum Christian Monarch
	heir apparent
	dark pilot
	so far from
that care and the LOVE
that drove me then
we are recovering
but how indeed,
if we are tried and true
News sources in deep eclipse
truncations of tongue
the voices are saying
something about salaver
spittel from mouth
froth in mad berry
contact beery
    and there it
    go again!
dag nabbit
    this tongue on stilts….
        a mental tongue
    a duck’s bill
        the beak of the brain
    the swirling beauty always
        beckoning back upon the queen
    upon Anjou        upon fistfulla
        fruit and the gold,
  always,
        to the end
          she was remarkable
        if too
tolerant



What narrative is unfolding?
	What capitalist zygote?
	(meaning the infancy of
		dreams of avarice)
For our protection
the citizens will be watered
3 times a week
It costs $1.50 per citizen per
treatment
Revenooin’ 2015
When they can find a need to
repackage resell air
It will happen

What will also happen:
Empire
The merchant aristocracy
Vassalitude of the masses
Give me cable or give me death!
Jello was right
That crazy saint
The paranoid Sylvester
I was drunk surly and hypocritical
When the promoters saw the crowd they
Jacked the price
The talk was good
except for the Mumia crap
and the Reagan-era diatribes
Praising Ice-T after several instances
of Kulture Kapitulation
Whack shit that Ice
Ghetto Capitalist
Konspicuous Konsumption
proof of playerhood
anathema of Jello
so except for that
he was all right

Who else stands firm among the stars?
What message or wicked apartment
is erected or conveyed?
These saints do not
leap they do not
distribute grain among the suffering
they are solitude
and sorghum
by noon all is quiet
after a heavy bombardment all morning

al-Qaeda
operatives
give
up
now
you are dying in droves
and no one will remember you
Tora Bora like some kind of WWII dream
wet dream for bored hawks
so give up now
or are there some things
    even more important
	than living?

I am not Catholic
I will not go to mass
I will sit around all morning
and make negative assertions
I don’t need this news
I need music
and thereby
a respite from the hail of fire
and the gleeful calls for blood
The graveyards we have filled
are not our own

	A word of advice:
	        you wanna save somebody,
	        save yourself!

and with highs in the 30’s
we are expecting rain



	News from the 27th Parallel:
	there is a red hawk flying
	the crested waves spit
	and shine a bioluminescent blue

	sails have been spotted on the horizon



	crazy for calling
	the renegade soundwave
	oh-h sing
	it is the wickedest song

	I went to mass today
	and took communion
	mumbling my responses
	a heathen
		welcome to the commune
		yes I took I the Eucharist
		The image of Mary glowing gold
		against a field of blue and
		fluttering
		I took the Eucharist
		what I maroon
		I loved it all and
		am set for another 10 years

	calling for the crazy
	renegade soundwave
	sing the wickedest song

		Yeah I’m down with the Queen
		and why not
		this tired lil’ Protestant dynasty
		has stick up butt
		and lust for conversion
		call in the wanton grace
		the disassembled pattern
		chaos has risen
			driven sledwise on a mother’s
			menstrual blood
			surfing the red edge
			we find it
			our river
			Mistah Kurtz, he dead
			and coke-addled fuck-ups aren’t swiss
			madmen in bojangles rowboat, either
I don’t care what they say about us anyway I don’t care about that



bang!  bang!
	knock on door
	knock on wood
	shoot six-guns
	and ride off philander
	we will serve you no more whiskey today, sir!



A bumper sticker from B.F.E. New Mexico
Is the Spirit of America
It’s like having a tattered, worn
American flag on your car
why this is so I cannot say
why it evokes cactus in silhouette,
the desert rolling away
from the side of the highway,
sand blowing in slow delicate
curls across the rocks,
here and there a beercan;
why these things are evoked
is clear
the sticker is from B.F.E. New Mexico:
a tarantula on the highway
the sky an impenetrable blue
a blue you look deep into and see 1969
reflected back
a red dirt road through the BLM
lands
Cabezon standing dominant over
the skyline of resplendent
mesas and inscrutable formations

there are empty refrains of desire
to be sung
their emptiness not their flow but
their impregnable truth

I had a dream
some kind of carnival
lost objects and a shuffling about

the desert is dry
so is my throat
my bed lies empty
my heart unfortunately not so

O to be a rock!
some product of volcanic belch
stringent is not a word that applies to nature
is it?
Do any words apply to the isness of
the ology?

Lava tubes
Lumpen proles
Red Clay and Red Man
Brown Pride and La Raza
Land Rights and disintegrating wood stake
with hand-written death date
poverty, art, nukes, mineral wars
and rough history of conflict
Genocidal memory
in Kidnapped Bronze foot
A statue of Hitler put up in Brooklyn

We have not forgotten
And though I am no longer there 
I am with you New Mexico
dog-ear of the union
forgotten fields of azure sky
so beautiful as to inspire
rambling pointless poets
claiming citizenship by tenuous thread
of  four-year residence
But you and I know things aren’t so easy
my roots are mobile
I am the only kind of airborne
plant there is
strange species of pig

Do you remember when we walked
along the walls, skipping stones
on the moat?
Dou you remember that legendary
wish to not exist, jumping in the
shrinkball until the
infinite compression had been achieved?
jest keep squishing down smaller and smaller
End result’s always the same
Wind back up standing tall above
the suburbs with a new pair of
golfing gloves on.
swell, isn’t it?



	She has a head like a revolutionary
	war-era fortress (octagonal)
	      and her mouth is a giant cannon
	      the kind of American ingenuity
	      that made US the envy of the globe
	      sent away for all the finest craftsmen
	      some confused timeline
	      and terrible wasted
		ink		like a braindrain
				    to density
				        stupid



the arabic graffiti
in chalk in the wall in the stairwell

a report by a cab driver
three angry young jewish students
tell of some arabs destroying a campus menorah

JDL honchos arrested in plot to blow up
LA mosque

This place has been marked for death

Don’t import your fucking war!
Lay down arms and carry trumpets
to the gorges place them with
the unused hand grenades

keep that palestinian quarrel
in palestine
give them a state already
(but progress is stilted and
stuck about with knives)



That’s it that’s all there is
under the soft yellow glow of the nitelite
on a dark overcast winter morning

miles davis getting’ with it in the
living-room

the air is cool and smells of me 



ahhh
now I see how it is
you are all wrapped up in knots
and need to kick this shit out
get over it
drown the monkey
there is something more powerful than
the green emerald ray that emanates
from that mini-simian forehead—
pixilated though it might be,
sluggish around corners ….
		        a fish on a line
you are hooked like
yer name is etched on a tombstone
“Dewey defeats Truman”
get it?
It’s not too late



Hanuman
that monkey flying over the sea
bouncing from the head of one sea serpent
    to another
got one upon me
    <yer not gonna be alone this christmas
    said she>
    somehow, cobblestones dapples in sunlight appear
What that has to do with Hanuman
    is beyond me
But All is One, right?

So blow up poems stating the
    obvious
jump on sea serpents piss in boots
wind it up slow or twist the
winder like you was a sadist
twistin’ a nipple
you are a monkey evolved from the sea
Amino soup with space particle surprise
Life, you se
    Is all Me



We give our enemies weapons 
to make things interesting

two vats of tar have been found
underneath the city
a gas-manufacturing plant
operated there in the 1800’s

our enemies eat at us from within
our enemies are the sentinels of time
we give them greed, avarice, stinger
missiles, vats of tar

watching the movement of the pen on paper
makes me nauseous

But then again, it’s only 7:50 AM



An expression I like but never use is
    see you on the other side
I’m too superstitious
    to taunt death
    the expression is so noble
    A fatalism
    without resentment
    or optimism
flying over France, 1942
see you on the other side
Maybe ya will maybe ya won’t 
life that delicate wafer
gone in a jiff
leaves nothing but crumbs
a little nutrition is afforded the body
by one life’s sweet music
before it’s all glommed
into an anonymous turd
Keep it rockin’ clambakers
You’ll be wishin’ for
	a speedier resolution
	before it’s all over
		(or maybe not I just play ominous
		for prophetic gravity)
Anyway, is there another side?
Will we see there?
Will “we” be
	at all?

The Redbook | Part 2 | Part 3

See Also