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Friday, June 14, 2013

NIGHTINGALES

Josefa de Obido-O Cordeiro Pascal 

Joseph Noel Paton 1821-1901

NIGHTINGALES

Summer breaks its face on my arm.
I can’t remember how your mouth
Felt on mine.  How your hand was
When I put my lips on your fingertips.

My heart dances on my spine, fooling
Me into believing that love has a name
That sounds like yours but ends before
I can reach out and touch your hips,
Your lips, it, as they said, trips me
Past the dream house built of pale
Moonlight and forever and a day.

Up among the concordance of moon,
sun and our loving, bop style in mouth
Jazz explaining to each other from song
To song  how wild this thing is, wind,
The keys ripping past; candles made of


Fireflies and mission bells, tearing 
Sheets of song into tiny pieces.  Oh yes how
And howl, spurl myself digningly, plutridly
Fornicoulted, intensely exploding in charcoal
Mouth bar-b-que laughing.  There is
No further town we can be found in.
Every stop on your skin unveils the
Brisk night, irresponsible, tales told
By the blind about how the hands
Know the name, the name of all the rains,
Their particular voice, their night thoughts,
On sidewalks, opened at last, no streetlights,
No mouth of song following.  I touch
Your crazy traffic and burn acetylene yellow,
Pure green.  Aircraft land in the middle of summer.
My skin stretches, explodes and contains all
The mysterious rainbows from which we reconstruct
The language of all the endless nights of our youth.


Thursday, June 13, 2013

THE BOOK OF SHIT



Frank Brangwyn

This was the first poem in my book CRUISIN' AT THE LIMIT: Selected Poems 1968-1978 published by Duck down Press, Fallon NV. 1982

THE BOOK OF SHIT

(invocation to the muse)


What fire then?
To give myself to children?
Oh woman run free before me
and let your hair come down, a winding sheet
for the fairest of the fair, the daughters
of the wind, your hair.

To be left alone somewhere in 1959
listening to fur piece bands play over
and over again, Night Train, memories
of bottles and stale smoke visions of black
haired girls dancing, legs spread, everybody’s 
hustlin’ brother, get your ass out there
and get it on.  And my guitar kept playing
thru Bill Doggett, spending a portion of your life
looking out the window of a smelly mens room
looking at the traffic going down Niagara Falls
Blvd., taillights like sores across the parking
lot.  And the band played on.

Sometimes I drank.

My first wife, dream bitch, falling
asleep on the couch and letting me rape her
in quiet of sunday afternoon after weeks of
not coming near my body, my brain warping
out on its own jetstream of her working and
not coming  home till two or three in the morning.
She didn’t wake up the whole goddamn time.
Just laid there and I stuck it in and worked.
My heart, coming so close to the dream
and she laid there, later to say, “Don’t
try to fuck me when I’m asleep” and I had
no more words, walked out on the porch
and watched the street lights
and cars.  All the music little purple fires

in the ends of my fingers.  she said
listening to me read something to my best
friend, “Why not call your first book:
THE BOOK OF SHIT.’

It was a joke, we all laughed.
She could not understand
what I was doing and I wrote harder to keep
her away from what was my self, the damage was
already done.  I wanted to keep a small part
for myself, some place where i could be pure.

Finally, waking up to orange juice and glucose
after 21 days of shock treatments for an anxiety
reaction, which means I wound up huddled behind
a door afraid to open it to anyone.  Anyway it worked.
I didn’t care about a thing.

Thorazine and hands moving in my dreams.
All that was left were the words.
All that was left was the part I had kept
for myself, the poems: THE BOOK OF SHIT.
Class of ’61.



Wednesday, June 12, 2013

A LATE JOURNEY






A LATE JOURNEY

We passed the house of the avenging angel
With its parapets and ribboned trumpeters,
Purple and red-violet the color
Of their eyes.  It was the hour
When dreams are captured, sorted
And released to the children born
To the damned and to those who
Wander.  They are unable to speak,
Dress in cassocks and flowing
Gowns.   They do not take bodies
Often as it is this dreaming
That gives voices to the winds.

We can see this in the eyes
Wild animals turn to us
When we encounter them in the forest,
Unexpected and interrupting their precision
We like to call behavior.

The stars wound round him, this lurid angel
As the singing rose around us.  Lights began
To go out as stars became the evening.



Sunday, June 9, 2013

FEBRUARY, UNAWARES


A Buddha made from bugs

A piece by Jan Fabre

This poem was published in my book WHERE THE STARS ARE KEPT, published by Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, Ca in 2007.  The book is out of print.


FEBRUARY, UNAWARES

There seem to be small lights
In the water, just at the edge of the dock.
I've been watching them for hours.
They flick on and off, changing colors,
Making random patterns just
Below the surface.  They do
Not appear to be attached to anything.
Rather, signals from below the water,
Defragmenting,  some larger
Information, condensing space,
Too small to be seen otherwise.

A word appears.
It is displayed briefly but
Clearly. 
Again, it reads.
Then Look, quickly followed by
Time, This, Here, Changing.
Moment, Practice, Stillness.
Then Nothing.

The patterns do not return.
A number of fish gather where
These lights have been; breaking
The surface, falling back, flashing
Silver sides as they do.

I don't expect anyone to believe
This.  I was alone.  The place
Was remote.  The evening was a quiet one.  
These things happen occasionally.
We consider them wonders.
Talking lightening, a display of bio-
Luminescence, a new way to
Communicate, a privilege to observe,
To see and hear things all around us.
Knowing the night and the day.
Hurling through space on
A beautiful blue planet,
Counting all the stars as we do so.