TO MY FRIENDS

I wrote these words for you

on my Krishna-blue

IBM Selectric II

cf. Petrarch, Rima Sparse 189

MY BARGE is large but I forget

what people, items squat in cargo hull.

The brains are inaccessible, the skull

is poorly pitched against the salt and wet.

 

There are oars, and sails on sails, and yet

sans oranges, the crew is dull.

Drums, and the requisite seagull,

anchor them in music of regret.

 

The whole assembly’s now in danger:

cords creak, timbers bend, joints leak.

Weird hindrances. Signs impossible to read.

 

No captain I am to all stars a stranger.

The whole ship now begins to gibber and squeak.

Damn this ship! Fuck all ‘god’ and ‘speed’!

CONCENTRIC HORSES

Four concentric horses.

Two running, two curled up in clover,

dead or only sleeping in the clover.

They won't be separated out:

no unbroken mind

from anywhere may ride them.

They will have no secrets.

 

If we looked long enough at them

our secrets too

would soon be unbelievable.

 

Impossible flower of horses.

 Four Horses: Concentric Design, Persian, Early 17th Century

EMAIL TO MARLENE

Yes me too Marlene I cannot stop thinking 

about the war either

been feeling so appalled and helpless

and also violent

for instance I can’t stop wishing I were a legendary assassin

the kind who can creep across the floor

silent and slow

as a square of moonlight

I would sneak into Putin's house

and stick a flower in his ass,

and then chop his head off--

but you have to be careful you know:

once you've started on that road, 

where to stop?

 

Too many asses/flowers/heads for one lifetime

in fact you'd wind up being buried under a mountain

of asses and flowers and heads

for about 10,000 lifetimes

 

make no mistake: you’d be a hero

a legend

and that 

is exactly why I don’t

trust myself

with these decisions

MAIMED: HE SEES FACES IN THE GLASS

 

I see faces of blood

faces of bone

faces of sphincter-like

aspect

horrible faces of stone

 

faces of meat

faces of crème brûlée

or of meringue

in advanced decay

 

angel-heads

with revolving faces

shifting melting

features rearranged

utterly

the eyes however

they maintain a constant stare

that has never changed

nor shall it ever change

MAIMED AN INTRODUCTION

 

Maimed? Well you are not alone

in hell let me

introduce you to your new

friends this is Shitfit and this is Dickless they

will be overseeing your problemo grande

SUPERVIELLE

Jules Supervielle does not wait 

    for inspiration

he brings his instruments

to rediscover those things and noises

abandoned in a moment of confusion.

Oceans of blood lap at his feet.

 

You cannot wait for inspiration 

especially if like Supervielle 

you have cardiac troubles

(as who, ultimately, does not)

you can’t wait for the earthquake

before grabbing your hat

or learning to box

because look: you’re already in the ring

with a monster,

a complete freak of nature.

Or is that merely a blur

in your most secret mirror? Some smudge

attesting to the departure

of her most obscure majesty?

 

I would like to learn that technique

to stay an ocean of blood

to speak with a siren, to question her

beyond her many refusals

though I know it is very late

 

to be learning this art.

MONSTRA GLAEBOSA

 

for it is the time of lumpy monsters
contriving in great freedom
on the banks of a toxic flood

room for corpse-wolves

wading ashore to come

 

and under a moon engorged with blood
contriving
colossal pyramids

according to barbaric plans

 

it is the time

of burlap scrota

sweeping through charnel realms

 

ps

Grendel was a floater

My services to poetry include the following:

1. Removing maggoty rats from the space above the ceiling without pausing to think
2. extracting Neo the Catbus from windy tree-top, the trunk of which tree was luxuriously robed in poison ivy
3. dreaming and frowning under Walnut’s dizzying canopy of mutated leaves
4. unselfconsciously, however regrettably, seeking fun in each of places under the sun, and forms of love
5. familiarizing self with metrical laws and their violation
6. innate vulgarity and pleasant disposition
7. perverse delight in subterranean solitude
8. very low threshold of pain
9. vast expenditure on books and lending, giving away or losing same
10. general irreligion
11. active late-bloomerdom
12. the ability to be represented by the imago superficialis near Bozkir, Turkey, Taurus Mountains, Ikonya 132: a seated woman holding a bird which is eating grapes from the hand of another woman who holds a child
13. with Sid’s help, and by dangerous means, getting my van back on the road...to everyone's delight.

MY AMERICA

My America

is the America

of pre-code horror comics

and I want it back

 

FANCY BARBARIANS

 I said OK kid 

   principal parts of

ferō: 

      go!

--Daddy?

--Yes? 

--Were the Romans just

fancy barbarians?

ENIGMA

 

ANCIENT DANCES

‘Doesn’t anybody want my dear Fortunata to dance?’ he said. ‘Honestly no one dances the cordax better.’ 

–Petronius

 

All song and dance is heard in the Dharma. 

–Hakuin Zenji

 

For Jesus leads the dance of love. 

–Wyclif

 

She coulde of that art the olde daunce. 

–Chaucer

 

These petrified relations must be forced to dance by singing to them their own melody. 

–Marx

 

Anayu, Storm Snake Old Man,

Come here now, for we are dancing!

Bring your rain, you arrive now! 

–song of Nanbe tribe

 

This time only you will see me.

When they dance at Takimildin

Fog will cover the base of the mountain

Toward the south!

I watch from there!

Thus, when the time comes,

They will dance it thus!

Whoever dances thus will think of me. 

–song of Naninnoh-hoi tribe

Raoul Housmann, the Dadasopher

Archive production: morning poem 482

 

WARNING*

CRACKERS TO THE WHITE ASS

FLAG FASCIST DRAPES

WITH THE CRACKER ASS FUCKS!

 *This text was flagged as inappropriate by fb

LENINIST PEP TALK

 

  It feels stupid 

while you are doing it

but what you are doing

is called living

and I 

want you 

to know 

    it is 

a

 fucking

revolutionary

activity!