a plain poem
i don't want this poem to say too much.
a nice surface poem is all i need.
but i so usually blather about work,
state of amerika
with government like a zoo of animals
of hate transpiring beneath mimosa breath
like shadow is light & creature'd words
are truth. whether saturation occurs
beyond the scope of evil i doubt. it's
a final straw, the kick in the ass, an
ace. meantime purity isn't even questioned
as the source. that's shit.
i'm a sunk prophet, now, adorned
by a skin of dirt, crab-grass hair
on my knuckles.
a cultural monkey.
like amerikan monkeys,
voters & tax-payers.
strata of society shifted
low as poets,
yes,
down here.
stupid, loud guys
downstairs, they're screaming.
maybe playing sock-football over
the furniture. it's late sunday night.
i am not a serial killer.
i think of a gun. i envision
a silver revolver & i grasp it.
move like
clear syrup
down the stairs,
roll around
a corner,
peek thru
edge of a
window,
there's that
fuck,
& that fuck,
& i fire two silencer shots
thru flimsy screen.
i roll back upstairs,
unenvision the silver gun,
& write
more
poems.
exact truth
if there is something absolutely
relevant in the air of words i'd
be saying it.
but listen, listen to that
far-off cricket
of time. silence
will one day
be sold like bread.
thinking
i cld change from gray
jogging-pants, put my jeans
on, & a shirt, socks, shoes.
splash cold water
on my face,
maybe add eye-drops.
pocket my wallet with a least,
i'm positive, one twenty,
& pocket my new cell-phone,
head out the door
down the steps
to the car in the misty rain,
pre-dawn. locust of street-light hum,
& wet dripping, a xylophone of rain-
drops. my belly is growling.
pano's is open on 38th street.
the baltic-speaking waitresses
won't even look up when i order.
a big breakfast.
scrambled eggs.
wheat toast.
gravy for the home-fries.
bacon, sausage, coffee, yes.
i'll have 35 cent'd it for
a morning erie times newspaper,
so it wld be wise
to remember to pocket my glasses too.
well, it's a little too early
for the morning edition.
& do i really want to be alone
in the pre-dawn rain
with a savage cholesterol breakfast
& a very stoned head?
there's bread in the refrigerator.
i cld just toast
toast, stay shirtless,
meditate upon
the internet world
of this particular poem
with the near
immediacy of a
webcam!
i'm
so
embarrassed.
you've
caught me
this naked.
right on the money
i suppose some men & some women
have a clear grasp on the meanings
of other men, of other women.
communication tends to be so superficial,
blather between speaking word-creatures.
6-foot mammalian birds with a lot
of song to sing
for whatever impulse drives people
to spike inane talk into the holy
cross of silence, it's usually for money,
or power.
that's about all there is to say.
that's the way
it is.
6-foot mammalian birds
masturbating wildly, daily, hourly,
every waking
& sleeping moment.
why
we have poetry.
today & for eternity
here we are
writing lives with keyboards on fire
writing unique intrusion reality over
internet advertising &
porno webcams.
if twenty people read this poem
that's almost
too many. the underground
on something so public like the world
wide web
is alive &
nobody cares, it's still the old days!
it's still bart
coming all weeded
with a case of beer,
& he's bringing
his guitar,
& twenty years have passed, bart,
twenty years.
friends have
slipped from our arms like
pastel-colored feathers,
the stink of death
& brash physicality
is over-
whelming
but for prayers of pot.
you pray.
look, imagine a
statue of the virgin mary
unpainted,
just an outline of
limestone,
of moon-rock
& our slow gravity
dance in black space.
semi highway
we haven't done a long road-trip
in months. the car is not as reliable
anymore. something has to be done,
but we're not sure what.
buying a car in amerika
is like buying a baby python snake
in rural india in 1892
while a young girl suckles on yr penis
mars is a different star in the eastern sky.
i want a tank.
a tank with a cd-player
& a place for cell-phones.
i want to be armed with heat-seeking missiles
& the authority to fire on suv-driving
amerikan citizens.
cars
cars in amerika
the money we pour into cars
we cld send
a poet
to the moon for a years,
to a well-stocked
moon-station,
complete with every human luxury.
a semi down west grandview sounds like
robert stack
reading this poem.
hollow earth
i get like this sometimes.
abrupt. impatient. sad.
imperative i write
a poem, all else in life is
not as significant to my
well-being -- well, except
for ann
& those i love, they are
vital. & so is this
poem, this enigma of
focus & freedom
lost in a country
like
you. amerika only listens
to entertainment
poets
& who the holy fuck
are they.
how many of us have
left, have turned away,
have stopped
writing.
there becomes a
futile point i reach
when i must
speak,
when so few
hear or
care. you
are in the same boat
& i assume you
too go nuts at times.
what remains
of us for those alive
is dust
some fuck might make money off of --
get yr dead poet's dust
here
the world is turning around
the world is turning around
& what we thought was the worst we lived
is the best of times. anxiety initiates
honor: perspective is everything.
what we considered evil, what provoked
the amerikan public, tumbles from a
zillion monitors now
& nobody is talking about love.
when peace is mentioned
it's compromise -- a middle agreement.
i hate fucking idiotic democracy.
the snakes snake thru so easily & the brash
back-stabbers hoot like hog-farmers
drinking beer in a bloody barn. either
them, or clean-nail'd upper executives
who stiffen their slaughtered souls with fine
scotch & blindly
create the world of business
which is the world of AMERIKA.
has it really sunk in
father bush -- cia & prez,
son bush -- texas & prez,
has it really
sunk in -- & who cares with life
reduced to
democracy.
i thunk a thought
i thunk a thought
& it was a good thought.
best thought i ever had,
winged, a hawk of a
thought. thunk it
with perfect zen transitory logic
with duality doubled & tripled & divided
with opposites attracting like june-bugs
like black suns & translucent suns.
i thunk a good thoughtful thought.
backflashing
thinking about me in my boyhood room
in ellport pennsylvania. young teen,
late 1960's. hadn't smoked pot yet.
hadn't gobbled a palmful of mini-whites
or eaten that purple haze on the shore of a
creek with guys like regis, packy,
junior, vic, ed, it was early afternoon
i know, saturday -- we probably planned
a baseball game at the field --
i think we had our gloves with us
slapped on the various rocks around
the room-size sandy beach
under giant oaks
under circling chicken-hawks
& operatic crows
the purple haze
we had beer too i remember
i remember sitting on a boulder
feeling buzzy like a fly.
packy became a sort of frog-like
human thing who glowed blue, yellow,
all purple the water rolled like paper.
sat there feeling fly-like &
incredible.
next thing i realize
i'm here
now -- decades later. hendrix
is the last name of ann's
younger sister & amerika
is a nightmare of social mutation.
existence on the surface
of a spinning, microcosmic world
under old, green trees
in whatever age
the mind
hovers,
song
of a bird
in bird-cage skull
i am more
angelic
than any homosexual poet
i am
not
moving from this boulder where i
hunch, all paunches,
i'm a giant,
furry, buzzy fly in fake, pastel daylight.
hangovers
i think i remember my name, my face,
my self. yes. not opening my eyes
i realize i am prone in our bed
& it is dark. crack eye, 5 a.m.,
& i definitely attest
to a barrage of clear bottles
of newcastle brown ale:
i breathe the ale from
5 hours ago, & the cheese
& anchovie pizza,
the sex-site surfing
& stumbling, too drunk at midnight.
christ,
look at all the poems
surfacing this morning.
is soberness
a goddamn
dam? shld it all be continuously
dam --
dam the virus
of amerikan plenty,
yes.
turn away,
rise all damaged &
wrecked,
sore & stupid,
& compose amerikan versification.
just move the fingers
those zombie-moving
fingers.
gulp coffee.
gulp water.
gulp medicinal smoke.
& buddy,
write
glorious, unfettered poems.
everybody
eventually
recovers, & we
do it
again
& again,
thousands
of hangovers
& poems.
for jesus
he's the son of god.
he is being crucified,
hung on a cross
to die & spend the final moments
of life on the surface
of planet earth
in horror.
from the softness of mother
to intense pain
& injustice, that's
the flash
he sees of life,
& it is
existential terror,
tho the loss
of so much
blood
makes the mind airy,
he hallucinates
& it is what
we now know as this.
this is his altered nightmare.
amerika, gentle power.
gross roman soldiers
rape & pillage
the world. christians
& hypocrisy
are twins.
thinking about
jesus christ, son of god,
two thousand years
ago in the middle east,
hanging, crucified
on a cross on a hill
under the sky
under the cruel conditions
of humanity
& the masses of primitive citizens.
humans slaughter humans.
the basis of religion is a stark
truth.
jesus was a man.
one of the
trillions slaughtered
over the course
of human history,
& there will be more,
even the devil's son
we will
mutilate.
the bloody runny trickle
the bloody runny trickle
of menstruation i imagine
first considering
asking ann
how is the bloody
runny trickle of menstruation coming?
imagine.
like a spring brook in the woods,
but blood instead of water,
deep valve-leak of blood at the bottom
of ann's
female insides, the flesh
like couple inch-thick pork-meat
over bones, over skull &
luckystone bones of toes & fingers,
woman. what leaks
is moon
water.
red rain
a skeleton stands
in the center of a small field.
it isn't night, nor november,
but it is beginning to rain. bones
sound like tingles of wind-chimes
& the skull is a flipped ceramic cup.
jaws are not yet working
into words or screams. empty eye-sockets
neither see nor are seen beyond emptiness.
bone & rain equals skin,
eventually.
rain splatters in pools until eyes grow
like dough-balls &
goo of bottom becomes a tongue; first,
black-green mold, then tongue.
inside the bowl of skull waters slosh
& slowly
solidify.
get well poem (for bill)
one man's body is
sleek & fortified, he is
the picture of health in the 21st century.
he's a fucking asshole.
it's like the logic of the argument
to jail dope-smokers:
a middle-aged wife in iowa
is slipping poison into her husband's
coffee every day now -- he is confused
why his teeth are
all yellowing &
loosening. neither smoke marijuana.
president bush the second
lacks the concept of surreality.
an elephant ear flaps out of his open mouth
like a huge thin gray tongue.
reality is never tenuous
for the president of the united states of
amerika. dossiers on the liver, spleen,
cock. periodic checkings
of blood & teeth: the most pampered
human being
on the planet
earth. i guess we aren't
gods.
fuck.
i thought we were gods.
naw,
just
the lowliest of poets...
sniffles
& coughing,
general disorientation.
satan wears a halo & it's
fact we are spinning on a spinning
orb spinning around a spinning sun
spinning thru a spinning galaxy
spinning across mega-lightyear distances
spinning like we do
with nothing, ever, nailed down
especially not mentally
first thinking this,
then that,
& multitudes of other thoughts
inside an orb-like skull
let us be misty,
maybe ghostly -- curling
columns of smoke,
gases,
quantum metaphysics
in eye
of hubble telescope,
wobbly,
weird,
the hurricane clouds
& zoom
& the nose
of the statue
of liberty
earthling amerikans
spinning religion & death
spinning physics & favorite movies
of demons & blood
flapping film-projecter end of now
in firelight
in a large stone circle room
where minds hover
headaches (for norman)
i say no he says ah dad what kinda crap is that
then he farts a famous douglas fart so i'm
gagging getting the car-windows down for fresh
smog afternoon traffic air stopped at a light
at peach street & liberty avenue.
he's nearly 16. i look at him & i think
of my father, my grandfather, the line
of androla men thru time on the surface of
planet earth. doug doesn't give a flying fuck
if i get angry as long as he gets his way.
he approaches me with arguments --
an argument stance,
when, hell, if he'd just
chill, bop, groove,
it'd be fine; but i got a
headache, my blood pressure is maybe
two thousand over three thousand.
he lets go his gaseous explosions
& laughs as i choke
getting the car-windows down like i sd
in three o'clock city traffic
on an 80 degree day in erie.
these kids today -- no concept of
honor.
no concept of galactic
shiftings,
of timelessness,
of starlight tension.
the new generation
is even worse than my generation
& yr generation, & all generations
ever.
amerika is fucked, period & unequivocally.
subjex of riting
a possible passion violates
reason from safe realms slicing along genital
veins how vast a man feels is paramount to his
(or her) experience of time between first
breath & last breath: fuzzy hallucinations
all pussy & blow-jobs & cum
when the mind in the skull isn't squared
in a cell of sanity in the real world,
but freed, no human logic matters,
no consciousness is relevant.
cunt,
men (& women),
see glories of cunt close-up
smelling of gardenia & the dew of night,
as they moan dying.
gusting wind, slaps of rain
& car-engines starting below
in the black parkinglot.
silly, i thought about
going out for breakfast?
it is nearing a respectable time
i can softly awaken ann.
snuggle her from sleep.
smooth dream into my voice, my kiss.
i'll say
honey
i love you
she will groan
satisfied
groan, then think,
she'll whisper
from the warm pillows
"did you wake me
to make you breakfast?"
i might stutter
in the back of my mind,
but baby,
i do love you
no matter breakfast food, or not,
yr skin
tastes like
butter.
manners of being
murmurs & milk
of coo & acoustic guitar / twanging
on a tuesday licking cow udder
'cause beyond the deepest moo
is the slightest silence:
a skull. skull into a pile
of white dust in under-earth darkness
where eternity is. out of sight.
out of empirical law.
molecules 4 billion years old.
molten fire in the middle
of all we know, of all we ever experience.
symbolically,
center of fire.
roundness.
spinning. nobody ever wakes
from mind-flower budded on a
human stem -- the eyes
like pistils
of spider's sight:
once a spider
never an inorganic cell
spinning around
neptune. rare instances
are the only moments
with awareness
further than
cock or cunt,
further than
the spillages
of words for
words -- sloppy, human communication.
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bartman
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