Friday, September 23, 2016

Andrei Codrescu, Four Poems & Some Polemics


The Disappearance of Gabriel,
mixed-media collage by Daniel Y. Harris 



pre-call notice to a 108th street developer

During the night without notice or even much noise
the Congregation Gabriel Synagogue was gone from
across the street. The old-script gold letters on its frontispiece
gone, only their shadow still visible on the arch under my window.
Next day the brick arch was gone too and all the bricks next day.
A fence surrounded the steel-beam skeleton. A poster on the fence
announced the coming of something that looked suburban,
a cluster of apartments with a tiny park, followed by the company’s
name and number. I want the gold letters G, I, and A.
They stand for Gabriel who helped me move in, Ina who helped me
move back into my body in the new city, and A for my own name.
It was the old Gabriel Synagogue that persuaded me to live here,
it was a point of reference, I get easily lost, and a site for the hopeless
thought that one day I might go to an old schul and read the Torah.
I have a right to those letters, Mr. Developer. This poem is a warning.
Tomorrow I will call and it will be the prophet himself speaking.


august 4 2016 shark activity

I went to my Starbucks on Austin. Woe! A whole wall was gone
opening into a a brand-new Target store.
It happened overnight at the same time as Synagogue Gabriel
vanished. Some kind of tit-for-tat goes on in Queens.
This isn’t growth, it’s the sea of my haunt live suddenly with fins.


Mesmerism for M, rare flower

at its core intelligence
is what touch taught the body
through all the bodies touched
before it arrived here to learn
other bodies through its own
dense pod of touch-knowing
so dense that its force can use
words to make your own hands
be the other’s hands free
to touch your body to its core
but rare are flowers that consent
to such density of sound to bind
what knowingly surrenders
her own hands to another's mind


on frames & fragility & squares & ovals for Ina

I thought of frames because whatever their ubiquity
ineluctability and seeming inescapability
they don’t frame you or me    that is not their job
some things still escape them

the thought of being framed would have sent me fleeing
in horror over hills and into unmapped cities had I known
in advance of its goodwill toward all beloved creatures

and yet there you are
your eyes attentive and not quite in the frame
and something kind not sure there is a frame for
and also surprising laughter
maybe you snuck out of the frame at an unscheduled time

maybe an old fox like myself and a stubborn dreaming child
escaped their frames somehow and rolled away like eggs
shedding old shells while growing fragile new skins

is there an unframed elsewhere?

and then our rolling dance is interrupted
by a hospital and a deep cut

I forget all about frames and think
of the moment when you forget the pain
and open again your arms and legs in the oval
that has somehow replaced know-it-all frames
with a sieve pierced by rays of not-knowing
in circular motion around my there & your here


SOME POLEMICS

Letters for Enrique     


yes on the other hand
“letters can be blueprints for birds”
yes on the other hand
the handprint of plato is still on my face
he was not gentle his writing gave language
the trophy in every fight

the unspeakable can’t even come in the back door
he instructed his servants to take its medicines
with their eyes closed and place them under a bush
he could inspect later with his snake-stick

oh medicines under a bush like 50s spy microfilm!

and if butterflies are a blueprint for Sanskrit
that language too must imitate the sound of a bell
in a mind empty before its waking to forms

all letters then busy making birds and beings
in a hurry like bakers before the deadline for a wedding

hurry up bakers

only I know that there is a lot of flour in the heavens
so hurry is not necessary and neither is the wedding
there are more birds and butterflies than letters
and not all of them were named by fans of literature

an alphabet longer than Audubon is a certainty

without a script       on the other hand
even as the unborn and unnamed are slapping
the little Jesuits at their desks without a pause

rimbaud was on to something that was us after he
gave up language for a stewpot of snakes



—Andrei Codrescu



Wednesday, September 21, 2016

AC Evans, ECHOES OF DESIRE


Echoes of Desire, image by AC Evans



ECHOES OF DESIRE

Boum! One little look, and… boum!
Charles Trenet – Ray Goetz


Yes, it’s me! The Albionic Man,
The human junkyard… now,
I have to scribble a few last words…

Allright darlin?
The last transit van from Venus arrived
At The Electric Laser Clinic, no problem.
Here we go again – no signal, and…boum!
Easy way trips in slow motion,
Echoes of desire and mod girls on scooters
Refresh your everyday revolution.
Storm the town hall, body and soul, baby.

We live in a world of shadows
But, encased in zodiac scaffolding,
She doesn’t care about life or anything.
Meanwhile, here at Thermo-Station Junction,
A full moon is obscured by cloud,
Banishing memories of extreme caution.
Her bare midriff is a diversion route in free-fall.
CafĂ©, gallery, theatre – stay connected, and… boum!

I wrote a new chapter, but did you notice?
A view of blue sky is an abrupt change in feel.
The studio is here – Allright sweetie?
Scary claims, pull handle, push door.
Spark outrage with this strange equipment.
Solutions without boundaries a speciality, and… boum!
Forget The Albionic Man, that backless loafer,
With his illegible scribbles.

We live in a world of shadows.
But she doesn’t care.
No, really… she doesn’t care,

She doesn’t care at all.
Not at all.



—AC Evans


Monday, September 19, 2016

Ed Coletti, The Awful Truth


Exceptionally Rare Bird, image by Ed Coletti




The Awful Truth

                                    in the key of “b”

It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it.
But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.
                        —Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest


1.

Big Bill busted-up blown
beyond Battery Park
blinded blast-bound brief bit
bombed boy begun in Bronx
bomb-borne beyond Berkeley
badass-babinski banker-accepted
biochemical brassring bingo
bigleague bet-the-barn farm board
(before Bush bet the bigger bundle)
befell befalling biodegrading
bagpipe-bugle bell-book blaring
big bond brokers belly boarding
Brooklyn Bridge and Britain-Boston
bonds bonding bodies bonded
be-falling bog-men befouling bottomless
blasé bookish brownstone buildings
barbaric balkanizing baggage
bastardly bedouin brews bad beer
bam blam Batman’s burdened balls
besotted by Bin laden’s boorish bravado
bacillus breeding bad behavior
back-diving baptism-by-brashy-boarding
beguine begun by Bush big brother
biliously bought the bingo-card,
beginning Baghdad’s biracial bleeding      
                                                           
2.

Before such blasts
both buildings built
blowing bout-to-burst
bubbles beckoning boldening
barking bedouin braves’
barely-believed bonanza
bridging Benghazi with Baghdad’s
brief boredom bought and brought
brutish British black arts
beneath Brooklyn Bridge
bufoonist Bush brother burger
beer bourbon-blunted brigand
beast-bought boiled buried
bindage-bridled brigandly blackjacked
barbarian bed-wetter bout to be blessÄ—d
Boston-bound Blakey boom blowing
boom boom band born
bye bye before beats beatnik
blacklisted by bully-boys
breezy bard be-ins being in
blacklisted by bully boy bard-ons
Baghad-By-Bay berated by
bankers bleating badass bandaid barf
ballumbus/broadway bookstore
bonanza Baltamont-blunted back to
Brooklyn back back back to
benzine’s burn baksheesh burp
Bopahl-by-Bayside                                        
bummer of blood-barking
beasts burdened brought bellowing
Barbarossa’s bankclerk bagmen
barbarian-bombarded battered
bingocarding bet-the-farmers
by-the-brass-book blelievers
'bout to be biblically befallen
balckguards’ blackarts
blackheaded bald blockheads
bemoaning blown becalmed boredom
burdened betimes by bloody
breakneck brutes befouling bite-sized
brides and birthday bliss
ballroom-bright-ballsy
beam brandished by
burnished bronze
boat bell below
burning buildings
‘bout to bishop-blunder
beserkly Bowery-bound
by-the-by between
batches of barrage balloons
brief beliefs believers believe-in
bunches of beautiful boy babies
’bout to be beneficently born.



—Ed Coletti



Thursday, September 15, 2016

J. Karl Bogartte, The Golden Hour


A Derisive Luminosity (44” x 58”) 2014, image by J. Karl Bogartte




The Golden Hour


Darkness burns mazes into the avenues where your solitude nests, unveiling the youthful siblings of uneasy inventions, seductive ciphers and vague spyglasses whispering endearing phrases... the cello attracts rival veils and slips of the tongue.

Your presence is deceptive, a garden of delirious stains.

The invention of night, the ageless question of impossible balance, the pilot’s daughter eating crystals: To fill the world with light, the void with imaginary bodies glowing in the dark...

She has not been spoken of for many years, she is mything vitreous and tapping pawns for tallow, she is quickening her fluidity, to divert and disguise. Light poured into lacerations the way shadows enter clothing, for only a moment, or two, only a hidden space. A translation, for throwing phantoms into invisible walls.  She is myth-ratcheting amorous, chiding brutal structures for mountainous beckoning, to corrupt with pleasure.

The ancient horned flower of your psyche attracts the devoted milking machines, the aboriginal veins of a fabric that propels your footsteps as determined as her threads slipping into light, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Dark and greedy, the always secret and ever vanishing body of torrential mirroring.

The glow between living and ceasing to live, emulates the long-legged cascade in her whispering circuitry, the gaze of rain is corrupted film, caught in the act, disguised by pleasure purring in gradually brightening passwords. The catapult of an unfinished sentence, turned to provoke, to stroke and latent in state, the light separates your body from its own darkness.

The perfect alignment through the axis of its twin, quartered and shelled in the gasping for breath and emerald, adored and pandered for pleasure and sight unseen, she licks herself in meadows of ermine and chimera, aching, angelica posing in the likeness of her bees sipping, through every sense of pulling ravens out of her body for kindling.

The perverse pleasures of the captured bride dove-tailed in the mathematical equation of the city held up for example by the stars.

The scorpion-headed mannequin, your shadow striking inward for contact with the natural world. The empty animated gloves shaking out contentment in the garden, eyelids of entropy emitting seeds and slow rituals…

Dark gravitational assignations seduced into amulets the color of glass, evolving in sequential chiaroscuro, tempting blood where (in the Manor of Sighs) the barbarian sign language seizes the images of your being in the rich, antiquarian lucidity of your extinction. Your face, or the features of night in the fever of graceful spirits that still come to drink the liquid of life out of your hands, the pendulum... An evening of theater runs ahead...

Trapping belladonna between the lines, between her legs, between phases, to embrace the blindness of your murmuring, pushing out between her lips, the lost hermeticism of albino checkmates.

The weapon you most cherished was feminine. The wedge forced into the appearance of things was ambiguous with its dark insistence and wind‐up astronomy, clicking and whirring about in circles and broken up by triangles into long, interminable caresses that went on forever, imitating a newly discovered galaxy quivering in the nearness of wolves.

There is only the daughter of Icarus, without mirrors, the shadow of uncertainty that surrounds the ribcage of a philosophical paradox, only the stone of a primitive light, only the glance that hatches in the fire, the optical mainspring of a science that runs amok, only the ciphers leading the fossils of daybreak, and the glowing of those beings you feed each morning, the pools of blood dripping out of your dreams. Flight is only the body torn by light, powered by obscene gestures. A choreography of wish fulfillment.

There is always the diamond-cutter’s unremitting caress, always those great moths entering your eyes in a frenzy of unconditional attraction, clearing a space for the ermine of humor, and the misplaced objects of great value.

Among the various diversions and unforeseen discoveries, when the shallow end of a gesture foreshadows a long and hazardous recovery, and sudden landings in desolate places, it is your eyes most of all that appear as an interlocking resolution, or the honor among thieves.

The dark elopes, hydroplaning, self-eloping, shaping the ghost hunters. She lives outside of the hour light-embalmed within her shell and taken by the hand in secret. They double-side in a miserable silence. The cave that writes a reflection across your eyes. Deserted... In her divide is the rattle and the awkward torch of precise gesticulation. An unnatural dance among innocent victims. Cherished presence smeared on your face.



—J. Karl Bogartte


Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Charlie Baylis, Ronald Reagan travels to the land of mangoes

Ronald Reagan travels to the land of mangoes

for Brendan 'totally mangoed' O'Connor

Sometimes in the sky I see endless sandy shores covered with rejoicing nation of pearl: a great golden ship, above me multi-colour pennants flutter in the morning breeze.

Arthur Rimbaud – Farewell


the sailors slit the wind's wrists     comets stuffed with glitter smash and scatter in the sea    the vacant body of Ronald Reagan plops into the waves    Ronald Reagan where the hell is my

hamburger

Lana Turner in blue denim Lana Turner in red denim mouth deep crazy zooming red under tunnel crashing reds bleed into Berry Davis blue

 a carpet on the water    a postcard                    Lana Turner   qu'est ce qui vous etes devenu

marble clouds swirl            six French Queens rise from the Norman coast and whip their husbands to death     eyes wide and powerful               Ronald Reagan       what has become of you (my

hamburger)

   William the conqueror's glass fingers    Anthony crying to the asp      Julius Caesar spinning in a Nascar               six French Queens rub Viagra into Ronald Reagan's bum          resurrected!    

the boat collapses

Ronald arrives at the Jersey shoreline dripping with Nike               Charlie Baylis, waiting for him

“Ronald Reagan what a mess you made of Vietnam!        “Charlie Baylis what a mess you are making of poetry!!

     imps gimp me ears scorched with sand      I punch Ronald Reagan in the groin      I pray for Ronald Reagan                             I pray for Nancy Reagan                                I pray she really loves

hamburgers                        

*

the sunset on the grass tips   
the glass of champagne balanced on the grass tips   
the eggs cracking at midnight and spangling the grass tips
the murky alleyway in Lahore
the pink lipstick on your lip
the candyfloss for breakfast
the Duke of Guadeloupe stuck in the tape loop
the lake's fine edges submerged under the grass tips
the invisible mistakes of Ivor Rubber rubbing out the grass tips
the Edgar Allen Poe gallery in Marco Polo's wristwatch
the paisley pyjamas glitched to the stern of the mayflower by a pixie in Grimsby
the North Atlantic rising and falling like a lap dancer's legs
the sundial scattering seeds in an asteroid over the milk and indigo North Atlantic
the electric rainbow waves of for fucks sake
the sunrise puking on the stain glass windows in a Cathedral in Bethlehem, TX
the Mormon doll tip-toe tapping a Morse code bible (8 wives! 9 lives!)
the dot dot dot
the exploitation of the female body in male poetry
the exploitation of the male body in female poetry
the sadness when love and exploitation dance hand in hand
the wormholes
the X has died
the X has risen
the X will come again
the Rupert Michael Loydell explaining that it is too late and that we will all be gone
the lack of grass tips
the where are the grass tips
the where are my fucking grass tips

the here are your grass tips

*
By a wreck of a crazy red in a car crash in Paris next to Lana Turners body    we found a poem feinting on tissue paper     penned in yummy yellow pen next to blue stained denim


Like acid dying the stem of the rose

like light on glass in the march gales

like honey weeping into a swimming pool


like a toboggan ride down a Christmas town

like sand reaching for sand and finding sand

like a child protecting machine guns in Aleppo


the tropical storm gathers force, the air thins

the static whips, the rain rips the folded cups

the western wind bows below the eastern wind


the birds tweet for the flood has come

to the rabbit praying to the rainbow to the

Eucharist sucking Spring from six French Queens

tied up in nots whipping the stars to death

*

Tweet to God
 65 Photos and videos

God
@god
Hells yeah, it's me!
heaven

Tweets and replies

God @god
“In the beginning the end. In the end the beginning. Or s'thing. @CNN”
47 retweets 108 likes

God @god
“day 1 n 1 f the crew hs banged his head on a cpbrd ffs! box a light bulbs sctrd out, now w all gt lights here!!!!! #YOLO
176 retweets 304 likes

God @god 
“ day 2 fizzy rythem mde me a waterfall wid fairy-fancy n swoons placed sum camomile stars up above me lost home boys patrick tim and laurence
209788 retweets 51090 likes

God Retweeted @chalesebaylis
A million poets writing the same f'ing poem taught by same f'king teachers.
0 retweets 0 likes

God @god
“spent day 3 wasted making mad animal shapes w @RonaldReagan n bwlin oranges and coconuts in infinity pools”
425 retweets 779 likes

 God @god 
“day 4 w @Miley the sun so sunny that r whole island smiled. we r jubilant juveniles! We r TOTALLY mangoed! LOL!”
288 retweets 510 likes

             God @god 
"day 5 nsometimes I feel like I can't catch them all @NancyReagan @PokemonGo”

God @god
“last day here giddy n mercury evening n we 8 a morning, river pissd thru us n were wrapt in her velvet.”
176 retweets 304 like

God retweeted @ProphetMuhammad  29 May 2009
“Sad news Frankie @Pontifex: God has been revealed to be a woman.”
0 retweets 0 likes

God Retweeted @Ponitx _Jul 14
@ProphetMuhammad  rly?
0 retweets 0 likes

God retweeted @ProphetMuhammad  29 May 2009
 @Pontifex: just kidding bro! LOL!
1 retweets 1 likes

 

 Notes

I would encourage you to listen to this song while reading the poem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrTGRZZuDTI


Lana Tuner's death bed poem owes a huge debt to After the Flood by Arthur Rimbaud, the copyright holders can come after me with knives, I will be waiting for you.


Charlie Baylis




Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Rupert M. Loydell, White Shadows


Code for the Inverse of Converse, image by Daniel Y. Harris 




White Shadows



white shadows
white echo
grey shadows
grey echo
white light
white out
white stripe
white light

black frame
black blind
black frame
black blind
grey shadows
grey floor
grey space
grey grid
grey sky

black out
black out
black out
black out
white light
white noise
white wall
white wash

silent scream
end light

foot fall
foot loose

shuffle sisters
echo boot

long walk home
in the sun outside


—Rupert M. Loydell