poésie
poetry
[It is true] all salads rebuke dresses.

Jack ANDERSON

The Social Contract

This poem must begin,
"This poem happened,
it really happened,"
for that is its point.

One night while riding
the London underground
I watched a young man
(accepting what looked like
a friend's whispered dare)
strip off his clothes
and fold them up neatly
until he was left
with not a stitch on,
except for the boots
he'd had to remove
for just a short time
to get his jeans down.

There he sat
on his pile of clothes,
buck naked,
clean and muscular,
and with a nice smile.

All of us in that car
gasped first and stared,
looking him over
(some blushing, some brazen),
then, seeing what he meant
and would do no harm,
we smiled back,
his friends now
and friends of one another.

And any time anyone
got on at a station
we turned in unison,
waiting to see
what would come next,
only to relax
when the stranger relaxed
and became our new friend.

Still, someone someplace
must have complained
to someone else there,
for at one stop
a uniform
appeared in the door
and ordered the guy,
but softly, politely,
to put on his clothes,
which he did
with no fuss,
and we went our own ways.

Yet while he was naked
we were joined together
in sweet solidarity:
it was all so innocent,
so civilized,
so good.

And this is important,
for it really happened,
and that it really happened
is the point of this poem.

A Brief Summary of the System

The 1 of which there is
The 2 operations
The 3 decisions
The 4 pronouncements
The 5 syllogisms
The 6 conditions of the sevenfold vision
The 7 irrefutables
The 8 procedures of will
The 9 renunciations
The 10 exemplifications
The 11 orders
The 12 disciplines
The 13 returnings to the 1

Memorization continues
Instruction follows
then quizzes
         tests
        ordeals

The Bippum

I was just moseying along minding my business not thinking of much

when out of nowhere the bippum got to me the bippum the bippum the

absolute bippum tapped my shoulder NO! the bippum kicked my butt and

the bippum is here now running beside me pinching me onward shoving

me panting into the next time the bippum sneaks up yanks me out of

harm's way pushes me into the thick of I falter fall the bippum raises

me helps me so the bippum drops me again to fend for myself the bippum

watching airily above my head NO! the bippum burrows through my brain

loiters in my heart nestles in my pores NO! the bippum is beyond all

around I rush toward the bippum the bippum melts firms clobbers me

blessing me kissing me licking me lashing me tongueing smooching

embracing wrestling me to the ground pinned I grip the bippum gropes

me NO! there's nothing there but a void of broad daylight and the

bippum the bippum the inescapable growing bigger broader shrinking

to a seed the great bippum tingling frothing at my mouth leaving

me speechless rocketing racketing but still still the bippum hushes

flares silent signals bip bip expletive expletive expletive deleted

NO! the bippum my dearest I say returns soothing socks my jaw pulls

up my socks fondles me flusters me fidgety I swipe at the bippum I

caress I implore I scurry from scamper to throw myself at against

every which way expecting dreading orgasmic delirious giggling agog

NO! it's the bippum happens that way agog the bippum there there ouch

an itch inside and out in the street a snowstorm windstorm out of

nowhere anyhow now as I was just moseying along

Drizzle

A green bus turned a drizzled corner
in the drizzling gray the green bus turned
turned a corner drizzling onward
drizzle the windshield wipers parted

the street gapes on the bus long gone
the bus far gone this corner turned
where wipers parted the corner stayed
green gone gray and drizzling on

Point Deadly

A strong whiff of carbolic still tainted the air.
And where were the keys of the beach house hidden?
What color were the bedroom hangings? 

Her name was Thelma? Velma? Valda, maybe?
You knew that gown was begging to get mussed.
Empty bottle. Tough cookie. Ashtray with stubs.

And the waves just kept on crashing, crashing.
Wanda, the waves just kept on crashing.

Cranky

Shucks let's semicolon this,
that'll spike its spittle;

but it grits me so
I feel like November's

march step matchstick
hyphenation won't pac-

ify. Let's parenthesize,
prick future tense.

Grammar's granny
darns syllables 

under pond ice
(November's march past). 

We flap, quack,
poor funky plosives.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Michael CASTRO

CHILI-MAC

–for Allen Ginsberg

Poets want Irv's Good Food
not because of the sight rhyme
but because this is a real diner,
white tiled exterior
& spinning counter stools—
the last of a dying breed
in South St. Louis. 

Greasy menus,
Nehru capped cook,
lone gray waitress,
winos & investment brokers—
all bow & nod
to thy egalitarian fare.

A genuine place.
Bus stop pacers get invited in
out of the cold.
Everyone know everyone—if you're new
you're soon known. No need
to introduce yourself.
Irv & his crew will name you.
                         Ginsberg
came in & tried the Chili-Mac Special,
grilled the cook
about how to make it,
for who, & why.
Is it popular? The interrogation
went on & on. Social
research.
It all boiled down
to three words. 

Cheap and Filling. 

Allen looked at me. 

More for less, I said.
Like good poetry, he smiled.
We ordered some and it filled the bill.
More American than apple pie.
Yankee Doodle's Italian pasta,
the feather in his cap,
tickling Native American beans & peppers.
Multi-cultural dialogue afloat
in the gastric juices.
Irv asked, Is it good?

It was a good year
before I needed to go back.
Allen long gone
from Burroughs' home town. 

I walked in the door & was greeted like a regular.
"Howadoin Bud?" said the chef.
"Well, well, well. Mr. Budget." chimed in the waitress.
"Where's Mac?" the chef asked.
I looked at him weird.
"You know,
your friend with the beard," he said.
"Chili-Mac."

VISITING MALIK ON HIS DEATHBED

–for Maurice Malik King

Malik lays on the hospital bed, unconscious,
hooked to machines monitoring every bodily function,
comatose, breathing heavily, responsive
only to pinpricks, not to words.
We talk to him. Maybe he hears.
We tell him those things we don't normally.
How much we love him. How he is us.
We remember his vitality, his joy in living,
the beautiful music of his soul and gleaming
saxophone and eyes. I don't want to remember him this way:
bloated, near naked, splotched with sores. I remember
how he said my name,
and the lift it always gave. Brother
Malik,
if I could lift you now
out of this limbo,
out of this bed, out of this room & its white gloom,
I would. I would lift you like the notes of a golden horn
blown by the purest of breaths.

BLEW IT

–for Woody Shaw

through the tobacco haze
& the clatter of cocktails
through the stench of spilled beer
& the lurching boilermakers
out of the darkness of the pit
where the vipers of the night entwine
he gave language to the black rose

Yeah, they said, he gave language
to the emptiness they shared
he gave them prayer & they said, Yeah  

he screeched from the ache in his balls
intricate & instinctive as a spider
his belly blown lines spun a symmetry
spanning the void, flies buzzed quizzically
round his notes on their way to the silent gods
    & the chorus echoed Yeah
as he quenched their summer thirst

He was troubled, he was troubled
by their trouble, for he took it on
sucked it into the bell of his horn
into his gut where it gnawed & got reborn
made it part of his own storm
& he rained, he rained like a dark cloud
he reigned regal as a pharoah, clean as a queen
O he fluttered like a monarch, like Chuang Tzu,
like a caterpillar walking up & finding out
he can fly

& no one wondered why, they just let him die
they just said Yeah, & let him die

for he gave language to the black rose
& down, down in the darkness where its root grows
the cyclopean train shrieked in the tunnel of the soul
a thousand toilets flushed & the excrement of the city rushed
& gargled through the labyrinthine network of subway pipes
a murderous shakti current injected the third rail eye
with a lobotomous blindness he straddled

sinking his feet in the low slow quicksand—
They said Yeah, & lashed him to the tracks
O he had to hear that iron Siren's song

When it came hurtling & wailing out of the darkness
he had to sing along
had to embrace that Golgothan face
for it was late & he was headed home
He'd had too much to drink & he couldn't think
He just blew what he knew to be true
giving language to the black rose
raining all over it so it grows 

& no one wondered why
they just said Yeah, & let him fly

MANGIA ITALIANO WITH STEVE

–for Steven Pitters

south side cheap pasta eats
at mangia italiano waiting for the open mike performance bards
to begin their rites—home made noodles & healthy sauces,
salads, all you can eat, less than five bucks, a good deal
meal; restless energy of highschoolers on up
rollicking in the narrow aisles.
From my table through the front glass window I see
two teens lighting a joint; nerdy kids
burst through the aisles to hug & shriek at one another,
restless, sexual, a simulated high
to be not alone,
in not out—the first
poem's about a cop killer—"he did it, didn't give a shit"—
the twenty something poet is pushing it, screaming over the mike,
but no one's listening
too hard, some
not at all—
that poetry might be
the shove of personality; a slightly ill
control of the technological, not technical control
of the illogical; amplification not implication; instead of
an imposing electric voice
a voice imposing itself by electrically enhanced
volume, i.e., in my face—hadn't counted on
that direction—
the poet booms on, a poem
for "the homeless", for "love", for or against
the "suits" & "robots" swiveling in big chairs
in antiseptic offices; the particular
however, unseen—the reality

cops
     walk in, anonymously alerted, two,
a man & woman, crisply uniformed, each
only a few years older than the highschooler heads
they recoil, walkie-talkies blaring
not unlike the unheard poetry, but the cop
poem's over, the dope's already copped, the back room's empty
& in the sudden hush
                                                       no one knows nothing—& I say

X generation misfits, yuppie dropouts, big booming babies, aficionados
of some medicated get-a-life nostalgic sixties never-lived, some cool
jeans commercial, turn off
the TV in your brains—put out your own antennae—

            write about clinking coffee cups
& cops silencing poets—

the best line of the night's
from a musician playing/saying
"free music, the only music
that's worth it"

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Ashley CHAMBERS

Survival of the Passionate

I'd really like to tuck the two sets of five
deeper. Fill the fingernails with the brown
rocks, crumbling dirt and lava. Yes,
further than the core of the earth.

I've seen them with my own blue eyes
(matching the bubbling springs)
Oh love, these are blank stares
fading away from notes jotted.

Addressing more attention to them, (not winks)
the fluent sprinkles of spring water trickling
         down, come down
                                 further, and we can

taste them. Again and again,
until blackberry juice is once again
necessary.

But, dear God, I am not trying to insult
your pure water. (perfect even with fish)

I'm trying to survive
from fingers turning blue.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

Ira COHEN

For Roxanne & Marina Tsvetaeva

Awake in a dark room alone
Downstairs the Goddess of Love sleeps,
her jewels and makeup
in a box till the next performance
Memory dances in the net of illusion—
MahaMaya
& I unable to sleep,
feel myself less substantial,
turning into a memory
Perhaps it is better
to have the heart of a jackal—
I would not come again
to lie in a cradle
or to know the short weight
of earthly love.

Asha Pasha Vinir Mukta
(Freed from the fetters of hope)








Crayonic Message

Sitting with G at Accutreat Film Restoration
                                                      Services
                                                      Center
Gerard tells me:
"You know movie film shrinks, don't you?"
I'm scared enough without knowing any more.
Some people hide everything,
then die at 50 from smelling all the 
                                    chemicals
I'm on the verge of tears again
& I remember Jack Smith dying of AIDS
lying in the fetal position behind his
                                                door
after three days of not finding him at home
We're talking 6th floor walkup here—
& then the Blue of Derek Jarman's last film,
made when he was going blind,
falls over my heart
                                     closing my eyes.










On Monk's Mound w/Michael Castro
(or 13 Million Bucketfuls of Earth)

On the way to Cahokia Mounds
just outside St. Louis, a civilization
                        of sun worshippers
which existed there until the 12th century
just before Marco Polo met Kublai Khan
A billboard proclaims that the best solutions
come out of the Blue
Jewish Indians, we move through time
dreaming of smoke signals
& weighing the smoke as we go
All this is part of the Mississippi River
                                                culture
where once Paleo Indians stalked
mastodons & sabre tooth cats
Going back in time the arrow returns
to the bow & we watch as the bowman
                                          slowly fades
The braves still seem to be moving,
the wind blowing their hair
Standing on Monk's Mound
we come closer to the sky
Skin, fat, claws & bones certify our existence
We are living exhibits pondering
the meaning of pleasure in the afterlife
Sun, snake & seed chronicle the cycles
                                          of our sojourn
Looking into the rearview mirror
we can see that the end comes slowly
when the bounty is finally finished
In single file we leave one by one
Don't leave anything behind
because you won't be coming back
Even the old woman who was sitting
on the top step of the highest mound is gone.

Walking the G

I'm with the G walking up Broadway
to Tom's Diner (Thank God Seinfeld is not there)
Gerard is dreaming of meat loaf
We stop on the way to peruse 2nd hand books
on a card table
I say, "Gerard, take the Browning—really he's a
good poet.
Take it from me & Ezra Pound."
Gerard wonders if it is true,
but won't buy it even though I tell him by heart
my favorite lines from Epilogue to Asolando.
Not even "Baffled to fight better" can close the
                                                                deal.
He wants the Chicken Special for $5.25—
He doesn't know I had that yesterday.
"Take Suetonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars,
I'll pay half." He doesn't have the time,
he says he's reading Roland Barthes' 
The Responsibility of Form
"That French muffdiver?" say I,
"Do yourself a favor & read Suetonius.
Witty, sexy, full of all the latest scandals—
didn't you once say Rome was a riot in those days?"
No sale!
He goes for the Turkey Soup—
after offering it to me, "Fuck it," he says, "it's probably
good."
Forget about Caligula, Nero & Tiberius.
Raphael knew what the Spintriae were
when he was twelve & Gerard browsing a cheap
book on erotic seduction will never know.
That's what I like about him though,
that way you get both soup & salad—
what a deal & I buy both books even though
I probably have them under the refrigerator.

(What else can you write on a day like this?)

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Doug COLLINS

A Bank Robber's Dilemma

That thought crossed my mind
when the break-up came in Lexington
yelling, screaming, throwing $100 bills
at each other.
The idea we had when we began
robbing our first bank in Topeka
the process, the vision of getting our own
cash.
And no one gets hurt (everybody hold still)
we decided to climb up that economic ladder
of recovery with two sawed-off shotguns,
a bottle of Absolut and the teller in the trunk
then the run on the United States of America
(in green we trust)
driving a canary yellow '64 English rover
listening to the cassette sounds of Miles Dewey
Davis and Thelonious Sphere Monk.
Soaring through the midnight oil of Albuquerque
watching the water-colored landscape,
holding hands, till the microdot hit
doing the Halloween thing in New Orleans,
robbing people with our Bozo masks on
then catching Dr. John the Night Tripper,
on our way out the door.
Then things got serious.
You told me of your Polish/Czech/Slavic
background.
How your mom served the soup kitchen
for the Communist party
the police dragged her out of her home and
onto a stretcher, fed her mad chemicals,
no natural science could save her.
Pulled into a Shell station
saw tears in those champagne eyes
no woman ever looked as vulnerable as you
dropped Jimmy Valentine off in Brooklyn,
had to tie some business with a lady in Ft. Green
don't know what he sees in those girls
but sex is his drug
at the rest stops reading Dostoyevsky, Yeats, and Richard
Wright
grabbed a newspaper, the headlines read,
"Facts in Motion"
I knew we were on the right course!
You know that SWAT sharp-shooter was mad,
we—walking across market street in San Francisco
with the Catholic school girls and the crossing guard,
too risky to take aim.
However, that kid Timmy, who took the Polaroid in
Maryland
still scared me.
Regrets?!
Should not have done those farmers in Germantown
hell, Reagan did them first,
I just came behind.
So here we are some twenty odd years later
you're a patent attorney; myself, a professor of English
at a local community college
having lunch at the University of Dayton Law
Library
I gave you a wet kiss and touch your bosom
(no, the love is gone I'm seeing if you're wired)
what's that song wailing over and over in my head?
that's it, it's Dylan, "Positively 4th Street".

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Cid CORMAN

*

Is this that funny?

But what is this or that—man—

compared to nothing?

*

Baby—we've all jumped

from the pot into the fire. 

Ain't we something else?

*

SAY
THAT
AGAIN

Before there was a 

future all seemed promising—

but now knows better.

*

Who are we to die?

Who are we to live?

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Clayton ESHLEMAN

MORPHOLOGIES OF PARADISE (IV)

In life I am always, in some sense, under water.
I am in death, everwhat, in every stay.
The doubling doublicity of my situation
forgives my shark, goes after the fleeting
father fin of my own whirling blur,
as if I am in sestina, and the end words are
     the fate gale.
Ancestors talking through ancestors,
the deep talk some of us see as the essential poetry.
As if "here" is a cockpit, or hyena den,
in which a kind of god-rending takes place.

To get to the underflow, the dream lyre, the under-
lying nightmare apotheosis, in sync with this rational,
imaginal, short fuse: a grand notion!

What would occur were this chiasma to spark?
Would "I" become the magma of my cellared dwarves?

The glory of poetry is that it surfaces and stands
and slumps, ready for reader sacrifice—
the language of paradise enters dreams as
nonsense that as nonsense makes sense—
I am next to the serpentine tree
inside Eve and spitting Adam,
god is the sound of my self-intercourse,
I pose for Star Black—BOOM—awake to gray Ypsilanti shade,
the neighing silo of baying shades,
Caryl, and breakfast,
the inversion in which spitting Adam is shield.
I'm proud to be speechless by
someone who means more to me than I mean to myself.
Where did the language go?
Is "here" the poets' black hole?

To have a "kill hole,"
to be a Mimbres pot in the poverty of a great museum.
To be struck through, and intact,
oval, instrumental, without organs.

To build out from one's void gates,
to organize a psychic fortress
capable of defending and inspiring vision.
As a novice, I circumambulated Nijo Castle,
experienced the power of a four-fold Golgonooza.

I've staked my eel on a riverine non-solution:
Hart Crane is the skull
buried under my left pylon.

As for my selfhood, my cobra-spread parasol,
I made it out of split umbilicus.

Now I'm getting sleepy . . . the Chinon has begun to deconstruct . . .
I'm on my way to that fogbank
where the masters of
      thumb-heel mayhem are
combing out the human sin filth from Sedna's hair.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Gàbor GYUKICS

Trees of fallen leaves
 Diligently fight against
  Our human tempest

Ants on sunflowers
 Crawl to gather half-dying
  Seeds for the winter

Beautiful embrace
 Whispers angel-lip music
  Wild teardrops smile

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Phillip HAMMIAL

AN INCIDENT IN FAMAGUSTA

First, on a real table
a real pie, sliced (no way of knowing
how it got there). And then, as though
the two events were connected,
we found her in a bath bleeding
from both wrists. Too late, obviously,
to save her. Why? Because outside, in the canal,
a barge with her name—Margaret—on its stern
was passing under a bridge. It was being poled
by a man who was probably naked, naked
because it seemed that he should be (the mist
too thick to see if, in reality, he was). But what
we did know with complete certainty was that
the water in the canal had stopped flowing. It
was simply waiting. For as the Moor
was overheard to say: Pure Christo polls high
in the Famagusta District, which was obviously
where we were for where else would water, in sympathy
with a suicide, stop flowing? And wouldn't start again
until life resumed its normal course, i.e. until those
who discovered the body (the we in this narrative)
called the authorities, etc. and, incidentally, opened
the window that faced the canal & shooed out
the hundred or so birds that had been crashing against
the walls & windows of the little chamber of horrors
where she chose to end her days. Birds that, by rights,
should have been in a pie.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Ken HAPONEK

Aunt Dorothy & Uncle George in Vegas—9/77

Dorothy orders another Seven & Seven
from her solitary 2nd row table
wanting to give her extra time
& her kiss to this pelvis-creaming man
sliding her hips back & forth on the leather seat
trying to shimmy her beige stomach support silk
over long uncaressed hips

George watches from his barstool
nursing his dollar water
outraged he had to plunk down four of his winnings
forearms snuggled protectively around his quarter bucket
won 6 bucks off the slots
one-armed bandit my ass
called it quits
he checks his watch that woman
has 5 minutes and if she orders
one more clear & commie on my money

Dorothy watches Tom's lips near the microphone
& she swoons oh my goodness
if only Patty were here
wishing George would have given her the room key
for their separate yet adjoining suites
so she could show Tom
how she'd handle the mic

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Jack HIRSCHMAN

ELVIS IN ALBANIA

Writing a communist poem

glanced at the tiny straw basket

on Pierpaolo's desk.

Inside it there was a stamp

torn from an envelope to be saved.

It had a picture of Elvis Presley on it,

over the Shqiperia, which is the word

for Albania inside Albania.

Beside it: 60 Leke, the currency.

A suicide by drugs. Yes.

And just yesterday so free, so clear,

so together with all the world,

even if rebelliously alone.

Shqiperia, I lived in you then and you in me,

and a passport wasn't necessary.

Now that I can go to you and be like

a rotting magnolia in Mississippi,

I feel like a hillbilly with words

and the eagle a symbol of the vendetta

of the birds.

INCIDENT IN WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK

From the park bench

where I was licking

stamps between two

untalkable-to women

on International

Women's Day, I saw

suddenly (wishing

the woman on my right

keep her face in the

newspaper she was

reading; and the one

on my left keep on

gazing all the way

to the left), a man

in blue jumpsuit

like that of a

French worker, lying

on the spring grass

drunk (he must have

been) or whatever,

began pissing an arc

of golden pee, his

hand in his half-sleep

reaching down to hold

his cock as he lay

stretched out there

and the pee coming out

golden on the grass

in relief against the

blue of his jumpsuit

like the yellow and

blue flag of the com-

munity of new Europe

(which are the same

colors as the flag

of the Jews in Europe

during the Thirties—

and I couldn't help

seeing the foto on

the cover of the Leftist

magazine, Calendario, in

Italy a month ago, of

that blue flag with its

twelve yellow stars in

a circle and, in the

center—ironically, of

course—a swastika)—

anyway, by that time,

he was just about done,

the last drops raining

on his poor knuckles.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

André HOILETTE

from Jean Michel @ Fugazi, Basquiat series, no. 3

I. 

Dusky allegro
summer song,
love dukkies and white girls.

I watched him in the rain alleyway
Pound ghetto Sanskrit revolutions
(pirouetting in the mind) into the porous cement molecules.
His wet vision doesn't run.
He paints with hair;
tentacle dreadlock brushes,
some w  i   d     e
some t
          h
          i
          n, bruises concrete with pictograms.

Who needs Andy Warhol, Fuck him! 

II. 

The band is good;
they've tattooed anxiety and teen angst
into the mood over the stage.
Some kid got his dreadlock ripped out
in a fight earlier.
Basquiat gets solemn
as he timidly rolls it between his toes. 

But Jean Michel is overlooked
and his cartwheels R' lost in a sea of passive Saxon fury.
He resorts to drinking lipstick
and it is melting on his charcoal lips,
sliding down the tract of his throat
into his belly,
pools of coagulant collecting.
His mouth is red and dripping "MURDER!"
but he is no prettier,
no more recognizable.
This,
This!
Is nigger artiste isolation.

                                        —1/21/99

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Vicki HUDSPITH

Academic Detox

When you forget what you learned
And remember what you know

Cover

I cover you

With hands that

Travel

Over easy elegance

Heated palms

That make their way

To the embers

And hover

Like burning magnets

Between your ribs

And heart

The Ant Colony

Ants are not fond of margarine. Like us they prefer
Butter. They do not have cholesterol problems
Because as yet they do not own TVs. For centuries
They have toiled in order that they might be able to
Take a night off and watch the Northern Lights which
Are their version of canned laughter. They hate picnics
but feel compelled by folklore to attend them
Or at minimum do a drive by chicken leg grab. Their
Queen is a pain in the ass. They don't love her but
Without her they would be common, so they serve her.
She is an insatiable nymphomaniac but they don't
hold that against her trying instead to stay busy with work.
Forgotten ancient languages have been genetically
Imprinted in them at birth and they say things they
Don't understand. Like us they often make bad marriages.
But because of their outstanding physical prowess
And humility there is seldom cause for divorce. They
Haven't read the great philosophers but they know them
Innately. They love the flowers of Spring and lacking
Perspective eagerly run all over them. They
Are much like us. They are nudists but because Puritanism
Has not invaded their genetic code, it does not
Affect their work ethic and each ant loves their own body.
Therefore they don't care about go-go boots and
Sandals. Like us, Ants are driven by their hearts and pretend
That it is all in the name of duty. Ants are never impulsive.
When they laugh, the gardens of old maids tremble. Ants
Love to dance but lack a sense of rhythm so
They gave it up when Homer scorned them. Rain is their
Sensuality. It makes them feel delirious and late. Quivering
And running between rain drops to their fate.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Paola IGLIORI

SYNCHRONICITY

i looked at when the Futurist Manifesto was
1909
1999
i thought of my grandfather, Ulysses, at Fiume with Marinetti, D'Annunzio,
and of the other ancestor Federico Da Montefeltro & the
beginning of the Renaissance!

i looked at the energy the Futurist Movement brought to the century the
energy of change
charged with the wrenched blowing of a stifling stifled body
a tortured torturing energy of laceration on the way to laser-ration, the
machine projecting forward & the human anguished cry mixing
with the roar of mechanisms

foretelling the fight between things that had always connected
: like ART & SCIENCE

look at art
intuitively manifesting the mold through the rendering of the essential
weave of the People—the living essence—
putting the imprint of that essence out in the ether—
forming the mold then to be filled by multiform spirit
and SCIENCE
being the first to follow:
look at the mosaic of the Middle Ages in which the quivering image is
made of many unique different texels and each texel alone is just a
fragment
all this telling us HIS-STORY . . .
Then Giotto creating the concept of depth, of perspective, by mirroring the
vision coming out from the eye of the viewer, for the first time the
individual as center point of the mosaic,
that evolution created the new mold that Copernicus could then fill
realizing that conventional reality after that looked too flat!

Then perspective started to snowball . . . With man self-elected master of
creation . . .

THE PRICE?

The use of tribal motifs seems to be a spear hurled by Picasso in his
opening attack upon the walled citadel of perspective and causality.
Umberto Boccioni, an Italian Futurist summed up the feelings of the new
century artists when in 1911 he declared
"We are the primitives of an unknown culture . . . "

In order to "get" the formidable concepts of the new physics, it is first
necessary to let go of the belief that continuous linear space underlines the
objective world, that time is an ever-flowing constant stream outside human
affairs, that the world exists in the tessellation of the perspectivist grid.
All these ingrained beliefs were part of the conventional
nineteenth century paradigm.
They are not, however, integral to the next higher dimension of space-time
or the alogical aspects of quantum mechanics.
"THE WESTERN ARTIST DISCOVERED A NEW WAY TO SEE THE
WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF THE ARTISTS OF AFRICA &
OCEANIA BEFORE PHYSICS BEGAN TO UNDERSTAND A COMMON
BOND BETWEEN ITSELF AND A WORLDVIEW LONG EXPRESSED
IN TRIBAL CULTURES" "ONE COULD SAY THAT THE IDEAS OF
MODERN PHYSICS ABOUT SPACE & TIME WHEN CLOTHED WITH
CONCRETE PSYCHICAL FORM APPEAR AS SHAMANIC"

T I M E   I S   N O W

The war has been going on, the broken circuits and the natural and
unnatural disasters and genocides of all kinds have taken place
only after the living through of the lacerations, the survivors connect
wounded warriors with heightened speeded grooved connections

this new dance of erotic connection begins
erotic creation, the attraction that moves the planets
technology mirroring hu-manical hard drive
and the circuits start buzzing,
you can choose the speed, activate the links, decode, and encode, and . . .
"flow the blood" the DJ says . . .
. . . where to?

speed through the fusion points, bounce back hitting the nose
that damp vital spot, old sniffing tool,
on those silent, dark, rubber walls
that bounce you back over and over . . .
or on those sharp knives that pierce always in those dripping live
festering wounds
. . . where to?

your tools sharp, but distorted
in confusion between torture and nurture
. . . where to?

the energy coursing leaps out of the narrow gorge, creates multi-pathways
across the broken circuits and . . . GO

. . . SHIFTS to the tingling hot slow glowing rising grooving overflow

HOW CAN YOU TELL WHERE YOU ARE?

beyond the fragmented mirrors of vivid dancing reflections in confused
fierce struggle?

THE FLOW AND THE LINKS SHOW YOUR ATTENTION WHERE TO 
POLARIZE
until the magnetic attraction of the creative flow itself
speeds up, deepens the groove, burning all that needs to be burned
but struggle spreads like fire on fuel
fire always burns but there are different kinds of fire

in the shifting fine tuning of discrimination,
elusive dance of shadow and light
echoes the laughter of a sacred trickster

FEEL AGAIN

where's it at?
constriction and flow
death urge and life urge
torture or nurture?

they rhyme
but take a different line

feeeel
IS IT FINE?

there is erotic constriction and erotic flow

POLARITY?
the choice is yours . . .

is it?

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Vincent KATZ

Fresh-Faced Beauty

I wandered lonely on East Broadway
bought a watch battery and so
knew the time again
a mist enveloped dusk
crowds thinning as I ascend Bowery
lights twinkle on Manhattan Bridge
neons begin their significance
crowds empty by Spring
a deathless feel as of past springs
so calm and hushed abandoned bank
but death is in the smells of rotting food
and tenements' blank appeal
a friend just stepped out of my life
permanently, no big deal, disillusioned, he said
with art, no money, he waters plants
in a hotel, will die sad in a room
or ecstatic on brain juice
the city dies again
though sky maintains a pastel balance
his watertowers rise over
new generations of Loisiders
young girl walking dog by lounge's glitter
club's itinerant appeal
but you knew all those changes
kept pace through generation's
ache, that somber trust repealed
old query clinging to a wet mattress
singing "aloft, aloft, afloat"
in a city where people walk and walk
their pants tightening, and you observe
crescendo of night mist, Chrysler sirens
now looming through Cooper branches
up to the university, death of mind
but hope is near and trust

and you too near so distant
hung up without emotion
empty goodbye echoing
as insane illumination
book finale "The End"
the foot walks on to hoped-for grace
writing, a turn on the street of poetry
everyone telephones, cigarette, calmly
bodies walk calling alone

Air             

            to Yvonne

It floats,
or you do,
up where
size is. 

Doesn't do
anything,
a blurred
cloud, later

perfect pink
over pond
you sink
a moment

fails, you
are there,
too. High,
you fall

over sight's
abandon,
prism in
weather

above, in,
seasons,
for one,
for again.

Mexico City

After striving for decades to ascend
Never before have so many
Come along until the day before
Half the people in the city

Half the arrests were tawdry
Single-minded remedies of taught
Criticism, to deride, manifest
Scorch at the top of the map

Wry imagist mumbling, hankies
At rest mimicking rose-colored
Thighs at dream in west high
Search everywhere for shimmer

Wrecked pleading noticeably
Aware, antecedent presence
Reared pregnant pressure's
Half-mast design curve mask

The city smiles and condescends
To the minister, who also, like them,
Has decided to take some time off,
Reaching to the sly in dark tide.

summer

sitting in a dull town
trying to notice life

staying inside a room
listening to an opera

outside grass and birds
a breeze blows leaves

on tree branches without
notice day passes sun

reddens sky sits water
placid on body go down

Twist

dodged assimilate
attire attach.

watched whistle
work remnant.

style research
assist penury.

rest increment
retire spent.

awry reason
reckon alit.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Scott KEENEY

What Is

after Tzara's "Route"



this path in the woods that separates us
as I reach across it
roses bloom in place of fingertips
while the other side of the path is pushed
so far into the distance
it is the rose that circles around you
as you walk—less and less knowingly—away

Vault

after Tzara's "Volt"

the skyscrapers slant against the oblique skies of sunset
cars turn down one-way alleys never to be heard from again
the pigeons obstruct the scenic views of the park
where the most hospitable properties hide behind the branches
and the squirrels like leaves somersault to the dirt

you walk but there's another who walks in your footsteps
taking his own temperature every five minutes
and reciting the times tables to twelve
wearing a flannel robe that reeks of smoke and mouthwash
earmuffs deaf to the curdling sirens streaming by

the city nauseous with catcalls and flashing lights
its many eyes like saucepans boiling over
spills its tears into the sewers and subterranean abodes
dreaming of the meat of the sterile plains and the way
a kind of lava polishes the apocalyptic temptations of the sky

finally lost like a keepsake in the history of an obscure rose
your face in my mind and my mind in this city
I roam the narrow streets that surround you
while you yourself roam other more impressive streets
that must surround something

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Jack KIMBALL

Sonnet

You hate yourself at the gigaplex, your authenticity
bulked up on Milk Duds, your “conceptual” leaning out of
storylife, out of cash and this, the cheesy drapery
carefully separated and intensified with mouthwash,
the bloodhounds apprised of a collared leg on the floor.

That's Smudge,

Pluto, to you—
he slants the flow and glues, messes it. Give
this, silly . . . these unwound and red knuckles
start it out . . . working our slaves at the elbow.

Christ, is that vicarious? —could be, but
the sky gets said by the sullen hand, each finger
boasting and accelerating, others.

This registers small and great numbers on white serotype.
Infiltration happens. The outdoors made compact in drag
bunts to the confiers of sums, tears' climbing and descent,
sympathy with the self.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

Frank KUENSTLER

A TRANSLATION

Again they refuse me a passport
but I will find a way; a way
To travel from thought, my harbor.
I can always sail away.

All countries issue welcome, greetings;
no visas, no guards, no customs shed.
The wind has given me giant wings,
& there's music against my forehead.

My shadow visits boulevard and slum;
It skips across brisk villages;
Each word makes its way back to freedom,
& a song emerges, translated.

back to volume two poésie contents       volume two home

back to archive

William LEVY

FOURTH AND FIFTEEN

The penalty
for eschewing
celebrity when
one had a chance.
The penalty
for not becoming
an usurer’s apprentice
a book reviewer
a rock ‘n’ roll biographer
a liberal spokesperson
for the
Ministry of Propaganda
a curator of phlegm.
The penalty
for writing oneself
out of any chance of
university placement,
for not merely
refusing awards
but making oneself
unworthy of receiving them
is marinating in this
Kingdom of Kulaks
a gezellig icy
corner of northwest
Europe’s Grub Street
as a lap-top bombardier
editing books about
Incest in the Netherlands
Sex Torture of Political Refugees
Necrophilia with the Unknown Soldier.
The touchdown
for being a
shy populist
is radio.