Thursday, May 29, 2014
J.P. Dancing Bear
Scaramouch
“…it seemed that the scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful
ascendancy over almost everybody in the
Jeroboam…”
Punch: What have got there, sir? …In your hand?
Scaramouch: A fiddle.
The sky breaks apart and of what falls,
scatters, becomes the sea, cheered on
: a fanfare of sails flapping.
You cannot remember the tail splashing
water : evaporated into a cloud :
you throw your hands up to the sky
: so certain of His work.
Your body is clown white : your heart
: the moon rising
from the ocean’s side, wrapped
in three missing pages from your bible,
yellowing with age.
You are God’s comedian though
only the gulls ever laugh.
What's left to you : memories
: bread from another life :
a beaten dog : years training
the fiddle.
The waves are alive : sparkling
dark wraiths : greener than your
envy : fear whispers : crew is
creaking planks : you no longer
listen : too busy preaching : spin
the gospel : slap the cross :
book slam hand : a lapping ocean.
Forget the stars : Callisto eyeing
the north : forget cruelty : scar
and mended bone : aching
with the change of weather.
You are the Chosen : Messenger :
Puppet of the pulpit. Leave fishwives
to their gossipy shores : God still punishes
: flesh of the flesh of one apple. Think not
of happiness : of pleasure : flog it
out of your mind : let the tempests
wash it away : you know you’ve always been
right.
The gulls punch through cumulous
musings of the Lord : hover-cry
parablic tragedies over men :
O thrown shadow : O harlequin
: no one heeds your warning :
soon they’ll beg to repent
: throw your dagger words :
curse the captain : his ship
to the white, angry tongue of God
***
***
Charles Taylor
Pigs
What do I know about pigs? You might ask, said Vampire. Well, I am not always in immediate need of blood—or chasing humans. My first acquaintance with pigs was on a family farm in Illinois, where the pigs kept chasing m,e wanting to sniff and playfully nip at my leather shoes.
Perhaps they picked up on some wonderful smell left over from the curing of the leather, which neither humans or vampires are able to pick up. Pigs’ noses are much longer and thicker, like dogs, and no doubt much superior at detecting odors. I had to laugh at the situation, a pack of pigs after a vampire just beginning to experience the rumblings of hunger in the belly.
Farms are generally far from the law and from prying eyes—good places for vampires to operate. Well, I didn’t get any supper that night, but I did begin my long love affair with those smart and social animals we have misnamed pigs.
I knew a pig once that lived on a lovely beach in Mexico. I have a photograph of him singing to the full moon, which he did often. Pigs are stuffed in small pens and left to defecate on themselves. A pig’s skin is highly sensitive and often lacks shade. They are forced to cover themselves in mud to protect their pink skin from horrible sunburn.
Whenever I’m working a farm, after I’ve supped, I will always set pigs free from their pens. I can see in their eyes a gratefulness, and love to watch them move into the fields under the wide stars, noses to the ground, searching out squash, cucumbers, green beans—whatever crops they can find.
***
The Dreams Do Come
A beast holds Poet upside down with a hand so large the creature can wrap his fingers around Poet’s two ankles. The beast is eyeballing Poet, and with a heavy machine manipulated carefully, removing, with tiny tweezers, all Poet’s eyelashes.
When the beast is done he’ll return Poet to his metal cage at Plato 666, the metal barn of steel cages where poets are stacked one on top of another. The poets can get their heads through their cages’ bars, and eat from a conveyor belt carrying scraps of meat and vegetables sweeping slowly before them.
The beasts do the eyelash plucking every six months, when the poets’ lashes have grown fully back. Still, Poet is as scared, as a child petrified by an imaginary monster under the bed. Poet doesn’t know for sure what his eyelashes get used for, but he suspects they get crushed into a light oil that’s needed for the miniature gears in Nano robots. Lashes are too small for stuffing—the elder down that’s plucked from living geese to put inside pillows. The beasts are convinced that the eyelashes of poets make the finest oil, as a result of the poet’s sensitivity.
The poet’s worried because he does not know how long, with all the plucking, his lids will hold together to create more lashes. If they fail the poet could get chopped up and cooked up like chicken friend steak--or killed and tossed into the trash, to be buried underground to ferment into agricultural fertilizer.
On the other hand, the poet has never felt so important.
***
***
Friday, May 23, 2014
Sue Beere
A Matter of Time
Scene: The interior of a train. LIGHTS come up FULL on Woman seated next to the
window, her hat on the seat next to her. A MAN enters.
MAN
Excuse me, but is this your hat?
WOMAN
Yes, it is.
MAN
(picking it up)
Really quite a remarkable hat. A friend of mine had a hat something like that once. She
was a tap dancer, liked to do "Tea for Two." You know that song. It goes:
(singing and dancing)
Picture you upon my knee
Tea for two and two for tea
Me for you and you for me
alone.
(moving towards her and more seriously)
Nobody near us to see us or
hear us
(stops singing)
and so on. Yes. Really a most remarkable hat. I think I know where they make these. I
think I visited the place. It was in the country. There were young girls working there.
Sewing on the beads, making flowers. They were very young. It was hot. It was summer.
Some had taken off their dresses and were working in their slips. I remember watching
their soft round arms moving slowly at their work. I could see the outlines of their breasts
through the thin cotton. They were half naked--because it was so hot you see. They were
half naked. (Pause) Quite a voluptuous brim.
WOMAN
Oh, it's just a hat. It's the hat I always wear when I travel. Because if I lean my head back
(Their eyes meet) ....
If I lean my head back against the cushions of the chair...then it's the kind of hat that
doesn't get crushed. That is, it does get crushed but it doesn't matter if it gets crushed.
You just puff it out again...very easily...and it goes right back to its original shape. It
resumes its original shape.
MAN
Yes. (Pause) My hat is different . Rather expensive. Imported from Russia. So cold in
that little town. so cold, that sometimes in the winter when there isn't any wood to make
fires, to keep warm, the peasants--very simple people--dig holes under their houses and
huddle there together. It's very dark, deep down there, very snug and happy and warm--
usually: But sometimes something happens between them--a man and a woman perhaps
and then they struggle and fight and tear at each other in their frenzy. (Pause) Sometimes
I don't wear my hat.
WOMAN
I see you're wearing it today.
MAN
Yes, I'm wearing it now. I wear it when want to. I want to wear it now.
WOMAN
Will you be coming to your stop soon? Will you be getting off?
MAN
No. No, I'll be going the whole way.
WOMAN
It's not very crowded, is it? The train.
MAN
No. It's less crowded than it was before. Soon there won't be anyone left-- except us, of
course.
WOMAN
Yes.
MAN
No, no one left. The further on you go the less crowded it gets.
WOMAN
Then it's just a matter of time, isn't t?
MAN
Yes.
(BLACKOUT)
***
***
Monday, May 19, 2014
Lanny Quarles
The High Stone Sawtooth of Double Excess
you are Mr. Fang’s lover
you, and
in the bright shower of useless days
which wends its spray from down off the mountain
Chuang Tzu's carnival honeysuckle rose
a gnarling
standing tall for sprawl
to block the path
whose face wood be
a would end tornado
the tour nadiring
around the bends
rising too fast to be scene
and save its samples
they confer
around an unholy magnet
no will confess
tides
the many meaning one
in sicknames
courtesy
clue
what towers oft
is in the same tribe
the black sun
which the strange romantic
touched a stick to
poking it to test
are you in there
old thing
and all the old coins
have pictures on them
of that ugly old stick
which makes of repellent larvae
the beautiful forms of words
sewn deeply in the skin
thou shalt have nothing before me
thou shalt have me only
unto the end
this rare punctum
period
like an all devouring
whole.
***
***
John M. Bennett
***
speeding
blaze your name in
heridance em
blazoned in the
wind beneath your
table will a sing
le signature sta
pled was the
ash empacted
in the corners
is a sodden
frenchfry where’s
the stool your
dad’s direction w
here’s the air
connected to yr
dict ionary was a
dumpster b
urning in the alley
wet down the b lock
the real moon
***
back across the door
when it works the sw
eaty fork instills a
rain will worked the
faucet forked and
still the fork instills
and sp linters ,cha
sing what the arm
has re ached the wall
of cups and inches tr
embling on the tine
to go your pants in
habit was that d
irty bowl reme
mbers in the sink
the bowl the work
abandons inistilled
and stt ill
r ice .
***
tat
fin por fin por
fin por fin por fin
por fin por fin por
fin por fin por fin
por fi foco n por
fin por fin por fin
por fin por fin por
fin por fin por fin
por fin po
r fin por
il
***
the rent
flickery thru the if off
if flicker crawler’s crus
ted in flopping news was
pills and top ,off your
wheezy sleep’s was
pesantez is if ,when
off will crystalize
ligera mente was ,if
off ,the Thursday
swallows in my sing
ing c ash ,if off ,en
hancement while the
bocas estentorizadas
silenced in the street
cadáveres son ifoff
if off
b ulb b
***
***
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Felino A. Soriano
query notion clarity
gray morning, this one
gregarious in its whispering clothing,
curtain-behind the voice of its
presence
not yet vertical in
the awakening portion of these bodies’ abbreviated
translations . . .
why a sort of similarity to
the nakedness of a birth truly witnessed, each
sound of smile serenades the burgeoning of
wait
of what appearance labels
and the watchers—
they’ve music inward
swing saluting rhythm
hearing, viewed-full extract
and the whole of this morning’s elongated extending,
remember ?
***
***
Friday, May 2, 2014
Allen Bramhall
24 Visits to the Nail Salon
The Inquisition resembles framed debate, with flowers
transmuted into toads. Toads are all right, fictions with
tongues. But we must remain cognizant that climate
change and claptrap produce farms. Why is the big
unknown.
Benches of grey strokes produce futile farms. Fluency
exercises create our future. We aren't tractors, we are
men and women, perhaps a few lorn children, okay some
dogs, cats, a dolphin or two, some wax figurines, a bit of
lint, the point is, we create meaning just by standing by
as time passes and then passes again.
This is the signal moment, complete with commas. Semi-
colons mark the moment when something included could
be left out, straightway to the center of backing away.
That's why we bully children.
When not bullying children or implying immigrants or
examining our inner lint, we have the scrumptious duty
to appear focal. The farm must feed the billion openings
that may say Yes to the right No. It's a program or
problem, whatever.
Meaning
produces candlestick
wainscoting in a brilliant
littoral waistcoat. Wow means
faddish brilliance, same as
children. Our best pants tell us everything.
***
***
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Ric Carfagna
from Symphony #10
Prologue
This light
that has gathered
is intrinsically other
forming obdurate angles
from a late afternoon sun
where the awakening eye observes
changes in a burgeoning field
the growth of many days
of what is felt in the heart
to be something
other than tares
something of substance
viscerally grasped
an ontology of belief
fears or fate
or a leaf
suspended
in a spider’s web
a movement
through a galaxy’s
inner recesses
…
“as if we instinctively know”
the reason finalities arise
a continuum’s quanta
to define
an anthropocentric logic
…
and is it
enough to know
what is unsullied
is unmanifest
a Gnostic forest
lost among trees
a path to differentiate
signal from noise
stalemate from semaphore
identity from anonymity
death from…
V
And this ocean becomes
an indeterminate factor
a random outflow
of occurrence
on a landscape
where only names survive
and where dust follows
a wind’s nomadic trance
through time’s diminishing wake
…
and speak to this
as a moment stolen
from the pendulum’s swing
from the prismatic labyrinth
of photonic entanglement
and from mass given
to a consciousness unfolding
within the immateriality of thought
…
and who can pierce the veil
which occludes yet reveals
subtle rendering of a faceless deity
the halcyon wind
of passing angelic wing
and a universe forming
in the blink of an averted eye
…
and now
the moon
at perihelion
the burnished shadow
of a future made present
and of Orion’s glittery sword
rising behind the grass-blade meadow
and the gun-metal-grey skyline’s expanse
XXVIII
And to not speak
of death
as occurring
outside this room
of florid wallpaper patterns
and a glass vase
holding a plastic rose
where the weight of gravity
is decay
and the evidence surrounds
this incontrovertible conclusion
that blood does not flow
from the stone god’s
heart and limbs
and the intimate faith
is desolation
calling into
a cognitive void
calling into
a landscape
set ablaze
leaving embers
to contemplate
a shell
removed
into a corridor
of sleep
where revelation is
a cresting ocean wave
and desire is hidden
in transcendental recesses
untorched by human hands
LI
And the eye is an ocean
“as we moved in circles
against the tide”
losing a focus
blurred by weaker harmonies
resonating beneath
a turbulent skin
…
“and we noted
distinct features”
losing their identity
in the proximity
of a canvas
portraying an abstract landscape
…
“and we recalled
Rothco’s metaphysical vision”
one note
on a stave
harboring
a celestial music
of the spheres
one image
emerging
from a cognitive fog
and one eye
observing
in isolation
how the ocean moves
in cyclical pulsations
refusing to be contained
by one species
seeking order
or by one mind
which ebbs and flows
asymmetrically
across a windless strand
Interlude III
Time exists
as a primordial abstraction
present in the cellular structures
which materialize
as a physical world
…
and the sea
brings life
through an open doorway
brings perception
through time
leaving spaces
where dust collects
in rooms of small hours
where ghosted appendages
trace polygons
on a glazed pane
…
and winter is
what is
left behind
the fragments
of a sculpture destroyed
a perspective
through a bricked up window
and pages torn
from a book of days
LXXX
And she sleeps
in a cloistered room’s
intimate enclosure
a shaft of sunlight
moving across
an ocean
at dawn
a sparrow
in a hedgerow
and the spiral geometries
of fractal time waves
hidden in corners
and unfathomed by the eye
and she wakes
from her dream
to an insular expanse
peopled with gelatinized wraiths
and nameless faces
martyred torsos
lying beside
the iron cathedral’s gate
and a song thrush
preening itself
on the prow of a barque
littered with
moldering autumn leaves
…
and there are shadows
of what is not
left behind
residual debris
coiffed from a collective memory’s
primordial wreckage
weeds in a field of lilies
reflecting the sun
on a north facing slope
the silent ending of many lives
hidden by lunar penumbral drift
and sentient breath drawn through
dimensional curvatures in lifeless space
…
and she wakes
from her dream
recognizing a self
as a terminal entity
abandoned to a nomadic anonymity
a mirror’s blank stare
and the disembodied dead
materializing
as voiceless gods
passing from sight
and returning to dust
XCVIII
“And we observed”
where the scars formed
and understood
how the eye is
the maker of illusion
and how the day follows
like numbers
removed from an equation
…
“and we saw the flower’s bloom”
desiccated and
black with age
sag and drop
from its spindly limb
and the wind
morphing the surface
of the vernal pool
…
“and the apparent illusion
in all external motion
giving rise to the internal
contemplation
that essence exists
apart from an ontological entity
determining its being”
…
and at mid-day
the eye follows
light through an aperture
each photon
a distinct act
of inarticulate will
…
“and some muse”
that a higher power
predestines
all things physical
yet stands
apart
in impermeable distance
…
“and some formulate”
the outcome
as discrete variables
in an indeterminate equation
…
“and we observed”
how the wounds heal
and scars form
“and we interpreted”
what is before
the eye
as mere shadow
casting what is
isolated and abandoned
on the rising tides of deeper seas
***
***
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