methodist revolt/marxist historian

methodist revolt

my father had
sidewhiskers like karl marx,
but i was not allowed to know
who marx was. i sat in that pew every
sunday buying and selling my soul and
he preached in a loud voice that
hurt my head.

my father died in 1958. the whole town
burned down stores and made
neo-surrealist drawings. i
sat in my treehouse and read
john 14 and burned holy candles.
(someone told me the candles were
holy. i burned my fingers lighting them.
someone said candles could be holy.)

two weekends after the funeral,
you danced with me.

i think you taught me a lesson,
and,
in retrospect,
i didn't want to learn it.

marxist historian

i love you because of how
your glasses wobble on your face;
and your wide mouth
allures me.

i used to think you were dispensable,
like the paper napkins that we never
used at my house
and God can raise sons of abraham
from these stones.

my soul is neo-surrealist
and my soul is neo-surrealist
but your soul is wholly unusual.
build me a spaceship-timemachine,
take me forward 400 years into another galaxy,
and help me write a marxist history.

we make a bed of
stones and paper napkins
and i
take off your marxist glasses.

Kino-Eyes, part III

Kino-Eyes, part II

Kino-Eyes, part I

Canto IV
Under the delineated dark stars,
she sang softly to herself. You could
see the way she thought, the burden of it
on her ribcage, the quiet weight of it on
her lungs. Her breathing came shallow.
You could see the way she thought, and yet
the thoughts were hidden. She laid her careful body
on the dark tangle of grass like a forest in a fairy-tale,
and she looked up at the black sky as deep as time and space
and the stars, and you could not read her mind.

Canto X
But the I-beams
but the crack of steel on the
bones of arms,
but what are you
to make of your own lack of
belief?
But under the cracked shelter
there is a crying among the ranks of the women
and a hollow feeling in the chests of the men.
Every limb will be snapped,
Every vein bled dry,
but what of
your own lack of belief?

Canto IV
Softly, ungregarious,
she laid her head on his shoulder.
It was not what she wished for, his shoulder,
and for many days she had kept to herself.
Perhaps he was the answer to those quiet questions
she had not asked. After all, he did fit against her
very well, and if she could sleep there,
perhaps she could forget the he who had
come before, and how her head had dragged
over the spikes of his shoulder.
Softly she let him lead her and wound her for now.

Canto X
If the sun were less pitiless,
If the moon less bloodred
If the earth less hard and cracked
If the sea less swallowing and hateful
Or if the teeth of the animals were not so bared
Or if the arms of the people were not so laden with gunmetal lashes,
Then I were not.

5word carryon: phantom fronthall

question
discouragement
quite
open
more
--
when I look at you, I think things that are
quite open; the way oranges roll along the countertop,
the way stories I half-told roll
across my tongue--
things required and under
the glass-topped table two people

hide in awkward wedges. if you
need a little more discouragement, I can provide that
for you, or if you would prefer to be quite ignored, I can
give you that.

if you were quite alone in an open space like
a white field or an airstrip, and if I
suddenly appeared quite close to you, my breath
trickling over the warmer places of the air like
fog down stairs; if the real reason for sewing shut
the doors of the phantom fronthall had to do with
your answer to that-- then do you suppose

we could more or less settle on the correct proportion
of discouragement and blank eyes?

..

..

open question.

--

are you a poet? ask me about 5word carry-ons.
(lascivious/rearguard/until/tote/green)

merry christmas from vintage jane and bob dylan

i'm standing there watching the parade
feeling combination of sleepy john estes.
jayne mansfield. humphry bogart
mortimer snerd. murph the surf and so forth
erotic hitchhiker wearing japanese
blanket. gets my attention by asking didn't
he see me at this hootenanny down inpuerto vallarta, mexico
i say no you must be mistaken. i happen to be one of the Supremes
then he rips off his blanket an' suddenly becomes a middle-aged druggist.
up for district attorney. he starts screaming at me you're the one.
you're the one that's been causing all them riots over in vietnam.
immediately turns t' a bunch of people an' says if elected,
he'll have me electrocuted publicly on the next fourth of july.
i look around an' all these people he's talking to are carrying blowtorches
needless t' say, i split fast go back t' the nice quiet country.
am standing there writing WHAAT? on my favorite wall
when who should pass by in a jet plane but my recording engineer?
"i'm here t' pick up you and your lastest works of art.
do you need any help with anything?''

(pause)

my songs're written with the kettle drum in mind
a touch of any anxious color. unmentionable. obvious.
an' people perhaps like a soft brazilian singer . . .
i have given up at making any attempt at perfection
the fact that the white house is filled with leaders that've
never been t' the apollo theater amazes me.
why allen ginsberg was not chosen t' read poetry at the inauguration boggles my mind
if someone thinks norman mailer is more important than hank williams that's fine.
i have no arguments an' i never drink milk.
i would rather model harmonica holders than discuss aztec anthropology
english literature. or history of the unitednations.
i accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me.
i know there're some people terrified of the bomb.
but there are other people terrified t' be seen carrying a modern screen magazine.
experience teaches that silence terrifies people the most . . .
i am convinced that all souls have some superior t' deal with
like the school system, an invisible circle of which no one can think
without consulting someone
in theface of this, responsibility, security, success mean absolutely nothing. . .
i would not want t' be bach. mozart. tolstoy. joe hill. gertrude stein or james dean
they are all dead.
the Great books've been written.
the Great sayings have all been said
I am about t' sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes.
though I don't understand too well myself what's really happening.
i do know that we're all gonna die someday
an' that no death has ever stopped the world.
my poems are written in a rhythm of unpoetic distortion
divided by pierced ears. false eyelashes
subtracted by people constantly torturing each other.
with a melodic purring line of descriptive hollowness --
seen at times through dark sunglasses an' other forms of psychic explosion.
a song is anything that can walk by itself
i am called a songwriter. a poem is a naked person . . .
some people say that i am a poet

(end of pause)

an' so i answer my recording engineer
"yes. well i could use some help in getting this wall in the plane"

rocking the 5-7-5

am in love with haikus today. never wrote them before now.
--
exercise#chinatown
she had even more
character than the red wooden
sign hung overhead

phylum and suicide
in the lab I think
in green, forgetful of your
multipurpose blade.

hyperion
I like to pretend
that your wildly flashing pen
does not inspire me.

African Jazz
when you look my way
my body turns African;
I think in rhythms.

exercise#18- vienna
you could tell by how
he watched her mouth moving-
he thought it a waltz.

Brooksie and Ginsberg
I never thought blood
from my lips could fall down so
like tomato juice.

exercise #76- costa rica
search a bit harder;
I know you'll find cane sugar
hidden in the trash.

dryad's recall

I had forgotten the smell of dying leaves...

I had forgotten until my feet passed over the crumpled brown fallouts, bruising out the smell.

I had forgotten how long this had lain in me like winter.

I have been waiting many days for that smell to come back to me;

I have been watching for the change of color, the bite of air, for many days.

I had forgotten how I wish to shed my leaves, to burn out like a candle in an old forest.

It is my home, the dying in damp brown hollows like familiar haunting hands,

I have been waiting all the burning summer to die so cool and dark.

And every nymph remembers the Golden Ages; I recall the Grey-and-Brown.

I had forgotten leaf mold streaked down my arms, damp dark leaves against my neck.

The cold, dry sun spreads it's light out;

this is the man I will lie down with.

28.07.07

just around your ankles, can you feel the starpricks of
cold cold beautiful water and the glassdrops from the
blades of grass trickle onto you?
--
those eyes, swept around with cat-brown liner-
too young for what they bear? well, they're old enough,
old enough for dragon-taming and looking back to Egypt.
the neat cool rows of metal-and-glass that we enter and
animate. see life, see life walking up and down the keysof
the green accordion, resting on bundled herbs and bakery bread.
those hands, comforting and grey-brown holding up
small empires and letting fall pretty gestures, describing,
circumscribing. persistant and the snap of a camera like
teeth closing around a captured image. that's not my face
you just sunk your teeth into, camera, but I can look it
in the eye and see laughter in it, anyways. see life crawling
with ants in the grass- will we pull our legs away, brush it
aside? you remember opression and harmony and life sits
contentedly on the stairs as we talk in the sun.
that head, gleaming like wood against my jawbone,
that head (that head I half-hold inside my own) circles like an eye.
we are very brave and
we are very glad.
--
look you, look you, look well the oddessy,
look well we are not who they decided we would be.
look you, I am not a surrendered vase, you are not
a thoughtless beauty. yours is not a thoughtless beauty.
I have not mustered so little passion as that, to wake up
and look 'round and recall music and cinema in my beating
soul like a bracelet on the ankle of a walking girl,
like beads of water on the tired ankles of walking girls.

--

i would dedicate this, but i think you'll all clue in. consider this the voice of doom.

photo credit to mrs. strauss.

the velocity of souls in green fields of water under the hands of barren iron people

eyes on the sky between
Mars and Saturn,
eyes on the ground,
.....black dirt,
.........grey stone,

rice paddy
..rice paddy
....rice paddy

baby, you're going home.

fingertips, razors of grass, broadeaf
hands up, waiting on:
..time
....time
......time..

time doesn't leave you alone.

high on the ramparts of guardrails
............ (and views)
under the arches of skies and your muse

money
..cigars
....chalk
......and dreams

rice paddy;
baby, come home.

The Old, Acceptable Nature (Hourinthias)

...and in the forest

behind, she heard the

creeping Hourinthias

still making her way

determinedly after,

one clawed hand

extending the pieces

of shell in pitiable,

hateful supplication.

Aristhene set her face,

forbid herself to hear

and rode out of the trees...

-----

Aristhene and Hourinthias

---

Verse VII

-----

Book VII, Chapter XI

-----

The Legends of Seven Counts

-----

The myth still clings with insect's hairy

limbs to the sidewalls of my heaving brain.

Seven counts- the oldest legends of sacred

numbers and times- still trouble my sleep.

Hourinthias! A dark stain you are, seeping into

the fabric of history. Well did the prophets warn

of your coming. I have seen what evil you have

done unto my own; myth or truth or fact, still;

I see what evil you have wrought in these times.

My own, the old, acceptable nature still holds

you in sway. Troubled with visions of the Senate

rising against you, you build careful eggshell empires

to hold your words safe. Even my most valiant efforts

at redemption for you result in little more than

the shedding of this piece, or that. See, behind you

Hourinthias, doe-eyed, ludicrous creature, picks up

the fallen piece in her clicking claws, and proffers it,

thrusts it into your succumbing hand. I was granted

no weapons of the gods, but merely a path I could

tread. Hourinthias dogs my steps, makes crude signs

to me, heaving her ponderous body towards me in

offers of friendship. No alliance have I made with her,

and yet she calls my in her scraggling voice; 'Come,

come to me. I will give you pretty shells to hide in."

No liar am I, no slave of the old, acceptable nature.

And yet I know what she sees me as; I am to her a crawling,

naked thing. Fine words? A noble path? She knows

only the pleasure of covering over a creature with an

eggshell. Oh, sanity, forsake me not, for Hourinthias

will never see me for a proud, dark-haired lover, artist,

but only a naked creature she must ridicule into hiding.

She cannot see me riding out unfraid; only she sees that

I have no shell; and knows that I must fear. No reasoning,

No protest will send her away. She follows me, just out of

sight. I know to well what use there is in ignoring her.

My own, well did the prophets warn that you must

struggle like new birds from your shells. Well did they

speak of the troubled times of Hourinthias. The old,

acceptable nature clings, flylike, to your skins. Cast

it to earth slowly; turn away your face-

wage battle against the ill-favored Hourinthias.

The Army Boats

The sea is army-green this evening,
and the wind scrapes across my
tongue like the bow of a violin. All the rosin
in the world would never get me
what I need. The lights of the town don't
reach me nor the sounds of the drunken,
dancing people. I'm not sure I'm still walking
on the rocks. I'm not sure I can taste my tongue.

The sun gets closer every day and the whole
world is on fire. The army boats spit fire across
the swaying waters and I say the rosary,
praying it doesn't reach me, praying it doesn't
find you. Don't you get lost in your army-green.

I can taste the sea, bitter, when I turn my
head. The foam is proud of itself. Damn the foam,
I can only be ashamed of me. The insipid
fingers that whisper across my cheeks-
the metaphor that bites my tongue, the salt
water that stings where the teeth held on,
oh, hell. I'm forgetting myself again. You
remember how I used to say the rosary
over every mistake I made? You
remind me of that every time we speak.

My tongue fails.
My tongue fails, but
you've forgiven me that before.
Every duty is a chalk
mark on my wall until you forgive me.

Do you recognize me?
Or is that the whole problem?

edit; after some thought: To anyone who might be offended at the use of swear words.. I will probably at some point be discoursing on the use of employing things like swearing in art, so if you could hold off judgement of me until then...

22/05/07

Ode To Rudie
Dreadlocked, saxophoned
carpeted and raw-boned
Eyebrow-ringed, red-haired
No one ever really cared.
Avant-garde thinking man
I think I’ll stay; I think I can
The basement is your home for now
That’s sad but you’ll get out somehow.

Dreadlocked, saxophoned
I want more than time on loan
It's a thing you can't afford-
starving artists' fate.
Save the date, save the date
Yesterday is much too late
Shoelaces and cigarettes-
it's you they want and you they'll get.

Dreadlocked and saxophoned
Intermittent, golden-toned
I remember that you said
that growing up got to your head
and I remember Thursday night;
it makes me think that it's alright
that I can rest on sagging steps
and I don’t have to hold my breath
and if you ever come upstairs
well, you know I'll be waiting there.

Pacific Mosiac

Ah, for the pacific flow
of unmeant conversation
on the tortuous mosaic of
my brain.
Ah, for the milk-white stream
to sooth my bright ideas into
calmness
yet again.
Ah, that I might not speak
one single word from my
sharp-edged thoughts,
but simply tide with
sweet pale falsehood.
Ah, for the graceful flow
of gentle insincerity
down the many-tiled rift
on my chest.
Ah, to lie in peace!

-by Giv, written in February and suddenly brought back to mind yesterday afternoon. I shall pretend there is some vital significance in that.