january 15th, 2010

Here are three new poems. They all need work in my opinion, but I do like them.

The first is another choppy, short-lined cut-up I wrote with Erin Dillon. The cut-up done in paragraph form grows very old, very quickly. I may hate this kind of spacing, but it's something different.

The next two are shots in the dark. I'm not sure what I was trying to do, which is why they need work. Until they are fixed, here you go...

jungle trousers

we have chosen stubbed toes

the size of handsome dimes

armies of ghosts crawl on their bellies

overlapping shouts of

Donald, find some tissue paper!

the American matador has been gored

a number of times

meteor drifts float like ducks

and sting like empty compliments

offering brown land for broken legs

hobbling like little lambs

ample-bottomed women

flirt behind library shelves

in a beautiful place out in the country

The banister is warped and bent and sliding down it proves to be a loud mistake. The family cat scrunches her arrogant face in annoyance, I assume. I throw my left shoe at her and barely miss. What a shame.

My aunts are still cooking dinner in the kitchen so I sneak out back and light up a Camel Blue. I went online a few weeks ago trying to order a carton of Camel Lights. The website advertised a blue pack of cigarettes as Camel Lights and to make a purchase I had to order at least three cartons. At $67 after shipping and handling I figured why not. Here I am four packs into my first carton and I’m waking up with terrible phlegm and an awful pain in my right side. Cheers to Russian cigarettes.

Halfway into my sixth drag I hear Aunt Marilyn clapping and rounding up my younger cousins. I take one last hit, snuff the cigarette out on the sole of my shoe and toss it into the back of the bushes by the fence. As I reach for the door handle I slow down and tell myself it isn’t that bad. After all, you’re in a beautiful place out in the country.

don’t judge a poem by its title

If artists are true visionaries they will make sound for vision. Hamlet has been repeating this in his head all day, as if it’s a mantra he’s trying to perfect. If artists are true visionaries they will make sound for vision. He has said it the same way every time. The pacing has been identical, the inflection he initially gave true has not parted, and at this point in the evening the quote means absolutely nothing to him. If artists are true visionaries they will make sound for vision. Amidst his friends, beneath the tourist-driven flurry he wears the look of a clear mind, and he wears it well. At this point Hamlet is more than familiar with personal distraction. (To clarify, this is the kind of distraction brought on by constant societal analysis, an admirable yet alienating level of expectation for human interaction, and a sickening, guilt-ridden feeling of sympathy for the homeless). If artists are true visionaries they will make sound for vision. Will the mantra ever amscray?

I also have three poems published in the new issue of Physiognomy in Letters, which you can buy and/or download for free here: http://physiognomyinletters.com/index.html. Good stuff, check them out.