songanddancegirl

oh the horror

 

we talk about blocks  about anxiety  i check the

Iowa Writer’s Workshop site  $50,000+  annually

i think i can get in   i don’t believe in writer’s block

+i can spin words  into gold  (gold jerry  gold!)

 

Rilke gestated the duino elegies for 10 years

so what was he doing  instead of dragging words

dark+bloody from his loins?  smoking pot drinking gin

 

reading the duinos  u can see  that he needed a

decade  to cram angels+archangels  by the tens

of thousands   onto the head of a pin

 

so did he believe the voices up in castle duino?   (dead with final poem  at 49)

you’re lazy

you’re bored

you have nothing to say

you’re washed up  +ugly

 

hell no  in those ten years  Rilke stoked his immortality  but for me

sitting Kurtz-like on the river of brokendreams  the wordcemetery

beckons   a bog    poet bogwoman  and the word feckless appears

in the gator’s mouth    along with poet’s black toes

__

 

..could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt

how big, how confoundedly big, was the thing that couldn’t talk,

and perhaps was deaf as well. I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there..

(Heart of Darkness  Joseph Conrad  1902)

 

 

Fall 2020

..but, oh those nights- those nights when the infinite wind eats at our faces..

and the nosing beasts scent how insecurely we’re housed in this signposted World..

do you still not know it?   (Rilke  First Elegy  1912)  

 

your sense of humour+your rugged goodlooks

didn’t u think anyone loved u?  lucinda moans

lake charles drawl  throaty    mr. marty  today’s

the day of the dead  + i just saw a flash of your

imp grin   riddleresque   +provoke

 

felt your breath too  blowing ru’ach in my face

spiritworld pressed up against us today  hey  i’m

coming to mexico for february+march  will stay til

april   if we get along

 

i’ll come every year

every day

 

I’m coming

_

 

Fall 2020

2nd coming

heard thumps overhead   rushed up to roof

+there was bigbro   2 yrs. dead   flopped on

his side  looking way better than when i’d

seen him last

 

florida hospice   going fast   and fast is a

relative term   we brushed him off  +he

regaled us  with tales of the crypt

 

ape it’s not what u think!  lunch is 

5x the price  +the shrimp are NOT the size

of your arm  but otherwise it’s fairly  hospitable  

 

there was this one guy who insisted he was

my brother   but they’re both still alive  so what

kind of jive was he talking?          unless

__

 

..generally he finds the secret not worth knowing..

(Heart of Darkness  Joseph Conrad  1902)

 

 

 

 

Fall 2020  .. hey  can’t we get them some bigger shrimp? ..

i say joe i gotta go

my attendance at 5 deathbeds  confirms

that the throes  they ebb  into a fabulist peace

a release so gentle  it makes birth  that garish

bloodbath !  an unquiet grotesque

 

which

of course

it is

 

not so  the birthing of death  no forceps   (just those prying sister’s fingers off of u)

here there is a low swinging  to the wailing

of those who are losing u  who do not see

that u are just over yonder    waiting

 

so don’t u weep

don’t u moan

and

DON’T  wish them back

fer chrissakes

 

get a life

__

 

..she could still see, feel, his mind darting, and darting..

(William Faulkner  Light In August  1932)

 

 

 

Fall 2020  ..long may u run .. Marty Atkins.. May 19, 1946-October 21, 2018..

..is waiting.. and darting..

don’t ask

 

it must be  that the twilightzone  has split open

+those GIANTS peering over the town  (did u see that episode?)

a couple in a 1950’s convertible roll into a quaint

town  it is empty  even the kitchen drawers are fake

 

well those giants loom overhead   as i negotiate with

bureaucrats for my old mother’s freedom   in the

nowapocalypse     LET MY MOTHER GO!    my voice

all moses +shrill   *(not the 1st time i have tried to free her)

 

CHOMP CHOMP   now deep inside the stinking mancavity

of a giant   it smells of moss  mingled with fecal  +oldcovid

about to be shat out?    birthed?

 

or  maybe i’m in Woody Allen’s sex flick  inside the spermatron

where i am about to experience conception  fer chrissakes!  it

smells like salt  + tastes like slave

__

 

..born into this..into a place where the masses elevate fools  into rich heroes..

born into this..pissed on by this.. made crazy and sick by this..

(Charles Bukowski  Dinosauria, we)   

 

 

 

Fall  2020  ..autopilot is your friend..

here i lie

..fell down + can’t get up..

 

since the first caveman  shambolic  +fetid

lay +did not get up  humans have not been

fond of death   but  who loves peace more

than death?

 

hands up if u think u do

 

when the wind brings covidlaced spittle

to the nostril’s edge   +sister morphine  +

sister death  wait in the wings  this deathbed

thing   becomes  lugubrious   repetitious

 

+death’s bitches  huddle  in condos+caves

__

 

 

Fall 2020

covidqueens

 

trump + mailorderbride took a ride to covidland

didn’t like the diversity  or rubbing shoulders with

the petit bourgeoisie

 

covid is not:  racist  sexist  homophobic   it is not a

hater   so they felt uberlonely   now riding in a sealed

rover   trump blows kisses to the masses  as covid

crawls up the a****   of his secretservice bitches

 

while back at the whitesthouse  Mel blows  hot+cold

about decorating that:  fucking x-mas tree  (as heard on tape)

 

oh bartleby  oh humanity

__

 

 

FALL 2020

charbroiled Q tips plus a side of covid

the Harry’s Charbroiled truck is GONE   replaced by a

covid testing truck  with a moose on the side  which

looks more like a beer logo  this is all too confusing for

the hipsters  who line up for cow + chips   as volunteers

make ready the longest Q tips known to mankind

 

these will be rammed  up the beautiful nostrils  of said hips

likely better than what they usually shove up there?

 

while covid tests are free  cow+chips  at the edge of our swish

park  are decidedly not   but cost less than a gram of cocaine    marginally

__

 

..in the 2nd wave of Covid 19 it is the young who are most likely

to contract the disease  and they will have longer to live with the

lifelong debilitation..but they continue to herd like lemmings..as the

covidcliff awaits..

 

(whitegrainy substance..doppelgänger for cocaine..)

 

 

Fall 2020      (..rhymes with stash..)

 

 

limpin proletariat

the Harry’s Charbroiled truck sits cowstink+fatted  at the

edge of our park  feet from the marginalized   covidrefugees

line the meanstreets  many limp

 

today i walk on gilded vomit  thinking about the bulls  at

maple leaf gardens  circa 63  backsides smeared  dark+fecal

 

why dad??!

 

cowboy father said  something about straps on their privates

teaching me  that a bull’s life in captivity  is always intense  +

he knew a thing or 2 about captive bulls   +who was full of shit

__

 

 

 

Fall 2020

( Arthur Rimbaud..father’s doppelgänger

+ favourite poet..after me)

prodigality blues

 

what kind of a man is he?

what kind of a man is M.I.A.

on the night his son is about

to break thru?

 

do u know where he is?

the wife winges  i reach for

the dial phone  +dial

 

he is not alone  not far from

home  the wife will not touch

the stinkbaby

 

perfect+gesticulate

 

and when he is 2  she plays too

close to the water’s edge  a game

of rolling him

__

 

..he will eat my bread and he will observe my religion, the stranger said..

why should he not bear my name?.. (William Faulkner  Light in August 1932)

 

Fall  2020