PARCHMAN FARM
the barbed wire
the smoke stacks
the chains on the gang
the railroad cars in line
the line of Humanity
the guitar wailing out
the cries of the lost ones
on Parchman Farm
on Parchman Farm
when we were young
__
September 24, 2000
for Illinois
on his 42nd
*(Parchman Farm is the oldest prison, and the only
maximum security prison for men in the state of
Mississippi)
Fall 2016
PLEASE DO CONFUSE THE END
WITH THE BEGINNING
She is gorgeous +dark skinned speaking
a singsong French Pneumatic breasts ride
high +bounce Mesopotamian goddess material
in urban jungle devoid of horizons +round
feminine hills of magic +deep wells
When God was a woman thighs+bellies buttocks
+breasts were worshipped The age of uroboros
No shortage of fecund Great Round now extinct
Numb citydwellers uncertain where end begins +
beginning ends Not realizing that they do not
The whole point of the uroboros is infinity but if
you have been programmed to believe in straight
lines +greying male sky Gods poor you Perhaps
the Rabbi who stopped at Gethsemane before being
nailed to a tree knew that: the vertical + horizontal
can be dangerous in the wrong hands And that no one
has ever been or ever will be crucified on a circle
__
October 6, 1998: 21 year old Matthew Shepard a buoyant,
diminutive, openly gay Wyoming student, was found bloodied
and comatose in a field, strung up in a manner later described
as a crucifixion.
Fall 2016 ere of Thanksgiving RIP Matthew Shepard
I LOOK AT THE WORLD AND I NOTICE IT’S TURNING
Have you noticed the bizarre quality of today?
Not 1 but 2 men with pizza boxes bumped me
The 2nd fell to the ground his box crushed by
my left breast I don’t know how he was diverted
Pepperoni perverted+torn on pavement Pizza man
inverted +gently weeping What story have you told
yourself about today? What connects you to history?
I look at you all + I see you should be stripped of
your phenomenology of your politics +phobias of
your performances
When the existential nakedness to end all nakedness
will lead you directly to your inner-most selves And not
in the opposite direction like say the world wide web
It will be a little like birth a little like death when the
sound of your name echoes + fades How many mirrors
must you look in to know that the wall you see behind is
the trueblueyou With nothing in-between And no one
alerted you Until now
I look at you all your bodies: a cypher acting out your spirit
No guru No teacher Only exiled poets+cows lucky prostitutes
+ old sidewinding men
__
I sleep a drunken sleep,
judging the beauty of the world negligible,
craving something that neither dies nor withers,
nor avoids meeting my hard, ravenous look.
(Adelia Prado 1990 Alphabet In The Park)
__
About Adelia Prado: She says to herself , I am a simple
person, a common housewife, a practising Catholic. Her
family were laborers; she was the only one to see the ocean,
to go to college, or to dream of writing a book. At 81 she lives
in Divinøpolis, Brazil, a landlocked state of rugged mountains,
mines, and baroque churches. She began publishing her poetry
at 40.
__
Fall 2016 First day of 5,777 lunar Jewish Calendar
DOES THE RACE CARD HAVE A PLACE IN DAY SURGERY?
the pretty activist of colour with a mesmerizing
fuchsia lip skin a lovely coppery sheen head partly
shaven chastised steve paikin for saying that much
of the new assisted housing is so nice you would
never know low blow steve p a man who usually
with one eyebrow askew skewers the man though he
is a successful white jew wonder if activist knew?
where we come from you don’t want to draw attention
to yourself especially while travelling in much of the mid
east or any neo-nazi hot spot i.e., parts of france + yes
germany somehow the mind finds a circuitous route back
yesterday as we huddled around our soon to be surgeried
sister all 5 of us yes 5! in a small waiting area where the
rule was 1 family member per patient
but then we’re stereotypically pushy a holocausted people who
in 2016 dare you to: grab the baby from our arms +catch it on the
tip of a bayonet May the bones of the dead be resurrected enfleshed
+ may the year 5777 be one of miracles
__
I saw an officer make a flinging movement with his arm, and
something rose up into the sky like a fat bird. With his other
hand he aimed a pistol, and the bird plummeted to the ground
beside its screaming mother, and the officer shot the mother too.
But it was not a bird. It was not a bird. It was not a bird.
(In My Hands Memories Of A Holocaust Rescuer Irene Gut Opdyke 1999)
Fall 2016 Rosh Hashanah
BY THE TRUMP TOWER I SAT DOWN AND WEPT
Hillary was wobbly on September 11th +now the yellow
ape + his beady eyed children are circling her tent intent
upon having us believe she is neurologically unsound
This from a family of robber barons whose youngest child
Baron I has never left Trump Tower
Hillary no doubt re-lived the sights+smells of 9/11 Perhaps she
was even catapulted into PTSD (+not PMS as the Donald would
have us believe) Hillary had arrived at the Towers even before Bush
whose weapons of mass destruction theory was still in it’s infancy
The scents that day were: burning flesh +mayhem The sights: mangled
bodies on pavement Last moments alive in free fall from 80 floors above NYC
One woman whose clothes were burned off of her body looked pregnant The
young firefighter at the scene: They were saying she was just bloated but no
she was pregnant
Hillary saw carnage +looked evil in the Bin Laden eye Later she sat stoically
as Osama met his maker Where was the yellow one that day? Likely nursing the
heel spurs that kept him from active duty in Viet Nam 1968 This September 11th
three non-contacted Amazon tribespeople who had walked out of the forest 2 yrs.
ago escaped back taking only an axe +their pet birds
Should the coward who has never held elected office nor studied the great books
(he reportedly speaks at the level of: Grade 3) should he become President the
forests will grow full as decent people everywhere jostle the endangered tribes
This as walls are built +Muslims +women who bleed from wherever are pilloried
A laugh 3 parts cackle will echo on the empty streets See Melania atop the Trump
Tower shredding her Michelle speech as Baron I is transferred to 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave. tout de suite +the pimp to the end of civilization points his stubby finger at you
+ at me
__
As flaws go Hillary is a galaxy away from Mr. Trump, an intemperate
vulgarian who appeals to the grimmest recesses of the American id.
Ms. Clinton’s shortcomings cannot be compared to Mr. Trumps; they
are not of the same genus. One is running a viable candidacy for high
office. The other is a bigoted boor.
(The Globe & Mail Editorial September 2016)
FALL 2016
JESUS LOVES YOU MORE THAN YOU WILL KNOW WOE WOE WOE
I just want to inject people’s faces
You have to be a nurse for that
She was left money so she went somewhere
and had her whole body done
2 young girls with time to lose shmooz at the
Thompson Hotel Weird microcosm of the
macrocosm
Listen my own dentist said: If I had it to do over
I’d have gone into eyes that’s where the money is
Sounds like Graduate redux though plastics were
big back then No way would Mrs. Robinson wait
on a big brass bed for my bitter dentist
But wait she did for the lemmel Ben Who no doubt
Elaine made osh+porrich of (mincemeat in yiddish)
for visiting the orifice from whence she came Forgiveness
is a funny thing innit?
Ditto hope: deceived deferred +finally extinguished Or is it?
In Von Triers Melancholia the only characters who do not fear a
giant meteorite are a depressed woman +a young child They do not
care that the apocalypse will be the shit abyss
Children largely immortal until age 8 The depressed woman for whom
immortality is overrated says: Why make God wait?
__
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: It’d give us an erection
Estragon: An erection!
Vladimir: Let’s hang ourselves immediately
Estragon: I can’t go on like this
Vladimir: That’s what you think
(Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1954)
____
She got into a green car
pool table green
lit a cigarette,
and I’m sure she drove off to someplace magic
where people were always laughing and
the music was always playing
and the drinks were good
(i saw an old fashioned whore today Charles Bukowski 1972)
First day of Fall 2016
WE ARE ALL BORN MAD SOME REMAIN SO
Man sweeping debris broom touches my knee
Eyes meet its 33º Tomorrow last day of Summer
Summer of high anxiety scorching heat+humidity
He’s back at it the sweeper with dolorous eyes
Boots Landscaping & Maintenance on tee Don’t stand
so close to me Smell of sperm trees +rot +squirrel droppings
Sweeperman sweats profusely drips on my suede Sam Edelman
boots Leaves a skull+crossbones stain
I weep + turn away but not before he of the thick thumbs winks
Evil reaper of Summer’s deshabille Summer when hope biopsied
found malignancy Especially in Aleppo where children photo’d
with blood+white dust about their faces Bodies rigid+zombie
Not Halloween for 40 days Ditto Israelites wandering in exile Now
we huddle haphazardly waiting for the ice+snow already seeping into
Canadian bones It’s in our DNA eh?
The land of milk+honey 8 frozen months away Walking on eggshells
for news of Gordie On the eve of final Hip concert there was a full blown
rainbow Full umbra over gnarly Toronto promising happy endings
+remission Only the meek know that the dawn is dusk backward Don’t
wait for me
__
It’s Godot! At last! It’s Godot! We’re saved!
I begin to weary of this motif.
(Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1954 winner of Nobel Prize)
End of Summer of our Discontent
THE DEEP CYANIC SKY THE DEEP CYANIC SKY
So Cormac McCarthy repeats All The Pretty Horses pg. 202
Is this a sky you have known? A sky you have been ravished by?
Is it even knowable? As it hangs over this fable of Mexico A
magical land filled with pretty wild horses febrile young men +
the Goddess Mary still weeping for her crucified son well into the
new millenium
He of the cyanic eyes bringing the Word to huddled masses Now
the Pope worships at the temple of Zuckerberg WORD (see photo
Pope embracing Facebook Jesus Septemeber 2016) This week horoscope
advises: be like the wise wild child in everything But between the child
+everything the world lies waiting
Don’t be seduced by too witty oracles in Art & Culture magazines
My childhood friend whose sister was bitten by our bulldog recently
lost her mother at a gas station when a truck rolled over her This
mother small for an adult lived in a 10,000 sq. foot house round of
face +impish grin
Maybe she lived with crushing sensations in her lower extremities Maybe
she dreamed of giant trucks under azure skies +fields of cyanic daisies
growing by the river of Babylon Don’t believe any form of knowing will
save us Oracles be damned The future isn’t what it used to be
__
ORACLE OF DELPHI 8th Century BC
One of the main stories was that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied
state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke
gibberish which priests interpreted as enigmatic prophecies.
Fall 2016
*vapours have been known to flow from crevices in the ancient riverbed
at Trinity Bellwoods Park frequented by poets+perverts alike
IT WAS ON WEST QUEEN WEST THAT I SAW
THE CONSTELLATIONS
Last night a huge meteor streaked past my
window right in front of the glowy-red CN
Tower Every night a light show wizard at
the switch He must be on lysergic acid Some
nights the show induces vertigo
But this light show was the real deal +billions
of years old Not 48 +disconsolate on Front St.
It flashed by as my brain strained to: a) determine
if a nuclear attack b) make meaning of the bluey –
green ball of fire with a yellow tail
I already miss it +know that I am as likely to see it
again as are the 323 reindeer struck by lightening in
Hardangervidda Norway to rise from the dead Grassy
mountain plateau covered in carcasses Is that one with
a red nose? (see photo: Globe +Mail August 30, 2016)
And as for meaning maybe there is no meaning No grand
scheme No raison d’être Just a lot of ancient shit not backlit
floating around in my life in our lives Waiting to escape through
brokenhearts +mysterious black soulholes (saddest line ever!)
My friend told me that his new mantra is: LIG Let It Go This is noble
Mine is They Shoot Horses Don’t They No truthfully it’s: LTYT
Lie Through Your Teeth Just face it No one’s interested in your deep
truths or in something you didn’t do
__
Fall 2016
(August 29, 2016, NE sky , over Ontario,
confirmed by Global Meteor Records +NASA)
HE SURE PLAYS A MEAN PINBALL
When you get right down to it don’t we all
die for + from causes unknown +unknowable
With names like disease war +natural? As if
in naming it we beatify it Though it’s all we’ve
ever known the only friend the End
Same way we live trying to make meaning
out of the Big Bad Meaningless with malls as
huge a cities trying to distract Tommy can
you hear me? Tommy? Tommy? Donald?
The future just isn’t what it used to be
__
End of Summer 2016 a.k.a Summer of Donald
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