As/Is







9.25.2008


offertory

let's speak differences
navigatory and otherwise
nagging on the trees

offertorial
faces pass
in dead of sleep

an office
a sentence
a settling at the bottom

privileged beloved
many afters
and befores

cheers
to the bloodlight
and cheerleaders single file

cheers
to the passage
that corkscrews our souls

'cuz socks dragging
from footprint to footprint
is meat meeting crucial








9.19.2008



Plunger

signals on the karma scale
what will be is set
I call the peripheral voice
we moan voodoo blues
drawing out identity
man's face is watching me
for the question of the void
the fountain overflows
suck it back in karma
the revealing must wait





Mary Harju's "The Fall"






sons and daughters

sons and daughters unhatch volumes
in the long room makes for pleasant waiting

kamikaze moths from clouds' gargle
like snow we know what we know

it's who you think you are
is wishes for is washes of

beaknosed newness
got am sound forever radio

or got the tv on we watch ourselves
or got it pretty sitting made we pose








9.16.2008


you are birthdayed

I am cloistered
in amazement

never leave this
wild enclosure

people theorize
we're away

and they are right
we're always unavailable

for comment is a weakling
and the truth is in

the margins full of Christ
mas wholly owned subsistiary

maybe not or just the wool
pulled over like a cop does someone

and this minute I am matrimonially
inclined having declined

so many prior offers
by the duffers and their fellow champs





888 by J. D. Nelson

Send your name and mailing address to madverse [at] gmail [dot] com for a FREE copy of 888, my latest chapbook of bizarre poems and experimental texts.

This offer is good for anyone, anywhere on the planet of Earth!

Love,

J. D. Nelson
www.MadVerse.com








9.15.2008



Gabcast! Monday









9.14.2008


Sheila E. Murphy - COLLECTED CHAPBOOKS (1981-2002)

Blue Lion Books announces a new hardback book by Sheila E. Murphy, COLLECTED CHAPBOOKS (1981 - 2002). A collection of all Murphy's chapbooks issued during that period, many out of print and now available in a beautiful hardcover edition.

"For three decades, Sheila E. Murphy has been been one of the master architects of American syntax. Those who have read her poems only in magazines or chapbooks have no idea of their scope, the scale and the depth of her work. For those readers, this collection will be a revelation. This is a great book!" --- Ron Silliman

"Sheila E. Murphy is indeed a virtuoso bird, one who takes flight through language at the slightest provocation, carrying her readers with her on long poetic journey. These poems are about linguistic experience, about music on the page and in the head, about ideas approached from surprising angles and made anew, about renewal and revival. Over the last twenty five years I have continually migrated towards Sheila's approachable, lyrical and engaging experiments, basking in the sun-drenched visions she has gathered and made from the worlds and words about her. Collected Chapbooks is an overdue delight, a tribute and a publishing event." --- Rupert Loydell

http://www.lulu.com/content/2251616

is the web-address for ordering this book. The book has much to merit purchasing a copy to enrich one's experience of contemporary poetry. In reading this book, you will be amazed at the variety of her poetic discourse, no doubt, in paraphrase, falling in love along with the the spell of her bright syntax.





okay

a beautiful maintenance dabs at a bit here
a bit there wakes earnings' shutters to rise
from flash to shred the maverick clouds as soft
as polaroid to light a match in one long wheeze
shacked up in the hut of cigarettes remember when
where first we did it or chant a while something
snappy and unhinged and strapless as desire








9.13.2008


udnce



u dance


undo
unwatch
unstance
dance
umbrace
ungrace














9.11.2008


good brave bye

I don't know how
it is incurious against
already disappearing
wind chimes I don't hear
enactment of this yearling
heart I don't induce
a person's breath when
it is finished at the moment
life begins it ends

I don't evaporate by
heart for being I revisit
how I know that
you are here a while
until I lose alertness
for your smoothness
that requires as it requites
I give up love for you

I don't enlist your light
I make up for where it has been
lifted I mind the quiet
where we met soon enough
not far from where I am
again my soldier
my endeared and polished
reason for the constant shine
of heart's own
flight of feathering across

I don't consider selves
a plus an acreage I don't delimit
scars that show through
who I am I don't align
with prior to my pose
the question of your answers
drawn into a generation of
loose moments that evade
the crop of notice








9.10.2008


White Fucking Whale Fucking Obsession Fucking Tale

Fucking sun raised to devil's taunting shit I cried
Loose lips harbor fucking A they fucking harbor killer whaler
in screw you fucking pompadour

My goddamn fucking cocksucking tale I tell you cock suckers now:

Fuck death fucking stinking cunt of hero books at sea
A suck ass who...
Cunt hole prick of demo angel devil ass hole
Shit headed whirligig mice tantrum on two wheel harpoon pontiff
Mother voice three hole fuck at one hell pit below decks
Spokes & bells sucking infant life surreal gonad wooden stump captain asshole
Burnt fucking teeth tooth whirring gunwale
Scorched skull abandoned bone king ass hole fucker reflector mirror
Screw you fuckers like a prize coin hammered fucking up
All I did fucking shit was fuck up all day all night
Never took my own fucking advice
Never once fucker thought about any fucking thing
but shit I hated that peice of silver coin hammered fucking up
On ice flesh of white wash fucking seething blow hole
Anti warp fox sequence tail duck fucker demon shaman eye cunt sailorman
Shouting: “My dog has fleas shit hole fucker in auto distance!”
Every diamond a corpse cunt prick tit on a fenced corporation
Binges fucking fucking symbolism lunatic fringe fucking basic
Fucking freaking tradition gag order acting
HO! Fucking white whale men there's shit I got my self fucked
Bitching rope snagging me fucking down...Cap'n...I'm fucking telling you
There ain't a fucking thing we can fucking be doing but
Save our selves screwed men though we fucking are
Sone things are fucking better off left un....
But Fuck it Fuck it to fucking hell








9.09.2008


fedX

BETRAYAL SO REAL
OBNOXIOUS WHYS I CRIED
SO INTENSLY THIS TIME
SADNESS EVOKES STRENGTH
DREAMS BELEIVE ME
EYES CLOSED
THOUGHTS RACING INFINITY
TRUST LOST SWEPT AWYAY
YOU SAID STAY
I LEFT!








9.08.2008


september 8th

all I do tonight is I magnificat my heart out

in thanksgiving that your tests say you are perfect

as I have constantly declared and I declare now

rows of dampness have rehearsed divesting desert of its crust

I sing to you

it's aqua what I sing

I think there have been roses here





creationism

lights to a pin in the tall tall room
each floral stab of ecstacy rose bones
suggests something naughty with bff
builds a fire around a bubble it burns
submission going down down hangs laundry
something's happening here today confounded
o infatuation like streets doing things
flat beer miles spread thighs happeningly
shopping the shit you'd like to do but
never'd confessed before okay cool well
make the secretaries feel better won't
stop until it's that feeling inside
penetration transmitter radio usa
ways to choose skirt the red tape
slopping dingy diners on fire yeah
make the blood flow rootsy o do it
a walk in the park high on kites








9.07.2008


ovunque (ovid, conrad)


quocumque...everywhere
nihil est nisi mortis imago
only death’s faces

the horror the horror
------------------------------------
(Ovid, J.Conrad)








9.06.2008


G O A H E A D A N D H A T C H

goad
and dander
back
atcha
go!
head
to hedon
and
bonanze
yr
sprocket
e e e
past
mat
hazmat
yr
(n)ation
ack shun
blonder
blunder








9.03.2008


Exercises

1. Write/read a poem that is torture to both the reader and the
writer.

2. Waterboard a sonnet.

3. Climb on a poem and take it for a spin around the block.

4. Read the first word of a poem and then every other word
thereafter. Then read the second word and every other word
thereafter. How do the two readings differ?

5. See the poem as a mountain. Plan your ascent to the peak
and then your descent. Don't forget your oxygen.

6. View the poem as a hole you're digging. How do you know
when to stop? How far down do you go? How do you get out
once you've stopped digging?

7. Write the poem backwards, and then make it make sense,
or not.

8. Imagine the poem to be a city that lies beneath sea-level.
How do you prevent its being flooded the next time a
hurricane comes along?

9. Imagine the poem as a hurricane.

10. Put your poem (or someone else's) through basic training.
Teach it to march. Train it to kill.








9.02.2008


pretty to be sitting sostenuto facing unknown lens

so you are

so I will be

the hill with puncture

at its middle

as if eyelight

or a cap

above it

held





I Keep (Telling Myself)

you (amiss) will vapor
as my pores (damp light)
of you (let go)
the finely tuned redress
will not come easily
in present tense
unleashed (from happiness)
affixed to gentle
weeds in unison
the song an old familiar
dialect left short
of here (a mix)
template and tongue
in groove elapsing
capstone course (correct)
the vines come down
to threads (remedial)
the ones we hear
the ones we tie





Boulevard

Finally, it remains impossible. Of course, in fairy tales
anything can happen. Effects arise both from using
others to our own advantage, and from their using us.

If the wife has the upper hand, the husband has the lower.
Her clenched fist signifies, but the assigned tasks are wearing.
So, parting deeply gives tunnel, as is so often said.

A visitor to this world must both learn to drive in his first
ninety days and register as an off-planet sex-offender.
Wreckage must be cleared away by dawn.


fr. Organ Harvest with Entrance of Clones
(Hamilton Stone Editions, 2007)





i worship the sun

or saltines
staring blankly
waist deep
in blue broth
of wilderness
is breath
is above
page through
chimerical evergreens
lets better read
huge as beauty
its pulpit
circling perpetually
groovy machine
it emanates
it calls
it speed dials
follow me