Poem for July 31

Millions of Us

Purportedly a chain of civilians, soldiers, voices
lice they were called. It is sometimes sufficient to beg
Lice creeping over one, kill them with a chemical;
then there are lice-ghosts everywhere. Glints of pearly
nails. The light of my beloved will keep me from noticing.
Trailer to keep her in; he asked me if I knew her ‘auction name.’
Walked over the scorch; what are values when there’s nothing here?
The wing of a dead soul grows into all the lace you see through,
foreigner, lice-ridden article of divestment. Splendid vices
pouring outcomes over the eager cash flow promotions.
So many of the dead came to me that their transparencies
covered my visage, I’m too near you. Don’t you want to see?
We came from faraway camps, forsaking the human because it
broke our bodies into pieces for the torturer’s pet, who
propositions you. There is always a slant on it. The trees must
go down; or light affects your eyes badly. We pleaded for an
adjustment, before we’d recognizably died. You
told me you were a heart, but you were guarding a tower. You
said you were a failure, but you helped destroy us.
Wings all over me, stuck to my skin, there’s no point to it
why are you here when there’s nothing? We just don’t believe it.

Now not no never you. I wasn’t you. You have to talk to me
my name is irretrievable. No one letting you go because you
are prized for not existing except as a body, now not.
No I don’t exist, alighting and ghoulishly begging you for a
drop of your blood, a morsel of your flesh. Yes take some of
me, though there are so many others with flesh. But they’re too
rich to give. I know they will never let you in, you beautiful
kids who haunt the corridors extending through
the invisible world, so you can find your way. So you can see
past the smoke of disastrous fear acting out of dreams:
it creeps everywhere. See how it took them over, for
they had no mind to stand against any fantasy the instigators
chose. Had no minds at all. When I was little, no one told
me I’d have to suffer. Who can be a child? And the ghoul
patiently explains how the wing of a word can extend till the
barrier is made, so they can’t see us. If you say beauty, that
will be ignored, and we can hide. It was his name a long time ago,
before the auctions began. Her face then was large and younger.
She can be lice or ghoul. I want that, I don’t want action. But I
will have to live off bits of you.

The new definition of witch is one who lets them eat you, if
they have to. Because you keep regenerating. Oh that’s such an oldy,
and all that flying. Sometimes they do — the man who showed me a
few things sits all day. The teaching is to let them come as far as
inside you even, empty enough; I can hear them and render affection
Why, if there’s nothing? Is this nothing? But you are destroyed
We shake all the time. You remind me of someone else I knew.
The wing is inscribed,for involute. Not to beg in the offering
of primal services, we have come here. No one would let us tell
anything but our bodily humiliations; had to do differently, not for
redemption, because we are more than redemption. I am my maker.
The shape formed by the bits of mirror glued on is unimportant.
They’re inside my chest and stomach, and they glitter in there.
Then if light disattaches, comes up to be spoken, you
can see and you can hear. This is true because each of you has this
too. Has all the bright pieces inside: there was nothing else
left to be. Then I say it, like these pages, or how they would
love me for hosting them. The earliest people feared them,
and subsequent ones deny the dead. Why would I be afraid of
all the people dead and martyred? I thought you were talking
about words. You knew I wasn’t.

Dido who had to be delivered from the wrong story:
I want you to know I’m no longer left over. What about our
library, nothing good left there? I want to read the fashion of when you
were old a long time ago. Gothic roses in the type: I’m an ancient
Had read every the book of before they arrested me.
I had crossed the black plain, I had held tears it was abrupt
executed in the earlier style. It is a timeless death placed next to the
most beat-up books. Only a book can love me now. We’re reading
without real eyes; I’ve read everything too, or in the tradition of
telling it is repeated within you what we did. We must have
been trying to make something as we are now, but why. You
have the ear for it. The light wants you to reply, asking if a
shore had been attained or if the language were Dutch or Swahili
I didn’t know. It is how you raised the ground, like raising a child
every word that comes out of my mouth torn I’m responsible to
The wind foul pieces here tries to turn me from tenderness, the way
they killed us in the center of the city, that night. The bodies
floated in the river while I looked for other souls and saw my face
water damaged a new texture and how can I see? Potential
returning within its white petals and central whorl.

He couldn’t believe someone would hate and betray. I
told him, but he refused to believe it; then I left the room.
This lace has to be made. Treason said the ghoul that
peculiar invention betrayal, how primal was that?
In Hesiod after the light, after chaos and lover. Said the armless
woman, said the one cut open, said the smallpoxed
the strewn children their bodies woven into the page
so I could find what they thought, even if babies only cry.
Those are the bodies when I was no longer alive but uplifted
butterfly of lace with an empty length to bifurcate my symmetry.
No I don’t believe the lies of the live. I am a spot of light in
order to find out, hanging on because it wasn’t revealed in
death. I know what happened to me, she said: bleeding I
lay there unblessed. Do I want a blessing now, or a god to
rebuild me? We have gone beyond god or new lives, or death, or
tribes. I am working on this lace light at present; I accept the
drop of sacrificial blood to propitiate me. One piece of you at a time
is all I need. I am letting you feed, I say, because I know this has
always been. You’ve been telling me for years
We needed you, if no one else did. We have this project to
change our silence into the beautiful city of a voice.

-Alice Notley, from Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)

Poem for July 30

Lost Releases

 

 

The Disgruntled Few, “Desire Me, Desire My Dog” / “LP Lips” (Tar Pit)

The Brutal Ax Piggers, “Delectability” / “The M-Shaped Girl” (Swine Barn)

Long Tongues, “A Visit to the Star Morgue” / “Gumballs in My Throat” (Lolly)

League of the Lost, “Inevitability Stomp” / “Preface to Plato” (HoJo)

The Rasp, “Slobbering Brats” / “Filthy Heads Under Faucets” (Bark)

Mighty Joe Young, “The L-Ray Boy” / “Laughing for Money” (Funk & Wagnalls)

Nether Lip, “Gangrene, Gangrene, Mixture of Green Fat and Cream” (Talking Mule)

The Legion of Decency, “John Cage and the Half-Strange Girl” / “Lipless in Love” (4-Play)

Dog Tongues, “Squeeze Me Quick, I’m Leaking” / “Passing Gas in the Dark” (Data Dip)

Frightened Philistines, “I Felt the Shiver of Success” / “Tickle Me” (Dolomite)

Tiny Pink Tips, “Devoted to Dogs” / “Willimantic Afterlife” (Huge)

Three Teens Kill Four, “I Was Conceived at the Opera” / “Devils in My Skin” (Aureola)

Starface, “Slap My Me For Me, George” / “Knock-noggin Hollow” (Chop n Chop)

The Liquefiers, “Rhino Heat” / “I Had My Mask Torn Off at the Office” (Siren)

The Nematodes, “Black Mountain Sweethearts” / “Kidneystone Stew” (Sun)

The Iraquis, “Ayatollah So” / “Gurglin’ Down the Pipe” (Froggie’s Magic Twanger)

The Herald Angels, “Am I Moist Yet?” / “Hash-Brown Eyes” (Ex Cathedra)

Mamie & Ike, “Candy Lips” / “Drool” (Swannee)

The Liquids, “That’s the Dirt Talking” / “The Sound of Slippers on the Stairs of Life” (Mmmotion)

The Toadlings, “Pluckin’ Plankton” / “(I Woke Up with) Caterpillars for Toes” (Manna)

Sweet Rat Treat, “Let’s Grow Weird Together” / “The Druids Were Right” (Nonfat)

Mickey and the Evangelical Reunion, “Mouse Cakes” / “I Saw God at the Barber’s” (Righto)

Unusual Antibodies, “Relax, Relax — Get Tense, Get Tense” / “Trichinosis” (Infested Hog)

The Hubbies, “Hula Hoops in Hell” / “Hubba Hubba” (4H)

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Father Blink, “Ice Cream? More Like Frozen Dog Foam” / “Sealed Odors” (Cusp)

Itsy Bitsy, “Pork on the Vine” / “Tinted People After Dark” (Goodwill Industries)

Hamburg Patty and the Seeded Buns, “The Tinted People Go for a Cruise” / “Have You Got Enough Lotion for That Emotion?” (Dagwood)

Sneeze Pie, “Spread Your Money All Over My Face” / “Beefoleum” (Presto)

The Hyena Twins, “You Constipate My Mind” / “Heave Me, Feed Me to the Rocks Below” (Big Bhwana)

Rubber Uppers, “Jealous of Your Knees” / “The Girl with the High-Risk Glands” (IUD)

Young Americans for Freedom, “Challenge from Beneath the Snow, or How Dookie Made My Garden Grow” / “I Quiver for Moles” (New World)

Rapid Rob’t the Rabid Rabbit, “I Wiped the Drool from the Chin of Death” / “Icepick in My Mind” (Bronx Cheer)

The Ovoid Honeymooners, “Whistling Plasma” / “Birth in a Swamp” (Sploink)

Unnatural Yogurt, “Star Squeal” / “Tool and Die, or Just Die” (Agent Orange)

Dr. Indoctrinator & the Eternal Outcries, “What Do Women Want?” (parts 1 & 2, more forthcoming) (Fatter Platters)

Brain Augur and the Trepanning Room, “Lifting the Lid and Peeking Inside for Soup” (Nosey)

The Sobs, “Slim Slams the Slum” / “Do the Turnkey Trot” (Realtors Against Reality)

The Naughty Nuns, “Take It Easy With My Creases” / “Used Honey” (Mumps)

Active Cultures, “The Faculty Hag” / “Making Me Wait Is Making Me Wicked” (Sears)

The Azz, “Tonk Town” / “Little Lenny’s Lying Lips” (Pigwiggle)

 

-George F. Butterick, from The Collected Poems of… (The Poetry / Rare Books Collection, SUNY at Buffalo, 1988).

Poems for July 29

Mulholland Drive

A popstar’s a trunk in which vision’s
buried. That shrill almost-beauty begs
exegetes. Certain songs, events, films
corrode, and never become gestures
(Ashbery). In a thrust is such pleasure.
To die in her armpits, high octane!
But the song’s peppy, not compelling.
Exiting the ER, the gale took
up my petticoats, or would have if.

The Royal Tenenbaums

The price of real estate burns us all.
Replete with symbolic capital,
we conjured a chatelaine, brunette,
her silverplated scissors hinting
at replenishing the irises,
long-bearded and brown and spooky, and
the debate a hip one, phrases like
ice. Came a warm day, we were as gods.
But a sulky night, puke moon, horndog.

Two poems by Kathleen Ossip, from Cinephrastics (originally published by horse less press in 2006 as  limited edition chapbook [the copy owned by Looking Back at Orpheus is 29/50]; now available for pdf download here).

Poem for July 28

Insomniac Alphabet, Part 2

N is now; N for navigate, next
O, oceanic; O, oh, oh; O was only
P is promise; P for paving blocks in bloom
Q: queen of sailing ships, queen of forgetfulness
R, the river-drowned boy, river-drawn map and border
S, sea not silent; S, the gulp the gasp the getting it down
T for timeworn thunder-fixed memory
U is undertow, influential invitation; U is uterus
V for vines across everything, climbing voices
W: with out-wit without win wind; W is for window
X, a clear mark on the accordion map
Y for yellowjacket; yesterday and yield
Z is for Z is for Z is for zero

the start of the end of it all

 

 

-Nancy Kuhl, from Suspend (Shearsman Books, 2010)

Poem for July 27

Selections from THE LAMB

Sensing a just
and impartial ghost
close to each living thing
I could see the genius

of institutional religion.
Examine your conscience.
Confess in darkness
and take away a task.

Soon you’ll wash off flesh
scented by its parallel past.

 

*

 

Your best friends
have gone ahead.

You can leave your singularity behind and put the book down.

This is your pilot.
You are about to leave earth.

Your confirmation code is BNROXL. Or is that a zero?
It doesn’t matter now.

-Fanny Howe, from The Lamb (Song Cave, 2011)

Poem for July 26

ERNESTO CARDENAL AND I

I was out walking, sweaty and with hair plastered
to my face
when I saw Ernesto Cardenal approaching
from the opposite direction
and by way of greeting I said:
Father, in the Kingdom of Heaven
that is communism,
is there a place for homosexuals?
Yes, he said.
And for impenitent masturbators?
For sex slaves?
For sex fools?
For sadomasochists, for whores, for those obsessed
with enemas,
for those who can’t take it anymore, those who really truly
can’t take it anymore?
And Cardenal said yes.
And I raised my eyes
and the clouds looked like
the pale pink smiles of cats
and the trees cross-stitched on the hill
(the hill we’ve got to climb)
shook their branches.
Savage trees, as if saying
some day, sooner rather than later, you’ll have to come
into my rubbery arms, into my scraggly arms,
into my cold arms. A botanical frigidity
that’ll stand your hair on end.

-Roberto Bolaño, from The Romantic Dogs: Poems 1980-1998 (New Directions, 2006). Translated by Laura Healy.

Poem for July 25

The End

I wake
from the dream

and a deep voice
has pity on me

says It’s the end
and I get up

and move
to the blue room

where you stare
at the TV

and you’re dead
your face is dead

and I’m dead
as long as I’m in

the room with you
so love becomes

a blue thing
and we shine

*

The End

My mother
and her dead

sister are
watching me

from the end
Come on

flower
they say

and I love
how they call

me flower
so I walk

closer
toward the light

that is them

 

-Emily Kendal Frey, from The Grief Performance (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011)

Poem for July 24

In Naga Land, Nepal

Easy desultory night
you are working in me
What’s coming
seems not strange
It takes you
You grow younger

The moon pumps it up
All things float out
The thin ones, your
boyish hands,
move fastest.

-Anne Waldman, from Countries (Toothpaste Press, 1980)

Poem for July 23

Self Portrait

He wants to be
a brutal old man,
an aggressive old man,
as dull, as brutal
as the emptiness around him.

He doesn’t want compromise,
nor ever to be nice
to anyone. Just mean,
and final in his brutal,
his total, rejection of it all.

He tried the sweet,
the gentle, the “oh
let’s hold hands together”
and it was awful,
dull, brutally inconsequential.

Now he’ll stand on
his own dwindling legs.
His arms, his skin,
shrink daily. And
he loves but hates equally.

-Robert Creeley, from Echoes (Toothpaste Press, 1982)

Poem for July 22

“for Love”

When M stalked up the stairs we said
“What…” “I’ve been raped and I’m
furious.” No police, she simply
decided to burn all her possessions
which consisted of mostly clothes and
books. When she gathered up “for Love”
by Creeley, I asked if I could have it.
She gave it gladly. Cinda and I exchanged
looks and she asked M for a sweater.
Sure. Not to be too obvious, we didn’t
ask for everything, but the next day
we were able to give back blue jeans,
and several blouses and sweaters,
but she insisted that I keep “for Love”.

-Allan Kornblum, from Awkward Song (Toothpaste Press, 1980)