Howdy

I suppose posting poems is dumb--who wants to read other than prose (aside quotations) on a blog?
Oh well--I feel so much more comfortable posting poems--whether they're bad or not doesn't bother me.  But I'm more than less scared to post prose many may deem stupid.  I mean I kind of want to gripe about poem rejections, post stats for how many Submishmash rejections I have amassed--but yah I also really don't want to go there because I already so thoroughly am.  Well here's a poem I wrote yesterday, which is not part of any manuscript.  Often I write poems having a sense that they do make a manuscript, but I also crank out floaters:

Short Lines

By that time we
Were out of
Seconds.  Silver
Throats.  Camellias
Bloom.  Arsenic
Studs stems
Spindle length of
Deck.  Depth
Deceives.  Wreck
Recalls initial
Slip.  Lips purse
Ripping apart
Imperfect and
Perfectly
Necessary witness.
For every
Split there are
Ellipsis
Orbit astute
Skips smooth
Favoring fen where
Once one
Learns to do
Without air
Breath comes
Naturally. 
Read my
Hips.  Screen its
Blips.  Lean
In or
Let go.  Forget
Going that
Gong may
One scorcher day
Set snowing.

Problem(s)

I, in prior post, poem, failed-post maybe almost ok poem, wrote "twat."  I like the sound; but I hate the meaning.  If this and other epithets vanished, I would not rally for their recovery.  I like restraints, so excising words from English strikes me as lovey not censorial.  I adore syntax and this gets me into trouble: I didn't/don't mean twat, or not in any comprehensive way; it emerged out of a desire to write, write basically anything, write a logic that has no life outside of itself, but if so then I should be doing Zaum (sp?) not American vernacular.  I am cool with the letter T, and W, and A, and T, but not when they're turned word.  Stupid word.  And even worse as acronym.  It's kind of terrible how writing not meaning is what grabs me most.  As if writing has no meaning even when none is intended.  And then there's the Heterosexuality claim.  I do believe that, do mean it.  But I also mean this: if the world suddenly turned Gay as Gay as Gay as can be, the issue of female having dubious cultural status would not disappear.  Heterosexuality is everyone's problem--which isn't to state one has to be aware of this--and I don't imagine any one demographic could lay claim to solution.  I hope one year I figure out how to pull off lucid prose.  I suspect it will be when I stop being me.     

It's Been A While--And This Post Is No Reward

There was a rat, there was and there was.  Rat was and was rat there or ranger.  Was range present or at a distant ridge.  Was and was and was and passive.  Without voice.  Was voice rangy yes no maybe more of that pastoral tune would do but not now nor then and Zen zeroed out in ginger.  Who do you want to fuck Ginger or Mary Ann or do you want to marry her and her who is she.  She is the point.  He is the Doberman thus sun comes between.  Day after day divided by bray brings us away from fucking and fucking brings the world right here to this spot this hot plot of panders.   Words come so slowly.  Passive reigns.  Regicide passes out on the sidewalk.  Twice then thrice then twat.   As long as there’s Heterosexuality misogyny cannot be wiped off or out and out of this box there’s jack.  Heterosexuality cannot be disposed of unless the concept of human is tossed out the tenth floor window.  Which is good.  Without it there’d be nothing to look at.  Look at him.  Strip that grin.  Those clothes.  Lasso his cock.  Tell it how it is.  Regis is fucking a babe named Leandra.  His contract has turned a blind eye.  The eyes of this spider are beside her.  Every room romanticizes bestiary.  Without rhetoric what could writing do than be dull as some dullard but then he’s dead and in an uncanny position.  I’m enthralled.  Dead men rock.  Men are like geology as seen through a shattered mirror.  Men are and passivity is and these two nodes are congruent.  These words are inspired by Ariana Reines even as they bear do I mean bare no close connection.  I wish this could pass as prose.  It can’t and I can’t and can’t is and is at times passive but who cares who cares who cares not even I do though I don’t matter but oh you are mega.

Poem I've Just Read--Dug

I just read, at the poetry journal Octopus, the poem "Hymn to Death" by Robert Fernandez.  It's fairly lengthy, and makes good use of its length.  Many of the line-breaks capitalize on the energy that can ensue from adroitly working this facet of prosody; at times, in the opening, I get a William Carlos Williams sense of the line, though that's a bit misleading as Williams had more than one sense.  These ones of RH recall Williams poem with the horse carrying its load and the nostrils jetting breath-fog like the twin jets of a car.  I am not usually much attracted to art whose explicit subject is death--especially when death becomes more like a trope or metaphor than the actual biological dynamic--but this poem has plenty of energy present, and plenty of literal death in the form of, frequently, sumptuously sensual non-human animal details, so I'm liking it.  And I am obsessed with marrow, and the poem ends entering marrow, so this makes me happy.  My only quip is the part that goes into something like choral refrain; I think the permutation meets narrative meditation macro-structure works better.    

More Samples From Ossuary

Would skin and bones
Crowding

Bone-crunching be better?

We fry

Skinny

Girls for bait
Baskets at this fish shack
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;

  
[This one has a title]: As Water Warms More Jelly Fish Threaten “Red Tuna”

 Love is not the future;
Love is the eviscerating
Heat of the present.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I’m smart but dumb.
At the thought of knows how
My cortex goes numb.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I’m a tourist walking
Vernacular streets.   
When I’m most
Clueless yet desirous
Crossing
Cerberus is wheezing:
Willing and squeezing
That I may get by.
But of course if I could see
My confidence clearly
I’d almost want to die.
I’m the head agent
For secret agency.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Skies are an impossibility of letters. Wavy locks. Optics. Coptic phrase stitched into the border of a hanky. No more panky at the bank. Satisfactory Action! Activation necessitates savage ken. Doll why didya do that.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Where has
My jubilance gone.
Other than what I know
What’s wrong.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

...and oink just
Done through
With the pinky pink
Bolt unfurling satin Straight
Jacking any normal
Woman’s sense here’s a jacket.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Gourds are stuffed with
Freshly slaughtered goblins.
The fun stuff evades
Like pounds of flesh.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The birds are stranded. Everything can be done to help. This affords little hope. How hard does it have to become before there’s generous action.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Like any good
Tom she can tell
A nearby hot mama

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Cracking bubbles, smacking
Gums, tender
Attempts at
Smiling, frying off
Fear, to see what clarity
Ensues once world’s...

















































































 

Timidity

I really want to write an essay--assay--whose subject (no, topic) is White Supremacism/Supremacists, but don't yet feel such an attempt could tenably be in public because my position is extremely distant (it is bell hooks who has massively aided me in my changed, more accurate understanding) from standard notions of what constitutes this wretched phenomenon/a.  But I should probably rethink what I mean by public (discursive/written) spaces: one which is not White might be simultaneously freaked out and heartened to see my stance. 
 

More of Not Enough

Here are some snippets of some--have composed so many more, so the some is no sum--poems I've written in the past seven or so months; I'd provide the entireties but it seems most publishers count blog postings as grounds for disqualifying for their stages.  It's unlikely most of these pieces will find those stages, so my careerist concern is likely unnecessary:

from a section of a manuscript I will likely title Ossuary, which will probably be the title for the whole array:

Note--titles are missing

World, worldly obsession
Threatens
To turn my purls into a pearl
Handled scoop
With which you dish my cream.
It hurts badly and
I’m not allowed to scream
Or I am but
Not if my master’s
Me. Could this be?
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

So that there’s beauty
We must put her to bed.
Sleep sweetest dreams.
If you feel chains
Graze your ankles
Roll over.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;;

Let’s shake our asses
In the Jism Dooms Room;
The Room Dooms Jism;
Girl Juice
Gets you more 
Than can marry to merry.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I bleached my backdoor and common
Sense calls me an asshole.

Friday night
Cherry pie.

To stay safe
No cream
Pastor ain’t approved.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Brand the burn.

Hot sauce
For one.

Hottest box.

Pepper breath fogs
Windshield.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

All the trees
Are cinnamon.
Perhaps high seas
Are more of them swaying.

Currents carry meats
Killers mince.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Corn grows. Hormones
Escalate. There are too
Many of these babies.
There can never be
Too many babies.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

...These lovely ethical
Beliefs are imprisoning
Me, unable to see
The full turn of emotive degrees
I value. I am
Damnably stagnant. I need to
Uproot. If I stay
Here any longer
I’m liable
To lose all sight of sugars
All the while suckling NutraSweet.