postcars (circa 1984)

But I want to trace myself

clear of the spots I have faced.

Clark Coolidge

a

Acquisition Junction, population 850

Black top and fresh lard

I point at them to know my disreputable standing

I don't know never did probably won't

That picture of God's electrifying finger

I'm too much here

At five feet eleven and one half

The spectacle from another style

You are soft as pillows

Down expecting my great distributed descent

O catch us at that fatal injection

For once they should have it fill

b

Trees glistening am up but not about

Am unstuck for breakfast time Warning

"Sorry I'm running late"

After temperature am breathing. Raining

The sound of raining its gentle hair

Your tresses. His water-form now net

I am estranged and forgetting

It is the murmuration of glove. Quiet

It is quiet. More quaint than silence

Raising cheers far stretched

c

Decide to reduce my mouth its wild running

Look and learn of process: look and --

Admired your upper cut, its confirming

Decide to misread a certain diary

Admire a surface tension

Your surface tension when you move, confusing

Substance that magnetizes my substance

Pulling and pulling me --

Damn the surcharge of things bought

At Acquisition Junction, pop. 850

d

Afternoon distilling funny tasting horizons

Everything slow and steady as she goes

Sailing off but cardboard scenery is shifted

We drink and eat and smoke

My stomach roils. My eyes give out

I am writing a letter to J.

He of the honorary degree

Your stereo in my brain

Lacks its needle in your absence

The beveled corners need some lick work

This is not it ... Come now

e

The seasons untied: "Groweth sed,

And bloweth med,

And springeth the wude nu ..."

And of the serene celebration

Sea-shells those scimitars of scintillation

Something for you something for me

Ich bin ycleped The-God-Of-Average-Nightmare

And you in the orange life jacket

Saving him on represented waking memory

For once you and I

Moving above the median rise

Never expecting a further falling down

***

The above is offered here as an example of arrested or 'late-onset' juvenalia; though it was indeed written in the mid-80s of the previous century.