a few last 'transductions'

1

VERSE

Your ectomplasmic
phonograph
ennobles us.

2

SLY

Tint of flange.
O seranade!

3

IDIOT ZEAL

The communist
enraged the bull-horn.
The psalmist
instigated the triathlon.
The smoker
maintained the round-house.
The seminarian
cleaned the small car.
The pharmacist
mortared the zap-cant.
The foot-soldier
made an idiot
out of thumb-smoke.

4

TRAINS

That vine mull in
the bowl. That mole
outside of granite.

Neither debt nor fort.

5

PEER

Blistering the main
without mother. No. Cheers
for my judo. O Canadian sue no
neural lake for clan
donned in fist leprosy.

6

BIFOCALS

Flexible pores that course.
No misery. Pain. From talons.
The miserabilists are a-comin.
Across the grass like
star football players.
Big names.
On Monday.

7

CORE

Fun dear. Smoke dear. Hung to dry,
man. Dented ray, Don. Air and
vents are real. If sugar fuses.
If tent irons and tubas
and trombone melodies.

8

SIERRA

Fusty against the form of
my calamity my blue saga.
Afternoons calcified like
membranes in my front.
Today. O annunciation!
For my floating birth
that teems gargantuan
and sends huzzahs
I study by [the light of]
poor sodas.

9

POOR END

I took what I slept what I
armor-plated what I lamed
what I bled what I tied
what I doubled what I saved
what I sickened what I stole
what I gave what I finished
what I gave where I

***
All nine above are 'transductions' of poems originally written in Spanish by John M. Bennett.

monster picks up a tenor

Every true poet is a monster.

Tomaz Salamun

Monster out of work
nearly two years.
For twenty-five bucks
picks up a
battered Buescher
from a pawn shop
and begins to teach
himself how to play.
Scales and melodies
at daybreak,
screaming feedback
by nightfall.
He fixes
an old record
player so he can
jam with Coltrane.
For a change of
tempo gives up
drink. Says
to his cronies in
the busted
park Got my golden
horn to drink from, man.
And to any-
one who crosses
him Don't fuck
with me or my tenor!
Sweetest slice
in the world comes
from my horn. Goes
begging in bars
for the cost of a box
of reeds. Plays in an alley,
Believeth Me, If All Those
Endearing Young Charms.
Tone filled with spit
and righteous
vibrato. Later he
sleeps with his horn.
White genitals
cradled
in its bell.