ON PERSONAL ALERT

Birds are everywhere in bookstores.  
My cat dragged
the day. It was horrible.

I wish they would resist
what is grilling in their blood,
what the jaw bone preaches when the rest is gone.

The human
animal is more than a pocketful of dimes
and the dimness found there.

BOOKS I WOULD LIKE TO READ IN A WORLD OF ABUNDANT GENEROSITY

Look I don’t have any money. I don’t have any pennies – okay maybe I have a few pennies – but I don’t have any money right now, and I want books, I want to look at books, hold books, I want to look at front covers and back covers, I want to read blurbs the better to understand what I am reading because I don’t understand words too well, I don’t understand poetry yet I read poetry all the time, well not all the time but a lot of the time, and did I mention I don’t have any money, not much anyway, I mean I’m not wandering the streets or anything and I have a lousy job stocking grocery product in a grocery type store, and I hate it but that doesn’t matter, what does matter is that I have no money and I really feel the urge to read some books and the books I want to read are below these words, these are the books I want to read, so anyone? anyone out there? publishers? editors? poets? ... why not? why not send them to me? It doesn’t matter, either way, I’m not asking for a lot, just the books below, send them to me.



Gordon Lish COLLECTED FICTIONS (O/R Books)
Ben Mirov GHOST MACHINE (Caketrain Press)
Daniel Bailey THE DRUNK SONNETS (Magic Helicopter Press)
Sam Pink THE SELF-ESTEEM HOLOCAUST COMES HOME (Six Gallery Press)

scrawled near base weeds behind the fast food joint

Her sacral saccade in
madding briefs and
aslant low hillocks of
her exfoliated shudder.

Oh her gesso
athwart
my looming
foci.

I admire her legs.

We flail
gladly, onto hunkered plains

letter to Artaud

Dear Artaud,

The sour battalion passed last night, scummed &

not a single rabid god in my throat, nowhere

in the Directionless I seesawed lights by the olde abandoned
truss factory.

Whereas one time I seen the Albino struggle
after the red steer at
Acme Demolition (established 1934),

while just the other side of chain-link the humpback
in retrofit
hawked root-beer and camel-skins.

Like wyrde.

And you, you lost your shark-teeth in and now huff
like a monumental lung-fish but torqued ajaw
way more than prolapsed, dude.

Corruption ratio is down.
Fever stock is up.
Ain't no way that be the Truth.

But it still is only $0.25 for lunch at Mike's:
tomato soup, egg salad sandwich,
one cold glass of fresh milk.

lines from a notebook written in a rented van at night during a thunderstorm in an Ontario provincial park

1

Whose bright idea was rain?
Who invented rain?

Please don't let me get sick.
Though I deserve it.
I won't get sick.

Thunder shakes the van.
My daughter asleep in her tent.
I can barely breathe.

Why won't the rain stop?
Why are you slamming the door?

Waiting for lightning to singe the page.
Lightning. Rain. Thunder.

A man can't sleep.

2

Mr. Nature slept all night in the van.
Now his neck hurts, he is slightly unhinged.
New Day! New Beginning!

3

"How did you sleep?"
"Not bad. And you?"

4

My hands tremble.

5

It is pleasure in the form of ordinary catastrophe.

6

One day you wake to find yourself
remade
into a new bent gull.

this nothing bicycle

I got up. I said, hello. I said, What is this? I said, I'm hungry. Then it was time to go. I got on my blue bicycle. We're going now. And I was gone. Shooting down the long gravel drive by the silos by the creek by the barn on fire by the school that lay in ruins. I was happy to be riding in the new light. It was night. It was day. I hated to be going so soon on my blue bicycle which I hated and loved it was old and did not work. I grabbed the bicycle, throwing it onto my shoulder. It was nothing. I could have carried it all day. It was heavy. Where is my money? I had lots of money I was rich my father was rich though we were poor beyond my ability to admit how poor we were. I could not say anything to anyone how poor we were. The barns were on fire as I rode happily the gravel road. There was this place I would go to when I was lonely I would go there it didn't seem like much but it was special to me. Maybe it was the time of day that was it the time of day which was always late in the day early evening though there was no darkness on things yet there was light but it was going away. Everything seemed blessed by the light and the fact it was leaving everything. I thought I was a special person. I wasn't a special person. I had seizures. Pale skin. I had red hair and everyone thought I was wrong to have red hair but I had red hair. It was long and fell in waves. I thought I was someone else. I wanted to be someone else but I was only who I was and this made me sad. On my bicycle the world seemed endless to me though it wasn't endless it was only about four or five miles long. I would ride for an hour the time just when day truly ended and night truly began when I got home it would be still light but if I stood catching my breath at home once again it would be dark in minutes. I had everything this is what I would say to myself I have everything. But when you think this it is only the case that you have nothing or hardly anything. My return was perfectly timed. Every time I returned I returned at that moment when it wasn't light or dark it wasn't truly light or truly dark but was a moment of perfect balance between the two. I say it was close and sometimes closer than at other times but always it was perfect. Then I would put my bicycle away in the back yard and hitch it like a horse to a tree. I would hear doors slamming, a gun going off, a siren, a dog bark. Elements that leaned homeward.

poem

O hapless one! O storm tossed hiccup!

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.

birth and other outmoded ideas

thinking of you thinking of you thinking of the color blue

***

small dog sprints big dog chases after
happy
alive

***

fly
hello

***

I walked seven miles yesterday saw turtle on trail
handled
gently

***
my hands look old now the rest of me I don't know
who am I kidding

***

that chipped cornerstone must have been a hammer

***
from the east wind brings coyote fur
horses breathe outside your
tent

***
burnt Sienna with its essential suggeston of folded me
in your pocket

***
next life I want to be an architect
whoosh!

***
I'll sell you my television for $200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. 000
my blood you can have
for free

***
if I could do it over again I would do it the same but with more fear

***

too easy too simple
yes