Sunday, December 23, 2012

SLIGHTLY INCOMPLETE MESSAGE...


SLIGHTLY INCOMPLETE MESSAGE TRANSMITTED FROM FBI HEADQUARTERS  IN QUANTICO, VIRGINIA TO PRESIDENT REGARDING A GOVERNMENTAL THEORY OF POETICS, INTERCEPTED AND  DESCRAMBLED COMPLIMENTS OF SALVATORE NOCERA - OBSESSIVE, DANGEROUSLY INTELLIGENT, INSOMNIAC HAM RADIO OPERATOR:


"... so we are fairly certain, thus far, according to numerous corroborating reports from a cross section of known poets (under much 2BABBLE-NXS serum) that, verbatim, 'there's this cosmic band that passes through me with extreme rapidity, a braided ray of pinkish thrust, finely veined and arteried with threads of the most brilliant f***ing gold,' and this flexible beam (dimensions unknown), purportedly coursing throughout the universe in quick, successive revolutions, occasionally touches poets, nipping a toe, catching a midsection, and may reasonably sever a head (undocumented thus far), but it is in this contact with this circling band, we refer to as the Poet Band, in touching more and more of a poet, rids him or her of more and more mortal flesh, in some mystic transformation, leaving behind (pure conjecture, solely in the poet's conception) slightly tingling lungs and occasional numbness in extremities (see similarity to asleep limbs in Document 12, sect. 4 of POETICS), and eventually, we induce, may free the poet of all carnality, as (to use a poet's verbiage) a dart-board becomes less and less itself as it is used more and more, leading the affected poet to unprecedented inspiration and proliferation of quality work, but, unfortunately in the exact moment that this band touches non-poets, adverse temporary and permanent effects ensue, whereas grace is imbued within the poet, the opposite occurs with the non-poet, such as slight memory loss (see deposition of subject #61473:  'It was on the tip of my tongue'), and major memory loss (often confused with Alzheimer's, see Reagan's autobiography), knees buckling, getting 'the giggles' in church, the unnerved subjects who attempt to climb one step more than is there, and finally, those unfortunate citizens who endlessly pick up one thing as something else falls, but our program, V.R.O.O.M., (funded from our successful, secretly executed 'miscellaneous tax' strategy) has been implemented for such afflicted, non-poets, in the interest of national security and individual safety (Vehicle Ready Operation Of Museless:  a clever program in which non-poet subjects are unwillingly conscripted, for their own good, and set into constant motion throughout the continental United States), to avoid further contact from the Poet Band, subjects are ingeniously hidden in government manufactured cars, often colored a sickly neon, glittery hue, with windows, for anonymity, tinted to illegal opaqueness, and further fitted with two experimental devices to prevent future contact with the Poet Band (utilizing both sound and light defenses):  a set of Richter Scale-like sub-woofers, which will vibrate a neighborhood for a radius of 2.2 kilometers, and also a black-light glow which radiates from the undercarriage, and with these automobiles (appropriately dubbed 'Nausea Machines') we hope such measures will prevent the non-poet population from further contact, as they frequent, town to town, noted 'neutral ground' areas, suspiciously public yet somehow immune to the Poet Band:  malls, movie theaters, main streets, some universities and colleges, large collections of giddy adolescents, and usually in close proximity to 'mosh pits' (where blood, hair, and mucus samples are being  gathered without protest by entrenched and properly 'grunged' agents this very minute) and finally, regretfully, our last immune area, Arkansas, yet as our interrogation of currently 'touched' poets continues, New Mexico based satellite dishes have picked up a possibly relevant message (studied through our finest sound equipment, specialists have identified the voice as most similar to a grown man in gay, girlish timbre), though the code to crack said message continues to elude our 'best boys', and the undecoded message remains:  'fudge, fudge, call the judge, mama's got a new-born baby, not a boy, not a girl, just an ordinary baby, wrap it up in tissue paper, send it up the elevator, first floor miss -', note:  'first floor miss -' repeats itself in simple fashion, as 'first' represents variable 'n' in the progressive equation 'n + 1', thus the 'n' variable increases one whole number in sequence, leading to 'second, third, fourth', et cetera, and always followed by 'floor miss',  which then continues on, according to our 'Big Al' super-computers, ad infinitum, and to supplement that bad news, our initial project, commenced at your request, involving the capturing and confinement of one hundred poets who were under the impression they had earned an all expense paid, one month stay at an unknown writer's commune in Washington, D.C., has failed also, as the poets would not remain seated in assigned cubicles and work on their theory of poetics, despite liberal cattle prod use, and also General Electric's Inspiration Evacuator Machine was perhaps set at unwise levels, causing the poets to utilize their pens in combat fashion, dueling over what little inspiration remained in the observation room, as the poets, consequently, separated into two initial factions (a revealing spectacle), the Masochists and the Sadists, where a grueling fourteen day stand-off persisted, as the Masochists demanded to be stabbed and the Sadists happily refused, but on the fifteenth day, everyone, well, we are down to four territorial poets, each commanding one corner of the observation room, brandishing their pens with what our chief psychotherapist perceives as malicious intent, but without losing hope, our present and most hopeful effort, in a parallel project, is focused upon a youngish poet's latest, most intriguing response (his matter of factness widely unappreciated by our agents, despite the largest dose of serum ever administered) to our repeated queries regarding the nature of the Poet Band:

'It's God's jump rope, man.'"

Monday, December 17, 2012

Kissing Booth


If my ex-fiancé did not volunteer
To run the kissing booth
I might not need to use the “ex-“
I might have one more tooth

Before all this, we had loved fall fairs
I mean real love, as in Cupid
We ate and spent like lovers do
We wore our  “I’m with Stupid”s

Behind my back she signed a sheet
That volunteered her kiss
My love for sale, my girl for rent
My vivisectioned bliss

The asking price—one ninety-five
Two even, with state tax
I read this from a flyer posted
To a telephone pole with tacks

The morning of, I stayed in bed
My hate a thick, black fog
My future wife was passing spit
With any solvent dog

Such money could buy a meal-deal lunch
A string of wholesome bowling!
But no, this money was buying my girl
Her lips all chapped and swollen

Oh, the kisses I envisioned!
The cash-bulge in her smock!
Fast Cash could get them twenty for
Each grunt that worked the docks

She came home late that very night
Two dollars was her fee!
She wept and tried to talk to me
I stared at the TV

“Listen to me,” she pleaded
Pouting her traitorous lips
“I really need your comfort now”
And sadly bumped her hips

What I heard then quite changed my life
My jealousy undone
I laughed and cried and laughed again
She hadn’t sold a one.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Scansion


The blue-lit letters of Jordan Marsh
and the several hunchbacked parking lot lights
drone on into the night like common knowledge
as I pretend to converse
into the payphone

I'm crunched down
against November's thorough chill
reciting my new poetry
into Ma Bell's buzz
pretending each honeycomb hole in the receiver
is a little, faithful ear
that I have to fill
with sweet, easy honey
I say things like:
his goat-gray hair | floats in the breeze | like fastened curls of smoke
or something like that

Across the way
the wind and the bus stop
play accompaniment to my verse
issuing rudimentary whistles
like the first ever wind instrument
long since abandoned
The traffic on Route 9 seeps by
each car passes
like mobile paranoia

Then
I hear his slapping feet
dogging the pavement
like a lazy flogging

His body reminds me of an old and busted watch
beyond repair
that still somehow maintains
stubborn, perfect time
He collapses through the parking lot
in his usual black nylon jogging suit
lined with yellow reflectors
that shine and move
like scared, wounded night
He slips inside the bus stop
sweaty and winded as only
a community college professor can be
when reduced to this

The scenario resumes:
He calls himself Will The Shake
and I am one of his
lesser know characters, Fellatio

In the silent corner, he pays me
Not as much this time
He says, Don't shoot it all in one place
If he only knew where it went

But still, I start
gently,

                    pyrrhic

thinking
and so, and so

On cue
he takes out a small, tortoise shell comb
and strokes his finely trimmed, academic beard
as if posing for a bust
He turns his head casually, side to side

I excite to

               anapestic

thinking
on the way, on the way

In caesural pause
I say, I'm going to be a poet
He rocks on his heels and laughs
He says, This'll be grist for the mill

I quicken,

          iambic
  
thinking
like this, like this

As always, to fill the silence,
his voice echoes among the empty public stink:
'Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;
I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.'
His voice bounds and then
quivers as

I move to

     spondee

thinking
footfalls, footfalls

This past Autumn he has serial killed
He's re-stabbed Polonius
again dunked Ophelia
had Gertrude swallow twice
and just now
has speared-speared Laertes

He turns away, my one and only rule
completing this, his never ending lust
I barely dare to glance this nylon fool
at his perverse and guarded figure just
before I slip back through the door outside
I dream of sleep and dread the too long walk
and wonder if he knows this eventide
behind the doorway so well spent and hawked
that I've managed with guile to make Hamlet
the darkest shade of green impotence for
a boy of lesser name and age has met
the challenges of life head on, though poor
to get a seat (full paid by Will undone)
for INTRO. POETRY class one-oh-one.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Resurrecting Ponce

Along with a carton of unfiltered cigs
I bought a barrel drum of red pistachios
and now carefully smuggle them
eighteen red nuts and two smokes at a time
to the V.A. hospital
where my grandfather lies sinking
in a stagnant pond of
starched, white linen

He is motionless as I enter
except for a slight, unanimous tremor
up the several tubes
rendering his body
a twisted network of death-delaying
entrances and exits
I close the door and hold a lit cigarette
before his mouth
His lips strain with all the effort
of a crew-cut Samson
and I swear to God
no smoke comes back out

After his second cigarette
I bring out the pistachios
and deal them one at a time
Letting him crack them with his own hands
Each plump kernel eventually falling out
as if by accident
He never finishes more than seven
But what if he does?

He slips out of consciousness
His dead-vine arms
turned out in supplication
ready for what's coming
it seems
But the expectant shadows balk
They remain near the IV stand
unsure and slouching in the corner, wondering
how to take the life of an old man
whose fingers are still pink

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Country Road


hundred feet of head-lighted road humping under wheels like forgotten chances are spotted yellow reflectors down the center line occasionally tapping wandering tire's rubber like previous prototypes to an unsuccessful land mine under endless test the completeness of the night with quick lurch light your cigarette when the lighter pops from the console and lose the knob down your lap and see the hell glow circle of heated metal show in your crotch its surprise-mouthed "O" shit and have a tantrum on the brakes as the car follows attention deficited wheels who let the rain and brakes distract their calm lines in a Great God inertia slide down in the seat and the last thing you think before hitting the deer is curl in your thumbs so you don't break them on the wheel but they don't move dammit, you shriek to the dumb deer and it relaxes its hazel orbs on your car's unblinking, passionless stare as the animal effortlessly tumbles like a gymnast over your hood, roof, trunk, and you continue into tire-tilled high grass and a don't move me tree, opposable snaps, your car finishes screwing around and you can stop screaming and get out of the car to see how the other came out comes steam from slick burst of deer God you say as it weakly glances over its splintered shoulder like a woman feigning disinterest and you can see the message of what's happened has not yet traveled to its thin head off any traffic and pull it, what'll be pulled, it's hind end trailing blood dark and distilled from several nights like these slowly concentrated upon its eyes as you hugstrangle its neck and feel your dumb thumbs strum pain and stop its soft, child-sized head from realizing at last breath comes that smells like a wasted, clean chance.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Back filling...


I'm uploading to my blog poems and short stories today. The poems are much more recent. I haven't written a short story in years.