Live from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts:
The distinguished Scarriet Best American Poetry March Madness Committee delivers its Laurel Leaf Prize to the Best American Poetry poets who successfully traveled the road to the Final Four.
Janet Bowdan, Billy Collins, William Kulik, Reb Livingston, this high honor has no other attachments but recognition of your service to poetry, to glory, and to song. You four began with your obscure births a journey to this moment.
In the presence of our judges, your families, your friends, Garrison Keillor, and these poets who love you, on this day, April 3, 2010, I present to each of you the Scarriet Laurel Leaf Prize.
(Applause)
All four poems feature lucid movement through a dramatic landscape, a sleek impressionism, an original beauty, a fluid design, a combined emotive and cognitive power, and clues to life, as well.
The final Order of the Poems:
4. The Triumph of Narcissus and Aphrodite –William Kulik
3. The Year –Janet Bowdan
2. That’s Not Butter –Reb Livingston
1. Composed Over Three Thousand Miles From Tintern Abbey –Billy Collins
Thanks to all participants in this year’s Scarriet Best American Poetry March Madness.
A final farewell to the No. 1 seeds in the tournament: Galway Kinnell (East), Louis Simpson (North), Sharon Olds (West), and Donald Justice (South).
We hope you all enjoyed the excitement during the road to the Final Four, and learned more about all these poets.
64 excellent poems, chosen from 1,500 Best American Poetry selections 1988—2009, were selected to the tournament itself and Kulik, Bowdan, Livingston and Collins were the top four.
Congratulations!
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Tom, Marla here with more from William “Wild Bill” Kulik, a Scarriet exclusive, this is available nowhere else on the internet, I typed it in with mein own eight fingers and two thumbs!
Fictions
William Kulik
In that novel you bought at the chain, a young woman looks back on her life.
She’s 30, a teacher married to a Harley-riding oil exec, mother of two sons.
They have an apartment uptown, take exciting trips, but she’s bored, frozen,
galvanized into life only during rough sex or when she pictures him dying
on one of his drunken, lights-off rides across the Throggs Neck Bridge.
She thinks, as you do, her dad may have abused her: dreams and flash-
backs tell her it’s true. Meanwhile he, driven by his own demon, is made by
the author to describe their life as “a simple story of seduction, rape and
madness, the usual preoccupations.” Now deep in the book, you wonder if
they’re being readied for some sinister ritual the one will create, the other
acquiesce to. You wish they’d come to grips but it’s hopeless: he won’t give
up his rage against a cold, demanding mother, she the hold on reality per-
fect order gives her. When their fate is revealed, you applaud silently, a wit-
ness to the truth of those struggles with the past that imitate your secret life
so well you identify, are consoled. But are you liberated? Any more than if
you’d watched the war that prompts those sounds of agony amplified by two
huge speakers under the ring on whose sweaty canvas Killa Quadzilla meets
Dr. Death in a world of faked falls, stomps and roars, the theatrical shame
of the one about to be drop-kicked into the screaming crowd, the other sud-
denly real to you in the cocky strut and powerful hairy arms, hand on the
helpless throat, you and your brother huddled in a corner of the room hug-
ging crying Mommy daddy please stop we love you we’re sorry
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Tom, Marla here, another classic performance by William Kulik:
Hi
In Memory of Wolfman Jack
My name’s James, enlightenment’s my game. Comin’ at y’all with Soul
Break, the two-minute hot spot on the hottest spot in town: station WSLF
Millennium Radio 2000 on your dial where we know the pose of those who
think the sword can cut itself and you out there usin Twoness to reach One-
ness thinking you ain’t really real with a capital R til you like old Frog-in-
Suchness—don’t know his ass from his eyeball but give you one helluva
Chugarumph! do that jump-in-pond-sound thing y’all dig on—cause you be
thinkin’ he got something you don’t have, which is where you wrong and why
I’m here tryin to get in your Original Face, tell you there ain’t nothin’ here
to realize actualize fecundize: you can’t get it cause you already got it, and
if you could get it, it wouldn’t be it, got it? Just you lookin for the Ultimate’s
a joke! Hell, any state you could find wouldn’t be Ultimate if you could find
it, ain’t I right? And dig this: what you in your Twoness call the Illusion cre-
ated by your Twoness which Illusion you are usin to reach the Oneness you
in your Illusion think you ought to reach—all that mess is what the Man,
Brah-Man, is already doin; and, like the man says: “Console thyself, thou
woulds’t not seek me if thou hads’t not already found me.” Now that’s the
truth, ain’t no illusion—but it’s all there is for now, brothers and sisters in
the Land of Pure Delusion. Time for James to park it on his little satin pil-
low fold hands and stare at the dot he painted on the wall. Cause I got my
own confusion. ‘Night, y’all.
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 2:22 pm
writing (on the walls)
Janet Bowdan
As if I could see that far into the past
could on an overcast day the sky full
of omens walk along looking at something else,
window displays, hear its recognition.
horizon gaze open-focuses, contracts to close-up
you could almost touch minor characters
lilliputian from a distance now brobdingnags
as they turn major, the key’s minor,
when the walls close in you get out, go
for a walk. cracks not in the retaining wall,
not the one required to hold the house up
just a sort of curtain wall, a cosmetic, a facade.
Back then the writing was on the wall and now
the wall’s blank, a shell, the kind of blank that
if you shot, you wouldn’t hurt
me, just a powder burn, a scar, unless we were
too close. hear the shot echoing in the past,
someone’s shot a video, the turning again: which
story’s etched into the wall with light? who
read it, who looks at the whole story, who turns
to look at something else, into the sky for omens,
demanding signs, a boy falling out of the sky, we
are too close: you can’t stop watching, I can’t look.
Back to the window displays carefully dressed mannequins,
faces painted in the reflection of the sky, the story
of giants in miniature, you watching. the angle of
incidence.
thomasbrady said,
April 4, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Marla,
Wild Bill Kulik is blessed to have a Muse like you looking after him.
Tom
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 2:25 pm
ice 2 (on)
Janet Bowdan
the question is what is being kept on reserve, what are my reserves
you could say if you had any curiosity about me
and I will just say I am intensely curious about you
vice versa would only be polite
but I’m sure you have your own life you have to get on with
your intimate concerns. And now back to me
say that there is a part of me not used, utilized, well what part
is that? clearly it’s not the part that works, all working parts
in order, working non-stop it feels like, the ever-increasing speed
of the conveyor belt, the treadmill, the grindstone the nose is to:
do these images suggest a wearing down or out to you? do you think
I have, indeed, gotten smaller? of course to answer that
you have to have paid attention before. it’s all right,
try this: does water expand or contract when it turns to ice?
A simple experiment will provide the solution. Put a full glass of
water into your freezer and leave it overnight or for several years
before checking on the results. It might help to mark the level
of water on the glass with a wax pencil, in case you are likely
to forget where it was.
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Apologies for Ice
Reb Livingston
No bread crumbs or constellations
I see nothing
except thick trunks, leafy branches
Now is not the time for snow
but I pray for it anyway
it’s crisp and puts me sleep
Charm brings distrust
wolves, June fools
It’s almost July
Grandma passed away, the wolf
missed his chance and
doesn’t know what to do with himself
I squandered mine
fill freezer trays with water
stockpile limes just in case
you stop by for a vodka tonic
You’re busy demonstrating your
quaint breeding for elegant cruelty
ignore, then apologize beautifully
seize upon the cold retort
now I’m the asshole swinging the
hatchet with no regard for school children
So I bide my time sipping seltzer with the
animal meant to gobble Grandma
People judge, disapprove
yet he was the only one to
send condolences, start a dialogue
I’m lonesome with no one else
My winter valley upbringing
taught me all skiers end up
dead, twisted in the gully
their locust eyes frozen like feelings
still able to gaze upon our abundant shortcomings
as we pile their corpses on the wagon
which is why my people
keep their love on a switch
flip it off and tape it down
Too bad about electricity
once I was thankful for it
I will be again in
another life, said sadly, fondly
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Pinup
Billy Collins
The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense
that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup
drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.
Your ears are ringing with the sound of
the mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe,
and as you look closer you notice that this month’s
is not the one pushing the lawn mower, wearing
a straw hat and very short blue shorts,
her shirt tied in a knot just below her breasts.
Nor is it the one in the admiral’s cap, bending
forward, resting her hands on a wharf piling,
glancing over the tiny anchors on her shoulders.
No, this is March, the month of great winds,
so appropriately it is the one walking her dog
along a city sidewalk on a very blustery day.
One hand is busy keeping her hat down on her head
and the other is grasping the little dog’s leash,
so of course there is no hand left to push down
her dress which is billowing up around her waist
exposing her long stockinged legs and yes the secret
apparatus of her garter belt. Needless to say,
in the confusion of wind and excited dog
the leash has wrapped itself around her ankles
several times giving her a rather bridled
and helpless appearance which is added to
by the impossibly high heels she is teetering on.
You would like to come to her rescue,
gather up the little dog in your arms,
untangle the leash, lead her to safety,
and receive her bottomless gratitude, but
the mechanic is calling you over to look
at something under your car. It seems that he has
run into a problem and the job is going
to cost more than he had said and take
much longer than he had thought.
Well, it can’t be helped, you hear yourself say
as you return to your place by the workbench,
knowing that as soon as the hammering resumes
you will slowly lift the bottom of the calendar
just enough to reveal a glimpse of what
the future holds in store: ah,
the red polka dot umbrella of April and her
upturned palm extended coyly into the rain.
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Another internet/Scarriet exclusive — from the novel The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter.
A Brief Political Manifesto
Jess Walter
I was driving around the packed Costco parking lot
looking for a space and listening to some guy
on NPR talk about America’s growing suburban poor
when I saw this woman with four kids—
little stepladders, two-four-six-eight—
waiting to climb in the car while Mom
loaded a cask of peanut better and
pallets of swimsuits into the back
of this all-wheel drive vehicle
and the kids were so cute I waved
and that’s when I saw the most amazing thing
as the woman bent over
to pick up a barrel
of grape juice:
her low-rise pants rose low and right there
in the small of her large back
stretched a single strained string,
a thin strap of fabric, yes,
the Devil’s floss, I shit you not
a thong, I swear to God, a thong,
now me, I’m okay with the thong
politically and aesthetically, I’m fine
with it being up there or out there,
or wherever it happens to be.
My only question is:
when did Moms start wearing them?
I remember my mom’s underwear
(Laundry was one of our chores:
we folded those things awkwardly,
like fitted sheets. We snapped them
like tablecloths. Thwap.
My sister stood on one end,
me on the other
and we walked toward each other
twice.
We folded those things
like big American flags,
hats off, respectful
careful not to let them
brush the ground.)
Now I know there are people out there
who constantly fret about
the Fabric of America;
gay couples getting married, violent videos, nasty TV,
that sort of thing.
But it seems to me
the Fabric of America
would be just fine
if there was a little more of it
in our mothers’ underpants.
And that is the issue I will run on
when I eventually run:
Getting our moms out of thongs
and back into hammocks
with leg holes
the way God
intended.
Bob Tonucci said,
April 4, 2010 at 4:43 pm
A brief musical interlude from 1970….
Apeman
Ray Davies
I think I’m so-
phisticated
‘Cause I’m living my life
like a good homosapien
But all around me
everybody’s multiplying
And they’re walking
‘round like flies, man
So I’m no better
than the animals sitting
in their cages in the zoo, man
‘Cause compared to the flowers
and the birds and the trees
I am an apeman
I think I’m so educated
and I’m so civilized
‘Cause I’m a strict vegetarian
But with the overpopulation
and inflation and starvation
And the crazy politicians,
I don’t feel safe in this world no more
I don’t want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
and make like an apeman
I’m an apeman,
I’m an ape apeman
I’m an apeman
I’m a King Kong man
I’m an ape ape man
I’m an apeman
‘Cause compared to the sun that sits in the sky
compared to the clouds as they roll by
Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an apeman
“In man’s evolution, he has created the cities
and the motor traffic rumble,
but give me half a chance
and I’d be taking off my clothes
and living in the jungle”
‘Cause the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in a coconut tree
Oh what a life of luxury
to be like an apeman
I’m an apeman,
I’m an ape apeman,
I’m an apeman
I’m a King Kong man,
I’m a voodoo man
I’m an apeman
I look out my window, but I can’t see the sky
The air pollution is fogging up my eyes
I want to get out of this city alive
And make like an apeman
Come and love me,
be my apeman girl
And we will be so happy
in my apeman world
I’ll be your Tarzan, you’ll be my Jane
I’ll keep you warm and you’ll keep me sane
and we’ll sit in the trees and eat bananas all day
Just like an apeman
Bob Tonucci said,
April 5, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Colloquy
William Kulik
On the verandah, fat Scotch in hand, trying not to make sense of another day in Nadaville, I imagine I’m telling my dead friend, Jeff Marks, who knew me best, how as a child I’d lie in bed subtracting the world, piece by piece: father, mother, friends, animals, neighborhood; then Philadelphia, America, the oceans, earth and sky til there was nothing left but blackness-and me, dizzy, spinning, unable, however hard I tried, to subtract the mind trying to subtract itself.
And how, the night before last, I had a creepy dream where I was stretched out waiting staring when my usual face turned dinosaurshaped and bone-white, as if the flesh had been boiled off, the mouth exploding in a scream, and next day in the garden, squashing Japanese beetles with my fingers, I saw that same face on a bug who, I swear, stared at me, daring me to kill him. Which, as I’m telling Jeff, struck me as a premonition, so I’m not really surprised when Death, in traditional costume, appears at my elbow. “These are positive signs,” he says, “But I need more proof of your commitment.” “Like what?” I ask, annoyed he doubts me. “I read Beckett, load up on despair, try to be stoical: think of myself as a ripe grape whose time to fall is coming, the way Aurelius says to. I’m deep into Nietzsche on fate, Sartre on non-being, Camus on suicide, what more do you want?” “Literary guys,” he sneers, showing a set of yellow teeth. “I know you only use those half-ass ideas to appease me. Think you can hold me off with that bullshit? When it’s your turn it’s your turn, and the hell with Wittgenstein. And incidentally,” he says with a stare as cold as the moon, “It’s your turn.” He spits the words in my face, breath so incredibly foul I wince, my whole life rewinding before me. But pretty quick, cause it’s so ordinary: the kids go from grown-ups to babies, I have my hair back, endure the trials of marriage, the shy college years, adolescent shame, terrors of separation, all the way back to the dark bedroom of the six-year-old who could make the world disappear, only his consciousness left: and would this be at last the subtraction of it? Feeling a full-body tremor as I did the time a mugger held a thirty-eight against my temple, I hear a frightened little voice begging “Please can I have more time? Maybe finish a book, live to see a grandchild?” He snickers, and I get another peep at the yellow fangs. “Deal,” he says, “Just remember this,” and he pulls back his cowl. What he shows me I can’t describe except to say it’s at the same time mind and notmind and the mirror of mind, shattered and reflected from a thousand constantly-changing angles, and out of that whirlwind of light the barking of a thousand hounds. I squeeze my head-hard-to keep my trained animal from leaping its leash, hear him whisper “Au revoir” as, with the sound of a balloon running out of air, he vanishes, leaving just the smell of garbage rotting in the sun
Bob Tonucci said,
April 6, 2010 at 12:00 am
Mental
William Kulik
The maple’s twisted branch
is the stick that hissed at Goodman Brown
snake-devil in the forest evil
it’s the knife in the chest
of the guy with the badge that reads Brand Master
lying face-up under the stars
who died leering at the Penthouse Pet
with the tits full of sand
who smiled when she thought of her boyfriend’s cock
bent and gnarled
like that branch the little man standing
on his front porch watches change
from ground to figure
figure to ground
blackness burning
in the forests of day
like Dracula’s tux
at the end of his endless life
Bob Tonucci said,
April 6, 2010 at 9:35 am
Recourse
William Kulik
It’s my last day on earth and a guy in a white coat I hope to Christ is really a doctor and not some paranoid asshole escapee from a nuthouse is asking me intimate weird questions about my medical history, writing the answers down on a clipboard with a crude holographic likeness of a winking Mona Lisa who looks I think like Kirk Douglas in drag taped to the back. Because my tenure here is tenuous, I don’t respond to his steady stream of insults though I am sorely, as they say, tempted to — as he mocks the scars, sags and creases of a body I’ve always hated. “Ugly black mark, right thigh,” he demands, pointing with his pen. Grudging but obedient, I answer: “Pencil stab, kid brother, 1951.” “Why?” “Teased him.” “About what?” I feel a mixed rush of anger and shame. “Being a sissy.” He scowls, and I wish I could shove the pen up his ass, but I need to give in. “Jagged scar, left eyebrow,” he says, fingering the hair, and in spite of myself I get an odd tingle. “High school gang fight,” I answer, remembering the sneer on the face of the kid who started it by calling me a queer. He pauses, staring deep into my eyes, then goes on about the folds of belly-fat, the misshapen navel, the lopsided ears, the crooked chin, and I’m left feeling less like a man than ever and more his minion — the word comes to me out of a blue very like his eyes — so when he smirks at the patch of psoriasis I’ve always been ashamed of, it’s more than I can bear. “Singed by the high-tension wires of life,” I lisp, limp-wristed, and stare into those depthless captivating eyes, which suddenly gleam with lust. Swiftly licking his lips, he yanks off a rubber mask: it’s our twelfth-grade English teacher, Dr. Sonnenfeld, we all thought was having an affair with the custodian Mr. Delp, and here he is at heaven’s gate with my fate in his hand which is now behind my back and me without a single hymn to sing
thomasbrady said,
April 6, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Thanks, Mr. Tonucci.
This Kulik kicks butt.
An apt Final Four candidate, I’d say.
Deserves the Scarriet Laurel Leaf Prize.
Bob Tonucci said,
April 6, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Metamorph
William Kulik
It begins innocently two people driving on a country road. There are trees, a lake, you’re just talking then she grows a moustache blood pours from your nose there’s a black cat on the windshield a demon doctor in the forest promising your dead friend will return then you’re driving again near the ocean seawall like a stadium you enter a tunnel under the waves you smile to calm her thinking all the while of fish there’s a field where you stop to watch two men in ten-gallon hats and tooled leather boots cast with long rods the hooks flash in the sun and you are very angry but a vulture grabs you anyway you hide your face so he won’t peck out your eyes then you turn to find him on your lap a baby now with a blonde moustache you think all roads lead back the bird squats on your heel crooning what a trip just for one more look
Bob Tonucci said,
April 7, 2010 at 12:21 am
Litany for Insomnia (from God Damsel)
Reb Livingston
O Tempest! Begetter of all tricksy.
I mortgage your tearflop marquee.
While bethinking the outfaced sneers amassed,
I believe that you, Shepherd,
would in a pageant decree this velvet to vomit.
Blameful as I am,
I greenly swallow you cocksure.
Pleading heartsore and couplet
may I dissolve beside nuptial snore.
Bob Tonucci said,
April 7, 2010 at 9:15 am
Litany for Thy Talents (from God Damsel)
Reb Livingston
Let us refrain mastery for our clash
by lauding the anguish of the exalted Woe-dodo.
Woe-dodo, vessel of pleasure,
tendril of good-smelling hair,
beloved of unanswerable savants,
you are instance to the worth of handy affection.
O you who wears a scarlet bra
and ninny sheath
pray for us that,
though you are unworthy of a recognized wrap
we may have our names voiced from Thy Woe-dodo yap.
Bob Tonucci said,
April 7, 2010 at 9:35 am
First Ballad Interlude from the libretto of “Paul Bunyan”
W.H. Auden
NARRATOR:
The cold wind blew through the crooked thorn,
Up in the North a boy was born.
His hair was black, and his eyes were blue,
His mouth turned up at the corners too.
A fairy stood beside his bed;
‘You shall never, never grow old’, she said.
‘Paul Bunyan is to be your name’;
Then she departed whence she came.
You must believe me when I say,
He grew six inches every day.
You must believe me when I speak,
He gained 346 pounds every week.
He grew so fast, by the time he was eight,
He was as tall as the Empire State.
The length of his stride’s a historical fact;
3.7 miles to be exact.
When he ordered a jacket, the New England mills
For months had no unemployment ills.
When he wanted a snapshot to send to his friends,
They found they had to use a telephoto lens.
But let me tell you in advance,
His dreams were of greater significance.
His favourite dream was of felling trees,
A fancy which grew by swift degrees.
One night he dreamt he was to be
The greatest logger in history.
He woke to feel something stroking his brow,
And found it was the tongue of an enormous cow.
From horn to horn or from lug to lug,
Was forty-seven axe-heads and a baccy plug.
But what would most have bewildered you
Was the colour of her hide which was bright bright blue.
But Bunyan wasn’t surprised at all;
Said, ‘I’ll call you Babe, you call me Paul.’
He pointed to a meadow, said, ‘Take a bite:
For you’re leaving with me for the South tonight.’
Over the mountains, across the streams
They went to find Paul Bunyan’s dreams.
The bear and the beaver waved a paw,
The magpie chattered, the squirrel swore.
The trappers ran out from their lonely huts
Scratching their heads with their rifle butts.
For a year and a day they travelled fast
‘This is the place’, Paul said at last.
The forest stretched for miles around,
The sound of their breathing was the only sound.
Paul picked a pine-tree and scratched his shins,
Said, ‘This is the place where our work begins.’
Desmond Swords said,
April 7, 2010 at 10:02 am
Writing today, New American poetry unfolding to a logic Kenneth-Dinh-Bök-Mlinko-Nowak-Perez- Stallings-Tamblyn
Amber Craig and Linh,
Mark and Rigoberto
Ange and A.E.
Martin Earl who is one’s favourite
González, Santos Perez: y’all individual, unique singular atomized poetic Christian curator-cycles in Blunt Degree Expedience College, Good Piracy All Zero
Academy Poets
Today Danann logic, according to the long-term prophetic scale of turnover and agility, ever more efficient, our material mean, scientific programme, pragmatic to an end: You knew writing sought ‘no other gradient but the one of least resistance, in a windfucker song, aye tumble into Crow,
growing, growing, knowing it is Crow again
here to save -abandon- you and me in a row
A special date in the season’s fledging, little
slave in bonded Letters, dear dear you help-
ing one attain the crown of luvvies. Crow
nascent and inchoate calanderical competition
Who’s Worst: Me OR you, ‘continuous predatory-
stopgap, market “fast cheap and out of control”
theory-breeder in pure logical movement, language central, spontaneously
dichetal do chennaib, divination from the tips’ worked for you. The muse of ten thousand American souljahs in a poet army of bardic fluff
pastime, hobbles my hobby’ – twas all a midnight noon, luna
zenith, full-faced, remembering dichetal do chennaib, divination from an edge
the final resolution – tipping into spontaneous critical prose,
poetry and abandonment, public dumps
orthographical premise for Am ‘n UK po-biz
in a windfucker song, aye tumble into Crow,
in love with Charon, Graves, Maeve and díchealtair – magical disguise –
‘Of the rolling level underneath ‘him’ steady air, and striding
forward into the foam-saddle seat of a sexy Cortina, a lining
lost to the windhover “underneath” “outride” that is there so many times
unstressed upon syllables, row in row.
What? I’d say: is that dactyl rolling steadily and striding into iambic underneathness of air baby, anruth, cli and doss breathing that spoke in seven-stressed lines – heard through em, in what turned out to be, your final hurrah to 20C dreams of tv figures and Celebrity poets shaping how, what who and why in the aye, didn’t you just know the change of tone would be so blarey and in yer face.
What aint sed. Nuff messin meff. C’mon yer cunt. Fuck off yer whole and stand up straight, take that look from off yer face, coz you aint ever gonna blare my heart out: Appollo, Calliope Euterpe and Ogma – defined goals
folding like a handkerchief on the hinge of our tradition
Tuatha De Danann
specificities of place, time and context to self-regulating cases of capital in writers discovered filling more than just niches, more quickly if the field far off, Adam Fielded, his activity is clearly your own, AmPo souljahs, coracle-oracles and obstacle of bad drag, associate with the precious many academic
interiority or self-expression
one-dimensional algorithmic result of iambic numbers, trochees and protocol crunched… or esle
on the data-cloud of a network
on a handheld device, Swords now functioning better for less
people expecting
the interaction and concatenation of other machines
do cheann im chrios.
Thanks very much
Your head on my belt, in a windfucker song, aye tumble
Crow, growing, growing into knowing it is Crow again
here to save -abandon- you and me in a row
row row us love, to the phonebox of ourselves, Brian
Conoley Crow dialling Daisy Dawes, Donovan verse
chorus coracle, come Billboard Koan, Shitty Namaste,
oracle of Frieda and Gillian Goldsmith and Greenlaw,
Huerta and Javier Kwame Turner: What is Poets
Theater? Irish Poetry Now? Provisional Language?
Foundation Month at Harriet blog, National AmPo
Thom on looking at thyme under a microscope, the scientist
reaches for a lemon. The Gated Community
a normal kind of everyguy Crow knows the shoulder
of Cuchulain well: Landed upon the dead
god’s material remains and signalled -L-O
a lover pool bet
Cuchulain is Brutus Appollo
Pretanik Chief Bard and Pencerdd in Lancs
Manchester, Merseyside, Nottingham
Oswestry, Preston, Quay Street, Rotterdam
Ted and Undrid, Val, Wendy and Mister X
Y the Zoroasterian Golden Dawn Circe
keying up the chord of lovely Irish surreality
stepping up, c’mon, Letter alliteratively
hypo-critical love, sad sack ponies, pink
gimp-prince and princesses, all alone
row row your Zoroaster Yeats a hashish
prince, pill addict reverser sorcering
sidhe ghost of Tuatha De Danann, daring
Truth of the Sidhe, Mister Eliot and me sta-
ring into lampost at the corner of our street
watching Concrete envelope the soul
Mister, y’all know he is just
like us, everyguy Euro-American Ap
Dafyd de facto English person’s lineage
root of East Coker from where the guys family
fled persecution of Religious belief in Tudor England. The same as one’s own family felt the purge and holocuast of what happened when two opposing forces met in ‘private’ war on the continents all one’s own.
Thanks very much everyone. Very proud not to know who you aren’t, despite one’s enthusiasm in the critical debates happening here on potw 150.
A special date in the season’s fledging nascent and inchoate calanderical competition of Who’s Worst: Me OR you, little slave in bonded Letters, dear dear you helping me to attain the Crow luvvies.
Oh dear, sorry, unnoticing are we, Sir X slave from the Styx, authoratative Dame blare concern, audacious gaze at the ambient Gazelle, in love with Charon, Graves, Maeve and díchealtair – magical disguise.
Disquieting Charon Bablyon Adam and Eve, aye or nea princes
princesses reading dearest believers, et tu sur l’art non – oui?
Experimental Thought readers. Have a think about it.
‘Styles of deployment and organization of resources for creating literary value’ that have radically changed over the past years, aye, KG in the English of Enormous New ‘technological mechanisms for synergy and cooperation’, allow one’s ‘language to concentrate in both new and unprecedentedly dense and narrow ways. Writing no longer fixes on the single masterpiece, but rather on extended, horizontal, non-locatable production’ unit. You know that, don’t you, cutting your swathes through the digital landscape, with blade and scales that, until recently corresponded for centuries, to the development of time and space in its entirity, approaching Ground Zero, the zero brigade, blunt, chilling, trilling of Darwinian Nazism, rampant facist opportunism in action. Writing it appears, at this scale at least, is dead.
What’s the Density of Kevin Desmond’s words Kenneth?
bándhraíocht or genuine dichetal do chennaib?
A Wonderful Parade
Bob Tonucci said,
April 7, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Marriage Pants
Matthew Lippman
I don’t know when the shitstorm of failed marriage
took off.
I’m talking about people who I went to high school with,
to college and Italian villas—
where we could see Vesuvius and if we could not see it,
imagine it,
and if we could not do that either,
played with the sound of the word
as it rolled around like horny lovers
in the backs of our throats.
There was Jack and Lucinda,
who spent three years building banjos
that neither of them ever played
but the plants flourished in their stinky apartment near Gowanus
so who cared.
The question persisted:
Who the hell am I
and what the hell have I done?
Then there was Katie and Todd who loved
caviar and sparrows.
They wanted to have a kid and thank fuck they didn’t.
When Katie left she blew up Todd’s motorcycle
and the neighborhood kids ran down the block for a second
to see the debris
then went back to their basketballs and bong hits.
I wanted them to make it
for everyone on the planet. I wanted her cancer and his insatiable desire for obese ladies
at the Target
to be beaten into death;
to prove to the 21st century TV newscasters
that nobody knew what the hell they were talking about
when they newscasted on TV
that marriage was dying like an obese lady
in the lingerie department
at the local Target.
It felt weird,
like people weren’t getting divorced,
but more, like they were dying—
crawling into the earth with the worms and roots
to hide away in horror
while their children ran to the school bus and the Batmobile
and the EZ Bake oven that, of course,
could never, ever, ever,
catch fire.
It made me want to beat up my mailman
and the woman who sold me my internet cable
and the telephone guy, Lou,
like all of this was some reflection on how we had forgotten to talk
to one another.
But it wasn’t.
It was age.
The age of worn out marriage pants,
untended. One leg torn at the knee,
the other, burned out in the crotch.
It was bad cloth, warped stitching, inseams with no in
and I knew it.
And then I got hitched.
Eight years later,
my buddy Stu said to me:
How do you stay connected?
I said:
You want to stay close, stay close.
You want to be in love,
be in love.
It’s like watching TV
Like ping pong after dinner.
You pick up the clicker, you pick up
the paddle.
But who the hell was I?
Some mornings I get up and can’t tie my shoes.
I’m forty-four years old and can’t toast the seedless rye.
My kid cries because her hands are wet;
my wife undresses in front of open windows.
What am I supposed to do?
I wake up.
I say good morning.
I put on my pants.