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Exquisite Corpse
Issue 8A Journal of Letters and Life

ISSUE 8 HOME || BROKEN NEWS || CRITIQUES || CYBER BAG || EC CHAIR || FICCIONES || THE FOREIGN DESK
GALLERY || LETTERS || POESY || REVIEWS || SERIALS || STAGE & SCREEN
Five Poems
by Antler
Author's Links

Feral

Boy raised by wolves, boy raised by panthers,
     boy raised by dolphins, boy raised by sequoias,
Boy raised by spirits of plant-eating dinosaurs,
     boy raised by the cave behind the waterfall,
Boy raised by clouds,
     boy raised by snowflakes every snowflake different,
Boy raised by rainbows,
     boy raised by stars that existed before this Universe
     in Universes that existed before this one,
Boy raised by a crystal embedded in bedrock
     one mile below where you stand
               or one hundred miles below where you stand,
Boy reared by an anaconda in the jungle
     that became his teacher and bestfriend,
Boy raised by eagles, boy raised by fireflies,
     boy raised by luna moths, boy raised by pussywillows,
Owls, gorillas--boys raised by them,
Bears, otters--boys raised by them,
Bigfoot, LochNess Monster--boys raised by them,
Boy raised by geodes, boy raised by aurora,
     boy raised by marijuana, boy brought up by mushrooms,
Boy nurtured by a huge field of fresh fallen snow
     with no footprints in it in moonlight,
Boy raised by whales he never sees
     whose minds a mile down in the Pacific Ocean
               control his every move,
Boy suckled by volcanoes,
Boy raised by hurricanes and earthquakes,
     tornado-raised boys,
               boy raised by echoes from sea-shells,
Boy raised by undiscovered pyramid on the Moon,
Boy raised by reflection of Mount Everest
     upsidedown in a dewdrop,
Boy raised by being able to tell
     what kind of tree
               by smelling its bark in the dark.



New Clocks for Millennium


Alarmclock that makes squirrels of creatures
     slaughterhoused every hour
               with portrait of butchery
                    where the numbers would be.
Pocket watch that makes screams of shot soldiers
     from a different kind of wound every hour
               with close-up of each wound
          where the numbers would be.
Clocktower that makes deathrattles of people dying every hour
     from stroke, cancer, heart-attack, AIDS,
               drowning, burning, freezing, starving,
          eaten alive, hanging, beheading, electrocuting
               with sculpture of each deathface
     where the numbers would be.
Timepiece that announces each hour
     with a different kind o' fart
               with close-up of hinder it poofed from
     where the numbers would be.
Sundial with lifesize replica of Blue Whale erection for gnomon
     so one tells time
               by the shadow of leviathan boner
     silently advancing umbra and penumbra
               
around the copper circle
     with rays emanating
               from the center to curve-edge
     ending with Blue Whale eyes looking out at you
               where the Roman numerals would be.
Churchsteeple bell that make's delirious boycomecries every hour
     with movie of angelic boyorgasmface
               projected on a screen attached where
     the cross used to be.
Grandfather clock that makes every hour
     the sound of girls' nipples
               getting stiff.
Grandfather clock that makes every hour
     the sound of lightningbugs' rear-ends
               when they lights up.
Skyscraper-size hourglass
     suspended from armada of dirigibles
               over every capital of every nation on Earth.
Clock from Hiroshima stopped
     exact moment atom bomb
               exploded.
Clock from Titanic stopped
          exact moment it
               plunged.
Wristwatch on mountainclimber buried in avalanche
     discovered 10,000 years later
               starts ticking.
Clock in spaceship
     travelling so fast
               its hands stand still.
Clock so large in the mind
     our Universe is only a dust mote
               on its nanosecond hand.
One day a year summer solstice sunrise
     blazes through the narrow vertical slit
               in the ancient black granite tower
     illuminating the naked statue
               in the darkened chamber
     for a minute.



Doting on Dust Motes


Doting on dust motes it occurs to me
     the Universe began as a dot,
               each of us began as a dot,
     a sentence ends with a dot,
               we put a dot over our small "i"
     and seen from 100 feet up
               we look like a dot
     and in the brain of that dot
               the idea
Just as there are intergalactic extraterrestrials
     from other solar systems in our galaxy,
So there are extragalactic extraterrestrials
     from other galaxies in our Universe,
Plus extraUniverse extraterrestrials
     from other Universes simultaneous to ours,
And just as it'd be inconceivable and preposterous
     for us to try to teach all we know
               to an amoeba,
So it'd be inconceivable and preposterous
     for intergalactic extraterrestrials
               to try to teach all they know to us,
Or for extragalactic extraterrestrials
     to try to teach all they know
               to intergalactic extraterrestrials,
Or for extraUniverse extraterrestrials
     to try to teach all they know
               to extragalactic extraterrestrials
When extraUniverse extraterrestrials
     are as far beyond extragalactic extraterrestrials
               as extragalactic extraterrestrials
     are beyond intergalactic extraterrestrials
               as intergalactic extraterrestrials
     are beyond us
               as we are beyond
     an amoeba
               as an amoeba is beyond
     the idea
In the brain of a dot
     that knows it looks like a dot
               100 feet up
     and knows we must dot our "i"
               and end our sentence with a dot
     in a Universe that began as a dot
               in which each of us began as a dot
     doting on dust motes it occurs to me ....



Sad Bad Mad Glad

Sad to say more nuclear bombs exist
     than number of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam.
Bad to say maggots play hide-n-seek in your corpse.
Mad to say jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountaintop.
Glad to say frost ferns unfurl on winter's window.
Sad to say more soldiers killed at Gettysburg
     than number of U.S. soldiers killed in Korea.
Bad to Say maggots breathe through their anuses
     when they bury their heads to feed
               in putrefying flesh.
Mad to say the present stood still and drew into itself the future
     like a child sucking forever on an unending
               piece of spaghetti.
Glad to say the green tree frog on the milkweed plant
     listened to the girl play her flute
               for a half hour.
Sad to say if all soldiers and civilians
      killed in wars the last 100,000 years
          were stacked on each other
     they'd reach to the Moon.
Had to say no way to prove maggots not philosophers and poets
     beyond any human.
Mad to say rather than put your best foot forward,
     put your best cunnilingus forward.
Glad to say rings of debris around a young star
     coagulate into new planetary systems.
Sad to report the microscope and telescope got a divorce.
Bad to confide an octopus can squeeze its body
     through an opening the size of its eyeball.
Mad to shout every shit from your shitting asshole
     and ejaculation from your spurting cock
               came from your mother's vagina.
Glad to sigh high-reared slow fucking
     ending in furious plungespurt.
Sad to say undone by stallioncomecry,
     undone by tree idolatry,
               undone by taking to heart
     we don't live in a nation
               we live in an assassination,
     undone by a full-grown Blue Whale
               25 million times the size
     of the fertilized egg from, which it grew.
Bad to say radio messages we can't decipher
     from civilizations in other galaxies,
     .     pass through our genitals every second
and have passed through human genitals every second
          since humans were tree shrews.
Mad to say erudite Luddites exculpate execrable executives
     and inculcate incalculable cohorts
               who vouchsafe purpureal zealots proclaiming
     we don't live in a nation we live in an hallucination.
Glad to say happy skinnydipping.
Sad to say 100,000 times more slaughterhouses than churches,
100,000 times more prisons than performing art centers.
Bad to say cock engorged with blood,
     balls engorged with come, come engorged with genes,
          lungs engorged with air, guts engorged with shit,
     body engorged with water, skull engorged with brains,
          brains engorged with thoughts, thoughts engorged with orgy
in a gorge engorged with sunlight.
Glad to say the Universe is in a black bag in a spaceship
     on its way through a wormhole to a higher Universe
               that itself is in a black bag
     in a spaceship on its way through a wormhole
               to a higher Universe.
Glad to say the explorer hacked footholds
     in the frozen waterfall inside the mountain
               and climbing up discovered
     a frozen river winding through a huge cavern
               with animals painted on walls and ceiling.
Sad to say there were lots of tears in the plant
     when the factory closed down.
Bad to say frenchkiss your lover's bellybututon so passionately
     her mother in her grave feels delight
               and her mother in her grave feels delight.
Mad to say it took 1.5 million hours of labor
     to construct Stonehenge.
Glad to say you showed the child who just learned to walk
     his first violet.
Sad to say Japanese soldiers forced Chinese civilians
     to strip and dig holes and bury each other half-way
               then ran over them with tanks.
Sad to say at the present rate of increase of
     cancerdeath from smoking
               by 2500 one billion people a year
          will be killed by cigarettes.
Bad to say if more boys jacked off on graves
     more corpses would have smiles on their faces.
Bad to say every boy has 1000 hours of erections
     during sleep each year.
Mad to say in a single year a single youth jacking off
     is responsible for murdering more sperm
               than the number of people who ever lived on Earth.
Mad to say mourning doves, mourning cloaks, morning glories
     come to the rescue.
Glad to say one little girl draws an apostrophe in the shape of
     a crescent moon.
Glad to say the 8-year-old wino saw his sister born at 7 AM
     an hour later kissed her on the forehead goodbye
               and walked to gradeschool.
Sad to say more books on suicide than you could read
     if you read 100 a day the rest of your life.
Sad to say the woman who blew glass eyes for people who lost one
     died in a carcrash and was found crumpled
               through the shattered windshield
          with a dashboard Jesus in her mouth.
 
 

Know For Sure


All we know for sure is
     all places that exist
               were once one place
All we know for certain is
     all the beings that exist
               or will exist
     or have existed
               were originally all together
     in an infinitessimal dot.
All we can know for sure is
     if humans went from dugout canoes
               to spaceships to the Moon
in 10,000 years,
     in 10,000 years humans can go from spaceships
          to the Moon
     to Moons made into spaceships
          travelling to other galaxies.
All we can know for certain is
     a Blue Whale swims in its life
               a distance equal the distance
     from the Earth to the Moon and back.
All we can know for a fact is
     Sequoias grant the desires
               of those who worship them.
All we can trust in is
     the wind rustling the leaves of the Oak
               is our ancestors speaking to us.
All we can know for pure is
     azure lures hawk-gyre.
All we can grow for queer is
     superb boyrump in moonlight.
All we can row for endure is
     pebbles are bubbles of stone
               that just take longer to burst.
All we can show for mirror is
     druids were so certain of immortality
     they lent money to other druids
               on the condition
     they pay them back after they're dead.
All we can glow for echo is
one followed by octillion zeros
     would fill a book
a trillion pages long.
All we can flow for gecko is
     all the unwritten poems yet to emerge
               from brains of humans yet to be born
     from now till the Sun explodes
               are as child's vapor cloud upon a window.
All we can snow for cure is
     the center of the Earth isn't that far away
               and if we walk 20 miles a day
     we can get there in 200 days.
All we know beyond question is
     the supernova rate
          in the observable universe
     is one per nanosecond.
All we can know beyond exclamation point is
     if humans went from sculpturing
          a tiny stone into a human face
     to sculpturing a mountain into a human face     
          in 25,000 years,
     in the next 25,000 years
          humans can go from sculpturing a mountain
               into a human face
     to sculpturing the Moon into
          a head sucking a cock.
All we know for sure is
at the exact moment time-machines from the future arrive
     we depart in time-machines from the present
          into the past
     and miss them
and end up going through a wormhole
     into a parellel universe we can't return from.


ISSUE 8 HOME || BROKEN NEWS || CRITIQUES || CYBER BAG || EC CHAIR || FICCIONES || THE FOREIGN DESK
GALLERY || LETTERS || POESY || REVIEWS || SERIALS || STAGE & SCREEN
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