Part 4
The Story of Actualism
In Iowa City Introduction
When Iowa City Actualism was blooming in the 1970s, we wrote a lot of collaboration poems, and I made it a practice to save the ones I was involved in. I put the collab folders in a storage box, and then I forgot about them for three decades. Just two days ago, I found the folders, which contained over 220 pages of work. Some of them were unsigned, but at least 194 pages bore the names or initials of two or more people--48 people in all. Here is a child’s garden of Actualism.
Notes on reading:
Each poem is preceded by a tilde. This enables the reader to jump from poem to poem by doing a search for tildes. It also helps to know for certain that a specific line is the title.
Each writer’s identifying letters (usually initials) are preceded by an accent mark. This enables the reader to skip to the collaborations in which a specific writer participates by searching for the accent mark followed by the two identification letters--thus, searching for `DG would take you to poems in which Darrell Gray participated.
In some of the collaborations each section is attributed to the person who wrote it. In most of the collaborations, however, authorship is attributed at the end to all the authors together.
The first poem, “Party Poem,” has the most known collaborators--11. It is dedicated to the Writers Workshop.
The last poem, “Marathon Collaboration Poem,” is the longest--31 pages. It was written by many during the 2nd Poetry Marathon, but signed by none.
Index of Abbreviations
Each person has a two-letter abbreviation representing their full name.
AB Al Buck AC Ann Conner AH Anselm Hollo AK Allan Kornblum AT Audrey Teeter AW Alan Willis BA Bruce _____ BR Barb Raaz BS Barbara Sablov CK Cinda Kornblum CM Chuck Miller CW Chris Woeffels DA David Gitin DF Dale McFarland DG Darrell Gray DJ Donald Justice DM Dave Morice DO Dave Odegard GF Geoffrey Ford GM George Mattingly GS G.P. Skratz HI Hillary _____ JA Janet _____ JB John Birkbeck JD Jim Dorka JI Jim Bateman JL Judy Lawson JM Jim Mulac JS John Sjoberg KA Kay Amert KF Kathy Fetter LC Leander Cyrus LD Linda Dorff LG _____ _____ LW Lynn Willard MA Margaret Manos MC Mark Cohen MK Michelle Kulefsky MM Michele Morice MP Many People (unsigned) MS Morty Sklar NR Neil Ruddy PC Pat Casteel PI Paul Ingram PL Phil Lemke RD Ray DiPalma SA Sally Redfern SL Steve Levine ST Steve Toth SW Scott Wright
~ PARTY POEM
(for The Writers’ Workshop)
[Ten people wrote this poem: `DM `MS `CM `SW `JM `JS `AK `ST `LG `DG. Each section has the individual author’s abbreviation listed at the end.]
1
music inspires the floor shakes
`DM
2
four or five words
`MS
3
familiar plants, animals
`CM
4
potted plastic
`SW
5
plantit
`DM
6
hiya, Cinth! wisteria?
`JM
7
one more time the kids in the neighborhood hey hey that’s a great choice one of my favorites ships on the oceane
`MS
8
color it orange & leave all that snow
`JS
9
there is a chain hook between the cushions of this largte couch. i call it The Great Chain of Being. we unhook the chain before opening frozen orange juice. good morning little schoolgirl. i’m a couch
`AK
10
boo!
`ST
11
THE TRAVELS OF OZONE
Oh! Zone!
`SW
12
melting fish bones
TOGETHER
`CM
13
i’m an easy bruiser
`LG
14
I wanna hold your foot, I wanna be your leg, I wanna look at the table.
`JM
15
a sunlit day it’s almost may and yet there’s snow outside uh-oh
`DM
16
i woke up this morning and it was this afternoon oh i woke up this morning mama, and it was this awful moon so the next time ya see me coming blah dah dah dah dah dah dah
`MS
17
scot located them a copy of the original, in other words a shadow of a former delusion multilithed easier than the original not really huge, but sewn up. Come out and visit.
`MS
18
rain check book
`DG
19
I used to think the 21st Century would be great--vast unemployment, beautiful women, fantastic highways and buildings, amazing drugs and record albums. Billions of geniuses masterfully solving the subtlest impossibilities. That’s what it felt like, being 27 and stoned with my friends.
`JM
20
the city words a are for looking are for pages a the home
`DM
21
Al Buck did Al Buck didn’t but Al Buck
`MS
23
monkeys express a paw
here you are superior
`AK
24
Twenty four.
Baked bird. Unleashed lettaces race through time’s hard hat.
The vee’s crease.
`SW
26
anti-versary
`DG
27
under the Philadelphia Cream Cheese the hard brown table looked like the Phillies How’s the ballgame How’s the potato chip dip?
`DM
28
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten! shouted the man in mission control as he tried to make the rocket return to the launchpad.
`DM
29
“as bats fly caves grow”
--Spelunker’s Guidebook
`DM
30
what time is it?
gold.
`AK
31
What is “it?”
Things, generally.
`SW
32
“OUT TO SPACE”
out to lunch out of breath out of line out there out with you! ow t burnt out out house make out outlanders outlandish out of your head out of gas in side out
`MS
33
The Well-Fed Bi-ped
bi-ped bi-pass biluminous bitaxatious binary blahbi
`MS
34
after the cat walked in the human collage walked out
`DM
35
comma, period.
`SW
[signed:]
Scott Wright Sirs. bros. sisters. Glandfather Kornblum Stepson Gray Mormon Sklar Dave Morose ~ WORKSHOP COURSE LIST FOR NEXT YEAR
8:282 Rhyme Workshop 8:283 Rhythm Workshop 8:285 Onomatopoeia: When to use it (Seminar) 8:286 Beginning Linebreaks 8:286b Advanced Linebreaks 8:287 Iambs, Anapests, and Dactyls: Comparative Study 8:289 Caesuras: Now and Then (Historical Study) 8:290 The Literary Origins of Variable Feet Traced to Their Roots 8:291 Poetic Anatomy 8:292 The Economic Implications of Free Verse 8:293 The Psychology of the Caesura and the Collective Unconscious 8:294 Stability Theory in Fluid Rhyme Schemes 8:295 Applied Imagery 8:296 Literary Genes and Chromosomes 8:297 Introduction to Doggerel 8:298 Intermediate Doggerel 8:300 Natural Hazards of Poetry & Doggerel 8:301b Field Trips with Pencils 8:301c How to Correct Incorrections 8:301d How to Write Right 8:301e The Poet in Action 8:301g Poetaster Laboratory 8:301h The Alphabet and Its Purpose in Reality 8:312 Successful and Unsucessful Metaphors 8:313 The Disappearing End Rhyme
`DG `JS `DM near Xmas ‘71
THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF “& I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well...” The president is not a cook. The president is not a candle-maker. The president is not a registered nurse. The president is not a rock & roll star. The president is not a Neanderthal man. The president is not a Clerk Typist II. The president is not a housewife. The president is not a management trainee. The president is not a ballet dancer. The president is not a pseudo-intellectual. The president is not a short-order cook. The president is not a heavy-equipment operator. The president is not a fork-lift operator. The president is not a telephone operator. The president is not a small-time operator. The president is not a cellist. The president is not a registered Communist. The president is not a conscious philanderer. The president is not a dermatologist. The president is not a ketchup manufacturer. The president is not a new-car salesman. The president is not a tinhorn gambler. The president is not a factor. The president is not a mother. The president is not a witch. The president is not a podiatriast. The president is not a quarterback. The president is not a hearing-aid specialist. The president is not a typewriter. The president is not a chirpractor. The president is not a special prosecutor. The president is not a Riverboat Captain. The president is not a tattle-tale. The president is not a peanut vendor. The president is not a jukebox repairman. The president is not a flying carpet sweeper or a Guided Bissell. The president is not a swinger of birches. The president is not a glass of milk like a cigarette. The president is not a grapevine. The president is not a Hoover vacuum cleaner salesman. The president is not a music box. The president is not a monstrous vice-president. The president is not a Republican pope. The president is not a better mousetrap. The president is not a stitch in time. The president is not a trucker. The president is not a trick-or-treater. The president is not a rag-time Cowboy Joe. The president is not a yoyo champion. The president is not a Jewish mother. The president is not a nagging housewife. The president is not a cross-section of an orange. The president is not a colostomy bag. The president is not a poet. The president is not a second thought. The president is not a Chinese restaurant. The president is not a Polish sausage. The president is not a warm puppy. The president is not a mighty fortress. The president is not a piece of ass. The president is not a hormone imbalance. The president is not a creative plaything. The president is not a sugar-daddy. The president is not a Milky Way bar. The president is not a well-worn homily. The president is not a dirty diaper. The president is not a good gopher. The president is not a living bra. The president is not a great lake. The president is not a grape stomper. The president is not a hamburger with everything. The president is not a test pattern. The president is not a seventeen-year locust. The president is not a bird in paradise. The president is not a tea for two. The president is not a stepping stone. The president is not a fish stick. The president is not a Pullman porter. The president is not a president. The president is not The president
`AB `DG `PI `AK `CK `PL `DM `GS `ST
~ THE TOTALLY NON-RIP-OFFABLE POEM
I am the totally un-rip-offable poem Try me, smart mother fucker Stick your dick up my ass Nothing Cold stone
Try and fuck me Try and get me to suck your dick To eat your pussy Never in a thousand years
If anything I’ll rip you off Don’t look for emotions here There are none you can claim false
Step on my ass You’ll sink in Nothing but pure shit Which you are full of Scholars, critics--fuck off.
This is a street poem from my zip gun Go pimp your own mother fucking poems Drag queens
Human beings are inferior To un-rip-offable poems Think about it Look around you One big rip off
Live it Eat it Fuck it Suck it Don’t write it
Here it is Tweaking all your cardboard cocks: The Totally Non-Rip-Offable Poem.
`CM `DM
~ RAYMOND BURR AS THE POPE
“Hand me that beachboy album he saw the record but as he washed the amazing sky whose blue lumber built houses in the background he still wasn’t ready to turn on the record player”
now that’s not at all what i wanted you to tell her said one woolly visitor from north korea to his wife referring to their handsome chauffeuse who kept whipping the straight eight alfa romeo around the iowa hills
running interference from antares to maggie minor was never less than interesting. sometimes it was downright exciting. the boat rocked violently the sentence remained. it remained, it remained.
“Whatever happened on the next wave,” he said when he noticed the door appear sitting on top of the ocean’s surface looking for all the world like a magic trick, except the doorknob was turning the wrong way. cre-ee-eaak!
the old farmer grazed upon the elderly nonchalance of the sky it was that kind of day--trees, aluminum poles, medicate and the tradition of going on in a hole. women are just “shoved off the corner.” Australia? Even it allows blacks
`AH `DG `DM
~ Carry On Push Up
the bowl of nuts the hardwood floor relate, yes we are friends. for the translation means that tomorrow is monday. & the buds, they are coming. yes, we are friends. dig this nut. dig this bowl. it’s the time of our life.. & we are friends.
the shoes will walk. the nose will smell. yet the hardwood floor ignores both. it stays hardwood, because tomorrow suddenly isn’t monday, but everyday, the day without a capitol letter. the buds haven’t been waiting all summer for nothing.
`JS `DM
~ ESPECIALLY THE BAKERS
back and forth from the old to the new testament so glad i own my home and have learned everything there is to know. But the food isn’t as good as a nurse especially late at night, your name in lights and a bright future ahead of you and especially the bakers who stand in the street with their invisible faces talking about how light is a song. “O sole mio” is the song the bakers sing, but not to me, to you, because of your green shoe polish on your green shoes--neat, or so it seems to the bakers as i am rich handsome in typeing fast as i am a biography like merle haggard chaseing the cunt of joan baez up hippie (i am hip))Hill. Every time I tip the food up to my lips it tunrs into calories It turns into rolls of money.
`CM `DJ `CW `DM
~ Wind Ensemble
The way my legs hurt I might as well have gotten up and walked it over to you
*
This music carries you to the end of the room and when you sit down it pulls out the chair
*
There’s a flood there every month on the dot
*
At one concert they rioted
*
By walking around it.
*
This typewriter Makes the way Clear for
*
Oh, well, we’ve heard that twice but
*
See the program? It’s all about The TV Guide
`AK `RD `DM
~ THE BLUEBIRD OF HAPPINESS
The woodpecker of anxiety The yellow-bellied sapsucker of ennui The penguin of impotence The ostrich of self-deception The nightingale of broken promises The bob-white of introversion The mockingbird of inner turmoil The raven of righteous indignation The red-winged blackbird of psychotic vengeance The bluejay of obnoxiousness The purple grackle of ill-gotten gain The goldfinch of good fortune The cedar waxwing of good grooming The minah bird of mischievousness The wood duck of luxury The toucan of expensive taste The cockatoo of raucousness The whippoorwill of wishful thinking The meadowlark of malice The hummingbird of nervousness The starling of madness The dodo of doubt The condor of candor The kiwi of irrelevance The great auk of awkwardness The pheasant of phantasy The puffin of psychic phenomenon The quail of queasiness The red-breasted robin of thick headed thinking The thrush of thwarted ambition The crow of courage The spoon-bill of pathos The mallard of mistaken identity The tufted titmouse of Tomfoolery The rose breasted gross-beak of robust living The eagle of eagerness The seagull of surreptitiousness The albatross of atrocity The crane of dubious achievement The pelican of pomposity The Baltimore oriole of ebullience The sparrows of passive aggression The chickadee of randomness The finch of finickiness The screech-owl of schizophrenia The bat of uncontrolled desire The lune of illumination The pterodactyl of tenacity The cormorant of conspicuous consumption The morning dove of déjà vu The turtledove of terror The parakeet of purity The turkey of bitter truth The pigeon of plain thinking
`ST `PI `CW `DM
~ A Poem
Lets write What’s right What! you can’t write. Write’s not right. Who’s Wright He’s on the right performing a sacred rite. Right? Write I mean right. I mean Wright O.K. I got it straight… now
Write performed a sacred Wright, Right? Rite! Rite performed a sacred write Right after Wright If Rite performed a sacred write which way did he go North or South, east or west. I am lost, my directions were never rite. He went left, not right He went write out the door He went rite through the window He was always Right You’re so Wright, write, rite, and right
`MM `DM 11-6-77
~ MY FAMILY TREE HAS DUTCH ELM DISEASE
It started when my mother brought a purple cape
and tried to jump out of the second floor window
but landed in the dog dish
The, one day
all the leaves fell
out of my family photo album.
An’ way up top where my great
grand-daddy wuz
supposed to be one time,
was somebody I never knew/
And here am I. not an ancestor yet…
Butch’s Tree Trimming Service
is coming this afternoon
to prune my heritage.
`JB `DM 1-74
~ “AFTER GOING”
after going through the store picking up more and more we’re here and the fall weather isn’t falling that’s cool to the fan taking it easy across the floor stretching the truth till it covers its blades with magic Its not how long it takes that goes round and round in its cage Word dont make sense objects whirl themselves go faster and faster till monies the ground breaking ceremony fingers do the walking This Here’s a tree folks or is that too comp licated you see it does nt matter if its oxygen or sheer energy hose the red corpustles will bustle it off Foamy water
`ST `DM
~ INDELIBLE MINK
These are your hands These are your feet OPEN THE DOOR and come in before the wind takes you and your indelible mink for a ride
`DG `ST `DM
~ DOWN TO THE FACTS
it’s a long way but we can make it into anything we want… even a hit of yesterday streaking the landscapes with lubrication
`ST `AK `DG `DM
~ 20 BEST POETRY BOOKS OF 1973
1. Flexing My Boredom………………………….. Greg Kuzma 2. Buyer Beware……………….............................. Mark Strand 3. Turning Into Animals………………………….. Peter Wild 4. Jars of Bliss……………………………………. Dan Gerber 5. The Employed Enthusiast……………………… James Bertolino 6. Up Front……………………………………….. Diane Wakoski 7. Meat Balls of Fire……………………………… Ron Loewinsohn & “ Padgett 8. The Watercress Scandal……………………….. Mona Van Duyn 9. The Plainer Truth……………………………… David Ignatow 10. Your Highway Taxes at Work………………… J.D. Reed 11. The Probable Volume of Air…………………... Marvin Bell 12. Sincerely Yours………………………………… Barry Goldensohn 13. The Mirrors of Stone……………………………Gerard Malanga 14. Double Your Pleasure Double Your Pleasure…………………………...John Giorno 15. The Ringworm Sonata…………………………..Louise Glück 16. 20 Verbicide Drive…………………………….. Clark Coolidge 17. For the Sake of Argument………………………James Humphrey 18. Presumptions……………………………………James Naiden 19. Dreamstains……………………………………..lyn lifshin 20. Good Clean Fun…………………………………Paul Engle
`RD `AK `DG `DM
~ CHANGING VALUES
In our modern times, we have to thin out our perspectives to accommodate the office building When the newspaper sails across the driveway and lands with a clatter on the front porch, it doesn’t mean that somewhere the news is being made, like a special factory Dogs bark at the Post Office Mail clerks try to shoo them away addressed to the Bronx Zoo, Elephant House. But some things change more slowly, The North Pole has yet to see Ronald McDonald, or bikini, or even 10 ¢ coffee. Yes it’s comforting to throw a brick and know that it will definitely come down if no one zaps it with a laser gun, because gravity never goes out on strike. “Solidarity for ever,” sings a chorus of bricks as soulfully as they can--for bricks. No, yes is another opinion that prospectors cherish Pulling gold from their teeth, tossing it in the stream then panning for it again Dogs bark at the Assay Office and prospectors sic them on the ad men glowing like sunsets in their purple-orange leisure suits. “It’s just our job,” the ad men try to explain to the prospectors. “Without us, there would be no paper for you to train your dog to bring to you when you come home from work.” The prospectors’ laughter brought the fire department in a hurry…they thought the Post Office had exploded. But even today, things rarely change that quickly. The firemen went back to the station and turned on the TV.
`AK `DM 2-79
~ FRAGMENT (after a drawing)
That’s a drawing of Steve Toth.
Oh? It doesn’t look anything like him.
I know. That’s why I added the birds.
`AK `DM
~ “THE INVINCIBLE RAINCOAT”
THE INVINCIBLE RAINCOAT
leaves for sale FOR THE MEADOWBROOK OF YOUR MIND
TAKING IT FOR GRANTED that’s love
the lawn is more you gonna paint?
GUARANTEE yep
when you buy the Brooklyn Bridge fuck
THESE ARE THE WOODEN DOORS
like them jesus, you ask personal questions
IF THIS WERE CHICAGO what else is there?
LOOK IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR but ahead, too
`AT `DM
~ AUDREY CAR BROKE DOWN
foeign to the white plate
the light offered water
then
sofa cresting
the tough guy has second thoughts
(remember Mercury,
we do and hope we can pick it out from among the ankles
tall creepers and the others who have gone on before
flake out
and you can have some
be quiet
and be here all night
`ST `DM
~ WINDOW FAN
winkie runs up and down the town in his night gown
blinkie sticks his foot out from behind the tavern
winkie trips and falls asleep and dreams
because tall buildings have lots of windows to appreciate.
`ST `DM
~ WITH THREE
lights on we reach across eyes open a mad actor pours electric plastic all over your pretty blue workshirt tsk now you’ve got spots SPOTS….!
SPOTS lava Tuesday
Plump lava for all TUESDAY
Think what we could do with three Is Monday Monday on here the lamp sprung a leak Plastic electricity on the rug Plumbing problems bring the landlady who brings moths and their larvae And by tuesday had eaten all the salad. But eerie cucumbers walk the night and spook the electricity like mad actors wide-eyed screaming of spots that will grow and cover the earth with plastic by monday. Next Monday. This is Tuesday. We have 6 days. Only three of us know the danger! WILL THE EARTH MAKE IT?
`AK `JS `DM
~ THE MOUTH OF THE SUN
as fingers press the keys letters appear outstanding like a page of stars folded up and hidden in the once silent alarm clock
maybe the stars we see are just the sun many years ago or to come
its nice to have a space heater like the moon at night like a typewriter with letters close enough to see
maybe the words we see are just the mouth many years ago or to come
`ST `DM
~ THE HAPPY HEARTS
snobs ARE almost unanimously telepathic because they’ve all got the blues
`DG `AK `DM
~ MONEY
it comes hard and goes soft
`DG `DM
~ “Tailor-made cigarettes”
Tailor-made cigarettes send up the flags-- likenesses of smoke! “Off the cliff,” the disc jockey’s voice declared to the sky. No radio, no music, no memory. no waves, no oceans just places you can spend the night hoping for just one more day, riding in a bus across the sky
the dome over st louis made us think of salads. the leaves of spring being to us the rarest delicacy like hearing from Bruce that Nixon upside down is NO ‘X’ IN.
down to earth and thinking about shoes the bus passengers take a snooze the man behind him takes a sip of Robin Hood booze.
“Hey, pass the car, Mr. Busdriver, I ain’t got all day and you’re a lot bigger.”
`ST `DM
~ “the bells are ringing”
the bells were ringing in our ears, oujr eyes are impressed and feel wanted.
they feel pretty spaced out they blink every few feet as the woods grows dencer and cencer
waiting to crackle when it gets dry
the seed of fire
sand paper
the bells are ringing
another hour has passed
the leaves burn slowly in the rain
seeds of waves
rocks the boat with melted popcorn
the usher slips on a stray kernel
“the bells are--” he somersaulted through the air
he crashed through the leaves of the nearby trees
“--ringing!”
`ST `DM
~ Little Chair spenser fair
brown with white spots, the guernsey trim tones investigated for welfare sitting is sitting there it is sitting on a brown tone desk clays yes nature loves the clay county fair
ah wafers of debris, cookies crumble for yhou before the great fowler: W-w-w-w-w-w-waif. make use of the lit teacher forging a bubble on the back of a pop’s standard system
o desk, your trim lines intersect whether or not the pound scholar is doing it for bombastic words or for welfare or for the coffee cup full of goodbyes to john
the train said henry the train is goin’ on past the guernseys to the fair welfare well being toes and heels and ankles and shoes & SOCKS!
`AK `CK `JS `DM 9-2-77
~ THE GATOR LOST HIS MIND
in Mexico the space is already heated and the alligators never really find it
`AK `DM
~ AT THE TOP STAIR
the wheel rolled forward till reaching the door where the fortune teller stood, like a scarecrow
catching fire. don’t look at the sun unless you want to see a purple tunnel, she said without blinking.
the blaring of her voice retraced its words in the dust. she drew them in small hidden holes
with small hidden fingers we take them in. Letting them buy us out so we can push on. to fill the cheese
with wheels, too, so they’ll tell the future, simply look through the wrong end of a telescope.
you’ll know we look so small the future will never find us. yhou’ll feel what you know must be itching coming from
the desire to see wheels so small they roll through the palm. the rolling hills curve through space
as we inhale the air around the top of the stair. footsteps ricochet in search of ears, air fills our bodies. feel light headed
with the wheels spinning throughout the ming vase spinning around on the table till spinning out the window to the sky
`ST `DM
~ STEADY WORK
Maybe women are flies Or what we imagine as their wings brushes the stratosphere on its way to some other feeling like “dismal swamps” opening up the sky like vests worn by ugly mammoths. Oh, you won’t get away with it trickling down you back. So smile and get a new car.
`DG `AK `DM
~ BLUE SUEDE SHOES
walk around in the record until you see why the animals all have jobs
`DG `DM
~ ANOTHER IMMORTAL DISCOVERY EXPLODES INTO A PROBLEM
The longer you work the less you know it
while millions and millions color things in
`AK `DG
~ SIX OF US ARE HORSES
the rest of us live here Otherwise we miss the train. IF WE’RE NOT HOME WE’RE PROBABLY AT THE TRACK.
`ST `DM
~ WHOOSHING YOU WERE HERE
like a Russian flown suddenly home, newsman Ronald Ziegler was resumed in the direction his voice was coming from
`ST `DG `DM
~ HELLO, OPERATOR
The wasp has just left home!
`DG `DM
~ MERRY CHARISMA
&
A
HAPPY INNER EAR
`HI `DM
~ FREEDOM’S JUST ANOTHER WORD
like “globemother”
`DG `DM
~ SHOPPING FOR YOU
WHO’S YELLING?
`AK `DM
~ HELLO pipes the kazoo bubbles the plate umbrellas the chair brushes the arm drops the penny sips the time, 2:45 the depression poem of the future will be a happy poem the radio will be saying come to 718 North Mommy Street where we’re having a ball giving away canned food, dancing lessons, all you have to do is TRY to make it to 2:54 & well you know the rest `AK `JM `GS ~ O POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY! O Political Expediency, as if an after-shave of the senses had an appetite, you cross your legs & pick up the phone. O Political Expediency, occasionally the sky won’t wait for a red light. No, & these matches still fall from my had, pinball wine in a phonebooth that has never known the arrogance of a “bug.” O Political Expediency, clothing can substitute for an automobile. Distance means nothing to good shoes. Electricity sings in the laces, & when the laces are tied tightly, miles laugh appreciatively. The truck stops reconsider their 24-hour schedule, & the wine leaps from the yellow pages in astonishment. Our wired fingers roll the whole Interstate into what we can hold as it goes up in smoke. `AK `GS
~ JOHN, WHERE’S THE SPACESHIP?
Over there under Mike Moyer.
`DG `DM
~ THE BOOK OF CHECKS
as the bankers went to lunch their footsteps were encoded by The Footprint Information Bank
`AK `DM
~ IDYLL
The emergency was cans. Groping towards the jungle synopsis was another story altogether.
*
After the clown erupted in feathered backs
*
Arf is
*
The sly baby was really spinning webs of salt on
*
A spider perks
*
Warden, the box of
*
“finished”
flakes
*
the warden spoke lightly of the vanished tools that sprouted “within” that garden
*
somnambulation was a word he never
*
used lightly
(into his youth)
*
the cohesiveness of a peanut butter sandwich
*
The yellow light on the coat of paint
*
Jackson smiled, dipping his hand
*
Spanning our entire discussion, a silver ring leapt brightly
*
In spurts the bursts occurred
*
a bird a bird (slurred)
*
fragrant moaning
*
a monad? who wd even mention such a blatant thing?
*
somewhere something else is beginning to grow
*
whose thoughts fault in the rocks
*
A yard away the green fence clattered
*
Gravel roads were upstairs
*
The songs were like it, a fly
*
Like the soft end of a point
*
at the movies together
THE FLY starring Vincent Price whose head got smashed in the begtinning : love scenes
Vincent: “Say you love me.”
Fly: “I love you.”
And it did!
*
the fur trees
*
the cook, so involved with Ice
*
He turned, then mounted
*
Like a deck of cards at sea
*
Spanning a wing or two
*
Man’s unique position If it works, use it, said the original
The fakes replied:
when the dynamism of inclusion & refinement forms a series what is yr unique position:
a few light years moving in .
`DG `DM
~ OPIATED HASH
the blue sky with opium hash
cru m bly li ke ‘leven
+
10 + 1. noun flow just rumbling, a big pile of snow our mechanics not “hardware” it’s re- assuring to the banknotes they grow I to the sky watches we need watches timid hands afraid to point to minutes’ blue star
suction points can love you if we are aware a man identify with woman & defend earth this rocka-by melody
`JS `DM
~ THE HEART
It slides through the body, from sea to shining sea, whirling up to the mind where it speaks: “base vault of the hemitrope bergs” rather straight on up to it it gives out its tongue dreams lapping like so many sounds that you can’t even hear without the help of the heart. Thump thump , the wave bouncing off the auricle to the ventricle and back again.
which in the asterisk of what was speaking
had never bounced
but only stood
as an open heart
not moving
as we silently looked
still.
`CM `DM ~ NEEDLEPOINT
soda popi we could make a square clean rubber natives under tone of fascism
webbed feet & all!
i stand on them (with mine)
and we turn around & down
Wart your lungs are here vital symptoms of youor body
one more toke jingle jangle WHY DID THIS POEM (thing)HAVE TO BE SO SERIOUS Stones Mama swaheely do i turn blue porridge
is on my nose, but it
smells good… so i lick it offff and then turn red porridge
[signed by John:]
John WART & DAVE WART
`JS `DM ~ In One Fell Swoop It’s Done
Were you reading by the six foot flame?
We’re reading you by the six foot frame.
The kite went halfway up the sky
As the lightning bolt came the other way.
Ben Franklin stood holding the string far below.
`AK `DM
~ “My heart an old radio”
My heart an old radio my brain a new TV a brownout in October will be the death of me
`PI `DM
~ THAT’S HOW I KNOW
I found a left-handed rock. I tried to pick it up but I’m right-handed
`PI `DM
~ “MY HIPS ARE MADE OF”
My hips are made of chicken legs they call me Colonel Sanders. My french-fried soul beyond despair My spirit’s like a sander’s
`PI `DM
~ REALISTIC LINES
Bald butter fixed hares to everything the bee sings, hiding behind the books. Tangerines looked like something to eat, and so they were. As the hares ate the tangerines the bald butter dripped down three white crosses which glowed and buzzed in front of the books. Fat birds kept landing on each other till they were no more than spokes in a wheel and pretty realistic. Elizabeth in the night outside my window expected the longhairs to love her cat nature sending the buzz somewhere else, somewhere where all the people could recognize the holiness of the buzz and the crosses which are no more spokes in a wheel than an empty maxim, like “clothes make the man”. Try changing your entire wardrobe sometime, and brush yourlong hair looking for Elizabeth who once glowed in your night. Lyres smoke but they are playing as she softly gives a nod almost asleep.
`JS `AK `DM 7-22
~ MAYORS DELIGHT
Mayors Baby and Linseed met at Atlantic City and a glove slapped a face, the fingers split the tiny threads of rainbow petals
Everything a cloud shop, the sky turns on its cloves and hams. Ginger Ray was wild with delight,
white cloth, and a long powdery joy that jumbled up her mind. STOP!-- she screeched, owlsville
is the next stop after University Heights on the Valhalla and Elysian Railroad and go-cart track. But this deters not our doughty mayors.
`BA `JA `DM
~ MY THERMOMETER WEEPS
I suffer greatly from cold she said, inviting me to her bed.
Shortly thereafter: I told you I know I’m cold, so it shan’t be necessary to insert your thermometer.
But my thermometer isn’t cold. And it has windows you can see out of.
Just then a microbe ran by shouting a waving to get our attention.
Hold it! Hold it! Your thermometer is missing three red lines.
But if you invite me in I shall restore them and provide you with bonus Poxtops as well.
Just then a Poxtop ran by
`BA `JA `DM
~ TOAD
Some of the vines are wrapped into the smile that died of the plague like this toad who’s got money. He makes a grand and classic gesture. All the drinks in the house are on me. In a dud small town joint like the Vine. Where everyone is always smiling. Like this toad ceramic like lawn furniture who has stored up the Power of Years of Possession soon to be given away in a different sort of gesture. To a friendly sad toad who looks like a camel.
`AK `DM
~ THAT’S CAUSE FOR CRAYOLAS
the time scheme
is up
and downtown the crowd
lifts its crayolas
and wonders
who will draw
what we
all want to see? they all try
to draw
something beautiful
and perhaps
uplifting.
except for
a happy bebopping black guy
who drew his jelly roll soul
and
the crowd could do nothing but cheer.
`AK `DM 8-5-71 ~ OPENING HOLES LOOKING
When they go into the bathroom they disappear orange light in- fluenced by blue light jello in the ice box thaw inside the oven.
tomatoe patches appear on my white pants blood of little plant but better then the shed where you’ll remember shooting somebody
“hello” you on theleft side of the refrigerator “this garden universe blends so tight that i think i’ll take it off. but not yet. First, a soda
to send them u8p to the big ship right now
would strangle the future or would it push the eagles off cliffs
`JS `DM
~ HE’LL BREAK FAST FOOD
oof ouvre a punch spell the sky blue zippo clouds on the halloween lady
snare the dress on my moon that goes & returns like a boomerang tomorrow the world is here your brain licks itself gently cleaning the jar food grows in and around “art” cars drive away with my hand oh under bridge a crow flying to pencils enjambment over coffee hot or cold cream, sugar, both
instant success grape heart rising from and going to
hair that longs to fly but sends letters by airmail because it’s got wings
`JS `DM
~ TOMORROW THERE’LL BE RAIN SONGS O F JOY IN OUR TIME
Out the window the lawnmower rolls chuckling in front of the boy doing his duty while we’re passing out or almost seeing double heads “hard enough time” The double heads beolong to car,
Take rides with you when you go to the edge of the universe
There’s a whole world out there and you didn’t touch it
Fresh peaches! maybe of ants will But NO velvet could be so real as as- teroid Malt Duck will cure Dave & Jack & I or Jesus kinda existential Revolution mujsic Tomorrow there’ll be rain… Big ones that float on the back. Like the grey wizard, waving his wand at you / But Wart my fingerthumbs are stuck: jiveing the wan d Did thumbtacks appear in my eyes?/ What costume should the poor girl wear to all tomorrow’s partys” velvet again as Trees take on new forms Part of each spotted eye Guys yelled at me last night “We’ll get you” I angled my route around and crossed the Island the park on Dodge Street…
the sky was clear, except for a mysterious window through which you, dear reader, are watching
`JS `DM
~ THE EXTRA
As the starch kept the shirt nice and stiff but you shift and say, too many s’s to carry the extra to the point where his name got bgig enough to see with out squinting.
After the blades got tired and plow a garden to keep the seeds extra sharp and ready, the world goes round depending on plants to keep away flying objects as their attention is divided.
But who remembers how to set up the props that go along with anything, just as long as they get paid to make a monkey out of the man who lives in the dirt we wash out of our clothes?
He stays where we can hear him practicing with a broom.
` ST `DM
~ INFORMATION
“fine girl on next block it was alright… pioneer Bess malts & hamburgers for sale here… This tree is where the village smitty shave his hands into a tool poor little alligators all in a row closed on Tuesday
paint sale
Monday, so stay around till then and then go whistle a little to Janis “April in July” new song to Margarita 7 stars
from Sally 8 stars a close friend
from the hills of Missouri
up a pickin’ plankiton knows what
upside down in a fish bowlers took them off
NO MORE LIVE WIRE a three-some appear to two nunns & a man slowly faints in the hills
& time seems to slowly strop
& everyone called “Information”
`JS `DM 7-22
~ Musically Speaking
In the sound of it You see notes with Your ears And feel its message With your touch-- Back of the neck is hot those Little hairs are on end ARE MAKING ME TINGLE Musically speaking, to rap things up Lets share it.
`SR `LW `AW `LW `MM `DM 11-6-77
~ “There once was a guru named Mac”
There once was a guru named Mac, Who thought he could sit on a tack But when he sat down He said with a frown “I ain’t doing no more of that.”
`MK `DM
~ PARSLEY
Growing somewhere, without knowledge or skill, the parsley increases in number. The secrets he contains, though plant-like, are nowhere near any backlogue of taste. Nor do regrets pro- long its death when “the time has come”. Gently twisted around every switch tickling any dirt hiding under our nails in the midst of a flick, the parsley flexes its tendrils in the midst of a flick, the parsley flexes its tendrils, having studied under a zen-master named Charles Atlas. Hail sometimes lands on parsley, turning it around the basics of weather until they form little bra-like cups and catch the ominous stones even as they think “Might be a nice day to pay earth a visit.”
`AK `DM
~ PARTY TIME
The band begins to play! But weeks go by.
At what cost this life we led? What cost art? What cost to our cellular structure?
That five-dollar bill was made Without your body in mind.
And although the ultimate disease Has already been cured by love,
The penultimate disease, the clap, Was more like an applause.
`AK `DM
~ HITTING THE CAR FOR A SIX-PACK
i’ll drive us home. john & cinda are leaving.
going to the jocular grocery store.
our bouncing up the steps foreseen by the ing Lou Gehrig’s homer
soaring so What the nose isn’t quite hers
the new bar is hers & its beat
easy chair fairy decanters elves need beer & milk sometimes too
but, alas, joy
smacks us on the face with such a silly smirk that
we can’t even get in a good cry (sob)
cheese ing a sense of humor Moving like known among your friends
movie ing we all is in together
and the credits are flashing in quick succession on the screen
the curtain is closing
a scratch recording plays distorted music
the house lights are coming on…
o no!
is the movie really over?
then someone will have to get the cheesecake, start the coffee,
and finish the coffee,
and start the coffee
we live by liquids alone
`JS `AK `CK `DM 9-2-77
~ THE THAW
the floor cracks under the weight of the planetarium, dips inward like a salad bowl, and rises to a poiknt telephones ring from wire to wire where the giraffe chews the lettuce “watch out for static electricity especially if you chew the casing off the wire when someone’s making a long distance call,” the zoo-keeper warned the spotted neck but the head was eating volts one by one
the beams crack a smiling moon since the earthquake lined up the cue ball and sent the ceiling flying towards the corner “Did you forget your change?” asks the kid behind the counter wiping up something special-something uneatable. he sees you making the same face minute by minute and wonders how much longer you can hold that carrot with your eyelid
now that the giraffe has tasted does he know? Is that why the power company took their nets and hung out on the tops of poles? On the folks who don’t exist we play this joke. Hope they get a kick out of it. Hope the floor cracks under the weight of our laughter and their smiles.
`ST `DM
~ Deliverance
We pulled and pulled at the river. Sam didn’t think our canoes would float, what with the big hole gaping out of the top. This got a chuckle, and Herb said, “That’s what you call yer cosmos, fella.” A real pink dream of a portable radio beat swung up alongside us, umbrellas raised Herb off the earth All those blondes waving goodbye with such motorcycle grace. It was a classic example swimming away.
`JI `DM
~ THE SKY MIRROR
The sky is a mirror carried over the centuries out of which we recognize the forms of birds-- something so cimple.
it provides a solid floor--am almost facial jesture. Once, when the children
Alas, the children have seen their reflections: too late to talk to or about them.
The sky, a soft back in which birds are centuries whose lables fell off
but to touch the mirror
is not to become a grandfather.
A new focus is never more than what the old one wanted. The hills are randomly arranged, tho not as one expected. Everything seems less
until a single brush-stroke alters the future--
a bell rings
the door in the painting opens
two pairs of shoes walk out
and hover in the air
This is not the planet
we thot it was, say the birds
or
too much malleability leads to WINDEX
The clarity isolates the perspective to a new pane that shines long ago like jays.
You say you are blue. There are more points of reference than those that fall around you. One day everything will cohere in epic proportions. And then we will go to bed.
`DG `DM
~ SMUG MUGS OF LOVE
The telephone exposed itself three iceboxes ago
pretending to be your voice when I really know
absolutely nothing beyond you. You’re the kind of stump that
beautifully articulates space.
Stubs and stiffs fall out of the closet
as though bogs
got ‘em
Z-z-z-z,
said the letter Z
as tho inspired to send a bacon to Jamaican friends
They were all waiting just around the bend. The sound of yr horn suspends syntax. Two Centuries later we slog through the gloom to THE MILL. I light a crown of sweet weed. You suddenly feel like a rainbow
of course, there’s a cow walking through you--
it’s even with your concepts…
those of good sharply blunting those of water.
Like “energy-units” pooped out at the end of a prom. Violets wilted, rustling the typo into Immortality, ohhhhhhhhhh a humanoid detour into the sordid prune.
Bent Harbor
nearing Zeno. “The placenta reeks of purple fun”
or, frum the Dune-E-Ads:
quote en toto:
De Sota wuz a Whiz- Kid. Grooming, he grew hot in numerous spots. His gyroscope splintered wheezing away on a dime, --“Swine, swine,” he muttered and then grew great.
Soberly, Otie stroked his cloak in time. The Rhyme choked in Dot’s throat. She bent her time- flavored smoke a throw for broke that lay at her towel, rigid…
somehow
like a split nudge
flipping off an old shoulder
like the dot
of old women
glistening sunnilyh
outside in the reign of Juliet Caesar, Esq.
that famous bag of grips--
but loves, lasciviously, Stubs un-ornate life. From here to the stereo, she thought, what might displace him? Aglow? A sober hut? The mut ran over the terrace in a single gulp.
He said, Gulp, if I only knew a god, why then I’d give more, jennie. Jen- nie said, “Move where?”
Move over there, to that turtle
Immediately, the turtle smiled
Hi, it said, my name is Cid Sullivan
and I’m here to guess your bread.
Their bread was Wonder!
Tastee smiled, then ran away!
But who was that turtle???
He was the EVERLASTING MARVEL.
He never “faded away.”
`DG `DM
~ THERE WILL BE NO NOVEMBER
A stairway of sharp angles imagined to be days of the week: One step to the next and you need wings! Put your ear to the wall the engine is warming up. the dogs are turning over and still something seems to be overdue; like the turkey we put in the oven. The pots have put their lids over our eyes. Enough of this turkey talk cried the chef Have you no appetite for snails? At this Lucinda packed a stout walleroo into the snarl of her eyebrows and whipped four words across the room: CHOMP BIG SNOW UMBRELLAS And there was peace (momentarily) (suddenly) but not irrevocably. Turn the days of our year back to May. Excuse me. I forgot Monday & Tuesday & Wednesday are just around the corner.
`DA `ST `DM 12-9-77
~ IT TAKES YOU
too long to go around taking the farther speeding “not even” from the bottom of my heart to the street in a 196- Chevrolet where the motorcycle cop gives you a ticket that looks like an invitation to a benefit though you knew it was him all the time you never let on, kept silent and got took.
`LD `DM
~ He Would Say Something Like That
“Variable foot” or “The plotted plant”
Unsewn waterworks? What if it mutates itself out of existence? The door keeps spurning the cake. To sweet, bad for the heart!
And the residential neighbors are selling their sidewalks to make room for John Ruskin who smokes a cigar of the same name.
Buyer Beware! a new collection by Mark ‘What’s-in-it-for-me” Strand aims its tidy energies at my collection of better sense
This is not to be construed as a mental training brow. Plotted pants.
`AK `DG `RD `SW `DM
~ WORD-SONG
Why don’t you write the words for a song? Just fill in the blanks like I ________ forever on the _________ of dawn. A rooster remains to be hypnotized. But what you sing can’t sound off without a large, semi-crepuscular nodule of linguistic feedback. “Fire is the best perfume.”
You cross the room which has not existed until now, but now it knows a single sound can alter its destiny. So you tap on the shoulder of a raisin-shaped prop and zoom-- Mr. Muggs says, Gulp! He enters the mind, turns around, & forms a lake. On the lake a small boating party sets out against your lip. Its Spring. A light breeze pelts the louse with downy tears: he’s ten years old, a “homilyh”, and a “squirt.” You hit the dirt feet first with your hands. Your right one says, “Mama!” Your left one says, “Crawl! This is real live combat, Daddy-o!” Your hands have a field day, if you let them… But you don’t
You know its all in a word. Like Popeye & Sweepea you have saved each other from the unending drip of the Universe. The song makes a world of its own. You sell that song to a company that makes you famous. Getting off a train one day you smell Fritos, falling every so lightly like snow 00for God’s sake, man, Grab Her!!! Tsk, too late Far out Too much That’s it! That’s poetry! Or pottery! Poultry? window Thru the stained-glass/ the time of day seemed altered. Thru the stoned-ass wind the groping gauchos faltered.
`DG `DM
~ POSTER POEM
for John Milton’s birthday
here after the wall paper will sail along the interstate. the local-yocals have learned to live with these minor distractions but we, the descendents of migrant fruit-pickers, become vocal and masticate nouns in our every digression. what of it that Latin rhythm: I’ll take a tango over another word from you John Milton. we used to call you Boots until I gave you an opening. Whew! That was a near miss. The I that”s us gives the you that”s you a birthday present--some words on golden paper, which this poster was printed on. Tomorrow if we see you hitchhiking on the interstate, we”ll exclaim to ourselves “Why, that looks like John Milton! His birthday was yesterday!**
`DA `ST `DM 12-9-72
~ THIS IS THE KITCHEN
between these two walls the very end of space the table wears a tablecloth… and that ain’t cheese buster which the spreader relates to nothing in particular just a quiet game of parchesi in the Palace of Versailles a nip or two for grandma the crystalline air which is her hair vacillates between being and non-curtains
she slams the icebox door and declares ‘THIS IS THE KITCHEN THE LAND IN WHICH TWO WALLS FACE EACH OTHER TWICE, SHARP AS CHEDDAR WHITE AS COTTAGE. IF YOU THINK YOU’RE OVERLOOKING THE GRAND CANYON THERE ARE OTHER WALLS THAT LOOK AT THE LIVING DOOR.’ she sits down and cackles because she knows that you want another drink of orange juice and oranges aren”t all!
`DA `ST `DM 12-9-72
~ Iowa City Energy Crisis (a class reunion)
by Mark Cohen Philip Lemke Barbara Sablov John Birkbeck Dave Odegard Geoffrey Ford Dave Morice
Paradinoia
My glands throbbed as I entered the vacuous city
on its outskirts lived the embryonic chicken the doomed sunday night dinner with sense enough to be an omelet
its air port beacon throbbed
a vein in the neck
blew out
we almost escaped
the fetal incarnation
swallowed the custard pudding
grinned demonically and
passed the salad bowl
An evening in Paraguay
parquet ekskewezay america America grounded in slavery cane vomits blood while singing Ave Maria
Meanwhile back at Iowa City Hancher Awes-de-Tory-(um) And the calendar’s days are numbered.
late friday afternoons cut chirico shadows down the Washington avenue those skinny women in buns cluthing barbara’s bakery punkind ‘special hurry ascross in diagonals the streeeeeyt
*
THE DONUT IN THE SKY IS SATURN’S LOST RING
remember the light blue ring around the desert, the others thought it looked like you yoo-hoo, the old hoot owl rooted for the mutants as they flew like pavlov’s dogs over hill and dale “Donut Nirvana--let’s go to DONUT NIRVANA!”
Night: The lost ear listens to the sound of a clump the clump that says, “Re- turn car- to the lot!!!”
*
The ramp glows in the dark It was built in Iowa City, AD 1973 Some say it was meant to be a tabernacle for car-worship. However, recent discoveries show that it was more like Saturn’s lost ring, hovering in the coffee soaking up all that delicious caffeine!
WHOA!
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE charging still chasing pavlov’s viscious dogs.
The Donut Wagon. Dunking through history.
*
That Thursday
In front of the Campus Greez ( The Campus Grill, that is) All was lost – I thought, Since only I lost was was my mind. ( only a figger of speech, that is)
Remember? Remember? Remember The time when Big John and Jeff Ford Both bought the same shirt at Penny’s And my memory will never fail, Those old scenes of Iowa City Were always there – always there – always there . . .
*
Can’t remember names except Yours Boofoo was its real name but the kids called him friend I know, know know not, not, not what, what, what my clothes were doing imagine them having a cocktail party and not inviting me “Well get yourself a more responsive dog” She barked at me I turned on my side and went to sleep dreaming and dancing with dirty feet on the doormat of reality.
Refrain: Boom shuusshh iicckk woow See you at ten
*
Lil bill went over the hill so long ago it might be to Pluto by now yes it was over four years ago that the decade turned into the first shade of a memory of watergate
across the street in Michael’s bar drunken ex-hoboes quaff their ale like a scene from one of miller’s parties golub returns
harsh wine saves the day
the new federal building grins like the prez himself down off clinton street the full measure of the new moon withdraws from the physics
building with a lost rib
whose evening is this?
whose women are you?
are you really bald-
headed lena from Jacksonville ?
if i ever run into you aga
i’m gonna go stark fuckin’
WILD!
*
HORSEPOWER TO THE PEOPLE
Urban removal anyone? The situation shifts dramatically to the year 1904 before Halley’s vacant lot… a baseball streaks across the outfield “NO BATTER NO BATTER” chewing gum sticks to shoe the floor quivers lightly Then a demagogue begins to move the small bones of his mouth:
“And tonite we will look at the horseless carriage. My, isn’t that pretty. She’s riding with him. And her bonnet’s made out of lsd! Ignore that, folks. Because in 1904, the horse jumped when the car goes whizzing by
at 10 mph!”
The kid’s right about one thing. What goes up. . . . . . . . must come down…
(see what I mean. Henry’s Hamburger buns in the sky. The 1904 kid bites into a Superburger in 1973.)
`MC `PL `BS `JB `DO `GF `DM 1973
~ HUNG LUNCH
“These guys are nuts” Archibald MacLeish said that they just rip frases out of the air like high pop flies. Archibald enjoyed baseball as a simple tonic while down the road a piece President Nixon was practicing curve balls. His balls were out to lunch. When they came back a unanimous jerk was applauded on the spot. Snapshots bloomed in the nasal passages of clerks on their way to the cogs & wheels. Lunch for Mr. Peanut was nojoke-in fact his v very exicetence hung onit
`DG `PC `CK `AK `DM
~ “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.”
The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick. .
sick eyes that see no sun, the blood to thick to pierce .
The tan Pierce-Arrow glided swiftly down the drive. .
“Drive over here!” “No!” “Why not?” “I don’t have a car!” .
Cars sometimes make the mistake of leaving someone behind. .
We were now presenting a bug’s eye view behind the scenes at the Watergate. .
The gate filled up with water as a sign of rain. .
rain, rain, and the earth is washed again .
Again I take the typewriter in hand to inform you of the situation here in the temperate zone. .
The ozone lifted the kite even higher… .
higher and higher and clearer and clearer, the moon is a slice of silver floating in the atmosphere of space .
and like mince meat pie makes ones mouth water, so it makes ones mind water .
Can a banana ban a can anima?
`PC `AB `DM
~ WE ALL
We all rise We all shine We all talk Like Gertrude Stein
`SL `DM
~ GUTS
The sports car slid smoothly to a stop at the barricade
In the floodlights above the machine gun nests she looked more closely at the chandelier.
“Hi there, Captain,” a friendly voice called out, then: “Look out for those testicles!”
“Somebody tell the Duke I want a torch parade on the double”.
The floodlights dimmed The machine gun nests and the chandelier fell into the sports car.
She drove away, ignoring the barricade, the captain, the testicles, the duke, and the parade.
`JI `DM
~ PROMISE
Indra flitted through the skies on his Vimana. But, does flotation offer a complete answer for lifting the big ones? Hours later, the professor & I had forgtotten our saddle sores over a dinner in a Cairo hotel shaped like an old pramid: “Promise,” I said. He smiled, revealing his Vimana somewhere near his tonsils.
`JI `DM
~ “The Armadillo”
The Armadillo
Makes pointed tracks
in the sands
of another time
stomping a song to his sweetheart
one two thump one two thump
one two thump stump jump
stump jump
armadillo stump jump
in wisconsin they stump jump
But the question has arizz.
Is this beast the monster that they
say he izz?
Why can’t an armadillo sing?
Maybe we just don’t
hear his heart thump bump.
Or maybe he can’t carry a tune
with all that armor covering him.
Shh. There he goes again.
`JD `KF `AC `JB `DM 1-74
~ “THE SAD STORM”
THE SAD STORM
The sad storm needed a new handle The lightning wasn’t happy, either
*
PASSING GEAR
The plant takes down the book from the automatic dashboard. Out of the window cattle register zero on the Richter Scale
*
LOVERS
Neither of us talk about the easy chair
*
NEW MONEY
The plain deal settled the west with alittle help from the fanciest woman this side of the Mississippi
*
STUFFED DOG
The wolf was too big
*
CANDY HEARTS
The rug spoons the curtain reds back again into salt: The forks manipulate windows without spilling the beans
`SW `DM
~ COUGH NOTES
Thinking about the golden goose whose mind is a feathery substance basted in perfume we say, “Fuck me! Shuck me! Grab my nubbin and shuck me!” screamed the hippie poet just in from Boulder as he read his neo-impressionist odes to the swooning crowd at Epstein’s. Instantly Loose Linda, a poetry aficionado jumped behind the counter grabbing for his fly. “I beg your pardon,” screamed the hairy young man as he jumped from his throne of godly position and sat down with a cough drop. Imitations ventured toward him, waving their thumbs. Pumpums lifted the sky at its edges where tall yeast infections robbged the scene of its beauty, substituting and amiable ugliness. And like the golden duck who hated all that was unduckly he rolled out the door and into the space that he occupied
`BA `JA `DM
~ ALL YOU WANT
the floor stretches its checkered feet when you open the door at half-past eight
so wide you can see the man next door i can see you smile at his child of four
the pancakes are extra light for you eat all you want, go have a few
AND THERE’S the rug to wipe your shoes your feet inside have paid their dues
and your hands to wipe your pants on fire as the pancakes blaze with sudden desire
`ST `DM
~ STARS THAT STICK TO YOUR RIBS
the stars tonite are shaped like meatballs. And I mean the thick kind that sticks to ribs all the way around. Like a money built unexpectedly found empty, we say “well why not 2 ice cream cones in the stomach, and a smikle, too?” Tears slide down the edges of the meatballs as they sigh in their compartment of the gleeming stainless steel steam-table.
`AK `DM
~ AFTER MAYAKOVSKY
On the plate my soul is served at a supper of the future. A hand pushes the plate away and a voice says, “Man, this steak ain’t dead yet.” “But the onions-- what about the onions? Aren’t they reminiscent?” My soul is funny like that, sometimes. Then we both laugh--ha ha--at food, hands, voices-- whatever happens to be nearby.
In the air around them, thick walls piled up, forming a bedroom in the present. A hand pushes the bed away
A hand pushes the bed back. The man controlling the hand crooks a finger and says, “Garcon!” Again, “Garcon, take this meal away, for some reason I’ve no appetite tonight.”
`AK `DM
~ LISTENING TO THE COUNTRY & WESTERN STATION
“sounds like John Ashbery wrote this”
spoken by Dave Morice titled by Allan Kornblum
`AK `DM
~ IN LIVING COLOR
The giant faucet was pouring out water from mid-air The bug walking across the top opf the page sings a song of color When he comes across the faucet seems to be a cuddly bug pouring out eggs and spinning a cocoon
An old shepherd snapping at flies wanted to shake hands Her paw was the color of sundown so deep you could fall forever in love and this would be forever your favorite color.
2
As the summer turns toward its cool wind (which grows in the apples and emerges when they fall) the day glows in its sunset
It was not so long ago for eating grapes soon all teeth were sunk lost in the deep green sea like an alphabet bomber
The street outside leads sofas to the river where they turn into lifeboats and carry the dreamer away in to the night
3
The living color has a mind of its own Thirteen chameleons balance into the rainbow in the church of St. Yellow
This is their home They will stay here until all the yellow has been used up
until all the green has turned blue.
4
The pigeons landed in the drainpipe where the pools gathered after the rain took their homes Itching their branches had scratched their chance to fly back now so they stay in the air, refueling only when necessary
They strafe the rainbows pouring from the shepherd’s eyes and whisper “It’s the water” to the wind and the water in the wind criticizing nothing making merry with the verdure as it steams with birds of paradise Long feather dip like brushes in the airport of dripping condensation The crackling of bird seed sprouting forth a network of rhinestones The pigeons gather in the park Far away the birds of paradise from high branches look at themselves in the water. “I am what I am and that’s all what I am!” said the parrot of paradise.
`ST `DM
~ PINK LEGS
Oho! Che!
`SW `AK `DM
~ Loaded
The fan propels wives as the widow hangs out in the window
a hard chin dented on the edge of the sill
if it had an edge.
& the wee folk throw out their arms
like miniature fans in the window’s reflection.
popcorn spills down the aisle of butter
at the Loaded Dice Movie House:
just as the fan cools the air the curtains begin rising
you wisp onto the stage the cars of the world
squealing on your shoulder.
you realize the mission has been accomplished
because of the steering wheels lost in your hair
tell tale fingers grip the roads
dust clouds ring their tips--
when they say the night has a thousand eyes they mean the eye has a thousand nights.
`ST `DM
~ THE ORANGE THAT WAS A ROCK
Ashtrays bloomed like mushrooms near the television in thoughts of the antenna being struck bgy lightning
came back from the factory in one piece to glow and rain on and on
somewhere there’s a magnet eating sailsman the clock telling him its time to draw attention
under the rock ant eggs gushing into his mouth distance of four feet and paced off briskly
The orange that was a rock and roll song turned into a sphere with sound advice
and rolled away humming past other colored rocks and away.
`ST `DM
~ HIT THE FLOOR, A DOUBLE SONNET
Like hitting a woman, like standing outside a ballpark and hitting a homerun into it the pencil hit the floor with a full barrel of lead, out of which baseballs are made to bean the batters for good The woman picks it up and cajoles: “Is my little buttercup hurt?” while actually writing: “My big buttercup!” on the inner lining of her finger. Eggs make the batter better but if they come in chromosome explosion they’re as unpredictable as gasoline in one of those stainless steel milk trucks that are secretly filled with beer and go fast as a strike that flies by the mailbox. A sudden thunderstorm is like mail. When you get no mail, you strike out.
`CK `NR `DM 8-11-71
~ BAKERY
for Charles Darwin & Manson
At the bakery, the hot donuts sit, speaking
Unremedial possibilities tiptoe from behind the coffee urn
behind Mable, the wife whose yeaowling toe nudged existence into a sense of itself.
Donuts, like marbles, roll till they get on the floor that thinks it’s a mind made of dough that Mable has taken from the breadplant they stashed in the bow of the Beagle snooping past and sighing so plaintively. He had never asked for, never wanted to be a pop culture hero. “But,” he thinks, “Perhaps a visit to the butcher is in the cosmic order.”
`AK `NR `DM
~ THE MAGIC KIDNEYS
Thumbtacked to the wall behind us, Superhero and his Girlfriend Contemplate Impending Cosmic Danger out their Window. Thumbtacked to the wall in front a balloon carries a man in a basket over 2 homes and what seems to be a large garage. In back are foothills and in the foreground, an hitching post. Telephone wires! There aren’t any, but hardly notice that. Everything elegantly ordinary and realistic. Superhero points to the balloon and commands: “Pop that balloon!”
Kidneys come out Chartreuse and Red glows Superhero’s eyes Those are magic kidneys underneath the outside layers little symphonies of beetles attack allegro andante vivace adagio On command the crazed beetles
WHOOOOASHH Miserable miracle! Oh sad foot! Oh ill wind that blows no good!
`JS `AK `DM
~ the burning goldenrod
the picture nestled over the fire it was the humidity though, that destroyed it groans of paint melted into the smoke shuffled into the long trails of burnt jump-rope the precision of wood the precision of flames wiped up on the blue hotness at the center seeking a king sized bed instead of a chimney signs a rubber foot knots the shoe-laces and settles down
`ST `DM
~ ICE CLOCK
The frozen globe is sort of happy hanging there beneath the imagined runt named Nichlaus, the Tibetan Monad, whose thought
appears bluely,
signifying sadness in our thoughts and beads
What if Lincoln logs could pop
and slurp
and you were our personalized Lincoln,
a dog barked tremendously mocking a cat…
who aptly named himself Glyph,
son of Hyro
Together they lived for many years on the cool sprouts of the Mount. Everyone thot they were nuts: Hyro & Glyph. Hyro had a high slow voice the chicks dug son & his /kept shoveling corn. “Corn is a compound,” he wd say. Dollars ending in twilight, then i search for a lay.
Thin ripples of magnificence
penetrated our false sense
of reality bulging out of our shoulders
like thirst buns…
Meanwhile, Sal mineoed down the street
and into a dog. The dog barfed on the freak and what we know today of zoolongy stems from his placid snout
like a sonata played by a bunch of anxious jerks who, like it or not, form your impatient past into a ball, & throw it
thru the trance.
On the other side, a whole hole developes.
It was a veritable ball of suntan!
It walked talked balked hawked chalked mocked tocked tapped rapped snapped flapped slipped zipped tapped mapped zapped flapped
as anyone could see through it, like glass. The smell overrode all opinion on the mattress.
One quivered politely, like a snowflap
Down soared Mattie Mountie, chief Cherokee warrior
in that Sci fi triller bout that Tooi Tooi
Wha’ Tooi
Happy one, of courswe
One happy tooi coming up.
(a fly nudges his brother fly and said, “Watch this, man.”)
Jus’ ah ice cock. Absolute dial. Twenty- four hour’s protection.
`DG `DM
~ THE LONELY CLEARING
Somehow the moon got lost in the soup where the birds were waiting eagerly. They say that the birds were the last recruits. This land is a map that says “goodbye.” Because it’s going to town. Because we have a new moon outside and it looks ten times better than the old one. Ask the birds They’re in the backyard growling in the mudbath.
[signed:]
Allan Dave Skot
`AK `SW `DM
~ HOMER’S LOST IN THE WOODS
We try to figure out these clouds but they are weights, maybe, conducting the sky to gravity: Shoes are fortunate in that. Wingtips carry Homer to the weeds in order to recite his latest to the cute chick who bought the wine. But before they reached “that little hollow” they discovered their steps were level with the tins of the topmost branches. Elevator shoes posite birds in the German train station wjere Fra amd Jerr poured the glass of stars into the net taking the elevator to the astro jet. And then the geisha girl said But after all, we’re only young once And we’d better make do With the trolley or our track shoes.
`AK `SW `DM
~ SUMMER SLEET
An unorthodox cloud appeared and reappeared over the subdivision, sleet smeared a host of envelopes through the walls of happy homes.
Mama! cried the mailmen. Sud! cried mama. But the windowless White Chapel hovered noiselessly behind beams taut with frenzy.
Will rubber washers save us? we wondered, stuck in the wall and forgotten.
One doesn’t try, even a little, to remember before summer snow, which is worse.
`JI `DM
~ COW COUNTRY
Bone-weary, the salesman slept in his suitcase and dreamed of “Cow Country”.
Soon a man picked up the grip he was in and set it on a train.
The porter, or someone official, stamped it “Cow Country”, and “Bull Town.”
Pressing his ear against a crack, the salesman heard a cry, “There’s a cow on the track!”
“Bull!”
`JI `DM
~ THE MAID OF HONOR
A bucket of peat moss cast shadows all over the audience as the maid began the countdown, a recital of the names of various fish she fed to her thighs. “Artificial insemination,” murmured their hearts, “is a thought backed up by a fist.” She dashed out into the rain and ran into a Ford pick-up.
`JI `DM
~ JUMBLED DUCK
His nose was like a leak in a fishbowl. The future orange. Spies washed their cow cried Wow! as she peered at the calendar hanging from her eyhe lids. Today
we grunt down a house and thusly roasted a pig. Charles Lamb haply was walking by and said, “Thank you for the Inspiration, a toaster. Thawed out, the North Pole would like somebody wasn’t home, or bald. A raunchy best seller sat on the table. Without saying “Toast is not my pot of tea” bussed the bee as he hoarded his golden nectar. English muffins
are the regular morning special at the Hambgurg Inn where oenophiles from Joe’s meet girls returning home from Mother Margolis’ chicken soup Factory. The Hamburger Factory is next door, showing photographs of old and rare hamburgers.
`BA `JA `DM
~ GRAMMAR
A machine in France in which was placed on the altar a pot of fresh chervil so the priest could impress all with his gourmandaise. “We are the pioneers of the party games of tomorrow!” that sounds like fun said the curvy glass bottle as she rolled toward the priest who protested this violent assault on his pristine celibacy which he had heretofore protected by fresh artichoke poultices. Fun? Hardly--more like a serious attempt at the invisible woman who lives next door but wonders about gold. Ie.: is it lavender? Or French.
`BA `JA `DM
~ Traffic Tickets.
We tried to park between the lines whose sliding board was rusty That night we readjusted time tomorrow it was frosty
Traffic tickets filled the air to make us think of snow & when the pencil drops on us We think of what’s below.
Down where cactus starts to bend The water’s being waved Then something makes the kitchen floor (The walls are being paved)
We walk to faucets, tap, & sink the glasses, cups, and shards Then we ask the cigarettes Todeal out the cards.
The holes forgot to brush their teeth And so their moths were next As Plates that left their food alone To hold the magic tricks.
The kitchen lines grow long and blue And carry us through spaces Where other meter maids begin To deal with our cases.
`ST `DM
~ THE FACE OF DEATH
for Fred O’Hara
I’d a hoed im under but the state’s cat came cutting the interstate through an took away is remains said Hans, the Irishman from the very top of the world You have to look twice to see ime even here. Then the face of death burns a hole in the paper plate, whose only other burden is mashed potatoes. And they’re in the right pocket. As a thought about hoes, think back to the time of yhour life, mountain climbing
over coils of green plastic in your backyard snagging on the couplings trying to siphon the pool before it caroms on a center-shot from the left Hans smiles at Mable’s potatoes as they bounce through the pool like the earth wrinkling at the beginning of time on earth to create these mountainous poems that might have been dedicated to Fred, instead of to Frank. Fred Mertz with the Idaho potato head.
`AK `NR `DM ~ POEM
I just wrote it
~ POEM
You did You really did
`JL `DM
~ Thoughtful numbers
The oldies are still, and this makes them stick to the gum under the chair.
You, to be a thoughtful number, bend your head to look at them, stuck in the mild weed
because the wind musically moves them to clear your sight so we can set up the log cabin.
When we dialed for the news something went wrong and we got weather.
The head at the other end said, “It’s raining questionmarks.” You said, “Maybe I have the answers.”
`ST `DM
~ THE WARMING TRENDS
The sky is filled with warming trends That rotate through the news, But after it works out that way There’s more than we can lose/
We try to eat your father’s stories But more than we can swallow, The warming trends that light the sky Will turn the roadmaps yellow.
If we couldlearn to use our wings We’d speak a different language. The words that we know how to spell Are so much extra baggage.
The picnic basket’s getting old, And we are getting nosey-- O, Lunch, is that the way to eat? The food is feeling drowsy.
We feel the same, the warming trends That make your lunches change Are those that make the buffalos Run across the range.
`ST `DM
~ HOT SHOT
Hot shot to center
hot double play of colors stirring the future’s mold hard on! land is formed between first and second out of the part that brings in the articles of grace from the channel that turned to snow rain snow and opens its mouth that catches you off balance off the track sharpening the senses O television screen casting your plug forever chasing the huge shadow of a lunker the speed of light isn’t so fast after all
`ST `DM
~ A SPONGE LIFTS UP ITS FIST
Morning. The Ryan’s house. Mr. & Mrs. Ryan are silently copulating in the tub, leaving the water run & the kids in bed on soft springs of sleep: “Now, John, your car’s honking,” whispered Sharleen to 17 year-old John Ryan Jr. as he fingered her clit in the family space module. “Sharleen, what is my car’s name? Is it Biff?” “No, Fog. Don’t ask me what make. I never knew those tires in all their frozen beauty, starvisitors that they are.” A spong. Evening. The family watches spacevision.
`AK `DM
~ IN MEMORY OF BORIS AND NATASHA
Breaking through the subway entrance, always we shall be ho ho ho dreaming two nights after the artist said, ‘I am buying groceries and thinking of starch remember? ho ho ha ha to space we”re just a barrel of monkeys, and the deeper the soul, the hee hee hee hee in the forest.
Boris, come here with Natasha and tell us all about Bullwinkle. He”s a moose ho ho, and through some outpost, the artist must create a moose and ha ha be born again.
`DA `DM
~ WITH ZEST
to my closed eyes Tanzania is completely dark, like the horizon on which your arms are twin headlights from the future flyhing doors appear like apples opening the tree, the toe refuses to kick as the fallen star makes fall look like starch If you”re looking for likenesses, look twice, especially in Maggie”s Nipples, Wyoming. Autumn isolates the make of her car, but her skin wakes the violoncellos of Lebanon.
crests of abundance! magic objects converge winter vibrates in the driveway oddly fed with confetti hands pick their way through the strings.
radios are on always, ever since the Black Sea of night finished its chocolate malt, and the Tundra converged in horsemen who shout, ‘I’m aware of Coca Cola, for I see the sign flashing before ; and after.’ After what?
Afterwards.
Staples hold us in place when the gold ring tingles with brilliance. Cro-magnon times, evenings of untapped facts, sand that feels more like snow because it is snow: Dots taller than straight lines, falling gently & wnitely, from the sky to the warlocks in the kitchen. Like the nose I saw on your face.
try to rouge daybreak
`DA `DM
~ THE MASTER VALVE
beyond the wing where birds are no longer involved in flying,
the stuffed box unstuffs itself all day all night of stuff= to displace birds devour space
the shape without the master valve turning in on itself as night glows within the lightbulbs.
`KA `DM
~ YELLOW CHARTS
The admiral’s eyes scanned the yellow charts. He checked his watch, synchronized with his buddies who were out on the boats taking after the enemy subs. “Time’s NOW,” he said, and gave the signal to the others with him. “Right,” said the chaplain, “Pass the meat scraps.”
`JI `DM
~ “WOLVERTON MOUNTAIN”
Wolverton Mountain
She had always liked honey But she’ll settle for money.
*
The Older the Violin, the Sweeter the Muzak
That summer, the bees bit hard. Under the hive, the violinist tried hard.
*
PT-109
Hairy arms cling to aging piccolos The once and future president Is connected to them At the shoulders
*
Grade=A Creamery Butter
Mmm. Sticks to the lips! Sticks to the stovepipe! Melts in the grooves of my record. Burp!
*
The Sweet-Scented Flour
Had too much sugar in it So we used it to Freshen up the bathroom.
*
Bargain Basement Dress
It looked good in the Honky-Tonk It looked good to the Honky It’ll look good on his sweetie. It’s a bargain! It’s a basement! It’s not a poem!
*
Pick Me Up on Your Way Down
By the neon stars above I’ll meet you in the alley By the nylon cars below I’ll drive you to the valley
*
The Old Bastard Story-Teller
He’ll sing you a tune Then steal your food Jive your bananas and Run out nude Then tell someone else About how you got screwed.
*
Baby Doll
Teddy loved me yes he did So who was I to care
Teddy loved me yes he did And I loved Teddy bare
`KF `DM 4-10-74
~ HEROIC ADVENTURE STORY or PURE LOVE
The elephant whose tracks were being followed turned around and chased the hunter from his path right into the breadfruit tree with the hairy-legged guitar picker studying math
`KF `DM 4-10-74
~ PIECES OF PATSY CLINE
“When you touch me I fall to pieces,” said Patsy Cline, and she tumbled off the wall a beautiful brick affair lined with ivy and a swing in the background where a Rock Island Train whirred under translucent clouds “It’s over now, because I don’t want to have to spend my time on something else. You’ll have to buy the drinks and I promise you won’t even touch the glass,” said you, though. The moon coursed through the coffee. You tried to read the message in the fortune cookie. But all you could make out was: “…sidewalks to the date!” The exclamation point caught you while Patsy started reassembling between the porch.
`AK `DM
~ STEREOPHONIC MOUSEHOLE
The tiny mouse stroked his mousehole and jumped off the bridge, where he’d stood,on a paratrooper walking upward. “Eek! Get that mouse out of here before my husband gets home.” Music blundered in, filled with notes like “$50 please”, or “You’re stepping on my toe” The mouse did a dance out the door, sweeping his tail against the soft, thawing concrete off the ground. A long time ago mice dreamed of doing the same. To the tune of cheese.
`AK `DM
~ DAWN IN TAHITI
We slapped out the side of a red but sturdy boat
“Go,” we said to one of our group.
I knew it might happen to me one day. So I got a gun and waited.
All the while I rode the tides with the dolphin, the color of never knowing. Warm shower lavender and French cuisine.
Waves, like clover, laden with soap drifted through our taffy experience a year or more in the future, till the modulation begins in the cups You know better than other boats. Soaring above a huge bat smacked its lips.
` AK `DM
~ VICTORIA FALLS
the fin of the fish ended in a splash passing out turkey to you and your loved ones as we waved from the water lapping up red and blue and green coupons fluttering about the bronze statue The doorman fixed stars for five dollars slipped up up the umbrella’s hat off- erring the dew drops said the parrot swinging infinity cubes, resources, tricks and getting married or killed can’t be winter theres spring in the air it’s out of season and so it falls face down.
`ST `DM
~ DUCK TONES
What happens next depends upon what happened “previously.” This is a game carried over dark terrain to the ultimate most-visible duck.
`GM `DG
~ CLUCK TONES
What happens next depends upon what happened in “DUCK TONES.” This is the blame carried over dark brains to the ultimate most-invisible cluck.
`DM
______ ~ The Growth of New Concepts: A Birthday Poem for Al Buck
Research is not an end. Neither was your birth.
.
Your birthday is not an end. Neither was your research.
.
Monday, December 18, 1972 (we think) – HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
.
He has to find new methods to solve this modern day epidemic thus, new poem
.
But, he thought, if I add a little bit more of this chemical I’ll solve the question of immortality. Men & women will be able to live forever, and they’ll never have to worry about tomorrow, just yesterday. Then he stepped outside his laboratory for a triumphant breath of fresh air before completing the formula and was immediately stricken with amnesia.
.
The club describes an arc when admitting new members. They are stunned because they always wanted to belong and now they do. They suddenly realize the impact of haley’s comet. “Far out!” they cry, “is not just an expression.”
.
Because, Mr. Buck, Research is not a den of thieves, though the researchers might not know what they’re ultimately looking for: the angel of the lord still has to consult the angel of the electric cord to plug in the light or the fan.
.
d d d d dd d d d dd
happy birthday to you!
`AK `DM
~ MOOD EARDRUM
Talk is for the gernaniums watered with power as corrugated as can be. Listening outdoors can be toothy, like a pelvis twitching, but what we remember is aloof & detached, while on the ball which is rolling. Turning the corner you remember an epigram, and it kills! Your next poem continues off into a bed-- there talk is olike a motorboat skidding over & beyond all time. The mood, plant-like, extends into our minds until our minds themselves grow seeds, & turn insane.
`DG `AK `DM [in Planet News]
~ THE NITTY GRITTY
What is this gidly boo and didly do of witches brew?
Perhaps a snack on a gingerbread shack
would clear the air at the warlock’s Fair.
Or snow upon the toboggan of a nitty gritty dragon
Maybe the witches brew is really a moonshine
that rains on magic like gladstones.
`BA `JA `DM
~ “fingers retreat from”
fingers retreat from the burned down radio
it still sings but it can’t sign its name
soft other objects that sit on the TV
shake their heads in objection of the radio
as the tv gets stolen the fingers stuck on the hand that holds them
tense up at grammar and no sound do they make
feet of snow wiggle toes of December
the footprints trail the distance
that eats up so much time by going between things
`ST `DM
~ NOTHINGNESS
1
LINT
A single piece of lint hovered on the windowsill for over 12 hours. The first 6 hours the sun was shining. The second 6 hours the moon was shining. Finally, at 1:36 AM the lint quivered for 1.03 seconds, then dropped to the floor.
`DM
2
DROPS
The water faucet in the kitchen leaked.
Every 2.14 seconds, a single tear-drop shaped globule of water appeared at the mouth of the cold water faucet. It was approximately 62 degrees at the coldest point and 61.99 degrees at the warmest, or vice versa.
It immediately splashed upon falling 4.3 inches to the white porcelin of the sink.
`DM
3
COUNTRY DRIVE
Leaving my house on Sunday afternoon, I drove north on a blacktop road, for a ways. After going 1.3 miles, it became gravel, then at .8 miles, I turned east and steered my truck for 4.3 miles whereupon, I turned North. This road was dirt. At exactly 5.3 yards, there was a barricade that stood 6.5 feet high and 12.6 feet wide with semi-broad diagonal stripes.
The edge of the river was 57.9 rods immediately following.
`MA
4
HAND MOVEMENT
The hand moved its thumb a ½ inch off the arm of the chair. The index finger followed the thumb ½ - way, then, .9 seconds after that, returned to its original position. One second after that, a fly that flew in from the window which was only 2.666 inches open landed on the nail of the thumb and caused it to violently shake up and down, then return to the chair’s arm next to the index finger.
`DM
5
PEANUT BUTTER
Peanut butter has 265 calories per tablespoon full. Do you realize that that means that peanut butter has 15,600 calories in a 12 Oz. jar?
`MA
6
GRAIN OF SAND VS. GRAIN OF SALT
The yellow grain of sand sparkled amidst 32,256 grains of salt which were spilled across the blaniket on the beach.
`DM
7
CELLULAR DISTRIBUTION
Of the approximately 10 trillion cells in the human body, not very many of them move of their own accord.
`DM
8
GRASS
In the average blade of grass there are somewhere around a googol of living and dead cell. But they all move in unison, unlike other types of cells.
`MA
One of the more unusual collaboration methods involved taking a poem “Acid Delight,” published in an unknown magazine by an unknown author, and crossing off letters and words to change it to “Body Tight.” Here are the two poems, with the starting poem followed by the collaborative rewrite.
~ ACID DELIGHT
I am getting somebody uptight. I am getting everybody uptight. Maybe I'd better go away for awhile, and then when I come back, people won't be uptight, but no, If I go and do that someone will say : Omjigod ~ he must have freaked out and split, we better go and look for him or he'll walk in front of a city bus, and someone will say : how come he trips if he can't handle it, and that will get everybody uptight, so I guess I'd better stick around and keep cool which won't be easy cuz I'm getting this guy uptight, I'm getting everybody uptight, maybe if...
(author unknown)
*
~ BODY TIGHT
I am getting tight. I am getting body tight. Maybe I'd better go and then I won't be tight, but no, If I go someone will say go~ better go walk in front of us, how come everybody tight, I guess I'd better keep tight, I'm getting body tight...
`ST `DM
The next two poems work the same way as the previous two. In this collaborative rewrite the original poem “Information” turns into the new version “Or I.”
~ INFORMATION
Hey kid won’t you tell us who hooked you on the zig zag corners of the new high school ?
(author unknown)
*
~ OR I
Hey id won’t you tell us who hooked you on ego the new high ?
`ST `AK
~ THE GRAPES SING THE BLUES TO YOUR LIPS
o solemio! toot-toot-tootsie down the track with a large vehicle
burping seeds to a melody never written
but sung by nectarines at crating time a here we go again I Here thoswe…. hhhh hw
back to ? toot-toot-
tootsite up to follow yes
you do
the minuet
long tall grapes
with round firm bottoms and
provocative stems, yearning for
the savage picker who also knew the pumpkin
more than well he knew that pumpkin and the tomatoes corn carrots etc… and so sad he knew
the fruits that would pick them firmly from the SUPER super markets
orange pekoe teabags under your eyes, sir or ma’am
did you think they were stars
So super, your market, mister super,
This resting home for old plums and older tangerines
waiting for Miss Varicose Veins of 1973 to view them with clinical scorn and caress their bruised pulp
Take them all madam clean the super gems off their skins
and enjoy them at your super supper time
`MM `AW `DM 9-3-77
~ ANYWAY THE CREATURES APPEAR
solo on the edge what they wear (other than lips):
the huge hat
knows that You kan,t wait , because it,s not POITRY s how ever youo spell it…
but it is something much more which is next to less m they look toward words, write t e like h the word GO whence the whens with small letters:
poitry
or poatry? pootry? poutry? poytry?
Or hats cats mats , it is as ah yes it isss
bits and pies of apple POITRY
like the little tags that come off of one hundred year old mattresses that say
“do not tear under penalty of law”
& shriek when you rip them off …
ANYWAY,
on the matter of pies
H I HH ii Hi the pie is a jayberrie hi’
and the 10,000 Joecubs had their turn
this is crazy . Michele HI Hitler
Alan: I am disgusted distinguished dave here
`MM `AW `DM 9-3-77
~ THE SNOW MAN MEETS THE SUN GOD AND LOSES
The name for anything exists like feedback--a bar-be-que
over which new clouds establish their erratic patterns. Once we
are born th e linebreaks stumble--there are no “proper”
nouns. The last thing we remember will be the first
Grand Entry into the quickly melting eye--we will have legs
that stride beyond the remotest breakfast, we will have hearts that shiver
like an ariel view of the Alps. Our minds are anothe r matter.
They will grow fur. “Ah yes, I believe I’be seen you somewhere,”
Tradition will say. “Y our typewriter skipped a few spa ces, but those
were the best ..I mean…in the Long Run.” And so we
melt into the future, where snow is lighter than air filled with cornflakes.
If we depended on the radio, if we had bodies composed of rifts in the air, if
rhyming couplets came easy as the outer sphere of relationships melting
like the night, then maybe we would se e
with all our organs, make music which illuminates, dropping us off
in all the relevant places.
`DG `DM
~ PORTRAITS KEROSENE FOR THE MASSES
by Allen G. Willis and by David J. Morice
Scene 1, take 1
AAAAAAAAAAA
drum in the corn was poor thought tonight delight the green stamp on the barn made the woman turn toward the sunlight sand. She urged me to turn away. The baseball fell limply on my shoulder.
“Hi.” “Hi, how are you?” “OH, fine.”
we said, in the rain, or, as you said, rainstorm
the mold on her cheek in the yellow flesh covered over with lipstick revealed her to be dropping through the trees to the earth, the land of rocks and dirtworms.
The yard going up to the vase, as bald
as could the boom in the ear be. “Hi.” was all. But more Love is like that. The ear, hearing The Word.
BBBBBBBBBBB
`AW `DM ~ THE STAR CHART
[on the worksheet for Mr. Anderson’s Section of Fiction Writing #8:181 for April 15, 1971]
The star chart lay on the table in front of Toeman. He felt silly. Apparently he’d been steering the ship into the wrong solar system. “Monsters,” he plundered, “have a way of growing on you.” “Toeman?” The sun set on and on. Tobacco sacks fell off the shelves into their plates. Dinnertime, Toeman thought. He lit up a bowlful and took a toke through his toe. Mmm. “Yes?” he answered. “I’m very busy.” “Too busy for your wife?” “No. Go get her.”
2
He was dashing through the portholes. Toeman’s wife lay in the bring, reading directions. She wanted her hubbie, Toeman, to fly away. Night fell. “But where is the star chart?” she cooed. “Look under your Pappy’s khakis.” he dashed off. “I did want to read a little before we hit the heyk, heh?” she said. Suddenly, it happened.
Radios of joy echoed thru her snoot. Lifting her one limp leg into the steaming air of outer space, she, like a crane, crooned tweetily. “Monsters,” she peeped, “MONSTERS!”
3
“Monsters!” She was in real trouble. “Toeman, help.” “Why do you call me by my last name?” he asked. “MONSTERS!” she answered. Three days later, a little healthier than before, Toeman got up. Instead of the mirror that he enjoyed so much as a captain, he dunked his wife, Grace. “There’s money in starvation!” she chirruped.
4
The ship floated thru endless space. In fields of vacuum, the two voyeurs fell into magnificent comets of sleep. They dreamt of tiny MONSTERS that winked and beeped in their sleep and who rubbed their tiny MONSTER calves with salve.
“Hand me the store chart,” Toeman honked. “We’re headed for Me Too.” (Their moments drift away, like scalps.)
[“Me Too” was a supermarket in Iowa City at that time.]
`DF `DM
~ OUT IN THE BACK YARD
Out there, fur, a small man, and a golfball whirl in flurries of bone splinters meadows No one is alone; the purple box of horseshoes wait to be thrown at the cross on the hill The picnickers watch silently, food on their feet, ants crawl out of their ears, eyes, and mouth They are having fun. The sun is rocking forward, melting them in their own bedazzlement
Let’s have a fish, one of them shouts. The mailbox opens as the flag comes down. A fish tumbles out. “Hi! I’m Josh!” it exclaims, and quietly places his fins over the tombgstone An awkward stiff pushes the earth away & rises in a robe of butterfly wings and postage stamps “I told you I’d be here. Now put me back, please.” The picknickers coughed. The small man hit him with a mallet. He and his butterflies went away.
`BR `DM
~ OH YEH THE BAH
the bah oh yeh the bah oh oh bah bah oh oh yeh yeh
winter wrinkle winter twinkle
cold snow cold snow through the though the thought the tough
tough tinkle
tinkle inkle inlet winkle
oh yeh oh oh the radio oh oh the readio
clam chow der
clam chow der
der der er
urp
urp
purp le pur ple long long long
`ST `DM
~ GO FOR A GRAPE
Down on the farm the farms hands gasp for air doing opinionations on the roof. The sky flies underfoot. Head over heels the farm hands tumble off the roof.
The swing on the front porch held the moon between the slats. the sweat rolled off the back forty the horses smile between bits of brothers and features sailing for cover the main force of the explosion going into the eggs and making them bloom like firecrackers in the eyes of a cow contented So Billy the Kid was your kid brother and your only drink away from being an instant success The gunfight at ok corral marked the end of an era. No more would the mysterious horseman gallop up the hill, shouting “Go for a grape! All is well. Go for a grape! There wasn’t much out yet Only the moon sailing through the sky like an apricot.
`ST `DM
~ WHEN WALKING BECOMES IMPOSSIBLE
you fall off.
`SW `DM
~ NOW
let’s write a collaboration poem, Leander huh what do you say
what more is there to do?
Is there work up North?
North of here or North of there?
What does North have to do with collaboration?
Do you realize that each stanza in this poem is questionable?
Is it?
`LC `DM
~ “i don’t know”
i don’t know what to type about you’ll concentrate
on what is going around
the air waves
through your fly (open) not seen or smelt but
Buzzing!
thereright awaynow youcan hearit
rhythm of spheres and rod
makes u think of god right? wrong?
no, i think it was maybe both?
Or neither.
Indespensibly yours--
the poet
`LC `DM ~ THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE
Opening the pages is like opening the mind of Count Dracula.
like a zoo splitting in half
elephants monkeys snakes birds
hitting the air bats flying up the cellar window the Count, whistling “cry me a river”
kicking up the dust loving it, with all the lint under his fingernails
`TD `CL `DM
Tony D’Marinus, Colleen Lookingbill ????
~ “THE DUNBARS LIVED IN A COTTAGE…”
The Dunbars lived in a cottage on a back street, which had the distinction of being the only home on the street adorned by a garden. With perhaps the exception of Judge Hepdurn’s garden, an elaborate affair said to have cost a “pile of money”, there was none to compare with it in Canada.
The Dunbars were the kind of people you always run into at a picnic. Mrs. Dunbar, a slight, squeamish woman of 35, with long auburn hair and two narrow-set eyes shaded by enormous bushy eyebrows, tiny well-slanted ears, and a nose that reminded one of some alien and sun-burnt plant, stood at the edge of the garden with a hose in one hand and her husband in the other.
“Oh Howard! Look at all those strange vegetable babies I planted last year! Some of them are taking unknown shapes!”
Howard looked like the kind of guy that crashes your card game. You’re with old friends and this nondescript guy will be there and he sets in roots. He always ignored his wife’s absurd declarations, preferring to stare at the fence six feet behind his wife’s ambling promenade thru hedges their gardener had trimmed and sculpted into lawn furniture. Everything everone else remembered seemed totally unimportant to Howard. He was cultivating his future in such a way as to allow maximum room for the sky. Each plant had to crawl in a horizontal path until it reached the water. Underneath the ground there was a network of unusable passages, but conversation glided away at the same rate of speed.
“Aim it over there, Bertha,” Howard shouted, pointing at an interesting blob of light. It was a plant composed entirely of light, or so it seemed, reaching out its many luminous tentacles, inch by inch.”
Bertha shot a heavy spray onto the creeping form.
The noise the spray made aroused the Mad Ants from the garden’s netherland where Howard stood crushing things with his nice new shoes.
“Oh Howard! Some of these shapes are turning up behind you, but you can’t see them.” “Why not?” he said. The blob of light quivered and rose into the sky and stayed there twinkling like a scar. Howard was listening to a Mozart string quartet on his AR system. He wanted to do what was best for the future of Canada, and he wanted to assure his future. Ambition was a church he worshipped faithfully in. Although concerns with his early business were like the petunias his garden had been inspired by--thought of, but as the past--he wanted those men to live like plush velvet trumpets. Elaine, their daughter, was visiting at Judge Hepburn’s on a parallel lane.
The Hepburns were a vivacious couple nearly six feet tall. They had been married in the garden years ago, under a petunia. Another interesting blob of light crossed the lane behind them. Lighting up[ their future like a home movie. It went like this:
Bertha strode forward and touched a clam that drifted through the air lazily keeping the time. Then a dark stranger walked ujp to her and invisibly read her mind. She puffed up like a frog. Later as you walked up behind the dark stranger and said, “Hey, do you know what it is?” That made you grow tall like Bertha.
You talked awhile to the Hepburns and cautiously noted all parallel lines, the blob of light notwithstanding the court case in which everyone seemed to be about to lose his shirt. In the present again, the Judge asks Howard Dunbar to join him in a gin and tonic. The fate of galaxies hadn’t sharpened the inviting tone of his host thought Dunbar as the plant’s strobe effect made him squint and turn away from the glowing spasmodic horizon made him squint and turn away from the glowing spasmodic horizon. The furniture matched the overtones of the Judge’s tweed jacket he draped across the top of a bookcase as he reached into the second drawer and pulled out a bottle of expensive gin.
“Have to hide it from the servants. They have orders not to let me drink, but damn the galaxy I say, I need the effect, the familiar patterns.” Ice appeared in the glasses and in Dunbar’s voice as he opened an attaché case and addressed the Judge reluctantly.
“My children don’t remember what Canada looked like when there used to be a night. Since those plants took over our dreams have become real life and the fears of our past now glow in the weird gardens that proliferate wherever Canada has maintained communications.” Dunbar sipped his drink and wondered what his words could mean to a man like the Judge who had “been thru it all”.
“Wellk, Dunbar, I’m going home!” said the judge as he slammed the door in his car outside and lit the engine. He drove a car on candle power, figuring he’d save on gas that way, and he did. But the car wouldn’t go anywhere.
The Judge appeared at the doorway holding his ear. It was speckled with the watermark of time, and it said, “Eat at Joe’s” in the interim. They had finished their meal a long time ago. In the morning ice cream clouds hovered over the refrigerator in the hands. They wandered aimlessly in search of the children.
“They’re certainly in Canada. But that lasted only till there used to be night happened. What do you think we should get them with?”
Clyde rubbed his bald spot. He didn’t know that they were talking to him. He thought they knew him like a wall for as long as the house had been that way.
“Let’s,” said Clyde agreeably.
The next thing they knew they were involved in some unaccountable air and fine points that burst into Dunbar making him feel faint. Instead he smiled like a Ford. Just then Bertha bolted into them, and almost knocked them over. “They’re rising! They’re rising! she shouted, waving a half-eaten hose in the air and foaming with words. The sky was an intense violet with little flakes of cucumber drifting away as far south as New Orleans. Something was obviously wrong.
“It’s those Hybrids,” shouted Howard. “I told you not to plant them, yhou dumb bitch! Now the fate of the world is upon us. Guilt will outdistance everything we’ve tried to handle; even ourselves!”
Howard threw a big limp arm around Bertha’s middle, and she began to squeeze. At first she thot that his mind had been taken over by the consciousness of the Plants, but quickly decided he wasn’t nearly as interesting.
“This is not time for that!” she blurted. “You’re acting like just another one of the disguises reality takes!” she screamed, pounding absentmindedly on his chest.
“At least I try to be real,” retorted Howard, “while all you ever do is cook me my meals and go for long walks and pull weeds.”
“It’s all too complicated, Howard. You ought to listen a lot more to the Judge.”
Just then a terrific explosion occurred in the center of the garden. From the blast of light came the Light Creatures, and carried everything away.
`DG `AK `DM
~ MARATHON COLLABORATION POEM
(Written by many people during Poetry Marathon #2)\
During the writing of the 100-foot poem on June 21, 1973, at Epstein’s Book Store (see Volumes 7 and 8) an electric typewriter sat on the Sara-Hart Terrace for people to write a collaboration poem. The collab is a wild series of literary snapshots of the people and the places of the time.
Creeping leaves of the lizard trees! Its time and here is no one here to celebrate it. But if and when we have room to remember it will make a great story for our retirement keepers. There should be no action but that action which generates time standing still and not a breath in the air.
M O v e
If your interested in seeing a new tornado film you should go to Blackhawk County – KXCL ? Tornado falls in love but when time to break u8p can’t face the reality of p arking meters which only need plugging sometimes not at
7:30 AM It’s a beautiful day – but a little early for inspiration. J.S.
7:31 AM Words move the world… “Mislabeled laxative” reads the REGISTER….
so spell right…..read carefully….. swallow nature, not poison….. RBS
Rolling down the highway all caught up in the Bumper Sticker Revolution – gangs of families headed for beaches – mountains – forests – and kitchens. Up with peanut butter down with all else that can’t stick to the ribs.
Holidays are for anyone who can appreciate the simplicity of celebrating nothing. And nothing can be exciting when your rolling down the highway with your bumper sticker and your doll in the front seat.
thfh hy66 we shall
We shall walk together in the park some day /Watch the pretty birds Then we’ll go down to the river And get a big fish.
Good Morning June 21st, meet GME
and the mother goddess confirms again her ancient hold upon the world, and we again shall bask in beauty from the other age. sheltered by the oak receiving the old blessing. we are still people of the beauty past, dawning with our own age and the time of our ancestors.
I am a rasin whose draftsman sketched the dotted line to the cosmos---J.L.B.
Where are you, Mother Pronce? The day is growing old with Olives and Sara has rejoined her family. Tell me, hamlet, when the eagles rise and pay homage and bills to their fathers, do the snakes fart on the hot painted desserts?
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as
jj ojohn lareemcmgkkpijhujgp f hrtiritidy johnlarew ijjijiuu--- -----HCGJS UWDUUDHUHWU HJBNBJKHUJ IHIHICEIFIIC IEFIIIHIHIIYMMNMNMCKNOSFISHERHF
IIGKKBI(O.H L(E $K%K!”#R%_&’(* U*–jc kskvjkjvccdkvck jk4953888 abkfjfjkjdkvjkvkkj kfkvklvkfvkjvkdkv dkvkjkvkf
ee
i.e.: we grow into our appliances.
the satellite marks the bills
the double agent appears like the owl with the Ph.D.
“singing in the rain”
tho there aint no rain, just a little bank offering matches
& shelter against the fall-out of . . . .
The dollar doesn’t float.
The baloney does.
H.R. HALDEMAN USED CARS
JOHN DEAN INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH MOUTHWASWH
GORDON LIDDY BURGERS
RICHARD NIXON ALPHABET SOUP
BUT we’re asleep on this channel, showing the genius of this most twentieth of centuries:
brain selectively Off!
& ON!
because it’s a long way to Kansas
& longer coming back.
*
*
*
do we trust buildings?
can individuals still be “found”?
** signs of signs **
Honk!
FASTEN YOU SEAT BELTS LADIES N GENTLMN WE ALL ARE EXPERIENCN DIFFICULTY WITH THU PROPULSHN SYSTM OF THU URCRAFT.
i.e.: theengine just landed in
tennessee. we’re in
another state.
we’re in the all of us
…
APHASIA
cures ham.
The highway is a back space.
Individuals ARE sometimes “found”
but in other forms.
Three-fourths of every waking; thought merely serves to hold up our pants.
The other fourth undresses
the previous thought.
Thus philosophy is a monument to that body of thought known as
Incipent Erasibility.
********** time
for
space.
space
for
disguise
of
sheer
forgetfulness
.
Thus honk?
surely progress is more than ?
honk.
“are you married?”
“how old are you anyway, mr. bank?”
“you’re my friends I want you to know that….
&on&on&on
until we return to something more
exciting, like
honk.
In the sky on the solstice there are two big knees, crossed where a year of lunches meets a year of wet dreams & paydays.
The lunches extend from Vladivostok to Cleveland to San Luis Obispo to Tunis.
The dreams rain down from over Shanghai to just over East Leroy, Michigan.
Books are left lying and liars are left in their books
& we are all paid for
beaver to eternity.
This is a film that does dnot star
everyone only
any body;
*********
The words are covered with DOG.
The dog is NEVER covered with words.
******
Good reception in the stomach the engineers.s;;
and good rectal plumbers
S iowa state bank & trust building books adler satellite fallout-shelter
the public is invited to submit titles for the actualist marathon kkkkkkkkk
epstssssspdt oforooigr iOdllkdl – e564
na5314554 64jjj you $$%T_%$# $ %$##
FAR OUT
It is now degrees o’clock out of the west.
The west is the clock by degrees. Now is the degree the west is of the clock. The clock out west is degrees off.
*
Six legs holding up four people around me.
English is the language of barbecued beef.
Nineteen people are trapped inside the bank.
Beef.
Bank.
English.
Legs.
TV camera.
Now people will buy anything.
*
Something just fell down on something
out in the universe.
This is why cheese is 89¢ a pound.
My knee is about 2 ½ feet from the ground which is about 6 miles below United Airlines
which is why there is not really a “president.”
Chickens are white & yellow beef.
Wood is dirt on speed.
Fingers are high pressure frontal systems.
Highways are back space.
Logic is creation shot full of holes.
*
“The coins of beauty are burning holes in the pockets of the universe.”
--God.
*
Why am I sitting down when I could be someone else?
Why do the faces look like money?
WHAT I DID ON MY VACATION:
Colonel Sanders. Kentucky Fried Brains.
Burger Chef. Burger sKing.
Burger skiing?
There’s still snow on the bald
banker.
---Wells, Nevada.
**********
When there’s nothing else to eat,
there’s always time to eat.
**********
askew : mind
bird : organic radio.
bus : moving picture.
snow : cold salt.
typewriter : visible man.
definition : rape.
**********
Politics is not the margin on the world. Fact is not the margin on the word. Margins aren’t .
**********
THIS IS GETTING.
*
Tuna is the pitcher of the sea.
Time is the tuna of the mind.
A PITCHER IS THE MIND OF THE SEA.
***
The bank underwhelms me.
“You need money? Go to the bank; they got it all.”
--Ezra Pound
***
Have we got beyond 1900?
Scientists studying the rings in baloney disagree.
Some say there are too many periods; some say too few.
Others think that periods are actually square.
*
*
If you feel your psychic potential is being under- exploited come to H. R. HALDEMAN USED CARS.
****
When your whole life seems to be just so much mileage what you need is GLEEM.
*********
When you’re body gets tired you can get a plaster cast of it to carry around. They sell them at the Orthopedic Hardware Shop. And what’s more they bill you. And if your name is already “Bill” they give you a new body free. That’s the way American medicne works. That’s the way Doctors get to go to Wejunboo for Thanksgiving For the 4th of July For Flag Day For National Secretary Week
The new body never gets dirty looks. The new body never gets tired. The new body never gets the whooping cough. The new body never gets pregnant gut if it does The new body aborts pretty easy.
****************
Black crow Worshipping the colosus auto That delivers dead rabbits.
--------------------a*****
cold porcelin potty basin feels like the skin of a girlfriend i once had kissed like a dead fish.
- - - ----- - - - - - -----
Now is the time for God to really mean it.
*****
Trees blow trailers over and on the moon nothing is replaced.
**********
A “Two Dimensional Obect”
has yet to be invented.
***
smithereens in Copacabana nexus flirt moonmen look look more mirth for my friends!
**********
DNAL – LOH E – CY O J Creates Poetry sjc
* * * * * *
COMET CONSCIOUSNESS IS HERE TO
don’t watergate me
************************************************
You know it’s really hard to say If its become anew day. But it isn’t if you know If you know what I mean.
When the angels meet Aaron and Arron meets Ruth let the lights shine in Minneapolis, the dixies run in York. And tall all the world that Mister Shine is alive and well in Coralville. As for me, Mister Scopes, tell my mother that rice swings and the motherland is heavy with heat, and in the wet forests the jackel is a stranger and my sweet brown earth thrives.
sex is a high density i8nput, gives a very clean, very steady voltage; be sure to remember to insert your battery before you start, however, so your meter functions properly.
when the spirit moves me--cross the river, round the bend, Gloria halluluah, here i go again. cat walk down, steel yeard blues, lets o go roving, see you soon.
lunch time ramblings, flowers for a friend, Epsteins sidewalk, flags in the wind.
see Dave type Dave is not a type Dave is Dave sometimes sometimes he is more than Dave
Darrell wheres funny hats Darrell has a different hat for every day of the week Darrell has eight hats
Tim Hildebrand (t) sits in yellow chairs when it is not raining
This tape is not catching up with Daves Tape
Steve and Sheila are here too, Steve and Sheila are hugging and things in public
Dave is writing in public shame shame
will 100 feet ever equal 100 feet
ddddd
beneath his 100 ft. long shirt the poet scratched the itch later he located his arm
were all sad tie dyed
one impala asked the other impala at a street light ‘whats gnu’
ladies heart’s are sad and gay whenon Friday they get their pay what what ever did you say he rymed and timed all day if it weren’t for the sun I could stay
wandering in and out wandering all about see the people come to watch
Here comes Bob caught in the act Howard sits like a fart
k
middle day in shade machines behind Dave in front
middle of the day paper goingin crooked writer crocked
so we plunk each other rapturously & signal Butch for more latitude!
burps are free - ------------- -
BOOT HILL CRIMSON CITY, ARIZONA
_______ Go to / Cisco Pete and Big Tit Ethyl April 4, 1879 They suffocated 69ing.
Last night my wife donned a comb, a baret, a lacka lazical belt & wapped her kitcheneet. My dog, it was not George loved Junior with a passion. I found them behind the garage eating each other ‘s pepsi.
MAN!?.,:+*)(‘&_%$#”! ******************** **** ***** *****
WAY DOES MAN KILL? H W
BZ
BURPS ARE FREE WHEN YOU BURP
I thot my garage sparrow was dead. I breathed into his beak. He opened his right eye and died.
Reality is the toilet wall upon which we write our lives.
soon a day will come when we can all see peace. a day when man will no longer be afraid of his brother,or himself.
open apaces filled with dots of electricjoys in the noons silent morning of the suns softly endi endings. and the summer somnabulist walks on… controlling the avenues of walked on lives He tred softly, his padding feet making the whisper owling in the secrest of bird landed nights. never to be awakened--destined to never really sleep moments of laughter lit within the nests and the chirps that chip each mans mobility. Only the thot that shot the image remained to plague him bulleting the depths of the mirrored image glassedf the cracked image cozed out the green blood and the spiders spun webs faster to give it chase touché touch armed angleof the grasping trumpet doth return the replyh only to be gobbled up by the giant gnats and toadstool which sat on everyone in the moments of gothic signitures of wrath beconing the marathoned poets poeting. and the galumphing gnats galumphing charging insects with the realities of the earths indigestion fulfilling the ocean waves and the vast mountains belching forth the magnificent belch of burps which resounded through the caverns of the decaying brain rot. ROT ROTTENING in the warts of the cavitied mouth of zits. ZOTS!!! Was it cold. SHALOM
The kite string dangled out of the window with a rock on the end. Hopefully the people in N121 will get the hint and pull it in to read the note It’s a poem.
the note. it’s all about life. also it says hello and have a nice day. it’s wonderful to know there are still some beautiful people left in this world.
35
who writes poems to submit to Guinness Book of Records?
n
6
man who created the world and made it to his ideales who made it
livible for himself but hardly livi ble for other animals made
now has poullted, it; and
destroyd and used up almost all of its natural r esources has made the world unlivible for any animal
The clouds are out today, I am hungry, and they are dumplings, I am afraid and they protect me. they are bumpers, cusions around the universe, cusioning the earth with atmosphere which is unending, unreachable. I can’t have them for supper.
One of the clouds Isee today looks
like a bird hatching from an egg When the clouds turn gray he turnsto golden silver.
never once but occasionally more the cover story broke and lies had to end and thw mountain still remains the faces change but the truth is still there
ID
********************************* ******************************** ********************************* *********************************
anything
A frustrated Shirley Temple taps across the Good Ship Lollypop
Th
999999999 The longesst poem in the world is a dream image articulated in the echo box of well formed American cheerleaders. “I want to succeed”they scream and scrape the sky with their urgent cunts as words tumble tumble tumble. Humour sitting on a sunlight porch brings action to the flat midwest first note of summer…thank you says the sun and corn for words,k though not enough to eat or love or lean on, fill me up and tickle on the disconnected circuit of my soul! Thank you and good night.
DAVID HArR FV
DAVID HARVEY ***IS A DUMB**SHIT!!!!!!!!
signed gillgan fox signed
gilligan foxxx THISA
In Iowa City, in the summer, it is so saD. The Americans, the Armenians, the drunks living on Marcy st. also are sad.
MAKEUP IS WISE TO PUT ON
ALLTHE TOOLS CONVENE (tools not fools) HERE TOMORROW
and the bartenders, they weep
is this typewriter working? why yes it is.
I think i f will just write a few words why i
am waiting for my friend to come get stoned with
me and then again i feel as if sometimes I am waiting
for the entire world to come get stoned for the love
of god………forgive me if sometimes i submerge
into MAYA and suffer under the illusion that I am
a separate identity, I8m sorry I guess I’ve just
strayed from the mother organism and trying to
manifest my idea ½ thoughts into reality. Well my
molecular structure is beginning to disintergrate
so if youll excuse me I will just vibrate my way home..
Dear Darrell,
The wongbreads are fling asque, askew. The Jumpinells are chipping the silence. The Rats are swimming the 100 meters for St. Anthony. So, Heaven help me in little desires. Johnson, tell me where the radishes are; show me where the tulips sing; how do the bee’s belch; where does the finest Pike leap his incandescant record? My lover, Tell me where the morning glories shit? And on who? Where in the avenues and the guts of lonesome cows does the mother come into play? In the softness of marbgles and there is astronide to be sute, does snow and love go together? Tell my mother and watch her laugh so much that the goldfish snicker and die, slowley, eaten sensuously by Bettas but lovely, and slowley like dwarfs, lonely, sad and permanent.
i haven’t been poet for too many tears.
this is a ERASMIA PULCHELLA if you dont bellieve me or anyone aske Jeanny with the light brown butterfly green shirt and red shirt and big smile all of which has nothing to do with her brother who is Dave with the light brown butterfly and purple shirt
and black border
sun sets but we dont live there anymore
sun sets and the cars pass Dave types faster and faster and melts into the table a long 100’ poem of Morice Joyce says quiet Joyce don’t be os busy Dave watches the sun set and the cars pass again and continues to type
Socks change your socks change your socks it is the VERNAL EQUINOX
52 minutesw per 100 equals 100 minutes per 1000yards linear on the cusp of the margin thst is the lower priced spread the higher is spread 100 fet long or perhaps 100 feate long
AND THE INCREDIBLE NIGHTHAWKS*)? ¼
I’ve seen one of these before; I know I have-- perhaps in my dreams of immortality, perhaps disguised as my brother in a dark brown suit, No cheating! The idiots will be here soon,,,,,,,,, Otherwise=the guppies, the enormous headpiece, my friend the Pope.
Today is Yesterday’s Tomarrow and Yesterday is Tomarrow’s Today andTomarrow is Today’s Yesterday and and there is not yesterday, today and, tomarrow.
submited by Me Myself and I.
[Note: a Chinese ideograph appears here painted on calligraphically]
& we race toward the end toward 8.51 race toward sunset catalogue of catalogues earth’s fiery balling
F THEIR R A FEW SPELING MISSTAKES IN THISS SINTENSE SEA IF YOU KANN FIND AWL OV THEM THEY’RE R XZAXLEE 14 OV THEM
And we raced toward the end of 8:51 and found no end
`MP (Many People, unsigned) | 
