Sparks arc across ocular intervals
Scintillating, oscillating reversals of polarity
Swooning in the swing of synchronizing ecstasy
Of simultaneous intercognition
Instant understanding in an eyeblink
Constant conversation converging
Subconscious urges emerging
Transmitted in pulsing waves
Between beams of magnetic affinity
Embedding interchanging images
Of me
Looking at you
Looking at me
Looking at you
Looking at me
Looking at you

"Curtis, I have a mouse in my room.
What should I do?"
"Get another room."
"I did, but not because of the mouse.
I asked for a firm mattress.
I need something hard to sleep, you know.
But the mouse may come back.
What should I do?"

Cattis

Cutting up my translation of Catullus

Shall I now deity minister and Cybele's familiar be?
And so to domicile of Cybele tingling lazily
Exhilarate excite from error her anima
And with liquid mind saw without what and where he was
Over high seas Attis swift shipped
Others incite, others drive rabid.
Twin gods' ears with new announcements referring
I cold green Ida's snow-capped locale cultivate
And went to woods wrapped opaquely location divine
Attis
Where wood-dwelling deer, where forest-wandering boar
There sleep fleeing quick away from excited Attis
I, a maenad, I part me, I a man sterile to be
And go to their opaque furious lairs
There from joined yokes Cybele released the lions
Where cymbal sounds voice, where tympani rebound
At the same time furiously inhaling vagrant wades spirit driven
The revelers suddenly with trembling tongues yodel
There always all life's space her familiar he was.

Clinton in China

MC
Good evening and welcome to Bad Pop Opera. Tonight we bring you an excerpt from "Clinton in China" with music by minimalist composer Les Johnson and libretto by Hugh Jorgan.
Principal players include the following:
As President, former singer for Black Oak Arkansas, Mr. Hot'n'Nasty himself, Jim Dandy;
As First Lady, in a reprisal of her role as Evita Peron, the one and only Madonna Ciccone;
And as Premier of the People's Republic, Kung Fu fighting, fast as lightning, David Carradine.
The scene opens with a Chorus of Red Guards responding to a Chorus of Arkansas Hog Callers.

MC
So that's the way it is.
Have a good night and a better tomorrow.

Dawn Joy Marks

What kind of cat can I be?

A whopsical cat, a topsical cat,
A slumbering cat on a mat
Below a flickering hearth
Becomes cats of many colors:
Brindled and calico, rusted in the sun,
Or Siamese, if you please.

Ears which twitch at phantom mews
Of cats who were and are yet to be:
Krazy Kat, Felix, Mr. Jenks, Chester Cheetohs,
Morris the Cat, Ruff's pal Reddy, Sylvester, Jr.
Puss in Boots, Ptah, Dick Whittington's cat,
Mungo Jerry, King Leonardo, Pepe Le Piu,
The Lion King--now how about that?--
Jag-you-are, ocelot, Cheetah Chrome.
What about a lynx or almighty sphinx?
That is the question.

What kind of cat can I be?

Fer Jimmy Bower

I have just emerged
From the fiery pits of hell
To tell of the terrible loneliness
Of those who dwell within

Forsaken by family
Forgotten by friend
Eternity of agony
Torment without end

On my burning brainpan
Teardrops hop
In a danse macabre
Sizzling into dissipation.

Flitcraft

What if?

Abduction;
Retroduction:
Reasoning back or away from
A premise in the optative mood
To determine a functional apparatus.

See if it works.

What if you do it this way?

Imagine, if you can, approaching
Every decision with this criterion.

What if everyone did?

Would the world be different
Or what?

What if?

Heal Thyself

Physicians oppose guideline algorithms
Used in court as standards of care.

"Only 15% of practice is evidence, the rest is interpretation --
Which turns medicine from a science to an art,
Because there is always a human factor."

"Smile for the nice doctor, precious!"

Focus

"This is Amy. Hypertonic tension
Had clenched her hands into a clawlike rictus.
She had lost her ability to grasp.
Eventually her internal organs were likewise affected.
We did all we could do,
But she died a year later."

A hot rush swept over me
And a deep welling of the soul
Poured down my cheek
Until I could taste
The salt of the earth.

National Poetry Month

What is a poem?

Is verse really motivated
By sudden spontaneous overflow of feeling --
Xora erupting from the fell grasp of the sable-robed Underworld
Like a pomegranate exploding
While the shimmering drapes of Aurora
Radiate effulgent iridescence?

Or is it actually calculated craft
That rings false if too artful
Lacking a core of recognition
Which is the basis of remembrance
Engraving an epitaph for eternity?

Incredible.

And somewhere there is music
Between the buzz of the nerves
And the throb of the heart,
And this rhythm and noise interacting
Propels the poem onward and upward.

It is this music which is encoded
In the spiral oscillations of cerebral nucleotides.

But something is lost in the translation
That can only be regained by enlightened interpretation --
An incandescent reflection
flickering as it fades to virtual afterimage:
The wink of the stranger on the hearth opening vistas of deja vu ;
But are they things we really want to see?
The shudder of nostalgia horripilating goosebumps
When we know who's next.

NeoExpressionist Exhibition

I want to paint New Orleans
in the red spasms of agony
of a victim at a voodoo rite;
in the creamy chalky white
of the payoff at a chicken drop;
in the soft pale blue of a sultry
humid sky fading into a mood indigo.
So don't forget the Carnival purple
and make that cold drink ernge!
I want to paint New Orleans inside-
out with its guts as well as its glory.
I want to paint it with its pants down
bending over backwards sticking its head
where the sun will never shine.
I want to paint its crime and vice
and overwhelming selfish stupidity:
The slanting squint of the silent assailant
and the clutching grasp of the greedy grabber;
the foot of the law on the chest of the oppressed:
the throbbing heart of the weeping mother.
I want to paint New Orleans
laughing, sneering, grinning, blushing;
Anguish & sorrow—repentance & regret;
Praying & swearing:promising & lying
--eating & drinking:living & dying;
Singing, shouting, screaming ------
And whispering something sweet
with more than a hint of spice.
 
I want to paint New Orleans
splattering Charity Hospital afterbirth
with the spew of forgotten fathers
and the maggot-laden scum of stagnant dumps
with yellow pus oozing from gangrene-riddled sores
while a disconcerted surgeon beeps his stockbroker
signifying the ultimate corruption of the soul
the writhing of a gnawing worm
buried deep in the blooming bud
of a well-pruned convent camellia.
I want to squirt the squirarchy's stinging spleen
in the sullen stares of the bloody bourgeoisie.
I want to squeak the shattered
skulls of private school preppies
across a creaking cracking slate
in screeching obscene swastikas
And shoot my steaming seed
on the face of a squirming debutante
Screwed, blued and jigsaw puzzle tattooed.
I want to paint New Orleans'
streets and trees—gutters and steeples;
A puking tourist glinting
in the blink of a sweaty mule;
Purple roaches and orange rats
stalking and exterminating
blue dogs and red cats;
sculptors, poets, dancers and homeless;
junkies, drunks, gamblers and thieves;
the shrewd, the gullible, the prejudiced, the mad:
I want to paint all of New Orleans and especially
All of you here now watching me saying this.

New Year’s Meditation

Teetering on the brink of tomorrow,
Are we having fun yet?
Pop, pop goes le bubbly above
Echoed by the brewsky below,
Are we really having fun?

Armchair linebackers
Elbow through the crowd
Venting frustration in anticipation
Of a Superdome Sugar Bowl
They could see better at home,
But there's nothing like being there
Written off as a business expense.

As the fog lifts and the fireworks fade,
Are we still having fun?
Tokyo stockbrokers
Contemplate the rising sun
As we sleep off fun, fun, fun
Till papasan takes the T-Bird away.
The party's over, let's go to work.

Panther Spoor

A Subjective Sorites

A high-school senior in 1969 tried to shock
A hook-nosed, silver-bunned spinster
By turning in a term paper about Soul on Ice ----
She shocked him by giving the composition an A-

Who iced Eldridge?
Apparatus of oppression
Omnipotent Administrator
Nightmare food on Patmos
Heart torn in two upon the flaming crux
Crime: Crotchfunk soulrape
As-salaam aliakum
Leave it to Cleaver
You took the best, so why not take the rest?
Freedom now a Mao Mao
Competition is the law of the jungle
Supermasculine menial, come forth
Safe, passive apolitical nonparticipatory islands
High-siding and low-riding,
Seeking asylum in Folsom, liberated from a doctrine of hate
Look into the disturbance
Lumumba, Nkruma, Kenyatta.
The fallout: The Smashed Banana
Dancing fool stings like a bee
Ethnic self-hatred bleached out
Hordes insurgents freeze
Counter-revolutionary bourgeois ideology
He's got the devil's eyes
That by which he defined himself
No longer has a recognizable identity
And they are outraged
You're only spreading disunity
Drained off as pus from a sore
I don't dig this action any more
Logical and reciprocal links
Biological miscegenation
Primeval mitosis
Locked in cold storage
Universal Democracy of Cowards
Coincide with the gulf
Extirpates domestic component
Quest for the apocalyptic fusion
The world is hemophiliac; blood is a lubricant
Understand what's bugging you:
Trees, screams, nightriders, fear,
Totalitarian squares, fraudulent and pretentious
Unfathomable subconscious machinery
Dehydrated oasis
Profound personal crisis
Alienated from the status quo
Butterflies, squats, windmills
They just sound like keys in propria persona
Come out of her, my people
Vomit out the poisons of hate
Foulest decay and putrid savagery
All in scrambled suits
To understand what is at stake here
Sluggish, compromising, and drag-footed
Feeding the conflagration
Appropriating his heritage
Strangelove's foreign policy collapses, completely shattered
America slowly awakes: We are a very sick country
Unchartered amorphous league: Ofay Watchers Anonymous
They too are victimized, neo-colonial puppet regimes
Intending to explain the Trinity with an analogy to 3-in-1 Oil
It is an explosive issue, the masses' response to charisma
Grinding cameras and extended microphones
You can't slander the dead.

Pardoner’s Sac

We open The Enquirer to find the following notice:
 
(ALLEGED)
CALCUTTA MIRACLE TISSUE!

First, the shroud of Turin; next, the vision of Lourdes!
Now, you too can have the tissues used by Mother Teresa
To cover her head during Holy Mass.
Tissues pure enough for the sweat and tears of a saint.
Hold them up to the light,
Say a hundred Hail Marys,
And you'll be amazed what you see
Interwoven among the fibers.
What reliquary, lacrimatory, or sudarium
Has powers such as these?
Need we invoke the Holy Grail
Or guilt and personal recriminations
While the poorest of the poor grovel for crusts?
Blessed be they who shall inherit the earth.
(a portion of proceeds will be donated
to the Ronald McDonald Foundation)
Only $6.66 plus $3.33 handling!
Not sold in stores! Get yours today!
Call now and have your credit card number ready!
1-900-MIRACLE and ask for Simon.

Tissues also available for the phlegm
Of one formerly known as Princess.
For the more sanguine sensibility,
Please see our ad, page 84,
For auto upholstery embossed
With the imprint of a British royal profile.

Polemic Plight

An opera, an epic, a saga of the sea,
If I could sing one of these,
Oh, how joyful would I be.
Yet I sit lonely in my room
Brooding in a nimbus of doom,
Breathing in sharp ozone stench,
Would that I were Latin or French;
Ions gathering negative potential,
Would that I were Walter Winchell.
Groping for the rhyme sublime,
With ridicule must I bide my time.
No flash, no clap, not even a number
As from the heights to the plain I stumble;
Crawling up to crouch and stumble again.
This is all that I can mumble:
Who do you want? Brian Gumble?
Even he would not bumble
Letting all his talents fumble
Into unintelligible jumble
Making everybody grumble
Turning into a rough and tumble
On Wolverton Heath with the Wombles
Careening through briars and brambles:
Have you had enough examples
Of word salad sturm und drang klang?

Rakeman

Raking the yard, raking the yard
I've spent my life raking the yard;
How I ever hate raking the yard.
Pull back and again and again
Back and forth. Don't miss a spot
If you do, you're in trouble,
And'll have to do it over again
Even at night with only the porchlight --
Not an easy thing for a child of six,
Handle chafing stigmata in the palms.
The eternal return --
My stepfather treated me like a bastard:
Boxes, cuffs, and backhands spiced with vitriolic stings
And don't forget the backhand compliment
Damning with faint praise:
"He may have made Star, but he'll never be an Eagle."
Well, I got him.
This time it was a hoe, not a rake; same drag, different tool.
I was edging around the foundation in the hot summer sun
When he came home for lunch
And strolled around the house inspecting my work
''How many times do I have to tell you
It's got to be perfectly even.
See, around those pipes -- you missed some.
Get down on your knees and pull them, do you don't dull the hoe."
I glared as I gripped, tendons taut in my wrist
He went on and on and on.
I took out my file and started to sharpen --
Grating and grinding, sparks flew.
"You're rubbing it the wrong way!"
Then I ------ well, you know the rest.
Raking the yard, raking the yard,
Raking the dirt in the prison yard;
Turning big lumps into little.
Raking the yard, raking the yard,
I'll spend my life raking the yard;
Do I ever hate raking the yard.

Rap Sheet

I want to kill a cop
They've never helped me when I needed them
And always hassled me whenever they could
Predators do not prey on other predators
Both cops and crooks chase chickens
They're both in the business of crime
Looking for easy victims to fleece
A wolf in cheap clothing is bad enough,
But what happens when you trust a fox?
I want to kill the cop who asked me
What I was doing with those girls in the garage.
I want to kill the cop who came to my school
When I cut Clyde "Sonny" Landreth's tires.
I want to kill the cop who swiped my groceries
After arresting me for shoplifting
I want to kill the cop who laughed at me
When I stormed into the station, face streaming blood
After getting jumped by a gang of greasers we had given a ride
I want to kill the cop who took my picture at an anti-war rally.
I want to kill the cop who locked up my buddy
After grilling him about every burglary in town
When we got caught with a carload of empty Coke bottles
Behind a convenience store. "Yeah, watch me jump this ditch!"
I want to kill the cop who interrupted my courtship
Late one night on a country road.
I want to kill the cop who refused to arrest the guy
Who stole my motorcycle after friends helped me track him down.
I want to kill the cop who told me he'd heard I said
He had sex with a teenage girl in exchange for letting her date go.
I want to kill the cop who took an hour to search our van
When we turned around on a wharf
Looking for a parking place on our way to a concert.
Luckily, he didn't find anything.
I want to kill the cops who killed the kids
In Chicago, Detroit, Jackson, Kent, Selma and Watts.
I want to kill the cop who told me I couldn't hitchhike on the expressway
And made me walk a mile to the next exit.
I want to kill the cop who kicked out my legs from under me
While frisking me against my car.
I want to kill the cop who performs the rectal probes at the airport.
I want to kill the cop with the radar gun hiding like a highway robber.
I want to kill the cop who tapped our phone
The night before Nixon came to town.
I want to kill the cop who sided with
A casual acquaintance of my ex-wife
Who assaulted me during a property dispute.
I want to kill the cop who pulled me over
For cutting in front of him to get on the expressway.
I want to kill the cop who let go the guy
Who cracked my skull against a brick wall.
I want to kill the cop guarding a construction site
Who pulled me over for DWI for no reason other
Than that he was bored and had nothing better to do.
I want to kill the cop who let go the guy
Who broke a beer bottle across my face.
I want to kill the cop who rifled my pockets
After a blowout in the rain skidded into a used car lot.
Luckily, he didn't find everything.
I want to kill the cop who ticketed me
After I was hit from behind by the daughter of a TV sportscaster.
I want to kill the cop who killed a construction worker
Who whistled at a white woman.
He said the victim had threatened him with a brick.
I want to kill the cop who wrote me after a hit and run,
"The results of our scientific investigation reveal
that your car was hit by a car with green paint.
There are several cars in our city with green paint." Case closed.
I want to kill the cop who sneaked up on me when I was taking a leak.
I want to kill the cop who refused to take fingerprints
From a screwdriver used to strip down my motorcycle.
I want to kill the cop who asked me whether I wanted to keep
The pint of whiskey he found in my pocket
After going through that yellow light.
I want to kill the Tulsa cop who told me to get out of town before sundown.
I want to kill the cop who arrested me for having an open container
On the street after I put it in a trashcan.
I want to kill the cop who came to my apartment after a break-in
And seemed to be investigating me.
What difference does it make what books I read,
What movies I watch, what music I play.
No fingerprints taken then either.
I want to kill the cop who brings blood-spattered faces
Into emergency rooms saying they fell down
Getting into the car. Fresh streams of scarlet
Flowing across channels etched in crusted crimson.
I want to kill the cop who ticketed me for not having a license plate
Two days after I reported it stolen with my tires, battery and radio.
I want to kill the cops spending my tax money.
I want to kill the cops guarding the gates of GM
And our country's interests with an ICBM.
I want to kill the cops who guard the White House, The Kremlin,
And mother-loving Buckingham Palace.
But what I really want to do
Is kill the cop in all of you.
What I want, actually,
Is kill the cop inside of me.
All right, I'll do what you say;
Just don't shoot me, OK!

The Rapier to the Bludgeon

A Juvenalian Exercise
Written under the influence of two Coca-Colas
Being a Polemic for Food Poets
Who are too polite to defend themselves
Invoking Tisiphone and Her Sisters, The Eumenides

Spare us from The Ashcan School
Spare us from The Worm’s Eye View
Save us from the vulgar doggerel drivel
Of Militant Mediocrity rhymin’n’slimin’
 
“We’re all in the gutter,
But some of us look at the stars.”
 
The self-appointed censors,
The self-appointed arbiters,
The self-appointed literary dictators;
Cato, Petronius, and Dr. Goebbels
All rolled into a loudmouthed louse.
 
“If you don’t have something nice to say,
Don’t say anything at all.”
 
So what is your education?
And what are your qualifications?
Must I run down my pedigree
For a pack of pesky pound puppies
Lapping up their own puke?
 
After a dozen years of scholarships,
I want to give sweetness and light
Back to the public that paid for them
In taxes and petrodollars.
 
So don’t tell me I can’t quote
Because you’ve got sour grapes
Because I was doing my homework
While you were in the can getting stupid.
 
Was T.S. Eliot a plagiarist?
“De gustabus non disputandem”
 
I don’t like coffee and
There’s nothing you can tell me
To convince me it tastes good.
 
And what about your taste?
Smoking crack—is that good taste?
Shooting smack—is that good taste?
 
What have you to tell us about
The City of Dreadful Night
That hasn’t been said better
By Coleridge, DeQuincy, or Anna Kavan?
 
Or ar you just a junkie wannabe
Like Edgar Allen Poe?
 
Who cares if your thumbs are up or down
When you’ve got one in your mout and
One where the sun won’t shone and
Can’t tell which is which
Whenever you switch?
 
You say you like life in the raw;
I’ll take mine well-done
With some of that special sauce,
S’il vous plait.
En guarde!
Et toi, Brute!
Touche!

September Psalm

First chill following a sweltering summer;
Drizzle patters on the trees outside.
I curl beneath the covers;
Lady Day croons through the wall.

I've been tired, so tired.
I don't look forward to work.
Age creeps ever onward,
And what have I accomplished?

This is no ode to autumn,
No lingering lament on death,
Only the seasons changing,
While for me all is the same.

A phone rings unanswered next door;
Leaves rustle in the wind.
For whom am I writing?

Loneliness and oblivion,
Obscurity without end.
But not without a friend.

Those of you who read this
May sometimes feel as I:
Life is not always a party,
But that's no reason to die.

Spirit of St. Louis Cannibalized

An Occasional Envelology

William Burroughs is dead
Dead as a stainless steel spike.

Queer -- Junkie -- Naked Lunch -- Nova Express -- Soft Machine.
The exterminator on the job mainlining the 3rd mindmeld.

No more wild boys in the cities of the red night
No more big black centipedes at twilight's last gleaming
No more snide talking assholes paging Dr. Benway
No more no more no more
Nothing here now but the recordings
And the reek of air-sole Nikes:
Victorious demiurge arching wings
While a chorus of cash registers rings.

-- Tangerine Tapesplice --

Hanging out while the hung jury rigs
Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin, the Heavy Metal Kids,
Steely Dan and the Great Brown Race.

Radioactive viral engrams consummating critical mass;
William Tell's champagne glass shattered to sundry shards:
Abandoned artifacts
Ah Pook was here,
And now it's Nowheresville,
The ticket that exploded.

Meanwhile, back in Interzone --
Orgone accumulator right on target: Towers Open Fire!
Shooting up! Shooting off!

William Burroughs is dead:
No, no. He's cut up, folded in.