The Gates part I (click for whole poem)

The Gates

I. 

There were wrought-iron gates by the riverside-
salvaged bits of a grandeur left untouched,
save for the bloody, hardened frost of untold years of creeping rust-
holding fast to shifting dirt, fascinating urban folk
and adding fuel to village lore, the mystic cause of children lost:
"Bodies pried from off the shores! victims of its demon claws
which wayward men invoked": this is the stuff of fairy tales,
which aging men stuff into tomes like photos into old shoeboxes.

So when young eyes were shied away in houses, 
and hunchbacked trees bent about these gates-
in the days of dying that define the autumn; 
the opaque days of winters lost to the beating down
of uncouth weathers-

shuttered sunlight rolling down past leaves
blasted flakes of those gates' splintering red metal
to soothe over churning riverbed sediment,
crumbling into metallic stones smoothed over
from the glancing graces of thousands upon thousands of watery hands;
and cracking crayfish on the bellies of otters did these old relics sink 
into blue Egyptian silt with the bones of their old possessors--- 
stirred in and bellowing with the riverside tides 
of the earth's foreign sentiments, 
where tumble and glide the endless confessors 
of the silent and placid seas.

(and thus so it went, 
that in the every minute which from it followed came a minute more, one...

two...

...and three hundred years would slowly pass
as the great ambitions of great-souled men
with all the wears of work and wine
would acquiesce to their too many days
let by them fly as purely wasted; 
with altogether too many dreams,
expectations and aspirations
let slowly simmer to smoldering regret.)

TSE


for parts II-IV
follow this link or click title above
http://www.box.net/shared/oxfsya3j5d

for raymond carver

he waited with his toes out from under the covers,
and muttered "bon nuit", rum-laced, heart blank,
his poems written and unwritten and at last forgotten.
he lost them in wispy clouds of catalogue lovers,
in bathrooms and neon motels without thanks,
with carnivorous fervor unleashed in peruvian cotton.
and without affection for his daughter's mother,
whispered, "you are nothing", tiger-like, frank
as cleopatra slept, forgetting the rotten.

JHS

Jesserae

Jesserae

Jesserae, O Jesserae:
inevitably predicting the impossible
all night
with two french girls
and their gay escorts
forming a Nuvaring 'round ye
preventing my would-be assailing
of a most unlikely virginihood

Jesserae, O Jesserae:
I am too drunk to remember your name
moments after you tells me
So I forget. So I ask again
So I forget. I ask your friends.
So I forget. I ask my friends
to ask your friend
I am may be too drunk,
but your name is too dumb to remember
so my phone does it for me.

Jesserae, O Jesserae:
I will siege your walls daily
with sexual trumpets
or by the minute
'til you hand over your self control
and the keys to your Peugeot
to me.

Jesserae, O Jesserae:
Queen of the infinite gyro biscuit wheel
Dutchess of touches
Earlette of the lemon wedge
Saviour of the battle of the Dancefloor
take me to your industrial palace
of wrecked fantasy
and show me, O great nymph
your secular world.

Jesserae, O Jesserae:
I want to put my hand on your ass
and squeeze your cheeks
not because I think you are attractive
but because I'm sure I am
in my warped haze
losing traction and detracted
but not attracted
to you, sweet Jesserae.

Jesserae, O Jesserae:
mon petit chou
I will miss your cold eyes
made cold by eye shadow
and running mascara
and horrible accent
and the smell of one hundred armpits
waving in the wind.

PDM

Move!

O!, move me,
Great Speakers.
Move me across the room
to where I oughtta be.
"moved by soundwaves
crashing on foreheads"
O!, destroy me,
Great bass-god
and rectifier of left turns
(and wrongs)
O!, caress my soundwave
with your soundwave
and promise
not to let up
'til I retire

Poios-Sabe (Manger) [click to download]

             eros, aeros

     swim higher, allow devour.
Be that unattainable comfortness
Syncopate it -

Heterophonic phenomena shall emerge,
through the soul aperture of truth
- .

(∞)

"thank you& now is not the time"

foul wasteland, nestled between my heaven & clocks
themselves speckled with old failures, thin metal veins;
back toward their blank abyss you beckon,
with old sevens to grandfather nascent plans.

heaving silence in momentous nothings,
back and forth between my heaven & clocks,
you sling a senseless sort of small remembrance
snatched from somewhere in the distance.

'neath one wispy strand of old times you stand,
siren, and the ticking and tocking never ceases.
it only drones onward, ever onward, grating on my heaven.
all the while old clocks march in line, keeping time.

JHS

Space Jam #33 (click to download)

Karolos Magnus, the Z, Lance Delko

Stuck

When I stuck you,
I wasn't sure if you were stuck with me
or if I was stuck with you,
if we were bound to some other principle,
but we didn't talk much about it,
in fact, not at all, because
we both were anti-stuck
--didn't want anything to do with it
too sticky we would say, for me
because everything is sticky when
you're unstuck:

spitting out the apple

"Zero adhesion please,"
"I'm not a dying man."
but if I were...

You stuck me, though--
i was a pig before but no more--
stuck me like a polish pikeman
and now i'm covered in sticky
and without antivenom I convulse
and wait for you.

LD

OK This is Called Three Guys Hanging Out in Baltimore on Wednesday Night

Baltimore tomorrow on the edge of a piece of garbage
on an inexhaustible bridge of nothing which only gives me problems
trouble mouths ungummed in the eyes of mother shouting
shouting louder in the face of nothing which only asks to be pondered
pounding out unnaturally optical double shouts
triumphantly asking the thing which knows itself to be asked in both question and answer
truly traveling in triple space

there's a rabbit that went by my Baltimore wait there's life here?

ravenously devouring The Wall before us in the nothing that stands before everything in the brief prelude to infinity
can I accept that my second is fractionally equivalent to some other listener's moment of listenership somewhere else for a similar amount of time?
somewhere else in Baltimore I might
let us gum gratuitously at the gall bladder of infinity
but wait, the tear of a spleen traveler wiggles within your lukewarm liver
rummaging through the rubbish of invisible dirigibles
deep in tunnels of exhausted tummy ticklers
either you're stuck or your legs don't bend and be careful because it all starts over

JWR & RJM