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

Some Saturday Morning

the sad avenue,

its broken down starlets

just standing, not looking

for some soothsayer

nor swaying for some lover-

just standing, swallowed by

the sounds of some treacly pop group.

it's too early in the morning,

too early to stand there empty,

without quietude. 

when the parade petered out, 

passed along like this morning sunlight 

through clouds of cotton candy, shouting, 

hollering with all its punchdrunk, sadeyed brilliance, 

the avenue sat, sadly, and all its tired sadness sat, 

wondering how in the hell it had gotten there.
 

JHS

These Manufactured Poems, Matrices 9-10: The Party Matrices

9.
You just force head,
dicklick! Can't your marbles
(the rest) change not?
Best on. Bro it.

You DICKLICK! The best
just can't rest on
force. Your change, bro.
Head marbles. Not "it."

You can't change it.
Best rest your head.

10.
You, bleakest rye friend,
blacker are your colors.
Scream. AM: My fire,
I, bathing space, sunshine.

You blacker, scream. I,
bleakest (are?) am. Bathing
rye, your myspace
friend colors fire (sunshine).

You are my sunshine.
I am your friend.

These Manufactured Poems, Matrices 3-5

3.
Tremble small, never inward.
Blindly stumble, wriggle, looking,
single thimble, humbled, simple,
dimpled tripper, rubber member.

Tremble blindly, single-dimpled
small-stumble thimble-tripper.
Never wriggle, humbled rubber,
inward-looking simple member.

Tremble, stumble, humbled member.
Dimpled thimble, wriggle inward.

4. 
Devil only owns shoes,
walks in elephant suit
around- wearing Sunday best.
God tears, "Purple hat!"

Devil walks around God
only in wearing tears,
owns elephant, Sunday purple
shoes, suit, best hat.

Devil in Sunday hat.
God, wearing elephant shoes.

5.
A terribly eerie calm,
Christ! Storm the origins!
My like is fierce
nothing... new is brewing.

A Christ. My nothing.
Terribly storm, like new.
Eerie the "is" is.
Calm origins, fierce brewing.

A storm is brewing,
nothing like the calm.

July 5th

on some jambalaya tuesday,
when the riots died down. you,
in your evening gown, went round the
apartment, lighting candles, humming softly
under the din of the dying refrigerator,
under the din of the drunk, dying riots.

on this tuesday, jumbled like your curls --
unkempt, unspoiled, the pipes had broken down --
a roach gallavanters across the tile, leaving
a tiny trail in the thinness of the dust, scurrying
under the refrigerator, doomed to die
like the refigerator, like you, like me, and
the sluggishness of this slow crawl --
our slow death, the death of the slow riot,
the riot against all of the sluggishness --
it slows me, slows the flames in the candles.

and so, sitting on our private perch above the square,
the wind gently moving neither here nor there,
where rioters square themselves against the squares,
i turn round, stare at you -- you, humming,
lighting candles, haphazardly hee-hawing
from kitchen counter to bedside tower, and
the sluggishness of it all somehow satisfies.

suddenly i strive toward a slowness in the sequence 'fore i die,
a slowness never found with fists thrust high into the sky;
so i shut the door on rioters, their din now dead and done,
and i move round, blow your candles out, and pour myself more rum.

JHS

Friday

...the real drunk guy comes out to hunt for rare strains of alcohol tonight.
"Also, prepare to die, Don Nacho. We'll see where we end up."
He rolls up his trousers and wipes his sleeve on the counter emphatically.

"Ready."

The bartender, confused (he's never really seen anyone drink before),
questions a dumb one: "What'll it be?"
The man answers. "Alcohol, please. On the double."

A few blind minutes future, slinging back a wet spaghetti basket
he splutters, "Whatten stagnation thissaint no goddam likker?"
But it's way too late.

Waking up already, hollowed out but heavy headed,
having traversed an impossible path to his own bed.
Good thing this here woman knows about the crazy man inside.

And good thing she loves him. And good thing it's pajama Saturday.

"Who're I?" says he first, "This bed's gone all Moses and firesticks
And my thoughts are invisible."
She soothes sayingly, "The man is here..."

(they both pajama back over to the bartop
and bloody Mary their way around another Saturday morning,
but that's another story:

NDW & JWR

no balance

spitting shitfaced bullshit belligerently
with no sense of balance
berating with snapping sharp consonants
teetering and sneering insults, i
sling shit at everyone standing around

seething and snarling at foreign figures
only recently friends
tottering totems saying nothing now
dismembering these symbols, i
misremember their meanings unfound

shitting out an oversensitive screaming stream
of bellicose nonsense
spouting torrentially, smearing and staining my senses
straining no longer to stand, i
topple to the ground

JWR

Form with function, yet hardly functioning, too busy fathoming and fornicating.
It's more like floundering, really, even with the immense understanding belying that Fall.
Frivolous fledgling, fondling this freedom, pondering that forgiveness.
And yet still, frying the backs of your eyeballs for superficial thrills.

Who are you? Better question - you are who? Here is who you arent.
Your whole self. (Though I suppose through and through, this is physically you.)
An instantiation; proof that you exist. But more just a pointer we point to.

When you die, you're really gone. And there's no use asking.
But if you asked where? I'd point neither here nor there.
Because where you really are, we can't point to. Not in the air.

VLS