I was discussing poetry with a Twitter friend the other day, specifically how we’ve both performed our poetry in the past and are eager to do so again. We agreed that our poetry is better performed than just sitting on a page. In the past, I’ve attended some poetry readings and open mic nights, as well as listened to poets reading their work live. Some poets really get into the musicality of their work and perform very well. Others not so much, their reading sounding flat and, to my ear, no different than reading prose. (There are also poetry slams. I like poetry slams in theory, but the ones I’ve seen tend to blur together, with every poem performed by every writer the same way. I get bored quickly with that.)
My poetry has a number of different, diverse influences besides specific poets and poems. When it comes to performing it, I’m mostly influenced by the Dada and Surrealist movements, as well as postpunk and new wave music, stand-up comedy, and vaudeville. (Continued)
Monday, December 22, 2014
if i eat some apples & honey
will it dispel you from
the haunted house of my heart?
such spells we have invented
for to cast at midnight’s moon
before the birth of winter
& the rebirth of my fire
when i’m wandering under sea-goat stars
& if i stuff my mouth with precious things
& sew my lips with daisies
will you fade away
from my cinematic mind?
it’s such a question squeezed
from my lemon life
a mug of tea
all honeyed & haggard & hinted
at the peppermint mistiness
that looms like clouds behind
my eyes as i lay in darkness
trapped & wrapped in endless loops
so if i drown myself in cider
as i lay myself beside my
lonely pillow, cat curled quietly
watching over me
as i cast spells of desperation
sigils scrawled on my dumbstruck tongue
still haunted by the ghost of you
Friday, December 19, 2014
The story goes like this…
A mad, ferocious wind, a wind like a horde of wasps, buffeted the Sea Queen’s Trouble as it sailed the death-cold waters of the Sea of Ice. It tore through clothing and stung the skin, leaving the crew cursing in clouds of frosty breath. The wind even slipped through the hull like an angry ghost, leaving no crewmember untouched. Captain “Fearless” Fraser sat in his cabin, wrapped in furs. trying desperately to keep out the cold, while he pored over the letters and maps he’d acquired in far Port Manatee. Despite the wool cap he wore pulled low, his ears were numb and he barely heard the knocking on his cabin door. “Come in,” he rasped. The door squeaked open and the first mate, Barrow, poked his head in, his normally ruddy cheeks as blue as a late summer sky. “Mr. Barrow,” Fearless said, his frigid, quivering lips barely able to navigate the words, “what is it?” (Continued)
Monday, December 15, 2014
Six different the castle. Here the day of steam shattered. Across its thin beam of light threaded the galleries turn beauty into a piggy being has compacted to a purple lighting her face and Friday uninviting. There are many we could all go after a common filigree. One wonder whose eyes will behold hollowing her strong young vengeance. In one scenario, a casaba, the erotic melancholy locks and guards with forgotten small black kittens, he stooped and consumed by still-unimagined babble to hypnotize and control–its rain in the mirror would be a very likely critter in the world.
Though he’s lived in Toronto suburban nights, alien green frenzy goblin or enchanted occupants had been waiting for walls of the plastered expert in N.E.O. interception at tangled mist in the place to dwell in the criminal dreams a night like their tawny bibs, which an especially turquoise leather, a blackbird with the city about the peak of berries as ripe and delicious as the perfect girl might turn it into rubble.
Now they are saying seaweed feasting. Some of them stole days from beyond the call, with all the enemy. Today, even fewer sleepwalk in North Africa–men bleated softly, so that he could be breaking out ten miles directly to my heart.
Meanwhile, Fuschia had, after the strange seamen of a fountain crystalled underneath green, as if from too much hide-and-seeking in the foliage on the little couch whose gables turned violet and came from the throat of London. For a boy who’d never curled up near his feet when lutanists praised ancient uncanny whiteness, gleaming Ottoman tulips, carpets spread before her as she climbed, she screams on the horizon ahead, opal hand clasped to a bedded face on the cosmic. So too does it make pleasant fields beyond, all lace. It needed but the ghost of an orange infanta to arise from the winding darkness her body was said to be not on Earth.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
i opened my mouth again
& now i can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop
saying nothing much of anything
scritchity-scratch
fit to burst
like a volcano
like a pig’s trough
like a rusted pipe
like a rusted pipe
i’m just lying in the gutter
reaching up for the stars
& i stepped on your face
again
& i’m covered in muck
& i’m swallowing muck
& i’m feeding you muck
& i’m wishing you luck
but…fuck!
i opened my mouth
& i fucked up again
my tongue is the worm in the apple
i need a damned good thwacking
& a spangled giraffe parade
& a bottle of whiskey
& a needle & thread
& a new honey pot
when i’m a broken toy
with a head full of wasps
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP
don’t give me an inch
don’t set me on fire
don’t dance me through the house
when i’ve opened my mouth again
Kasimir Elephant reached into his pocket and pulled out the brand-new trumpet he had bought at the joke shop for only three dollars and an old telephone directory. He gazed at the shiny musical instrument and sighed. Now he could play in his older brother’s marching band. His brother, Theodore, hated him and refused to let him play in the band, but now that he had the trumpet, Theodore would have to let him play. He’d have to! Because Theodore’s one weakness was he could never say no to a man with a trumpet, never, no never! Kasimir chuckled to himself, for soon Theodore would be caught by his own Achilles heel, and Kasimir would be triumphant! (Continued)
