I promised some additional uncollected poems and I took a few photos that turned out worse than the meager efforts I posted yesterday from the Cal State Poetry Quarterly. So, I'll type these in and go get a scanner hooked up soon (I hope). These are the poems in these two volumes that appear only there and do not have manuscript scans or typed poems on this website. Check the poem database under "Advanced" and "Magazines" for Aileron if you're interested in the others (for example, I added about we of the tender souls... in an old thread here).
Vol. V, No.2 (this first one makes a nice companion piece to one I posted from Cal State Poetry Quarterly):
a disgust, and only that...
when I see these cowboys driving the freeways
in their bright red pick-ups
say
on a beautiful day in March
with a beautiful animal
(or animals)
untethered and swaying upon the
rear panels
I wonder about these cowboys, about
what concepts they live with and
by,
what noble occurrences
engender them,
and when I pull alongside to
get a look,
I am never ready
for the final undeterred
emptiness which
swings across:
a spiritual nullity
so great
you can feel it
almost as something
physical,
it's like a hammer blow
to the gut, the head, the
mind, and
then I know why
I've had so much trouble
in the factories
in the bars
at parties
picnics,
any gathering of the
clan,
large or small:
all there's to them are
arms, legs,
heads, ears, eyes, sundry
parts
gathered together
in such bad
ensemble
that there is absolutely nothing to
say.
to rail against them would be
something akin to
firing bullets into piles of
crap....
these crushed animals
upon the freeways,
they wouldn't leave humans there
like that,
it would remind them
too much
of their own deaths
which
most often
in funeral aftermath
are
more farcical that that
which
preceeded,
amen and amen and
amen.
snap and no snap
I was going to fuck Henry Miller
but he died so I came to see
you, she said,
and she was a big girl with a
camera and she snapped shots of
me,
but I knew something:
ass was only important when you
couldn't get
it,
and she was a nice girl
but I passed
knowing also that when you got
ass
you often got
involvement:
when you go to bed with the
girl
you go to bed with her whole
family (mother, brother, father,
cousin, who's ever
around)
(like x-husbands, godfathers, sisters,
dogs, cats)
and you also go to bed with
all her ideas, ideals, misconceptions,
and neuroses.
sometimes it's better to
masturbate,
and after she got her
snaps
that's what I did..
then I read a bit of
Schopenhauer,
went to sleep.
old Henry probably would have done
the same.
hey, come on now!
don't give me
that!
Vol. VI, No. 1
the swarm of Impossibility can be knocked on Its Ass
one learns to endure because to not endure
turns the world over to them
and they are less than
dung.
to endure means to simply gut-it-out
and the larger the odds
the more enjoyable the
victory.
they say you must fight for
freedom.
I know that.
only I didn't fight the Japanese, the Italians, the Germans
or the Russian
for my freedom.
I fought the Americans, the American bosses, the foremen,
the low-wage scale, the prostitutes, the friends, the
girls, the women and/or all that
sundry.
there's no end, of course, to the fight:
new conditions are set-up:
it may no longer be the hangover morning on a
factory assembly line
but judgmental factors remain:
treachery, deceit, all manners of proper and new
traps.
I believe we are tested even as we
sleep, and often it all gets so serious
we must laugh it away.
to endure takes some luck, some knowledge and a
reasonable sense of
humor: the way the cold have gotten
colder and the bold not so bold, or the way, say,
the elephant stands in the sun waiting to die, or
the way men fail again and again and again, or
the way the singers scream words that can't be
heard, or the way the ladies are angry and
unhappy, or the way the rain shines on Mozart's
grave, or any
of the many things
one learns to
endure.
Vol. V, No.2 (this first one makes a nice companion piece to one I posted from Cal State Poetry Quarterly):
a disgust, and only that...
when I see these cowboys driving the freeways
in their bright red pick-ups
say
on a beautiful day in March
with a beautiful animal
(or animals)
untethered and swaying upon the
rear panels
I wonder about these cowboys, about
what concepts they live with and
by,
what noble occurrences
engender them,
and when I pull alongside to
get a look,
I am never ready
for the final undeterred
emptiness which
swings across:
a spiritual nullity
so great
you can feel it
almost as something
physical,
it's like a hammer blow
to the gut, the head, the
mind, and
then I know why
I've had so much trouble
in the factories
in the bars
at parties
picnics,
any gathering of the
clan,
large or small:
all there's to them are
arms, legs,
heads, ears, eyes, sundry
parts
gathered together
in such bad
ensemble
that there is absolutely nothing to
say.
to rail against them would be
something akin to
firing bullets into piles of
crap....
these crushed animals
upon the freeways,
they wouldn't leave humans there
like that,
it would remind them
too much
of their own deaths
which
most often
in funeral aftermath
are
more farcical that that
which
preceeded,
amen and amen and
amen.
snap and no snap
I was going to fuck Henry Miller
but he died so I came to see
you, she said,
and she was a big girl with a
camera and she snapped shots of
me,
but I knew something:
ass was only important when you
couldn't get
it,
and she was a nice girl
but I passed
knowing also that when you got
ass
you often got
involvement:
when you go to bed with the
girl
you go to bed with her whole
family (mother, brother, father,
cousin, who's ever
around)
(like x-husbands, godfathers, sisters,
dogs, cats)
and you also go to bed with
all her ideas, ideals, misconceptions,
and neuroses.
sometimes it's better to
masturbate,
and after she got her
snaps
that's what I did..
then I read a bit of
Schopenhauer,
went to sleep.
old Henry probably would have done
the same.
hey, come on now!
don't give me
that!
Vol. VI, No. 1
the swarm of Impossibility can be knocked on Its Ass
one learns to endure because to not endure
turns the world over to them
and they are less than
dung.
to endure means to simply gut-it-out
and the larger the odds
the more enjoyable the
victory.
they say you must fight for
freedom.
I know that.
only I didn't fight the Japanese, the Italians, the Germans
or the Russian
for my freedom.
I fought the Americans, the American bosses, the foremen,
the low-wage scale, the prostitutes, the friends, the
girls, the women and/or all that
sundry.
there's no end, of course, to the fight:
new conditions are set-up:
it may no longer be the hangover morning on a
factory assembly line
but judgmental factors remain:
treachery, deceit, all manners of proper and new
traps.
I believe we are tested even as we
sleep, and often it all gets so serious
we must laugh it away.
to endure takes some luck, some knowledge and a
reasonable sense of
humor: the way the cold have gotten
colder and the bold not so bold, or the way, say,
the elephant stands in the sun waiting to die, or
the way men fail again and again and again, or
the way the singers scream words that can't be
heard, or the way the ladies are angry and
unhappy, or the way the rain shines on Mozart's
grave, or any
of the many things
one learns to
endure.
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