The Brutalist

The Brutalist Photos

2009-08-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Thank you.

2009-04-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

Hello,
I want to thank all of you who have enjoyed The Brutalist.
I am now writing under a new blog

It is sort of the next chapter of my poetry
You are welcome to access it
Here
http://tobinjohnston1.blogspot.com/

Thank you all for your interest and love.
I hope I didn't bore you.
Toby

I Don't Mean to Brag

2008-09-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

I don’t mean to brag but. . .

I write poems
yea
that's right
I know
this shit just comes
ta me

I don’t even close Microsoft word
it’s open like an all night corner store
I can type with my right hand
while my left smokes

Metaphors, for me, are
like, um. . .
easy.

And one of my similes
took a bullet for the president
but I won’t tell you which one

See the thing is-
I’m well rehearsed like old Homer
loved like Emily Dickenson but still a loner
strong and sensitive like Pablo Nuruda’s boner
sober lyrics but still able
and I can still drink Dylan Tomas under the table
but hey
this is what I do

You know that poem that goes
It's hard out here for a pimp
When he tryin to get this money for the rent
For the Cadillacs and gas money spent
Because a whole lot of bitches talkin shit
you ain't knowin’
Yea well
I wrote that.

You want to hear another-
I took the road less
traveled
ect.
ect.
and baby
that has made all the difference
I didn’t write that
but I could have

And sure, I know
somewhere there’s a poet with a heart of gold
bucking hay in an Iowa grass field
with words the world has never heard but has waited for
but slope-forehead mother fucker is to busy feed sheep
to commit shit to paper
and he ain’t here anyway.

So I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is-
Do you want to by my muse,
baby?

Old Song of the Heart Broken Working Man

2008-07-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

Old Song of the Heart Broken Working Man

I was a rail worker
workin’ the C & O line
‘cross the Chesapeake
in that hot tin-roof new august
the air, muggy like livin’ in water
Sweat runnin’ down my knuckles, greasin’ my arms to action, tattooin’ my shirt and pants and face with yellow clouds of dry dirt
the air was filled with grunts from effort laden lungs and the steely percussions of iron hammers fallin’, and sometimes
we were singin’ hymns
other times the jail house chain gang blues
and sometimes we worked on in silence
waitin’ to be struck down by our sudden obsolesces
‘cause the world decided it could build a better man

I was a lumber jack
left foot up hill, right foot down,
in western Oregon
reddened cheeks by mid-morning shadows
walking in the deep perfume of old growth and vegetation
rotting to be reborn
callused palms to the tar worn axe handle
strike, strike, striking at my ringed and wounded heart of white pine
crying crystalline tears
until the work was done
and I saw there were no more hearts left beating
no bleeding left in the wound

I was a descamisados -
made my way up from Lobos, Argentina
to the mad dog rig in El Golfo de Mejico
a skipped big rock distance from Louisiana’s shore
He a Creole name Edmonde, that one there a black Dominican named Jack, he a gringo boss man whipping us to work with curses
names us all mother fuckers like we his orphan child
we trip pipe all day, throw chain, labor over the big wet wrenches of our trade
till the black mud come up from the pipe and cover us like tears of the virgin
until the shift bell rings and the sun sets flat against
El Mar, el color del oro
casting fire over the derrick, gang planks, tower, and the roughnecks
like everything was made to burn.

I was a dockworker
in port side Chicago
the great lights of the dying waterfront industrial
at my back
leaning hard against the greedy
grasping
machine gun
gales of lake Michigan
cradling a stuck and burning match
in my hands
but it went out
despite everything
it went out
leaving me only smoke
chasing it’s self out over the black formless water

These hands
gave me my place amounts men
and a warm meal and a few bucks spendin’ for the weekend

These hands
that could be tender despite themselves
could caress a woman’s arm while she slept

I thought they were strong enough
I have always prized them
these hands,
all I have in the whole world,
I always believed
they would be enough

The Revolutionist's Son

2008-07-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

My father told me while loading his gun
“Drink Scotch, Whiskey, Vodka and Rum
‘cause this world, my boy, weighs a fuckin’ ton
and someday soon you’ll have to carry it son.”

Either/Or

2008-07-09T23:43:00.000-07:00

Either/Or

I can type with one hand while the other
feeds me smoke
like burning fields feed the air
an ivory body

I can pray with one
word
and curse with the next
trusting a God who knows
the heart which utters
devotion and betrayal
is at least honest

I sit amounts friends
and weep from loneliness
and walk down an alley
married to
a woman
as she removes the window screen
extends her small arm out into the night
plays with darkness between her fingers

can I leave my love
out of love
for love

comedy
and tragedy are the same face
light falls and recognizes

one
then the other

life is a joke told at funeral

Happiness
is three matches left
for two cigarettes

Tribute

2008-07-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

Tribute

I was borrowed this joy
was given this unexpected happiness undeserved

by a composer, McKenzie
who I am teaching to break dance
and who was the first to tell me the worst was over

by a brother, Erik
who let me sleep on his floor for two weeks, doesn’t shy from my embarrassed grief
by his wife, Sarah
who wraps me in hugs at each meeting, a wordlessness love more real than any open declaration of love

by a sister, Wendi
who fights so hard to be my friend,
and her husband, Nova
who loves her and unexpectedly completes our family

by my mom, Jamie
who calls to check up on me, who tells me I am lottery ticket
and lets me pretend to help her with her cleaning accounts

by my little bro, Boomer
who tackles me during soccer and apologize for all this fucked up shit

by my best friend, Andy
who forgives me the weakness I have worked so hard at hiding from him for all these years

by his wife, Meg
who volunteers to help jess fill out the divorce papers

by my class mate, May
who risks everything, everything, everything
to show me I am worth the risk

by my friend, Larry
who does not charge me for leasing his couch

by a girl on the east coast
who wrote my grief-stricken curriculum
and tucks me into the bed I once shared

by the six cigarettes left in the pack
and the hot one in my hand
and the cool tall boy of 21 Steel Reserve
because it is slow brewed for exceptional smooth flavor
By Otis Redding and The National
and Gram Green for his whisky priest

by God who I still confess a wise father
giver of perfect gifts.

Poem on the subject of Jack Kerouac

2008-07-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

Poem on the subject of Jack Kerouac

Jack’s down with Blake: You know that grain of sand shit.

He look over city streets as a farmer
his plot
grimacing at the weeds
but in love with them as well

He reads these poems in the morning paper
over coffee and beneath bold headlines titled
bank robbery, Building construction-demolition, and the obituary page
Loving father of three; a memorial

He reads these poem in bus stop scribbles
in the neon painted cartouche
letters climbing the latticework of walls
Chaka, Salue, GRIM,13th St. Kings. BSV and BREAK

He reads them, these poems
in the streetlights beneath their pyramid glow
and the pin prick stars
with violent wonder how that if we sit on the pit-bottom ocean floor of the black, black universe. the cosmos above us
those infinite fathoms that rest over us but do not crush us
but allow us to go on our hum-drum way

He hears these poems in sirens, in the slamming of doors
the rumbling of garbage trucks, hy-draul-ic hisssssssss
in the undulating subway floor
in the heartbroken cries of freight trains passing
calling the mountains to us

He hears these poems in the jabber of slang-tongued youths,
in the cat call and street fights curses
in the acccch-pt of a man spiting into the gutter
and the terse metronome of a woman’s high heel quick-step j-walk
in the gulping groans of naked strangers out bedroom windows in that tepid summer air
even if alone, he imagines them
maybe they are stranger to themselves or maybe not but sometime he imagines them so

He touches these poems, they are coarse and indifferent, cool like concrete
they are the soles of shoes, worn out and resoled
they are sharp like the chipped teeth of broken alley glass
sometimes, they are ice like fashioned metal bars
Other times they burn to touch

He recognizes stanzas, verses, odes in the landlords, hooded hustlers
and restless single mothers
in the migration negro as he etches out identity denied him by an indignant history
in 6’five transvestites
and shortest distance between-points businessmen
and, and, and the girls in short dresses with hoop earrings
so round they could pass up her arm to the shoulder
in handcuffs, billy clubs and corruption the righteous try to name the two am gin joint jazz

He smells them out
a bloodhound for the perfume of blood and piss and sweat and sex
the urban bouquet, squalid aroma and beautifully rank

They sit, these poem before him like before a portraitist
in park benches, slumbering beneath pedestrian walks
They lie naked in an uneasy sleep

Poems turn to him
and hurriedly travel passed
brought before his feet everyday
disguised in a different face
a foreign voice
A thousand different citizens of word

He confesses
recognizes
you, you, you
I remember, I know you,
I smile familiar
Do you know me?
Do you know my face
Do you know you are my beloved

A madman skin bruised like an old leather belt ambles by
screaming “ I am the king of Pain.”
He pays to you silent tribute

The musicians dip and dive in the watery smoke bar air
He pays to you silent tribute

The Church steeple stands believing
while expressway congestion looses faith
while the Sky-scrapers aspire to Babel

He is here, in the city amounts his kind
happily like one in nature
or the devote before their God

He pay to you silent tribute

Homework

2008-06-29T23:37:00.000-07:00

Homework

Do you want to know what it is like to be a poet?

Go to your kitchen
Lightly sprinkle coffee grounds on your over burner
turn it on high
and watch

turn it off and go outside and smoke a cigarette
and think carefully about what you saw

Cream and Sugar, Milk and Honey

2008-06-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

Cream and Sugar, Milk and Honey

She chided me
for drinking coffee with my cream and sugar
while I argued for God’s indifference like a jilted prophet
or an atheist in perfect heath
her slender finger rested upon the arms of a black chair
she did not gesture with them but kept them sleeping
her coffee was black and unsweetened and she sipped commas and question marks into the conversation
described her devotion to her lover divine
to the beloved
four years
are but
four minutes until her lover returns

Abram before god renamed him
once prayed over a knife
and was given a ram
I do not know if I am the faithful father
or the obedient son
or if I am the ram caught in thorns
or if I am the knife

An omniscient God can never claim innocents
but she, being human could not have known
how she wounded me
over the alter of conversation
how I stammered beneath the weight of her theology
struck blind by the image of her God

I excused myself
and in the bathroom where I began to weep
someone had written
“Do not judge” in quotes and attributed it to Jesus
I went to quick work
with my sacrilegious hands
took out a pen and wrote below
“Do not judge Jesus,
he did the best he fucking could”

I did not see God that day nor any day since
perhaps I did but he wore visage I did not recognize
as the greek Gods are rumored to do
no one has given me a new name

I did not see God that day
but there was
a knife
held in the slender fingers of a woman
who had seen the promise land
and not yet been allowed to enter

Tribulation Prayer

2008-06-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

Photograph by Summer Stetter

Tribulation Prayer

I know I am an inadequate priest
embarrassed by my sincerity
the admission of my flesh
the lust of my eyes
the hunger of my body

God
help me finish this last cigarette
God
help me sip this tall boy

I know it is wrong to expect heaven here
I know the story of Jesus fucking Christ
you don’t have to keep reminding me
I know

God
help me finish this last cigarette
God
help me with this cup

I like My Whisky Neat but My Oceans on the Rocks

2008-06-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

I like My Whisky Neat but My Oceans on the Rocks

1.
The myth of Nature finally expelled
the earth is man
EARTH IS MAN
EARTH IS MAN

Extinction. More or less redundant to the dodo; analogy for idiocy
Dodo did not dead itself, you know, simply fell out of ecologic style
But what is that to you, as you live amounts your fancy cars and houses
Go. Going. Gone.

You, Darwin’s ungrateful heirs
We assume survival of the species
Evolution a fact we are determined to disprove
But listen-
to whispers, grunts in dense jungle
to the grand plots and schemes of playground ants
they know what you loath to admit

the earth is earth
immutable
mother

2.
The secrets of conspirators
other species wait to take this neglected throne
the leathery bat or insecure squid or unassuming koala

Bewared!
The machination of those crafty marsupials
they sleep in trees now, but soon our beds
will dress in our clothes, take up our vocations: cabdrivers, professors, TV producers
Curate our museums where skinless reconstruction of t-rexes smile, no less ironically
they schedule book tours for authors
discussing the study of our decline and inevitable death
rattle
they will drift into our gutted homes
invited through doors we left ajar
they carve into their doorpost our epitaph
a warning to their children

the earth is earth
undeniable
father

3.
We are a candle burning beneath a paper cup of water
We are Samson; blind and hands against the beams
We are Sardanapalus reclining on red satin
We are the atomic. fucking. bomb.
willing to curse death with death

But what did you expect other than violence
should a vulture sing like a meadowlark
or Hyena of the plains learn to weep apposed to laugh
the cat will mew, and mew, and mew
until some one
lets her
out

Fire wants to tell you something
It covets wood until it is black and valueless
satiates its heart and speaks its extinguished breath
a warning
to you

The Earth is Earth
indisputable
death

4.
Some speak like we might seceded from earth
cut our selves from this womb
like an adolescent Zeus

Some speak like earth is mute, tongue-less, resigned.
Do you really think she will remain silent forever; suffer this disgrace?
Gaia gonna find you after class, gonna take you behind the handball court and fuck you up
Poseidon has traded his trident for a 45. and is calling your bitch-ass out into the street
Earth prays for a deliverance from you
She recites the Psalm 109 with every hurricane. She calls the name of Shiva with every quake.
Do you think even faithful Yahweh or longsuffering Allah
are going to let you little shits trade in your birthright for a house on the coast and a full tank of gas. Squatters and transience will be evicted, so saith the Lord.

The spirit of Jonah walks now through the streets of the world
through the hollowed out buildings of Chernobyl
to the five lanes of the 105 down into the belly of Los Angeles calling,

Repent, Repent, Repent!
The day of wrath comes!
The Earth is Earth,
unassailable
life!

19 to my 28

2008-06-10T20:10:00.001-07:00

a
darling
nineteen to my
twenty-eight at my
twenty-ninth birthday
She attends
a classmate/friend of my little brother

And poor Beth,
drinks to much. at my party. bad argentine wine.
regrettably drunk for the first time, she spends the party
alternating between
passing out and throwing up
calling out the name of some unworthy boy
and finally settles in broken limbs
a sunken ship
to the ocean floor of our neighbor’s couch

In the morning I groom her
the beautiful dark shadow of her hair
holds like a bouquet, tokens of the night before
leaves, pine cones and wads of pick vomit
I thread the pine needles from her hair, a diligent seamstress
comb my fingers through the soft tresses.
until “presentable”.

She is embarrassed.
but lets me to my work
and I am careful not to appear over-pleased
a man in love with a widow
should not smile at the funeral

It is love
love that turn vomit to ribbons
love which teaches youth to make courageous errors
and love which allows age, in turn, to see itself in youth.

To Beth

History Lesson

2008-06-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

History Lesson

1.
The Vogue

Commas are out this year
periods- old hat
and failing capitalize the 1st person singular personal pronoun- down right embarrassing
Poets today would not be caught dead
using bold letters after labor day
steer clear
of anything too unscholarly
too Bukowski
cite Homer over breakfast
and Ovid at brunch
Auden in the afternoons and T.S. in evenings.

As for what’s hot
Italics are in-
in
IN!
and dashes seem to go with everything
but nothing goes so well
with prose-
as cancer
or repressed childhood memories
of an abusive father
or the doe-eyed embarrassment of a first sexual experience
or a mild objection to perceived political injustice
or a fat adolescence
or the difficulty of relating to an autistic grandchild
anything- any subject that sounds quaint and nostalgic
vomiting forth from Garrison Keillor’s
gaping
Midwestern
pie hole

2.
Briefly and Currently

-Howl is the last 50 years of dust collected on book shelves and Ginsberg has been dead for 10 of that. Unrecognizable from a pile of gardening sod.

-Our post-soviet Ulysses returned finally home, Milosz died on August 14th ‘04, as I traveled to a wedding. Weep, orphaned children!

-Two years before, Robert Pinsky exchanged barbs with Homer Simpson and did more for poetry than any confessionalist had done in the last quarter century.

-So many Sylvias we might reenact the Normandy invasion with live ammo and still be drowning is in kitchen metaphors and daddy issues.

This purgatory of confession prose
tyrannical and philabustering
for sixty years

For sixty years
this tabloid intimacy smile
readers notice the single letter difference between
Illusion Allusion
but still pronounce them the same

Headlines reads
striking journalist omit byline in protest of censorship
while the poets omits everything else to censor nothing.

Oh grief! cherry wine, scratch that, edit to contempornaity
malt liquor of tears
Oh! unblushing shame
Oh! fashionable vice
Oh! endless bourgeois swine call of injustice

naked subterfuge
courageous deception
to lie of,
about,
and to oneself to others

like declarations of war
everyone look prettier on the page

3.
Cookies and
A Glass Half Empty of Milk Memoir

Prologue
This Plathian fantasy
A mirror’s
a mirror.
it is the eye that deceives
takes account, discount of who perceives
the angle, the bend of light and memories

Chapter: First and Last
Reflection: more like water
fluid forgetful
the titanic lay hidden for almost hundred years
a hundred years, a hundred years
and Sylvia was never found
She sank into her legacy
scuttled between the plaster walls of her prose
a violent violet’s imprint pressed in pages,
perfumed postmortem
her resentful specter drags over the kitchen linoleum
whispering poems through stove pipes
soot smudged fingers rim every mason jar
every glass and goblet and pitcher and picture
filled with her dirty tears

(If I were stuck in a kitchen with her she would have to fight me for the oven door)

Epilogue
A few words on the fate of the characters

You found her body at the feet of the killer
that letch
who burned her final words to silence
sealed her mouth with his misogynist cum
but he’s a good flirt and you couldn’t resist
his white ford bronco and birthday songs
His stout-pout lips
He played that same song and you danced like you did for her
sugared his effigy
whined “the veil of poetry, rent!”

You have rejected the Copernican revolution for a universe of self
The sun never sets on Ted Hughes Ego
even dead he cheats, pinches ass and sleeps with every undergrad that will let him.

4.
Speaking of daggers. . .

Confession came to vogue
when taboo had teeth,
in the unkissed mouth of that poodle skirted society
to confess, to howl, to cry daddy was rebellion
then. . .

And now,
The diarist and poet become one.
Left margin to Center mast
does a poem make

Tell me if this sound familiar if not endemic-

The persona (Forgive me, I almost said poet) begins in that airy personal pronoun of self-speculation on dysfunction X, slowly alluding to via domestic setting and tone, an over-turned aspect of the writer’s relationship with a easily identifiable object-person, Insert: distant father, dead mother, druggy son, dick obsessed daughter -whatever. The writer metaphoric as oracle alludes to nature and a mortal climax (often explain in as clear-cut a manner as possible) and then concludes with denouement chaser- a witty or revealing ending illustrating the writer full grasp of the implication of his/her pseudo-emotive-crisis.

Poetry as therapy has won the day.

Billy C, protect me from your followers
the witch-hunt of intellect
purge of the new
poetry: as simple as reading
simple as sentiment
reduced to melodramatic denominators
135 words of EEC “may i feel, he said”
reduced to
Five words on the inside of a
Febuary 14th themed
greeting card

Hail the subjective antidote
Hail the straight-forward-backward
Hail American’s cancerous illiteracy
It’s instant oatmeal attention span.
the art of art out of step and style

We,
The bastard princes of a bankrupt crown
What is left of this inheritance to fight over
poets of this generation
the audience has dwindled to people who think
of themselves poetically I.E. clamoring for publication and an open mic
like the cardboard brandishing transients
we speak only to ourselves
and are paid even worse.

Children
avoid the company of morose princes
that villain of Denmark
by any other era but ours
mascot of the abysmal
He did not invent the monologue but popularized it
convinced himself his questions were more interesting than
a empire

But what is left to confess?

Wait!
I forgot a denouncement
is a form of confession!

B-boy Cipher Poem

2008-05-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

B-boy Cipher Poem

B-boy with sword and laced tight shoes
Dj Good Day on the ones and twos
That heart break, pump-skip, cymbal/clash/smash
proud sponsor of the James Brown hundred mile dash
clap, clap your hand everybody of you get what you got
you seen before, you want some more and you know this shit is hot
swift-swift is my shuffle, and smoooooth is my step
on the job and working and I never break no sweat
Empty spaces on the floor so you know I came and went to it.
people stand from their chairs, applaud like I invented it
fresh styles, no denial, moves get a look-look
don’t even bother dialing cuz this set is off the hook
took this, borrowed that, understand all I see
don't be mad that your style looks much better on me

In Context, The 2008 Election Cycle as Understood by a Twenty-Something

2008-05-31T11:06:00.001-07:00

In Context,
The 2008 Election Cycle as Understood by a Twenty-Something

Balanced news broadcasts reflect the despair of hope
the fervor of expectation, the throng and pomp and mania
anemic hands clamor for the hem of this garment
some touch silken Jubbah
others a Brook Brother’s three piece
some recognize themselves
while others see only their own ignorance
this tongue and cheek messiah
this father for bastards of the electorate
this first term senator from Illinois

Voices cry out-
He loves you back
He loves you black but not black enough
He loves America for the first time in his wife’s life
His middle name is Hussein

Old heads prattle
depictions of renditions, subtraction and distractions
wounded by their bleeding heart years
burned by Nixon’s sardonic grin
and Regannomics’ wind-fall sin
palms slapped, knuckles wrapped
PTSD politik
this Ambassador Hotel remembrance
this Texas Observatory nightmare
cutting their jaded teeth and filing down their nail to nubs
this 401k of bitter, bitter disappointments
this broken and dreamless sleep of the Boomers
finally assuaged
a spell finally repealed by something
looked for but as unexpected as a sudden break in the clouds
dawn’s newly birthed light

There is power in young minds
to long neglected
there is power in young minds
to long unexpressed
the new generation of participation
an indication of revelation and revolution
I voted for the man and would have done so twice or thrice

And if I am given children one day
and am asked by them
what I remember about the year 2008
the year cynicism was out of step and out of style
the year Obama ran

I will tell them, what I tell you now
that in that year was hope
that 2008 was the year I held my breath
and I wanted that dream for America, for myself and my fellow citizens
a country deserving of it founding documents

That year
was the year
I held
my breath
and wanted

Statesman Written by Tobin G. Johnston May, The 22nd, 2008

2008-05-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

Statesman Written by Tobin G. Johnston
May, The 22nd, 2008

A man. He is first and foremost that. A man, made of the same stuff as all men.
The malleable clay and silt of river beds, shaped by currents and seasons.

He, like all, is supplicant to the passage of time, to the flag of youthfulness,
to tenderness and the ache of our bodily destiny. He is a man.

Sharing in that divine spark which teaches dreams to thoughts and generosity to actions.
Attentive student to the benevolent teacher. But not alone, he is

and has become other. Is brother, son, father, steward, servant and inhabitant.
Citizen of this good country. The flesh of this expansive body.

Nascent hope of this soil. Resident of ourselves. He becomes to us, risks greatly
for us and for his own faith. He knows he takes his life and gives it peril.

Greater men have failed. Men more capable have been overcome. In goodness
there is little guarantee. But still he offers to us a knowledge of himself

and with this offering asks us to know ourselves. He is a decision.
He is a watershed. He is this or that. He is possibility.

This American saga retold before our eyes. This story of our nation- corporeal.
log cabin, cherry tree, rough rider and polio survivor. This myth,

flesh-dressed before us. This statesman of promise. Much is changing,
much is left to us to change, but much is changing. Yet do not fear.

There have been times before when it was like this, when spirits were moved,
when words were restored their dangerous and meaningful power,

when people trembled to see different. But finally in my life time a moment worthy of poetry. Finally a man for this moment. And finally an man worth writing poetry of.

R. Kelly is a Child Molester

2008-05-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

R. Kelly is a Child Molester.

That’s it.
That’s the poem.
R.
Kelly
is a
Child
Molester.

Past-Tense Blues

2008-05-11T00:16:00.000-07:00

Never happier sadder
The only cure for the blues are the blues
this far down the road from sober, I
am confident I could
play guitar
with these tender fingers
with these callused palms
I could sing tin-pan
stomp and shake and sweat this feelin' out

Not drunk just enthusiastic
gett'in real social
not because I hope you will hear
rumors of my defaming myself but
because I have a lot of catching up to do
You kept me on the straight and narrow
but given the way things ended
it's a miracle I am still straight

Two pints past peace of mind
I am drunk and drunks should not write
they should not do anything but drink.
but who knows maybe I am sober
that is to say not drunk enough
you're not here to tell I had to much
The bartender with the mid-drift tattoo knows me
but not as well as you did

I can remember being young but am old enough to have to remember
and I knew you before
I knew you before me
I knew you before me

Then
Every day I learned you new
I promised I would
stay the same but
knew you needed me to change
I promised I would work hard
but I knew I could not keep a job
I promised I would not fuck us over
but I knew just as much the man you married

This late hour counts years in the place of seconds
I am too old for a broken heart
but seeing it only make it so
and it's to late to know better
it's too late
and I have to work in the morning
but I’m up
trying to learn how to sing
and play guitar
something I swear I always knew

What if it is not loneliness
this ghost that haunts us
this heart ache beat beat beat
What if it is not loneliness
but the nagging suspicion
that we
were meant to love
we were meant for love
every last one of us including me

I was meant to love
I was

This far down the road from sober
I am having difficulty finishing my words
but swear I remember their meaning
there was never a when
when I did not remember
you

You were meant for love
you were

An Act of Raising a Glass

2008-05-10T21:07:00.000-07:00

An Act of Raising a Glass

To sickness and hopefulness
To be on the mend and still inflicted
To wishing otherwise and to dreaming
To lying awake and sleeping and then awaking again

To before sunrise and waiting
To in twilight stand
To look out, to be expectant
and remain

To stagger and hide
To look down and be ashamed
To stillness and harmony
To speak but whisper as well

To this regretful hour
how I inhabit you
seeking, stretching out in you and at moments
finding

To both grief
and kindness unexpected
To recognition and
and gratitude to you who know me

This, an act of raising a glass and drinking.

Beverly

2008-05-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

Heavenly Beverly
looked at me evenly
wondering why I was leering at her

Beverly Heavenly
told to me openly
what by her look I could plainly infer

Mr. Gandhi

2008-04-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

Mr. Gandhi

Mr. Gandhi
Often fondly
could recall every word his wife had said
despite all the lumps on his head

Window Pane, Glass Shadowed, Stained and Night

2008-04-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Window Pane
Glass Shadowed, Stained
and Night

Passed Twelve, working to be responsible for my thoughts
like spoiled children they pout, stamp their feet and scream red-faced
One O’clock, Two O’clock, Three, Four

Four, Four-Thirty, Four-Thirty-Seven, Four-Forty-Eight
Let Five come if we are to go on living
Let Six come if God weeps invisibly besides the grief-stricken
Let Seven come if we are to love again

this is the promise of twilight
Baptismal water and light

Let every heart be new
Every heart can
Every heart can be new
Every heart

Ireland, You Are

2008-04-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

Ireland, you are

Biography of a this second hand city
this truck stop for a-buck-fifty people
this mountain music/café commune
this tie-dye nostalgia, this Birkenstock birth control
and endless blown glass weed pipe malaise
this cloister, this dark age
this edge realm of circled wagons pioneer stagnation,
dross against the northern Pacific
this time-capsule/acid-tab
this backwoods orgy and meth den bathtub
this valley of squatters and dealers and justifiers
this pit of relative, pacifist, vegetarians
not as materialist as So Cal but just as self-absorbed
so much work you have left un-done
I have eaves dropped on your bar stool conversations
for six almost seven years
and found nothing worth but a pint of good beer.

Ireland, you are
to my James Joyce.

Subterfuge

2008-04-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

Subterfuge

She wants to know why you hate
confessional poetry- but if you
answer her you would be
no better- so you buy
her another blue
ribbon- hoping
she doesn’t
read be-
tween
the
lie-
(n)
s

American Pastoral

2008-04-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

American Pastoral

We put to bed
those Russian heads
who dreamt the world to war

And now we sleep
fields sown and reaped
locked, the bedroom door

the work, complete
the house, still
the rooms, quite

the horizon is blue
the horizon is grey
the horizon is fading to black

and someone’s down stairs

Adopted

2008-04-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

Adopted

puckish
her smile
she walks on top of me
passed my feckless will
and bent rebar heart
topples my well-read, manicured cynicism
fearful of loving something so fragile,
delicate
so as to make the lover as vulnerable as the beloved.

Lukewarm
neither the title nor mantle did I desire
I retreated to the margins of photos
hid behind shoulders and foreground grins
become setting
a bird in the rafters of the manger
catching glimpse between the slats

I see a little of what
your mother sees
what he, your father sees
when they find you
follow you
love as you love and as you seem to be love

What questions she raised, her smile doubts me
What unexpected goodness might
exist in me
when I would follow a child
even though every step would be agony

she bruises me
and with each step
she places her foot back upon the bruise.

To Indy

Disillusion

2008-04-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

Disillusion

The Comma Johanneum is…
1 John 5:7-8
5:7 "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 5:8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one."

I just discovered that the dance I thought was The Roger Rabbit
is really The Cabbage Patch
and what I thought was The Cabbage Patch
is The Running Man
but of course there is no Trinity
it is a parallax, bent light shimmying in oasis heat, the bark of the hound of the Baskerville
a theoretical summation adopted by middle aged theologians
propagated-
by which I mean “enforced”
by the 100 years of papal-politik
the flint and kindling of auto de fe
grindstone to inquisitor’s ax
but ultimately as concocted
as Bloody Mary
celery, tomato, vodka, Tabasco, lemon
and black pepper
by Tommy “Deus Ex Machine Gun” Aquinas
in an attempt to sober up to and reconcile the biblical text and the segmented ether of Augustine’s Neo-platonic sensibilities.
I.E. he made that- ‘S’ ‘H’ up
bore the lie like a dumb ox till doomsday
Old E could have righted the wrong
but he preferred this mark to martyrdom
Had he chosen heresy over hierocracy
foundation might now be footnote
article reduced to asterisk
but the church will have its indulgences
An irony not lost on angels that where Jesus speaks the ink is red
so much blood for a blot
So much cost for a comma
but if not a comma-
a dash

perhaps

A Picture Taken at a Hotel

2008-02-24T15:20:00.000-08:00

Photograph by Bill Eppridge

A Picture Taken at a Hotel

In an old issue smelling of mildew
is a picture of the hotel Ambassador

a man stretched out like great Orion
listless, in the night’s sky, a black cocoon

his torso emerges from the shadowed firmament
coat jacket still buttoned, right arm as if reaching

fingers as if intending to grasp, the unflinching light
spills upon the scene, touching his hair, his open eyes,

his nose, the left cheek, it gives itself
to the pageant, to the witnesses, to the observer

a boy crouching, the light touches him too
burdens his shoulders like white wings

outlines his halo kissed head, he cradles
the man whose dead gaze strikes the side

of Juan Romero’s face, the boy looks away
with the light, with, not against the current

of its illumination, looks to where the light
is fleeing, to me

Thelonious

2008-02-19T00:08:00.000-08:00

It was the piano
those ivory and midnight keys
no grey middle ground or comprise
played tickled/played quick draw/played left hook/played gut bucket Mozart
played beret, played fess, played Buster Keaton, played pork pie
fingers strike, incite
trigger a felt hammer’s fall
to suture copper wires
that refrain, knee jerk inspiration Monk fought
for and against
time against time and time again

At Newport his left would play against the buzz
of passing airplane engines
while the right included spilt glasses of water in it’s progressions

I think had he a horn he could have breathed his spirit wings
shaped notes transient/in transit/intrinsically
but touch the keys and your committed,
no going back to Rocky Mount
no going back to high school
everything make or break Manhattan
or so I explained to McKenzie
who responds
“We don’t need anymore damn sax players”

Untitled

2008-02-15T13:18:00.000-08:00

My fear is
the aging boomers may represent the greatest threat to art in America
since McCarthyism.
Their near immortality hold us forever in a soured aesthetic
like milk cartons expired by two day
take artists (especially poets) over forty on a case by case basis
get you nose in there, smell the air they sit in.
And be warned
sometimes they side step the ottoman opposed to trip
but that shit is still in
black
and white.

Siren By Tobin Johnston

2008-02-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

Siren By Tobin Johnston

Siren, siren
Siiiiiiiirrrrrrreeeeeennnnn, sigh
Some one’s on their way to die

The ambiance of Ambulances
The sonic sign of deference
this recompense
peirce through our din of confidence
that we believe the lie
that hubris believes
That we shall never see
The inside
of an ambulance.

In Return

2008-02-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

In Return

Presently
a woman lies on her bathroom floor sobbing uncontrollably
clutching one hand in the other
white finger pressed of blood
ghostly
the water in the sink is running

Presently
a child can not form the words for the death she feels
and so it remains unnamed but no less real
and she becomes less so

Presently
a man sits in a public place surrounded eating, talking strangers and the song he hears blinds him
he turns head to the wall as waitress approaches
but fails to control his voice as he thanks her

today, they are me.
tomorrow, you
perhaps.

once I remember thinking I had a tough year
but recalled laughing at times
a little as the leaves turned
But this last one took memory and left nothing
in return

How to get Beaten to Death by a Mob, By Tobin Johnston, in Dedication to My Sister Wendi Johnston Noon for her Twenty-Eighth Birthday, Jan 18th, 2008

2008-01-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

How to get Beaten to Death by a Mob,
By Tobin Johnston, in Dedication to My Sister Wendi Johnston Noon for her Twenty-Eighth Birthday on Jan 18th, 2008.

The thing you worry about and fear as the most difficult, even impossible,
turns out is simple. Done for you. The distance, the you and them, closes like a
slammed door, faster than you could have imagined, could flinch or yell.
But you held your tongue. Your ciphered breath resigned, a plea to the storm
Pass over me.

Accommodatingly. You don’t have to raise a finger, they will bring it
to you. Like a cup of water, a glass of wine, they ask you to drink.
Suddenly, adrift within inescapable raving clatter. Murderous, murderous, murderous,
howls spit and vomit from out of every face. Shattered voices become
Voice. The harnessed horses of their rage.

Gradually. They test your standing with God. Step closer only to retreat
until the proof demonstrated, confident you are without favor. Forsaken.
Inevitably. One steps up to you as a lover. Almost intimately. You feel
nothing but the impact, like a gust of solid wind. And suddenly asleep and then
awaking again, on the ground, the sun burns colorlessly, tattoos it’s brilliant
heat into your eyes and brow, as heads wearing hate-insane masks, open-mouths
scarlet, grimacing and toothy, close over you like laced fingers. You’re being
swallowed whole. Eaten alive…

Once you hit the ground it is a matter of blows and seconds, the cadence of clenched fists
like a carpenter’s hammer. Stony knuckles split skin as glass might, loosen teeth.
Feet, now eyelevel, take effort to connect. Painting the inside of your
skull a nova white. Someone has a rod or stick or cane or broom handle.
It bites the hardest. Wraps your body in fire. Your bones to eggshells become.
Your forearms ache. Splinter beneath impacts. And still you place your broken
limbs in the path of the brutal trajectory. Your mouth thirsts for breath.
Tastes bloody and dusty air, smells sweat and piss. Rusty adrenaline sits on your
tongue like a copper penny. And body forgets the blow of a moment ago
to ready itself for the next.

You disappear into agony. It becomes your very identity. Your cursed name.
Your sightless mind, the only witness, it contemplates the violence best it can.
While every thought you have or once possessed is stuck and struck again
from your brain. Everything lost to abstractions. of… God or father, mother,
spouse, or child. Their grieving visage or your forgiveness. Even death.
As unimaginable as the absence of pain. Even death! Even here as it kisses.
Wets your silent lips. You understand it no better.

These strangers once, now as family. All you know of the whole world.
A boy, perhaps your son, struggles against the surge of larger bodies
to get a punch in. But you don’t recognize him, his gleeful look beyond
this new blindness. Nor do you notice the excited faces straining
with the effort of killing you.

The new mantra you didn’t know you were offering, the prayer you didn't, until
now even know how to declare, is lastly granted. It is finished. Ended.
Unnoticed by the delirious crowd or even you. Without portent or blast of trumpet.
Gone. The dreadful miracle. The unassuming magic. disappeared. absent. vanished.
Into the air.

For a time after, they will continue to beat the husk of you and after will sing
with the same voices, dance with the same feet, clap with the same hands…
A celebration will commence. They will call forth family and loved ones
from their homes, each will step into the street, into your grave and make merry.
Rejoice. And you will witness all. this- your funeral. Be spectator to the
circumstance. Present. Accounted for, but in flesh only, a sting-cut marionette.
as your clouded marble eyes burn back at the sun. Unblinking.

Hearing Rhythm in a Late September Storm

2008-01-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

1.
Listen!
The sudden applauds of rain.
A million
drops
fall
si-mu-tane-e-ous-ly
right now, here
and every where else.

The humidity snapped like pencil, and came down
in buckets, and leapt off
tarps and scaffolding, and swirled
against sidewalk jetties of piled trash and stampeded,
down the streets like a run of bulls
to the dock or
down-down-down to the drain and subway stations.

Deluged-
the farthest distance between you and dry

2.
Top-side
clap of car door
castanets of running high heels
crack of black unimaginative umbrella snap-ping to full bloomed attention
bouncing over heads like halos

a percussion to the mellow sounds: the yellow cab’s engine idle, the tire crowned barges in the harbor
drum roll to the moaning-groaning
work horse freight traiiiiins

cadence, ca-
dence, ca-
de-
nce
the ants go marching two by two hurrah, hurrah.

We hoof-it, the population of this city
we dodge drops and other dodgers
Honk, honk, splash
and I’m laughing as I
throw myself to a wall, beneath
an over-hang, besides
a blackman with static hair and a chomp-tooth
smile, who tells me I "found
the best spot in all
New York".

my blood is up and pulsing and I am laughing still and yelling agreement to him
over the thunderclap bombast
"God-Damn-Right!"

Ode to a Dictator

2008-01-07T17:34:00.000-08:00

Ode to a Dictator

The nervous tyrant plans to kill
all city pigeons who bear him ill
and those who plot against his will
on statue, ledge and window sill.

The executions planed for three
denied, the pleas for clemency
if asked what could his reasons be
he mentions a conspiracy…

He swears he hears their whispered plot
vows to strike while blood is hot
and lines them up, all to be shot
Coo! Coo! Coup d'état!

Uquq

2007-11-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

Uquq

a man
crosses against the light
desert sand Kufi
his silken robes
the color of coffee and cream

in his shadow
a youth, bareheaded
black hair shorn close to brown skin
dark, laughing eyes
a careless sprinter
he holds his father’s hand unashamed

Cars surge toward the intersection
a charging flood of headlights and windshields
and the boy grows afraid
he urges
pulls against fingers, hands to hurry
but like Yacub leaving blind Is’haq side
regretfully, he lets go
lets this legs fly him to the curb
and sanctuary

looking back in spite of fear
he raises his voice (words in need of no translation)

In his unfaltering pace
the father
reaches the sidewalk
as cars rush to devourer his footsteps

The man dresses now in a patriarch's honor
delighting in a son’s youthfulness
he touches the boy’s head
offers again his scorned hand
that in new knowledge the son receives
and they continued on
down to the mosque
on the corner of 1th and 11th.

So is Allah, patient and merciful
Praise be to Al-Ghafur, the all forgiving
Praise be to Al-‘Afuw. who pardons all

Jessica

2007-11-22T23:34:00.000-08:00

Jessica

I
used to read
my love poems to you
before an audience
but you hated the attention
so now
I whisper them to you as you sleep.

I used to write every day
about your youthful beauty
but we are older and
beauty is more than
can be surmised in a single day’s effort.

You ask why I
write less now
than before we married
and am a struck with how different
love poems are
from poems about love.

January 14, 2006

Eugene, OR

2007-11-22T00:43:00.000-08:00

Eugene, OR

Land of bad floppy hats
of patchwork pants

de-odor-less
and
meth-toothed

grave of Kesey
grave of Kerouac

the ghost of Woodstock
drug itself across the country
to die in the woods of empire’s edge

unquestioned regurgitation of sixties pathos
100 thousand sons of lumberjacks and whores
100 thousand white people talking diversity
100 thousand time-trippers
if there were only 7 amount the city worth saving

over organic coffee
California’s illegitimate step child
re-learning the lessons of Altamont
daily

The Faux-New York
If you can’t make it here
you can’t make it anywhere

He left

2007-11-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

When my FATHER
left
our DNA exhaled
sighed
A collective weight lifted from our genetic shoulders
a Helix can only stand so much
-
we made him so miserable
our distant prodigal father
his daily presence only provided a measure
of that distance
-
His FATHER
was fast to denounce him
-
His MOTHER
gave a convincing show of disapproval
-
What anger can remain
after knowing
that the man you should
HATE! your
FATHER
was merely a puppet of his.
-
Knowing how stone-faced a man
his FATHER
was
by knowing my grandfather’s son
-
My FATHER…
My dad
a haunted man
devil-possessed
-
condoms, pills and other forms of contraception.

My Father

2007-11-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

My Father

My Father was a drunken sailor
Reading books by Norman Mailer
Lost at sea in a summer storm
Left four children, one unborn

Rules for a Fairy Tale

2007-11-12T01:33:00.000-08:00

Rules for a Fairy Tale
-Advice and warning to young boys and girls-

1. Youth is powerful magic
2. The mystical ordinary creates a mistrust of the familiar- take wardrobes for instance
3. Paradox: much can be doubted but the improbable should be believed
a. Shadow begets shadow
b. The unknowable touches the assumed and makes it skeptical
c. Do not assume a sword’s only use is to kill, or a chair here is a chair there, or evil is ugly and beauty good
4. The hope and fear of adults is to be one
a. They least of all can help you
5. A kind heart and honest intention prevail/A willingness to inflict suffering will cease or will be ceased
a. The unrepentant cruel do not see the last page
6. To escape life into fiction has serious consequences as much as the escape itself is necessary
a. To save one world you must neglect the other
8. Inevitable is the casting aside of innocence/Your journey greatest casualty/The mantle of independence must be passed
9. Not every friend makes it to the end
10. Imagination, more than all else, is courage

In a New York State of Mind

2007-11-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

In a New York State of Mind

1.
From the Airport
the A to L to G-Graham
a living city sacked by vandals
Not Visigoth circa 5th century
but Dondi and his bastard children.

city graffiti to walls like leaves to trees
So close to Chuck Close’s Kate
no thing escapes the artists’ notice

Corners of canvases and store front glass
world is a well lit and traveled gallery

Fat Cap, Skinny cap, NY thins.
Pardon us officer for our sins.
Montana, Red Devil, Belton, Krylon
Black tip, Blue to the breaka breaka dawn.

2.
If the decent into JFK is like witnessing eternity, bookend to bookend
than the air-shuttle is your funeral and Subway your grave
three years from your death
when all those
who knew you
have moved on down the line

Your stop at 3rd is nigh
and up a flight of dingy stairs your resurrection
revelation to your mother’s childish lie
Over nineteen million people can’t all be special.

over 20 million everyday pilgrims on pilgrimages
you are sand in a sea of shifting sand
not ghost, echo of specter or Hades’ shade
for those had visage and name to remember
you are anonymity, distant kin of curb-side bubble gum

the 6 billion other earth-wide
(but that was two weeks ago mother besides)
and none whom care for you but
the one
who waits
to take your seat on the train
your cab fare on the street
or walks in your shadow waiting to step hurriedly passed your dusty bones

3.
Concrete is God bound, indivisible and hard.
the brick does not determine its purpose/use
the architect does
these go to a skyscraper, those a tenement,
this one goes through the ocean blue glass of a Mercerize Bends/ Crash!
Scattering fingers of starry confetti to the asphalt sky
this is the City of the infinite

and your voice in-wombed, lapped up by the stones, waffled between car horns
your voice that thing which you, confident, speak of love and hate and forever and tomorrow
is unheard.
you are krill-
it the Atlantic

Hush! Horse men approach over pastoral lands
Brown Brick wants to tell you something about the architect plans.
a song unwritten, merely suggested by the blueprint’s lines and outlines

There was once a bird of violet plumes in Rome on the eve of Alaric’s third return
and while it lived, it spoke and whistled for his master’s wife’s pleasure
mimicked expression, mouthed the sound of word, and when it died, its existence went unrecorded, but an omission unnoticed
by the chronicler’s pen

you share the same non-fate
So why not write on walls.

Mr. Avery

2007-10-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Mr. Avery

Steven Avery was born July 9, 1962.
-December 14, 1985- Found guilty of attempted first-degree homicide and first-degree assault.
-Sept 10, 2003- Declared innocent of prior convictions and exonerated after eighteen years in prison.
-March 18, 2007- Tried and found guilty of the first-degree intentional homicide of Teresa Halbach.

Mr. Avery, Mr. Avery,
accused of actions quite unsavory.
Held within a prison cell
and there we kept him very well.
The judge said, said gavel in hand,
this is a social reprimand.
He, he must be sent away,
till death has given a final stay
may God forgive him, judgment day
or to hell, he send him straight away.

Away from all the children please,
away from wealthy divorcees,
away from spendy SUVs,
and from, again, the children please.
Mr. Avery, Mr. Avery
Locked away for being unsavory.

Eighteen years
are watching, waiting, stalking me.
For tears and tears don’t come to me.
I stare at walls till I can’t see.
Or recognize the man is me
who sings in chain just like the sea.

A reprieve! A reprieve
has brought blind justice to her knees!
We were wrong, mistake, in error.
You’re are a man and not a terror.
We were wrong, you’re not a terror.
Here’s a pardon from the mayor.
Here’s the air your freedom bought,
and something else we near forgot:
we return what once was yours,
the dignity a man endures.
Mr. Avery please take your leave,
and a framed certificate of your reprieve,
your right birthright, your free-to-go,
a fifth of Jack for when you’re low,
a pair of shoes, a brand new suit,
a coupon for a prostitute.
A productive member of the state,
Justice delayed but never late.

They named a bill after your namesake.
Politicians mention you by name.
You are a talking point for much debate.
An example cited in order to convince.

Final act

Murder, murder
red and gory.
Doctor, doctor what’s the story.
He cracked her head with a tire iron.
T,
I,
R,
E,

I,
R,
O,
N,
She was never seen again.
God made Adam, God made Eve,
made the apple, made them leave.
The Devil said, said they should know better,
the truth can blush but blood is redder.
H,
E,
double L.
All bad boys go to hell.
All good girl will go to heaven.

H(clap-clap, clap-clap),
E(clap-clap, clap-clap),
A(clap-clap, clap-clap),
V(clap-clap, clap-clap),
E(clap-clap, clap-clap),
N,
What he did not do, he’s done again.
He’s done again,
again,
again.
He’s done again.

Mr. Avery we thought you better,
our faces blush but blood is redder.

Put it from your minds sweet children.
He was never,
he was never.
We are justice, we are just,
sing of lullabies if you must.
And if you dream but sleep won’t come,
we are justice,
we are just.
If you dream that sleep won’t come,
look for guilt and finding none.
Know that man is never done.
Son of the father, sins of the son,
and man, his crimes are never done.

Mr. Avery, Mr. Avery
Locked away for being unsavory.

Sunday Morning Blues

2007-10-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

Sunday Morning Blues

Go tell my woman, you need the keys to the car.
Go tell my woman, you need the keys to the car.
The bartender will not serve me and I’m in no shape to walk very far.

I know Jesus eye’s are on me. He sees me walk this narrow line.
I know Jesus, his eye’s are on me. He sees me walk this yellow line.
When I done and drunk all the liquor, he’s gone a turn water into wine.

With the Lord beside me, I will never drink alone.
With the Lord beside me, I never drink alone.
I don’t take shots with the devil, he don’t give me no ride home.

Theologian, they don’t know nothing about my soul.
Theologian, they don’t know nothing about my soul.
They don’t like no cussin’
and they sure as hell don’t like no mother fucking rock and roll.

Baby, I see your dressed up for sunday, I swore it was still friday night.
I see you dressed for sunday, I swore it was still friday night.
I don't know why you're angry, we have gone two whole day without a fight.

Go on now to chuch girl, before the pulpit take a knee.
Go on now to church girl, before the pulpit take a knee.
Say some prayer for my forgiveness and baby
please,
please,
please
come back home to me!

The Body Works is Downtown

2007-10-29T21:33:00.001-07:00

The Body Works is Downtown

The exhibition procession

hushed

gawking

struck dumb, gut punched

revelers once, forgotten

taught to mourn

mistrust the intent beneath ourselves

the inevitable betrayal

a future moment, that kiss our body bears us

looks to and from each pair of masked eyes

stares into/out of

every face undressed

the threadbare veil finally torn

wordless disbelief

Who could have suspected

the saboteur?

Into the crowded silence speak

doctors and nurses

morticians who nod

mention Latin words

provide antidotes

those men, women

who we entrust the horrible secret of our mortality.

Epigram, Epitaph

2007-10-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Epigram, and epitaph,
one gets homage,
the other, a laugh.

Vogue

2007-10-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

Vogue

Commas are out this year
periods- old hat
and failing to capitalizing the personal pronoun “I” - embarrassing
Poets today would not be caught dead
using bold letters after labor day
and one should steer clear
of anything too plebian
too Bukowski

As for what’s hot
Italics are in-
in
IN!
and dashes seem to go with everything
but nothing goes so well
with prose-
as cancer
or repressed child hood memories
of an abusive father
or the doe-eyed embarrassment of a first sexual experience
or the mild objection to perceived political injustice
or a fat adolescence
or the difficulty of relating to an autistic grandchild
anything- any subject that sounds quaint
coming out of Garrison Keillor’s
gaping
Midwestern
pie hole

Blues Song of F.W. Bateson

2007-10-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Blues Song of F.W. Bateson

1.
A Eulogy for an Old Guy

A man at a public library cracks the spine of a book whose cover reads: “The Complete Poems of Bukowski”
and a block over, a punk girl gets hit by a car while riding her bike.
Coincidence?

At a club in LA, a thug named Jr. P-rock, is 21 years old, wears tims and his left pant leg rolled, He banks head and surveys the room, something he sees turns him back to the bar. He orders Hennessey but is served Peach Schnapps by mistake and in the mirror, against the wall, behind the bar, contemplates ordering another. While women to the music sway, sipping flutes of Alize.

When husband and mistress, with each other, lie, an impatient young girl burns the roof of her mouth on a cookie straight from the oven. (I know it is a ghost story poets tell their children before bed but it haunts me still.)

Every time a woman’s designer high heel snaps in New York, a spirit appears in the high desert of Cabeza Prieta reciting love poems to the pallid sky. Town’s people in Ajo talk about the sightings over auburn bottles of Negro Modelo.

As a child witnesses the seasons change: summer autumn winter spring he formulates those memories which he will recollect on the last day of his life and as he does so, a Cambridge prof overlooks the punctuation errors of an undergrad he hopes to bed.

Every time a sewing needle draws blood, a teenage girl in Eden, Vermont comes slowly with infinite affection, and infinite care, her golden fingers on her lip(s), wills silence everywhere.

For every 5 dollar bill and penny a pan handler handles in D.C, a Berkley student searches for synonyms of “groan.” Two alternatives are, “yalp” and “howl.” By the time he graduates, he will finally confess the unconfessed.

Small adjustment of the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamical system may
produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.

and so this is how an insect’s death may end the world
and poets dead impose their will upon us
still rap on nighted windows, sabotage spelling bee contestants and instigate
minor traffic accident.

2.
Freddy Bateson wants to tell you something,
so pay attention.
“I come not to praise Prufrock but bury him.”

Angels came to Lot’s family, told them the rules
but mother couldn’t help it. Where she now stands, to face the bitter breeze of soured seas… regretting.
-Daddy told you not to mess with the rearview
-but you didn’t listen.

How’s this gonna end? How it begins is simple enough.
The womb is our first addiction,
a 9 month monologue to the 3four beat of a mother’s heart,
before the screeching interdiction. SLAP on the ass. “Welcome to the world.”
learn to walk, vote, and make love - your species needs you!

Poets!
Tradition is the umbilical,
fostering you, child,
out of which all attempt at self sufficiency
would be abortive…
but after labor/after pain/after loss/after gain,
what was sustenance becomes suicide.
An ignoble noose.

The wind pours over the hollow crystalline mouth of Ildeth
frozen shroud of retrospection.
The wind blows across her parched, craggy lips,
blistered and sun worn.
Listen carefully - crane your head - listen close!
Her whispers are faint - the drag of a thread across broken glass
she says to you, “remember but do not loose yourself to remembrance. ”

A Microwave Metaphor
Those who make too much of the past
are doomed to re-heat it.

Freddy is almost done
He wants to chide you against:
Lingering in graveyards/
Necrophilia is a crime in 50 states
but alive in letters/
Conjury and invocation
through bookish mediums/
The modern temptation for piggybacking/
Worse still, literary grandstanding/
Glory via association/And counterfeit contemporaneousness /Posing in the foreground of a celebrity’s photo /And name dropping like a phone book/
(Anyone in Hollywood will tell you it’s who you know.)
The fabrication of lineage/
This T.S. ee W.H. Audacity and parasiticism.
Freddy talks about history – the bastards of the crown are sometime welcome
at court but cannot choose their seat.

Reverence for the referential
is self-death-
loosing sight of the path, a hiker will starve in circles
and whales trapped in inland canels hear echoes of themselves in the shore reflection
calling to them siren-like.

Ask Emerson but don’t ask me to quote him.
I know the chapter and verse
but in the tectonics of transposition,
from pulse to the page, his words disappear
become the tag line beneath a movie title – prêt-a-porter prose
like the wide road it is evil because it is easy.

Socrates knows something about the hard thing
and a good stiff drink.
When he walked to Delphi, he did not come to hear the oracle proclaim
but the translation, and its subjective implication.
To him she said, “Don’t act wiser than you are and in this you are wise.”

That fair-skinned virgin with her mouth to the earth’s exhaust pipe
she says to you now,
“why be bound to the was
and the who of the was
why not the is of the now”
In new and other words - Get your own licks
and stop writing notes in the margins of the books of greater artist

Robbery and vandalism
But even vandals must create language to distinguish amongst themselves the master's hand from untrained eye. Their word for messing up another artist’s piece is “Going Over”. Their word for a plagiarist is “Biter”. They have a name for an incompetent writer. Do you want to know what it is? They call him, “Toy”.

That hiss of red devil spray paint in a silent train yard, is that same hiss- the breath volcanic from bellows of earth, is that same hiss the ocean breeze sounds over jagged rock, is that same hiss gas makes before the burner ignites.
Its mantra names a curse, a warning-
Assia… Assia… Assia…