Albert Flynn DeSilver
"PRISONS ARE AN ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY INDUSTRY" *
for Eddie & Anselm Berrigan
I wanted to be clever
in the wake of a doorknob
so I went to jail
for advice & direction
they locked me up on the spot
by merely looking at me, and they
swallowed the key
just like in the cartoons.
to get free I had
to tear into the wardens abdomen
there I found a poem by you two
called "Gladiola Cheekbone"
I wiped it off on my stockings
and used it as a spinnaker
on my sailing ship to freedom
in freedom I met a guy
named Archie Pilsner who spoke
through a naugahide helmet
"why don't cha' come back to my castle
and pet some of my soft money,
you splendid little suit of burl"
In his care I became an instant
freon junky, everything donned a creamy pink
haze, was blatant & exceptional--
this is an excerpt from my bonnet sequence
forgive me these poems
they keep my neck astride the headboards
Oh, and here's a shot of me
swinging from the hymns
in a raffia bathrobe.
In this one I hail you with a cotton
cab, loud opera detailing the crack
in the rearview mirror
its all a terrific tweak to my many lobes
like the salute from a
harangued petshop owner.
Today I will watch the
breeze swill some,
while my mind opens
a hair.
I'm now a stand-in
for wimpy air
tomorrow my part
is pylon placement therapy
along the freeway
my role is to warn off
yeasty vehicles
elsewise I play
a little vanishing fool.
* (as quoted from the director of the Chamber of Commerce in Terra Haute, Indiana. June 2001)
A FRANK O'HARA ALPHABET OF FIRST LINES
'A certain person's epoch's burning'
Bushes toss on the crowded terrace
Clouds or cloudbursts, the haze
Decide what you want of my heart most particularly, eagle, and take it
Elf, forbidden word, heart within me
Free to suffer speechful constraint
God! Love! Sun! All dear and singular things!
How can you start hating me when I'm so comfortable in your raincoat
In sensuality I find a harvest dawn
Just as he's about to rise he erupts
Khrushchev, is coming on the right day
Like a cat who pushes and flexes forelegs
Moving slowly, sweating a lot
Now your protesting demons summon themselves
O sentiments sitting beside my bed
Perhaps he will press his warm lips
Quips and players, seeming to vend astringency, off hours
Remembering at best bitterly
Salt water. and faces dying
This morning a blimp was blocking 53rd street
Up to our noses in the cresting wallops
Vaguely I hear the purple roar of the torn down 3rd avenue El
When hope is beneath your skin
You find me tentative and frivolous, don't you?
IN BRANDON DOWNING'S SHIRT WEAPON BREAST POCKET
lie crumbs from
"the bakery of death"
who, lit as
the rails are on a north bound
Oregon train, tumble in my lap--
run together in the distance and kiss
naughty stanzas, naked to the state line
when I part the pages
I see finched mollusks and a farmer
hocking millet-light to doubt-thick eyes.
There drift in perfect snow peaks
tri-angling their way into
street lamp blowholes
I need pines, trappist monocles,
and a seed company born of pens!
But out east in red Texas
fresh from the bullet trees at the Crawford ranch
lie longhorn leghorn foghorns
all in full bloom--
like what to make of it? An exquisite helmet, A
paper pagoda for my brain on the jones
like
out the porcelain sunroof, how all is quail signage,
eyelid storm drains, crusty spring light, a fixed
pink sunset make-over, sponging up the western hump--
all is scattering wimpy sheep in greeny meadow
we ride them across the gilded pulp and weep
you flawless tentacle baron, you,
you my darling abductee.
THE BIG WINDY MEET
Palatable wind is malleable arrows.
In the mouth. Invisible silver,
the spray of sharp words
between tight teeth
carpal-tunnel fuck bag, hallelujah--
She's a scientist of the Grecian type,
isn't she?
You can tell by that
pair of copper urns she
wears, tugging at her teardrop
ear lobes
goes, she does, toting
audible myth
causes Jack's fat cousin engine
across the street
to act pulmonary at 6:AM
and those perfect sapsuckers
feet clenched in the high firs
cackle like track-star axles
Friday night after the big meet.
PAUL KLEE
You wandering artist you
All full faced
Double
Resting in the hand--
The tight rope walker
Walks between
The twittering machine
In ur-clock, plants
An arrow in the garden
Of cosmic flora,
Dune flora
Vegetal strange
A danceplay of redskirts
A fugue in red
Giving off rosewind
In the flight from oneself there are
Unanchored signs intensifying themselves
Uncomposed in space--
In the current six thresholds
There are astral automatons
And an angel who serves a
Small breakfast while
Conjuring a trick.
She bellows (with an egg)--
We play muddle fish overripe and
Slightly inclined.
Here and Beyond are (captured)
Astray
A stricken place
--thither--
Uplift and away where
Viaducts break ranks
There are heroic strokes of the bow
Given the timid brute, a reflection
In the analysis of diverse perversities
He is an angel, still ugly
In the Genesis of the stars
Where two men meet a mirror
Each believing the other to be of higher rank.
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