3 mar 2012

a cloudy day in Santa Cruz
I'm well again after a bout of food poisoning
waiting for delivery of an Ikea bed

with a plastic sack for a head

— after Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Hoping to be stuffed

with wine & chocolate.

Darkest red.

To live a super-strong life

I hold a cardboard insert the way my human holds a titanium plate.

But I am discarded oil.

The dump bares its leavings picked through like a squirrel in the road.

I fly off in a sudden whiff of methane,

the plaything of an orphaned urchin.

It bats around with splintered planks of maple.

Out: my emptied flavor.

I fear I might be punctured. Or I am a lung of airholes.

I beg for Scotch-style reconstruction.

I beg for someone’s Medicare card. A pot sleeping stopover.

Some Epoxy gel.

Connie Deanovich [pic courtesy of Felix: A New Series of Writing]

from Connie Deanovich’s Watusi Titanic, 1996:

Dating Patton

When I’m too busy

I pretend

I’m dating Patton

Battle-scarred

triumphant

exhausted

and pissed

we couple

a couple of

war horses

big on the scene

in our own minds

not minding

wind

snow

veracity

we say anything

to get it done

we feel anything

to get it done

and when we’re

done with each

other

spent

like sparklers

we plant ourselves

in the ground

like neurotic Dobermans

leaving a mark

waiting to grow

again

into two

supreme

pains in the ass

Allen Ginsburg's introduction to the Bhavagad Gita.

Poet Mark Levine on teacher Philip Levine.