The Greenbook (part 2)

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Revision as of 13:27, 20 Feb 2005

Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2002-2003). Part 1 | Part 2]] | Part 3 | Part 4

NOTES FOR A POEM ON PARIS

Day afore yestiddy, we arrived
found our friend’s flat
at
156 Boulevard Magenta
(he’s lucky, she’s lucky, we’re all lucky)
settled in
took a walk and walk and walk
discovered nothing
ate overpriced Moroccan
(hey, it was Christmas Eve)
Poor kidlet woke up screaming
and distressed the wasps’ necks
which are neighbors
creeping ‘round in socks at 2:30 AM
to find out who was torturing an infant
Hail Satan!
Hail Caesar!		Render unto absurdity its due
Heil Hitler!		reject these impotent princelings
			of the disgruntled
And so more walking
Notre Dame at Noon.
Christmas service
Gloria In Excelsius Deo
Bells tolling
Shakespeare  & Co. glimpsed par hasard
brief pause at the beat Hotel
Where the if-anything but bohemian
hotel now serves the upper crust of
American tourists
but where the beats were given their
due with pictures hung on the wall –
Burroughs, Gysin, Corso, Ginsburger
with cheese, Orlovsky “the American poet”
Harold Chapman’s book in the drawer
The staff were very nice
Must’ve been our baby

We walked away towards the 
Louvre, towards the “Elysian Fields,”
towards the Arc de Triomph, The Tour
Eiffel, back to the Metro.

Got home and cooked up steaks & taters
Drank some Lirac rouge

That was Christmas.  In Excelsius Deo
Chr-i-ist is born!



Coal train
    in Paris
black hi-way of rails
bleak house flyaway
	vapor trails
	sun sails reflecting light
	aviator sunglasses
	catching flame

“Who but “We” perpetuate this mythos”
      he says
      scrunching up his fingers in quotes
      around the We
      Wee Wee Wee
      all the way home
      chick-kneed
      rick-rack
      along Bedrock of
Stepford Wives
      The Witches of Eastwick
Robert Redford
Stepford and Son
      step forward
      move ahead
      inch along
      it’s not too late
      too rip it into shreds:
      “I saw the best minds of my generation”
      dropped like rag dolls
      and kicked in the balls
      for whom the bell tolls
        (trolls)
            starring Eric Stoltz

Schlitz more than a malt liquor
business of pee·kni notwithstanding

unaccompanied by leftist burdens of dovish doubt
we oppose all that would seek to
profit from death
may as well tax air
water to the highest bidder
clandestine desalination plants
a wicked banter chopped
down by the coast guard
The Marijuana farms of the future
desalination plants you can make with
mail-order kits

In Excelsius Deo
quel condition?
what nervous soul creep of infinite blackness
crack another beer
calm another Fear
Forget the aching want and the desert horizon
White hot of instanect memories al la le
Madeleine du Proust
Playing Kidlet upon
puppet-bright red
please don’t touch him
please don’t

that smell of poorly sterilised vomit

clou d’or
champignon luminescent
une fenêtre 

Day 1:  circled around Montmartre
Day 2:  Metro “Cité”
	Christmas Service in Notre Dame
Walked over to Shakespeare and Co.
Thru quartier latin
Git le Coeur, No. 9 saw pics of
    the dead ones
heartless lying
    or burnt away
the to the libanaise sammich shop
        dicked about with heels on
then to the Louvre, the Pyramid
The only space in Paris – apparently –
to run a remote-controlled car
Tuileries Gardens shite brown
    in December
and thru the stumpy champagne-glass
trees
within view of the Arc de Triomphe
marching thru the Champs d’Elysees
the chic madness
the frenzy of the tourists
the exaggeration of individual need
magnified into a kind of subsonic
hysteria
the gibbering madness only waiting
to 
aggressive form
into a mass suicide
or a slaughter
almost diddle-fucked
in winter
a brazen horsecloud
I am sure I have heard talk of before

stumpy and grimpy upon prototype washcloth
I wished I was a luminescent mushroom
    it all comes from the synchronicity
of the gibbering gibbernaut:
    and just as we wonder
who this voyager of logorrhea is
we also wonder about Gavroche’s
“sky pilot” 

and this coal train worked on the both of ‘em
a record of sorts of a black soul and a 
disappointed one
We will carry our infants upon
grass
but will forget how to tell the difference
between a Delacroix and a Gericault

Things like chips sap the poet’s soul
but Sausage makes it Stronger

dilapidated boat-pick
campfire under freckled bridge
turned out the lamplight dancing
upon the Seine

As I grasp may ankles and get
ready to whistle
my foreground
    fades to black as my Carmichael
    bounces my Stokely
You never had bones for this job
Which was ever a shitter, at best
(as he walked on down the hall) 

Bill Evans becomes acquainted with an errant
wind that sounds like john lennon  
and the waft of scum sterile shirt vomit
emmanatin’ from the toilet
we gobble and sleep
this small space give us no room for conversation
we tumble into sleep, exhausted
I have good tunes
plenny liquor
weed
I don’t need to roll onto the
padded joke called a “bed” to have
a good time		I can just crawl
in and outside of lines next to the
hyperinflated wheel of the baby carriage,
looming large to the left  side of my head
what was I saying?
Footnote grabbed me critchety-crotch
of dad-blazed gum-cursers
oh blow me down under the splendid rays of a
fallen pencil
which is an exploded
gold-leaf dragon
in an area frequented by prostitutes
    clinking glasses
slurred voices
    (of television)
beyond the walls
where the pigs may pass
and goddess trample all of them
as one

the effervescent madness
returns in Paris
even my wife
it turns out 
is annoyed
and my son no better
    I am no better
    than a child
    gauche and lacking
    class
    style
hopping delightedly among 
pigeons
and skidding across the floor
....while the biberon boils

across the natural boundaries of
earth 
they only talk of telegraphic wires in scorn
but the satellites have them edgy
why is there this talk of dog-stars
edging into the domain of chance glimpse
which is a lisp inverted with the
    double-cypher of the Faerie King
What elaborate speak I in
    if not deliberate fancy 
Tom Clancy
    degenerate glocken-spiel
    gun-totin’ talkers minimal
    shoot first
    pick up paycheck later

What enlightened hornograph
causes tremulous emotions upon paper
crapulous doodling
along the din-dong slate
it lies in wating
an anchored sip of a shrine gone by
we’d rather remember out felt
cutters and sell their heads for
10 cents this is the cryptographic 
radio network speaking and 2-
nite we have the following
anoouncements,
now and forever,
catered to and brought to you b(u)y
the Nicholson Bros. Sweetback Plant
Macon, Ga.	R·ed

they bend light into martini glasses

Yes, a grasshopper
	he said with a faggoty exasperated air



go stonewall (jackson)
	riots still my beating heart
And then there were five

the limerick
	is more verbal
And whatever happened to Bennigan’s?

Similac = milk like it = Irish
BUT it was nonetheless fun!



Special
	Treat!
    To keep away from sticky side while
    glue dries
    we rock on to opposite
    while leaves rusting outside
    are black garbage bags
    still a-flutter
    in re-enclosed
    courtyard



Baby squirms and grunts
next to me
thinks my pen and pad
are playthings
which of course they are

Hooting of Hancock
hunting heads
some tribal initiation
in analog





	artifice
stylo
    bébé dort
les armes de feu
étrillant
sur le froid
qu’enveloppe 
Paris
comme les bras
d’un mort
enterré
sue toutes les ports
d’Afrique
d’Emile Zola
des allumettes en l’aube
gentilles berbères
sonnent les portes
de la mer
la mesa
(la table)
sur tout 
sur tout



AND so it kontinues
these crazy automaton choices
blintzering about on an
unexpected slipstream
the autoconscious 
attention to the lick-spittle
madness we are about to increase
if in my needier moments
I seem an empty bag
In moments of nowness I am
a born-again hog
neediness = seediness
B = brackish delight in obstreption
shunning backwards alley in Fidel Castro
(It was a dream)
(the day was sunny, dappled, dusty)
(beakers filled like crickets)
!        !        !        !
Joke emblem upon the fortifications
(the fortified heart!)
		♥



and Noble House
makes me groan
less than
light in August

gums downward!!

                      i
14th educational material
since behind scrims the scenes
play out
scenes roasted upon the clear eye of
ubiquity
the latin hope
	hops left
	and children are born
	sparkplug
	diggin’
	willins 
	on Southern emphasis
	Aummm!



U.S.S. Conasse
skulking about
on skilky peds
no slinky silk
in Denim
hybrid hydrogenized
(distance makes the heart grow fonder
closeness breeds contempt)

it is not all written out in clay
imprinted with the ends of stalks
any riverside plant chomped
and utilized, for a wedge

and that was nearly 30 years
ago
time has only stood there
in yr memory
cheap
anaphylactic garden
sodium whipworm of a collective fossil

....missing text....

forgotten something•or•other
robbed of the dramatic

these fragmenting villages

    reconstruction of the Tower of Babel



In this recondite age
aghast at quick weeping
“tragedy” applied liberally
common sorrow made epic by the need to
sell sorrow
to convince a concrete world that they
still have the ability to give a damn
When, in fact, the averted eyes and
quickened step is an existential position
more than the actual fashion we avoid
the clattering bum in the doorway

and the squeletons dance
the scarecrows flap
misery a way to scare children into behavior
she was an old woman
living in a ruin where the trail
we jokingly called the Ho Chi Minh
	widened
	black widow’s dress and scarf
	old-world peasant of any number of 
countries

tomorrow the fountains of  aid run dry
“oh really?” they never even offered
a trickle, here

these are what are referred to as
“simple truths”



Fountains of Heart
shoot blood –
	flood-lit –
	into the air about her

	take a nap, take a nap



Who needs convincing?
What dangerous egg has been cracked now?
How many more can we expect to lose?
	These are losses that cannot be recuperated
	There is no inverse twin called “found”
in this department
Just sand and dust and emptiness

“there’s mothers cryin’ all over this world
for their poor lit’l darlin’ boys n’ girls”

Whip poor will
and ranged along the road
wherever they aren’t quickly driven away by
violence



IN the bar car
waiting for mama to put baby
into noddy land

sleep rip of wrack (she’s got a
nice one – pomegranates
	      placed
	      precariously
upon a gimcrack of wheeze



gnocchi of villages
sturmed in a pot called drang

everyday photography
captured the light coughs of a
baby’s second cough
quick,
fleeting

the milk is too cold
and he is inquiet

acceptance of this first life’s roughness
	on a voyage
and mama talks to him
and our fellow passengers far away
a thin yellow wash
upon the horizon
the clouds our ceiling
low and pendulous
and blue

he does not drink the milk

we pass thru low blocks
	innocuous
and inventive despite
their drab uniformity
and the lengths of their beards
denote
Forgetting

A casting aside
	a leaving
	(as in a parting)
	(and something left behind)
	(why am I in pyramids?)

	There is a drunken batwing
upon the sky
an open and left-handed fornicator
bringing about the soft red rains
of an antichrist
or a pretender

safely now,
into the night
beyond the circle of light
which is a reworking of
that which has come before

let’s not go gratis into that
good night
dripping healthy
like the dappled leaves in a healthy spring
floating in a clear water
cold, crisp
Japanese
underneath the flat blue mirror
without shimmer
just thereness
	and doppled leaves



dimpled knees
	like knotted cheeks
fervent fervor of religious
	horsewhipping
	fornicating flagpoles
	under homosex sky
	that is war
	with battling sky-pilots
Zombi Wing 127th skittering
radio hot webs of
reinvention
steel in hot lugs elongated and flying
penetration into suns
globes of truth gas
that are in a wider sEnse
known as stars

there is a demand for reaparations
the clouds lift
the dogs bark
and voila!
you have an incantation
no frustrated desire here
within the walls of the
fast-moving norm
no dick-roll of blathernathy
no incumbent vice-lord
toppled in the wildcat name of
a sheriff in hottananny hothnoo
somewhere in Pennsylvania
or Idaho
The long distance of loneliness
 a millimeter is long to an atom
these degenerate screeds
whispered upon “Whicked Whinds” 
and carried off into the perfumed 
SoCal nights
I cannot help but revere the 
fallacy
the imprinted myth
which holds the greater truth
than the trite realization
that the 18th century took
place in shabby cloth
and tenchnicolor
and wasn’t in black and white
and people didn’t move about alla time
as if doing a slow waltz

I gotta do some destructive treework
call in a dentist and simulate
desire

there in the attic, a bat!
does she expect a pennance
of pennants
docker worn shabbily
by cousins with priests
suave catholic boys among
the prep-school protestants
we shall overcome
as if it were a revolutionary
barricade
that short, fat
fleeting moment



(His feeding pattern
has been disturbed)
and writhing
we get into the ebb abd flow

break the god
you get a glimpse of the shadow
of god’s incarnation

bulb-beaked Bob
will be the Messiah returned
re-crucified by the CIA
before the intergalactic 
shit-fling
called apocalypse

ever so dim and cool
in a certain light
our necks bent at curious angles
to fill a book
I will limit myself to five words a page
widely spaced
short lines
like short necks attached to
<BEAKS>
(which peck and persist)
(a little bird from North Carolina)
	given away by a blood-soaked
	cotton
	during calm moment
  When KFC managers attack
We are not afraid of this knowledge
warped out on boneboots
slogging our way thru corporeal slime
of immaterial sin
so dense and corrupt
it manifests itself
something from the septic tank
7 microbes in a can-can line
7 venereal sisters
7 chinese brothers
(a nod to the livewire)
he who can interpret the universe
with grain
with beans
with fondled bones
cast about
somehow vaguely hinting at
the memory of licentious squares
the sheer amount of it
the worthless rubble
the barney babble of blarney trouble
sing harmonies
listen in vain for frogblades
jump razors like useless
ships
and oily fires on waterslick
of gimcrack
........
shit, we’ve lost the line
bring it back
bring it all back
to the meat

sack of fruit
ties to rough twine
this is the prospect
the entire doom of a fungoïd nightmare
glim globes dim upon sampans
always there,
in the mind’s harbour
miraculously weathering
tai-fan
periodic fires
sacred lines of scared credit
upon hollow•heel
patheticisms
drifting
incontinuous
weak
presqua indecipherable
possessing of imposing
rectitude despite the obvious vulgarity
we speak not here, of being common,
or popular,
but of the raw, unbridled licentiousness
which is the dripping feces
out of mouth-corner
that delineates this rare subterfuge
			this gilded tango
		a dance laid out in numbered
		strips
		recreated after the flaming ball
		of metal has splintered into a
		million pieces
and each one of these somehow gimped
  in prostitution of the perverse
  the perversity of interjurisdictional coöperation

one week away from a job
was all it took
to take up the pen
again the quotidian bar pilfer
of socket emplugment
called poésie
    Viva les cons!

When the cars stop exploding
we can hide and seek under
irradium nightmare
	this is often called the clear blue sky
just as the septic sludge pit is also
called the ole water hole
go fishing
    pull out a boot
		go swimming
    pull out a flesh-eating bacteria

    suicide under open fingers
    broken dumptrucks under the bridge
    nothing to do with lukewarm zeppelins
    work so hard to endear myself
    sarcastic wrapper a bonebreak
    of stinted stiltism
    a “bagoo bong-bong”
    gone bad
    track missile indifference
    under haggis-back of the sky
    pitching gut-filth upon the
    moors like vomit
 
    to serene incompatibility



Chasing germans like dogs
	chase just about anything
	that runs
This is not amusing
This here’s a salt-lick paved with
	David Hasselhoff
Castles which appear blue against
the cloud 
Can admit to no bestial plan
their air-cartons of distinguished-heads
brokers calm among the entrails
entered the disheveled Professor:
“Did someone say entrails?”



J’ai faim!
(cheat tactic 1)



falling back
upon
phalanxes
of phalli    (uses)
	       of the
	       term
	       are
	       variable



Frightening forward
all that was never left behind

stop!  in the name of the law
the fat contradictions
of labor
strong collations
among the midnite parade
a golden demonstration
upon an aging esplanade
    a cheap resuscitation
    of an explanation
a hardly original inspiration
came not upon a golden ray of wind
but on a fart

this is all vomit 
pass the noose



	What is the date
	When will mates help
	
	The Tai-pan of this
		here sampan
		crawling into sheep
		bed bugged
		and [illegible] 



cute



frightening forward
of the dimpled consternation
a film by Wm Holden
is a dark knife under bolt-heel
skies
    dampening, if you will
    a practical tickle
    from the past
    underneath the ribs
    too self-attentive
		to dig
    stick knives into guts
    automatic yet decisive
    quick
          with “considerated” lead-up
    Make an interpretation of

    a dick-sucked
          tit-wither
I wasn’t long in that camp
    before I stuck the grenadine
    into the bull of the stomach
(It exploded –
        Noble!)
Me, think obscene
dark inkling on the edge of
ecstasy

sparkling étènte
	stickling
  under silent feuds
fjords between minds
  enemy lines
I always sought Lords
then between clans, and
all, the conflict
The eternal amalgam
enormous
and stuck with bouchon
the ½ hour is over



Rusters like sublime razors
to walk around
soiled buttocks of the workmen
something pert like an old ad for
Salems
Square Jaws abound in a plastic
ray of eternity
all that noble pigeon to yr account book
shack-out upon bedsores
tarpaper vomit shack
the illicit jack of
fiery lickers and that
twisted mojo called the blues
and where funk
and where bass became assoc
with deep profound tones blunted
under toilet humour
and jibes
____

one might say part two
begins anew
addressed with stridency urgency
from a know-nothing
(and here I refer to myself)
tilting now at windmills under
an obstreperous lenz
(I am tongue-tied twisted
just an earth-bound distant
lie)
sky-like proportion of inflated rock
gesture
what should stand for solidity + impermeable
action
stands for the off-kilter rowboat and the
tilted kills



to try
  to fail
repeatedly

a psychiatric problem
or a poignant dialectic 



alas
as the blood-clots
crinkle
	the infant loses its voice
	but the rivers do not
	and I cannot go on



I cannot read
but I can write
I cannot write
but i can read
Higgamus hoggamis
hoggamis hig
I jumped in a gander
and came out a pig....



long and slow
	stretched out upon the guillotine bed
	there is sleep



Big atlantic
the inimitable
	inanimate
	mitigable
	by accident popped under earthquake
Ministers of government coiffed under anuses
Milky mouths
	jumping swore @ one another the
	disappearing heroine which causes despair
And there are some children who are always
whining and refusing and screaming at the
merest bump of the knee or anything

Inspired beyond adventure

	Massacre and desolation
	so many inappropriate tears

(eclipsing........)



small cards in Catalan
linguistic shit dip-out in conundrum
condom under drum
over witch-teat



Pablo showed up for a moment
made his greetings
took his coat off
laid down his bag

to all appearances
he was staying for dinner

in the hubbub of welcomes
the confusion with the baby
between the kitchen and the living room....
where’s Pablo I asked

confusion.  is his bike downstairs?
perhaps he’s making a call
searching for a bottle of wine
I dunno.  Je sais pas, moi
he took his coat
and went out the door



Why are you holding onto
this holy foreign object?

an alien life-form breeding
health throughout the universe

from whence does it spring,
this history of health
this talentless searcher

ever the vehicle
of inopportune imps

the slant of a letter
old stones in a graveyard leaning
last-stand before

	

conscious thought
imposes the sweet definition
of chaos	this hand
is so behind the eye
and it used to be keeping
up with the words in brain
but now it’s....
		blank



There should be
a happy demise
I surmise that this has since long ago
become mannered
and flabbergasted
storm•whistle
and blinking head light
rough in the wind
the infernal sea wind
warm and salty
He is the teacher with the shiny pate
once-proud lock now a pathetic straggle
against extermination
exterm a nation
does he feel that this
goon merits it

a kind of diary
slip-shod and dulled
a perfect dullard
cantankerous and weird
never wholly there
he senses his distance
even as he tries to broach
it

sometimes I can’t tell
if my....?

How can we transcribe that
delirious footnote

in the winter
a cold beer
in the summer
a cold beer
There are not hot toddies in store for us
Which forbidden dichotomy are you served,
   	     here
Long ago,
                     he said he didn’t
(his minarets
were broken
and the twat goddess		his giant (!)
the singing blade of		blue smurf
whoredom	stood
And like foul cretins		guard)
we dance upon their 
graves		graves		Snake•bite
	we had desecrated

	and already heading down along
	steep combat, a wanton diary
	of my ways

	Whenever I can tell of it, I
	I control myself w/bitter tears
	the pornographic telegraph of
	my heart sends reams of fish
	flying from my fingers and
	I am already way behind 
				the line....

Dissonance stance guard against
a rockin’ bod
they may not have the first step
down, but the third may come
more quickly if the river goat
arrives
festive Monday
a jolly good crack
and I’m sorry I left you in the lurch
that night but I had to sneak
off an kill a bitch

“gruesome murder shakes neighborhood”

and just how many otherwise “normal’
people are afflicted by this
malady?



We awaken to the sounds of war
telegraphed from a distance
they have an oscillating echo
as if heard thru a long metal tube



All the young dudes
  carry cans
Their cylindrical tubes
  the glint of the sun
  upon waves
iambic river of Lethe
the cinquefoil pulse of its flow

jump into the stream

She taught me to be ashamed 
	of my art
by the poor example
	of being ashamed
	by her own
[If only we knew what 
we were talking about]

Estor:  Sultan of Satanic
(his bulbous swing)



When the slow words fall down
and the devil refuses
to take the devil’s advice
the high-priest of nada
takes up with nihilists and fools
(con-artists, and artists)
noise-makers, and tools

coming across the birdbath
(otherwise known as the Pacific)
the metallic voice of Japan
coming across from history
a voice of black-and-white
sepia, even
dripping in slow crescendo
the hump-backed sun
which explodes into pus
many moons ago
as they say under the
imagined silver of the television
chomping at bulateen bits
(the squeaking door admits assassins)
their slow tread upon the stairs
the distant click of keys
tumblers thumping
a high-pitched ring like a fingernail on crystal

formidable
things:
rocks sent to space
the replacement of rings
scoffing
a laughter of tongues
(a slow riot)
1)	he was on junk
2)	he worked for a circus
3)	he can obviously think
4)	he circles up
a shark among guppies
who isn’t even a sm---

           
fortunate hell behind
the innocent error
they walk thru mirrors
their minions are legion
		ever-present
		effervescent
she did not occupy herself
with the end of a dark tunnel
and a nave is a cunt
and a narthex is a hip-set
(an oxen’s yoke)
(cock-a-doodle-doo)
the transept something hidden:
the second pair of arms
Lorraine was her name
they said she’d put out for anybody
that dogged hostility
she came across foggy
an underdeveloped picture
in a green forest in 1977
your memory of them is dim
you gaze @ your shoe and remember leprechauns

There is a Road in Spain
it is a kind of radio
people are there who
don’t wanna miss their chances
strange deltas vie with pregnant S’s
planes swarm across the sky
leaving instant cloud-welts
vapor trails some accuse of being
a kind of bubonic Raid®
some kind or aerosol equivalent
the entire continent being gassed

inoculated?
	His guitar cuts thru like memory rain
	not a particularly stunning departure
he thinks by adding tails he can add
dignity to the banal desperations teenage
girls muster
    (he is distracted by Mammon in the form of
     cheap humbucker)
Where was that memory (located)
We had so much fun together,
launched into improbable situations
by our own abstinence
    I fucked up........
& I’d much rather raise a kid with

 		    	you know the excuse
			and I cannot do it
			I have been consumed
			again and again love
Artificial				suffers
	   teardrop

no more banal tomorrows
I have a history to maintain
(we wonder why)
and get congratulated
how can we not think of how
Wayne Pickle in Zuzax,
his VCR and TV repair store going out
silly skills when to replace is
cheaper than to repair
He lived in Edgewood with his wife
and son.  His sister’s son lived
with them because both parents
had died of AIDS.
She had a horse and raised
German Shepherds.  They built a
concrete area and fed them all
the best food.  The children
usually ate hot dogs and white bread
in the kitchen then were sent to 
bed.
The boy who’d lost his parents
was sweet and doomed.
The younger was an odd egg,
innocent and charming,
incipiently weird.
Wayne was hospitalized, eventually,
with Crohn’s disease.
And one night, after surgery
he caught her in the lap of another
man, watching TV.
He moved into Albuquerque 
soon after.
Got a job as a mechanic
thru a pal,
eventually found a new lady friend
bought a truck
saw the children often

I lost touch....I had moved....
again....

Part 1 | Part 2]] | Part 3 | Part 4

See Also