THE LOST STEPS

THE LOST STEPS

Introduction

by Tristan Winter and Philip Newton

The following is a collaborative poem written automatically. That is, with each author inscribing as quickly as possible and without conscious consideration whatever hope or hell exploded in their minds in response to whatever the opposite collaborator had written just previously.

It was achieved through the debased medium of email, which turned out to be far more soulwracking than working together locked in a room, running amok and kicking down every door of the mind. Either arrangement can be gravely dangerous to writers, and this one slashed at our nerves with all the peril of a high-wire act, netless, and performed in a pair of two-man subs. And yet, six thousand miles of evil and nine hours of it distant, from the beginning the coincidences were uncanny; themes, acts of nature, quotidian mayhem threatening the job and even exact phrases poured through us simultaneously.

A further obstacle was our avoidance of the prose-poem format. This was determined, to my surprise, from the outset. After not having seen a poem from my colleague Philip Newton for perhaps a quarter century, I threw down a title and a challenge, to which he answered with the opening line of The Lost Steps. From there we naturally fell into a structure of alternating stanzas. Whoever opened a canto would also end it. By opening the canto, that author held the territory of all the unindented lines throughout it, the corresponding writer keeping his voice in all the indented lines. It was natural as well to alternate the opening/ending/ unindented pattern for the individual cantos. Thus, Phil opened and closed, driving flush-left, all the odd-numbered cantos, and I the even-numbered. It would’ve been impossible to construct this story any other way, as it was immediately obvious that it was, and could only be read as, a dialog, veering to duolog at divergent points.

Not merely because we had actively re-ignited collaboration, but because the scope -and emerging evidence of the honor of the voice and vision- of this poem proved with snarling indisputability the truths of our early lives, we decided early on (again simultaneously) to attribute its authorship to our first formal incorporation, The Baader-Meinhof Mutual Dog. In 1977, proposing an organisation with which to conduct cultural terror, I had suggested the name ‘Baader-Meinhof something…’ and Newton immediately completed it saying ‘Mutual Dog.’ -We have always worked that surely and rapidly in anything we’ve done as a team. I shall let Philip recount the genesis of that institution below, adding only that at the time he writes of we were both well-established in our fields -he as a stunning poet, myself as a painter and writer. I have continued my endeavors since childhood, while Phil has long added blues composer, singer and bandleader to his persona. Back then, among various anarchists, writers and artists, our peripheral collaborators included Hunce Voelcker, Andrei Codrescu, Pat Nolan, Gail King and others bemused to find themselves led into gigs by a couple of kids, who seemed intractably fearless.

-Tristan Winter

Minister of Defenestration, Baader-Meinhof Mutual Dog

President, Occidental Bureau of Surrealist Research

Northern California, 1976: It was the middle of the end of the beginning. The entire planet had descended into a solipsistic swamp of steaming narcissism fed with disco biscuits, cocaine, bad hair and auto-cannibalism: slick, vain, greedy and wretchedly, overpoweringly predatory. Everything was big, wide and broken. The blues was having a bad decade. The land itself seemed swollen and avocado-hued. Naugahyde textures and skin-hurting television assaulted us until the alcohol finally kicked in and colorless dreams marched along the cruel Viewmaster. We didn’t know whether to laugh or bury everyone and everything we had ever loved, and so we took the bus to humiliating places. Elvis had one year left to live.

My sister, Rebecca, was working at a bakery. You could smoke in places then. I smoked and drank coffee and decided for that moment not to drive my car into the Russian River. Becky told me about this guy who used to also take sacrament at the bakery. She figured this guy and I would have something in common, perhaps, if nothing else, similar symptoms. She was right.

Tristan Winter was sixteen. I was nineteen. We were both impossibly old and I knew with a shock of recognition that I had met my long-lost brother from Thessaloniki. In a feral state, I had been unwilling to accept the existence of humans or their children. The discovery then of a sibling at the Landhouse Bakery took on the odds of a sea turtle rising randomly in the Indian Ocean and emerging in the center of an orange life ring.

We discussed the whole surrealist pantheon. I marveled at his creations, he put up with my drinking and that was that: two lads with one Dada. It has pretty much continued that way ever since. We formed The Baader-Meinhof Mutual Dog during a jaunt to the coast in 1977. From the Evening of International Terror spectacle in 1978 to The Lost Steps in 2010, the Dog has been inviting the world to go screw itself. It has come as no surprise how willing the world has been to comply.

The Lost Steps is an exercise in automatic writing. The stanzas alternate from my opening to Tristan’s final words. Mr. Winter and I have had decades to mull and gather, weave and bob through the torrent of execrably mordant song and dance as what we thought could spin no lower has in fact done so in defiance of physics, self-preservation and any sense of decorum. Somehow, we still breathe fire. The result is this: unbowed, unhinged and absolutely at war, reflecting the perspective of a decades-long struggle of dream against fluorescent lighting. That is all I will say about it, and that’s far too much. I can only hope that you are as vulcanized as we were by the time the last line dripped molten from sizzling cranium to raging page.

-Philip Newton

Field Marshal, Baader-Meinhof Mutual Dog

THE LOST STEPS

c 2010

PHILIP NEWTON, TRISTAN WINTER

The Baader-Meinhof Mutual Dog

As I had started to tell you earlier

Karlheinz the butcher you saw him once

swinging aloft not a word for his wife

But I was just the cigarette girl

You got nothing on me

Peony stamens were strapped to the deaf

The blind ones making sausages

at us

Was it necessary to kill even their donkeys?

Moloch was everywhere

Even thus

Like magic each day came with a number

The prices went up over the course of the month

We heard of a sea

Terrible languid her hand gestures drowning

like leaves gossiping arguing laughing at jokes

Someone said impossible bells

There was no denying

It crouched waiting

Saturday night heaving downtown everyone leaping

from the coffins

I saw shards of glass a footprint

A single tear what meaning aftermath

of eternitys boogie: the Hominid Thwart

She was certain it was red

invisible thick enough to choke

Something came this way

The lawyers donned their stinking caps

And so the planet

which lived solely for another

one of fire, pure explosion

Ground hurled galloped shrieked

Mumbled numb the vespers

And we clung to our chilly sparks

Flesh it’s raining flesh we sang

Sotto voce sub rosa incognito in flagrante

Inside us we found black snails

red dwarves dead letters

And one ululation

Oblong hungry grinning

live ammo: bosunsquarksneutrinos

a can of Snap-E-Tom

Hold your fire hold your water hold your tongue

Franny said there were things best not

felt or ever born

Not the tumbril nor the blade

The wish to see the sky again

for sky once seen is ever for

And heaven blackened as she hung without a thought for us who loved her

There were as if to mock us

Fountains of ochre water

Burnt umber

Grease pencils

One trouble clef

connotions of worship we dug from the ground

kohlrabi, nards, a childish streak

Not a dry seat in the house

Even from this distance we all knew the wheel was broken

It leaned at an obtunded angle all

crusted with diamonds the stench of massacres enlivening devalue

The millionaires sang and danced with the cancers

What a show what a show we

dreamed home of mama

Got a hole in me pocket

lightyears away

and shadowing me still

Like my own beggar

It was winter

The coldest I can recall

We had to break off our words

Consumel was always sick

A harmonica retched

There remained only time

to write the names of our ancestors

Magnets attached to our temples

etched the inescapable course

I tell you we jump Boss

We jump

To preclude any accusations

the dogs wore golf pants

We wrapped our heads and painted directions on our legs

for by then we’d burned the long ships

We were told of a mountain

I had a little burro

He stared at me most censoriously

Hoof it Sancho.

Some thought it was election day

Others thought it was funny to make corpses appear in the sewers

Ralph muttered Black Damascus under breath

stinking like the urinals of hell

shuffled down long dead streets empty light hands of stone no mas

Panzers roaring through the harem

Crepuscular I ran

with the dog and the ferret

Away was the way

Put a little of this on the pustule

It will stop the running

Lurks the day when we all will be white

They let you do what you like

before they shoot

But the kisses are full of magnesium

and something dead cool

In a line we had forgotten

how we came

Perhaps smuggled across the heavy river

from a land of end and endless

where they were not above torturing families to maintain influence

Sun on the tombs

We rested

traded bread for tourmaline prayers

trees seethed

fierce and thought

eternal present

manna proud harassed

by winged melons

Having nothing to lose

we established the first of several

drowning pits

The franchise would benefit and

we pushed over one of the old ones

in what has since been hailed as a move towards victory

Hard shellacked hooks grasping porcelain

Does the roach feel something like hope?

Margaret went to Iowa

We ate our forks waiting

Those days we carried our own forks you see

although the winds had kicked our teeth in

we knew what abortions

we’d be what silver crimes

comprised our songs

The light when it dies

makes the faintest chime

Penumbra overture

II.

Garcia stepped up to the trench and thought quickly

of oranges

One leaf fell

The blood wed

and Voelcker vanished half over the bridge

An eel

Rose

Stone

We got too big for our skin

Something nosed in the ooze

Chupacabra sightings all

we had

passports from the Sideman Nation

Tell me burrito

Is it true what they spoke of in the market

that you know your groceries

that you produce hams for that one there?

Sing the termitarium

look as deeply as you can

We are every one on a crash diet

Splintered coalesced transmogrified

Mother behold your sons

Their slow debridement

sloughs the candle

Ophelia saved from drowning

dehydrated

cobra eyed with plans I tell you

Look Morty

no one loves a poet

If we’re doing our job they hate

our every cell, even the mitochondria

which just happened in

Poor bastards

Enlightenment

from citadels of the lycanthropic

self ordained:

First we kill all the artists

Of course now we just

get them to kill themselves

and we collect the royalties

But taking the broad view

nobody should have two good testicles

until everybody has one

Descent into a maelstrom

A turn of the screw

Hair wafting beneath the sea

amidst the eyes an emerald sun

If you stand still

you can hear them calling

each to each

Lourdes said

Neon sharks forgotten flowers starfish breathing liquid night

Pulpo Paolo reading dreads his eight

breasts mumur preview preview

dreaming silts my coral heart

Parthenogenesis

in the modern sense of marrying the moon

or throwing two lions into the river

The girls of summer curl and uncurl

dreaming of mild infidelities

doot doo doo doo wah

remotely disturbed by the far

more interesting

life of a cloud

Something moved

The back of my eyes

ignited groaned snapped and

erupted snakes with armpit heads

Your children will be born hungry

with incisors

A nurse is called for

Now quickly put your feet

into this paper bag

to enjoy the most exquisite agony

He could never be sure

but he suspected he was

following someone

It was all too much like screaming at flies

Although in the end he realised

they were probably just trying to sell him insurance

The ghost of Jimmy Reed

grins with

ten pound tombstone teeth

Freed of his marital responsibilities

he digs his nails into bottles

and curses every parasite

whose asthmatic vapors pollute

his drunk sainted memory

Heilige wut

Intestinal colors steaming up into the nets

ladderswrenchesplatingsplanks

I think the x rays are too

ravenous here

spittoon

the airplanes cover us in fire

one lonely piano in a distant room

sings the all night souls to sleep

brave and useless

The fish eats the eye

The eye in the fish

Drag the river

Drag the river round Ma

Drag the river this way Ma

Gimme some water

I’m drowning in parchment

Riparian time

9 o’clock post mortem

This machine fits snugly

into your secrets

levels the stairs behind as you mount them grinds

the glass you make

of others

tastes just like chicken

Razor winds no longer feel their own pain

I am standing I can hear the

ones departed near my face

What hidden tribe

Reuben Gad and

Half of Manasseh

groping gripping griping

reaping the whirlwind

Their names the only

poems

left alive

III.

Little children get on board

This train is bound

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh

The forests flee

Let’s laugh

as the porcupines

prostrate themselves

Steel snaps and nickel

parts with a lonesome howl

The oiler sleeps

Was it before me

or it was Vienna

That fresh scrubbed face those laquered

eyes like anxious scallions

Tom the baker’s son

took his sister to the mill

Sometimes it’s better not to know

I for an I

truth for a truth

Don’t panic

we do this sort of thing

all the time

Hold still

Endocrine rubes

Their woeful song of joy

Pointing: This is a telephone

Plaster here

Better to forget this particular

mark

The bulls wander home

She cooks, her hair is up

It seemed she only had one plate

For all the world one

Ignoring the claw rakes on the wall

smiling as sampans cheering crossed the room

She screamed crawl space

Who would have imagined that

even out among the stars we

would still be on our hands and knees

No citizen can any longer be expected

to know every law

hoarded by professional manics

Matters not you stand convicted

Relax

The yellow birds follow home the moon

Daily

levitation our sole hope

and chore

Feats don’t flail me now

Came the lords of the underworld

with epaulets wings of slaughtering angels

killing for rank

Generals prolong the race propitiate their gods

with an entire history

of human sacrifice

They happened upon us unaware

Wave upon wave until we were no more

My marrow beckons

A cipher moves in a London bank

The preacher lets you

look into the bag

The phosgene words the cacomorph glee

squelching

through sanguinous swamps the jagged

defiles of instant credit everybody talkin’ bout

Manny’s ass implants

And I decided this

That I would not fear them

They should fear my

vagrant heart

When I turn

look out

Dogs burn statues walk

carnadine mothers grow moustaches ask

so this is the end

Thanatos says give me time I’ll have to think it over

El Grito listen

the very thing which

gnaws your gristle

brings ridiculous gifts

We have taken the lounge

A junior mastadon

exorcisms nasturtiums nightletters

Eggplant

A small disc will suffice

We scrape a bit of this

from that your dearest tube examine

it for digital

currencies

spatialtemporal black reflections

of that which you imagine to be hope

But you were wrong about that

Car decides to chortle

There’s nothing you can do but

spread that joy baby

Snarling porkchops in the cellar

Munich next can’t afford to lose

I wear a white shirt sorry

and the floor that hideous floor

Cracks squeeze themselves

into cracks

Look out, Bobo

This thing’s gonna

lay bare the peplum

handcuffs and large bacteria

like giraffes

Canter to Oakland

Anoint your sword

in black water

He found himself suddenly before the world

trying to explain the weather map

The cities burned

She darned our socks

A whole war was waged

in saucers

Someone slipped on the remains

brought the house down got us all fired

We have no more day we live on this corner

counting cops and imbeciles

Oh ye blasphemers

the day comes when you would

sell your auntie just to smell this sandwich

The difference between right and wrong is I forget

my own shadow

You can’t play my blues child

They were written in the veins of the planet

The story will burn you alive

IV.

Prague 3 a.m. fogs pass towers blowing

through me like your name

Which is all

and alone

Calls me across any time any space

Nothing was done to clear the docket

We bore the weight of stricken souls

Vapor futile tea moldy carbon

Redheads from obsidian days

wet no one moves

Ask anybody their name

Hallways legs dead black legs

grinning

away

Unguentine makes everything more bearable

Carry the nights of edible moons

dolphin memories

pinelone calls

I the child

of inescapable logic funnel

statistical era

ruthless relentless pity

Hoarse renderings

Seeds and trammled rosehips

A paper bird flew into the fire

First time all spring I’ve been warm

How I longed to comfort you

He will be undone before

the who lives here

Periodically ventriloquist dummies wander in

complain the milk’s gone bad

Flee to Hebron

There another waits

glances under the camel

and begins to shake

Orange translucent

Indigo scratch

They approach like lovers

damaged beyond words

Wall to wall

no one comes

If this is now

where are the rock paintings

Carnitine befriends

the whip draws

there

standing

microscopic brine shrimp to thunderous underwater applause

resulting in tsunami which four hours later devastates Kantuki Prefecture

O hero shrimp sizzling in the spotlight

says thankyou

for this oppotunity to introduce my plankton

We find ourselves lost

Volunteers someone said

in the dim hours before the bell

we toss

when That One walks

gathering robes of sadistic contentment

human skins vacuumed bellies hammered minutes

seeped in lye and stamped

with Office

We expect complete compliance

even with laws which we have yet to write

No not that one, stop

Are you wealthy with hair

A love of your own or

are you shiny from autopeculation

Do you have sufficient red meat in your diet

We keep the children in

cool sheds

Truck, Hairball and little Trichinosis

all ripe now we taught them

how to steal and sell

Neighbors this is

how we spell enterocoelomates

per Deuterostome

Needles snow leopards

tiny colored countries

the Residence abandoned

those fucking things left on the lawn

This rind is yours

Clean your fingernails

Your cousin will be here for dinner

She had a voice like a granite venus

so I kept going back to buy things

I now have twelve rosewood caskets

who call me daddy

My name is Hechspittle

This is my corner

That is my bit of

hardened dream right there

I guard the soaring city of oysters

I write the names of everyones’ everything

(naming is Adam’s job, after all)

My name’s in my head

In the unlikely event

she bit the cigar

in Siracusa took another sip of bourbon

pulled five big ones from her horse

and said let’s put it all on the table

Garlic is always a good choice

Lourdes is back for seconds

Saintly pungence

Exremely unctuous

sage and

valorous we

experience

ourourour

honeycomb minds our trapdoor lives

In the fall we go to the mountains

where our animals graze

The Druse are troublesome

We had to drive them off

We’ve been told the islands have fallen

The tropics call

Aloha Akbar

When Midian was full of copper

what did we get but more little bowls

and a few charms

I tell you, those dogs

are holding out on us

Send Maria

with our hovercraft shoes

The lotus towers in my spine

I have absolutely no way

to get there from here

I want to sleep

I want a dream

that does not involve

clowns

Midnight bells in Algeciras

she remembered spoke of ships

we see because they can’t be seen

with her legs with the voice of a great big woman

gave me her hands of opal and amethyst

said leave me with you now

if there were only a window

we could fall out of

Seeking absent lines

the enormous butcher heaves

his trunk towards St. Paul

The remaining crew stayed down

and the one with the goiter

tested the edge

with a solitary tooth

Awarded the Nobel Prize

for littoralture when he was five

Gave up drinking the next year

and went on to produce a series of dark

disturbing jazz

gestures behind people’s backs

Zone repulse ratchet gun

threw all we had

no luck

Last

blue salt

Wait

Insects preening on a mirror

the fires too beyond our jurisdiction

Gassed trussed tossed

That’s how it is in a poor land

only bannana beer some root

inching down

A slow death

but crunchy

Like the hum of chitinous noon

The long future lesson

Take a look at them feet

Yeah

All aboard baby

in heaven there is no

place for poems

My orant is splayed

Supplicatory

Crying tree

Cover me

Bad real bad the TVs

run hulking through the streets

like sumo wrestlers

You have to know what you want

Ike liked pie and ice cream

I plan to run this

like a business

Using cargo cult scrip

staging mass trials

carve the word choice into kids’ scalps

with every third purchase and

a subscription to the Subcutaneous Natch

That fucking goldfish

has me right where he wants me

Tumbling through odium

Ripping at hawsers

Sawing my leg off to defend myself with

Laughing Flux Yous

This too I must leave

Soapdish of the damned

Pulling fibroids still

pissing on the prompter

I have a little boat

Rock me baby

Get up

chase the yaks out

and get in that corral

Because sarcoid dread

wrestles me mute

I keep dreaming of her

I asked her for water and she

gave me lipstick jelly

Same fuming exultation

Can you see if her feet are still on the floor

sorting pyrites

It was said and true

There’s more ass than horse here

The small motors grind

Everything is improved

to the point of unviability

Shovelling stars out of my yard

Some still smoking mind you

lying blasted all around me

spasming trees and cornedbeefs screaming

O junker class give us

one last chance

A pernicious seagull

strung the guts from here to there

and we ate for a week

You have to know when to

push away from the table

That would be

now

lookin cute

in my wooden suit

Observe, Sister

the crusted arch

the mangled synapse

the elegant proposal

wrapped in tattered plasma

The mustard sky the black chattering mountain

of scorpions each

stabbing itself to death

The titan hands pulling open the ground

With no heed for personal safety

the men made shift for the outer islands

An eye fell, then two, shattered

disgorged on

forgotten banks of shells

memory heaped cold

served well

Rectilinear

Tangled tactile shores

A low uninterested singing the worst you could imagine

We’re stuck here Dad

I keep pushing orbs

Far down the mildewed shaft

a pressed duck groans

I had never been in a building before

Helots paper cups notaries livermice

sputum tests

Leeches knee deep slopping from the rafters

Marketing rhizomes

Yves was one with my Indian mind

In the dry cave you are safe

Near enough to sense the ocean

but the caliph doesn’t come here

He has no need

If you survive

her dark hair will be worth killing for

Your children will avenge your shame

Piled up kine made a sort of bunker

Chuck and Weenus in fungus fatigues

solemnly donned their colander helmets

issued threats and demands

into a radio made of Spaghetti-O cans

Weenus the one with the poultry-shaped cranium

Who would have guessed that

of all the possible suns

This one would enchant us

coruscation cystoblast corazon

Each day etched before

there were days

Home

VI.

Here now the hour of white shadows

You will hand everything over to strangers

In a lane of the forest

a gantlet of spades

Mushrooms

Sister Rosetta rotates

Sitting on knowledge

is a flesheating plague

I know you

You were there

every prognathous moment

every burst aching membrane

when the red dwarf buried Louise

and we invested in menthol and heroin

poured into the stadiums

to be millions

To stagger launching wreckingballroars

To break the skies

for rock and roll Hitlers

One egg falls on its sword

A boot raising hob

The softest ones always win

When the loin lies down with the lambchop

prepare to receive

a punch on the luncheon

Mark the day

It was here we laid it down

and let them take it all

Write it in the quarterly losses

We put a contract

out on ourselves

Hey watch this

They would epiphenomenal so threatened many caesuras

usurers neither hormone chorale braying for

someone offence masked extinction reasons

gullible loneliness every fire do not want you

desire sink treachery legal entertainment dust by cowardice conniving

not their fault too near the balcony

Moo

said the dog and

Gautama on the road

beyond protein fire

suddenly saw with kaleidoscopic eyes

of the flies midworld around him

Cake is not cake

Just because I’m smiling

doesn’t mean you’re safe

Without another word

Ibrahim took a fork to the road

Laid disinfectant

Busted out the casino

and lo home again for

his connubial asskicking

If this place was on fire

I’d send you back in for the Crisco

If that ain’t loving you

you don’t know what

great service at a low price is

really all about

sugar

Silence now black

curtains part

What has my blood to do with anything

Born like shark slurry thrown onstage

Obtain radium my fellows hiss

And we women we love you for that

Always

see, we can make eternity

a dirty word

Look: misdirection

Badgers?

We don’t need no steenking badgers

The sign says

Identity theft and purple perpetuity

I walk

to Sperlonga

It’s the cost of doing bizniss

You just need a place to rot

reduce your intellectual property

and cut your overhead

smells like lemon drops

Fare niente, amico

the cats

stroll in and out

between the bars

I opened the gates of hell

and was surprised to

find it airconditioned

with a place for shoes

Couple turnstiles

lots of pinatas for some reason

and that guy who says he’s only been drunk twice

in his life

that he remembers

However

there I was

The Big Top at last

No more beauty thank god just

primordial loathings die people on the floors

you have pounded

nonono I’m getting rich

It’s disconcerting when he says

“Just you and me, kid”

But we really like that lady

all decked in leather

who orders businessmen to clean her toilet funny

they like her too

Waited on a bench kicking cinders

scratching my sores with potsherds

gave up and began wandering

free to roam about the cabin

Passed an ugly pianist

and a Parents’ Day game

Babies being kicked over goalposts

Camel’s hair brushes

lovely blank canvass

silver palette knife

tubes full of cold macadam

wringing screams

You are what you urn

The empty quarter beckons

The dark banks on dark canals

at home with the otters

and croaking things

I saw Hank

and Hank was smiling

A hircose still life

compulsive yet unsatisfactory

the stars in his teeth spelling

we are in Pakistan

forced to grapple with maggots

I am the blasted face

I am the captured infant

I am the green tortured blade

falling to the moon

We approach you could not say glaciers

We are outside in white forever

the world a paling maw

No sky to keep the skin warm

we’ve donned our bodies inside out

We cannot speak this blinding infinity

Across the snows we search moaning

a single speck

fleeing for us

VII.

We were all surprised

when the week ended

and no new Sunday arose

The roach wrangler

the foley artist

the gargoyles the Lobster Queen

crawling down the freeway

Ready

Fire

Aim

New confrication needed to be found

since everyone could no longer

give each other day jobs

Rub me baby

Rub me all night long

Now that was a real cosmetologan girl

in some real hip waders

Lost we were in the labyrinthian sewer

of Time looking

for fabled albinos

the Silent Ones distinct from clocks excreta

Move does not move

I displace this soup

I am the great

gurgle

Inside information

is dream we sought reverse

emanations found discarded limbs

perfumed voids laborious hope

hot carp

The dwarf makes

another appearance

assesses with a crafty eye

the angle of refraction

and plunges the dirk up to the wrist

The bedouins were going the other way

Two four and one in faith

It’s a dim chamber

Aunt Carol sits in the overstuffed chair

Her bones are listeria and masonite

Her smile is leviathan

If you look in her eyes

you hear the planet

groan on its axis

The crackling of molten pupae we call

the core

Pinocchio or mathematics

were ideas

our youth could march proudly to

Tusk

Bratwurst

Ape of the valley

Who are these people what do they want

What the hell are all those hairs

You’ll eat it

you’ll eat it and you’ll like it

It was as though many insane

bartenders had been hired

The customers were thinking Masada

would be funnier than this

We plugged this thing in heh heh

What does it mean

when the walls start smoking

We Frenchmen say

Urinal lot of trouble

Can’t get an airway

She kicks the rubber ball

and giggles

I hovered above

the crowd forgotten petitions

Idly watching

my untied shoelace

Weeks weakend years satellites burning out in shame

Half the world tasted politely of course

galore I am of the opinion

not that I would know such is my view now chrome

I can sell my earwax on the black market

for real money

Even in prison I will eat well

and be very popular

Bizim inegöl köfte

from peripheral inquiries

struck the mother

lode the defining

ether ore

Maurice trudged the last few steps to the door

thinking of peace and meat globes

The satchel he carried weighed 465 kilos

and was chained to his gonads

They are running me ragged

Here’s an idea let’s marry an orangutan

and try to maintain order

I mean, complete bullshit is far better

than unfinished bullshit

and that monkey really swings

Likes sitting in the tub

roasting mickeys and screeching

The Naked Cowboy Song

Klaus told me not to do it

But I could not resist the knuckle rubs

Played the plunger like an angel man she

owned me like a corndog

And who could forget that night in Milwaukee

The wire the Proust the ocarinas

and the five gallons of warm canola

The kingdom of Petra

spelled music

as viridian dignity

We said there is nothing as blue as blue

and nothing more eternal than

that place where the rock meets heaven

But the defenestration resulted

in a less poetic scion

Digitalis grows in East Chorea

Asbestos gums

and pit vipers

The Trojan vole

Lying around we found infinite death maracas

decorated with personality

Another putrid pyramid we think is a monument to memory

at age twenty

Come a little closer Maria

Your skin shines like a gondola of burning grapes

and your hair speaks in whispers

My breath is fecund

my tongue scabrous

my lips have cracks that could swallow Venus

for I am old

But my heart will beat a few minutes

longer for you, nire flaming akume

And water I loved

with all my sight

Imperious cobalt singing with a thousand brilliant eyes

The breadth of it like a wife

We took to the ships

Some of us kept going

breathing the winds of distant suns

seeking the fingers of God

regretting nothing

except the sickle in the wheat

Flight unquestioned

soundless We

had like clouds

each other

Coelacanth muse

With nothing to hinder it

the cancer will race straight to your brain

You just want a milkshake

and I will fetch it

Yes I’ll have one too

I’m not sentimental about these things

It’s a stakeout

too long we’ve wanted to start

the flow of oxygen

Charred breasts for everyone

Until morning comes

Nothing says dinner

like torn and noisome connective tissue

The country was suffering

a cold slaw

and a virulent outbreak

of sauce itches

If you don’t stop picking at that

it will never heel

Now go

Get some sea legs

We couldn’t think up any sports although

we had axes bling and ichor

gouting from our noses

a froth of ricey things teeming inside our skirts

and a wineskin named Ireneo

discharged after only three days on the job

We crossed 700 time zones that day

swift and glabrous

Altitude: 2′ 6″

The words on the box made insulting comments

about finding enough to eat

What could we do without something called a thing

Carbon, I cried

The stones seemed so dense

but a close shave revealed bones

which I discovered were mine

The wedding is at 5:00

Butrous plays the oud

VIII.

It was the silos I wondered about

Empty far fields

rolling into an enormous past

I turned sailed off

Iridescent grains

within

They called me the Black Sea Pearl

Everything was cracked

What wasn’t cracked was broken

What wasn’t broken was smashed

What wasn’t smashed was splintered

What wasn’t splintered was crushed

What wasn’t crushed was chewed

and eaten with a side of carbolic

The uprising was reduced to a flea circus

My job was handing out wahwah pedals

to every mentally ill person

between Warsaw and Macao

It is far easier and far cheaper

to get the poor to shoot each other

Suicides are even better

as they save on court costs

Prescriptions may be had

direct from the Supreme Logothete

Rachel sees

people in elf suits

screaming

Throbbing cerulean raccoon squalls

The steaming light siphons all

warmth we’re doing it

all with skunk tears

Tie everything down

A brown front comes

ripping

In the trenches molten eagles

Cottonmouth opera

Listen: a cello made of crows

playing life backwards

Antonio Vivaldi

Wilson Pickett rococo

can make you sweat just sitting there

The nude ascends

and I’m looking for a dropcloth

Vienna, Cafe Havelka I pissed

in the same trough

as Trosky

They brought birnen schnaps unasked with the coffee every morning

Ice picks were also on the house

And on the abandoned street at noon

from either end approached the two

rivals for the title of village idiot

not even this town being stupid enough for two of them

Although there were many outraged husbands

and the odd blonde musing for a bruising

a wrenching noise

like the title of every honorable house in Medina

tearing loose from the deed

Nakba came the cry of my loins

Headless chickens trampled the entire joint

Shimmering fallout came metallic

evilsharp prismatic poison

Before our moment despooled homoerotic Hollwood S&M films whipping

past in stultifying agony

officers sidekicks girlies foreign dudes

teenage coconuts

Major enemas of the State

sniffing for that bottom line

In Casablanca I was Monsieur Winter at the El Shigella nightclub

Each evening for me and the Saudis

martial rythms would leap out of darkness overlaid

with reverbed strings plangent vocals like snot

depending and the star would grin stupidity begin hand flimpering

They call it a floor show

because it imparts the selfsame joy

as writhing around in a pool of one’s bodily fluids

pouring out in a final mortal gush

I lay down in utter exhaustion

which is almost the same

as salvation

because down here

on a giggle sub

atomical level

one can say what

a thing is in exactitude

or where a thing is but not both

We only become the two by thinking

The glancing blow is our only

opportunity to transcend the butcher shop

Charnel waves

My peek into you will alter everything

I am not Eye

Eye is not I

sayeth the Lord

Just lucky I guess

The one with the fish hook skin

laps the crimson puddle

and waits

beneath the diving board reflections blinding

azure pewter what’s my name

He worries because freedom is dangerous

rejoices as that must mean he is brave

Small evil is the most deadly

most frequent and numerous

Noun verb adjective

Come to my breast she says

My milk is full of razors

And weevils with a prize

Efficacious and holesome

Peppino took my coat to have it mended

The shopping carts mass

and deploy in echelon

chrome spume flung

run wires

three inches in

We turn on our heels

but the game is up

The dogs flee the city

flaming with the manic rush for land

However it started you can be sure that

Lorenzo will finish this bastard

with a style all his own

Oh yes

A graphite carnival and

toothsome balloon-based dinners

will serve as kick bags

Down at the docks someone said scum

There were bugs as big as spleens whole cows

in the dumpster mountains

of almonds dates daylight moons

To preserve his love

he had to burn some goat

hair and an innertube quick

Fluorescent tomb

Marbles lost grow souls and molars

seek vengeance

Youth is not to be pitied

Youth is to be exfoliated

Youth is to be weaned

with pins and vinegar

The hole in your rib

a miners strike

in ritual baths

Make an appointment

Build a new parliament

I think I slit my throat

Masks the size of trees were dancing

A tattered gypsy shirt flew

atop the ziggurat

I will tell you the meaning of pity

To extract the last drop of dignity

remaining in the ark

To stand on the neck of the humiliated ptarmigan

To pluck if possible

the yolk of mercy

out of the dead ox eye

that is the meaning of pity

The streelamps lustral sobs

sifting down upon our heritage: garbage

Chuck it there

wait for the cream to sour

wait for the daisy to

rampage with a double bass bomb

If you are patient enough

your enemies will decompose at your feet

and you won’t have to lift a toe.

Mercury load the rains have come

Termagant vitriol degaussing us

Others’ memories we see through touch

lips on eyes fist in mouth

Voltage scorching through substations induction motors the snarling grid

shaking transformers blowing insulators spitting corona

discharges

Copper songs scream malversions

staggering heavenward pylons pylons

How may we help you

IX.

She broke into her own house

moving with fear and purpose

She wanted to look out the windows

that was all

Only her shadow registered

on the security cameras

There were zero emissions

Sugar Pie DeSanto was in the basement

sensing pixilation what the hell smoking camels

little demons disported

beneath the rug

This kind only comes out

by prayer and fasting

Man and Lunette made noise

enough to scare the pigeons out of the house

The door was open her face in the toilet

which they would flush every few minutes after hothot cries of ecstasy throughout the afternoon

Rollo was painting the ceiling a color called Nietzsche

Wolf the dog hammered nails into Inge’s head as she slept

and just then Earlene called having found the body

of a foreigner

Indolent

Rasping

container ships

diamond blades sparks

light the whole seedy mess

If Bill comes, make him dance

Bill dances good

He does one called the cornhole stomp

We’re cooking this juke as fast as we can

I knew it those plaid pants

were crazy to get down they were all over

Have some mandolin canape´s

The kids were playing price tag

with spears we wrote the holy father

about cooties but

it was one of those things

He just said “gimme the feesh. I wanna feesh.”

When he shot every lemur in Fleishacker Zoo

we figured it was time to take in his shorts

Some appendages just won’t let go

Theophania kicked the terrarium open

I’m sick of these snakes she screamed I want veal

next we played body count and another

limousine drove down the hall hooray with

Rupert and Shashlik Rupee

If we had only given them a little more rice

we would not be taking this here ride

45 times around the dining room

asking about my amygdala

expectorations new transmisions

It might have been a simulation

Practice taking rides on my love pony

The leetle pinto with the copperhead forelock

and then again she finds the brisket

still whinnying still charging for the privilege

naturally

Comes the morning, we starve but are happy

No one can beat us

No one

Uncle Bicuspid shimmers in the corner wondering

whom he might best

sell to the Feds

Get away from that cenotaph

Don’t throw that switch

Lights out lights on hey let’s change the ending

That there be no breaking in or going out

Deborah is my judge

for this turkey shoot it’s

black tie please on the raft of Medusa

Those southern boys they keep on rolling

The night porter explains

We’re all carnies

Horse says I see life as basically

circular

ballerinas waltz him through our whirlpool palace

You see, that goldfish

is the happiest creature on the planet

A battering ram

of pure revenge

I don’t see the glass

I don’t see the furniture or the sun waves

Your dreams are a joke

It’s like this:

you are drowning

I wish I could help you.

spit out those chains

Most people still paint with their feet

Stalked every step by hiphop cyborgs

we hear over the chorus of grinders

dark Circes

suicide plumbers who believe they’re divine driveby

shootings janissaries guard our gardens of lead

Choppers veer around the room

delivering us

the Official Snack

Is it too late to drink

It is very important to take this very seriously

Let’s set the bed on fire

the minute you believe

you are in some serious shit

We never intended for this to work

and we will work hard to be sure it does not

Let’s set the fish on fire

Dervishes ignite

cuneiform chairs for

autopsies

Deadmen’s hats strew

eyeshadow beaches

jackals gorging on your haunches

Everclear for scheming mommies with clowncar vaginas

Sonnyboy said

There ain’t but one way out

Little Rose rattled her rings

and sat down to gnaw a femur

We try to keep her indoors anymore

but it makes it difficult to explain the disappearances

Here, just watch your step

We played bumper tanks in the craters through

this world baffled with laundry hanging

off the battlements seawalls forts and cannon

starvelings chanting like sticks surround us

outside behind a city of satellite

dishes our masters lick clean their dentures

Itzvan flayed a donkey for coldcuts over the sofa

We are in the entertainment business

If you are not entertained it is entirely your fault

I suggest a body transplant

There

That one

The popeyed kid

circumcised by 12 angels

the strapless positive platitude

the Varronian civil theologians

Hamburger Jenny making them walk the plank

bowels tied to the Kelvinator

All those from Macon, Georgia

And Arthur Cravan inside the wardrobe

hollering at us to turn it up

It’s all about the boxing

I’ll do handstands on the rail

You wear that sharp pinafore

We’ll make the dog make us make the dog

do funny things

Splendid

Diurnal

Without a doubt the fattest fete I ever did

This will have their skirts up

Cheerleaders offgassing tearing vair

(Butter up your udder cup)

No smoking lots of cookie riding

on this game toucans

diving through the portholes

sing songs of the beast manatees form

a redsea mowing

carpets making prank calls the elevator man

Mr. Otis Regrets

we must ascend the Lost Steps

Catch ourselves passing echoes

Lacquered concrete

I’m looking for the man who shot my faux pas

This glaze designed to blind

Everything hurts but the black water’s rising

snarls at our shins like one hundred drunk puking caimans

Go go go go gogogogogogogogogo

And then the iron door shrieks

The sun already beats on

countless roofs waving dissolving

It’s time

As in amber

strong as a dung beetle

and handsome like me

winningly wrapped

in the back of the car

Steady thrum of blood

but not blood

perhaps acetone

The onyx wheels roll

Effulgence of brain

becomes sky

Archipelagos of girls’ silhouettes

sashay singing through the waves

off for more colorful lands

My courage failed me

Nonetheless I saddled the yoke and pulled

Tough woody brush screwed itself skyward

heedless of the weevil

and the boring guests

weary visions wriggled from the rents

and I was satisfied

I’d kept my talking valises

which held some scarves and the gold

olive oil of my journeys

Some burning churches

and a slice of mirror for signals

Me and Blind Willie just got back from Canaan

He never stopped bugging people the whole time

and damn near got us crucified

ass over teakettle

Cicadas crickets locusts toads

Stars dropping over the fertile scythe

Once the water is in your lungs an ovine

colossus enters the heart and that

spanselled steed sobbed and signified

if we might ever know The Dream

called The Chaste Chicken’s Wedding

Ma plucked the last of the fall hamstrings

and they were pressed for later

ma wears them well

The dry season comes

with rakes and tubers

Magnolias ravens Parma violets my love

Ironic Man and Captain Precambrian

led the mourners

to avenge our sessions

in humiliation therapy and in avuncular deference

to Baudelaire, Remus and Maturin

sang the Song of the Seine

But come what will

my heart will always belong to

the girl with the Mona Lisa bile

They came in the night of course

They asked me the poncho weaver

how long this shit would go on

I spit out a salamander and answered a ponchos time

You people don’t understand there are no more names

look at the shotgun houses the shades

the lottery tickets the trees you can’t speak the

guts you don’t feel

the puberty you live for the safe

you blew

boars’ heads slavering over electric dining room chairs

the blackened grout the bleeding shoes dancing by themselves

laying smears you couldn’t ever erase

As much as you race to erasure

this intensive care unit

to this

one

spot

where you can never be

where you will have to remain

Morally frontloaded with rockabilly spies

pimp your tzatziki buzzards circling be a star

the mark of the Dog on Hollywood Boulevard too many buttons push stupid

and it appears on your

gravestone

your lump sum

soil

Land Phil

Tattooed chariot rotting ape

Alone we love the fear and debility which makes tyrants

We carry our corpses with us dragooned

into murder as CEO or wage slave human freight

for my ancestors gentials geography

Cartaphilus I lived

a search for the Mayan face

velvet

doeskin

kindness

which never was woman I am on a train

out of you

It’s 11:59

We trundle through aching sweatlands

tearing iron

burning willow barbershops okra

Smokestack lightning calls the little bitty boy

derby on

With a retrograde moan the wet moon lifts her blemished eyes

and the panic in your pancreas is nothing

nothing like the stark howling horror you will know when I say

I love you

Like turquoise ghosts of caves evening gowns of squirming flame indanthrene

blue and luscious madder

Ford sent his thugs to batter

the knights of labor in the Battle of Overpass

and the black hand surrounded sooty theaters in Indiana

where our fathers and mothers who dared to fight for bread and boots

were trapped and shot

then given easy credit

Those same fine haired sons of bitches have done thus always

Niggajewboyragheadcripplespic

We have to rent shoes even when we’re not bowling

the chamber of commerce invites you to shower and

the Klan passes out free cheese

Did someone call me schnorrer?

Hellohellohello my chitlins this is

your family

o man you’re kidding

these are your friends

ah shit no come on

your wife o fuck o no o help me anyone

MATTER OF ULTIMOST IMPOTENCY

I AM INTERCOURSING WITH YOU CONFIDENTIAL

TELL NO ONE SERVICE GIRL HAILLIE DUBIOUS

but meanwhile

we have a problem

culture is finite

Willie Dixon for President I’m going

to the Nile Delta back in time and

scrape my plate

into that slut’s pool

You think you got plagues

We will all be stoned to death

with rocks or costs

All things great and small

on a stick

On the bayou

The Insecurity Forces are hunting my mojo

Saxophonists caudal at this door

Neighbors, I advise you to wait at the corner

Wait at that corner, neighbors

It’s only at the corner that you will find that thing worth waiting for

Get off the damn couch

Just get off and get

your ass down to the corner

We are handing out intelligence assessments

Here comes that red dwarf again a bottle

of white port in his head as you

had started to say hear the terrapins soflty

this eye that eye

Parquet ebola

The crawling beard

We have that tonic which will cure your wellness

We have the curried lamb

We have the basket and the chartreuse siren

Also we have these little shoes

that belonged to your brother

whose head they dashed against the prow of the ship

taking us to China and away from trouble in the mountains

God sent us away so that Aunt Josefina could gather up

the little girl babies of Shanghai in her strong, tender arms

Melanippe kissed us before we were born

Knew Aeolus would gift Chichikov

four

bags of winds to steer him home while our hearts lay buried booming building

in the Thessaly of our common mind

From the sky I grab the fly

paper says next week in concert always next week

Osip Basarov and Chicken Devine

live at San Quentin

(Laughing solo by Guy Fawkes)

heist on his own petard

pieces handed out, sacraments

vitreous relics

the great ossuary

which is my city

marvelous white and utterly silent

She summons us now with a pale hand

down to the Balkans

to go to rehab and fix all this

Two daring old men on this shattered trapeze

Low on the food chain marquee trombone you

with rhino makeup your mother called

we can’t help it if we’re ugly Tacitus wish me luck

because

Sono la Futura

You have enemies you don’t know their names

And they don’t know yours Mr. Newton

ArthurBigBoyCrudup pronouncing crocodiles

Frying tongue

We found the reluctant roots

Eocene fog, springs without mercy

We told the world to fuck off

and it never forgave us

It’s too late now, we’re safe forever

the camera obscura has snapped our mugs

motheaten immortal drums full of chattering teeth

He comes to the door and knocks

We raise our heavy heads

exchange that goofy look

Me and you Mr. Winter

Yes ghetto you know because all else is a lie passionflowers fly away she will move to Planet Hitchhike what if everything they have said is a mistake an avalanche of false selves cascading over everything others plotting others’ lives be there in the morning this painting will hang with me I’m ok I’m alright I may lay down tesselations drop like rubies falling away my life the lone streetlamp on the sea blood swells silent on the floor Carmen whispers skies of Toledo there are candles blinding here comets in my mulehide boots mermaids plashing in my wine I am in enameled cups so tell me brother whose sleep is this

* * *