Thursday, February 28, 2008

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

THE LITTLE SAINT GERARD


The little saint Gerard

Couldn’t hurt a mouse.

Brother Jack will testify.

The little saint Gerard

In the Lord’s house

Watches over all God’s creatures

Large and small.

Illness got the better of him

On earth, on earth, but not in Heaven.

The little saint Gerard

Feels no pain at all.

The Lord won’t allow it.

The little saint Gerard

suffers no more.

Brother Jack wrote it down

In his Visions of Gerard.





AND I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM


Far away with thoughts of nothingness.

On a cloudlike surface is where my mind

Threads on and I don’t know who I am.

Traveling to distant locales,

A wandering spirit, lost in the world,

And I don’t know who I am.

My face is unrecognizable to me.

Could you shake up my mind?

I don’t know who I am.

I don’t know who I am.

Miles from where I stand is the real me.

A cloud surfaces in my mind’s haste

And I don’t know who I am.

These hands attached to my person

Feel like the hands of a stranger.

My face is unrecognizable to me.

Could you shake up my mind?

I don’t know who I am.

I don’t know who I am.





I WAS ANGRY WHEN I WROTE THIS



A slave is one

Who can’t find time to read,

Always doing

Favors for everybody.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Todd Moore

how much


money you

got willie

asked pulling

a fistful

of change

& wadded

up bills

out of his

pocket sonny

took a bull

durham sack

out of his

shirt pocket

untied the

yellow string

& fished

out a five

you figure

this is

enough to

get fucked

up on sonny

smiled around

3 black teeth

& sd i know

where there's

some good shit

to steal

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

J.D.Nelson

Kolorado in my Eyes Makes me Fry

(Moon Table sold the egg of an incubus crane
to "I EAT," who has taken on loan a lamp.)

making Nikes
making Nikes
making Nikes
making Nikes

The astronauts love their Lake of Tang!

washing dishes
washing dishes
washing dishes
washing dishes

Made of silver, naught of Klee.

***********************************

Secret Poetry Apple


THE LOTION SQUID: A frog w/ a gimp in its hoofnik is here to see your garden shrimp.

CHUCK YOUR BUCKETSNAKE: Don't let 'em see you weeping.

THE LOTION SQUID: The chaos is blue -- a salty old hue.

CHUCK YOUR BUCKETSNAKE: Never let 'em see you sweat.

THE LOTION SQUID: In a bowl, with a howl, gettin' spoony w/ my lowell.

Aleathia Drehmer

“The River

for Gail

I question the worth

of my character

in this moment,

attempting to find some clue,

a common ground

to the mystery of my charm

as my face takes on

mixed emotions rapidly,

animated in graceful

but stilted movements.


And he tells me

quite frankly,

with mouth’s edge

curled upward,

that all women are crazy.

And somehow men find

what they need amidst

the chaotic flow

of ever revolving faces

worn without remorse

to find the gentleness and grace

that touches them

floating in the river.

**********************************

“Hungry Ghosts”

We are full

of hungry ghosts and

long hours divided

into silence,

chanting

and prostrations

to drive them out.


Gods

levitate above trees

parallel to the earth,

our feet buried in deep

to feel the transfer

of pure electricity.


We gather their treasures

with an unknowing greed,

eyes shifting sideways

watching and coveting,

as if we have found

something worth hiding.

Reticent hands

dig into loam,

moist and intoxicated

with recycled life

quick and with precision.


We lay on the ground in it.

Our lungs fill but stay empty.

Secrets are pushed in knolls

of shaming trees,

tucked under dark roots

lifting upward from burgeoning

rock formations and time,

until we no longer

feel the weight

of our hunger.


******************************


"Atmospheric Pressure"

Cold clutches her,

breath visible

from nostrils and mouth.

She pats her chest

as if this will equalize

the atmosphere moving

inside her,


the air steeling her,

the sound of rebirth

in this game of ball


played with five brothers

and a father,

whose face speaks

to his offspring

of light and knowing

wrapped around each of them.


Their unseen boundaries

of victory

evident in the ticking,

coming from chests

synchronized and loud;

something born unto them,

an extra machine

with a perfectly calculated

compass, affixed to the apex

pointing them upward

and outward.


************************



“Bravado”

The cat curls

into the crook

of my writing arm,

his breathing a

delicate whisper.

He still hasn’t found

the bravado of his voice.


The rise/fall of

his body slowly

tries to lull me

to sleep with the

pen in my hand.


Through the window,

reclined in dying light

of a gray afternoon,

I see beginnings

of buds on trees

pushing their way

from the core.


Squirrels dance,

leaping branch to branch,

tails high in the air,

chattering loudly and

twitching like old men

with Tourette’s,

in attempts to start

the mating season early.


The sounds of my family

spread out in separate rooms,

the bleeping of video games,

the turning of pages

with a soft voice

telling a story of her own

construction

makes me smile.


Each of us taking comfort

in time spent alone

speaks to me solidly,

without words,

whispering in ears that

we have found

some peace in this world.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Christopher Mulrooney

son et lumiere




koax

crek crek



moonlight and

frogs



in the pond

where I mist

to see the eyes

on me









_______________________________________________________









City of London



tea with milk the river ran
or coffee maybe at a pinch

slate-grey with scarlet trim

etc. the descriptive responses
of the think tank
precipitate a long roster
usually elided
for the capstone on the edifice we present
therefore I submit

on the face of new things altogether
winds bear new witness

but it is not a new thing
not at all to have this
Dr. Gachet defending
and diagnosing
Edgar Allan Poe
from the heights along a new river
perhaps not




_______________________________________________________




the serinette and the lightning-rod



I had flown in on a dare
to his own house I went
a cub reporter
that's what I own like 6 T-shirts
and a bag of milk chocolates
but no-one else could

we got along just fine

he served the soup out of my tureen
I mean the one we had grown up with
all the time

his favorite saying was
I'll be peckered

his favourite thing was an antique
serinette
he had rigged up with
electricity from a lightning-rod

he spoke about conductivity
lots of materials he said
just can't stand up to my action

I started in the business he said
twenty years ago I had
lots of people working for me

you couldn't imagine what it was like
a sterile litigious environment

all day long the claims were coming in
I had to stamp each one
with purple ink

anyway you had to
had to get up the stairs
and go to the roof to put the thing up
and run the connectors right the way down
to the bottom
it was a similitude of something
yeah

now though when there's a storm
I have bird music

the house had varying instruments
and pictures

we had soup for about an hour
and then he listened to his serinette
warble in the lightning

I was glad I wasn't going to fly
again until tomorrow




_______________________________________________________




green and pleasant land







fancifully they remarked the long since trifled with and soon to be forgotten

mystery that was the wheel and furnace

of the house the great mystery and keeper

of the toad house and the revenues in the interior whose ministry is kept

down in the house by the river where sat

the poet laureate as grimy as could be

in the soot air and sang



I walked as far as I can go

to Aberdeen and back again

and this whole story you must know

to Aberdeen and back again

and so I know sure the might and main

that do not manufacture the solipsistic trivia that multiply

and divide

these chairpersons ringing all the bells on all the dinner tables in the kingdom

one by one till all are done

and that's the song as it was sung

by the grieving laureate









______________________________________________________









porcupine


the hemispheres collide and draw apart
like you and my heart
I shall wander aimlessly like a spent shell
and wish upon the deepest hell
that you were of my mind in this
and that is all the man would say of bliss

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Gig News

The RB Morris Band

from Knoxville, TN

has toured w/ Bob Dylan, John Prine, Lucinda Williams, and Steve Earle

Southside

outlaw country and spoken word

featuring Scott Mertz, Sarah Elizabeth, Southside Freddy Wethington, Andy Cook, and Ron Whitehead

March 22, 2008 10 pm $10

@ the Rudyard Kipling
422 West Oak Street (near 4th street) Louisville, Kentucky
502-636-1311

www.tappingmyownphone.com