Mobirise Website Generator


The Paths Toward Song

Summer, 2012


David Meltzer


From: THE BAD BOOK


Dead to begin

Born to die

Rot rules
Rats pick up the slack

It ariseth
It falls off

Look at what remains
Remember what's gone

                        *

Apocalyptic didactic
gets easier in the slow sleaze
of release into captivity

                        *

No matter how the deep sleep
overpowers the powerless
a nightmare wakes them up

                        *

What happens
when we
dream together?

                        *

Dead alive
in a dream
too short to add up

                        *

Down X Ray hallway
I see everything
I see thru walls
I see thru lead
Maybe I'm dead

                        *

Buddha's got ha ha
in his name

                        *

Silverfish
suck words out
of great books

                        *

energy of survival
sparks all art
blood used as paint

                        *
humming tongue digs
deeply into core sugar
as if it's forever

                        *


ZONE

where poems go
if they're able to
cross over mort's mote
where alligators & crocodiles
root & rut for eatables

eaten out from inside eden pure
as anything unknown or unnamed
no stain in skivs
beyond juices caught in
Calvin's basket

hemorrhoids
in garlic bulbed stalks
pulp out of loose bung hole
into great lakes of
snake filled flip flops
twisting & weaving around
cast off marquee alphabet
jumble jungle
swamp of lost poems
boggled where
deep sea scribers
snorkel through brain snot
upward to word held high
as crown like radium that
burns eyes out & fries
tongues among the chattering
bongo paradiddling monkeys

oh poets in the works
oh worked out bards
oh super slammed
dumbbells ringing
bang clang old dome bash
flash of dumb
who cares
we're here &
on the run
on the make
chewing up the tiered
bugaloo iced cake
gibble gobble spit drool sugar
into each page of
easy rage that wrinkles
in sweet's acid
smokes & fulminates
& agitates nothing
but the burnt page

you gotta get the message
this is behind the front lines
w/ phat back beats
the dancing troops
& tropes & troupes
gung ho in crazy rubber leg
hysteria


                        *

NO PROBLEM

no problem he says
careening down railroad flat
hallway into the last safe room
wired for sound
detonated for glory

he says
no problem
facing the missus
who intuitively guesses
his disability
for truth

she says
even when you're here
you're there


he says
uh uh uh
& slams his hand
on the table


From: LUNA TWO

Lorraine Hunt Leiberson
mezzo-soprano
sings Neruda's No estes lejos de mi un
solo dia

Full Moon
rain on the wires crows perch on

Luna the one
beyond The Sun
I long for

                    *

wind & Moon
turn trees into shadowy
secret agents

                    *

Full Moon Accordion
opens up tendons &
duende nerve-ends
& never ending howling
in wolfen grief ululates
into the crashing branches

                       *


am gonna steam an artichoke
& make a turkeyburger
& sing in my sleep
of awakening

                        *
the part where you or I
get aware we're dying
& want to live beyond language or
medicines or doctors

                    *
window above the sink
slice of ice cold white
cloud-smeared

                    *

"Love's urgency": For Julie

love's urgency
more real than real
rearranges used-to-be
schedules & hierarchies
radical
emancipatory
levels redundancy
flatlines distraction
nothing left to say
except everything
sayable in poetry
sayable in wordlessness
bodies speak together