To begin: a poem entitled “Lines to Serve as an Introduction to the Show, Written for the Lowest Common Denominator; Hastily Amended to Address our Pale Horse Future”
There are no literary devices in this poem
no simile, no apostrophe-
there's no dissonance, no assonance,
no distancing my consonants,
in constellations of conversation,
an astronomic lack of conjugation-
there's no elevation in
the elongation of thoughts-
With this piece, my synaptocratic,
idiosyncratic oath I recants.
I'm just a guy quick-drawing
inspirado from the sky,
full clouds and dark wishes,
kisses from other's Mrs'
red wine and all that comes after.
The truth's in repetition,
the revolution of the wheel,
all art's born of friction.
Hell, God said
'Creation is lonely work,'
and on the eighth day,
hoping hands will hold flimsy dishes,
he filled us with desperate artist wishes-
Sad, bold lumps of clay rising
like Play-doe,
hell, ask Plato,
we're forms arriving at the real
manifest desk in a city,
where writers write dying,
praying for real forms arising,
just in time for the plying
of fact in layers peeled back,
while cracks in the truth
erode faith from way back-
Stopped dead in their tracks,
feel like thieves who steal moves,
but the ecstatic hack,
the stark raving yet pragmatic
hack will still muse;
muse for the muse
and on the grandest conquest
will invest, digress, come upon
an ingress and disappear into
a land beyond the beyond.
All in search of the mustang bitch
who won't ever wear a saddle-
I've met the muse
She was the queen in the land of the blind
and what she lacked in depth perception
she exploded in all the truths of all the world
because to her all truth appeared equidistant
So I met her for a simile, but missing an I
all she could offer was a smile
but it was she who taught me
the demography of cool
“artists create from nothingness”
she told me
“and so when they begin it is with nothing,
so they live among Ginsberg's Negro streets
where the rents cheap and they chip away
at the void until where once nothing
now is something”.
“Remember,” she said, “creation is lonely work
but once created celebration demands a crowd;
so those with nothing are surrounded by those
who need something; something to fill the
emptiness they cannot fill themselves.
But the crowd sucks the creator dry
and like weeds temples to the boring
emerge on those once negro streets
and the artists still have nothing and
now need something to stay – but with
nothing they are forced to move:
move on, move out, move away,
leaving behind those who only know
how to follow to lead”.
Damn slick, you're sly, you heard my simile-
in a piece that promised no imagery,
and that wasn't the only one...
Do I contradict myself? Abso-simile-lutely
This realm is rife with bullshit platitudes and
be sure, this poem here contains a multitude
We have many names on the list,
some you've forgotten, some you've missed:
I'm sorry Lawrence Ferlinghetti
we here ain't getting
any closer to a rebirth of wonder
I'm sorry Jack Kerouac
there ain't no going back
on the road when your directions
start with you are here
and here is a windowless room
I'm sorry Billy Burroughs
the algebra of need is thorough
but ours increases not geometric
but exponentially
We have many names on the list.
some you've forgotten, some you've missed
Beat.