I poeticize, proselytize
Punctuate and pontificate.
I write couplets and rhymes
And I really do it all the time.
I exacerbate and exaggerate
With no desire to intimidate.
I make similes and metaphors
Indoors and even out of doors.

There’s cussing and discussion
And sharp literary impressions
Through diversions, conversions
Allusions as well as conclusions.
And with luck, no delusions.
Just syllabically deft fusions
Of some deferential references
With a deft touch of reverence.

I rhyme thyme with fresh lime
And cardamom with cinnamon.
Sweetbreads and shortbreads.
Chicken bones and licking scones.
Rhyming pumpkins with dumplings
And matching up filets with filberts
Just as cocoa goes well with Kona.
Marmalade can be a good marinade.

I rhyme chrome wheels and automobiles,
Freeway off-ramps and Tiffany lamps.
Cellophane and vintage airplanes.
Flapper vamps and streetwalking tramps.
Also Cinderella coaches and cockroaches,
Nothing is unfair game to a busy poet.
As well as RCA Victors and boa constrictors.
Since I’m a poet, everyone should know it.

LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


Chapter 7


“Read me some more of your poems,” said Bian.

“OK,” said Jon and went to get the box that contained his poems in the  closet. He looked through the stack and selected several of them, then sat down next to Bian on the living room sofa.

“The first one I’d like to share with you is titled SOUTHWESTERN KANSAS.


SOUTHWESTERN KANSAS

When you fly to southwestern Kansas,
you see a different kind of Kansas.
The land is flat,
the sky is big and blue,
and the folk, the common folk, well, they get along,
the common folk get along in southwestern Kansas.

On a ranch down near Liberal,
the black night roars
and the wind is wet.
All are happy tonight, for there is rain
and tomorrow the pastures will grow greener.

In the morning when the sun first shines,
the hired hands
with leathered countenances
and gnarled fingers
awake in old ranch houses
made of adobe brick
and slip on their muddy cowboy boots
and faded blue jeans
to begin another day of hard labor.

On the open prairie made green by rain,
tan and white cattle huddle together,
munching on green grass and purple sage.
A new-born calf bawls.
Her mother, the Hereford cow,
is there to care
and the baby calf ***** her belly full
of mother’s milk.

About 60 miles to the north
and a little to the west,
The sun stands high in a blue sky
dotted with little puffs of white.
At noon in Ulysses,
folk eat at the Coffee Cafe:
Swiss steak, short ribs, or sweetbreads
on Tuesdays
with chocolate cake for dessert.

The folk, the common folk, well, they get along,
the common folk get along in Ulysses.
They got a new high school and a Rexall drug store,
a water tower and a drive-in movie theater.
They got loads of Purina Chow,
plenty of John Deere combines,
and co-op signs stuck on almost everything.
And they got a main street several blocks long
with a lot of pick-up trucks parked on either side
driven by wheat farmers
with silver-white crew cuts
and narrow string ties.

Things are spread out in southwestern Kansas.
A blanket woven of green, brown, and yellow
patches of earth,
sown together by miles of barbed-wire fences,
spreads interminably into the horizon.
Occasional, faceless, little country towns,
distinguished only by imposing grain elevators
spiraling into the sky
like concrete cathedrals,
are joined tenuously together by
endless asphalt streaks
and dusty country roads,
pencil-line thin
and ruler straight,
flanked on either side
by telephone poles and wind-blown wires
strung one
after another,
after another
in monotonous succession.

But things, things aren’t too bad in southwestern Kansas.
Alfalfa’s growing green
and irrigation’s coming in.
Rain’s been real good
and the cattle market’s really strong.
The folk, they got the 1st National on weekdays
and the 1st Methodist in between.
The kids, they got 4-H clubs and scholarships to K-State.
And Ulysses, it’s got all that the big towns got–
gas, lights, and water.
So the folk, the common folk, well, they get along.
the common folk get along in southwestern Kansas.


“The next poem is SIMONE, SIMONE," said Jon.


SIMONE, SIMONE

Simone, Simone
I’m all alone.
Simone, Simone
I’m all alone.
Simone, Simone
please come to me
and bear your breast
for me to rest
my weary head
and shattered heart
upon a part
so soft and warm.
Simone, Simone
I’m all alone.
Simone, Simone.


“The final poem, Bian, is TREE LIMBS,” said Jon.


TREE LIMBS

A long time ago,
I used to lie on my bed
and look out my window
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.

And I used to watch the cars
as they traveled by,
some fast, some slow,
from right to left, and left to right,
and wonder where they were going to
and coming from.

Once from my window
I hit a bus with my BB gun.
I was scared
because I knew I wasn’t
supposed to shoot buses,
even though it was kind of fun.

And sometimes I used
to hide behind my curtains
and watch the pretty
girls walk by my house
in their swimming suits
coming back from
the pool in the park.

But mostly I just used to lie
on my bed and think,
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.


“I love not only your poetry, Jon, but also how you read each one,” said Bian.

Jon gave her a kiss.

They drove to the tip of Cape Cod to watch the sunset, then drove back to the Twenty-Eight Atlantic to have dinner. Bian ordered oysters, lobster “Carbonara,” kale salad, and scallops. Jon had salmon tartare, chowder, baby green salad, and grilled octopus.

“Well, I’m excited!” Jon said. “We have a tremendous amount of planning to do, but we will have the experience of our lifetimes, and my greatest pleasure will be sharing it with you.”

“D’accord!” said Bian.

i hope to vacate a corner of some room,
spider-architect
           who's intrinsic basis is to craft
a spiderweb...
     yawn poetry...
   usualy the kind that's not worth a whole
lot of grit, and is ah, ah... all sighs...
well, hence the intended vulgarity...
  but i know that even that doesn't work
all the time, unless i'd be used to
listening to a waterfall playing the drums...
   and at best: i can only theorise language,
or that's what i think is my adequate role...
the rest of my life is fiction anyway,
a fiction where i don't actually write
a book, but live it... and only invoke
"poetry" to be used as a reference to how:
    nothing happens in philosophy books happens...
the only "adventure", the only "plot"
      is solely thinking...
      and isn't that something to be depressed about?
aparently that's not the case...
    apparently there's a layer of humanity
that prefers a thinking adeventure, to a, say:
   a cruise-ship holiday in the Mediterranean -
nothing happens...
    the only action is the stressor: thought:
or as i like to call it: the ought,
   and the subsequent cascade of choices...
         i can't believe there's a complexity in
thinking, other than making choices...
           making choices and then nostalgia,
euphoria, blessings, regrets...
        it can't be as complicated as it sounds
to the numerous adherents
       of practising the so called art-science that
philosophy deems itself to be...
   i don't know what sort of person you have
to be to read Heidegger over Dumas...
   when i was younger i only tickled myself
with fiction...
                when life became unnecessarily complicated
i decided to read a philosophy book...
     i don't know why, but that's how it happened
and my final bid worth descriptive
        analogies: philosophy books teach
you nothing but lethargy...
     i don't know whether you just dumb-down
and fall into posing a pretesence...
but at the same time... it would be nice to read
a feminine-ego in philosophy that has no origin
based in a "movement" / revolution
currently known as feminism...
   it would be nice to see a woman writing,
hermit like, branching off into a solo expedition...
   it's not that i'm ignorant,
the only female examples in my library are
pop... virginia woolf / ophelia..
   anna kavan and sylvia plath...
      evidently writing breaks women...
      when man came ******* and writing
  with a book... she had a *****...
    well... that too, and castrating men
for the purpose of creating the most perfect
choir-boys of the Vatican...
            i'd like to read what a woman actually thinks
(on the basis of the title, i.e. the two incidents in
the night involving women)...
  but i know i will never come across a naked
woman in writing...
      completely devoid of technique
  aspiring to poetry fakes, fiction fakes,
   always running away: having "fun"...
    i mean: something written by a woman that
could be equivalent of handling beef, or pork,
at a butcher's...
                 but that's not exactly based upon
a care to moan...
        i write on the basis of having a "leisure"
activity... well... i write on the basis of
   having the capacity to forget myself...
    i treat writing as a mode of anti-memory,
writing is anti memory...
              and it can become a sort of forbidden fruit,
given economics and how more bricks are sold
than books and how books can sometimes become
akin to bricks...
        i don't write because i want to,
    i write because: i also have to take a ****
  sometime in the night...
    so out with poetry's ah ah and sighs...
         it's not happening...
       say you watch either romeo + juliet
or tristan + isolde...
    now i use a language that has these myths...
the only polish myths i know are those
concerning the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth,
the Wawel dragon, the mongols...
  world war ii...
                     i have nothing, not even a puddle's
worth of depth, i use language as i do:
only because i have no soul:
  and that doesn't mean i sold it for private islands
in the Caribbean -
   or fame...
         i literally having one attachment point to
consider:
     to play on theoretics of language akin to linguistics,
but less so, i.e. with "identity",
    best summarised by verb language...
i just use a language...
        i don't necessarily care to have an identity in it...
  perhaps if i was akin to an octopus
with the so many wriggling limbs...
                    ah yes,
life underwater... so much more spectacular than
in the air...
                    and space exploration,
   akin to us with our space projects...
  and in the depths of the seas, life akin beyond
the vacuum of space: humpback anglerfish...
       or what ridley scott depicted...
        funny, that inquiry, that curiosity killed the cat
scenario...
          but being so warm-blooded wasn't enough
for us... i can't help it if i say that i'm not that lazy
in my observation...
    so back into a theoretics of language...
   using the necessary tools a (indefinite article)
     and the (definite article)
   or using the prefix rule a-      and the
         i.e. without a point.... atheism...
                 so just add the suffix -ism to that...
   otherwise known as vogue at certain times in history,
most notably started by either biiologists or
physicists... guess who brought the fireworks? chemists
with Faust and the devil at the fore!
  added fact: no one in the medical profession
    (they're the actually useful "biologists") don't
disregard that it becomes pointless
   to leverage the universe on the basis of
a single theory, a single mind, that's based on
both abstract ideas, and ******* genitals...
well d'uh... well done! clap clap clap clap clap...
       whether that's as a priori / instrinsic / genetic
       / predestination orientation
     as a spider and a spider-web...
                  i like to see that my ego is like
a spider's **** (or whatever you call it... sure,
gland... like a thyroid gland / sweetbreads)
                       that just produces these
god / no god arguments... and the reason is perhaps
obscure... it could be just that,
that i have this artificial intelligence implant in my head
that thinks if not believes in god (i'm not that keen
on the rituals, not a big fan of flagellation)...
      and so saying that: even a vacuum is something...
so you could say: i won't engage in religious Bar Mitzvahs,
but i'll argue for the non-existence of...
                  then back into the theory of language...
   a-          +         -th   (indirect article / direct article rules)...
articles in the pronoun category...
   what could possibly be the perfect e.g.?
   mein kampf...
            we have two examples already,
the obvious one, and the Norwegian one...
        what i want to consider
   is the alternative: ich kampf...
       as odd as it might sound: i consider
  i struggle to be an indefinite expression,
       and my struggle to be a definite expression...
   i.e. it's mine, i am the possessor of the struggle...
   ich kampf can very literally be an airy-fairy approach,
a pinata, hanging off a fishing-rod while sitting
on a scythe / crescent moon...
or: against the taboo of scientists feeling,
admiring art, reading novels...
    i can not not see the taboo against scientists not being
fully "human"...
       completely detached from art, from humanism,
never mind philosophy being the mediator
not really helping, that strand of it attacking
poetry...
                   but given a and the are the primodial
tools: say, hammer and scissors...
   and applying them to migrate from their
original grammatical boundary,
   it is necessary that they first experience pronouns...
    which is counter to what you might have
considered the pronoun i to be stressing...
given we're of the mortal caste,
   neither thinking nor being, or however argued
by Heidegger as being there / here allows...
given the numbers of us: it's still a case of indefinite
notation... or a Simon says / Solomon notes type of game...
    it's all vast, and empty,
    man's quest to be akin to a god's footprint
or a fingerprint...
                 with his copper statues of world war ii
heroes, or mentions of Achilles...
               but that's how it works,
there are theoretical physicists and there are men who
build actual atomb bombs, and that thing beneath
Switzerland...
                      it was in my belief to suggest that
black holes are 2 dimensional objects in 3 dimensional
space... a bit like those ferns in the Lara Croft video games,
the first types... from the 1990s...
    i believe that black holes are actually two-dimensional
objects, enclosed in a hyper-dynamic
           surrounded by three-dimensional space...
i haven't seen one up-close, sure... but i've never seen
jupiter either...
   so you guess is as good as mine...
i mean: how to transcend the harrowing experience
of writing poetry and fiction and write theory...
   to become a linguist without
              having to be burdened with a linguistic
alphabet...
   i.e. [flaj-uh-ley-shuh n] / (flāj'ə-lā'shən) /
flagellation doesn't really do it for me...
   can't feel a hard-on with that crap...
                        flaj? jammy ******* dodger...
   dodge ball more like...
                  i'm bilingual, i get the picture,
   and given the close proximity and the evident difference
i can have my little chemistry set, and a shed...
   evidently if i was bilingual from Hong Kong
i'd be a a yarn ball enclosing a silver tea-spoon,
that i'd later shove up my *** to question whether that's
a privilege...
    a bit like that mad lady with 20 cats...
  or thereabouts...
           so it has to be a case of ich kampf categorising
the pronoun as indefinite...
    there's me tomorrow, the struggle might not be...
my, as a definite article:
    say: keeping grudges... count de monte cristo's
zeal...
         in the same vein:
    they / them are usually noted into ditto /
ambiguity... hence they are indefinite pronouns
(working from the base of article)...
                    such as we / us being likewise noted
but based on an enclosure, endorsment,
a definiteness...
   thus said: how can a grapheme be the smallest
unit, when it encloses two vowels?
   aren't vowels and consonants the smallest units
of encoded sound?
         well... evidently not...
so why read books where nothing, absolutely nothing
happens...
   well... the last time i checked books were
not invented to compete with movies,
there's a clear dichotomy in that "∞",
   what at best i can ditto to invoke: relationship...
O 0, ∞ 8... look who's the fatty...
                      hard to see why the only
books worth appreciating are the books translated
into a movie, kinda makes the original books
a tad bit pointless, what, with the abandoned
mental effort of actually having read them
   (past tense of reading can't be grounded
within the colour red...
   keeping the grapheme as become more and
more bewildering)...
   reed, read, read.... no Persian is coming near this
soil, no Iranian is going to blow himself up,
by the looks of it... the Shiite Muslims
are the only sensible ones these days:
     you need to allow for a schism...
i also note that, Christianity has become
   omni-schismatic, and, well... that's just
ridiculous...    
                                  it's too much pick-and-choose,
buy and sell for 99 pence...
                    it's hardly as romantic as
r.e.m.'s losing my religion,
i pledge nothing to the cross, nor
   the shadow of the cross,
                  i have no allegience
to it, or the crescent moon,
in scientific terms: i'm a free radical.
     but what i really wanted to "talk" about were
my two incidents in the night concerning women,
i must have probed the right buttons on this thing called
universe to get this sort of reply...
the 2nd example (stated first) was just weird...
walking down the street with a beer and cigarette in hand...
a Mazda MX-5 pulls onto the pavement...
i walk past it...
    30 metres down the road
this blonde runs up to be with a rollie cigarette
   and asks for a lighter...
i notice all the power-cursors of a ring on
her right hand... the car she owns...
            i'm really the pauper and she's really
the queen bee...
            the weird aspect is that she ran 30 metres from
her car to ask me for a cigarette lighter...
    the first incident is even more demanding
a written absolution...
    in a pharmacy...
                  asking for my sleeping pills...
ordered in the afternoon... most likely arrive in
  3 rather than 2 days... 2 days if ordered in the morning...
   and there she is, the brunette deer,
  i swear to you, English girls have deer eyes,
  not dumb-like, wild ready for unknown...
i should know... i spent 22 years in this ****** country,
drank the local milk, ate the local beef,
   never had a local girl to bed...
                     boo, hoo... which just makes them
all the more fascinating...
        it was one of those: love at first sight moments...
there she was, pristine milken skinned anglo rose...
    with braids either side of her cranium...
   a very slavic accent...
              she moved from beyond the far-away counter
to a counter near me
while i asked for my prescription...
             and waited, and she looked at me,
or rather: eat me with a nearing claustrophobia i
felt in my chest...
           this really does sometimes happen...
this realisation of love at first sight, the love:
without a fight...
             those eyes can cannibalise you in an instant,
esp. in the locket of an english girl's cranium...
      my **** and ***** shrivelled up,
my heart imploded
     and could only fathom a fear in my head
that didn't arouse a single, god-identifying word
of sanity and action, or adventure,
and the whole nine-yards of marital contract...
      just this girl in the pharmacy...
      how she moved, how she eyed me...
   well... my face isn't exactly a da Vinci...
but it isn't exactly a Picasso's impression
of a pig's buttock...
            i can only stress a hypnotic moment,
as if impregnated by her...
        i was only there asking for my insomnia
pills... and i left that place thought-******
       and emotionally ***** by those daring eyes...
as if the whole point of woman was
to ascribe a man to her delving in utilising a womb,
meaning i was almost inside a stomach,
        meaning i was no ego, meaning
i was foetus...
                oh sure sure... Helen didn't send a postcard
to 1000 Ships

"I'm yours now. You can do whatever you want to me."
I didn't even know what to say,
I never did,
I was still shocked you could want anything to do with me

You said you had hopes for us,
But what hope was there?
We had no direction, no plans,
We just plodded forward hoping this foundation we built could brave the trials of winter

I've read that soulmates can come together and apart just as easily,
A tragic scenario to be certain,
And if that's the case,
What is a soulmate but a reminder that love is eternal agony?

I do still love you,
Love is,
It's become like breathing,
Autonomic

I can't even remember life before this,
What it was like to be absentminded,
The loveliness of ignorance,
Oh how I would gorge on its sweetbreads

But this is simply life now,
I live in flashbacks and moments,
I love ghosts and candied words,
And I drink the liquor of empty hopes

a storm rode up slow on the sea's horizon
filling our senses with its wild winds
we spent that night passing a bottle of crisp wine
by candlelight while the sea rocked us
like children in the cradle
but our laughter and words were
so alive with long roads
so rich with our full years

morning found us taking on water
so we turned to make haste
for some near uncharted island haven
and we beached her on untainted sands
with its stretch of palms and gentle *****
while sailing master worked mend sail, patch hull
we walked far up the shore and found a secluded spot
and there i lay with you
drinking in your taste and body
feasting with you on the sweetbreads of our love
till we were full and were left with only soft smiles

we sailed once again as dawn overtook the sky
sound once more and making good time
with a beautiful salt breeze in our sail
beating to windward
with a loving song to our hearts
these the days that my heart will cherish
these are the living dreams that
my worlds foundations are built upon
i knew i would marry you
you knew i would always be yours
from this day till time cease

My father died
before he could tell me
that your lungs fill
and you drown in yourself
as your heart fails.

My sister died
silent with the knowledge
that you taste the waste
your kidneys can't expel
as they slowly shut down.

My brother died
within the shell washed up
by the rolling tide of blood
from the bursting of
cerebral arteries.

My mother died
desiccated, emaciated,
her bitterness consumed
in the uncontrolled growth
of her cancerous sweetbreads.

One never lives
until they learn for themselves
the lessons of the lives
the histories and the deaths
of their inheritances.