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nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)
AAron Roz May 2018
Music is loud or quiet.
Music is soft or heavy.
Music can have meaning or not.
Music can be nothing or everything.
Music is:
◾Art Punk
◾Alternative Rock
◾College Rock
◾Crossover Thrash (thx Kevin G)
◾Crust Punk (thx Haug)
◾Experimental Rock
◾Folk Punk
◾Goth / Gothic Rock
◾Grunge
◾******* Punk
◾Hard Rock
◾Indie Rock
◾Lo-fi (hat tip to Ben Vee Bedlamite)
◾New Wave
◾Progressive Rock
◾Punk
◾Shoegaze (with thx to Jackie Herrera)
◾Steampunk (with thx to Christopher Schaeffer)

•Anime
•Blues ◾Acoustic Blues
◾Chicago Blues
◾Classic Blues
◾Contemporary Blues
◾Country Blues
◾Delta Blues
◾Electric Blues
◾Ragtime Blues (cheers GFS)

•Children’s Music ◾Lullabies
◾Sing-Along
◾Stories

•Classical ◾Avant-Garde
◾Baroque
◾Chamber Music
◾Chant
◾Choral
◾Classical Crossover
◾Contemporary Classical (thx Julien Palliere)
◾Early Music
◾Expressionist (thx Mr. Palliere)
◾High Classical
◾Impressionist
◾Medieval
◾Minimalism
◾Modern Composition
◾Opera
◾Orchestral
◾Renaissance
◾Romantic (early period)
◾Romantic (later period)
◾Wedding Music

•Comedy ◾Novelty
◾Standup Comedy
◾Vaudeville (cheers Ben Vee Bedlamite)

•Commercial (thank you Sheldon Reynolds) ◾Jingles
◾TV Themes

•Country ◾Alternative Country
◾Americana
◾Bluegrass
◾Contemporary Bluegrass
◾Contemporary Country
◾Country Gospel
◾Country Pop (thanks Sarah Johnson)
◾***** Tonk
◾Outlaw Country
◾Traditional Bluegrass
◾Traditional Country
◾Urban Cowboy

•Dance (EDM – Electronic Dance Music – see Electronic below – with thx to Eric Shaffer-Whiting & Drew :-)) ◾Club / Club Dance (thx Luke Allfree)
◾Breakcore
◾Breakbeat / Breakstep
◾Brostep (cheers Tom Berckley)
◾Chillstep (thx Matt)
◾Deep House (cheers Venus Pang)
◾Dubstep
◾Electro House (thx Luke Allfree)
◾Electroswing
◾Exercise
◾Future Garage (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Garage
◾Glitch Hop (cheers Tom Berckley)
◾Glitch Pop (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Grime (thx Ran’dom Haug / Matthew H)
◾*******
◾Hard Dance
◾Hi-NRG / Eurodance
◾Horrorcore (thx Matt)
◾House
◾Jackin House (with thx to Jermaine Benjamin Dale Bruce)
◾Jungle / Drum’n’bass
◾Liquid Dub(thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Regstep (thanks to ‘Melia G)
◾Speedcore (cheers Matt)
◾Techno
◾Trance
◾Trap (thx Luke Allfree)

•Disney
•Easy Listening ◾Bop
◾Lounge
◾Swing

•Electronic ◾2-Step (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾8bit – aka 8-bit, Bitpop and Chiptune – (thx Marcel Borchert)
◾Ambient
◾Bassline (thx Leon Oliver)
◾Chillwave(thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Chiptune (kudos to Dominik Landahl)
◾Crunk (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Downtempo
◾Drum & Bass (thx Luke Allfree)
◾Electro
◾Electro-swing (thank you Daniel Forthofer)
◾Electronica
◾Electronic Rock
◾Hardstyle (kudos to Dominik Landahl)
◾IDM/Experimental
◾Industrial
◾Trip Hop (thank you Michael Tait Tafoya)

•Enka
•French Pop
•German Folk
•German Pop
•Fitness & Workout
•Hip-Hop/Rap ◾Alternative Rap
◾Bounce
◾***** South
◾East Coast Rap
◾Gangsta Rap
◾******* Rap
◾Hip-Hop
◾Latin Rap
◾Old School Rap
◾Rap
◾Turntablism (thank you Luke Allfree)
◾Underground Rap
◾West Coast Rap

•Holiday ◾Chanukah
◾Christmas
◾Christmas: Children’s
◾Christmas: Classic
◾Christmas: Classical
◾Christmas: Comedy
◾Christmas: Jazz
◾Christmas: Modern
◾Christmas: Pop
◾Christmas: R&B
◾Christmas: Religious
◾Christmas: Rock
◾Easter
◾Halloween
◾Holiday: Other
◾Thanksgiving

•Indie Pop
•Industrial
•Inspirational – Christian & Gospel ◾CCM
◾Christian Metal
◾Christian Pop
◾Christian Rap
◾Christian Rock
◾Classic Christian
◾Contemporary Gospel
◾Gospel
◾Christian & Gospel
◾Praise & Worship
◾Qawwali (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Southern Gospel
◾Traditional Gospel

•Instrumental ◾March (Marching Band)

•J-Pop ◾J-Rock
◾J-Synth
◾J-Ska
◾J-Punk

•Jazz ◾Acid Jazz (with thx to Hunter Nelson)
◾Avant-Garde Jazz
◾Bebop (thx Mwinogo1)
◾Big Band
◾Blue Note (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Contemporary Jazz
◾Cool
◾Crossover Jazz
◾Dixieland
◾Ethio-jazz (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Fusion
◾Gypsy Jazz (kudos to Mike Tait Tafoya)
◾Hard Bop
◾Latin Jazz
◾Mainstream Jazz
◾Ragtime
◾Smooth Jazz
◾Trad Jazz

•K-Pop
•Karaoke
•Kayokyoku
•Latin ◾Alternativo & Rock Latino
◾Argentine tango (gracias P. Moth & Sandra Sanders)
◾Baladas y Boleros
◾Bossa Nova (with thx to Marcos José Sant’Anna Magalhães & Alex Ede for the reclassification)
◾Brazilian
◾Contemporary Latin
◾Cumbia (gracias Richard Kemp)
◾Flamenco / Spanish Flamenco (thank you Michael Tait Tafoya & Sandra Sanders)
◾Latin Jazz
◾Nuevo Flamenco (and again Michael Tafoya)
◾Pop Latino
◾Portuguese fado (and again Sandra Sanders)
◾Raíces
◾Reggaeton y Hip-Hop
◾Regional Mexicano
◾Salsa y Tropical

•New Age ◾Environmental
◾Healing
◾Meditation
◾Nature
◾Relaxation
◾Travel

­•Opera
•Pop ◾Adult Contemporary
◾Britpop
◾Bubblegum Pop (thx Haug & John Maher)
◾Chamber Pop (thx Haug)
◾Dance Pop
◾Dream Pop (thx Haug)
◾Electro Pop (thx Haug)
◾Orchestral Pop (thx Haug)
◾Pop/Rock
◾Pop Punk (thx Makenzie)
◾Power Pop (thx Haug)
◾Soft Rock
◾Synthpop (thx Haug)
◾Teen Pop

•R&B/Soul ◾Contemporary R&B
◾Disco (not a top level genre Sheldon Reynolds!)
◾Doo ***
◾Funk
◾Modern Soul (Cheers Nik)
◾Motown
◾Neo-Soul
◾Northern Soul (Cheers Nik & John Maher)
◾Psychedelic Soul (thank you John Maher)
◾Quiet Storm
◾Soul
◾Soul Blues (Cheers Nik)
◾Southern Soul (Cheers Nik)

•Reggae ◾2-Tone (thx GFS)
◾Dancehall
◾Dub
◾Roots Reggae
◾Ska

•Rock ◾Acid Rock (with thanks to Alex Antonio)
◾Adult-Oriented Rock (thanks to John Maher)
◾Afro Punk
◾Adult Alternative
◾Alternative Rock (thx Caleb Browning)
◾American Trad Rock
◾Anatolian Rock
◾Arena Rock
◾Art Rock
◾Blues-Rock
◾British Invasion
◾**** Rock
◾Death Metal / Black Metal
◾Doom Metal (thx Kevin G)
◾Glam Rock
◾Gothic Metal (fits here Sam DeRenzis – thx)
◾Grind Core
◾Hair Metal
◾Hard Rock
◾Math Metal (cheers Kevin)
◾Math Rock (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Metal
◾Metal Core (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Noise Rock (genre – Japanoise – thx Dominik Landahl)
◾Jam Bands
◾Post Punk (thx Ben Vee Bedlamite)
◾Prog-Rock/Art Rock
◾Progressive Metal (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Psychedelic
◾Rock & Roll
◾Rockabilly (it’s here Mark Murdock!)
◾Roots Rock
◾Singer/Songwriter
◾Southern Rock
◾Spazzcore (thx Haug)
◾Stoner Metal (duuuude)
◾Surf
◾Technical Death Metal (cheers Pierre)
◾Tex-Mex
◾Time Lord Rock (Trock) ~ (thanks to ‘Melia G)
◾Trash Metal (thanks to Pierre A)

•Singer/Songwriter ◾Alternative Folk
◾Contemporary Folk
◾Contemporary Singer/Songwriter
◾Indie Folk (with thanks to Andrew Barrett)
◾Folk-Rock
◾Love Song (Chanson – merci Marcel Borchert)
◾New Acoustic
◾Traditional Folk

•Soundtrack ◾Foreign Cinema
◾Movie Soundtrack (thanks Julien)
◾Musicals
◾Original Score
◾Soundtrack
◾TV Soundtrack

•Spoken Word
•Tex-Mex / Tejano (with thx to Israel Lopez) ◾Chicano
◾Classic
◾Conjunto
◾Conjunto Progressive
◾New Mex
◾Tex-Mex

•Vocal ◾A cappella (with kudos to Sheldon Reynolds)
◾Barbershop (with thx to Kelly Chism)
◾Doo-*** (with thx to Bradley Thompson)
◾Gregorian Chant (hat tip to Deborah Knight-Nikifortchuk)
◾Standards
◾Traditional Pop
◾Vocal Jazz
◾Vocal Pop

•World ◾Africa
◾Afro-Beat
◾Afro-Pop
◾Asia
◾Australia
◾Cajun
◾Calypso (thx Gerald John)
◾Caribbean
◾Carnatic (Karnataka Sanghetha – thx Abhijith)
◾Celtic
◾Celtic Folk
◾Contemporary Celtic
◾Coupé-décalé (thx Samy) – Congo
◾Dangdut (thank you Achmad Ivanny)
◾Drinking Songs
◾Drone (with thx to Robert Conrod)
◾Europe
◾France
◾Hawaii
◾Hindustani (thank you Abhijith)
◾Indian Ghazal (thank you Gitika Thakur)
◾Indian Pop
◾Japan
◾Japanese Pop
◾Klezmer
◾Mbalax (thank you Samy) – Senegal
◾Middle East
◾North America
◾Ode (thank you Sheldon Reynolds)
◾Piphat (cheers Samy B) – Thailand
◾Polka
◾Soca (thx Gerald John)
◾South Africa
◾South America
◾Traditional Celtic
◾Worldbeat
◾Zydeco
etc...
Matthew Bridgham Jun 2012
The club is small and dark and hazy
like the veiled comedy of minstrel performers.
Those dingy lights do little for the atmosphere—
dangling hemp from clouds of cigarette smoke.

This hole is filled with the classy of day and the
sassy of night—a real “blue material” kinda crowd.
Harry, the manager, after calling quarter and five,
booked some awful oleo acts just minutes before
“places!”

—The crowd sits on their hands ‘til they’re numb
and lame like the fish they watch flop on the boards.
Two acts down followed by some soot-covered
clown’s lazzo about who’s who and what’s what.

Give me a break! The crowd wants fresh fish to fry—
Girlies in pearlies with spun out legs that tower
the torsos they’re pinned to. Give them that
New York Style Cheese-cakewalk Variety Act!

The listless listeners of this K.A. circuit let out a
snake-like hiss, en masse. (The only show stoppers
are off the billing, stage left at some other club!)
The manager thinks fast like a quick change act—

Harry snatches a prop from the nearest kook—
In a long brown bathrobe, with a broad brown cane.
He hushed the crowd of loud, jeering jerks, in one
swift swoop of his leg-breaking, knockout **** called
The Vaudeville Hook.
Runner-up in the 2013 University of Indianapolis Poetry Contest
ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville.
  
The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues.
  
It is long ago, Elsie Flimmerwon, I saw your mother over a washtub in a grape arbor when your father came with the locomotor ataxia shuffle.
  
It is long ago, Elsie, and now they spell your name with an electric sign.
  
Then you were a little thing in checked gingham and your mother wiped your nose and said: You little fool, keep off the streets.
  
Now you are a big girl at last and streetfuls of people read your name and a line of people shaped like a letter S stand at the box office hoping to see you shimmy.
A REACTIONARY TRACT FOR THE TIMES

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains on the bushes yield
To seeping showers,
And in their convalescent state
The fractured towns associate
With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain
Raw veterans already train
As freshman forces;
Instructors with sarcastic tongue
Shepherd the battle-weary young
Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances
For mastering the arts and sciences
They stroll or run,
And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,
Though some regret it;
They liked their dictaphones a lot,
T hey met some big wheels, and do not
Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree
Permits the will-to-disagree
To be pandemic,
Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
And every commencement speech
Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more
'Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic,
This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth
Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic
Antipathy forever gripes
All ages and somatic types,
The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints
With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez,
And those who like myself turn pale
As we approach with ragged sail
The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn't;
Apollo's children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

Related by antithesis,
A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:
Falstaff the fool confronts forever
The **** Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,
Apollo's welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons;
He loves to rule, has always done it;
The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,
His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart;
Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire
Official art.

And when he occupies a college,
Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular
Attention to Commercial Thought,
Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,
For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence,
The goal a populous Nirvana:
His shield bears this device: Mens sana
Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,
From Right to Left have met success,
His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news
From Broadway to the Book Reviews
Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing
On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters,
Invented by some court-house bard
For recitation by the yard
In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations
And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad,
While dietitians sacrifice
A glass of prune-juice or a nice
Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational
*** plus some undenominational
Religious matter,
Enormous novels by co-eds
Rain down on our defenceless heads
Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting,
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair,
Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;
White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat
To organize us grow more critical?
Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo's
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:--

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.
it was warm
for a winters eve
unusually warm
but damp very damp
birthing a persistent
midnight mist that
crawled over everything

avenging
halogen angels
flitted down from
streetlight perches
skidding through
bare limb bars
of broken trees
roped in by sagging
telephone wires

skulking
seraphs
joined
ebullient
neon auroras
laughingly
brake dancing,
jittering away on the
pock marked rims
of hip hop streets

the fine drizzle
descending from the
black urban heavens
splayed holy water
over the bodies
of anything
that moved; and
layered mounds
of transparent beads
on all inert things
chiding those yolked
to weighty burdens
to seek relief of
a much needed
breaking point

our
slouching city
mired in a cycle
of a prolonged
historical rut
beavers away
to lift the lid
on tomorrows
tipping point
in a desperate
labor to stop
tripping over
itself...

a dinged up
Sentra’s
flashing spinners
twisted round
our dark corner
nearly clipping
our troop

inside the
yakking low-riders
scuttled along,
their hidden ***** eyes
cruising the stoops
and cyclone alleys
scoping opportunities
for the next
jolly hustle
to feed
a growing
angry fix

tonight
Mother Nature was
running a *****
to the wall third shift,
manufacturing a
stationary low
of gagging precip
churning volumes
of Vulcan smoke
conjuring
convective spirits
from all the
dim places

emanations lit
the balmy January air
rising from
stubborn gray patches
of despoiled snow
and rancid ponds
organic gutter water
composting
in distilled pools
awaiting leakage
through flotsam
clogged sewage grids

Paterson’s
litter police
could close the
city’s budget deficit
if all infractions
were properly cited
and paid in this
neighborhood

this queer elixir of
rising vapors from
evaporating snow
escaping the cracks
lining the bowels of
mordant streets
joining descending
screens of billowing mists
blurs boundaries of light,
diffusing temporal time

people and things
lose precise definition
reducing sentient beings
to moving silhouettes of gray
photographic negatives
framed in dribbling palettes
of pastel hues

our
5th Ward mission
planted in the
hub of a neighborhood
still holding on...

Old WASP’s
of St. Paul’s
long ago
winged away
from this
princely
Episcopate
principality

the abandoned
conical nest, its
chambers filled with
the mud of 50 dead rectors
precariously clings
to its shivering
boulevard corner

its endowment depleted
its earthly treasure rusting
grandiose Tiffany windows
remain the last legacy of an
opulent faith now
shamefully rattling away
in moth eaten frames

once icons of
adulatory reverence
the final sparkling asset
of a distressed religion
begs to be monetized
by flummoxed vestrymen
yearning to extend
a stewardship
over a dissipating
ESL flock

distress in the hood
parades down Broadway
in all directions

a few blocks east
a shuttered
Barnert Hospital
transfigured into an
urban enterprise zone
for health-care privateers
working overtime to
extract federal
corporate welfare
rent subsidies
dutifully fulfilling
fine print obligations of
Obamacare legislation

Old Mayor Barnert’s
namesake synagogue
once hard by
City Hall
is long gone
its absent footprint
now centered by
a thriving
White Castle

near Broadway’s end
on the outskirts
of Eastside Park
Art Deco Emanuel Temple
the last anchor
for the city’s Judaism
lies vacant
awaiting a renewed
purpose

fraught with irony
a thriving Islamic Center
stands juxtaposed
across the street
from the old
Hebrew Temple

we wonder what
will emerge
from the
hallowed chrysalis
of decommissioned
Emanuel?

rumors of a
Great Falls Art Center
trickle like a leaking faucet
failure to secure a mortgage
in the post credit
bubble pop economy
dams the possibly
of a new centers
coming to fruition

will
the city’s
changing
demography of
reverent Muslim’s
genuflecting
across the street
take time away
from prayer to
patronize a venue
offering decadent
bourgeois jazz and
risqué reviews
of retro Borscht Belt
vaudeville?

when Constantinople
became Istanbul they
converted the Christian
churches into mosques

when the Inquisitioners
drove the Moors from
Granada they converted
the Grand Mosque to
the Cathedral of the
Incarnation

what incarnations
will this city’s
twilight bring?

As Byzantine
begets
Constantinople
begets
Istanbul
the links
in the Silk Road
spanned west
to the new world
of mechanized looms
powered by
Great Falls
raceway water
and a distribution
and procurement
chain anchored
by the Morris Canal

Capitalist
modernity
begets
our Silk City
it also bespeaks
its demise

in the courtyard
of St. Paul’s
a muffled chorus
trawls the thick air

a posse of pimps
done wrangling
their stables
of $5 ******
sing reveries to
the evening haul

midnight lullabies
of corner crooners
lift a Capella hosannas
from the dark armpit
of an alley behind
the Autozone

“i said
you say
what can make
me feel this way
my girl”

juiced pimps
cashin in
livin large on
a skanks
50 cent haul

the trade in flesh
of distressed
human capital
remains a
growth industry

Music Selection:  
Temptations, My Girl

jbm
3/1/13
Oakland
Part 1 of extended poem Silk City PIT.  PIT is an acronym for Point In Time.  PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population.  Paterson NJ is nick named The Silk City.
Annie Jan 2010
A thespian
In a play
A strong man
But not strong today
Leading girl gone away
One act
One scene
One line to say
His kōan
"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
Silence.



Pretty girl
Gamine thin
Her Ribs
Bent staves
Round a coopers bin
And at the clubs
She picks up men
Who leave her
When they’ve
Had their fill.
And still
It’s courtly love she seeks
A treasure trove
That is for keeps.
Her kōan
"The moon cannot be stolen."
But maybe if she seduces it…
It will be hers.



She’s middle aged
There’s not much left
Her ******* aren’t firm
She’s barrel shaped
She watches soaps
And talks with friends
And fights the fear
That if it ends...
She hasn’t amounted to
Much at all
She could have been more
If she just had the time
Her kōan
"What are you doing?"
Nothing.
The last pose flickered, failed. The screen's dead white
Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light
Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled out
The curtain rose. A fat girl with a pout
And legs like hams, began to sing "His Mother".
Gusts of bad air rose in a choking smother;
Smoke, the wet steam of clothes, the stench of plush,
Powder, cheap perfume, mingled in a rush.
I stepped into the lobby -- and stood still
Struck dumb by sudden beauty, body and will.
Cleanness and rapture -- excellence made plain --
The storming, thrashing arrows of the rain!
Pouring and dripping on the roofs and rods,
Smelling of woods and hills and fresh-turned sods,
Black on the sidewalks, gray in the far sky,
Crashing on thirsty panes, on gutters dry,
Hurrying the crowd to shelter, making fair
The streets, the houses, and the heat-soaked air, --
Merciful, holy, charging, sweeping, flashing,
It smote the soul with a most iron clashing! . . .
Like dragons' eyes the street-lamps suddenly gleamed,
Yellow and round and dim-low globes of flame.
And, scarce-perceived, the clouds' tall banners streamed.
Out of the petty wars, the daily shame,
Beauty strove suddenly, and rose, and flowered. . . .
I gripped my coat and plunged where awnings lowered.
Made one with hissing blackness, caught, embraced,
By splendor and by striving and swift haste --
Spring coming in with thunderings and strife --
I stamped the ground in the strong joy of life!
By A Foreigner

I like Americans.
They are so unlike Canadians.
They do not take their policemen seriously.
They come to Montreal to drink.
Not to criticize.
They claim they won the war.
But they know at heart that they didn't.
They have such respect for Englishmen.
They like to live abroad.
They do not brag about how they take baths.
But they take them.
Their teeth are so good.
And they wear B.V.D.'s all the year round.
I wish they didn't brag about it.
They have the second best navy in the world.
But they never mention it.
They would like to have Henry Ford for president.
But they will not elect him.
They saw through Bill Bryan.
They have gotten tired of Billy Sunday.
Their men have such funny hair cuts.
They are hard to **** in on Europe.
They have been there once.
They produced Barney Google, Mutt and Jeff.
And Jiggs.
They do not hang lady murderers.
They put them in vaudeville.
They read the Saturday Evening Post
And believe in Santa Claus.
When they make money
They make a lot of money.
They are fine people.
B Brown Mar 2015
Blue Hill Avenue

It begins with Spanglish-speaking merchants
conducting business inside of bulletproof stalls,
where the faint scent of dried cod follows you
to the flat fix next door, into the auto body,
a hair shop, and to the steps of a church
for first generation Cape Verdean-Americans,
their offspring and that old lady --
someone’s  grandmother --
who wears a black dress on Fridays
and walks home from the Market Basket
the same time that you get off the bus
who wears a shopping bag full of tropical foods
and memories on her head.

And if you stand at its first **** south,
you will notice how the families disappear
in the African American section.
There are fewer stores here, lots of energy boxes
with epitaphs: “Tiffany Moore Died Here”;
a seatless swing set, a playground gone fallow.
You won’t see any church steeples in this section
that feeds on a neon CITGO sign too small
to illuminate the skyline like the mega one in Copley does.

A few blocks away, a ghost of the Jewish past sits
with pointy stars of David nestled inside its
bulbous steeples that simmer on summer Sundays
where Haitian congregants stew inside,
praying and giving to the building fund
in damp envelopes that will go to the omnipotent one
who will someday replace the stars with crosses.

And as you keep walking, past the temple,
you enter Grove Hall’s Mecca, a strip mall
with a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts,

a Stop & Shop, CVS, Bank of America,
and a Rainbows that sells your teenaged aunt
the sequined one-off shirt she needs for a date
and the fishnets she wears to the carnival
that parades through a sliver of the avenue,
the very next section of our beloved Blue Hill.

Across the street, Check Cashers speak English
as good as the number of dollars and cents
they count when they hand you back your cashed check
or the double win you scratched out of a Gold Rush ticket.

Adjacent to them, a Greek-owned sandwich shop
that feeds you steak bombs as long as your forearm or
Festive Fridays: 20 wing dings, a pound of fries,
a Greek salad, and a gracious gulp of fountain cola --
essentially, a heart-attack meal.  

Next, another ghost of the Jewish past,
a church in the former Franklin Park Theater,
where Yiddish entertainers performed vaudeville acts
which nobody living can remember.

Then a building that resembles an African footstool,
one that will allow you to see over the **** of the hill
and down below at a gospel choir trapped in everlasting song
against the wall of the one-hour cleaners and that store
where a turkey-shaped lady with flour dusted hands
stands behind a window, noticing you,
while guarding her beef patties and cocoa bread
with a bulletproof smile.
Sam Marlowe Feb 2013
What has remained where memory was lost or stolen?
Effacing years replaced what had been felt,
the child adept at stealth and isolation
becoming stranger than the life he left

behind in absence, which was both gone and forgotten.
An echo of a voice in an empty silo rings
because he heard it answer him with words
instead of bruises; the man and child grins.

Remembering selectively, the man
recalls the carcass of a red Case tractor
thigh high in grass; and Viet Nam,
a water buffalo dead in a paddy after

the Viet Cong, like willful parents, spanked
the area with small arms fire. Hell
was neither here nor there but something stank.
The mood rolled over as an odor will

disperse in time, a transient effect
of mind, but an abyss of remembrance haunts
wherever ghosts have congregated, cleft
from the wanton interval of thwarted wants.
PS Jun 2015
Gypsy Rose Lee.
Is that you or me?
Does that make you Baby June?

The favourite and best
No concern for the rest
You sing and you dance in the tune.

Or just like Gypsy
You learn how to strip tease
The glamour and glitz of the night.

But who's mama Rose?
And how could I know?
She pushes and leads to a fight.

But Gypsy is magic
And a rare art form
And June is so dainty
Doesn't know when she's born
She's the centre of attention
She's the first one who speaks
And Gypsy is left there
Still being Louise.

Chow mein and lambs
Travel the land
A show on vaudeville stage.

Let me entertain you
Let me have a try too
Honey, were you not entertained?
Has anyone ever seen the movie/musical Gypsy? Well I love it!
Dieter Muniz Oct 2011
We knew limited evil.
We base-valued desirable evil.
We unharness a nice, obedient, satan-tail.
She was fresh.
A raw, vile, unwashed beast.
A love-lorn evil bear.
She ate you so loud
-Idle Wrath
——————————————————————————————————
Would you believe,
I can’t lie?
She was a runner.
I was a bleeder.
She ran fast.
She was a love I’ll never know.
She was a debutante.
she was vaudeville.
I don’t believe
I’m losing it.
-Wild Heart
Since 1876 the building had stood
In the middle of town
In a bad neighbourhood
But, empty for decades
And an eyesore to some
She was no longer "The Lady"
And her time had come

The old man sat there staring
As the charges were set
To bring down "The Lady"
he would not forget
His first visit inside her
In nineteen and ten
He'd been inside her much more
he figured since then

Talking to no one,
For no one was there
He talked of her being
He talked to the air
"She started out as a theater"
"Built by Colonel Tom Shaw"
"To showcase an actress"
"Known as Katie McGraw"

"He built her a showcase"
"To play many roles"
"But, Katie...instead"
"had other life goals"
"It stayed as a theater"
"Until Colonel Tom Died"
"Others took over"
"and failed as they tried"
"To bring in top talent"
"To play on the stage"
"But by then, yes then...vaudeville"
"Was now all the rage"

New owners and concepts
Vaudeville died
To keep it afloat as a theatre
Many had tried
A store full of trinkets
Of baubles and rings
A department store future
And the money it brings
The next incarnation
Was in retail not show
And for twenty odd years
They gave it a go

"The Lady" adapted
and was a great place to buy
But, her past as a theater
Well, it never would die
New owners took over,
A cabaret place
Was the next incarnation
She had a new face
"The Lady" was re-done
With tables for meals
Great entertainers
and she held wide appeal

"I remember Bob Darin..."
"Dean Martin and Jerry"
"Came here in to town"
"And they all made quite merry"
"Great singers and shows"
"Kept "The Lady" on point
"But, tastes changed again"
"a new King they'd annoint"
"Elvis, came through here"
"Played "The Lady", two shows"
"But, rock and roll stars"
"Don't come up where it snows"

"The Lady" closed up
became a hostel for a time
To hide all her beauty
Was truly a crime
She's been a store and a warehouse
And a place that made hats
But for thirty odd years
She's been home to some cats
Derelict, vacant...no one comes round
It's about time for "The Lady"
To be knocked to the ground

Some piegeons and vagrants
The bats, cats and owls
all leave in the morning
When the cityscape howls
The owner, not caring
Signed off on her long ago
It's been fifty odd years
Since she housed her last show

Her boards held up Jolson
George Burns, ***** Brice
And I said, she housed Elvis
He played here twice
But, now "The Lady"
Sits and waits for the call
Of the man in the crane
With the old wrecking ball

The old man, wiped his eyes
And he turned from the scene
"I would remember
"Of how she had been"
"A palace of talent"
"A place one should be"
"Now, she's only a relic"
"But she's "The Lady" to me.
Heather Mirassou Oct 2010
Good morning rooster
How do you do?
It’s the crack of dawn
You ****-a-doodle-do
You sit on your perch pride fully and woo
Standing mighty and bold you call your brood for food

Sleek and graceful you do the cockerel waltz
Strutting vaudeville statuesque
Crowing to proclaim your territory
You stand protecting your roost
***** and brave
Watching for predators coming your way

The alpha male
Your earlobes and crown are blood red like a bird of paradise
Your steel beak as strong as a saw
Your feather mane chestnut drapes over your back
Your breast fuchsia and emerald quill
Your silken tail an extended fan

You run free reign on my ranch
A thousand chickens roost in my barn
You rearrange my garden while pecking for nourishment
Eating up all the insects and brown recluses in my yard
In dust you and your flock bathe
You even watch over the hens eggs

Your calls distinct and powerful
When you are still and content sweet singing rings
You are friendly to humans
And can even be domesticated
Stay here Roo
We will protect you
Copyright Heather Mirassou
jesi Gaston Mar 2015
“I've realized,” I write, “the Groucho Marx of the mind is chaos personified. The Groucho Marx of *my mind *was chaos, I revise and already think I should revise again – “you never know where you'll end up,” I think, of me and of Groucho. Either way, Groucho Marx came to me in a thought when I was thinking about a poem I will not finish, that would have been about him. “We were just four jews looking for a laugh,” Groucho says at least twice – once when he was alive and once now as I invoke him – the heavy glasses, the synonymous greasepaint lip, the cigar – lit, with smoke that surrounds and engulfs me, threads tangibly through the air, through my eyes, and through the insides of my sinus densely, like mossy Eldritch Horrors and old movies somehow without stopping my vision. He has a mouth but it doesn't move, he is not alive – instead he is a ghost, instead he is dead but standing there, with me, in space lighted from within – space that's white like the smoke – thickly. Among all this, a ghost in a black suit. At least, I think the suit is black, or bluing black. It is tinged with 50 years of rotting celluloid, and paired with a white button up underneath – no tie.
         Growing up all five of them were poor, very poor – so poor they were Jewish-in-New-York-in-the-early-1900s poor. Forced outside of the world, into their world from birth, while their mother, Big Duck, put them up to instruments and got them begging early – vaudeville was their daddy after all (“after all” being a refrain in the poem I'll never finish, repeated like a mantra – after all! after all! after all! after all!– in that text, and used like a drug – afterall – and always driving deathward to an end that never came and can't, after all is written down) – with the jokes they told and sang and played, on their piano, harp, and banjo, all the time – and here is how she learnt how well Chico could play the piano, and how well Harpo could play the harp. And how poorly little Groucho played the banjo. The shame she felt, the shame she must have felt – but here my poem consumes them, because I am already sure that childhood is wrought with fear of birth order, sure as I am that middle children lack something, and maybe have something for that lack, but It's me, not Groucho, that takes over, saying Groucho was the obvious middle child, and of course lacked Big Duck's approval – Big Duck hated the banjo strumming and myriad puns he threw, I say – puns being a part of the poem, the poem which would have (but never) ended on Groucho ducking soup. I wanted it all as a joke and still do, but who will disappoint? Who could? There are options – Groucho, myself, the poem, etc. all working poorly. It is hard to imagine the lack that would culminate in a poet – maybe this gap is wider than a middle child – writing three brothers into a brawl, cartoonish in the streets. May be even harder to imagine the discontent and fear at work inside a child of five – birthing chaos. Maybe I misspoke – I can't know,  I'm not a child of five.
                  Groucho is dead, is still standing in front of me expectantly, not moving. Right in front of me when again I hear his voice – reanimate and filtered through a phonograph – weakly rising above it's own eroded texture – “I was misquoted, I was misquoted... Quote me as saying, 'I was misquoted.'” I wanted his life entropically spinning this place, spinning throughout this place, a ghost – to live forever is to die forever in every gaunt lie, misquote after misquote re-shaping our dead selves until grotesqueries we never intended are held comfortably under our name. Groucho, aimless, escapes because he pre-empts – he uses his whole self to decimate his cultural body, to save the self he's sacrificed. Groucho means to become a void, or Groucho becomes a void more correctly – Groucho means nothing, can only mean nothing, because he's focused his words – his self – around his lack – the words' lack. Because the words always lack, and Groucho is all words. I see him take out the greasepaint container, which is in a shoe-polish-looking canister, and then I lose Groucho again to facts – he was the outsider using words to one up them. I see his wit like a weapon. His being in Hollywood was a stress on Hollywood's peace of mind. I see him tearing balsa wood from up under the street and chucking it into styrofoam towers, which crumble. I see the SUVs that swerved to pass him run into walls, deflating the cars and the walls while the drivers run screaming with ketchup pulsing from the real wounds in their necks. This is where my poem was – more or less. My poem had Groucho gleeful – “Groucho skips, Groucho skips, Groucho skips,” it said, “down the streets throwing rocks at cars...” – the melodies of my naive poem's schoolboy nihilisms never broke enough – “In Groucho's perfect world every day would be spent disrupting traffic, smashing bugs and ******* everywhere,” it said because it was too young to understand, because it had no void, and could offer no revolt from meaning – revolution being radical agency expressed through violence against every order, hatred for every structure including itself – in Groucho's perfect world really there is no language and no one knows what happens after all.
            Lingering is the thought that Groucho means something – lingering is the vaguest, most insistent and warlike imprint of a metaphor on Groucho's face, ineffably moving me to continue but Groucho is no friend, and Groucho is not with me, because the Groucho of the mind is not Groucho, Groucho hates the mind, and Groucho negates all possible Groucho's so the imprint is not Groucho's. The ghost is a misquote, the poem is a misquote, the letters are a misquote, I am a misquote – and this is a misquote too. His cigar (growing bigger) is puffing out that white cloud smoke but still I can see him – the smoke just goes into the space around us, the space that redacts and recreates itself every time I consider it – a copy of an 18th copy, with only Groucho remaining in all iterations, like the borders of a decomposed jpeg quietly losing logic. Groucho the lie, Groucho the memory – a man shaped around the falsity of metaphor and language – floats, as subject, through my memory – punctum with no point, void. Here he is – naked, a stark black silhouette I'd never claim. He's staring, but he's not staring at me because I'm not there. What's left is overstated nothing – the ghost of a man who negated logic, left in the mind of a poet who has long since given up on the man, and soon will give up on the poem.”
There is nothing left here. I am alone, I am dizzy – overcome with boredom.  I want to say, “Groucho is not here, was not, cannot be here” – I know instead I need to end on a mute point.
formatting is wonk for this one anywhere except libreoffice. It's always prose but there it's prose with cool spacing (which is to say it fills exactly a page in 12 point times new roman font single-spaced)
these faces on the wall that have no eyes,
the young children with blood escaping from their hands
   as they    pick up a mound of the Earth and  throw at genuflected  roses.
these battered men   in parks   searching  for light
   and   my woman   is no longer with  me.

it’s all  vaudeville:  this obnoxious working of continuance,
these redundant  flutings,   these  unprecedented fluctuations.

opening  the yellow gates  to death
as the  automobile churns the  last of its exhausted snarl.
   we    are children   peering through   glass cases
as   death laughs at his   hopeless  clientele,
    sad,   desolate   progenies   in   working-classes,
in   parks,  in factories,   somewhere along Mendiola,
  or  just treading the waist-high  hellish   froths   of   Dapitan,
    there’s   always   death in   the nooks   of the quiet
and from   where birds    stir in  sidereal circles,   death
  with his hands    resting   on the   cage,   chases us  back to  our homes.

death   the changing of the   gatekeeper.
death  the   telling machine.
death   the dentist.
death   my next door neighbor.
death,   this boorish broken-winged   Maya twitching in  front
   of my dog’s shadow  shot out of the Sun’s  shameful recoil.
death,   my loud and loutish muse,
death    the   truant,
death,   the   copious  fog somewhere in Kennon Rd.
   death,   in my   hands through   darkness    and  light,
death   through troves   of enigma,
      death   through   undisputed clearings,
death    the   long line  of red beads   in EDSA,
  death  the gates   of Plaridel,

     it’s the moon   following you,   trailing your measure,
i hold   my woman’s used   shirt,  pick up her photographs
    and there’s no tender movement left but  the still-seeking   lion
prowling   the jungles   of my  heart,   seared by  lovelorn undoing.
  
through   the  bottom of  the sky and the  unchanging roof-beam,
  the weathervane ceases to  a sojourn  and the  wind is  trapped
    in   a place  where we   cannot   utter any word  between the  gnashing
  of   our teeth – through the wasted   years,  through  the sleeping in  and out
  of   homes filled  with beatings,  to cathedrals swollen with  tribulations,
      and to   the vineyards     wrung   out   of wine,    my  lover,   walking  through  fire,
        sound     silence.
Medusa Jun 2018
Zenia Argos is tired. Tired to her ventricles, but still curious. She might possibly have told the right person on a certain type of night in the right kind of bar that she defined herself by her curiosity. Now she felt that her strange mind and her odd ways probably overwhelmed her and had thereby come to define her.

~^~
Zenia not only felt undefined, she felt amorphous.
Like a ghost in a black silk raincoat and black patent leather stiletto  heels, she stalked through airports and the gutters of various cities. She forgot to ask herself meaningful questions. She forgot to ask herself any questions at all.

~^~
One day in some unbelievably high-numbered floor of a high-rise hotel in a city whose name she had forgotten she woke up in a luxurious enough bed with a body on the other side of it, face turned away from her. Her brain tossed up only this inane phrase, which repelled and fascinated her at the same time.
"Age has it's privileges"

First thought after that was a silly image of an actual ledge, outside of a high rise building such as the one she found herself in at the moment. With a cartoon cat and a cartoon Zenia fighting to stay on the edge, and comically slipping, hilariously falling, and hanging on, in fast forward and then reverse, and she lay there with her eyes closed and watched the vaudeville show for as long as it took to run through it's loop several times.
~^~
Then she wondered why she was thinking in perfume ad cliches, especially ones from decades, perhaps many decades ago?

This prompted her to jump, catlike, from prone, to alert, and holding her gun from beneath pillow, scanning the room.

Nope.

Not a perfume ad.
Zenia Is a result of reading the excellent work of Margaret Atwood, all of it, for decades, but in particular: The Robber Bridegroom. In which she is the villain.
JJ Hutton Jun 2014
The young novelist wrote in his rented room, a claustrophobic nook under the stairwell, where the ceiling sobbed dust each time the owner hurried down to work or hurried up for a forgotten prescription. Shelves crammed with the owner's yearbooks and photo albums lined the walls. He typed at a long oak desk. On which, he had one plant, a gardenia, white flowers in full bloom, and a quote by Buddha on an index card in a four-by-six-inch frame. "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

The sun had quit for the day. He got up and poured out his cold coffee in the bathroom sink across the hall. He dried the mug with a paper towel. Then to the kitchen, where he pressed the button on the box of Merlot, filling the recycled mug. The denouement was coming together. But he hadn't hit his stride, tapped into that secret space where words flow with natural rhythm and proper grace. His hungry or starving or emaciated mother character--he struggled with the diction, the balance between subtlety and a Coca-Cola slinger's criminal word abuse--would decide to eat her baby. Not the ******, the denouement. Critics would **** as only critics could.

He drank one cup of wine while standing in the kitchen then refilled and stepped back into his room. The plant and the Buddha quote were suggestions by his mom. She didn't like him spending so much time alone. Time alone killed her uncle. The young novelist argued it was an indiscriminate heart attack. No, his mother said, it's from all that cheese he would eat. Cheese, his mother contended, was the unitary measure of loneliness, killing you one comforting slice at a time.

Google the symbolism, his mother said of the gardenia.

Secret love.

Oh good.

That's just the first result.

I always loved them.

That was only the first. I bet they're part of the funerary tradition.

Your father used to get them once a year for Pastor Mike. Do you remember that? Around Christmas time. It was your father's way of saying we appreciate your work.

Secret love.

The quote made just about as much sense. A devout--dare he think staunch--Methodist since she was old enough to disagree and berate, his mother's selection of a Buddha aphorism begged suspicion. The young novelist assumed this was an appeal to his academic worldview, a panoramic ideology that protected him from having to value or defend anything, really. Buddhism is **** electronic dance music; Methodism is vaudeville, tired and exploitative. And if his mother was trying to be cool, that disgusted him. But if his mother was trying to meet him halfway, that excited him.

That's it, he thought, the mug now half-empty. The mother is not hungry, not starving, nor emaciated. It's a loving mother. A mother that knows the lows of living. She eats her young in an act of compromise, to protect, to prevent confusion and isolation, hell even Kraft Singles.

He sat and scooted up his chair. He wrote in a fever, a frenetic fictive dream, page by page, scene by scene through the night.
The fog crept in on giant monster claws,
Surely no itty-bitty feline foots, I pray:
“Feets don’t fail me now,”
A line that will live in infamy,
Way back in a vaudeville when,
A minstrel Chitlin Circuit then,
Was an actor known as the
"Laziest man in the world,"
A character designed to stick to a
Collective white consciousness,
Stick like Tar-Baby, that negative
Image of African-American men--
I speak of The Brothers--
Who for over a century, have been
Struggling to live down a pernicious,
Most persistently demeaning,
Hollywood trope.
Tribute is due to the black actor born:
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.
Oh, Mr. Perry, & yes, you were the
First black actor to receive
Screen credit in a film.
Well, I guess that puts you right up there,
With Jackie Robinson & Sidney Poitier,
Carver or Tubman, or any of those
Countless northern abolitionists--
With no personal stake in slavery,
Or emancipation, but fervent nonetheless--
Color-barrier breakers &
Household saints a-coming &
A-marching in, in that number . . .
You paid a big price, Mr. Perry:
The indignity & débauche,
By abject surrender to the Boss Man,
Tribute, recognition is due for
Feats of humility & self-abasement,
Entailing total superhuman surrender,
Capitulation to the dismal, prevailing
State of American race relations at the time.
Stepin Fetchit: a name & a persona,
Not just painfully racist, but
Downright subversive.
dark leaps when
there is the frothing light
beaming a sizable aureole
on your face
this evening
and its palpable brigade.

dark is having your
inwoven dress free
from swaying
pressed against raucous
facelessness of things
rogue and renegade.

and when i have you
not, shining the light
and its intone,
wind felt like
stabs or
i in attendance
of a crazed vaudeville—
trapeze is the hinge
of the void
afloat, upstream, space-hovering;
a display of love
   and not so much
is shown of the vertigo
trapped in a square,
a face
impinged in the seamlessness
of this fabulation
when you've gone
quickly fading out;
    
     light is my remember,
o, dark my
     forgetling.
topaz oreilly Feb 2014
The  Contra jour man hid his  grimace,
watching the Punch and Judy show
with vignettes of spectators in like denial,
he  clenched his fists
fearful of the spotlight
yet he could not surrender pain

Eventually he try to break the  rules
and heal underneath.
Yet his crucifix a new seaside town
with a floodlit vaudeville
presenting songs of  belied memories
to which he can only  raise a mug
of  out of season white burgundy
apparently leading the dance  nowhere.
Upon the table in their bowl
in violent disarray
of yellow sprays, green spikes
of leaves, red pointed petals
and curled heads of blue
and white among the litter
of the forks and crumbs and plates
the flowers remain composed.
Coolly their colloquy continues
above the coffee and loud talk
grown frail as vaudeville.
Nobody Loses All The Time

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

—by ee cummings
Zak Krug Nov 2013
The fire rages
throwing shadows across
the trash.
Pepsi, Coke, Malboro
Cowboy Killers.
Lightning strikes the midnight black pavement.
Please Lord,
keep us safe.
Is this how the world ends?
A puff of smoke
tainted with a subtle hint of
Budweiser.
Oh, the humanity!

The wound has grown too large.
A bullet whispering through the air,
landing in a young mans chest.
The world ends
surrounded in yellow caution tape.
Police Line:
Do Not Cross.

Here the guardians sit
on the worlds edge,
looking over at the chaos,
coated in yellow gold and
thick black smog.
Choking on past sins,
the curtain falls on this
vaudeville show.

The world doesn't end in fire
or ice,
but both.
JR Rhine Oct 2016
I perused through the catacombs
gliding my fingers along your innumerate spines,
picked you up where you blossomed in my palm
and breathed archaic mysteries into my face.

I felt myself trembling
as I dared enter the hallowed corridors,
opening doors and peeking inside
in hopes to catch a semblance of your touch,
your taste,
your voice.

A fingerprint,
a coffee stain,
clues and the origins of bricolage
that left me breathless
and teary-eyed
as the weight of this sacred place
bore itself entirely upon me.

A part of your soul
encased within each one of your treasures:

I heard your stereo in a jazz history,
heard you ponder within Dostoyevsky,
saw your wry smile and charm within Fleming,
and your humor within Vaudeville--

and as I perused onward,
and the archetype bore itself naked in a holy privilege,
I closed myself within that impalpable bubble
and wept at the gates of Eden.

As I removed my hands from your ribcage,
and withdrew the breath from your nostrils,
walking away with your words and fragments of your soul
I soon realized--

You Are What You Read.
Thank you for everything, Professor Barrett. Rest easy, comrade.
every morning at dawn arise old ghosts
mouths a laceration of starched and well ironed sorrows
tall with hard calloused thoughts
they dispense in scattered winds
red fiery dust as they move
it pulverises a languid and tremulous sun
creating evil urges
white eyed they ****** and gulp
like burst and juicy fruit
their fill of emptied begging children
causing competing and contrasting
rumours of confrontation to avenge and humiliate
to cause a devastation of glimpses through
the red fiery dust paths
don’t think if there is no hurry they will slip away
no, the old ghosts multiply forcing a look upon
that frightened daylight star with an evil eye of virtue
that assumes to sanctify the foul rookeries
where perch devils and evil jinns
conjuring up a vaudeville of defrocked priests
who weep  over a holed and cast of shoe
with withered  fingers rattling rosaries
as if to ward of some dreaded contagion
and they lie there among the rain without the wet
and know that it is they who are the contagion
they so fearfully dread
JR Rhine Feb 2017
…the dream sequence
plays like vaudeville
in the peephole
of a kinetoscope

my drunken subconscious thoughts
undulate in murky waters
and slurin the visions of specters past

infrastructures and pylons
formed from childhood homes schools
skate parks friend’s houssand churches

faces familiar unfamiliar
mold and mend in wicked contortions
and diaphanous ambiguity
what obfuscates me from the truths
of my mind

I stumble through the chambers
haunted by childhood nightmares
and tickled by ancient fantasies

my arms
               and legs
                             are like
                                          rubber
           ­                              I
                                 feel
                  torpidity
overcome

and the words
are like alphabet soup
in the director’s commentary
splashing around aimlessly mingling
in the waves of broth

what will be revealed
in this phantasmagoric phenomena
wax figures coming to life
and panoramas dancing on the walls

my body somewhere in time
waits with pen and paper in hand
eager to counter the façade
with the utmost coherence

just you wait til I wake up
and reveal all your secrets
oh wondrous mind…
hear    me now as i say
  pilgrimed is the image
  unloosen
   yourself   into the wind
  as i *****
      for some
  sense of
     placeness in this
 vaudeville

      no more are
 the birds that
     sing and way past us
 already seconds
     in waning
    is the same permeable blue
tracking    up
   our curved  spines
and when      weakened
    falling at
     last

as multiple
    cities do -
i see   a line
      for  a stream uncollected,
 as      rain
     over     genuflected
  hills      will.
Joy Jul 2017
And some days the hours run like
Black and white films.
Flickering shadows,
Blank noise,
The hours tick by
Like clicks on a Kodak roll.
Between it all,
A mind as handsome as
The fool on screen
Taps the light
To bring the scene
To an eggshell cream.
July, 2017
Give Martin Lutherking Jr,
The cup of transfiguration,
And he shall drink from
The river of vaudeville
And thoughtless transmigration,

Listen children,
Nature taught me to drink
From the cup of tolerance,
But how can Akwasidae
Be enjoyed in praises?
That is the drums and claps of Africa
Beating and pleading violently
In excess fear and tears,

Now I know, that
I will never know
My enemies until
I become one,
Yes, I will never know
My love ones until
I enjoy the fruit of love,

Oh no, the sacred calico
Has grown weak and dim,
And the hunter has brought
A friendly mamba home,

My child, do not question
The nursing mother
Why she is raining in pain,
For the door of her anchor
Is now shattered in the
Valley of infinite darkness,
And her child is off
To serve the prelate ancestor,

Behold, the naked Gods
Have nestled their own,
And have rewarded nature
With the official dress
Of the ritual raven,
This quagmire is blood-curdling
And emotionally unfathomable.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com
Terry Collett Apr 2013
She was one of the vaudeville dancers
he supposed. He had drawn back the
curtain and she was sitting there on
the stall one leg crossed over the other,
in that skimpy dress, white lace up shoes.

He had apologised, blushed, was about
to draw back the curtain when she said:
Oh, no leave it be. And he had and stood
there, slightly open mouthed, mind ticking
over, eyes stuck on her fine legs crossed.

They were nice legs he thought. Her dark
hair, parted in the middle was not well
brushed; it seemed as if she’d just got up
from a bed. Maybe she had. She gazed at
him, her eyes looked foreign. Odd to think
that, he thought. He wanted to drink her in.

Take in each aspect of her just sitting there.
I’m on soon, she said. Yes, definitely an
accent, he thought nodding. I’m a dancer,
she said. O right, he said. He thought as
much; the dress and shoes, the way she
had about her. White ankle shoes. Lace ups.

Not the sort to wear out in the street, he
supposed. Are you to watch the show?
She asked. Yes, I am, he said, looking at
her lips, the way they spread under her
nose, held in place by her cheeks, he
thought. What would his mother say about
her short dress? Far too short, shows her
backside almost, she’d have said scornfully.

Yet he still gawped at her. Her ankles, knees,
thighs. What a feast for the eyes, he mused,
trying to look away, but held bound, fixed
as if by some glue. The tassels on the end of
the short dress moved as she stood up. She
stretched her arms. Shook her legs back into
life as if they had died. Must be ready, she said.

Warm ups. Yes, of course, he murmured, and
turned away, walking off, carrying the image
of her and her shoes and dress and her dark
hair into his mind. Fixed there. Captured each
aspect of her being, placed in some room of
memory, for later viewing, in his secret seeing.
Duke Thompson Aug 2014
An old dull silver tray bought from the thrift store last polished never
Sits between us, holding a half emptied handle of rye, two rock glasses
Adjunct ice bucket and a handful of spansules all neatly lined up in a row
Like candy for the taking
Too late

Existentially snuffed out
'Yes' I thought, there's a good start
But existentialism is so boooooring dear,
such a dry, ******, passe affair, pedantic really
She groans out her words elongated like some big queen of England
Sitting on her royal *** smoking from a long black cigarette holder
I pull her towards me roughly slipping quickly into thick, thickening
Newfound (land) accents
"Listen here missy, you're no Audrey Hepburn"
Brashly kissing bright blooming vermillion lips
"And you're no John Kennedy"

Playing dress up ***; cosplay games de la haute societe
Cruel broken bank account pauvrete down and out facade
Tho this is neither Paris nor London
Nor do we find any satisfaction in our destitution
I am not a plongeur et vous,
Vous etes rien qu'un petit ami du nuit
"I'm not your *****"
All part of the act
Or so I'm told

We've forgotten who we really are behind these vaudeville masks
     The world less lucid, less clear, receding gently tho greatly
         Day by lurid day
Tyler Nicholas Jul 2011
I remember it well.
That naive kind of love
shared through anonymity
when, in fact, I knew it was you all along.

Things haven't changed very much from then,
have they?
We still write
but with a more
colorful
vocabulary.

And with this
I vicariously replace my virtues
with violent vibes and
vaudeville-esque veneers.

I try to become more mature than I was back then
with these words
that fill these notebooks
that ooze
adventure and joy and sorrow and hatred and lust and violence and praise and thanksgiving and trust and disbelief and doubt and
hope
and pain.

My truthbox is full of letters to myself.
Letters that wouldn't fit in an envelope
to send to you.

So I let you read them on that schoolyard bench
under the lamppost.

Did you pay attention to detail?

— The End —