Desponsive Position

 
Learning to fly in a downwards trajectory,
a tragic achievement with scatological insults;
the overspill of emotion part of your geography.

Memories slurred in cabbage and broken glass - 
smart junk,
disposable wit,
fetishized objects,

Pilgrims of Derangement impersonate Fantasists,
a forcefield around eternity.

Autobiography deconstructed from relics,
bleached of meaningful distinctions
fungal avoidance teasing out moral complexities,
esoteric longings and the nature of proportion.

The prejudices gave spiritual status,
sensorial tonality, master of shifting discontent and
diagonal momentum;

Too much to say 
very easily becomes 
nothing but static.

The Moody Gospel

 
The impoverish soprano saxophone improvisation
kills the Moody Gospel 
in an free wheeling jam session;
a series of inconsistent contradictions,
refusals to be contacted,
doing his dirty work, 
by proxy.

You think it's money, 
it's not;
it's personality,
and you haven't got one lieutenant.

What has he got that Susie likes? 
Lost his leg to a home town sweetheart,
a feeble alibi for amorality.
Your every move is obvious,
all antisocial perversion of value, 
not cleverness, not imagination, 
just brute force.

The line of wolves who are nothing to anyone.
You are 
Genghis Khan, 
Alexander the Great, 
Caesar -
Yes, they were skilled; 
but were they subversive?

Sprezzatura

 
With beetle-browed irritation
here we go again:
Sprezzatura -
essentially or inessentially
an identity derived
for the pop imagination
of a self-exploding
book.

Not a prison house
or a world view,
this seems a little different,
not in cognitive taste,
but in cultural flavor.

The amperage of misunderstanding increases,
these darkly funny night sweats
a correction to complacency,
a strangled, atonal blend of
billows,
stutters,
and cracks -
a free-wheeling orchestration of
liquid samba and depraved forro.

Pearls hang down in necklaces,
islands come round in archipelagos,
two pupils and one fool go yelping
with little allegiance to tradition;
concertina remixes on high wire,
tightrope de crescendo
scowling in god's pocket
beyond basic logistical discussions.

There are no rehearsals.

The language of flowers:
a trio of violets,
thistle squiggles,
overlaid on mulberry
dead palms and live parakeets,
angels show up elsewhere,
no complexity, virtuous intentions,
maudlin caricatures, or amplitude.

The waggles of focal dystonia:
my light from one lightbulb,
I stand illuminated,
and the bastards tried to stop me.

Overheard

 I've overheard that
life is stressful in Fargo,
destiny is not a foregone conclusion
in the Trapeze Academy
where busyness has acquired
social status,
and the room is
in need of a huge,
green, plastic alligator.

Disorienting youth,
adolescent overindulgence
in pizza and porn,
her lesions left unresolved,
praying for reality
with punk exuberance
and holiday fecklessness,
trigger a crisis,
no surplus in chastity,
a pleasant moment at frieze.

I sensed a kindred spirit
contrary to
it's spirit of discipline.

I want to be a scout
and I'm stuck here
washing dishes.

Times are conducive
to extremist anger -
instilled fear in their
traditional minds.
The way you react to normal
stimuli changes talk
over action.
Between tongues -
different boundaries.
To be a monument is
certainly false,
the metaphor of loss
is translation.

How do you obtain a death
certificate for a brother-in-law?

Frugal with language
he skirts the edge of
poetic practice,
like Dada,
but still remaining
straightforward.

Dance with me, Big Face.

Yet Again

 
Yet again
the relentless chatter,
embarrassingly inane;

the world is too much
with us,

a rebuke to our soft lives.

We are forever picking out constellations 
from these days,
to fit who
and where we are. 

The present rearranges the past.
We never  tell the story completely, 
because a life
isn’t a story;

it’s a whole Milky Way of occasions.

Nkyrinna

 The paucity of reliable sources 
limits our understanding 
of pastimes and politics,
not discrete categories of experience.

Chimerical projection of new gendered actors,
took part in formerly forbidden practices 
that shocked elders, chiefs, and government officials.

Free from the confines of kinship 
and community expectations,
embraced individualism,
purchased imported material items,
openly initiated local rhythms,
ballroom standards, calypso flair,
countrywide cooperation and 
collective harmony
disempowered people.

Not as an embargo of the present,
the porous boundary 
between palpable musical energy
and social change;
a highly contested realm
where clothing matters,
and dress is political.

Musics do not have selves, 
people do.


 * Nkyrinna - This Generation

A Bad Feeling

 
She’s got a bad feeling about 
this calligraphic romantic diabolism,
all nerved up.

Squiggles and disambiguation,
exhibition of the lazy arts
with Tinkertoy rhythms
and obstructed harmonies.

She claims that there ain’t enough pieces of her 
to go around.

She doesn’t know that
everyday is anew, 
a state of constant arrival, 
another chance
for a belly laugh dawn.