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Sunday, February 21, 2016

Vernon Frazer Musters the Human Volcano for Nodal Conflict Amidst the Doggerel With No Stegosaurus Left

Beautiful Music Outplayed



a desperation mattress 
caught in ballad’s hot pursuit 

a madness                 
at the mural heads roll
       the pass                    over
                          the
           deaf-eared 
                     overture

advancing matter, energy the former
  heroic in transforming the thought
          word    as       deeded
  decodes receded residue

springs
    the nodal lunge
     synthetic
     entreaty                 dabs  
     spotters      trained

in the code of the crabgrass murder

no window scene flayed
when the brutal shadow 
displayed a frontal edge

the pitch tuned 
 to ears 
      out of hearing



Afterbirth Control



spontaneous comprehension 
stripteases yachts in the monastery

      unexpected
banjo factory a live augment
plagues 
     at the margin

       everything moves to guillotine   
       the multidimensional continuity breakthrough

mandarin lore: 
                
     instrumental muster for the human volcano
  
*

mileage candor
  resuscitates past hammering

and chaotic scorpions thatch
random convection projectiles
          chameleon linearity currents

     exquisite magnet quarrels
     magenta doggerel drooled 

ecstatic 
      on the painter

lark polarity the hobble

          legitimate  
                     in the first placenta




Secret’s Exhibition



clandestine 
portfolios its intimate 
   charade

a slow burlesque 
brings ancient breath
to runic emblems

no stegosaurus left to run its doublethink

before the rubicon 
challenge bolding its nightline thrust 



   timid  murmur faced
reduction its own hearing breath
  plate     shattered                     clatter
annoy

the aging who shift to the right
their windbreakers catching the current
of past
   emissions galore

at the reduction platter
    where serpent invaders

inured to the past
reclamation haunt

its vague suspenders float adrift
direction a suspension of leisure
pulling the emblem camp legend

underscoring the mileage debacle

patron saints
lifted after scorning their meat



when undue particles climb
the slated dimension cluster
to demean the hated tissue

a fibrous entourage
sneaks the slow wipe
encore a tentacle spread

ensures a plated glossary
         its undue weight of water

before the plastic surges hit
the freehand holding templar
mysteries along the great ruin

charges the line’s horizon

to the face of its darkest ledge

Vernon Frazer’s most recent books of poetry include Selected IMPROVISATIONS, ANCHOR WHAT and Definitions of Obscurity, a collaborative work with Michelle Greenblatt. Frazer’s web site is http://www.vernonfrazer.net. Bellicose Warbling, the blog that updates his web page, can be read at http://bellicosewarbling.blogspot.com/His work, including the entire longpoem IMPROVISATIONS,may also be viewed at Scribd.com. In addition to writing poetry and fiction, Frazer also performs his poetry, incorporating text and recitation with animation and musical accompaniment on YouTube. Frazer is married. 


Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Leonard Gontarek Reveals That Perfume Is The Gateway Drug

Apart                                                              

1

Tell me about yourself in a 100 words or less.

2

I have always believed, if it is not broken, don’t fix it.
I who believe it is not broken. I have never trusted the TV version
of autumn over autumn. I am only interested in people
who have fallen in with anything. It looks like I brought a haiku
to an epic fight. I was there the day the music cried.
My cat hung up on you. I am not good at lying.
I have a sacred heart.
I have difficulty telling the Mysterious Universe
and the Outside World apart.


Morphine


 1
                                                           
He sits on a bench refolding the map, with difficulty,
now that he knows where he is going,

The bouquet next to him
may be a gift, may have been given to him.  

He is on morphine.
He is wearing alligator gloves.
                                             
2

Poetry must change the world.
                       
 3

Santana is playing at a party in the past,                               
so loud you think the party is outdoors.


Window                                                         

 one
                                   
A single syllable of lily, before night.

 two

Mostly green, but gold too,
trees are ejected into the day.
The book says the voices of children
arise clear in spring like toys,

balls or kites, miraculous and
loud, and it is so.

The silence is a public garden.
You go there for the scent of water,
the statues of angels and monsters
and lovers, the magnolia.

You cannot see the future.
It is out of view of the window,
to the west. Darkness is covering the houses.
The branches are going out one by one.

The perfume is of a teenage flame.
The cat rolls in the last dazzle of light.

Each season is contained in the next,
understood simply. You cannot understand
spring, or summer. It is mysterious, as it should be.
The children have gone in, against their wishes, for dinner.             


Fair                 

It’s just like the chair
in my movie, I mean, dream.
There are thirteen things that matter for me here.                 



 1

Five Hundred New
Fairy Tales Discovered
In Germany.



 2

Newly Divorced Man
Gets Creative With
His Ex-Wife’s
Wedding Dress.



 3

I want to be paid for the time
I go to my job in my dreams.
The minotaur in the cubicle next to me agrees.


 4

The woman I’m with is wearing a perfume called High School.
The light is intentional.



 5

Perfume is a gateway drug.
 


 6

I feel totally safe-ish with you.



 7

Dusk is ex cathedra. The mica-flecked dark is also.



 8

Now that paradise is locked, where will we go?
Now that there is nowhere to go, what will we do with these brochures?
I have set fire to these messages in an ashtray many times in the last hour
and dumped the ashes in the river of wind.



 9

Little wind.
Don’t let it in.


 10

Everything is done. The truce is not apparent.



 11

The world isn’t fair, ladling out light.



 12

It’s spring. Kids run
through streets, with
cherry-stained hands, yelling,
trailing strings.



 13

I want more than this.
I know you do.



Rake                                                               



 1

It is the cutouts or silhouettes
of the leaves that concern
us. What is not here
is on our mind. The door

that opened out on the vista of light
cannot be seen or remembered
at all. It is suggested                                      
that the rake left out                                       

was not elegant, but may be so
now. Think along these lines.



 2

There is only one question: How can I help?
This is a direct quote.



 3

The man sits down at the paper
and begins to write a letter.
It is understood that there are those
among you to whom the idea of letter
will have to be explained.                              

Say you are viewing paintings in a museum
for the first time and you are transported to
a clearing and it is mildly hot.
The dragonflies are flashing and the base
of the mountain hums.
Two liters of root beer or ginger ale
are poured over you. You equate                  
this to the imagery in the paintings
you have seen and the emotion that is
stirred. It’s crazy, of course, but that is
why you’ve put pen to paper.

You add something
witty and charming because
you are writing to someone close to
you. And you sign your name.
That’s all.
Or you want to say the world is a garden.

Your small garden, which is wild, beautiful
and disordered, connects you to the larger world.
The birds make a terrific racket,                                                       

praise it and call it singing.
The soil smells like green darkness,
praise the slight air of oregano and dark chocolate.

You say you live for the civil twilight
when the bats try out the night
and the embers even out.

Say you coast in one of the boats                                          
to the center of the lake.
Tell me the silk the milkweed emits                                      

means the world to you
and you talk all day with cats and rats           
as if they understood.
Tell me you have fallen for the darkness                              
and petals, but save the last dance for me.



Level              



 1

Item: She parked under the dogwood                        
and hoped the blossoms
would undo and cover
her dark car.
She would photograph it.



There is a mysterious
rain in the fields, I am told.

Finite amount of crows
in oak at dusk.

 2

I would not want to seem
as if I knew something about
faith or the way to it,
if I did not.
To know a thing is simple.
When you do not know it,
it is complex, with many layers.

There are many places
I would want to return
to without a dark heart.

Now as I purchase blueberries
on the sidewalk, I see my
heart as lightened.

The wind rustles Mirror
Lake once more. The pines or reflections?
It is hard to tell.



 3

Through the night of trees
and tree frog hum,
a clearing in the leaves.

A falls starts up. Sheet
by aluminum sheet.
Mostly gray, thunder distant in the day.

All happens so fast,
as though a letter had grown wings.



Perhaps there is a place
to set up the compass
and level,
to better see from one point to another,
the present to the past.
Maybe it is this park.                                                             


Customer Service                                          



 1

Somehow it is my father at the customer service window.
I feel sadness. I don’t know what to do with it.                                             
He hands me a brochure to take home, to think about it later.
I realize the cicadas I heard were in a dream.
The weather breaks.
The rides at the carnival are closed.
I cannot love the past again.
The city asks, Do you desire a glass coffin?
A skyline in haze and mist.



 2

I see a red dog and I want it painted black.
No more will my green seagull turn a deeper blue.
I want to see bats fly out from the sky.                                  
I want to see it plainly, plainly, plainly.



 3

There is a music.
It is like when you are reading and listening to music.
The story is longer and more drawn out.                               
There are people here and there.
You interact and four-hundred pages later you interact again.
Music, on the other hand, happens inside.
You are not really thinking about it.
It is a river.


            (after Richard Aldrich)



 4

The weather breaks. I realize
the cicadas I heard were in a dream.
I feel a sadness I do not know what to do with.
One that overcomes and confounds.
The rides at the carnival are closed.
I cannot have the past again.
A city skyline in a mist of heat and exhaust.
The wind asks, Do you desire a glass coffin?
Somehow it is my father at the customer service window.
He hands me a brochure to take home, to think about it later.




Leonard Gontarek’s recent book is He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs
A new book of poems is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press in 2016.
In 2015, his poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges
MotionPoems project and the basis for the winning film from the Big Bridges poetry/
film contest sponsored by MotionPoems and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Jay Passer and Morning Winos, Evictions, the Barracuda Tank, and Chocolate Nail Polish

A NEW DAY

about 6 a.m.
after a food fight,
eyes reeking
from after hours,
the garnish of love
rumbling.

these are the details of victory:

so we celebrate,
decide eggs and a steak
drive to the store over
paved-over soil
jacked on foreign crude,
buy some beef
salt and pepper it heavy then
grill
kitchen good and filled with smoke,
drinks in hand, smile of wine, traffic going by
not a care in the world.

there is a sun on high and
guess what, it’s just
you
and me
and the urge to toast, ‘to the roasting flesh’
can’t wait to eat, yank it out of the
fire, slice off
ends against the grain once taught to do by a sot
at a campfire years ago
after a U.S. Government commodities score
at St John’s, Santa Fe, New Mexico:

that bastard used my pocketknife he later
pocketed for good


GENTRIFIED

first the lethal drummer across the hall
then the next door yoga girl with curly red hair

systematically replaced with robotic urbanites
a pain and panicky twitch inside while the doors rattle

they’re moving in!
well-oiled laughter, secret mechanical lives

and betrayal of my well-kept silences,
inevitable lonesome blues intuit

a brisk knock on early morning door,
notarized invitation for

perhaps a nice hot cup of eviction.



LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH

treading through pools
of molten lava
laundry day requiring
IQ of a thousand

mint tea steeped on the moon
Valentine postmarked
Pliocene

chocolate nail polish
sunshine leg balm
sparkly cigarette lighter

noticing a haircut
or a hard-on

it’s the little things
the alternative being

clown shoes
on a tightrope
teetering above

the barracuda tank


Jay Passer's work has appeared in print and online since 1988. His latest chapbook, FLOWER OMELETTE (co-authored with Misti Rainwater-Lites) is available from Lulu. He lives and works in San Francisco, the city of his birth.