"Detroit"

The frost has frozen my heart
winter conquering without stop
fitting the mood of this broken city,
shattered pieces, collapsing factories, endless misery;
Even sunshine would bring relief
from winter's slaughter,
the endless deep-freeze.

Wenclas poem previous post here lights a fire under ULA's FDW inexcusable funk...

... happy Birthday Martin Luther KING simultaneously the 2ooth anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's orphaned nativity, January 19, 2009...


When without a doubt
as the imagination can be
critical never doubtful in flight
the bleat of a dark sheep
beneath my hovel's distressed facade
coming through definite
from an otherwise at
that time of night empty
street with my name
some place under it's breath
someone or something
spelling somebody else wish to death.

Nope, I wasn't in fact stone dead
asleep three and a half
under that side of the AM
I was up actually reclined
to cold cock names of power despite
no moving water in evidence
above or lower the grail
of a wan headway moon instead
skimmed lost rivers
only glance my upper window sash
ushering in Saturn against each House,

then again while I pondered
Edgar Allan Poe besides
myself but most the mad girl down
Spring Garden Avenue prey to night
mares venting steam grates
on disembodied fears
jacked up the broken battlements
of tenement squares
relieved by palsy white
blotched vortex of the blood
sucking autonomic,
the neon-liberal gentrified right.

Life is better every time
than say car exhaust this way or
that just being driven away from it all
went out swinging head held
high as the eyes of Poe in that
Federalist daguerreotype period
all up and over the pitfalls
rude boy dogged the take
upon verily condemned masonry
second sands fell as he was
being born to wood awake,
come to the surface and make
us a demon in your image
beneath the mirror of the gutter
black ice sharply focuses vengeance.

1.19.09, PHILADELPHIA





BAGDADADELPHIA CITY PAPER'S INSULTING OP ED, DERIVE

[MORE OF THE INSIDE OUT TO FOLLOW @ ULACRITIQUE.BLOGSPOT.COM]

"Suzie"

I dream of Suzie with the cellophane hair
colored green, or orange, or pink--
depending on the day of the week--
and a safety pin through her cheek,
her biceps brazenly angrily tattooed
red, purple, and blue;
none of them say "I love you."
She wears leather pants and black denim vest,
black t-shirt with skull and bones on the chest;
The toughness hides the girl's baby face,
confusion at life and innocent ways;
Every week she pays her grandmother a visit
at the dying cancer patient clinic;
Suzie sits for hours and listens
to tales of grandmother's bygone days,
which the old woman truly appreciates.
Afterward the woman's eyes glisten
as Suzie stomps down the hall,
in tough-girl boots awkwardly tall;
doctors and nurses jump out of her way
but smile to themselves as she leaves.

-King Wenclas

carrion as if nothing had happenstance HOPEY KNEW YAH!

ZERO NINE

That year went out
according to plot
deep down in the open
pit vapors strung
along the strain of paths
still, something came out
flashed for no more
than a second stitched
to the wind and the broken
contract of high noon
steam bells clutched closed
when only deeper midnights could do.

The impossible rattled
in the hollow hands overturned
like dried spiders on their backs when
then and there the tide turned
from a lofty place hidden
from mortal stairs fell
without a sound taken back
into the grave incontinent ground
no one who caught on
would tell their turn
had been cast
the last become first.

Not a single order of execution stayed
to watch how parlor mirrors should trick
by the look on the face of the clocks
the beast set numbered
reservations bursting at the seams so
there will be a place for yours in the end
tonight from now on Frank Sinatra
black and white croons his polished
skull to the furthest extent
of the law as tube fed screens go
turned down as low as drums can stand
bodies to be counted back from the dead . 1/1/09