MORE JOHN G.HALL! more CALI CLARK'S supra-realistic "aut"

A SECOND SET OF WET CEMENT POEMS AT THE SAME TIME A SECOND READING. (CF. http://ulamanifest.blogspot.com/2008/09/from-manchester-uk-john-g-hall-one-of.html ) THATS WHAT POETRY IS ABOUT ....

Biography

John G.Hall - Manchester Poet & Editor of Citizen32, publications include Orbis, Iota, Rain Dog, The Wolf, Coffee House Poetry, The Ugly Tree, Carillon, Outlaw, Left Curve(usa), Square Lake(usa), Spume, Aesthetica, Brittle Star, Harlequin, Monkey Kettle & Fire.

Performs his poetry throughout the North West , mixing militant politics & biting humour with touching visions of childhood, love and football. The live recordings of his ant-war trilogy 'And Still I Cannot Wake From Their War' were recently bought by Drexel University,Philadelphia,USA.




Wet Cement Poem No:6 (a bankers tale)

The throne room of cash is empty but for a skull with a bullet hole
and a diamond collared dog lapping at the pool of his master's blood,

while in a corner of the Pentagon the Stars and Stripes spontaneously
combust and the ghost of Jimi Hendrix pisses lighter fuel onto the flag.


JGH©2008



Wet Cement Poem N:5


we stake the world on youth and beauty

surely no one would pull a knife across perfect skin

surely no one would pour lies into such fine china ears

surely no one would puncture the bubbles of their dreams

surely no one would drop explosives on such fine bones

surely no one would rape these Pre-Raphaelite faced angels

surely no one would steal the ancient ground from it's people

surely no one would electrify the diamond spider web of a mind

surely no one would blow open the Sistine chapel of the skull

surely no one would dare nail the body of love to a money tree

surely no one would blind fold the blind man or dam the damned

surely no one would pay the rich to be rich and punish the poor

surely no one would leave the torturers to their own devices

surely one day we will show them the instruments of justice

surely no one would object to the hanging of their heads.



jgh© 2008




Wet Cement Poem No:4




I am the hounded slave; I wince at the bite of dogs,


the sound of the cataracts of cash machines echo


I sit and look out on all the sorrows of the world


and on all oppression and shame, I run with blood


afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road


the human traffic burns through the metal rain


absorbing all to myself and for this song, I drink


bottled beer and lime and text instead of talk,


I have heard what the talkers were talking, and


vowed to write up and down these boulevards,


I will sing the song of companionship, of the


opposition of each heart to the murder of love,


to the maddening of minds, to dreams genocide,


all these I feel or am, all these call out for songs,


I am the hounded slave; I wince, turn and sing.





JGH©2008-09-20



*Every other line is from Walt Whitman







Wet Cement Poem No:3


they reckon birth may hurt babies
they say life is worth every penny

they believe the working class do not exist
they tell this to shop workers and nurses

they take the proof of our silent witness
they stare through the television screen into us
they trace each thought back to its owner

they rig the trail of life with sticky pleasure
they laugh at the poor behind their backs

they pin down the butterfly inside you
they pull the wings from your genius

they find starving people then feed them war
they have decided to counterfeit everything on the face of the earth
they reckon love is a rumour spread by dirty rotten communists.






jgh©2008







Wet Cement Poem No:2



the road pours me into the city machine

the fire damaged man sells me his bad news

the live wires suit themselves in culture cafes

the show houses play Les Miserables for laughs

the bar maids cry pints of crocodile tear liquor

the happy skull smiles of the living shine brightly

and the city machine passes me like a hot beer-shit.

.



jgh©2008







Wet Cement Poem No:1



from crashing waves find your answers

burn holes in paper tigers with ember tongues

be a red angel flying on swept back blue wings

carry a dove spangled banner in the midst of battle

touch a strangers pain at least once a day with your eyes

leave a trail in wet cement where your mind wandered

hide secret things, leave false clues, become unsolvable,

find undiscovered lands, burn the maps, pray not to be found.



jgh©2008



The Overcrowded Mind (for those who hate Myspace)


too many fingers in your pie
too many strangers in your mind,
too many cooks to your broth
too many second hand opinions,
too many shame faced shamans
too many spies on your secrets,
too many tongues in your cheek
too many guests at your feast,
too many double agents
too many doppelgangers,
too many sugars in your tea
too many spoons stirring you,
too many waiters in your cafe
too many fingers in your till,
too many beans in the coffee
too many crumbs of comfort,
too many unbelievers
too many unfaithful,
too many demi-lovers
too many semi-sisters,
too many baby brothers
too many mother fuckers,
too many fingers in your pie
too many baring you in mind,
too many non-special offers
too many basement bargains,
too many nosey neighbours
too many twitching curtains
too many keeping notes
too many stealing souls,
too many half cocked Buddha's
too many prying myspace eyes,
too many certain they are certain
too many truths told not be lies
too many fingers in your pie.


john g.hall©2008




Childish Thought

You don’t find no answer with your mind
only the mind trying to find the mind,
the vital answer has no vital question
it’s never been asked by mortal being,
there is no wise domain to live inside
only strange lands demanding maps,
the self can lie as well as any other
no sense can tell the truth all ways,
some people sit tight in the storm
some people move to Coney Island,
some people forget that words can fail them
some people remember all the ways to forget,
I think the universe is bigger than that
I think I’ll boldly go as far as flesh can,
my death will place me one day into an ivory box
my mind a fossilized collection of dead thoughts,
yet if I see a drowning friend in a rough sea
I do not wait for them to learn how to swim,
I throw them the happy ending of my long tether
show them the way I learned my crazy free style,
then sit eating my own Coney Island candy floss
while they swim out on their own sweet milky way.


John.G.Hall©2008





This is my diatribe


This is my diatribe making my space the only place of community
This is my diatribe making American war thought walk my streets
This is my diatribe making paper educated guesses into prejudices
This is my diatribe making Yankee gangster rappers poor people's masters
This is my diatribe making the drug of guns turn our children into toy soldiers
This is my diatribe taking Hollywood's unholy words as their new electro gospels
This is my diatribe making children without wings, making love without peace.
This is my diatribe against old powers making our new imprisonment invisible
This is my diatribe against the cash card manacles of money's all consuming madness
This is my diatribe against the doomed search for human power through violence.

This is my diatribe against the hopelessness of fear and shame and the thirty pieces
of silver dollars jingling in my dead soldier boys pockets and the I-pod god hanging
from my red neck and the fascist wolf whistles raping my girl friends angelic ear lobes
and the evil preacher men preaching against men loving men or women loving women
or any body loving any body and the rich bashing the ragged of the race and the
squeezing of our bones for our marrow and the rich lips sucking out our sweet souls
and replacing it with bloody warehouses of bloody things that no true human being
ever needs and the white war against the black world going on and on without end.

This is my diatribe and I love them.



John G.Hall©2007





The poor love as well as the rich


my brain is nervous with the night, my animal spirits are hunting
prey in my William Morris wallpaper forests, the black optics of fantasy
spilling into both our dreams, you hold in the dark practicing alchemy
and though I know you will never ask me, my manic touch questions
your flesh, my fingers ticking every correct answer, you wet me with
your soft corrections, we scream through the bedrooms brickwork,
two ruddy ghosts full of Easter's Catholic purple, our mouths slipped
with cinnamon, two sensitive bloods damned up by the gentle tourniquet
of love, my fingers caress your fine fur, you become a painted pony, and
while you tattoo my bones with your salmon tongue, and while the black
reins of your hair slip from my fingers, my demon heart pounds to a stop,
my blue eyes blush and the eiderdown's casual galaxy spirals around us.



John G.Hall©2007

"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

Only wright to rerun from Buffalo's ART VOICE from January '08, as LETTERHEAD II, VOL.1, is hitting the presses

http://blogs.artvoice.com/avdaily/
In the Margins
Letterhead, Vol. 1: Interview







Robert Pomerhn’s name is synonymous with the spoken word in Buffalo. He’s published three poetry collections and has been working the local scene—from Sunday readings at the Screening Room to countless appearances at Café Allegro, EM Tea Coffee Cup Café and Rust Belt Books—for years. This Sunday, January 20, he’s releasing the first issue of Letterhead, a new annual literary arts journal for Buffalo that he’s founded in collaboration with Brian MacMahon, Bradley Lastname, Eric Johnt and Kimberly Tomczak. The release party and reading will start at 7pm at the Lancaster Opera House (21 Central Avenue, Lancaster).
What prompted the founding of Letterhead? I see the Buffalo scene as, basically, separate entities or different small islands, where nobody really has any continuity within the larger scheme of poetry. That’s true not only here but universally and nationally, too. Bradley Lastname, our managing editor, had the vision, since he’s from Buffalo, to put together Letterhead to form a community of artists from Buffalo to create a working partnership and to create a piece of work that the poetry stands up in. Then Buffalo would be the common thread rather than the name of certain smaller poetry groups within the city. There’s the UB poetry scene, there’s the Buff State poetry scene, there’s the spoken word scene, there’s the Rust Belt scene; what we’ve tried to do is be an all-inclusive place where everybody is accepted, or at least we’ve tried to give everybody a certain voice in a place where the work trumps the individual.
Why’d you choose to list author names in the table of contents only, rather than with their work? We want to accept those people and champion those people whose main goal isn’t to be published, but for work to grow and evolve as they grow. That’s something we’re actively pursuing. Another thing that really prompted us is that there are a lot of great spoken word artists out there that really don’t hold on to their work. They throw it out into the atmosphere and they make an impact in the room at that time, and then we don’t hear from them for a long time. A lot of this work is not only spoken word, but also academic. We really just don’t want labels. It’s confessional, it’s rhyming; it’s anything within, but we pretty much try to take the labels off that poetry and put it together to see how it reads. There are a ton of really great spoken word artists in Buffalo who really never pursued print media before, besides the obligatory Artvoice submission and maybe Blinking Eights.




Do you think spoken word poetry loses some its value when it’s written down? I’m hoping to dispel that notion. I’m a spoken word artist and I’m a performance poet. When you speak something out loud, you make an impact. What we’re really trying to do is to have you go back and read that work later, too. There was a time when there were a lot of small, underground presses; a lot of what has survived now are basically online journals. There’s a lot of online computer [media], but there’s nothing that’s really in the print media. A lot of these places that were small runoffs in peoples’ basements were unable to withstand the test of time. We’re trying to put out a high-quality product that people will be proud to be a part of. I think we’re trying to put the stress back on reading, because so many people really aren’t reading. We want to put out something that has some wisdom, some knowledge and understanding rather than just information, because a lot of times information is really just misinformation.
What audience are you hoping to reach? If you’ve ever gone to a poetry reading, usually you’re not sure when to clap, when to sit down, when to speak or when to breathe. We want to take a lot of that angst away. We want to bring poetry to the regular person, to the blue-collar worker, to the university professor, to the construction worker, because Buffalo’s a great place to make art, but it’s just a difficult place to market art. We want to have a readership that extends outside of the small local poetry circles.
Roughly what percent of submissions did you accept? We attempted to accept as much as we could, and we basically didn’t send rejection slips out with people whose work we didn’t accept at that point. Rather we sent out encouragement slips. Maybe there’s something they could do better because for us as their work strengthens and grows. That’s what we want to see in certain people. Those are the people we’re actively seeking out, people who don’t want to sit on their work as though it were the dead limbs of a tree or something, but who look at their works as something that can grow and flourish into something stronger than they ever thought it could be. So that’s something we really try to keep in mind, as well as casting our net to a wider group of Buffalo poets.
Copies of Letterhead: Volume 1 can be purchased at both Talking Leaves locations, Rust Belt Books, or by directly contacting Robert Pomerhn (pomerhn.robert@gmail.com) or Bradley Lastname (bradleylastname@hotmail.com) via email.







© 1990-2008 Artvoice. All rights reserved.

Joan Logue- Walsh, William Hollis, & nice Buddha POEM in progresss by Mike Grover

JOAN LOGUE-WALSH

“She anesthetized unrequitedness”

She anesthetized unrequitedness

To make it a high art combating ordinary

About emptiness and one sock

A plethora of lint but no substance

Texture of dust and dust return

A film on the eye and no phenomenon

The foam of a head which is no drink

Dying of thirst with a blackened tongue

The black and tans were a mere lark

Of missing she can tell you a story

In third person mostly omniscient

Detached and full of subjective presence

With enough authorial absence

To be taken seriously, oh poor heart.

My scholarly melancholy is a joke

I played on myself in my fifth decade.

It gave me an excuse to delay gratification

For the great career I really saw myself in.

I was speeding downhill in a red ford Fairmount

Without a driver, With me in the backseat

I was ready to crash into the grassy knoll

It was going to solve all the controversy

I’m not sure about going back to college now

Maybe I should study ART.

I have no connection to technology

I paste up with scissors and glue

My concept of the future is grim

My favorite music is black and blue

I live all alone in a splendid shack

With vines and tendrils to enfold me

And animal comfort and companion

And trees and bushes surround me with density.

The sun can’t get in unless I let him

He is a man all golden and gleaming

With a blue eye for the morning
I am pale and wan and wanting
I settle for less than nothing
I wonder about my self-esteem?
I am a hopeless romantic it is spring
The fertile season of heat and germination

I’m too old for implantation and gestation

I’m giving birth to my own self being.

towards a structual proofing of the poem above

The Road Home

The road home
has many twists and turns
is icy sometimes and dangerous curves
steep climbs and no shoulder
to pull onto for rest.
The road home has no lighting
after dark
so you must learn the way by heart
memorize the feel of its surfaces
that change from craggy to smooth
or broken and gravelly.
You need to know the sounds
of the wheels turning over them.
If you don't understand these things
you'll never find your way back
you'll never be sure
though the road home is familiar
it is strange and new...
you need to listen for my call
at the front door.

J. Walsh
4/07

DISHING OUT AT CHANNEL 4 JACKSONVILLE FLA

#######################################

from

WILLIAM HOLLIS,

master-poet

WW II intelligence officer

and Brilliant Poetry Professor

who taught and in-formed

among others FDW

and sd. to him at Drexel Univ.

in late 1974, "You may or may not be

a genius just keep to yr. poetry!"

PAINTER ABOVE THE CITY

1.
From a balcony above the city he paints a late sun,
bright lights reflective among glass towers;
and sends them, his latest, by mysteries of email,
two, three at a time, surprisingly vivid, of which he says,
"The latest"; and I admire and laugh and blow them up,
remembering decades of canvases I've admired.
Portraits, guardian figures, and Japanese smut,
portraits of Andrea and me and suspicious bishops
are hung through the house, up and down steps;
then, ten years ago, landscapes appeared, full of crying
color and light, with a richness of Oaxacan hills
before builders came, before the world intruded.
Then back in the city where years add up and legs
might trip on steps that reach toward a new light,
and landscapes reach for a new peacefulness, colors
soften and distances are in some other world,
stretching with comfort that encourages me to fill
a room, where guests pause, sigh deeply and smile.

2.
Then, finally, on that high balcony, without stairs,
as others carry younger loads, he can paint all day,

pausing to watch a late sun pull colors in sharp
reminders of other explosions, of other beginnings,
of explosions that might mean a beginning of life,
a new world to replace a flowing darkness of the past.
But something happens, the landscapes explode
in three new paintings that arrived just recently:
In a powerful balance of blacks and grays, red fire,
a bomb, shoots into the air, as if we were in Baghdad;
and in another, with a harmless title of 'first snow,'
in a world afterwards gray and silent, a black wreck.
In the third painting, reds in a dozen hues consume
remnants of a blackened world. I hold my breath
at what he has at eighty accomplished: a final warning
of what power can do to the world, a final hope of what
creative fire can do to burn its image of a wrathful Buddha
in everything he's ever seen, now seen from a quiet retreat.

http://www.williamhollis.com/bio.htm

COTTON FIELD BLUES
1.
It was part of waking, to hear their voices singing
among groves below my grandmother's house,
with words I could not understand, a cry
of words, a cry to anticipate the day.
They climbed the hill, and I climbed from bed
and quietly ran to the porch to watch them pass,
their mules in polished leather, the sun still cool
over pecan trees, their voices deep.
A heavy voice rumbled about heavy clay,
not made, he sang, for play, as others made
a sound like drums and bells and pipes, the words
a blur of rhythms to lift with hope.
Melodious and sad, but full of strength,
they followed muddy paths and dropped the song
in ditches behind mules, unloaded knives
and hoes and hunkered to a sweaty task.
It was still too early for grits and eggs,
and so, before returning to my bed,
I went to greet my grandfather, sitting under
a peach tree in the garden, reading his bible.

2.
The day would pass in a casual way, with walks
to town, a lunch and naps, perhaps a story
from Clara Mae, a song at the old piano,
and regular trips to the outhouse in the garden.




"We'll sing," our Granny said, and lifted her voice
in an imitation of the songs I'd heard
as they had climbed the hill. It wasn't the same;
it lacked the flame, the need. It was amusing.
But as sun went down, I heard voices,
much slower now, in a cracked sound of pain
as they left cotton fields and came down the hill,
just there, beyond a swing on the old front porch.
The mules were dragging and piled with bags
of cotton, the wagon creaked and swayed; as old men
chanted, a woman's voice rose high and sharp,
and children cried, but not a dog would bark.
"The day's done gone," a voice sang deep;
"The night's come on," another voice broke in.
The voices of the women trailed after,
"I say it ain't much further we got to go."

3.
A voice from the house called us to supper, ignored
the mules and men who slowly passed and children
huddled behind a group of women who sang
their chant of pain that was tired of the day.
Later, as I lay in bed and listened
to a night of restless wind in trees,
a cry still lingered like a memory
of ghosts in a blue smoke: "Oh my, oh my….
"This cry's the song you hear when you hear the voice
that cries the notes that linger in your heart
that aches like the muscles in your back. Oh my.
Oh my…." It was the song I heard as I slept.
Can you hear it echo in the night
and bet against the failure of memory?
I woke that night with a sweat of apprehension,
squatted on the slop jar and slept again.
That was years ago, and sometimes I wake
and whisper to myself, "The day's done gone;
the dark's fallin' here for good. Oh my…;"
and then I hear the voices calling at dawn.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
He listened to and watched that strange adult world as he grew up in Lakeland, Florida, during the thirties; and, with his grandfather’s help, he started writing poems, usually during summers in Savannah or Buena Vista, Georgia, where he was too sickly to play with athletic cousins. And since he was one of the few kids, back then, who played the piano well, a student at the age of 8 at Florida Southern College, he had a wonderful opportunity to play throughout central Florida and overhear women in Winter Haven and Lake Wales and men in Tampa and Orlando talk about the whispered sides of their lives. He would play Liszt after a luncheon meeting and rush home to write a poem about some slick man with polished nails or the woman who hissed that she never wore underwear.
During college at Washington and Lee and Princeton, where he could not tie himself to one major, and during a year in Europe on a Fulbright, he was a loner, watching and listening and trying to find ways to make verbal music out of human experience. He sat on mountain tops in Switzerland and listened to an echo of voices, slept in cheap youth hostels, fell in love with Australian girls and the Grand Canal in Venice, ate in the cheapest White-Russian cafés in Paris, and tried to write poems more up-to-date than Keats, who had been his first love when he was 12. And then, after a couple of years in the army where, stationed in D.C., he spent most of his time looking at paintings and writing about that, he hit thirty. And then he married and taught at Dartmouth and Drexel and had a family, two daughters, an equestrienne and a scholar, and found that poetry had to be relegated to summer vacations — though the poems kept coming anyway, even after he grew tired of trying to fit into ‘the literary scene,’ a scene that never worked for him except when he was dramatically reading his poems in bars and bookshops of Philadelphia.

pictures above by Andrea Baldeck

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&& &&&&&

FRESH FROM THE MIND OF MIKE GROVER, A NEW SERIAL-POEM IN PROGRESS!!

subtext:

the pictures below with Mike's piece are from and of Bhante Yogavicara Rahula while in india and thailand a few years ago, one of the Mahathera great teachers and preceptors at the BHAVANA SOCIETY forest monestery, High View, West Virginia.

Offerings

-1-
Buddha begging
In the streets of
The capital city
Of Shrauasti.
Patched saffron robe,
No shoes on his feet.
Empty purple stone bowl
In his hands for offerings.
Around noontime
He would go door to door,
Non discriminant of rich or poor.
Take clumps of rice in the bowl.
He would eat his meal,
This bowl of rice.
Return to his home
In the woods
Outside of the city.
Wash his feet,
Remove his robe,
Sit in his appointed seat.

-2-
On Huron Street
The homeless all look up
With sad, tired eyes.
I try to look each one
Right in the eye.
See if I can find
A Buddha somewhere.
I know he is somewhere.
I wonder how many pass him
Without even seeing.

[SENT FOR THE PEOPLE IN AN EMAIL DATED OCTOBER 18TH ]

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