ABOUT
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
ARCHIVE
LAGNIAPPE
MAST
SUBMISSIONS
|
 |
THREE POEMS
by
Ronald Palmer
Diapason
"Take this Sea, whose diapason knells" -- Hart
Crane, Voyages: II
He slipped through my thought socket: throat
socket.
My mind
reached a point
Of soft
white and glistening
Snow covering the field: Cardinal
flew a bloodline dividing
white with a blur of
blood's fine:
Streak of memory: the first
pulse of a symphony.
After I witnessed: their incomprehensible
kiss
My
mind reached a point
Of
soft white and glistening.
This lyrical refusal: bloodbright
as a memory:
requires reversal. O logica: robotnika:
I was a full red circle once! Spin:blurring blur:spinning.
O Consciousness: my consciousness:
Forged as the body's thought aviary!
MORA: LISTIC ATA: VISTIC:
(I
want to be a father. You know:
a son to share my memory.
But you're so wounded.
You'll wound him. Neatly packaged for the factory:
Of me: and my fatal habit's gall. After
all:
I
can change.
You won't change. Yes. No drugs. Yes. No Sex.
Yes: I'll be a good father.
But you're so wounded. Must I: amplify? See note in next stall:
Of soft white and glistening.
My mind reached a soft point of listening).
Seven geese are scanning the yard under the apple tree:
It's
Summer now: the lord is with thee: one is charging at a
mystery
Under the orange peas: arranged in clusters on the trees: black
necks hooking:
A
gang of hooks:
Bobbing
in sunlight.
Song
as Serum
My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense
to something that is patent nonsense. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
A manic chanting off the highway ramp: emanating
from neon-orange public restroom stall: Ludwig is paused within the
first of three brilliant boxes of light: squares of sun thrown through
each head-high window. Three exacting glares on the blue:green checkered
floor of the restroom. Ludwig appears frozen within the first square
glare: crossing his arms: listening to the boy locked in mourning. From
this distance: Ludwig's hair is thirty ringlets of writhing flames covering
his thinking skull. One flame in the center seems
to disappear into a halo. He is a concentrated witness: he sees an orange
raven flying shadow circles within the stall: leaving trails of fire:
jerking itself into the next direction: around the invisible toilet.
Ludwig sees not the red sneakers of the boy: but not the thin legs:
not the pants around the ankles: in fact he sees nothing of the singer:
Song as serum: O give me one true moment of non-transience: song as
serum: where the future feels inviting and correct: song as serum: where
I'm not freaked into selfghettoization by five: song as serum: where
I refuse to keep running a mile into my musical mirror: song as serum:
toward a frail boat made of snow: song as serum: balancing instinct
and lyric: song as serum: the waves dissolve piece by piece every time
my chunked and drowning snowboat abandons a fragmented self into the
sea: song as serum: inspired by the impossible task of being me: I'm
speaking of genuine genuineness: song as serum: I myself am too busy
craving music to offer forgiveness: being love: song as serum: I myself
am: song as serum:
Alone in the public restroom: reading the garish graffiti: I contemplate
my disappearance. Not from the world: but from myself. If I am an exile
from myself: where begins my musical mourning? Where precisely does
my silence transform itself: in between my body and my mind? If I am
an exile from my family: where do I begin to invent my self for the
world? If I am an exile from my own country: into which field does my
nationhood begin its seeds? And finally: if I cannot invent a nation
within: where is my future's country?
Wrapped in a vibrating quilt of addiction: I continually quit myself
with music. Invented daily by a universe of sound: I always believed
I was speaking out of my mouth: only recently did I realize that I'm
Musical Boy. My philo-poetic songs offer only a strategic negation of
my self: speaking as less a prophet more a monk defeating the purpose
of limits: not a limit on memory: not a sufficiently sedated savior:
not an actual boy trapped in the womb of mourning: but an impossible
being left silent. If silence means leaving all my true songs inside:
the way love transforms a moody thunder into a lyrical spring sky: the
remainder sulks like urine in the porcelain urinal of my brain: a branded
name transformed by stigma. And this voice I'm using for display is
nothing more than the elitist farce that has funded prizes for the last
century. Art and Writing alike: I myself have been collecting torrential
moments of rain and weaving a solitary symphonic stripe (digitally enhanced
with real fire) across my internal orange sky.
O waltzing warrior I keep planning as my future self: song as serum:
imploring a foreshadowed dissection: song as serum: from the group that
wedges itself among the siren hypnotic: song as serum: Let the dance
room explode into foreboding silence: song as serum: Let the handsome
orange prince hang his beautiful hog out to dry: song as serum: flaccid
grief: stalls into a whirl of incessant drumming: song as serum: Let
language elide and a ramp of cadenced ice replace my life: song as serum:
introduces this insidious space: song of serum: I myself am wigged with
a sonic imposter:
These REPENT signs currently decorating my mind space: 4 feet X 2 feet:
marking the boot stained space in which I perform a roadside defecation:
hunch hovering in the fly filled summer heat I withhold a witness. Or
rather: I become a perpetual witness by simply existing. I witness this:
in fourteen inch red letters that look like raspberry lipstick: I sit
on the damp and sticky toilet seat reading: REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!
On the stall door: on the left stall wall: on the right stall wall.
Each REPENT says what to sing to transcend the spirit's sadness. I invent
a song for each: for all REPENTs are not written identically.
The stall door marking: REPENT is slanted to the right and the letters
smudge downward: Repent smeared almost beyond recognition. In fact "Pent"
has been almost completely erased: almost unreadable. With only a mild
effort squinting and tipping one's head: the word appears to pulse off
the wall with ghost like verve. And so this sign is foreign even to
itself. A techno-trance will suffice: with sporadic blade against blade
screeches that add a spirit-puncturing cringe nostalgic of Freddy Krueger's
fingers: as searing sirens cry out operatic: ally: O: direct thy stalled
epiphany toward its irrational center: each time the blades cross and
glide. Do I have a choice to lift the clouds with my voice is the repeating
line of the dance diva version currently playing ad nauseum at all the
shirtless hot spots.
Both wall-REPENTS offer a Barbara Krueger-ish statement -- one that
conflates abject horror with a lurid marketing strategy in one glimpse:
that is far more accessible to the print-trained eye. These mirrored
wall-REPENTS sing in perfect pitch tenor: hear: boys choir at Christ's
Church Cambridge University Cambridge England: Christmas: 1985. One
more note: which is scrawled in black pen under the right REPENT: this
post script adds a rock beat reminiscent of a Kurt Cobain scream vibrant
in angry black marker.
Forget it. I will not take my own small piglet life and make strips
of bacon of my promises. I will not offer my lent spirit back to God.
And listen to me well queer reader. Let it be known that the queer genius
has always been disguised as the appropriately troubled Christian: or
worse: discounted as a bargain rack for the insane. I will not cease
remarking on my unwillingness to repent nor will I cease to comment
on my traumatic history: one hit wonder of pork season's past. Though
our past may have made us choose the life box marked queer: it is our
queerness that chooses to decorate our past with an unrepentant gaze
of inquiry. Who else will listen but myself? Least of all one should
reproach one's tormentor: least of all: sing to the self.
Scrawled under the right wall REPENT: with obvious difficulty and juvenile
loops for letters: Hillbilly Homos Go Home! I myself am a hillbilly
piglet and have no home to which to return. Furthermore I find it perfectly
plausible that I'm still in my mother's ransacked womb. FLOATING THROUGH
SOUND! Nothing I've experienced on the earth has proven otherwise: has
proven this false: has proven anything. I know this because she bathes
my feet nightly in peppermint oil: her large hands massaging oil through
my toes: singing of the lonely earth and its millions of hysterically
flexing triceps. At night my body sings to my mind as a planet sings
to a neighboring planet: releasing a gaseous song: a trailing mist travelling
the orange-tinted sonic distance.
Ludwig is a nineteen-ager with an orange crew cut. He enters the restroom:
pulls himself out of his blue jeans: urinates: flops himself twice:
washes his hands: looks at his tanned and freckled face in the mirror.
I'm watching him through the bolt:hole in the stall wall. Drying his
dripping hands under the electric blower: he slows down: leans into
the square mirror: one hand to his mouth: he seems to be scraping something
from his teeth: then he smiles at himself: a cosmic spark ignites his
orange aura as he touches his hair. A moment pure Californian: dashed
with a confidence that smacks of a third year Hampshire College Art
major: but offset by a grand wit concerning his supreme ego: balanced
only by his well-hidden self-loathing. He is my new reason for singing.
He twists his lean torso draped in a loose orange T-shirt: grabs the
silver handle to exit: I can't help but release an elongated yet soft
squeal that sings of my delight.
I am myself a curious piglet.
He pauses: approaches the corner slit of my stall: my red Converse sneakers
are dangling from the toilet seat. "Hello in there?" He knocks
once. A muscular knuckle thuds against the metallic door. "Everything
ok?" I let out a sound like a crackling1940s radio: a static that
attempts to shape itself into response: I let it sound out: of my body:
I sound it out: in my head: I:sound:it:out: I'm a daunting Cathedralist
with an organ-less spirit: I offer him a ballooning Architechtronics:
a singed construction site as my withering orange soul.
I clink-slide the metal bolt:lock and he one-hands the stall door open:
As the door slow motion quietly swings open: an Elvis song miraculously
and visual-glitteringly glides from my mouth: open like a mute O: but
static-y again like a 1940s radio song. And I'm pure Elvis as the sound
comes out: "Take my hand. Take my whole life too. 'Cause I can't
help falling in love with you."
Ronald
Palmer
lives and works in Connecticut. New writing is forthcoming in COMBO,
Fence, LIT, and Slope, as well as collaboration with
Billy X. O'Brien in 3rd Bed. |
