Clark Coolidge

 

The Normal Is
 
She’s like talking to a plate of lemon ice
leads to nothing but sheared streets and Shetland sweaters
the eyes won’t track properly    there’s
something happening over there too    Jay Gatsby
hung on a pier    I’d rather go to Peru
get my heart broke in Cuzco for the elevation
as if I somehow just popped up    I knew it
raised a monster but didn’t turn out right
all you do is shove somebody    go away
screw your head on right reason for example
oodles of confusion and addled high times
usually parks her car on my dime    why
do you think of stripes here?    there’s no point
talking off the top of this nation of mistakes
whole hills of burlap and beaverboard plus other
tons of so far unlabeled whatever    all the shades of vitriol
witness to the fall of youth and its dumbass regularity
the worst part of growing up is the rest of your life

Clark Coolidge

A Few Windows Past Harvard
 
I remember when the world was three
the persons were not quite inhabitants yet
but they were sad    chortles in short supply
you’d think they’d learned to bend already
I watched them carry out some very clear operations
questions?    the morning when no different than
usual was invented    play me some Schumann
nothing was canceled due to rain
golf ball or even slaughter    no homes to go to
a slurry of a match useful at any rate
the Godz were out of town    someday they will find
a fossil with a serial number    forget the DNA
comes in tubes with a gravity drive
the Paleozoic starts with an overwrought thriller
ends as one too    what a universe    all details
determined by chance or necessity    one body
gets away and we have nothing    whatever
it will be found to be made of Ridiculum

In Clark's own words,“a retranslation,in the loosest sense, 

of the Han Shan Cold Mountain Poems, all three hundred and

whatever of them.”

Clark Coolidge

The So Gone

The room sounds like a stun
the window shone.
The petals are missing this felt dry sky.
Dun day. Mister warblilngs.
Crease bunch bricked to the ankles.
I write stormings. Visors for fenders.
The alkali in the moot tip pending.
Slant the tree among its polish.
Twine rum at ankle tub. Balloons
to the shed thud. The bark is parting
a mackerel and lodged much cheese.
A submarie trouser warning, of so's
to be got brought. A cherry filminess
the ridge will edge with the mattress molding.
Bulk. Day gone room for the end.

(from Own Face, 1978, 1993)

Clark Coolidge

ACID

Blackie was met at the subway
advertising
wished for pumice sunny flags
WE GO       DOWN WE         GO DOWN

“Giant Grouper” said, in cold spray net tank
                  GREENS deep at me
fade corridors
tapped the wrong uncle & spoke intimately

in foetal lift of potty stalagmites, resting
hair pillows edges of dead batteries
the leak
                   Growth Mustard

earth    vanity error: drainage , settle
         cigarette balls on umber pools
         the corners left to never return. . .

“call soon, I was underground”

Ron Padgett

102 Today 

                                i.m. James Schuyler

                    

If Wystan Auden were alive today
he’d be a small tangle of black lines
on a rumpled white bedsheet,
his little eyes looking up at you.
What did you bring?
Some yellow daffodils and green stems.
Or did they bring you?
 
Auden once said,
“Where the hell is Bobby?”
and we looked around,
but there was no Bobby there.
Ah, Auden, no Bobby for you.
Just these daffodils in a clean white vase.

Ron Padgett

Detach, Invading

Oh humming all and
Then a something from above came rooting
and tooting onto the sprayers

profaning in the consul morning

of the pointing afternoon

back to dawn by police word to sprinkle it 

over the lotions that ever change

on locks

of German, room and perforate

To sprinkle I say

On the slotsasw they excude their gas

And the rabbit that pushes it

To blot the lumber

Like a gradually hard mode

All bring and forehead in the starry grab

That pulverizes

And its slivers

Off bending down the thrown gulp

In funny threes

So the old fat flies toward the brain

And a dent on brillance

The large pig at which the intense comes best

Wishes O you and O me

O cough release a rosy bar

Whose mist rarifies even the strokers

Where to go

Strapping, apricot

Aram Saroyan

LYRIC

I'm a cardboard poet.
I eat rice.


* * * * *


a cartoon
of
energy


* * * * *


my knees are in my knees
my eyes are in my eyes


* * * * *


black salad

Alice Notley

 

Poem (Why do I want to tell it)

it was the afternoon of November 
15th last fall and I was waiting 
for it whatever it would be like 
it was afternoon & raining but it 
was late afternoon so dark outside my 
apartment and I was special in that 
I saw everything through a heightened 
tear, things seemed dewy, shiny 
and so I knew there was a cave 
it was more or less nearby as in my 
apartment it was blue inside it 
dark blue like an azure twilight and the 
gods lived in the cave they who 
care for you take care of at death and 
they had cared for Ted and were there for me 
too and in life even now 

Alice Notley

The Descent Of Alette ['Presently']

'Presently' 'we neared a pale beach,' 'narrow' 'with trees behind it' 
'thick & blue-black,' '& lights' 'many lights' 'deep inside the' 
'wooded land' 'I touched bottom' '& walked ashore' 'Then I saw' 
'a final entity,' 'airy image, pass' 'out of my body—' 'from my 
forehead' 'A small shape,' 'perhaps brain-shaped,' 'that seemed to' 
'contain in miniature' 'the cave network' 'where I had been' 
'I saw the rooms—' 'the caverns—' 'streaked with color,' 'dotted with 
lights,' 'but all tiny' 'as in a honeycomb' 'The image' 'receded,' 
'gently floated' 'away' 'on the wind,' 'like a flower' 'a hibiscus—' 
'all reds & darks' '& yellow glow—' 'Or like a lantern,' 'paper 
lantern' 'Then was gone.' 'The others' 'other swimmers' 'had not 
walked ashore' 'with me' 'I turned to find them' 'I thought they 
must be' 'still floating' 'in the water' 'But they had vanished,' 
'I was alone' 'Myself &' 'alone' 'Yet emptied' 'of much, it seemed' 
'I felt unburdened' '& even buoyant'

Alice Notley

Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice

So I'm an alcoholic Catholic mother-lover

yet there is no sweetish nectar no fuzzed-peach

thing no song sing but in the word

which I'm starlessly unreachably faithful

you, pedant & you, politically righteous & you, alive

you think you can peal my sober word apart from my drunken word

my Buddhist word apart from my white sugar Thérèse word my

word to comrade from my word to my mother

but all my words are one word my lives one

my last to first wound round in finally fiberless crystalline skein

I began as a drunkard & ended as a child

I began as an ordinary cruel lover & ended as a boy who

                               read radiant newsprint

I began physically embarrassing—"bloated"—&

                               ended as a perfect black-haired laddy

I began unnaturally subservient to my mother &

                               ended in the crib of her goldenness

I began in a fatal hemorrhage & ended in a

                               tiny love's body perfect smallest one

But I began in a word & I ended in a word &                             

                               I know that word better

Than any knows me or knows that word,

                               probably, but I only asked to know it—

That word is the word when I say me bloated

                               & when I say me manly it's

The word that word I write perfectly lovingly

                               one & one after the other one

But you—you can only take it when it's that one & not

                               some other one

Or you say "he lost it" as if I (I so nothinged) could ever

                               lose the word

But when there's only one word—when

                               you know them, the words—

The words are all only one word the perfect

                               word—

My body my alcohol my pain my death are only

                               the perfect word as I

Tell it to you, poor sweet categorizers

                               Listen

Every me I was & wrote

                               were only & all (gently)

That one perfect word

 

Alice Notley

Sonnet

 Pink & white, chiffon & chenille, & cherubs

They frame oval mirror cracked across
No reflection of me it’s rented newly
My books on & under a vanity
Bamboo’s here too, Southamptonese, chair
A library’s dark desk, austere
I rearrange change them which change me
I’ll often forget to see
Pink & white to be lost after 90 days
Town’s as foreign-looking & mine
No town fits—not my image of one, but sense
That a town might make sense.
Clean cold-weather town, historical interest
Winter emptied, slickly plain downtown

 

Alice Notley

Peridots of Kings

There is no culture anywhere, in these countries I almost
live in; though there is history. And there was once — but
now only monolithic companies. I drove through
town — nothing left — a two-story ragged portion of the
Desert Theater; another building almost torn away, leaving
a structure with scant paint, couple of windows. Our
culture. I don’t want to live in one of those in the
past future perfect tense. It isn’t that I don’t want to live.

In the south of France, Rousseau, the contemporary poet,
will now read. He sits at a table, facing a black window
that reflects him. I stand behind and stare at his image
intently: he is so plain. A woman staples her poems together —
then he cries out in a note. What a musical genius. We are so
fortunate to have him, whom no one cares about. I don’t,

I’m my own poet. You don’t need a poet; you don’t need
anything but a big store. You don’t even need yourselves. And
that’s fine. I guess there wasn’t anyone to write to. I
did it for the universe of ghosts; half coyote, half motel.

Frank Lima

Patchouli

it’s only that I think of you

as a wagon

or a mule with legs that

point to the stars

or a soft language

waiting to stroke a mirror

in a swamp

everyday is a new instrument

lavishly completed

like a part-time cane

the language of night is a prosperous sheet

full of delicate assumptions

the language of night is fragile

like a warm net full of rumors

I want to give you a box of signatures

that include all my perfect moments

Frank Lima

Gerard Malanga, LeRoi Jones, David Shapiro, Bill Berkson, Frank Lima, 

and Frank O’Hara at Wagner College, 1962. Photo: by William T. Wo

Questions and Answers

My angel, don't think the great stillness is wooing us: 
We just haven't slept the same among the letters that have a habit of 
Recognizing us. Those beautiful letters live in Paris all year around. 
For even the best of men go astray with words within the gentle depths 

When they are to express something unutterable. 
But I believe nevertheless that you need not be left without them as a 
Part of me, as a recreation between hesitations, 
The boundless ones in moments of doubts. 

If you have this affection for things that don't really matter to the poor, 
Then everything will become clear, more coherent and somehow more 
Conciliatory, not perhaps how I manage to function from day to day 
Taking Kenneth's last words to be my daily gospel that 'we must write 

Every day,' but in your innermost consciousness and wakefulness you will
Know I have patience with these black lines that I share with my most 
Intimate friends to say I'm still writing to you. 
So I sincerely beg you to have no remorse with matters of the heart, 

For it is a foolish, overbearing organ that does not have a place to rest 
Except in our sleep with dreams it cannot have during our times of 
Playful awareness. I only seek, as well as I can, to serve the last 
Wishes as a poet. What else is one to do with these unsolved hearts on 

Paper? Otherwise they are of no use to anyone but the dreamer who tries
To cherish matters of the heart, like closed rooms to the public in some 
Grand museum filled with treasure, or like books written in a strange 
Tongue hidden in the library of moments we let slip away fearing it was 

What we wanted from the beginning. We stopped searching for the 
Answers because we could not live in their blue tents. It's a matter of 
Living everything. Live now, and perhaps you will then gradually, without 
Noticing it, one distant day live right into the answers of the heart. 

8.3.03

Frank Lima

    

Wynn ChamberlainPoets Dressed and Undressed': 

Joe Brainard, Frank O'Hara, Joe LeSueur and Frank Lima ( standing ).

BRIGHT BLUE SELF-PORTRAIT 

I thank the spiders' webs and the circus dancers who stain our eyes with 
Rapid movements and authorize our handcuffs to make no distinction 
Between night and day or love and hate. 
No one will know the sum of our arduous daily separations from bed to 

Work. These pillars actually belong to you since I have not counted them 
Or know any more than you do where they are or in what country they 
Still exist. We can put all our concerns into a loaf of bread and French 
Kisses, go to movies and watch the splashing milk on the screen imitate 

the forest in the moonlight. Why all the fuss about the patrons becoming 
Feathers, discharging their ideas of nobility on the evening news? There 
Are no lights in the theater just soft snow from the balcony that is the 
Little red schoolhouse where all this began. 

Actually it was because of you I did not attend as often as I should have. 
I was too embarrassed to face you across the clay modeling tables since I 
Always felt like the clay in your hands was a cartoon version of my teen 
Years, dear slippery-fish ladies of the sleepy west. 

Don't forget, my early life will be yours, too, 
With its self-descriptions of poetic justice, 
The tiny creatures we write about can describe themselves in the moss 
We leave behind.

Frank Lima

 

Haiku

I

The lights are out

The cats are hungry

The room is full of gangsters

II

The dishes are dirty

The icebox is empty

I dream of celery and a compass

III

The roof is upstairs

The window next door

A guitar in the shower

IV

The hours disappear in my room

Where is my blue pistol

The door-god is knocking.

 

Frank Lima

 “01.03.2000,”

I found the words in a box and became recklessly enamored with

Them. As I watched, they blew smoke rings into my sacramental

Face. I was a blind old man, unzipping my life before them and

Trembling at the touch of cold marble. My fingers were once wild

Pigeons perched on the statues and I would sacrifice my soul for the

Erotic stillness of yesterday. The words would arrive through the nail

Holes in the century wearing the flickering faces of the past. I fit myself

Into anyone that will have me, who will shoot at me with the hours of a

Wheelchair. When will I stop looking over my shoulder in the subway?

I collected the tickets at the door, and made it perfectly clear that 

Writing is as lonely as a pile of discarded shoes. Heaven is wingless and

Far away and there are no books that mention your name or mine.

Frank Lima

Alex Katz. Frank and Sheyla Lima (1964)

With popping antennae ringlets

                    you looked like

                        a praying mantis

                          cold cream & turban

                                science fiction gleam

                   as real

          as cancer

            spreading

               stuffed-tits-and-rag-guts

                          yawning

                            brillo-crotch

                               that stunk

                                   all over me

             playing

                 Johnny-on-the-pony

                                   on me

                                                indoors

Alice Notley

 

Sonnet

The late Gracie Allen was a very lucid comedienne,

Especially in the way that lucid means shining and bright.

What her husband George Burns called her illogical logic

Made a halo around our syntax and ourselves as we laughed.

George Burns most often was her artful inconspicuous straight man.

He could move people about stage, construct skits and scenes, write

And gather jokes. They were married as long as ordinary magic

Would allow, thirty-eight years, until Gracie Allen's death.

In her fifties Gracie Allen developed a heart condition.

She would call George Burns when her heart felt funny and fluttered

He'd give her a pill and they'd hold each other till the palpitation

Stopped—just a few minutes, many times and pills. As magic fills

Then fulfilled must leave a space, one day Gracie Allen's

               heart fluttered

And hurt and stopped. George Burns said unbelievingly to the doctor,

               "But I still have some of the pills."

Clark Coolidge

Legacy of the Plug
 
The pup is gone    want an amoeba?
or an orange thing?    a “schizophrenic”?
it’s marginal but we’ll play along
the same vocabulary only fun this time

I saw the roaring rush past the clock towers
not even the starlings tried to hold on
a breach of flying objects just the same
to end it all you drop    understand?

Tape ripped from the sides of scrapers with resounding smack
they developed special lamps from the building fund
after supper we made a little model to help us
think it’s all vanilla or nougat at this point?

These light boxes kept on strafing our neighborhood
father came out all struck dumb from the bushes
he was a replacement we realized after
the habitual bulks had been hauled away at last

We made our peace with the director of the piece
a professional masochist named Rama Lama Dingdong
then the credits caught fire lighting the beach
goodbye to anything within reach