2 examples of Exploding
Text created by S.A. Griffin.
The original texts were sent back
and forth to various poets via email and altered.
_____________________________________________________
"It is difficult to get the
news from poems
yet men die miserably
everyday
for lack of what is found
there."
from Asphodel That Greeny
Flower
by William Carlos
Williams
Doc Williams' Flowers
Flowering
here on the asylum frontier
it is difficult to take the evening news
or get the newest poet's news
when talking heads doublespeak softly the big stick
while people without poetry die each day miserably
because of what they hear and do not hear
inside the mega mammon machinery of the market
the apocalypse a euphemism for the future
where are those gentle thawing rains
by red wheelbarrows?
but for now, strawberries cold as ice
freeze the moment into a very tired doctor
lusting after a housewife in a window
never to be broken through or cracked
by anyone
no pure native ground in our hair
no glory hallelujah without or within
no more virtuous oratory
inside the speakers halls are filled with souvenir shops
with sacred artifacts of disaster
outside poor flowers left unwatered wither
those asphodels all greeny flowers glowing
in leafy chains dying against a sea
of certainty
uncertain
come with me
let's not pick them
but leave them for other travelers
those who actually hear the news will admire them
and those who don't won't notice them at all
our options twinkle beneath our skin like stars
2002 Mike Bruner, S.A. Griffin,
S.D. Hampton, John Macker & Scott Wannberg
Edited by S.A.
Griffin
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On the Work of
Burroughs
(Exploding text from On Burroughs
Work by Allen Ginsberg)
The method must be purest meat
of
sharktalk, spoor
straight no chaser: at every bitter
end
people leave and
you're left
of center
of norm
of sexuality &
spirituality
of soul & truth
Madness unadorned.
Real not allegorical &
it's
all like it was before
:
William's
Red Wheelbarrow you
Must have seen in
Patterson w/Blake
old and empty like the room
before they came
take that first step again;
down an even darker road
into what's been bothering
you, swallow heads and tails whole
& yes,
it feels
as
tho the vortex has opened
becoming
Dorothy &
Burroughs
is the
Great Oz with
toy
balloon
Toto a 1,000 Cosmic Cats
staring at
millennium
change
& there are currents in
the air as Cats inhale Bop Poetics
breeething deeply the air of
supermarkets & streets
where you chose to radiate peace
. . . perhaps it's time again for
revolution
classless
empty without
form
peaceful Dharma Lion gait I see you walk in
Mind's Eye
see you
walk and wonder what you'd say to this today?
I could never answer
but it is all here
house full of
machinery that I
angelheaded
hipster
strove to search for
starry wonder in mechanical Indra's Net all night
and now it's all in
synch. . .
dead forgotten timezone airwaves : we
communicate freely over
endless Kansas wheatfields
& tenement lower
east side apts & diners & poisonous tomatoes
of yr mother's holy kaddish
and no symbolic dressing,
actual visions &
actual prisons of
imaginary dungeons
and
not yet from a distance as
surrounded by you now
as seen then and now.
"dreaming of a key..."
inside the dream machines
we become
anti-temporal-recordings
that
twist past the prerecorded
universe
that
begins
and ends
with one
or two midwest
Kansas
synapses
...
Prisons of psychic abstractions and visions
presented as
sheet lightning filmset backdrops
in all the cracks of
sidewalk
& in the leaves
of grass
which are now rising
from their
long winter sleep
beneath the melting snow
with rare descriptions
corresponding exactly to those
of
Alcatraz and Apocalypse Rose...
(with no Clint Eastwood
style
hollywood
escape/ing the words of yr holy
moods)
Stopping for refills of gas and coffee and
love
counting virtual billboards
between
mirages on life's
superhighway
where we face the information &
sort thru the confusion &
information overload for
the last gem of truth
looking in every wingmirror wanting for something not so real
- catching a glimpse
of the selfsame prisons. but :-
prisons without bars are holy
like
skin is holy
baseball
holy
internet holy
time holy
kiss of ages holy
holy
& where does yr beard point
tonight old grey beard?
& who do you walk with arm in arm?
I write and pray straight stiff back out
toward Heaven
the thoughts that make my mind and make me
feast on
naked lunch of Purest meat
Cholesterol and all. Not even
Kosher..
A naked lunch is natural to us,
we eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
& I'm still here
with you in
Rockland. Eating the
sandwich you tried
to teach me to make.
& now we look to the ways in which the
words do it all
on this
beautifully sad adventure we imagine
we are having.
they run faster and
crueler
than whatever finger typed
them
and sometimes we get the feeling that
we
should erase the tape
and start the
whole damned show over again
now &
now
& now
flip the tape &
continue : side two
they are not things that could feasibly be used
for your own purpose ; you are trying to unlock
them
or else use them to unlock
things
and sometimes you yourself are the thing
unlocked.
We gaze
at wide mad wonder of life,
love of life,
love of last
long-gone
dewdrop mad prison of this world as
heady
Indian angel visitations in
a million moments of
dreaming for love of life found in holy visions of summer
you know i was thinking
the other day in the Dillon's
down on
Massachusetts Avenue
and i decided
that the locks were always just
a dream
and i was
glad that
i spent time with such
a
good and
dear friend
as
Allen Ginsberg
when I
first met you and fell in love with yr
holy soul jelly roll,
grateful for our friendship
and only
hope that I
can face the remaining dream of
life
with the rest of the living
until that day
when
the Western Lands are
opened by an angry big mouth tornado in a
hurry cane tin pan alley
and we all
honeymoon together in the abyssinian
wheatfields
of
eternity.
poets holy :
tell me
which way yr
love points Allen
denver sf ny kyoto
czech & shared beard of cuba
tonite in the perfume
of
yr passion yet to
spend
dollars of soulmatra
heart coin
to the cia fbi & raygun
dollars of bomb
stars
breath
expand with
music
exponential
exponent tail
of heartbeat
holy
hear ear &
heart of sacred cock & cunt
chest
holy
asshole holy
heart of mind
holy I
hear you
In the sf waves
and Erie shore
Ferlinghetti
waves of Allen,
waves of lakes and waves
of heart,
I hear you call
:
Are you my angel?
I hear what you
say and I now write to the world to do it:
rise up! rise up!
and claim
this world!
radiate one thousand years in peacedance of heaven earthbound
childhood visions
holy!
holy!
holy!
Don't hide the madness.
(A word to the wise
guy.)
2002 Derek Beaulieu, Mike Bruner,
Marie Countryman, S.A. Griffin,
David Rhaesa, Olly Ruff, James
Stauffer & Michael Stutz
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