TO BAUDELAIRE by Bob Perelman

TO BAUDELAIRE

The head is the body's lair.

It may be slightly in front.

Milking these separations,

Words answer the immortal need

For intoxicating monotony. The body

is the mind's sieve.

Beloved grief, water drips

From a block of red ice

Onto a perfumed paradise

Lost in the obsessive embrace

Of reader and writer. Superb haloes

Hang from the heads

Of naked slaves whipping themselves.

A new world is required

To stomach the images

Floating on the headless

Torso of the old.

"I was surprised to find myself

Staring at an empty hole.

I ordered flowers."

--from Bob Perelman's Primer (THIS Press, 1981)

DAYS by Bob Perelman

DAYS

One word is next

To another, an excess

Of localism, solidarity, and

Vive la difference shouted

Down crowded column inches.

Each voice singled out

By ages of technique.

In fact you don't

Live a life one

Day at a time.

Some days you skip,

Come back to them

Later, others never occur.

These occasions are not

Even up for grabs,

Cause no comment.

from Bob Perelman's Primer (THIS Press, 1981)

INDIA

INDIA

How much does it cost the rest of the world to keep the letters of Indiana's name glued together and colored green. First, there is the i—n—d—i—a, which should cohere fairly stably by now, but adding the n makes for a whole set of erosions, indecencies, and unmistakable clues that the namers had imagined themselves in the wrong hemisphere. Then the a, which violates the inexact i—n—d—i—a—n by forming the inexact a—n—a, cousin to the even more tired r—a—m—a, as in f—o—o—d—o—r—a—m—a. The a—n—a implies a leveling of consciousness over a wide area. So, you have the search for i—n—d—i—a totally incomplete, and before anything of substance was initiated in the mind, it spread itself out insistently and destructively in an all is one howard johnson orange glow that is called health here, steel mills and florida orange juice, but is understood elsewhere as violence, appetite disembodied, misspelled.

from Bob Perelman, BRAILLE (Ithaca House, 1975)

A BOOK OF MUSIC by Jack Spicer

Coming at an end the lovers

Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where

Did it end? There is no telling. No love is

Like an ocean with the dizzy processions of the waves' boundaries

From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye

Like death.

Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length

Of coiled rope

Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths

Its endings.

But, you will say, we loved

And some parts of us loved

And the rest of us will remain

Two persons. Yes,

Poetry ends like a rope.

untitled, Aram Saroyan

traffic

an airplane

the typewriter

--from Complete Minimal Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007)

ON NEAL'S ASHES by Allen Ginsberg

Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash

nipples, Ribs I touched w/ my thumb are ash

mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash

bony cheeks soft on my belly are cinder, ash

earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock tip, curly pubis

breast warmth, man palm, high school thigh,

baseball bicept arm, asshole anneal'd to silken skin

all ashes, all ashes again.

August 1968