one old dog

Crave in slink systems. Shrieked. Crested. The Wold simpers under.

chair, table, lamp

Fuck this, I can't seem to write poems write now

Tonight I wrote Ten Poems

I wrote ten poems because none of them were quite right.

Eventually, I didn't want them to be.

Carefully he placed the nail against the cool ceramic. His coffee cup clattered.

With a hammer he hit his hand hard.

With a hammer he hit his hand hard.

Later, he sipped his coffee. His fingers trembling satisfactorily.

slippage

My foot hurt all of yesterday, but I didn't tell anyone.

I wanted to tell them today.

I had a glass of wine, and brought my guitar upstairs

Where I played it for some time, quietly. It was late at night, you see.

Slowly time passed.

Afterwards, I could not remember when the slick tips of my fingers had cracked
the last of their callouses. The long wear sheared them down till I could
feel the strings hum to the bone.

marbles

there is a red one.

a perched oscine

keystop.

fillings cracked again.

clatter.

Sorry sir, we'll have to drill.



Yes sir, rest, the nurse will be with you shortly.

These are hard prompts

Write a lo-fi poem.

write a vintage poem

Write a trip-hop poem.

Write a poem that splinters and fractures.

Write a painfully shy poem.

Write a MadLib poem.

Write an apprehensive poem.

Write a poem that deals with modern issues in antiquated language or style.
Alternatively, write a poem that deals with old/antiquated material with very
modern language or style.

Write a splintered poem.

write a poem that never takes an easy path.

write a skint poem

write a poem that is "the opposite of poetry".

write a "background" poem or a poem that doesn't call attention to itself.

I am tired of writing poems

I am tired of writing poems.

I am tired of corrupted snarls of cold language, writhed into aphasia, morbidly meaningful.

O

Mandate:

I have constructed for you a quotidian structure. Liftlike, shiftily, you kite with me.

I have established this labyrinth and from it extrapolate the universe. Boldly I impose upon you.

a long draft slips formidably down God's thorax.

Narrow. Window. Frames.

With sweet languor smoke unfurls; unsteady ground slips flatly. Here an open grave bears jeweled fruit amidst musk. Slow maggots make a morbid groan down the esophagus of the for now exeunt.

Fox-prints scatter the snow, a red brush uncurls leaving embers of fur coiled amidst the white.

Warble unrounded, fissures of tongue, mountains of marbled tension, Davidic intensity.

In the cracked fields of Carthage, young wolves fondly sing "ring around the rosy"

Narrow Window Frames

Languid smoulder, shifty slant.
Under-guarded. Groaning unfinally.

Craftily, Cleverly, think and uncurl slowly.

Warble unrounded, fissures of tongue, mountains
of marbled tension, Davidic intensity.

Salted, fondled roundly under the corner of another

By Joseph Berger

When he has heard Stanley Kowaiski bellow "Stella!" over the years in assorted productions of "A
Streetcar Named Desire," Tom Oppenheim has wondered whether Tennessee Williams chose the name as an insider's bouquet to Mr. Oppenheim's grandmother Stella Adler, the teacher who instructed the definitive Stanley, Marlon Brando, in her version of the Method.

wn e s hrd Stnley Koaiski bo "Sta!" ovr th years in ase prductions of "Stretcr Nam Desire," T Oppeneim has ondd whhr Tennesee William chos th nme s a insidr's buque to Mr. ppei's grndmohr Stl Adlr, teacher who insructd h definiiv Stey, Ml Brado, in h versin of Method.

A Love Poem

In Arlington, sleepless, a fetid Mortimer, grasp-ing
license as "Baffled in Inquiry" with a screen-stammer
of Times New Roman fluttered to AIM, out-mouthed, "For
you, my darling, I would be blocked forever"

This notion would haunt him, years later. And from
his stretched vocal's reproduce this, a curdled splash of senti-
ment, yet curving around the edges in the

crass

currency of the lymphoma carefully confining him to the
edges of his hospital bed. His heart crusted the web with its
languishments, trying to find her screen name again.

Vexed with wittled stone

Stonrever. Last of the limpet springs.

Oubliet, antagonism in the shape of a wilted tongue.

Graftily situated.

Moreover, upon clinical analysis we find whisper ways
of rhythm undermining listed drifts. Impotently exorcised.

Beri-beri wasn't all that bad

Mothballs, Marbles, Long Necked Nags, A roll of duct tape, black ink

Adjourned on all sides

liltstuck. Staccatoed. Pigeon Toed underincentive.

Abdicated libidanide, cyanide, striveways, driveways.

Domestically we unwrap

each careful word lingering along n-heptane links strains pitches. Sound-spider

will weave a dream-catcher into a thick rhizome, strictly spreading its Orwells until Graphically we are all kept

Fashioned with my clattering hand

Corpulescent tumbles. Visceral probings. Insectlike your long probiscus stretches
the eternities to my trembling centerpiece. Hum, sizzle internals, vacuum tubes en-
raptured orbiting long ellipses, electron snarls. Dribble up, slick percolation, the dra-
gnet gnat fleshing in marbled mysticism. This is the sphere. This is the deep sight.
Furtive, spasmodic, lifted crispings. Riven, mystic slips. I am warped into these long
drechways. Folded coded, drammed. Obelisk to my topography. Tabbed into the
slick structures under which my dark machine rumbles slowly into buzzlife. Fortunate
in ascii aesthetic. Graft algorithmically. Grip slip. Annotated limberings spark on many
screens.

Thrashling Borders

Wiftracks.

Leven bread basked.

Shiftly we more. Shiftly we masticulate, wastrel wimpers.
Formidable lashings. Inverted lengths.

Tell me this: were you ever once without that dramiat?

Arrow lines lip. Slip lifted. Here sit we, waiting. Ford.
Drive to the baskway, shift back ward things down.
Leftly, miserate, canine crisping. Wait slowly and be well.

To Zachris: Landing

Landing

I look out over the dark stillness of hte lake as I do every night. Above me the stars sit, stagnant again. Over the smoldering of Mt. Perun, I watch the electric lights of the landing field waiting, like me, for space-time to fall. Waiting, in their electric way, for you.

You are late, Zachris. You are always late, but this is the longest it has been. I hear from you so seldom, even over the transmitter. Faster than light travel, you say, makes keeping in touch almost impossible but I wonder if you are not, perhaps, escaping me. I try to keep in the same time-line as you, going to the spinners to keep myself young, losing so much time wandering through relative space, doing research. Still, it doesn't help; nothing is perfect. You come back, as you sometimes do, and I find we have aged slightly differently. Your birthday has moved a few months, you are a year older than I expected; these things are difficult for us.
I throw stones across the water as I wait, watch them eventually fall. Some skip more than ten times before they sink.

The sky brightens, distracting me - your ship finally coming down. It plummets too quickly. I see the signal tower flash as your course changes, watch the waves crest and break over the bow of your ship in its fierce surface violation. Already, I am running to the evac-mech, thanking the stars for the training, for the watch. The metal of the suit closes its cold energy about me. I dive into the water, my body braced. I dive to your ship. My sheathed fingers claw the ash from your sarcophagus. I find hte seam then, grab the lock on it and swim upward with sweeping strokes. Urgent sounds are blaring in my head, sounds that mean you might be dying or are dead. The sirens pummel my ears with the dying sound, the wail. I pull your finned sarcophagus to the surface. It parts the waters, leaves its dark wake. A word play shifts unbidden through my head, and I contemplate the cruelty of gallows humor.

The waves of my passing break against the shore at the Dover slate mill. I leap, my mechanical self lifting high out of the water to the land. With metal sheathed fingers I tear at the seam. I tear open your sarcophagus and watch it spit you forth, watch your screaming face, the agony of new oxygen in your lungs.

Later, I love you, shudder with pleasure as I grip the place where your shoulder has grown a hump of hard metal and soft flesh, the place where the computer supplements the self. You stand, and I watch you hunch your back, and cradle your arm, touch the metal of your fingers, the fingers that had once been perfect, been pure flesh. I cry, watching you shiver, your back hunched over your deformity (hunched with your deformity). I too shiver, naked against the night, my back cold where it rests on the feet of hte machine which had saved your life.

"I am done with the stars," you say after some time. I sit silent, hiding my cautious pleasure, letting you think out loud. "I miss the smell of earth, of growing things." After a time you continue, "We can still work for the smeltery. The botany lab is open, and I can work metal to earn our keep."

"Yes, Zachris. It will be good to have you here." I caress the evac-mech's corrugated toe, and lean back into the softness of the lakeshore. Sleep envelopes us, sleep and the warmth of a past day's dawn, still trapped in the sand by the dark water lapping.

* * *

There are days we lounge in our gardens. Your skin is rough from the heat of the metal; the steel of your fingertips sometimes glows as you twist and shape the brilliant ore. The hair of your chest gradually bleaches blonde from the long days in the sun.

"Zachris," I savor the sound. these are good days, where you work the sheets of metal into fine tools, and we grow such things in our garden. The Daude machine cackles as it brings metal up from the earth; its swift pistons and clattering tracks provide a rhythm for our hours of work. Our world is one of music and rhythm, the smell of growing things, and the smell of heated metal.

Dark Matter

So, I've been working on this sci-fi short story loosely based on a few of Aase Berg's poems from her book Materia Mork, which one of my professors translated in the collection Remainland. It's called To Zachris and over the next few weeks I'll be making occasional To Zachris posts (subtitled according to the section). Anyway, comments would be appreciated since I'm much less confident and comfortable in the realm of prose. Ciaozers,

Rory

Writing From Class

In Poetry today we wrote poems to several songs. Here are the results.

Roads (Portishead)

drip, cold dreams simper
lift
cold, wistful simpers stick regardless
oort
the clouds walking shadows through

Folded in and out in drastic constellations
correlations worshiping the vastness of each
small infinity, the language warps along
event horizons, black burbles, underskins

oh
crisp starlets engender
oh
faulty thimbles let in thick nettle pricks
piercing my firmament un-

shapely slenderings orbit in tight disarray
mock gowns gasp with slickening
open trays, regardless, of what they say



Build God, Then We'll Talk: Panic at the Disco

formaldehyde: I am three little piggies
drinking dasnickalates ribald colds and argued wristway sinks

Shed:
Shuck:
Cordial drink:

Let this orbit excellent shiftways, corrug, corrug, corrug
ate this breach, basted brinklings walk walk
curvature of earth marks this
unsatisfactory sunrise
makes this
dribble dance

Intimate sordidity thoughtless slinkering formal
hyde and jekyl shifting their unthoughtof arguments
into slick new conscientiousness
slinking in parkways in thundertones and
graspways
shifting in devatante ligaments, boneways
rebuilding lost sanguinity


Panic - The Smiths

I wonder to myself
Scraggle shrinks suburban ordials
Lastly, this:

Mephistopholes was a friendly ghost, but I could never from him
get the time of thicket, or the measure of this drifting filament


Shankill Butchers

Don't, Don't mind the guggle mouth
the trickle mouth milk
gout lipped by the shank, the new mouth drawn
harsh liquid drawn
across maw flesh gasping gushes of
know
gasping gushes of gurgle
gasping of kosher
cutlings, giblets, cut away
thin thrashings feebling out and rivered
down into thickening pools of clot
Picking fingers
Plucking

away



Guaranteed - Eddie Vedder

So I can breathe: clotleries, shifted snufts of oxy
So I can breathe: gravitas, heavy lungfuls
The far mercury cloud shivers, folding turbulences into
thick slick rain, washing with the temperate rise and fall
fistules from heaven to earth



Ghosts I - Nine Inch Nails

Formulated irrigation. Bubble up.
Brass. Bass lithography, shifted sign.

Warble on shrieked carpet.
Linger lisping.

Tour trumps with wind, shifted on coldplays, argonauts
stalking over a field of teeth.

I decline, I am crafted from salt.

I -



At the Zoo

Flat cat scuttles
Bacterian drafts
I argue slumps under orders from thick bristle boars
the Giraffes seem rather sincere
Goblets loft and lift drop and drink out timidly

Review: A Passage To India

I had to read E. M. Forster's A Passage to India for my British Indian Literature class, and I must say it's phenomenal. Certainly among the best books I've recently read. The language from start to finish is pretty much perfect. Of the sky over Chandrapore, the fictional city of Forster's Indian setting, he writes: "The sky too has its changes, but they are less marked than those of the vegetation and the river. Clouds map it up at times, but it is normally a dome of blending tints, and the main tint is blue. By day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white of the land, after sunset it has a new circumference - orange, melting upwards into tenderest purple. But the core of blue persists, and so it is by night. Then the stars hang like lamps from the immense vault. The distance between the vault and them is as nothing to the distance behind them, and that farther distance, though beyond colour, last freed itself from blue.
The sky settles everything - not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful. By herself she can do little - only feeble outbursts of flowers. But when the sky chooses, glory can rain into the Chandrapore bazaars or a benediction pass from horizon to horizon. The sky can do this because it is so strong and so enormous. Strength comes from the sun, in fused in it daily; size from the prostrate earth. No mountains infringe on the curve. League after league the earth lies flat, heaves a little, is flat again. Only in the south, where a group of fists and fingers are thrust up through soil is the endless expanse interrupted. Theses fists and fingers are the Marabar hills, containing the extraordinary caves." This descriptive deluge rides up in swells throughout the text, but is not the text itself. Unlike Hardy, whose descriptive heights carry on their wave-crests the peaks of his personal insights, Forster's human vision mixes well with a more colloquial style and permits him (with seamless transition) to shift from speech to thought to styled scenic depiction. This balance he quite thoroughly achieves, and no small detail disappears in the mixing. The symbolic language he achieves in his descriptive peaks he he recasts in his dialogues and interior-monologues and in all of this I was well pleased. The motives of the book are likewise excellent, a careful exploration of the points of friction in British India. His view refuses to be simple-minded, he carries up the complexities of the Indian factionalism, its unified conflict with the British, and presents a world of types, avatars of types, and complicators of types. His small infinities, twists of depth which permit unravelling and interpretation only so far as the mysteries they mist around, baffle attempts to categorize (and thereby reconquer) the India he presents. His pantheon of characters stress one another along surprising lines, Aziz, Fielding, Godbole and the presiding spirit of Mrs. Moore all mottle together along strange lines which need not fit expectation, follow the desires of the optimistic (or sadistic) reader, or mark anything other than an entirely real but intensely symbolic and ideological passage to, through, and from India.