POEM OF THE DAY BY MICKEY CESAR

proximity and parallels


Nerve on wire. We were
hung here, poorly planned
by enthusiastic commissars, twisting
and bleeding charge. For days we
induced current along
our lengths and braids, laid flush
from end to end, caught in
awful spasms and thunderstorms. There is not within us
any inherent electricity; we once thought ourselves
insulated well and somewhat steady in every winter storm but
this last one, the microburst which passed
wrecked our moorings, left us
destrung and dragging across the alley,
live and snapping
arced short
searching much
as lightning
loves
the ground.

-Mickey Cesar

CONSULTING THE STARS WITH MARK HENNESSY

And then there are those
wide-open October nights
way out there on the high seas
of the lower Mid-west,

and nothing but stars stars stars.

And maybe you’ve wandered
away from the fire with a friend or two
and a bottle of some not dissimilar
distillation of heat and radiance (to keep
the Universal Engine turning over, of course),

and Time, that supremely indifferent
retriever and reducer of all things
to their least divisible units
seems to have momentarily halted
in the tracks of its ceaseless stalking
of what we so self-centrically (if not
full-on solipsistically) imagine to be
its sweetest, juiciest prey.

And a Greek chorus of coyotes
is commenting on the days events
from the next county over.

And a truck somewhere out beyond
the horizon blows a long, sorrowful solo.

And our phones and clocks
(those little sycophantic servants,
advisers and grand co-conspirators,
as well, no doubt) have been given
their first night off in who knows how long.

So, if you want to speak to someone,
present company should more than do.

And if, for some reason,
you find you need to know
the Time’s current whereabouts...

well, you’ll have to consult the stars.

-Jason Ryberg, 2010

POEM OF THE DAY BY CHARLES OLSON

The Songs of Maximus: Song 1

colored pictures

of all things to eat: dirty

postcards

And words, words, words

all over everything

No eyes or ears left

to do their own doings (all

invaded, appropriated, outraged, all senses

including the mind, that worker on what is

And that other sense

made to give even the most wretched, or any of us, wretched,

that consolation (greased

lulled

even the street-cars

song


-Charles Olson

DRUNK DIRECTING TRAFFIC AT THE INTERSECTION OF TIME AND SPACE

No sooner had I lowered myself

down into that dark well

of ghost echos and distant whale squeak

than I was the poor boy of every

sad blues and honky-tonk song,

thumb out, on the Lost Highway

and a long, long way from home,

a lonesome stranger trying to

hitch a ride to ever-stranger lands

(and other Parts Unknown, as well).

I was Hank and Lefty,

Kerouac and Cassidy,

Quixote and Sancho.

I wore the fabled hubcap

diamond-star halo and red shoes

that were the envy of every angel

(and devil alike).

I made mid-night raids

on The Garden of Earthly Delights.

I stole Death’s pale, raggedy horse

and sold it to a traveling gypsy circus.

I directed traffic at the intersection

of Time and Space.

I rode bitch between a mega-church minister

and a street-corner preacher.

I got drunk on nine kinds of hellfire

and nearly died in a duel

over a one-legged ballerina.

If not for the alarm clock

pinching my ear with its

sharp, bony fingers,

I might not have ever

made it back.

-Jason Ryberg, 2010

CHARLES SIMIC SITTING IN THE CHEAP SEATS OF MY DREAMS

It would appear to be
either a rundown vaudevillian/
burlesque theater, Poughkeepsie
or Buffalo, NY, circa 19-twenty-something,

or maybe an old, black and white,
“recorded live before a studio
audience” style television program;

part “Honeymooners,”
“Days Of Our Lives,” and
German expressionist cinema
consisting almost entirely of various
stock caricatures and other tragi-comic
grotesqueries of the perverse
simultaneously hurling out hyper-dramatic
dialogue at no one in particular.

They orate, pontificate
and gesticulate, magnificently,
without ever seeming to be aware
of each other’s existence.

One of them is dressed as a World War I
Prussian Military commander, complete with
tall, shiny boots, walrussy handle bar
and singularly spiked helmet.

Another is, most likely, supposed to be
somebody’s booga-booga idea of an ancient
tribal shaman or witchdoctor.

Still another, wearing a bra and panties
and a thin silk cord running from his neck to the heel
of the high-heel shoe on his only remaining foot,
masturbates, dreamily, into the long shadow
of his nightly near-death excursion.

A chorus of mutts and street urchins
waits, attentively, for its cue (or a scrap
of food to fight over, perhaps).

And way in the back,
in the darkest and cheapest of cheap seats,
the lone, cigar smoking audience member
smacks out a slow and clamorous

CLAP!

CLAP!

CLAP!

CLAP!

-Jason Ryberg, 2010