An excerpt

from a novella i'm working on:

Beautiful

Clouds marble the grey night.
The electricity crackles through a wind-blown chink in the curtain.
The sky looks like the interior of a massive brain, spider lightning creating instant connections between swollen neurons. The earth is thinking.
You awake suddenly and turn to me, your eyes wide open. You look at me as if you have never seen me before.
“Do you know that you’re beautiful?” you ask me.
I stare blankly. Soon your head sinks down onto the pillow and plunges back into sleep. And I feel a sense of longing.

a poem by tom trudgeon and james meetze

potatoes- jayinee

Where does that bottle end and my hand begin
Shapes fuse.
That is why I
Drink.

You in my maroon flannel shirt turn into a boat
I sink my head
In your cupped
Hands, you drink.

Me in your ripped dress shirt leaning over the ledge
To feel the purple
Of the beveled hills
Touch my cheek.

I do not sense you standing there, fingering a pack
Why are you
So bright
It hurts to look.

Before we speak to anyone they are layered objects
Everyone is beautiful
I shake my head no
Don’t say that.

We can never find a real painting to live happily for
Just eat this cold
Dinner of cherry soda
And fingerling potatoes.

Constriction Poems

Notes on the Rules of Time Travel as Put Forth by Emmy Lennevald
By Jayinee Basu


Causality

Gloss the gangster, seconds don’t spiral
Keep the glossy gangster, not the spiraling seconds
The glossy seconds drip into the gangster-lined spiral
Gloss the second spiral, ye gangster!
Glosses drip spiral, seconds till the gangster
Glosses the spiral gangsters second.

Gangsters who gloss while the seconds spiral
Through gangster-lined glossy spiraling seconds
Gangsters count seconds while the glossy lines spiral
Gangsters throw seconds into the spiraling gloss.
The lone gangster spirals, glossing the seconds
The lone gangster spirals towards a second gloss.

Seconds spin spiraling, a glossy gangster weeps
Seconds spiral weeping toward a gangster of gloss
Second the gangster, who spiraling glossy
Seconds the gangster whose glosses spiral.
Seconds gloss toward a deep gangster spiral
Seconds gloss toward a spiraling gangster.

Spiral the glossy gangster in seconds
Spiral the glossy second-gangster dream
Spiral the gangster whose glossy dream seconds
The spiral of gangster-lined seconds. (g)loss
Spiral the second glossy gangster
Spiral the second gangster of gloss.


And Then

After a storm comes, so shall you reap.
Better die with honor: he begins to die.
Blood is thicker but who loves a lover,
Crime is the better part of valor.

Don’t cut off your nose, wear out your welcome
Early experience is the mother.
Fear of death where angels fear to tread,
Love while the sun shines.

He plants posterity
He hesitates policy
He doubts nothing
He is better than beauty.

Laughter is a sleeping dog,
Laughter is a bowl of cherries.
Like mother, like medicine.
Like father, like a tango.

The female of the species skins a cat,
The grass is more deadly than the male.
Marriages: death and taxes.
Remember to look after everything.


Gangster Summer: An Epithalamium
(for Sebastian Mouse and January Winterson,
married under the burning Brazilian sun)

I.

To be a sin
Bastian, a ban on best
So be a mat
So be a sabot
To mast a nasty bus.

A tousled mess
A man? A beast?
Nab a motion
To a sea.

Mist tiny stems
It sees tin meat
Nations seem about sin.

O Sebastian Mouse!
My sun-baste man!



II.

Not just any winter
Tinny new jitters
To a weary January.

Written in June, nay
Terse wry nose
A sonnet in rose.

Winston, see ‘er son?
Rye so winsome
A new Jenny ewe.

A note rain-taint
Rest now Janey
You are not a saint.

III.

Witty mousy January
Must be a bait
Bees swarm rainy
To a Bastian mate.

Arouse my reason
Winterous treason
In misty jabs
At sea a man waits.

Stain ye rosy beam
Wean yer awesome teen
Nest our timorous boat
In a sinuous moat.

See Sebastian
Sway sweet
In January sweat.

From Threads

This is a poem from a chapbook I made over the summer. The formatting got screwed up so the spacing is not like the original.
-Jayinee

Beleghata

I lived in a house
where the flowers bloomed
like chinese characters
outside the window.
Nightly,
the branches snuck in, scratched my cheek
while I slept they fondled my hair through
and through the bars there was rainwater
dripping lightly into the cool airy room.

I lived in a house
where the whapwhap of cotton
yards beaten against wet ground
woke me to the window
in the gleaming morning
where the
dappled
powdery
sunlight
flickered on the acid burning
brightly on the red cement.

I lived in a house
where autism blossomed
in pairs of awkward joints
they were all knees and elbows,
those boys,
their mother with her teeth
and her widow's thin white than
knotted about her swelling knuckles.
when they died the room was quiet
like the crazy chained to the window.

I lived in a house
where wives and daughters
with green eyes meowed at
the one daughter whose madness
was to love
and be loved
without clothes
with screams
so they kept her locked away
until one day, she up and died.

I lived in a house
where the crumbling stone wall
bore peeling manifestos
of Marxist-Leninist sentiments:
INQUILAB ZINDABAD!
The revolution lives on through fists
pumping, teeth
breaking
blood trickling slowly from his head
like the steady dissolution of memory.

I lived in a house
where a woman with black plum skin
lined my white little feet
in red red ink from a green glass jar
pulled out a bamboo mat
rough and dyed
the fan in a lazy whir
lulling me to sleep on the floor in the depths
of a dog howling in pain or love.

Poem with a segment of a gil gentile comic

-tom

excerpt from "pieces of memory"

one of many parts of a short story i wrote, now in finery 5.

*

Vivian dreams.

…

..

.

I’m

a thousand ways of repeating the same apology,

doing the same thing

an infinite loop of regret

with feathers

bursting from my shoulder blades

sharp and delicate fragments of white

disintegrate as though made of ash

the gray ends of gold-red sex

as I fall

into my grandmother’s garden, the

uneven hills of dirt hiding cabbage, narcissus, peonies, orchids,

oranges, snakes with glittering eyes –

My grandmother strokes my hair, and

she smells like the plums that hang heavy in the air, deep purple like organs in the sunlight

their insides golden and wet.
She has both her arms, the left arm amputated during the war hanging whole and unblemished

the skin as white as milk.
I wonder if we’re both dead.

She smiles, revealing even gold teeth, and says,

Don’t run.

Everything turns dark, and I’m breathing

alone.

….

..

.

Vivian wakes up gasping.

The room smells like plums.

-CVN

scooters, vacation, fall

Vast and Red

It is like a moor!

the loneliness cried.

This body cannot die.

put my rockish cenotaph

down in soily peat bog

so that I may live

forever.

What is the color

of closing blank eyes

and a lifetime passing by

without seeing this

very small girl

hiding.

The sense of the gruesome

is well developed

in some children

more than others.

Blame eyeyes.

She sees infinity

when she closes

her eyes

in tiny

dots

red.

-Jayinee

in non bedroom, non bath

- tom

A Barrage Now

On Later Falling Apart

In one apartment light streams

warm and blue, through a moon.

Lapis smoke swirls and spreads

like the memory of a distant sound

while the TV picks up the lost pieces.

Outside, a galaxy sizzles like a fried egg

picked out the emptiness

before chewing its nebulous albumin.

I would like to fall deep into

its gaseous lips, silky oil slick

blooming hot and thick.

On what did Atlas stand, then,

when the dust sparkled to stars

and oaks shot up through cracks

in reasoning and eggshells.

Route 41

The bus is hissing like a flat tire

“What?” an old beaver man.

“Not this route, sir.”

Vibrating lights, backseat like horror

story of two lovers

miles apart.

Lurches ahead, this great beast

the liquors left over in my gut

lurch, launching me forward

into a hollow time—

Only ten minutes passed

since the empty bus is popped

into a loony bin.

Windows like picture frames

holding the strangest family portrait

of strangers who drop fly-like

along.

the sensitivity in everyone's eyes!

In Silver Yarn (Mash up of Camille Guthrie's "In Captivity")

I drifted along past buildings

like a blank piece of paper

knees swallowed up by scenery

snouts disappear into wild grasses.

We see hanged faces and ravaged dolls

everyone thinks of a different radiant.

Raven catches a shiny fleck

yellow white red blue squares.

Be careful. This is very heavy.

Action of a bird landing

Action of light on a hat

Spikelet of laziness and love.

Fix here you expectant spheres!

With ears like a full bathtub,

the why stuck like sequins about your face,

hair like a cloudy day.

See here my heart,

he smells like a virgin—

with a bellybutton like a luminescent watch

and blood like melted crayons.

ch - chu - check it out.

-tom]

http://www.josephceravolo.com

ac and thomas collaborative 2008 part II

ac and thomas collaborative 2008

cool find

A Poem For John Wieners

-Trudgeon

Nonsense

I translated Sukumar Ray's HJBRL (Ha Ja Ba Ra La) into English from its original Bengali a while ago. He was the father of Satyajit Ray. They are part of a long line of geniuses. You can check it out here if you're interested in Lewis Carrollish characters and silly rhymes.

History Today

Cold park bench back
looks still broken

Roll up those cricket chirps into
one more fat cigarette
hanging onto her two ashtray shoulders

The plants grow tall here
and the wind grows colder

Every day feels like Tuesday
or a red scarf in the summertime
When the migraine scent of sweaty leather
weighs heavy on my wrist.

The other bench has been empty for years
Not cold, just inconsequential


-geoff.

6-17-08 11 am

-trudgeon 

ye olde love poem

A Song for Sevorg

I see Russia in the early light
with its onion tops veiled
in its ice milk mornings.
I see baby flowers bursting forth from your laughter
and I’m engulfed, enraged,

Overcome with a honeyed envy.
You smile and the czar collapses
You smile and the poet rejoices

Time clutches at you, stickier than do I
we both want to tie you down to this europe
but that's of no use.
"Look it's colorless" you say.
I look but,
I cannot see through those brilliant eyes
downcast but defensive
I cannot relate to your baffling mind
but I have every incentive.
You say it is for the doves
for the good of the movies,
I avoid the word love.

“Consider the benefits” you say.
I consider but,
libertarian municipialism
just doesn’t do anything for me.

Stroke your chin with your ivory fingers
and let your clothes down from that wirehanger body
quick look- updown stop at the toes
Clear smells linger under my nose.
Oh how the wind blows all through my head
while I listen to all the words that you've not yet said.

Soon the chickens will run through the courtyard,
and it’s a pity that
such musings of the mind
cannot be expressed with such dismal tools.
“What the fuck?” you say with the a most confused expression
“Since when did you start talking beautiful?”
I try to talk but,
tangerine trees burst forth and I’m rendered speechless

And then you smile
And then I say
"Oh who needs god oh who wants love"
And the snow drifts down all the while.

-Jayinee

FUTURE & NATURE

One hundred street lights
choke navigation. Hand over

The strung together musical
Instrument audiences. The bee

Is the butterfly
That makes noise.
-
Drink a thousand clocks. The wave is
Drunk in dormancy. Spatial spring is the
Unflustered god. Tree tops caught with hair.

Finding misery in the reduction old
Intonations are a little deaf.

The speed of light is not socially mobile.
Rise to the sky to advance.
-
Nine revolutions out of ten thousand also.
Replace the youth head. It was

About to dark. And
It was darkening. A presence
Is solemnly moldy. The situation is

Language. Language
Is all pleasant. How doesn’t a body
And mind piece depend on.
-
Dust has a creativeness. Really pay
Attention to the congenial now. Now

Between future & nature phase on. As
For me I damper my best for those

Who have tried. Only then respectability
Has sustainability. Purely blue colors
Market pools & windows now.
-
The neck is the obvious vessel
For grain. But now usually smoking
Of chlorine. Wind awakes liquor

In the surfaces of water. The recent
Return looks like an extinct heron. Intrinsic

to urban wall people. Last year
the green building is white this year.
-
The next causes the human
To appear slow behind. Waste
Articles may not be ritual but

are warm warm warm. Wait
For a congenital seed. Although

There are thieves for human emotion.
Controlling your breathing will
Slightly prolong life.
-
Empty murders the potential. Since
The four directions are merely illusions

Go. The good cloud is in fact
the travel that delivers the traveler

on top of a lake under a boat. No
matter that the wave is drunk

and the chaotic whereabouts
of a flower in a field.

The doubt is in lake days. Who
Knew these in a parking lot.
-

ac