ars poetica

Underwood 4

—Ruggero Maggi

Underwood 2

—Ruggero Maggi

Underwood 1

—Ruggero Maggi

fax artworks 3

—Ruggero Maggi

fax artworks 2

—Ruggero Maggi

fax artworks 1

—Ruggero Maggi

MONOLOGUE
From: jimleftwich@mac.com
Subject: Re: mashed potato
Date: November 28, 2006 11:32:06 AM EST
To: jimleftwich@mac.com

1.

yes, well. fuck it for now. making a record of that.
remaking, or mixing, or mashing - mucking and
messing more like it, never did make any difference
and never will make anything else.

well enough, and good, irresistible to say good for
nothing which is good enough for now. go nowhere
and get nothing is the plot. means nothing fat chance
but surely less than you think.

less at least than i think not to mention any of that.
go nowhere and get nothing is not how you got here.
go away won't you do any good any more than what
does me. at that. into where think yourself out of
who, whole lot of good that would do them, doing it
all for them and going away.

i was once makes me laugh to try, starting there
doesn't begin there, nor here, to say i was and go
from there into anything but laughter. fuck it for
now is laughing how did that or this get in here
haunted face floating into the mirror eyes sad
from being up too long trying to think her way
out of thought.

one thing at a time won't work like you have a
choice is how i did it but not what i think nor
even expect you to believe it as if i care. that's
a straight line, think any thing you like. no such
thing as a dot.

don't let the pronouns get in your way. we don't
care as much as they think, i mean mean as much
as they say, or think we do, as if i was talking to
you. i don't even know you. fuck it for now may as
well mean everything - forever to everyone. give
your self some credit or a break or half a chance
stop what you're doing shut up. pay attention, she
said. i love the long horizon moon beach naked fire
long time ago. cigarette sparkling water chevrolet
into the subway. that's not paying attention. that's
you, fondling your private lies. not me. i'm the
invisible truth you're trying to forget. good luck.
still not paying attention, and there's nothing i can
do.

how did that get in here, letter strings bread crumbs
threads to your dictionary, tell me you're not making
this up as you go along.

2.

yes. i do understand. no. it doesn't help. you made
too many bad decisions while we were fleeing their
prison game language prism all the same things will
never be the same, they were ahead with the fix of
the game. i told her the same thing over and over
and it never emptied ourselves of them. i don't think
she ever will.

forget it. starting over doesn't work and going forward
is more surprise than illusion though mostly only that.
we were in for a rough rhizome on the storm, i could
tell you that much. she slept cats and handwritten
breeze like a cloud among the pillows while i thought
against making her up and singing her to love me. it
would have been that easy. fuck it for new and make
it as simple like it never was.

3.

mean what you care, write what you thought. i
didn't think it would look like it sounds like it looks
as i'm thinking it now.

yes, well enough and good for nothing or as close
as i can get and leave a trace. a trace of less than
that. desire at that. that will have to do.

4.

i am already sick of what you will continue thinking.
they are already sick of what we will continue thinking.
you are already sick of what they will continue thinking.
we are already sick of what i will continue thinking.

—Jim Leftwich

—Enzo Minarelli

—Enzo Minarelli

—Enzo Minarelli

—Enzo Minarelli

—Enzo Minarelli

keeping it pure

words are not undermining my project /
a cool clear & well-thought-out treatise / but
it ails regardless is stricken with thought & lines:
tearing down hierarchies rolls like someone else’s
shard of the true cross / there seems oodles of definitions
(of key concepts) ghosting & going around & one might
choose with free-will / that much is easy / passé /
but then maybe one starry purpose & method
(unique to me) is worth writing & not
talking about / has the prestige of a colour
not invented yet / or a new car / glows like
jasper fforde’s shard of an original plot /
i teach it in no university course (yet) / praxis is well &
good / in the beginning (et cetera…) there was an ‘aha’ /
of course you liked johnny cash before the movie / &
there are bandwagon jumping (sporting team or otherwise)
supporters but / i can figure stuff out / good things like some
philosophy once plotted on a bar-coaster: there is a chance
anything is possible if only outside a poem /
i subjectively know what is important is possibly water
through a waterfall / the cycle means each h20 drop full of
quarks will come back & lament & find things terribly changed /
i write this all quark-like & i humbly try to embrace the fugacious
structure of some postcards / & everything / shklovsky
wrote of defamiliarisation & kinsella once typed
about periphrasis both of these things i like / so
my take (on things) is artful & numinous &
any being might care to imagine / the depth /
this signifies one clever english language
poetic / one kick-ass metaphysic too

—Derek Motion

FOUND POEM

This is a poem on the back of the credit card slip
It can't help itself
It had to come into being
even though the meal is over and the dishes
cleared away
The poem is overwriting the check, crowding out the numbers,
elbowing its way past the clicking of the machines that
make perfect copies on computers
It has a lot to say; it scrambles over the TV screen and
spills onto another slip, the one from the post office
We are not commenting
The poem must have its way,
past the waitress pushing up the aisle with glasses of wine
past the crowds cheering the basketball players
The bread and butter lie in their beds, untouched
the poem hovers and falls, like a small leaf
in an errant wind
Who is listening?
The bird on the fence?
The man at the bar who had one too many?
Flip a coin.
Will the poem land again on a piece of pink paper?
Will it bounce, like the basketball
and fall in a dark corner
hidden by dust?
or will it rise again
speaking in tongues
above the earth where we find ourselves
breathing with the clouds
thin as the air

—Alice Pero

Bad Poem

Anything can be excused away,
even a bad poem
Just give it the title, “Bad Poem”
and it won’t matter,
syntax chopped, stilted meter,
improper number of syllables
in each line
A poem with clichés,
a love poem that smears itself
with gooey love and rhymes shamelessly
“Oh, flow, go, so lovely my heart,
my soul, eternity of endless love”
I don’t have to be ashamed
I could even put a valentine in it,
one with lace
This poem could be a knitted cozy over a teapot
and three kittens jumping out of a basket of yarn
It could have a glowing painting of a sunset
over a fake fireplace in a turquoise motel
Now you say that isn’t bad poetry
You can see the sunset
You once wanted your own motel,
would have painted it turquoise
There would have been pink flamingoes and
a swimming pool with a chain link fence,
a free breakfast, white biscuits with margarine patties,
really greasy sausages, coffee with those little white
packets instead of milk
No, this isn’t a bad poem
because it started to be your poem
and your soul is singing through the sands of time
You are throbbing with the joy of finding your true
hand-painted sunset in my poem
You will add white cupcakes with chocolate icing
and sprinkles, the kind that are slightly stale
Because you like them, this isn’t a bad poem
and you can keep adding things
You being the audience and the poem itself
And I too am listening, biting my tongue

—Alice Pero

FOUND POEM

Random messages float in the air
like dogs making slurping noises
waiting for their masters
and we strain to hear
Some smell like bothered skunks and
we avoid them, close our car windows

A woodpecker calls to us from his rotten tree
The bullfrog has plenty to say
The poky donkey makes us pull him along
Old people take notes to remember and
repeat questions over and over
Who finds these poems and writes them down?

Or over there
as the Great Blue Heron takes flight
from one tree to the next
warning the woman in the canoe
of a coming message
she would have to snatch from the sky

Perfectly formed, like his wings
spread in a whoosh, flying soundlessly
the poem is looking for its landing place
under that turtle's furtive head
darting back into the water
What should be said?

Here or there or anywhere?
A small impression formed from dew
on early morning grass, a plop the cat left
a hundred different insects
the fox on the hill
or maybe just the thought of you

A rumbling starting in my head
a trembling hand
a motion to retrieve this song
before the sound is lost
an excited jitter, a flutter of joy
as the mind takes hold

Of what can't be held or
caught
A spider's work is easier to keep
her threads more taut
than this fleeting moment
that can't be found in a photograph

But can be seen in invisible ink
or in the pounding rain
You cannot hesitate or it is lost
It has no cost but fuels my heart
An endless source that disappears
and comes again with simple thought

—Alice Pero
____
from Thawed Stars (SunInk Pubs 1999)

please advise stop

—Rusty Morrison

This poem first appeared in the web journal COCONUT, #7,
the editor of COCONUT is Bruce Covey. http://www.coconutpoetry.org/

Writer’s Workshop

It’s the same every morning: reading, discussion, yawning.
Poetry needs to be concrete…
Today, the pigeons in the window are fornicating.
She starts it, waving
her black and gray tail feathers
high in the air. He can’t refuse.
Let the metaphor speak for itself…
They are a knot rolling along the ledge,
wings flapping wildly,
skinny legs fighting for balance.
Condense, condense, condense…
They are beautiful,
moaning behind the thick glass.
Who can tell me the story of this poem?
The pigeons are making love in the window
and the students watch as they finish
then pick the dirt from each other’s feathers.

—Ellyn Lichvar

Rome

and yet
we have all done it: lived

too much inside
this arena of lions and armor and bright sun.

        I only wanted to touch you the way the pen touches on the imagination

and then pulls back from the heat.
                                             I wonder how sunburned the baby will get seated
in the audience.
          Maybe the parents are too busy cheering the gladiator on or
maybe they just don't
give a damn.

—Sandra Simonds