..poem to commemorate the closing of CHAMPS WEST....

ENRAPTURED

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surely it would be like this:

 

The brazen herald from some celestial bugle

trumpeting punctuating decay

shrill of a junior high tardy bell

 

The dated Christmas tree bulb, the planet tilting

its cosmic neck as if to work out enervated kinks,

saddle of jigsaw cardboard  continents dripping sideways

 tectonic funeral tears

  cataclysmic zippers crackling

dotting the floorboard of the earth

in a fissure of fear

 

Oceans thrashing gargling  up

coastlines in bristled sweeps

volcano blowing their subterranean wad

mother earth menstruating fire and ash

Tornados skidding, Tsunami's roaring

 

Skyscrapers toppling like a game of drunken jenga

patches of the sky falling in heavy geometrical trapezoids

splattering thuds  anvils in cartoons

 

And this is how it would be

as reality unbuttons itself

 

A quadrant gospel of  devious

horsemen hackling in  neighing canters

across the Golgotha-gray horizon

 

graves rising like steeples caricatures in a children’s pop-up book

 

Overweight middle-aged naked Christians

elbowing each other to be first in line

making little “told-you-so” gestures with their fingers

at those who are left

 

ST. Peter holding an Ostrich quill

checking hotel room reservations

 

While below puppet sized incubuses

Prod pitch forks into the

Shoulders of  porn shop patrons

Marshalling them into a fire-laced

Subway staircase to suffer and to burn beneath

 

Cylinder Mayan Disc calendars

 Ricocheting satellite’s, asteroids plummeting

 failed comets hammering

like court-sentencing gavels as

albino buffalo stampede across great plains

 

cherubim and seraphim

playing soccer at Stonehenge

with black and tan Tao emblems

lotus plants plopping

crop circles rising like yeast as

 

marooned-coated Buddhists monks levitate 

towards enlightenment in pyramidic posture 

 Israel being removed  with a scalpel

boomeranging into outer space

concealed in a snow globe bubble

Mecca rising on all fours following

a MT. Arafat-sized silhouette of Muhammad, pointing

 

The entire continent of South America herds llamas into Alien spaceships headed for Andromeda

 

Thunder searing,  cities drowning, the mantle of the earth being riped from its skull

 

planets clanging together like abacus beads

 

the sunflower sun achingly

exhaling one final exclamatory wink

before giving birth to  nuclear miscarriage

blossoming into a butterfly supernova

 

yet still seven minutes away

 

 and how

 

in that moment

 

as this pocket of reality gradually snaps out of being

 

I want to find myself

seated on an overturned

cathedral doorway

hovering life raft

through the grainy dregs of

galactic nothingness

burrowed

in the earth of you arms

 

kiss the In the beginning  of your forehead

lose myself in the fleeting

cosmic eternity of your eyes

 

enraptured all this time.

 

 

 

                               

(performed C. West/ Bloomsday 2011/BLACKSTARSEA RADIO/ART SHOW/ Dirty Laundry LIT Hollywood)

...poem about sustained silent reading and communism for Brianne Ahmann (and poets Kyle Devalk and Megan Cannella)

USSR

 

Was the acronym they spoon fed us in third grade

Early afternoons chocolate-milk

Handle-bar cafeteria catered moustaches

Past the mulch burns and calluses of

 Autumnal recess

 

After the Lord’s prayer

 

 when we were required to look down

 

Into the open puddle of splayed ink

 alphabet inching across Russian tea

Gray plains of paper not knowing anything about

The cold war or the soviet republic

Or the Berlin wall

Not knowing a thing about the missile

Crisis two decades earlier, how our teachers

Would later describe to us the fashion in

Which they huddled fetus posture beneath the dessert

plateaus of their desks, the shrill of the siren

Heralding  an over head whistling screech of uncertainty

Waiting to find themselves incubating

In an ashy bulb of spontaneous silence

 

No more, or

 

The Russian grad student I was in love with

who told me that when she growing up

USA was the enemy and who wouldn’t sleep with me

  because  she was marrying a different man

Almost thirty years older

 who drove a firebird

And who came from a republic of money

 

How, on Bloomsday that same year

I did more

Shrooms than a Mario brother down at

The Red Foxx den

 Walking up  The balding cement arch of Main street Hill at 3am

Convinced with my long hair

And tattered jeans

 that I was an American slacker

Variation of Odysseus

And that the Russian girl

 was my Penelope

And how I had to kill the

Dual-Suitors of commerce and capitalism

Before our lips could possibly

Fold into each other’s breath

Licking the back of  Christmas envelopes

loose pocket  change fountain pebble

 

 widening of her eyes 

 

Like how we used to read

sustained passages of enduring silence,

 

Uninterrupted, painfully, pledging the pangs of our allegiance

To the scripted shells of language

Dripping off the cold sheet of a white page

One chilly icicle-shaped

Tear drop at a time.

 

 

 

... her body twisted in hard right angles/ her lips giving birth to the God bitten tissue of my name...

 

 

 

"Closets are for Gowns, Cinderella."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three days after Her Fairy Godmother's

Funeral, Prince Charming confessed

To Cinderella that he greatly enjoyed

Trying on her dresses while she was out

Sipping Cosmopolitans with Snow White.

It was the same night that Snow White

Admitted that she was actually quite a whore

Living with seven small men with

Very large feet. "Bashful wasn't so bashful

In the bedroom if you know what I mean,

And you'll never guess what Doc

Really was a Doctor of..."

The two of them crossed their legs at the bar,

Slamming shots of slippery nipples

Out of beakers. They giggled and teased

Far past midnight until the pumpkin

Flavored sun lumbered up in the East

Rella caught a cab back to her North

Shore Suburban apartment only to stumble

Inside and find Prince Charming wearing

One of her hot pink girdles around his

Head. Her Hollywood Naughty girl garter

'Mesh lynx coated corset Rella received

On her Bachelorette Party from Rupunzel pinned

To his hairless chest. A burgundy hyphen

Cover Girl's finest tinged his lips satin.

His visage was tilted like a White Trash

Christmas tree, dappled blotches of mascara

Reflecting dual ponds of azure Coated lids;

Elliptical planetary eyeliner gone awry.

"I think this could really save our marriage, honey”

The prince admitted stretching up one of his wife's

Inky-laced stockings far past his kneecap, clacking

His heels together, keeping his elbows angled

Into his waist as he effeminately

Gesticulated with both palms.

 

"I never told you but long before I ever indented

My ankle and swooped down on one knee,

I doffed my Addidas and tried the glass slipper

On myself and, guess what? It fit perfectly!

I then realized that I should have proposed to me!

PC declared, much to Rella's dismay.

"I'm not quite sure how to take all of this PC,"

Rella said, gnawing on her tongue.

She remembered how once, three months

Into their marriage, she e-mailed her fairy godmother

Who also knew a thing or two about the flickerin’

Magic inside the bedroom.

 

"My Prince won't come or else he comes

Too soon!" She typed via Instant Messenger.

"He fucks me once and then roles over

Frisking his fingers across the

lamp stand fishing for the remote control.

Please help me!" She cried. "My darling

Dear," The Fairy Godmother replied.

"Your marriage is simply in that period

Between Happily Ever After and the

Neighborhood of Make Believe.

I remember when Never-Never Land

Banished Peter Pan because he traded in

His Pixie-dust for a PhD and pocket watch.

 

 

"My darling dear, you simply cannot

Remember How Once Upon A Time

You were quite content sweeping flecks

Of dust. I should have shoved that broom

Up your ass you whined so much about

How you never looked like anybody else.

You whined incessantly about finding a

Soul-mate in an age where no one has a

Soul nor do they mate for very long.

You groused and bitched until one night I took

A piss in the Pumpkin patch and forwarded

You online Directions to the Fairy Tale Gala.

 

"Here," said Fairy Godmother handing

The wand to Cinderella across the computer screen.

"Are you going to turn him into my Sex slave?"

Cinderella proclaimed, clasping her hands together

In lascivious prayer. "Oh Heavens, no!"

Replied her Fairy Godmother.

"There are other wands reserved for that, my dear.

Take this into the bedroom and watch what happens."

Cinderella logged off without thanking

Her mentor and later on that night while PC swigged

His Zima and popped three Zoloft, yawning in the opposite

Direction of his wife, Cinderella, intent on licking

Her nuptial twin with sin, brandished a V-tailed conductor's

Rhetoric, tapped the wand on Prince Charming's thick brawn

Shoulder blade three times. "Is that your Wand or are you just

Happy to see me?" He exclaimed. Then all was well until

Gradually the tip of the wand abraded, whittling into minute

particles of scattered fairy tale dust.

PC began to take more interest in the outfits

Cinderella unzipped on the far end of the futon

Before she buckled her limbs around him.

When PC began to yell out the names of different outfits

Cinderella owned, she intuited it to signify

A positive result of unabashed Male coitus,

Until the abscessed-tipped wand gave the Prince

A diaper rash. "This all must stop right Now," PC Declared

(he was sensitive down there).

 

 

That was two years ago and now Cinderella

Stands looking at PC, mouth aghast;

Her Fairy Godmother charred into cindery ashes.

In accordance to the will her remnants are to be scattered

Over the Pumpkin patch. "When did our marriage

Turn into the Ice Age?" Rella muses aloud, wondering

How Prince Charming managed to make his package

Look so small behind her translucent thong.

"We're supposed to be an indelible role model

For aspiring couples everywhere.

Everything was supposed to be perfect!"

 

 

"Maybe it still is, honey." PC says tapering an ash

From his Virginia Slim. "I'm having trouble

Double-knotting your corset, but maybe

If we both hold each other just long enough

With the lights out it will resemble the stars

That night when first we met and I danced with you

Because I noticed that eventually, if I stared down

Long enough into the reflective tips of your glass

Sling back slippers, I could make out the color

Of your underwear and eventually, if I gazed up just

A little bit longer, I would be able to make out the color of you.

"Eventually you made your way up to my eyes."

Rella said, sobbing a tear with a balled up Kleenex while

PC, who was now tall, dark, handsome and flaming,

Contorted two metal hangers into tiaras, placing them each

Like a laurel's nest atop their respected Foreheads.

"I don't plan on lowering my vision anytime soon."

Says the newly christened Princess, rubbing a lipstick

Smudge off his front tooth before dimming the lights

Reeling Rella into his ersatz bosom.

"I think everything is going to be alright."

DVB04

poem dedicated to the one phrase I unabashedly deplore....

                 Colloquialism

 

“ I know, right?”                         

 Is what my girlfriend perennially says to me like a prayer bead mantra

Lolling her head side-to-side, windshield wipers on a Renault

 While simultaneously drilling her thumbs

Into the socket of her cell phone, texting, at 30-30

Over chai tea, a Benedictine  round,

insinuating that she knows

Everything about the corpus of Global civilization

whenever she concurs with a previous made statement

Or when I inadvertently

crack a witticism like a  defaulted sneeze.

 

She knows all about the universal patterns of weather

 when I use the word “resplendent,” to  delineate how the horizon

 Feels like pressed spring linen lightly dappled with

raspberry smudges

Trickling in the east accompanied by a drape of a fresh sunshine—

Telling me that she already knows, before stating that she is correct.

 She knows that the coffee tastes better when I use

Our Hamilton beach Coffee maker vs. our Keruig coffee maker

(Both of which look like leftover droids from a failed Lucas side project.)

Or when I tell her how sumptuous the

Vegan  quiche we just  ingested

 looks like something a petting zoo llama regurgitated

After taking a supplementary dietary enema

And I will overtly lie, seemingly embellishing stating

“This is the most healthiest thing that

Has ever been  entered the post-modern architecture of my anatomy,”

 to which she will responds:

“I know, right?” between listless chomps—

 

All the while Looking into the lens of her Hello Kitty pink Iphone.

 

She knows the Greek serial numerals to every sunken

Scroll lost in the library of Alexandria; can recite

Pi up to the 183^rd decimal integer without taking a breath

Backwards, drunk on duty-free Absinthe,

 Before chiseling out her organic shopping list in

Sanskrit, calligraphic font utilizing an

Ostrich quill and ink as a utensil.

Knows when it is apropos to employ the transitive form of the
 interrogative “whom.”

Correcting my grammar even though I am writer

While I Profusely tell that I am linguistically Incorrect

That I am grammatically maladroit, that  I am a failure,

That I am wrong

Which snidely commiserates with replying : “                                “

 

“I know right?”

 She’s mastered Hatha Yoga. Fencing.  Briefly interned with Boeing.

Can tell me the capital and populations density of every country

Casually whistling the national anthem                                    

 during  the opening ceremony of the Olympics

 before each colorful banner appears.

Finding sine cos and tangen in the Euclidean avenue of the Nepali flag.

 

 She configured e=mc 2/cogito ergo sum/ Polonius’s advice to Laertes

  All out of spaghetteos in her high chair using

wadded application for mensa as her diaper

Engendered verifiable replicas of the 7 wonders of the

Ancient world out of Legos and silly putty when she was three

Mastered the art of the Kabala while all of her grade school

contemporaries were listening to Raffi albums

 fucking getting off watching the secret of Nimh.

 She quilted  a chess board out of the periodic table of elements

Made Modular origami out of rehashed, thoroughly edited editions

Encyclopedia britinca, the Oxford English dictionary,

War and Peace, and the Tibetan book of the dead

 

The first time she shaved  the wilted

 follicles off the petals of her vagina

 she used Occam’s Razor in lieu of a bic.

As I retort flippantly stating “Geez that really

Must of have hurt you probably inflicted yourself with a

Rash,” she responds by stating,

“ I know, right??”

 

She can tell you what happens when the DNA of matter

divides itself atomically

Tympanic splurges, thermonuclear fissions

 disintegrating plumes

Tufted in a morel cumulus of mass extinction.

Humanities botched science fair project incinerating

 Homemade jello lava  Infinite Modalities prolegomena,

Tractatus, Gnosticism

Graduate exegesis’s Flotilla of principias and errata

The philosophy of the world to come. 

 

She can describe the nearsighted

mosaic of the sub-atomic kingdom

Blinking, Apiary den of molecules

 Scuba-diving  past the coral reef barrier of microscopic Quarks

String theory resembling cuneiform on unblemished

Operatic sheet music

The strip pole plank scale—  oomphalos elevator button

Going nowhere and everywhere

Through drizzles of consciousness 

And what we have perceives as chapters of

Time is nothing more than thinly veiled

Sheath of saran wrap, Nikola Tesla’s lunch

Where everything is simultaneously occurring

And will re-incarnate again and again ad infinitum.

She masturbates to Jeopardy!!

Hummingbird arpeggio,  two fingers

Bookmarked in the collected sonnets of her loins

Stating the question before the

Premier syllable of the answer is revealed

  Rabelasian blindfold occluding her sight

bathing in a rococo bathtub

  Brandenburg concerto chiming in the background.

--incipient mist of spring.

 

She knows the latitude and longitude of my body

My penis an isochronal lost terra-cotta  sentry man

saluting as we make love

In the bedroom she has had since child hood

 spelling and geography bee trophies adorning

The mantle, gilded mountain ranges spiked  between patches of

Rhodes scholar, Fields medals, Macarthur genius, Pulitzer

Prizes sex,  an exchange of particles and light

Conveying to me with the subtle orchestral

Bob of  her chin that if I fuck her a certain way

She will  say something I have never heard

Her say before in Latin when she cums.

“Alat volat propriss,” Which translates as:

 

(she flies with her own wings)

Stating that it is the motto of the state of Oregon

Something If I was more cognizant and more well read

I would already somehow know…

 

Or when we are making love how gravity

Sometimes reverses itself in dyslexic applause

The fractyl of our limbs iterate in evolutionary flap

 defy the stolid linearity of physics

Ankles and kneecaps parallax constellations

 tight algorithmic recipes, square root of our

buckled thighs  launching like sputnik, skirting around

The circumference of the over head ceiling fan

In frenzied apollonian orchestration before crashing

The quantum concavity of the cosmos

Elucidated in the hush of her eyes.

 

 

 And how afterwards we will be stamping out our post

coital cigarettes in tandem puffs

the prophylactic husk of  wriggled laytex laying

 like a road kill glowworm

at the bottom of the bed and how I would

look into the rosary beads of sweat skiing down

 her forehead as if having some sort of race

and I will tell her, “Baby that that was phucking amazing!”

and she will look back at me with a snug pout and

say, “I know, Right?”  

 

Before  whittling away at nothing

Into the pink hieroglyphics of her cell phone

with the tips of her thumbs.

 

Sometimes after sex I want to tell her how astounded

I am about the  subtle vagaries

of the human experience

Tell her that mankind result of propagating genetic residue;

a wayward strand of coiled DNA

sweat of a species

first reproducing sexually as a severed micro-organism

bacteria split three and a half billion years ago

on a planet that is estimated to be a billion years older than that

a descendant of a rather apish hominid

making it's appearance a little over seven and a half million years ago

being nourished by the nearest solar life generating bulb, the sun,

93 million miles away,

shepherding and shaping the anatomy of our selected

ancestral aunts and uncles into something resembling the current reflection of my own sleep-addled countenance

just over one million years ago

I want to tell her that being born in this time and place

 realizing that you are 1 of out 56, ooo,ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo

 disparate genetic possibilities that you turned out the way you did.

in this time and place. Realizing you are the sole production of a night your parents’ got lucky.

Realizing that if they would have waited a day, and hour, minutes before or nanoseconds later, you would simply not exist at all.

 Before rhetorically asking her this is why we hate thinking that our parents actually "did it"--it's actually an neurological impulse for self-preservation ….and when I ask her she will say

 

“. …. ….      “

Nothing because she is texting while updating her facebook profile about how her inquisitive boyfriend just won’t shut up.

That her boyfriend is ranting on about  a universe flooded with an estimated over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different solar orbs

stationed vast distances apart in what us humans

perceive to be the canopy of the night sky from our cosmic nest.

Each star capable sustaining the cultivation of planets harboring bacteria and biology's.

 In a universe comprised of 85 percent dark matter

-a universe where much more is happening behind the stage curtain

than in front of the audience-

-a reality where the unseen, the mystical,

yields more of a compelling force in our day to day

activities and choices then perhaps we can ever possibly discern.

And I will ask he what she thinks and she will say,

 

“shhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

 

…the majority of each bartered breath joyfully and naively oblivious to the wonder of creation, to the fact that I exist at all, that I have grown up in a usurped continent that has become the most opulent republic ever constituted under the morning umbrella sky of the planet. where the advances of science and technology has been UNHERALDED in the historical discourse of this planet, on a land boat that has milked dry the udder of natural resources of her planet still while it is in it's maiden years. Thirty years of smiling and blinking and communicating and obeying the laws of physics. Thirty years of love and digestion and wanting. The occasional wished for spurts of compassion. The blissful feeling of joy and longing and oneness.

On a planet where the majority of animals are water creatures and insects. This human being, a corporeal  hyphen etched into a future tomb stone  between a jousting numerical pillars of chronicled years.

This glorified cosmic bacteria is capable of feeling such great things. Such unity. Such compassion. Such pain. Such confusion And ultimately, such love.

I tell her all this while she continually looks down. Texting

Alphabetical acronyms elle-elle-elle, Owe-em-gee, our-oh-eff-elle

Which when pronounced phonetically resemble

The  sound our Neanderthal relatives made

One-hundred thousand years ago

When they wanted to know

Everything about the place they

Found themselves inhabiting

Opening up their lips, roaring an ache of unknowable pain.