FWIW – a literary site

New poems by the renowned Beat / post-Beat poet on the state of affairs & the state of the heart in the later years

 

 

 

Is It True

 

Is it true a huge swath of India will be

too hot to inhabit? where hundreds

of millions now live?

Will the land cook?

Where will this massive swelter move to?

A huge cauldron of people cultured to live

their unique manner & outlook

Where will they go?

 

Is it true Greenland is sweating out millions

of tons of itself into the Rising

of the Great Thaw?

Is it true Venice might be submerged

New Orleans too?

Will many islands disappear?

How about Manhatta?

 

As fit water is rarefied and the profit motive

derives policy & law & commands

enforcement

So the Big Boy wealth will have just cause

for war as their traditional solution to scarcity

& over population & climate change

 

Mutated seeds have replaced the Buffalo

The Pacific Ocean is radioactive

Baby Godzillas everywhere

Cameras inside cameras

Every busy corner televised

Yes or No decisions faster than sound

won’t let you escape

Calculates your every future move

 

Wishing is a curse

Wishing that I could make life

easier for you

An adequate provider instead of a geezer

whose accumulated wealth is in

battered notebooks & a 20 year old

iMac

Who’d be pushing mushrooms

if not for you

 

I haven’t a foot for games of fun

as in fun & games

At the parties dancing is another country

another era

I’m not getting old I am old

 

Wisdom is more than caution isn’t it?

Even children of rocky soil

Scions of bedrock smile at

Turn eyes to……flowers

both feral & cultivated

 

Yesterday’s rebels & revolutionaries

are afraid of change

Now old & compromised

They have their small slice of pie

Yet the Garch have made it mandatory

Change and not just talk of It

or that slice will amount to zilch

 

 

 

They Have An Artist Graveyard In Woodstock

 

The masses have been molded indoctrinated into

thinking meanness is cool

That we must cold look out for number one

to as always survive

Major Mass Media

Main Stream Media

Violence sells, intrigues

Maybe I’m wrong, that we know

Too much is the problem, maybe

We do better as cattle prodded this way

& that, huddled together

in our own excrement

Waiting for the train to the slaughterhouse?

 

Artists die here

They even have a special cemetery for artists

It costa money—so does the regular graveyard

Get rid of my carcass cheap as you can

I think burning it will be, if I can’t be dumped

in the Atlantic, my preference

left out for carrion eaters from the sky

But my ashes can go anywhere East Oakland 101^st

Ave would be cool so would the Meuse back

in the old country and the Ganges!

Rather one reads my books than a stone marker

 

 

 

A Way Out

 

The situation we find ourselves in

is driving me to nostalgia for the bottle

I haven’t been drunk in at least 8 years

(Yes what you thought was intoxication

was just my bad personality)

I can’t believe the “Love” Generation is going

to the grave with a whimper

Didn’t you experience the marvelous possible

unseen, seen when our eyes went

supernatural inside dancing molecules

buzzing from body to body?

 

We hear the mountains speak

They have heard much

They can correct us

The ocean can discipline us

The sky can make life unbearable

or healthy beautiful

The constituents have been hoodwinked

into voting against their interests

Not realizing they/we are examples

of why universal suffrage

can be viewed by some as a failure

 

We failed to win the war on drugs

(I admit I wanted drugs to win)

We failed in the war on poverty

No one in my recent ancestry was a scholar

Neither my mom nor dad finished hi school

My son Cassidy is a scholar

Are there rooms where the oligarch’s secret ministers

are picking out the assassin & victim?

Perhaps the method will let the well-paid controllers

of data let all falsity slip by on the party line

as facts are rendered meaningless

 

It drives me crazy when I know good learned people     

who think our next political move should be  

a compromise an attempt to replicate the recent       

past and rely on good old free enterprise system  

to suppress the violent revolutions of the

impoverished and busy away from peaceful

petitions of working class they, our version

of free enterprise, will limit the power

of the Garch

The minds behind that direction have no duty to the

future or past (the present defined)

The minds propelling policy—employ hate as the

great equalizer

 

They want violence

They think their money will protect them

from the massacres and keep their rule extant

Get rid of troublemakers

I’ve been over it myriads of time and I still don’t

know how money does it

Poison darts? maybe not but even depleted uranium

guns need money

The soldiers & officers in harm’s way

with huge harm in their retinue & regime

available but not without money & food

That I don’t have a remedy for the problems

humans face

The words that could solve this inextricable

suicidal dilemma are not forthcoming—

I don’t see someway out of here

no I don’t

I think for now victory for the Garch

is near inevitable

How long before the fellaheen rise again?

As sad and horrible life can be I desire

it goes on as the song stated

“for the good times”

 

 

 

We Will Live To Dance Again

 

O you were special flaunting that bare shoulder

with spinning moves in the drum circle

on the country tavern hardwood

in the meadow of magic round the fire

High stepping the electric hoe-down & the slow

danced intricate hands elegantly mudra quality       

motions of cleansing & cherishing

That Blakean smile of smiles welcoming eyes

emanating desire is tonic is health

When I first felt the back of your thighs and your   

glutes somehow and why I knew and stated

wow you have the good stuff

My friend warned me you were demure

No! You wanted it as much as I!

And your face resembling so Bernini’s St. Theresa

Espousing & exposing what the ideals of the day   

made into spiritual orgasm into strong queens

and sought after princesses, Mary

Wollstonecraft & her daughter Mary Shelley

and you loved and produced exceptional

language and rocking and rolling blues

that birthed jazz & symphony

Know I am blest we two deplore the Establishment

four kids and big breasts & a face I’ve always

adored since puberty

The Gates of Eden protrude and beckon

I would learn the heavy heat deep in the

Ambrosial bath of my main tool exhibiting a mind

of its own and your gypsy skirt dervish

 

Men & women are enthralled in homage

to the traditions you evoke

The Future radiates your cheeks

I watch you change apparel; your skin orchestrates

my fingers

I put my eyeballs into your nipples

It feels Good!

 

Covid-19 just isn’t going away is it?

Must it invade every ode every lyric?

Going to the happy side of the bed

Your entire body transforms into Clit & G spot

all of it makes you glad

And that is my desire & goal

There’s no ambiguity in our desire our lusts

The back of your ears your naked neck

excite my face and the noises

Breathings whistling outbursts of animal pleasure

I admire your hips a classic woman

Our bodies assemble to resemble the movements

of the divinities of the Pantheons

There is a god for every blade of grass

and a divine iota of sound for every

burbling pebble of water

Whether it is my mind or yours

The years the creases of time the tree rings

of the brow vanished

I could see sharp as daybreak the girl

in your face

 

Meanwhile the Fall of America

We like the lovers of Pompeii frozen in lava

embracing

Our history all we knew and abided by crumbles

into industrial back black bleak burning water

What was the reason to believe? & love is from

another fairy-tale era

In a motel room

In a pup tent

In the guest room

In the car in the other worldly Grand Tetons

Jackrabbits & tumbleweeds

going ape shit

O delicious skin O fragrant nape

Waves of genital heat sound like the inauguration

of this Universe

A sucking reverb and the Big Bang

is only my voice

There is no number symbol icon or word

come close to accuracy or description

We can’t rally we are inside wary of touching

the outside

The spoken air is a danger, singing

in the church choir could be a ticket

to the after life

This life on earth is a riddle only solved

by Death & what kind of answer is that?

Yet for a moment all the gloom evaporates

when you let your jeans fall to your ankles

When you put yr Mammalia on my buzzard

bait face and you soft touch my testicles

We’ve had choices

We’ve had opportunities of heroism

The directions of nations & empires

could have gone an unorthodox path

to Nirvana

But money pleasure self aggrandizement

got in the way

Because of you I’m still here

saying the great escape is still alive

I think humanity will find a way from this

sickening place it created It may take

millennia and IT may end any day

because of the damage to the air fire earth water

Yet humanity could & may survive to a harmonious     

collective will yet free minded destiny

and you know why?

Me & You, You & Me, that is why in the drum circle

on the country tavern hardwood floor

in the meadow of magic

It is the lovers who deserve life

and we will dance again

 

 

 

Let His Male Progeny Be Busboys

 

Let Barbie daughter work a 50 hour week at   

McDonalds & deal with male co-worker

predators in the crowded work space

like the other girls & women

Let the Kentucky prune be an orderly

at an old folk’s home

bed & pan division

Let the little Batista

unload the vegetable crates

out the semi onto the forklift

Let him eat out of a vending machine forever

or a Dempsey Dumpster

Let the Cuban-Canadian-Texan politician transform

into Whipping Boy

Let the Cockwomble like Stalin insult and belittle

one’s wife or lover as a loyalty test

Let the dark Adamms family wannabe do its turn

in the swank dungeon with grinning sadists    

being creative dining on bat meat

Let Lady Macbeth the fork tongued gangster

spend her days as an ordinary working class

Saudi Arabian woman

Let the Minnesota Soccer Mom Prosecutor

wait for Beaver to come Home  

Let her spend a few months in a cell

or quad next to the innocents

she prosecuted and convicted

Let the talented dark government groomed

and tested Howdy Doody   

be entertainment at the billionaires’

masked costume ball   

Let him Sing & Dance with Death

Let the Grand Bribers beg on the sidewalks

       & let their progeny be bus boys

 

 

 

 

 

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About the poet, Andy Clausen

 

 

 

 

 

My Grandparents

 

 

There are no photographs

of who they were

what they did

 

One was beautiful

with hair like the sun

setting in late August

but more pale

 

Another was slow, a third fat

with fingers so strong

they never let go

 

The last, a wanderer

who became lost searching

for work in Galicia

 

They come to me

as I sit after breakfast

in the kitchen

and I tell them

the truths I have found:

 

Time is a windmill

the world exhales each day

inhales each night

 

Friends come to us

when we are dying

or struggling with mysteries

or joyfully shedding our skin

in summer on a beach

somewhere

 

Don’t worry, I tell them,

we are never alone

 

And I tell them stories,

true ones, like this:

 

Once in an airport

while I sat alone, writing

a poem about Primo Levi’s

death in Turin

 

An Asian woman walked

back and forth near me

singing deep in her throat

  

de    de    tay

               de de     tay     tay

                             de      de      tay

 

and she stayed by me

singing

 

singing

 

until I finished

the lines about Levi’s

guilt and forgiveness

in the moment before

he threw himself down

to his death

on the stairs

in Turin

 

She did not see me

hearing her song

as she walked there

singing

 

her song

as deep in her throat

as Jesus or love

as deep in my throat

as it was in hers

 

de    de    tay

               de de     tay     tay

                             de      de      tay

 

And when I tell my grandparents

this story, they sit

in their brown suits

and dark babushkas, smiling

 

and nodding as if they

understood my words, as if

my English was their Polish

 

 

 

 

     —About the poet, John Guzlowski

 It Is All Undone

 

 

       “Many and splendid are the works I have wrought”   
              —Adonai

 

 

I. 

 

A solitary bird traverses the blasted heath,

where life has been forsaken.

 

I dug myself in a hole,

and yet the Father reached down

with his hand to lift me.

I gouged holes into myself,

and yet the Son had mercy on me.

But now I have sinned against the Spirit

and cannot be forgiven.

 

I have learned to climb

out from hell after inviting its worst to try me.

I have traveled casually

through many-dimensional cities.

All the while I would slip

into the doing of unspeakable acts,

knowing full well God

is massive enough

to erase it all.

No cycle too cruel to jump

into and out of, no addiction

too abysmal for my visitation.

But now I have sinned against the Spirit

and cannot be forgiven.

 

Turn your head as I walk past—

you want no part of this

that I’ve become.

I draw my power from the darkness,

I would bring down all humans

with me— what is that to me?

For I have sinned against the Spirit

and cannot be forgiven.

 

 

II.

 

“Look!” A solitary bird traverses the blasted heath—

and sings.

 

Just then, he and I shared

our two souls.

He took what was turned in me

and let it into his heart,

and replaced it,

now a thing quite new.

No one could believe this. “Look!”

Over the blasted heath— the birds are

returning to the place that God had denied

life for three blackened years.

 

I once sinned against the Spirit

but I have been forgiven

because I sin no more.

I have returned from the waste and void.

 

 

 

          —By S.W. Whelan. From the poetry collection Holy Hell

A new translation of the poem Corona by Paul Celan—

haunted examiner of the Holocaust, and one of the most renowned poets 

to emerge post World War II— from the German by Matthew Saks

 

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Corona

 

Autumn eats a leaf from my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time, and we teach it to walk:
time returns to the shell.

 

In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in the dream there will be sleeping,
the mouth speaks the truth.

 

My eye descends to the sex of my lover:
we look at each other,
we speak darkly,
we love one another like the poppy flower and memory,
we sleep like wine does in mussels,
as the sea in the bloody light of the moon.

 

We stand embracing in the window, people see us from the street:
it is time that they knew!
It is time that the stone consented to bloom,
that a heart beat with restlessness.
It is time that the time come.

 

It is time.

  

 

* * * 

 

  

Corona

 

Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.

 

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.

 

Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.

 

Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird.

 

Es ist Zeit.

 

 

 

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About the translator, Matthew Saks

About the poet, Paul Celan