Tartar Sauce
Richard Brautigan
made it punctuation:
Mayonnaise.
And the malaise
of an early palate
could only be crisped
by pickles;
we didn’t all
tell our parents
what we liked to eat;
some of us
made faces
out of our lingue-d
palatial ideas
of our ideals:
food
was our first
taste of life --
what life means
-- could be easily
defined: I like this,
I like this,
I don’t like
tartar sauce
as much as I once
liked it.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
AND I can magically call forth Bad Company jams with my fingertips.
The chapbook Maureen and I wrote together made this list.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Another Triumph in Poetry Engineering...
...by the well-oiled John Cotter and Shafer Hall Poetry Making Machine. Be sure to note the authors' photo. And please note that my bio is written in 3rd person omniscient.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Friday, December 29, 2006
Two Poems by Mike Sammons as left on my voicemail on consecutive Sunday mornings.
All punctuation, linebreaks and stanza breaks are my own. [In brackets are untelligible passages.]
*
I Fell Down
After a long -- very long night
of drinking bourbon and beer,
I came to my door and immediately
fell down at the first step.
These are the days I instantly remember:
God is a bird caught close between the legs;
winter winds round me like a [sick date]
coughing some madness in the nice air.
Trees dance the polka unrestrained
by my methods; some mother
sleeps sound in her bed.
Cigarettes last on my fingers
like gods…of strife.
Run your fingers down your thighs,
take them down your own legs
to your feet: you are a god of lust
and of all things lusty.
I love you like a shooting star
all above me; I lie on a trampoline
making my mistakes the way
we [warn some kids about lies]
and yet fails
on the white gates of Montrose.
*
Restaurant
Actually they don’t come in like wolves,
they come in more like enormous and pointless mannequins
on the lunchtime crowd of miscreants.
Cubicles disperse and weep;
taxis scream without screaming;
the boss stands like a moron waiting
for something that won’t come,
won’t become itself.
There is a man with his wife and his child,
a young boy with big lips and black skin,
and the mother keeps spying all over him
and thinks [he’s a genius or more]
and waits for her meal and ponders
some things I don’t even think about.
The dad’s face shows a jumble of ears
and doesn’t smile or move at all.
I see a doomed corpse in us all:
the father is doomed to at least fourteen years;
the mother is doomed to at least fourteen years;
the earth belches magnetic revelations in kind.
A bad haircut can ruin your life;
a parking ticket can send you to jail,
sitting wildly with the animals
who don’t shout and also don’t front.
Innocence abounds in the accused like a plague:
the dog barking is doomed to fate;
the birds fly like an idiot also.
Where does that end or begin:
yourself, your own child, a rogue,
an entire imbecile.
[Just to reassure] our kids, more
morons than we,
I open the bottle with a tool,
and sink my lips over the same glass mouth
till the draining, delving mind
sinks itself into the start which [is hard.]
The winds will find themselves virgin,
and the sky will mask itself like an owl.
I stand thinking “no, this is not my life,
this is not the life I wanted, this is just
not my life.”
Some are doomed to dust, others are doomed
to lust and to other things. Some are doomed
to happiness and comedy.
I will stay with the doomed of the doomed.
*
I Fell Down
After a long -- very long night
of drinking bourbon and beer,
I came to my door and immediately
fell down at the first step.
These are the days I instantly remember:
God is a bird caught close between the legs;
winter winds round me like a [sick date]
coughing some madness in the nice air.
Trees dance the polka unrestrained
by my methods; some mother
sleeps sound in her bed.
Cigarettes last on my fingers
like gods…of strife.
Run your fingers down your thighs,
take them down your own legs
to your feet: you are a god of lust
and of all things lusty.
I love you like a shooting star
all above me; I lie on a trampoline
making my mistakes the way
we [warn some kids about lies]
and yet fails
on the white gates of Montrose.
*
Restaurant
Actually they don’t come in like wolves,
they come in more like enormous and pointless mannequins
on the lunchtime crowd of miscreants.
Cubicles disperse and weep;
taxis scream without screaming;
the boss stands like a moron waiting
for something that won’t come,
won’t become itself.
There is a man with his wife and his child,
a young boy with big lips and black skin,
and the mother keeps spying all over him
and thinks [he’s a genius or more]
and waits for her meal and ponders
some things I don’t even think about.
The dad’s face shows a jumble of ears
and doesn’t smile or move at all.
I see a doomed corpse in us all:
the father is doomed to at least fourteen years;
the mother is doomed to at least fourteen years;
the earth belches magnetic revelations in kind.
A bad haircut can ruin your life;
a parking ticket can send you to jail,
sitting wildly with the animals
who don’t shout and also don’t front.
Innocence abounds in the accused like a plague:
the dog barking is doomed to fate;
the birds fly like an idiot also.
Where does that end or begin:
yourself, your own child, a rogue,
an entire imbecile.
[Just to reassure] our kids, more
morons than we,
I open the bottle with a tool,
and sink my lips over the same glass mouth
till the draining, delving mind
sinks itself into the start which [is hard.]
The winds will find themselves virgin,
and the sky will mask itself like an owl.
I stand thinking “no, this is not my life,
this is not the life I wanted, this is just
not my life.”
Some are doomed to dust, others are doomed
to lust and to other things. Some are doomed
to happiness and comedy.
I will stay with the doomed of the doomed.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
My New Boots
Here is a short movie our friend Colin made. It features John Cotter reading a couple of his poems and me reading a couple of haiku John and I wrote together. It also guest stars Marion Wrenn.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
November As National Poetry Month
Prison Escape with References to Dances With Wolves
The assistant warden
is a HUGE Kevin Costner fan,
and the warden’s son
participates in the universal theater
of young men in concert
with Tonka trucks.
The warden wonders
where #801116 went,
and soon the news
of the jailbreak
has shot through
the little local population.
The warden’s wife, who thinks
she’s been done so much wrong,
looks out from her kitchen window
into the wide Indian woods,
and mutters to herself: “run
you little fucker, run,”
*
Who Wrecked this Train?
Back then, one of us
was a sleek, shiny train,
and another was a bright
blue smiling train,
unassailable as he tracked
his way around.
The sun reflected off
all of us trains;
it was bright back then,
when our lives were filled
with so much university
and beer.
Bright trains, never
tired trains, and trains
wearing big brown sunglasses,
we were all linked up
with big metal joints that clanged
when we rammed into one another.
No one could say when
certain trains wrecked,
and no one worried
about it much anyway --
we were trains; we were
made of steel.
Now we know:
no train wrecks itself;
there’s nothing a train
likes more than its track;
and as the train rolls
through the forest,
the trees ask
“oh, what have we done?”
But inside the clickety-est
“trouble trains” is always
a quiet, clear voice from
a bright-eyed conductor:
remain calm, remain
calm, remain calm.
The assistant warden
is a HUGE Kevin Costner fan,
and the warden’s son
participates in the universal theater
of young men in concert
with Tonka trucks.
The warden wonders
where #801116 went,
and soon the news
of the jailbreak
has shot through
the little local population.
The warden’s wife, who thinks
she’s been done so much wrong,
looks out from her kitchen window
into the wide Indian woods,
and mutters to herself: “run
you little fucker, run,”
*
Who Wrecked this Train?
Back then, one of us
was a sleek, shiny train,
and another was a bright
blue smiling train,
unassailable as he tracked
his way around.
The sun reflected off
all of us trains;
it was bright back then,
when our lives were filled
with so much university
and beer.
Bright trains, never
tired trains, and trains
wearing big brown sunglasses,
we were all linked up
with big metal joints that clanged
when we rammed into one another.
No one could say when
certain trains wrecked,
and no one worried
about it much anyway --
we were trains; we were
made of steel.
Now we know:
no train wrecks itself;
there’s nothing a train
likes more than its track;
and as the train rolls
through the forest,
the trees ask
“oh, what have we done?”
But inside the clickety-est
“trouble trains” is always
a quiet, clear voice from
a bright-eyed conductor:
remain calm, remain
calm, remain calm.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
ONPM ETC.
Carving Pumpkins of Our Forefathers (From A Bunker in Strep-Ridden Vermont)
The likenesses of our Founding Fathers on squash
(as you ahem-ahem your throat into submission)
create a capitalization issue: does an Abraham
Lincoln squash become an Abraham Lincoln
Squash (ahem-ahem ahem?)
The likenesses of our Founding Fathers on squash
(as you ahem-ahem your throat into submission)
create a capitalization issue: does an Abraham
Lincoln squash become an Abraham Lincoln
Squash (ahem-ahem ahem?)
November is National Poetry Month!
My Homuncular Psyche This Morning
My homuncular heart hurts
this morning; I don’t know
whose idea it was to leave
this little walnut in charge
of my cardiovascular system,
but this diminutive organ
IS in charge, and when
I’m feeling CHARGED UP,
the little chamber of my bedroom
pulsing and my Mexican blanket body
tossed face down on the bed,
eye socket gently gripping
the pillow in a little hug,
I realize that I like feeling small,
being tall comes with responsibility,
and when I stretch and rise again,
my warm blood keeps me alive.
My homuncular heart hurts
this morning; I don’t know
whose idea it was to leave
this little walnut in charge
of my cardiovascular system,
but this diminutive organ
IS in charge, and when
I’m feeling CHARGED UP,
the little chamber of my bedroom
pulsing and my Mexican blanket body
tossed face down on the bed,
eye socket gently gripping
the pillow in a little hug,
I realize that I like feeling small,
being tall comes with responsibility,
and when I stretch and rise again,
my warm blood keeps me alive.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
This Whole Town's Made of Fiberglass Pools
Our retarded country music soul brother Alex Battles has put some of the extraordinarily retarded villanelles I wrote with Maureen Thorson to music. You can listen to them here.
Fiberglass Pools, Ohio, is particularly obscenely catchy and gut-wrenchingly wonderful.
Fiberglass Pools, Ohio, is particularly obscenely catchy and gut-wrenchingly wonderful.
Friday, October 06, 2006
OctOpOwrimO etc.
No Tell Ro*Tel
for Alex Battles
By way of a certain unusual
sort of penance: I hung a sign
on myself saying “Gone To Hell”
where “Hell” is a place without
canned tomatoes and “Gone”
is me all the way there, without
anything “To” make my dish
less yellow. And here I sit
in my metaphorical blindfold,
with my hands (maybe) tied
behind my back; my last
cigarette is a toothpick
(a paragon of good health
right up to the end,) but what
is that muttering? Are they
laughing at me? [strips
off actual blindfold, starts
throwing punches, discovers
no one is there. Heads
for the kitchen to dig
around in the refrigerator.]
for Alex Battles
By way of a certain unusual
sort of penance: I hung a sign
on myself saying “Gone To Hell”
where “Hell” is a place without
canned tomatoes and “Gone”
is me all the way there, without
anything “To” make my dish
less yellow. And here I sit
in my metaphorical blindfold,
with my hands (maybe) tied
behind my back; my last
cigarette is a toothpick
(a paragon of good health
right up to the end,) but what
is that muttering? Are they
laughing at me? [strips
off actual blindfold, starts
throwing punches, discovers
no one is there. Heads
for the kitchen to dig
around in the refrigerator.]
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
The Durge Report
Sybil was wondering
what to be
for Halloween.
She has a pair
of wings,
so I suggested
she pour hot wax
on herself
and presto: Icarus!
what to be
for Halloween.
She has a pair
of wings,
so I suggested
she pour hot wax
on herself
and presto: Icarus!
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Mmm Hmm!
Dear Good Time Crew,
Come on by the Freq-nasty for a "conclave of fun" (a funclave) with Aaron Belz, Aaron Balkan, and Daniel Kane. These are some high-powered poets, and after the reading we will throw them in the back of the Good Time Van and take them to test their sea-kayaking skills.
That's 2:30 at the venerable Four-Faced Liar. 165 W. 4th St., New York, NY 11238. Saturday the 30th of September.
Love,
Shafer
Aaron Belz's poems have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, The Canary, Jacket, McSweeney's, Verse Press's "Younger American Poets," etc., and been anthologized in March Hares: The Best Poems from Fine Madness, 1982-2002. He lives in St. Louis, where he is a teacher of high school
English and Creative Writing as well as the founder and director of Readings @ The Contemporary.
Aaron Balkan grew up in Arizona and attended Pitzer College in Southern California. He received an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, as a Times fellow, and is currrently on the faculty of NYU's Expository Writing Program. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Gabrielle and their sinewy cat, Horace.
Daniel Kane is the author of All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2003) and What Is Poetry: Conversations with the American Avant-garde (Teachers & Writers, 2003). His poems, interviews, and essays appear in in
Fence, Exquisite Corpse, The Denver Quarterly, and other journals.
Come on by the Freq-nasty for a "conclave of fun" (a funclave) with Aaron Belz, Aaron Balkan, and Daniel Kane. These are some high-powered poets, and after the reading we will throw them in the back of the Good Time Van and take them to test their sea-kayaking skills.
That's 2:30 at the venerable Four-Faced Liar. 165 W. 4th St., New York, NY 11238. Saturday the 30th of September.
Love,
Shafer
Aaron Belz's poems have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, The Canary, Jacket, McSweeney's, Verse Press's "Younger American Poets," etc., and been anthologized in March Hares: The Best Poems from Fine Madness, 1982-2002. He lives in St. Louis, where he is a teacher of high school
English and Creative Writing as well as the founder and director of Readings @ The Contemporary.
Aaron Balkan grew up in Arizona and attended Pitzer College in Southern California. He received an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, as a Times fellow, and is currrently on the faculty of NYU's Expository Writing Program. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Gabrielle and their sinewy cat, Horace.
Daniel Kane is the author of All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2003) and What Is Poetry: Conversations with the American Avant-garde (Teachers & Writers, 2003). His poems, interviews, and essays appear in in
Fence, Exquisite Corpse, The Denver Quarterly, and other journals.
Friday, September 22, 2006
September's National A Couple of Poems Month!
Remember My Smell & Cold Tinkling On My Diction Maker
Remember My Smell
Remember my smell
when it was so wide
that morning
on the other side
of standing up?
Remember when
that cold weather
made us feel like
we could do everything
without moving?
Don't forget about
the way the weather
smells; the weather
was us that day --
September so fine.
Cold Tinkling On My Diction Maker
Cold crickets make sounds
unrepeatable by my diction maker.
They live in the lips
between the accordion door
and the garage floor.
When cold sneaks down from North,
the stars twinkle to keep warm,
and I breathe sealed breaths
to tune my diction maker.
Remember My Smell
Remember my smell
when it was so wide
that morning
on the other side
of standing up?
Remember when
that cold weather
made us feel like
we could do everything
without moving?
Don't forget about
the way the weather
smells; the weather
was us that day --
September so fine.
Cold Tinkling On My Diction Maker
Cold crickets make sounds
unrepeatable by my diction maker.
They live in the lips
between the accordion door
and the garage floor.
When cold sneaks down from North,
the stars twinkle to keep warm,
and I breathe sealed breaths
to tune my diction maker.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
But brother, that ain't what's inside...
Compliments Whisky Rebellion's MySpace profile, here are some links to live country music in Brooklyn and around New York City. That's LIVE COUNTRY MUSIC and NEW YORK CITY, if you happen to be a search engine, or anyone else wondering where to find live country music in New York City.
For live country music in New York City, please see
Alex's Brooklyn Country Music or
Leon's Brooklyn Country or
Nate's Good Music New York.
Yeeha!
For live country music in New York City, please see
Alex's Brooklyn Country Music or
Leon's Brooklyn Country or
Nate's Good Music New York.
Yeeha!
SeptoWriMo!
Squirrel Battles Crow
It’s such a summer siege,
and here, at the end of summer,
the seemingly mechanical bleating blasts
from the crow’s talking utensils
must irritate her tonsils;
that hairy beast
who won’t leave her children alone
will surely curl up somewhere
once it has snown.
It’s such a summer siege,
and here, at the end of summer,
the seemingly mechanical bleating blasts
from the crow’s talking utensils
must irritate her tonsils;
that hairy beast
who won’t leave her children alone
will surely curl up somewhere
once it has snown.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
September is National Poetry Month!
Major Arcana
compliments beer-drunk muses Ann & Lindsay
Anyone can tell the future -- you can't fool
me; I know I don't have to be a magician
to foresee the weather or when the next emperor
will foolishly smash the heart of his empress.
I scared the pants off our local hierophant
when I broadly proclaimed "this chariot
someday will house the love of the young lovers,"
but everybody knows they've nowhere else to go.
Justice: your average swinging hanged man
will exhibit as much strength
in his ugly vertical death
as a sister of Jesus will in her temperance.
And as I sit here watching Wheel of Fortune
like thousands of other urban hermits
who’ve made Vanna White a high priestess
and turned Pat Sajak into a constellation’s star,
I won’t whip my head around anticipating the Devil;
I know he’s back there be it night or light of Sun.
All this knowledge condenses and leaves me moon-eyed;
it’s just knowledge; it’s not judgment:
My low-frequency brain sits on my body’s tower
receiving broadcasts from the past and future of the world.
compliments beer-drunk muses Ann & Lindsay
Anyone can tell the future -- you can't fool
me; I know I don't have to be a magician
to foresee the weather or when the next emperor
will foolishly smash the heart of his empress.
I scared the pants off our local hierophant
when I broadly proclaimed "this chariot
someday will house the love of the young lovers,"
but everybody knows they've nowhere else to go.
Justice: your average swinging hanged man
will exhibit as much strength
in his ugly vertical death
as a sister of Jesus will in her temperance.
And as I sit here watching Wheel of Fortune
like thousands of other urban hermits
who’ve made Vanna White a high priestess
and turned Pat Sajak into a constellation’s star,
I won’t whip my head around anticipating the Devil;
I know he’s back there be it night or light of Sun.
All this knowledge condenses and leaves me moon-eyed;
it’s just knowledge; it’s not judgment:
My low-frequency brain sits on my body’s tower
receiving broadcasts from the past and future of the world.
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