You seem to believe that you have a right to live in a world where you still get paid one thousand times a day or even more for the three chords you banged out (by accident, might I add) on an ageing Casio synth in 1986, & which later on was used as an obscure earworm in an otherwise quite uplifting car commercial soundtrack. What’s worse, you seem to think that we (in other words, yr vast and loyal audience) have no right to do whatsoever we choose with those aforementioned three chords, whether that be in irony or jest, no matter how many of us have paid for the privilege of calling ourselves ‘fans’, or else queuing up to have a hand or a breast autographed. To top it off, you appear to be under some kind of impression that yr so-called rights are still enforceable; that those good times will continue on indefinitely, long after yr own deaths (including the accompanying tributes, the repackaging of greatest hits, (none of which we’re allowed to even sing anymore, at our funerals or in these streets. I’d laugh if only for the fact that most of it Is true; I’d only take it back for the sake of a memory you once triggered; & I’d like to explain more but (we’ve moved on, actually.
Category: Poems (page 13 of 73)
As of October 2011, I’d posted over three hundred poems on this site, including many sonnets and search poems, as well as numerous poems that didn’t make it into chapbooks such as Abendland and Morgenland. I then ceased posting poems here, choosing instead to distribute them via my poem of the week newsletter. Then I stopped doing that too. Every now and then I post a poem here … but not as often as I’d like.
i'm sitting here writing a poem
(or at least pretending to) while
a photographer shoots me with
a wide-angle lens. of course it's
fake - this isn't even my office,
rather the media lab at yeonhui
in north-west seoul, a thousand
miles from home(s), months
ago, a million species of weird-
ness, like a bastardised poet-model
(po-mo) whoring myself out
for that fabled publicity shot.
the camera flashes, blips, whirrs,
a semblance of a shutter, a studied
pose, the stack of books as props,
the obligatory globe. looking
at the camera now, as i write,
is harder than it looks. somehow
it still feels fake ... especially
in close-up. can the viewer see
what i'm writing here and does
anybody really care? these are
the 'travails' of the modern writer
distilled into one single stream
of consciousness, etched in pencil.
the shoot is done, it's time to go
but fuck it - they'll just have to
wait until my final line is written:
#fml
This is the phase you will need to get through
very quickly now. It’s already too late to plead
ignorance, or a special case. You’ve strayed in-
to the grey zone between care factors. On one
hand: zero. And on the other: none. Someone
is about to tap you on the sholuder, asking for
something: papers, identity, drugs. It doesn’t
matter what they want exactly, only how you
react. It must be in time. It must seem casual,
beyond effortless. You must act as if you truly
could not care less. This is good. This is very,
very good. As a reward, please find two single
bus tickets enclosed. The first one will get you
to the station. The second has already expired.
This sound, that stinks of dirty sneakers
(never boots, they’re meant for da smeris
speaks of djungel, uprooted flowerpots
(never flares, maybe strobelight analysis
strewn across the asfalt like the remains
(not the actual remains, mind, but echoes
of tribal war, racial war – bloooood! Yeah,
(not just like Junior Reid, more an actual
song of the thrice-dispossessed, sampled
(never played, not spat by some kannibal
to oblivion! AKA K-Town, Babylon. Chant
(but do not actually sing, try screaming --
until I find myself somewhere in Somalia,
buying Camels for the old man. Slutspurt.
if i may so bold as to ask what it is, oh professor ...
indeed you may (listen and learn young padawan
here's a formula to make a mentasm from scratch
1st, take a sawtooth, or even better: a lot of them
yes professor, any help is appreciated, continue pls.
k. I suggest you take the superwave pulse machine
now head for the sawtooth & use a lot of detuning
here? no, here: max, sub 1: 120, sub 2: max, etc. k.
what are you using when describing this technique?
people have been trying to crack my sound for years
k. any examples knockin about to educate me with?
well, we wouldn't be anywhere if it weren't for kevin
agreed (managed to catch a copy on discogs last yr.
"what the?" was the preset. youtube here I come -
schooled!!