"It's as if I was never really here: a shadow in a haunted house. Do I reflect my new status in the now o-so-mundane bio note as if a part of me has actually died? 'Ex-editor, war wounded, freshly deceased.' I wear my trousers creased, not rolled. Vale, everyone: poets, proles untold. Never bitter, more like a sack of rolled oats: chafed, bruised, burnt, churned through & dry as the western slopes and plains or a chianti. I'm as dry as the bar half an hour after your magazine launch has commenced: a plastic cup containing someone's spit, half a profiterole. Vale, all of you: poets, souls & Microsoft Word as well, especially its tab function, yea. Goodbye to hours of pointless formatting, days spent waiting for a reply to an inquiry about the kerning, or an ampersand. Do I dare delete a space where a reader might pause? Do I what. The precious preciousness of poets fighting over prestige in a world where monkeys reign & no-one gives a flying vale about villanelles. My eyes roll backwards in my head at the idea of pantoums; & limericks are pure, living hell. Vale, all of you: meter, rhyme, fonts as well. Though I would not even bother to contact me, if I were you, spare a thought for what even the smallest offering by way of appreciation might do for my replacement's self-esteem (& grant me a small indulgence before I expire: stay lame. Because when you're gone, not one minute will the rest of us spend divining the meaning of your amateur hobbyist's musings on your behalf, yea, here in the wonderful boredom of the fold, where the same old sucks churn out stuff to pollute & mould. So vale, y'all! Poets, proles untold. Hope you die before it gets old."
Category: Tjugotvå (page 1 of 5)
The poems in Tjugotvå were all published via my Poem of the Week newsletter in 2010–11.
just not possible. it’s not possible that
the heart could heal itself (within days
the way a novel does, metaphorically, or
the way a tree heals the wind as it sways
not likely. not in my lifetime, or yours
will we live to see the human heart sing
the way a pop star does having seen some
bright star warning her that everything
is going. to disappear some day, the way
the soundtrack does when you’re homesick
or the memory of some mean thing you did
slights her, alone on a couch, face slick
with new tears. they almost manage to heal
themselves (save for a salty memory trail
that scars her face so playfully, so sad
like her mother’s handwriting in the mail
that no one else can read. though it flows
for you like the long journey home or rain
like appointments you never meant to keep
the way a strange pulse rescues the pain
from itself. the way a child cries without
even knowing why that familiar face keeps
popping up, unannounced, the way fm radio
dive bombs the day, until a silence sweeps
back. although that’s also impossible, now
the heart can print itself in three ways:
look at it lying there still on the page,
soaking up all those big old cosmic rays!
no he’s not dead yet (as if he ever could
pass on or away from this winged world
Ephrem Tamiru! tell us what you think re
Anchin Kalmeselesh or else just th sax
(sax slow and shark-like snarls through
an Asmara bar to hit Thomas Keneally
cold in the nose like a sweet tea might
were it to care for snark or saxophone
dreams thoughtful as hammond organ
licks kicking the Amharic dawn (was it
Amharic, Ephrem? what did yr words
mean on 1975 cassette tapes Ephrem
i feel kind of bad for the Blogger-files
downloading yr trax frantically to play
to get th info (titles translations set-list
Ephrem’s sound worlds unfurling slow
as Stevie Wonder’s imagination (you
were Ethiopia’s Stevie, always will be
mine what does it mean Atawquatim
the drums tell me what it all means
can’t go back now to my indie daze
got me Ephrem in th mound of love
in the mouth a super-Saharan man
pre-beat jazz combo smoking suits
preserved in shellac Youtube amber
i want to die in the arms of my lover
while she plays the sax on track six
whatever it’s called i guess you don’t
accept PayPal, Ephrem but i want to
breathe in all the radio transmissions
from Eritrea from the back of a stage
blasting Ephrem Tamiru onto the page
star swinging so slowly spookily seven signs say someone's sleepy saying so so softly somnambulent shredding sorrow saxily swaying snakes simmering so snowily sad so smitten saying sutures shiny someone's sax subtracts sneezes singly singing sinew shutterbug starsigns signs so slender star so saccharine so slow so stunned say something shattering slowly sing something sad slowly small season snowy sadly surrendering somehow silly so silly sadness so-so subterranean stones shock sixteen sighs stories scarsigns
start: doo-wop is the new ter-weetie: sheet iron rules the world of river commerce, still maniacs wander the streets of wood mill towns aimlessly, listening to portable transistors, waiting till their batteries run down to nothing. sometimes, i wonder what it's like in pittsburgh, or anywhere, really, sited on the confluence of more than two rivers ... & my mind wanders, like an aimless out- of-work timber lugger, over prairies & old rails, the background thick with kudzu, r.e.m., pylon - you know, the old reconstruction drill. punch-on pynchon's drunk on tough love, monkey bar plays, obscure league ladders underlined in invisible inks that radiate like metro lines or snakes out along branches, lines, staccato rim shots pale & golden in the light of a used-car dawn, or else a book of poems set in edward hopper's universe: a diner, an office in a small city, a small city, an office, a small diner, part-time crime writer moonlighting as a truck-stop harmonica-player or was that a waif (faraway sounds of water falling strafe the docks, the cobwebbed parking meters, say 'nothing really matters', but what if it does