PARIAH ALCHEMY

2008-09-01T13:02:00.002-06:00

PARIAH ALCHEMY

2008-09-01T13:01:00.000-06:00

"Without a purpose, there is no style."
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

"The Key to the Treasure is the Treasure."
JOHN BARTH

"The transmutation of elements has now been accomplished."
COLOMBIA VIKING ENCYCLOPEDIA

2008-09-01T12:57:00.000-06:00

MACHINATION (EARTH)
Computations and collections of data
Long lasting structures outdating themselves
Inflicting constants on life flux
Wheels grinding past creators
Eternities and injustices
MATERIAL

ILLUSIONS (FIRE)
Sense perceptions and eyes' expanders
Gothic cathedral and ritual
Reel upon reel flickering movies, tapes and television
Religion of faith in trickery, chemicals and coffee
LIGHT

EROTICS (WATER)
Body feelings from womb to sperm producer
Sexual viscosity
Smooth pleasures in low friction arenas
Innocence and slick bodies
LIQUIDS

POLLINATION (AIR)
Mind's thought in games and seeds
Soul ecologies, faith plans, hopes
Dreams, discoveries
Environments
LANGUAGE

section one: MACHINATION

2008-09-01T12:53:00.003-06:00

Yellow 666@ cough syrup signs dot

Salesmanship in Mexico.

They are bartering between pesos

In an age old resignation.

The amarillo metal markers

Are everywhere, some fading, rusting,

Last remaining heritage of Olmec's La Venta,

the culture of dealers, 600 B.C.

BODHISATTVA'S RETURNING REGRETS

2008-09-01T12:07:00.002-06:00

(There is a romantic poem in my rejections.
You are insane and I am seed.
I walked out on a perfect love
Because of futures,
Facility and funds.
I may be stupid
But here I am, back in the United States,
Hating your god-damn guts.)

Dogs! Balmy and banal.
We scratched out my mind
To avoid calling anyone a fool.
How I hate the devil and dogs!
I can only sit here and,
Shot, slobber. Beware of dogs!

The reach to transcendence, spirituality (ha)
That desire returns like promises or unfinished errands
Plateau of final striving, where campfires of garbage
Purge the airs,
I do vicious strolling in ireful circles, kicking the faggots,
No more work possible,
The other plateaus are surrounding me, greener,
But all ladders are short, falling,
Burning.
Every square inch has been described:
Tones of shrieks, shades of tongues.
There is nothing more.
Ashed and cracking dumbness.

Maybe it is the bottom.
Gravity must orbit back to the sun!

LETTER

2008-08-31T13:10:00.001-06:00

no one has written me in ages so i blather on
two people have continued to question my purpose in life
i believe it is disintegrating. it is definitely more or less random.

the search for that mystery, or for lack of better
words in anything less than a philosophical treatise,
"spiritual," or wordsworthian "burthen of the mystery," like a bad penny
always comes back    there are no spiritual leaders left
things remain    my stereo either shuts off or replays the
same record depending on its living mood, i am powerless
likewise my pool locker either unlocks or remains locked
depending on the terrestrial ambition   my car horn only
honks in extreme emergencies.    this is interesting digressing.
the name KISSINGER when added in a numerical series of 6
a=6, b=12, c=18, etc.
adds to the number of the unifying all powerful beast of the apocalypse
television is just too cute   i listen to insanity
and tiny voices make senseless decisions and contradictions
and emphatic nonsense, or impossibilities that are
as outdated as, well, dare i venture to say purpose
i write reviews for the daily illini     i am either dumb,
ugly, shit, or hell    michael j. pollard is on "moving on"
i am swimming almost a mile daily   i am doing well in school
language is an arbitrary system of sounds, a relatively
liberating thought   my car runs well   i'd like to try to roll it
sometime    politics is boring in that in order to be powerful
enough to be effectual one must be nearing the collective brinks
of madness and megalomania boring too is the
unrealizable truth that everyone is half queer and timid...
and love?   gurdjieffians would call mine overemotional attachment
michael j. pollard is riding bumper cars with the truckers
if i ever become enlightened, i say this restraining some laughter,
will the world accept me as a saint and kindly at last string me up?

untitled

2008-08-31T10:19:00.000-06:00

Haven't I written this poem before?

Free us from our reluctant withholding of presence.

Sick, sick unto death

Defenseless words - these answers are explanations,

Not working bullets.

We straggle on

There is no beauty

Dog shit and ice cubes

And gone imagination in love with hell.

I want to work like better organic clocks,

I do not want to play in your imagination.

THE SUN HATES ME

2008-08-31T10:13:00.000-06:00

Make a note to myself; you have peripheralized yourself from Lao-tse.

You are still yourself, watching this time.

It is poor, never great, dummy, ordinary mind.

But it still comes out necessary, foolish urge to create

Something, formless splat,

And is therein valid

Somehow

untitled

2008-08-31T10:10:00.002-06:00

On the floor of the college hallway
I felt like skipping out today
It's cold outside this narrow hall
Here freedom's precious children crawl
And build upon my memories.

The past is solid as this ground
The things that altered, shifted down
And still to put them to the tongue,
I see the abstract easier sung
Than hard recall of blame.

Remembering what I strove forget
Five years ago, my body let
From prison walls. That word gives pain
My kinsman yet, and I maintain
My laugh at time's rich follies.

It's cold outside, better on the bunks
And smoking Bugler butts with monks
Who had no choice but be a group
Without a church or flag-let troup
Who loved because we were the same.

Why I was with that workless clan
The cause is now in every man.
Raped there, but it's much colder here.
Damn! That plunging lonely spear
Was less bitter than sitting here;
This too sweet lie of ice greed game.

BALANCES, CONSTANTS AND FORMULAS; THE TRIAL

2008-08-31T07:26:00.002-06:00

When it happens
there is like an egg of head,
where I am accused and
choiceless and
futile to scream.

A twitch develops in my eye
dodging insanities in classrooms.
Is that all I do?
Write these redundant vain self-indulgences
As middle age approaches
with the speed of sighing jets

a teacher speaks
my eyes flying out the window
see the physical color working world and know

the corridors lead
my stumbling through the mingling
for ears to hear the verbal name making history and know

Out into my silence
Alone in a woods
Seek to shun them both, sight and sound.
Inflict change
upon the pious rocks themselves.

Or best, justify myself
by giving it a meaning
in any of the above.

By swearing, that is it.
Crude equations these,
no more.

(1973-74)

section two: ILLUSIONS

2008-08-30T08:46:00.002-06:00

America has the number
On license plates, ticket stubs, and money registers.
This is the beginning of pious hypocrisy
And the refutation of magic.
When sight becomes all powerful
The only recourse is to abandon seeing,
Or sadly offer submission.

THE PAINTER ON THE ROOF

2008-08-29T10:03:00.001-06:00

And what
Does he see?
Perched daily above the boring picture windows of old homes.
Holding his nails
With delicate teeth,
Sight inhales the growing rumble of day.
Perhaps she paints us our lives.
His steady arms knock,
and paint in rhythms.
Perhaps she paints us a dream.

(1971)

MY EAR (ON A MOTORCYCLE IN DENVER)

2008-08-29T09:36:00.001-06:00

Pyramids molded in sand

Come spinning from the eye of the Mack man

Crack in my ear.

(1972, revised 1974)

INTERVIEW

2008-08-29T08:03:00.003-06:00

Q: WHY HAVE YOU RETIRED?

My lists are completed, full.

Q: WHAT MOTIVATED YOU?

Sometimes fear. I have a great fear of my mind being read and my ideas being used by more powerful persons before I manage to make myself heard. There is also the likelihood that other minds have thought out my ideas before myself and I happen to be near their thoughts and hear them as my own. In that case, I am the thief. Actually, the creator or inventor or primary exponent is only he who is heard first. The hardest thing to take, of course, is to have a dated list or idea and have it appear later by someone else's credit. My great weakness is credit and seeing that it is given where it is due.

I've always made lists and rarely throw anything out. You could say what I have done is naturally evolved out of my life, and is the presentation of what is merely the daily day-to-dayness of my life. And I take it somewhat seriously.

Q: WOULD YOU SAY YOU HAD A PHILOSOPHY OF YOUR ART?

I couldn't call it art. Neither would I say I had a philosophy. There are a lot of philosophies that could be drawn out of what I do, or attributed to my lists. A religious man may see my things as the attribution of glory and praise to the works of man, a secular man may find them extremely religious. No, there is no possible philosophy applicable. I can see men, and can think about God. Some people remember the names of everyone they have met. These are things, or ideas of action. Without intellectual debatable reasons. Sophistry. I would call my things banal, yes. Celebrated banality. The presentation of evolved banality, that would be one possible expression of my work that I would consider; I hate to call it work.

I used to see this garbage truck with the motto, "We Never Refuse Refuse." A sort of functional Statue of Liberty.

(1973)

untitled

2008-08-29T06:23:00.002-06:00

Found alone with holes and flies
At home a Sunday morning,
Myself, alive and scratching head,
Barely awakened to the bed,
Unprepared for a new week's dawning.
I fingered through a nearby book,
Some Whitman revelations
Of beauty in our Nations
And love he had upon each look;
A children's love for lies.

As I was stretching out my limbs
My hands across my chest
The words set deep into my soul
The grasp of one who gathered whole
His people to his breast.
As naked as myself did lie
The man did bare to me
His need to shout and widely see
What shuddered my weak eye
And blocked my happy hymns.

"Life's not that sweet, no matter what,"
My coffee said to me.
A morning cup was steaming back
My normal thoughts, my usual lack
Of patriotic sympathy.
And envy grew with every sip
That I bid change to brighter sight
Of these, a people in the night
That stutter in their sinking ship
To save their humble lot.

"But they are rich and kill for greed,
You've seen the narrow way,
You've known," the coffee muttered on,
"The evils they have done."
I couldn't find the thing to say
To change that truth that seems sincere,
But then the streaking morning rays
Did end the doubts that weaken days.
I upped myself to nourish cheer,
And plant the week with healthy seed.

FOOTNOTE TO NELLY BLUES

2008-08-28T08:28:00.001-06:00

e.g. seeing again
Of a brujo, schizophrenic, or saint
But without naming,
Without the cease of flow,
Another hopeless ocean where
Fish are colored but unnamed,
"Ver sin parar, 'yo naci por pocos peces'"

A vision rejected
Yet standing firm,
The ghost of the castle
Holding hands with guilt
Stalking the grounds which are infinite
And only within my vision.

Everything spins off another source,
Marshall McLuhan is still lurking about
Calling ecology an art form.
I call it Amish witchcraft.

Steven was ordained several years ago,
but remains as when he was sixteen,
Even after marriage.
He had said he was staying sixteen forever,
Perhaps he is succeeding.
He is energy source,
Lee's definition of good.

I like the Navy as best option
to conform to salvation.
If I cannot dream,
I would enlist.
The idea of marriage
seems redundant and weak,
incredibly.
The security I had in prison
Was a bond hard enough to overcome
When I was freed into
Our lonely free enterprise competition.

section three: EROTICS

2008-08-26T19:51:00.002-06:00

The hard and the soft remain uncatalogued.

A man has a measure

A number he knows

Or chooses to ignore.

The story of the ugly man with

The smallest number in the world

Was lost to time and the mail services.

THREE LIES

2008-08-26T18:43:00.000-06:00

We are in the blazing cathedral,
Without detriment of clergy,
A saucer of gold feathers
Set us by the organ
Rolling tones sonorous.
In allness she becomes
The instrument of my body.
We thickly follow liturgy,
Through days collect orations,
Partake in silence and in screaming,
In benches holding hymnals
With lyrics known to lovers,
And define:
It is a dream.

Apart, I wander the road
And rocks divert me,
Trees, a dog, spilled baskets of birds.
She holds my thoughts that lack aloneness,
Knowing verses of feeling.
She retains my glowing steps,
Each leading away in stretching
And leading toward release.
A meaning filters through the gravel.
The riders of horses speak quizzically,
The cats demand to be fed,
Each speech reaching for me to know them
And explain:
It is a song.

Lying in the bed
Back, we stroke in timed and timeless caution.
Looking up, a spider pays attention
Down, sheets are children's deserts and mountains.
Skin makes folds like no other substance
And speaks in rustles and plops.
Hushed, with breathing and large lapses,
Final penetrations and wordless realizations,
The forty pointing digits stretch
To flag the finish,
Something stamps its validation,
Resting while we wait another
And believe:
It is a Mind.

PARADOX

2008-08-26T16:44:00.001-06:00

Slab of flesh on china wear,
Breaking solemn church-like air.
The canvas of the artist saint
is, to the thinner, only paint.
Promoting spirit, feeling seed,
The preacher cries he too knows need.

We called it mere desire
Out of our age and worldly pride
We lose because they build a spire
And change the words that for them died.
So down below the boat deck tossed
We whisper "love" instead of lust.

GENITAL HOMEWORK

2008-08-26T16:41:00.001-06:00

The egg opening
Football shaped gap
Slash of pink and brown and red
Slowly slips apart with peeping button head
At top, eying the widening yawn,
Surrounded by unmowed feather
Lawn from black swan down
Neglected into a matted pillow.

Inside, a fresh meat shop on display
Hanging choice tender dark sides
Still smooth and wet, uncooled,
Allowing almost any shopper's way

Like sheets of quicksilver pressed together
A coarse black sea sponge above
Meets the garden and the furrow
Softly the muted cane-like knob
Pushed down onto the button eye
And spends a silver-gray drop of dew,
Lost in the lawn,
The sponge and garden separate
Through curled blades cling
Stretched to their ends
The long and dull stub of unthought tough column
Presses again into the
Corner of the plow's lane
And smears aside.
Again, a separation of the grassy fields
And again a plunge into the hole
Into the now spread shopper's world
Of black and dazzling slides

Again and again the fingers of hair clutch
Each other as they leave and go,
A thousand hands of hallelujah raised
And then re-embracing in the fold.

ON CATASTROPHE

2008-08-26T10:58:00.001-06:00

Lust in the guise of oceanic feeling
a million cocks,
yes, six zeros of edible erectiles
disguised in Busby Berkeley symmetry.

My tape machine begins to make funny sounds.
Fuego magazine logo of flames
distributed throughout the house
begins a chain reaction
of material rebellion.

Everyone I see will be my lover.
My watch begins to run fast.
The case of beer is upset by a horse
and 7 full bottles burst.

The healthy hitchhiker
Flirting his way
Gets in my car
and gets high.
I find talking about sex easy with him.
The car begins to smoke half-way there.
Under the hood flames are laughing
From where only mechanics and God know.
Slobbering idiocy and eyes fail to extinguish
A nightmare of rejection.
My car ceases to be. The hitchhiker leaves.

I walk home prepared to mangle someone.
My whole head is want and fancy.
The mail informs me
My monthly welfare check is being reduced by $30.
My watch is now one hour ahead of time.
All prayer becomes an old list.
I remain a frozen vanguard,
out of beer,
lustful and alone.
shit

Untitled

2008-08-26T09:00:00.002-06:00

What about his thighs
That inspires me
To breathe in
Or a black hole in my head
Where there is not a bloody brain.

Pouring over books
pouring out of books
rock, stone color

Andalucia, I love you
Dying dry sand stone crosses Andalucia,
I love you

Poetry constants
Experimental groups
The secrets must be kept in our hearts
I will share my blood though I die
My heart will slit itself and bleed wherever you
Need to bathe
But only if I must.

"...with her continual lust..." it read
Unattractive prospect
Buying our meat over the counter, I wanted to see you there
I saw you
Water washing the floors quickly

Dying in the check-out line
Clutching my side, hoping no one notices the mess
Blood hiding the prices

Drowning
It is not anything, it is not anything
It is
Not anything

(1973)

ANOTHER LOCKER ROOM

2008-08-26T08:55:00.003-06:00

First there are bones moving through the space
Arm bones radii and ulnae
Leg shin and pelvic owl-head flat bones
moving through the two dimensions of
White bone space
Crossing in maddening undecipherable
Paper drama of checking sticks

Later the muscles unroll upon the white
(every one has white...
Bones
The red and white streaks of sloppy and tight
muscles, which
All get covered in a flesh coating,
Double-dipped, of skin

Who are walking into jets of hot spray
And soap,
A fragrant flood of flesh
A ballet of blood and bone
Sexes bobbling
A pore mosaic striped with veins
All is inspected and cleansed
An eclectic catalog of dimensions
Hair from thinning to pubic manes
Each disproportioned length
of pleasure and duty-proud
Peninsular cordlike thing
unaware, unconcerned trailing gravity ruled things
All a bit too proud or shy
To be out here
Nakedly greeting all
the other one-eyed things bathing at hip level

With pipelines of soul sauce
Radiating life to brain
And each beating stone of life
The core of interaction.

section four: P O L L I N A T I O N S

2008-08-26T06:56:00.003-06:00

Yet writing is as is evil.

Yet all jobs become available through

The agency of the beast. Yet we are ignorant.

Yet we must want to work, to eat. Yet

Anything added or deleted to scripture

Is as evil. Yet we ignore contradictions.

TO MOTHER

2008-08-26T06:53:00.001-06:00

a dream, happy momday poem, oh now nice,
love it, a dream and i wanted you to be in it.
i would have put you in my pocket so you would have been there.

But you were a little rocky mountain that
stood up against every storm and stayed firm

and so i dreamed without you dream without you
but always felt deeply, without rewrites,
our dreams could live together, well...
now i see myself as alwys being
the dream of a dandelion
on the side of this mountain.
oh that's nice,

(1973)

Untitled

2008-08-25T09:41:00.002-06:00

The million people

whose lives are so whole

they never have to write it down.

These million stories

Of all those integrated impressions

Are missed by we

Who live a thousand lives at once

And only now and again

Afford to fix one in words.

X

2008-08-25T08:43:00.005-06:00

days of seated crosses

trial and terror

cleaning the head with the tongue on the eyes

out

waggling towel through the images of the ears

_____by the ears

__ for the ears

dying dry, the brown sand shore...

(1971)

MAGICIAN'S BOOTS

2008-08-25T06:43:00.005-06:00

The magician buried
His own boots.
They lie locked in a crate,
Once colored red.

He doesn't think
About them.
They're turning earthworm gray.
He is counting

Each turn made
By larvae
That began breeding
In his spying earphones.

(1972)

SCURRYING FOR OIL

2008-08-25T06:21:00.003-06:00

being trnxfxed with fear
in the small cafe
trumpet saxophone electric piano
smoke drinks REMEMBERING an unwanted glass of wine

the revival
the voices
if time were then hours passed
that night

outside the assembly hall
others without tickets too
missed the second show, walked away
with their empty lamps

(1973)

POEM

2008-08-24T17:58:00.004-06:00

O G YAWN
HER IT COM AGAIN

THIS
THAT

I SEE
" " I HEAR YOU
" " " " "
" " "

ALL TRU
INC. MY DISBELIEF OF THIS PERFECTION..

LOCKER ROOM NELLY

2008-08-24T15:46:00.005-06:00

Again they meet to shed their robes,
A ritual of soul.
The peeling cloth revealing man
Alike to being whole.

The solemn games of noise and pride,
As competition's thrust
In strengthening the vain belief
Of winning as the must,

And that one's lot is never wrong.
So deeply felt within,
A strong emotion is, I'm sure,
That only others sin.

So grows the fable of our lives
That keep our vision one.
No man's slave, but still we fall
Even as our sun.

I know it's only just a game
Though everyone deny it.
The sober attitude is raised
In sport's relentless diet.

Though sophomoric it may be
To ponder what is clear;
We choose to fight but not to see
The underlying fear.

Let us not stop our grand deceit,
Our fight is surely good
And just and honorable and sane
And more than what we would

Have done in less a bitter time
When in some way betrayed.
The fight is what we're all about,
It is our second trade.

Now there are options to this mood
And have been for a while,
But proselytizing to the ears
Has wearied of its style.

So go enlist your muscling arms
And learn to battle well.
Life's just this game, and so is death
And God and love and hell.

But learn a secret as you pass;
Kill smiling, and be bold.
The joy's in struggle and is good!
There is no truth to hold.

IN THE MARGINS OF ASTRONOMY LECTURE NOTES

2008-08-24T15:25:00.003-06:00

ZERO age main sequence
bbb jets
gooey groaning ground of BBBeing
lysergic lethargic lollipop
YOUR THUMB!
we
worship
the
inhaling
nostril
O Sleepiness and weariness
O Smoke and nothing
O Lies
O Error
O Falseness
if everyone
had nasal
drip, it'd
be paradise
Zero Age = moment when star
begins to operate fully
on H to He fusion
MIDDLE AGED STAR
BALDING STAR
STRAIGHT STAR
BUM STAR
The Jackal of Nahueltoro
Stellar Birth and Death
Turbulent Eddy
SPACIAL SOAP HOLES
696969*+*+*+*+*+*!

drop out
go to work in Uruguay
A thesis in Psycholinguistic Cinema
Political Xmas
mad

PENSAR EN PERFECCION

2008-08-24T15:21:00.003-06:00

The Unconquerable West!
We would tease our sisters so they would scratch back.
We would hit our brothers and laugh as they swung back.
Was Christ a masochist? A child?
His silent invisible punch in the gut,
His yield and loss as it faded away.
We can do anything now.

PLAIN ENGLISH PARADOX

2008-08-24T15:13:00.003-06:00

KANDINSKY

2008-08-24T15:10:00.004-06:00

No longer insane but tireder

Periphery, just as planned and predicted

Left me out out to the center

out of the center

At one point I could see

Now I am out from the center of one

Circle but looking into the spinning of another.

Now to rise up above them both

Spin on brief circles may you concentricize.

end page

2008-08-24T15:09:00.003-06:00

"...thereof come in the end despondency and madness."

-- Wordsworth, on poets