"Poznań City Gospel" full poetry chapbook.

And the Living Theaters They Never Come

And the Living Theaters they never come
And the circus in always non-present
And the lights never shone
With a shovel at Rathaus
Or St. Roch's bridge
Or through silenced
Red docks
With a gallow

The gallow pole's a-swinging slower
The gallow pole's a-singing blue

And the melted waxes did never flow
And the streets were as bone
Of a whale
At Woźna
Where funerals come
On candles and rum
With Lili and Stetsons
And Japanese watches

The gallow pole's a-swinging lower
The gallow pole's a-singing blue

And the spinal cords they never break
Like straw, as the chords are all minor
For the busker
Named Gerard
And his sweet little rat named Chloe
The only creature
In love / alive here

The gallow pole's a-swinging sober
The gallow pole's a-singing blue

O, beloved city of mine:
You've chosen your refrains
Such a long time ago

By the time I choose mine
You'll be
Gone
And buried
And nameless

The Sky’s a Big Bowl of Pus Round Here

The sky's a big bowl of pus round here
The street prophet claims
As he counts up his bruises
And cuts off all strings
And the coffins come in all colors
And our brains are still very tender
The crucifixes still radiant
The crucifixes still hanging

See this little Persian girl / her eyes are all ablaze
Reflecting all misfortunes / in the crucifixes gaze

The moon is never quite psychedelic
The jazzmen are never in tune
The winds are never eternal enough
The pus flows on
The pus conceals
The pus is a serious commitment
Pus is inside of the jazzmen's
Hearts

See this little Persian girl / her eyes are all ablaze
Reflecting all misfortunes / in the crucifixes gaze

And the moon's all pus too
The cobblestone's pus
My longings are pus
Your body is pus
Your thighs are death's smiling daughters
Her whore's refined
Volares
The sky's a big bowl of pus round here
I'm sorry, I really can't help you

See this little Persian girl / her eyes are all ablaze
Reflecting all misfortunes / in the crucifixes gaze

Tell me, your stockings are pus
Your jewels and necklace are pus
The bridal dim bed is pus
The wedding is pus as the bells cut through you
Like cheese
Like coffee
Like cheap Russian vodka
Like life
Like sex or religion

And the Persian girl smiles no more / she's rotting right there on the floor

Seagulls Against All Obscurity

Come a-circling from the Baltic Sea direction
Come a-flying to this concrete jungle mess
Come, caress
B/w hope for dreams to last
Surpass
The pest

Comes like a bop song's forgotten figment
A missing passage
And ten thousand breaths over six million kisses
Six million kisses over these blocks
Holy cocks
And the Shadow Boys heaven

Seagulls against all obscurity
Dance... she whispers... just like the Baltic sea

And the Shadow Boys heaven's
A black firecracker
A fortune cookie
Or orange tea

Come, caress
Let us sleep inside this house
Let us sleep inside this nest
Surpass
The pest

Comes like a beast for your legs
Claws like the devil
Tears like the rain
Stay plain, please
Remain

Surpass the pest – graffittis say
Tear like the rain
For you to stay

This city grows only out of my back
Like a pair of tar fucking
Wings
Hear how the young girl sings

Just like the Baltic sea

Tar and Feathers Blues

We've murdered the very last swan
As the bastard froze on the lake
We've collected his crying feathers
And reflected upon their loss

Sing us some more boys / feed us some notes

We've sliced up the very last sacred heart
All's here now hooks in the abattoir
We smile as the boys sing out their dues
Tar and Feathers forbidden Blues

Sing us some more boys / feed us some pain

We've recognized our bodies only
At the last night of any chances
Last night in smokestack shelters
Last night on garage rooftops

Sing us some more boys / feed us some notes

Them dreary old blues keep on coming
Resting... surviving the madness
The dinner's served cold
And the boys are served dead
The finest young poets around

Sing out some moon boys / the sunlight is tired

Them boys can't sing no more
The Tar and Feather old Blues
Gets so depressing and crushing
No proper instruments left

Go to the vault... bring forth the old Hammond
The trashy and tacky and bluey one
The one poppa used to smash on

Sing us some more boys / feed us some notes
Sing out some sorrow / the blues here gets worse

And we've murdered the very last fetus
At least children won't witness
The hell

The Orange Skies Fade Out

What sense to make love
While our orange skies fade out
The skin grows older
And the cuts go deeper
The bruises are here to stay
Marks of some sick love fulfilled
Marks of oedipal cities
Curves of empty highways
What sense to make love
While our orange skies fade out?

And it drags you down forever / and it drags its song forever
And the fever that it serves you / is just bitter for the better

I'd shoot this damn city into my mainline
Brain-line
Scum

I'd count all the hobos and make them go
Make them burn for one cigar
Burn like the monks in the night
Like birds on the telephone wire
Like fridges in autumn
What sense to make love
While our orange skies watch

I'd shoot this damn city down
If only I could survive
Above

And it drags you down forever / and it drags its song forever
And the fever that it serves you / is just bitter for the better

I... I wanna see... I wanna see the moon over Poznan
Rise for the very last time... I... I wanna hear the fucking moon howl
Or rise in a different color... or end with a different rhyme
Forbid thee the orange skies
Make love
Besides

And it drags you down forever / and it drags its song forever
And the fever that it serves you / is just bitter for the better
Like your wine

Baby M

Baby M... guess I loved you way back when
The drunk days have come to stay
The drunk days were savior's 3 midnights grave
I loved you then... Baby M... I loved you, my midnight frame

And this M does not stand for Murder, Mother, Mission, Mercy
Madness, Monk, Mundane or March
Marzipan or Methedrine
Stands only here for your thing
Stands only here for your name
Baby M

But I've since sailed the most wicked oceans
Not the ones of your arms or legs
Not your neck's pretty landslide
Not your hair's incense
Not the chains of your eyes
Drove my Buick out of here... then gave it away... then got myself high
You cried... Baby M... but I swear I loved you back then
And I kissed your impatient hand
Like our city's corrupted plan
A map for your lust
Baby M
And I guess I loved you back then

I loved me some Coltrane... I loved me some Godard
And Baby M... no scripts are there... it's all been improvised
And I guess I loved your hand... oh pretty Baby M

And I wrote you a million and nine pretty poems
And I fucked your death away... you made me good
You made me white... you're still glued to my broken side
And I'm still your man...Baby M
Still your clown on parade

I loved me some bourbon... could afford it back then
Could be drunk all time... could be calm, could be sane
Now it's all over the top...now the cars really came
The sirens are wailing for me...Baby M
Madly so... madly sane... Baby M... hope it's no game

Still I kiss your impatient hand
Like our city's corrupted plan
A map for your lust
Baby M
And I guess I loved you back then
And I loved you without any script
I loved you without any plan

Knots

We've been going a cappella for too long
Need a drum... a voodoo for the streets
A black panther evening... a Che Guevara morning
A shotgun... a prairie... a thick coyote moon
A cactus... an orchid

We've been going a cappella for too long
Beneath this city's sterile roam
Gloomy roads... mimics cool... forgotten Gypsy fathers

And the knots went tighter for you and me
For liberty... for woolen asylums

We've been going a cappella for too long
Now even the crows can't sing along

Now the spirit's trapped at the breaking wall's seams
Where no cardboard prophets write
Where no one's enjoying the ride... the river is never wide
The ocean is never there

And the knots went tighter along the way
All trips got beauty beneath the radar
Stare

Give me a rosebud... or horses... or give me mandalas
Parallel angels... works of god's lonely beauty
Works of god's lonely men

A sordid corrida... a tango with death's blistered eyeballs
A six inch knife... a peel of your heart... a corkscrew finger
Futurist's dreams... von Braun infernos
All in this city... all in its magic
This city must be a woman
She's oh so-so-sophisticated
She's oh so cruel
Oh so distant
And lovely
And tired
And weak

Let’s Draw Us Some Pictures

Let's draw us some pictures of
Dandelions
Draw us some pictures of orange blankets
Burnt with real cheap cigarettes... smeared in heavy midnight
Wine
The only way to survive here's to die
Die to this shifting blue form
Urban shriek
Antonioni's nightmare
Let's draw us some pictures of
Deserts
Draw us some pictures of traffic lights
The only way to survive here's to fly
To drive... drive through the panic
Then rest at your orange blanket's edge
Outskirtal palace... corrosive rain
Songs a million years long... rooms a million years wide
Eyes a million years true
Let's draw us some pictures of
Matchstick men
Let's draw us some pictures on doves
Wing analysis... flight analysis
Strawberries and milk... concrete and feathers
Let's draw us some pictures of Poznan
Sing out a kantata for leisure's blue pawns
Witness the jazz singer's death
Let's draw us some pictures of tombstones
Of airplanes... of kittens
Let's send out some postcards... send them out to Japan
Make them return a million years wise
A million years true... a million years eyed
Let's draw us some pictures of
Poppies
Or sing us some gospel... or piss off some god
And then forget the whole thing

Where the Blues Kills the Singer Not the Other Way Round

I long to be where the blues kills the singer
Not the other way round
Where she rips out his inners... feeds them to beggars
Feeds beggars to gray filthy cats of delirium
Rejects the hand that tortures
With eyes wide open I'd stand and admire
And dance on her mad restless fires

I long to be where the audience's skilled more
Than the singer on stage
Than the male Blue Angel
With fake wings attached to his nose

I long to be at the scalpel's edge
To see through the city while cutting through it
To be what I'm after... to finally bleed

How I long to be where the blues kills the singer
And pianos are webbed of goodbyes
And basses are tangled of sweetest hellos
And some mute little songs
Of blue passer-bys

I long to be where her heels click out „mercy!”
And „satin!” and „metal!” and „velvet!”
The Blue Butterfly's now open all night
Give me, please, doll, give me danger

I long to be where the blues kills the singer
And all groupies collide with the train
Where she cuts off his finger, she's Spanish Lady
Laying her rose on my hand
And burn with her mad restless fires
To dance

Twirl as some basalt vertigo... but it's just her hair
Just her horizon...just her very own way

I love the blues as I love this city
Only when it burns

All’s Rust

All's rust by now... all's trust... her bra... untied
Like vein pretty highways
Same gritty directions... growing chrome fins... raptors
Lizards

And my golden ring's no more magic
The city's proud roundabout
Like Roman noblemen

Roman candles
Roman
Legions

Go down to the Wartime Museums
Some traces of life might still be there
Some traces might've survived

The zen schools are closed

This could just as well we
The really last visit
In the Rooms of the Living
Under the wings of a diamond-laced angel
Or tropical sunset
Ladies

All's rust by now... all's a must... her stain
Still there
Like this city's howling absence of ambiance
Or rattlesnake
Cupcakes
Spat over the mirrors

Meanwhile
Rosicrucians
Enter town

Might mean we need a new hope... might be a mean one, too
Not at all angelic
Blueish
Or Mary-able

All's rust by now... and though the carousels keep spinning
The Living Theaters they never come

Who sane would've entered
The Holocaust Plain?

"East-West Train" Full chapbook.

"... departing as scheduled luggage racks empty unfilled w/ your rain & your rain... how it adds to the morning..."

I believe I have said this before, but I really enjoy KSE's Sound Library series. I know many of you out there can not listen to music while you read, but I suggest you listen to the song or album first and then read the poems. The subject for this chap, AJ Kaufmann's second KSE release, is the wonderful album Trans-Europe Express by Kraftwerk. I don't want to delve to far into the album itself, but if you can recall Trans-Europe is such an airy and epic journey that seems to glide along the hillsides and meadows, towns and villas, with songs like "Franz Schubert" and "Endless Endless" and of course the title track. Yet for all their beauty there was that disconnect, the electronic coldness that loomed in the distance. Kaufmann's poems have that same feel as he rides through Paris, Vienna, Dusseldorf, Warsaw, and Prypiat, looking at the world through glass. In a world of synthetic coffee, showroom dummies (or mannequins) dance and the train moves on to new discoveries. AJ does not only relive the album, but adds an even stranger view as he translates the music into words. It really is magical.
(Jason Behrends)

Paris

Departing
As scheduled
Luggage racks empty
Unfilled with your rain
And your rain
How it adds to the morning

Paris
4:23
Deaf speakers
Inflamed
As
Sweet St. Germaine
Malacca cane
And the rain
Still 4:23
Violas ablaze

Concrete drops
Of soul
Break Paris
In half
Break Paris
Apart

The train rolls on
How the rain
Adds to
Most anything
We get to see

Frozen frame by frozen frame
Drop of rain by drop of rain
Piece of steel by piece of steel
Paris
Is
Unreal

Metal machine
Disaster

Vienna

We're evening coffee's synthetic touch
Vienna
4:54
And we burst through the city's waltz
Heart
On an endless
Avenued
Roll

(Drums in the room's dim corner
Evacuate all latte angels
Before the bombs
Come round)

That's life's very first rehearsal

Then stray cats appear
Anew
With their leather coats
Tied to their ankles
Some kind of savior
Or mercy
Electric

Braceleted views come breaking through
While mannequins dance all observed

Oh endless halls of mirrors
Oh endless hours of waltz

O dancefloors on cool blue fire

(And the bombs come round
And we're tucked in
Mad)

Dusseldorf

Memorize... analyze... immortalize
Steel-rails

And the tunnel begins
At Rhine's industrially
Pierced
Yet still infant mouth

Bleeds white apart
Blue breeds in color

Steel-rails still
Steel-rails to rainbows

Dusseldorf
And there we are – the collectors of faded gray postcards

That's 5:01
We arrive at station's end
We meet the grim
Conductor

Pass the Apollo... pass the digit-all clock

Pictures of Bowie
Fill up the vacant still suitcase
Fill up the vacant European heart
Lost at dead-ended waltz

There's still chance we might be returning

And Rhine's inners
Wail

The train's back East
Yet again

The train's back to speak with the clouds

Warsaw

Reach Palac Kultury's
Subterranean deep-throated
Rails
So well-concealed and armored

So undergroundly
Hollow

Warsaw
6:00
Here we've gathered gray
Under bright red unity's stars
The stars that still breed terror
The stars
That were never dusted

While Vistula calmly sails her barges
A little girl unaware of Europe
All her lovers reach out
For the railways
Tied blindly
She scratches
At trains

Still on the same goddamn train
Still in the same goddamn rain
And god, it's a nursery rhyme
And god it resembles
Suicide's hope

Bleached is the starlight round here:
Thanks god
It's still morning

The mornings are only
Gray
At
Europe's last
Yawning
Border

Prypiat

At the River Station's cafe
We stop with a well-comforting hiss

Flames shoot out from the broken
Concrete
Tables

Prypiat
6:23

Prypiat's cafe's served cold
And so are all nameless now
High rise blue tower blue blocks

The cloud still speaks in violet

Cross Lenin Boulevard
Cross empire's faded
Imagery

The trees are watching still
The trees are still alive

We stop
The train gets abandoned

The whole utopian dream
Wasted
Utopian mornings ripped out

The cloud still speaks in violet
Sirens wail
And radios crackle
The cloud speaks through our spirit

As sketches of urban infrastructure
Wilderness rusts the trains
No life lost
No life here at all

The clouds only speak in violet.

The harmonium's margin

I am a margin
just as my eyes seem to be
just like a secret life
leaving no traces
behind

Just like the furniture
straight from IKEA
that never quite fits
your
bedroom

Just like the poems
I wrote on your barstools
never seen
spoken
or heard of

just like several missing hours
several strange faces
waking up a whole week later
pretending
it's still the same Sunday
still the same lady
hanging on her man's limp
now hopelessly rusted
shoulder

see her walking towards the market
to finally become
a blonde
to finally please his
nostalgias

and she is a margin
just like my yesterday's
cappuccino
or the closed restaurants' vows
or the way-past-midnight
drunken chorus
of nighttime's blue janitors

just like these streets with no names
strangling out
your verse breath
or workin' ladies
ever pretending the cherry blossom
just to get to your
dollars
just to play your
harmonium

"Ashtray Sally"

I really miss you so
I really miss your style
I miss the way you treated me
I miss the way you lied
I miss your sweet confusion
I long for your disdain
I never thought you'd meet me
On this lonesome train
Ashtray Sally

I miss your pledges badly
I really miss your hand
I miss the way you touched me
I miss your Sunday fan
I miss your nighttime fire
I miss your sweet old song
And how you treat me badly
How you know it’s wrong
Ashtray Sally

In cafés dark and low down
You kept observing me
I loved the way you dance
You loved the way I sing
I miss your evening drinks
I miss your changing moods
I never thought we'd meet here
You never sang the blues
Ashtray Sally

I’ve nothing new to give you
I have to pack my things
Hear city sidewalks cracking
From what the night would bring
I really miss you madly
I really miss your style
I miss the way you treated me
I miss the way you tried
Ashtray Sally

Resurrecting dead sleep's sculptures

Resurrecting dead sleep's sculptures
is a no good occupation
yet the only one
I can afford

I've changed my rooms
beside that
I'm still alone

the rippled faces come always near midnight
pacify
soothe
& promise
death's beauty

come shinin' through green curtains
& a strange delicate sun's
last red
spasm

you've changed your clothes
beside that
you're still empty

a little red ball that's jumping up
round
ironic
no, not the sun...

clawing at poetry's high door
while having nothing to offer...

I'd rather remain alone
I really like this new room

the rippled faces keep callin':
spirits of my true lovers

All ships come to doom's ragged end

All ships come to doom's ragged end
like occasional
butterflies
masts like butter-smeared wings
the thick heavy beads
of a haven
all captains are heartless here
& what did you expect...

the butterfly's tongue pierces your ear
like Noe
at first day of flood
the day it turned out
he was not a madman...
he was not
wrong
while constructing his
fuckin' thing...

his ship's come to doom's ragged end
too...
the captain broken-hearted
still smiling at the raven's
chance of
rescue
found land & a rainbow
where most of us get bogus buckets
for salty water
a-plenty

we're mad hatters here, politely
sailed...
still not at doom's ragged end
but I promise
we're getting closer
& when none are left to
cry out
"Land ho!"
& rats have already abandoned
ship
then we'll know if it's finally home
not perhaps doom's
ragged
end...

Smothering camera still

It's there... a review of your passion
caught on film
an upstair alcove
intellectual lovegod
cat-man
shielded on red
baptized in plasmic screen
war
here...the omnipotent
red eye
tears...
brings forth the anvil of flesh
in a crucial parody
of devotion

gunned down & pleased
while ripped apart
at the anvil's
rusted
edge

the city's all around us...watching...
recording... improving... growing...
seeking a cure for its cancer

it's there... your passions reviewed
embracements/enlacements
in crashed corridors of velvet

if only you're pleased I'm in
smothering
camera
still of the night

Wish I was in LA

wish I was in LA
inhaling a different death
quicker & irrelevant
bored & tempted to run...
here only standstill helps
standstill only
makes it
work...

will catch the nearest plane
& move towards a brighter death...
not the one on cockroach bed
pesticide meadow
thin cold water
meth
but the one where moths are free
to feast on my eyes
& suck out my Pollack
brainstain

the one where pope won't come to visit
and June will last forever...

wish I was in LA
with a tapestry of dormant will
boogaloo
flower
inhaling a different gift

been wearing this death for too long
a brighter one might help...

there, at LA's suburbs
a strawberry lady's waiting
w/ her black/pink poodle
puddle

with a different kind of zoo

how I wish I was in LA
the one in the back of my brain

Eve

the flower of Orient sits tight
immortalized in
Remington's
entrails
as it tells the tale of a mother
under snowing skies of summer
& fades & shelters her monks
like snails

the flower of Orient looks back
to see her eyes form patterns
on the minaret's
tortuous
shrouds
reads under the leafy
vegetable
fabric
reads well above
her lover's
white
lair

soon comes across some sacred
text
& moves it
wraps it up
gently...

so the flower of Orient reads
age-old Braille
of a Prophet

delivers
predicts
& composes
a new
&
sour
Eve
for the times

Trapped between the devil's left foot and the drunken cherub's blackened wing

They've got free wine here – and I think it's nice enough
and I've nothing to tell you right now
I guess we've whispered all our frequencies
earlier...
even the green tongue fails
Figaro
& it's hard to even tell you
what exactly I recently bought
& these eyes are something I've known too well
well

what end to an end
to mean all the means...

& I can't play the piano again
not in the black room's
tower
the voice gets all tied up
in louse piss chambers
& all your territories've been thoroughly explored
pilated
illusorized
longed for...

the voices get dim in the lighthouse
but still – they've got free wine here –
we could drink for a million
years...

why tied to the mast & thrown overboard...

even the green tongue fails
Figaro
trapped between the devil's left foot
& the drunken cherub's
blackened wing

Dead love buzzes best

Ysabelle's real

you came to me as a trainwreck
I liked it
as I've been the drunken trackman
and we knew that we'd sum up to zero
which is quite an impressive number

we'd stay up all nite
and drink with the ghosts of the perched down
passengers
while Ysabelle would serve us
her „Barcelona” cold
no caviar
no wholesale
no vineyard...

I hated her voice and yes, I still do...

and you were real, too

I guess she's still writing songs
somewhere at Soho
w/ her plump blue sneakers
& bourgeois manners
while playin' nanny
to some little
grumpy
Hitler

while I've sung you of dead wives in my welcoming sheets
and the crow's distant ticklin' at my immaculate window
so deathlike & real...

and I was real, too
and I guess you liked it...

but I'm still in love with Death
& dead love buzzes best
almost like in that
summer
song