A.J. Kaufmann - "Hippie" (from "Hippie", TIBProd. Italy, 2019)

"Viers Ze" - Complete Poetry Chapbook, 2019.

Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky
built us
a frequency bed
Blake – a garden
in 77 days
our nymph bought wine
& Rimbaud planted the dawn
in twelve wonderful moves

& he stood there, in new
gardens
he disappeared
when you sighed
then the pond filled with honey
and a monastery or castle, whatever
walls in the fading dawn
like wings of butterflies
they trembled in the morning breeze

Jenseitsflugmaschine

that awful
bang, the unyielding drums
of iron feet
marching
in smog

burnt
flashlights of India in the distance
bombs over flowergraves

life
telebanking
cooccupying
its stellar
bridges to utopia

parasite schemagery

turned
newspaper
lavatory

time for
exodus
from a tight broken
wounded planet

where
Death aviates
the notorious air collusion
candy

where's the real one,
consumed by our leaders?

Dawn of the Magicians (In Memory of Woodstock)

Impossible tickets

valves
were screaming like tea

pots were brushes

canvas – earthlings

jungles urbanized

in the mythical days of birth
creatures gazed, and magicians, in their dawn,
upped creation- the ultimate
downer

they used us to dig for gold
in the mines of the Nibelungen

we were those creatures:
insane tickets, one way tickets
flown like skirts
into the universe

sad creatures, pale creatures
wandering the solemn wasteland

forgetting magicians' wands
Icarus sun cliches
on
Voyager 1
gold-plated
radio

the message got home, sang Jimi at Woodstock
but really, where was it from?

Days

There are days like that and some more
similar to vodka
and quiet
there are even nights and these and those
the latter are hungry and flaccid
and weird

There are still stars and here and there
those are wonderful there, but they are wilted
those here – crazy
there are still clouds and here and there
those are there, pinnate but muddy
those here – festive

There are days and others still quite
similar to wine
and empty
there are still nights, I do not want this one anymore
I want this, though because I have to

There are days like that and some more
similar to wine
and there are days and I love those
dinner, walk, cinema

Krautrock's My Second Name (Signal)

Birth Control
on the radio
fresh waves of subterranean sanity
drill away the
last bit of brain
availa-be

watching „Rebirth of Germany”
bicycling away
from the map

I start thinking Berlin & its history
how it got there
what ruined this sun of a city

something drops off
was it my leg? mirror blankets
the snowman
Yeti
walks off
into the cube
now, that's my TV set

snow outside in June, snow inside on my carpet
marks of giant feet
burroughsing the fridge away
that must be the bubble man
waiting for admission

plug in your ear remote
transmission
starts at seven

the show starts at never
please prepare your seats
& sell the rockets back home
nobody needs them now
that krautrock's
my second name
Nepal wants my
corpse,
daughter
grows a fin
& Izabel
fucks mountains

white noise follows
infinity repeats the
signal

Shark Eats His Ice Cream in a Limo
(for Conrad Schnitzler)

come
dry radio friend
why are you absent
drugged mirage of con-stellations
drift
amazed
there is a movement among the cellular
celestiality
con-fort me
w/ bass

there was a wall once
between Zodiac & us
& sometimes the sound broke off
dim kolhozia barrier

bass
blows off the mural speaker
& fresh afro x-rays
pump the cinema volume
there are no
con-tracts
but sign me as joker
I sure have some dry
radio wit
waiting in the con-spect
for the
aummarum
wings

aum!

there they fall, like sharks
eating their ice cream
in a limo
which was an image
of something murkier
in the first
sense
or something darker
in swift a/z
zone

Opiate

I have countless combinations
bridgeheads that I know well
I have twisted fascinations
structures without structures

I have all the clouds of connotation
coils of words and strands of colors
I have vibrating combinations
cliffs of clouds and slopes

I have observation tangle
I have entire movies of quiet cities
I have plasma derivatives
I have a lot of sea larvae

I have meandering unions
streamers of blank pages
cancerous I have close-ups
cold electric fuse

Psychedelic Lollipops

I cut past the jukebox
& check the tapes
from my teenage holidays
F# D A G#
on a napkin

meanwhile,
the mason's busy
w/ tinsel rainbows
whistling away night's complexity
over a sad minor riff

harmonica wail blocks down
haunts the elevator
someone pawned my fingers
$26
& climbed the narchaotic stair to wisdom
(Africa's lion hole)

she said
my typewriter's a bitch
„keep molesting her, she
deserves it”

there won't be friends arriving
there won't be
happy birthdays
will there be peace?
doubtly so, but daughter of the street
weep elsewhere

there is room for star-reflective dresses
mirror shoes
& vagabond blankets
& that sad minor riff
somehow lifts off in space
like psychedelic music
for groove cats
regrooving
dub karma

time, in time time will be

yes
& then you'll trip elsewhere

time will be sweet forget
& psychedelic lollipops
falling from the radioactive sky

„Starship (for Stargirl)”

Eating electric
camembert
at the top of
the planet
time is a wingless nova
slurping chao
tick psych songs
neath my
hat

I open my wallet
to find a kosmische kuriere picture
of you
the star girl
-
Vril child
of galaxis

pictured
eating electric camembert
backstage
Ahpooks'
with another Burroughs' lookalike

this transfer is full of
ego
but I was
always
prepared

acid tastes funny
in the 22nd century
'specially aboard this starship

Cool

Cool breeze sometimes
raises my eyes somewhere
where the roofs end and the dark begins
antennas tremble in the wind, night fast current
smoke from her cigarette
stardust from her hands

Cool nights sometimes
raise my eyes somewhere
I do not look at sweet eyes, I do not feel nervous hands
I do not look through the smoke in her restless face
I do not hear pale thoughts,
bland angelic phrases

A Butcher Flowering Deserts

strictly European
that's summed up!

chainsmoking my way through love
lovelonging my smoke
through life
someone called me duke
I barely talked off his time

I sense trouble
on the digital autobahn
in those horrorfueled ages
moving is an unnecessary option
quite dangerous at that

I sense trouble
on the still life station
that's why I leave s-bahn
moments
before the splash

I barely have the time to laugh
at my first American jokes
or ancient
2002 tape reels
watering
knowledge

kiddo
that's all I am, still
strictly
European

maracassing through myth

a
butcher
flowering
deserts

Pretence

at times when/
tuning guitars
& coughing
I secretly, underskinly
soak w/ reverb of age
she puts warmly on

when/ turn off ashtrays
bloat around the sun
they make me whisper freedom/ all over
another night
that drifts off compass

I spin some Davis
program percussion
automata
flesh (once) in android mood,
moon
she combs her hair

I can smell
victory
& dance in the
gamma ray dawn
it was a long gray dream
that brought on this rainbow

or is it just
her pretence in the fresh
morning air

her pretence
arriving with the s-bahn

A Day Like Wings

A day like wings
veils of clouds, morning smoke
actor, cigarette and coffee
then a table, then gin
stay with him
and one more after that
Ennio will show us the movie
funny evening spleen
thin, crumpled wallets
go with him …

the arteries of the mind will explode
Thirteen is different roads
things are only things
you know the periphery – you have a key
Y-X and now.

Death Rotation

Indian told me
don’t trust one friend
the other says the same thing
I thought
a talking bike
is well worth the z-road
& a fallen spark
is worth
a gothic mirror
in which Bea fools herself
into coil queen
of cinema

much later
a communist Atlas
was my morning messenger
& beasts of slogan
my enemy
I cut'em down and drove off
naively
thinking
“Easy Rider”

I had to take a fresh turn
back from the
supermarkt cosm
drinking pale canned coffee
early bird at midnight

then
Indian told me
don’t trust one eye
the other sees the same thing
I thought
let's finally ride
but wheels stuck in plasma of birth
jerked the sequence back
roads
jumpstarted eons
of pain
& we both turned extinct species

don’t fool me twice
once is good enough for me

that's how it works

don’t fool me twice
once is good enough to fool you back

works

the
works of a death rotation

Viers Ze

Tzy viers ze?
was the 1st question in Polish
when we crossed the
river, or-
iron curtain border

you offered three translations

do you know
that we have psychedelic
balalaikas
on Melodiya LPs?

three poems?
can change the world

and the one i forgot

but one poem
read aloud on Red Square
from the „Poets for Vietnam”
anthology
couldn't bring the US troops
home

save three

my grandpa flew airplanes
his landings
were soft-
his friend was a Yankee

on their breeze you could see the wall
but never touch it

like Charlie between the trees

Heard at the bottom of the glass

Moon reflected
in the bottom of the glass
bourbon, bourbon shined
a band of idiots began to play
and then she came…

and nothing was important anymore
when she started talking
the only thing I want
it never gets boring
I want to make fireworks
sparkling in the sky
and I want to be like snow
which melts away slowly
and be like the greatest flame
which extinguishes the fastest…

oh, she said, I despise
ordinary people
when they talk about everything and nothing
they’re fucking boring
the beauty of silence is alien to them…
sometimes it is ugliness…

I said, “Honey, after all
right now you are doing what they do
you speak and speak and speak
I am still waiting for the flame… ”

the lips shone like the moon
lost in a bourbon background
why the most wonderful people
have it so rough in life
– They do not belong to this world…
– So what… I know…

then everything stopped dead
people, chairs, lamps
embarrassed by the brightness
and so far from the truth
these are just names, names, names…
be a flame, snow
bird, sky
be anything that is not anyone
die
glitter…

Curving

hey, gatekeeper
keep the change
hey, pacemaker
curl the paste

cut a poem
into the mural
sign a petition with a slow soul
song

pace is same thing here,
so is belief
in/

/side street journals
high heel click/

damn, & if religion guides you, may it shine
cause whatever guides you,
shines
& dawns are happy mirages
of your girlfriend's car
curving

why crave your serious philosophy
it's yesterday's
sour
butter

its shine is of no use to
tomorrow's
gleaming butterfly

& guides are rarities

these days

Junk Song

Agnes English:
It passes for junk today
junk passes
it has no chorus

endless drone in D
stimulating sex
asking for George's address

/politicians enter the acid room/

most unlikely psychedelic
number one
of Polka gutter

(a trace of Agnes English in my yerba)

junk laughs, transmits
the lashes
of warm Porter

-we drink beer alone together, in the warm leather scenery-

archipelago beauty
turn your eyelids brown
with butter

turn left
it is why you vote
for cold vegan
moisture

Piracy on All Frequencies

The grey brain property warden shook his head – no! – and the globe machine vanished. Stars shaken, thoughts rewritten. Someone took another waterfall for granted, and Lady Biba coughed „But we have music”, so it was written, in pale graffiti, on an anonymous brick wall next to some brutalist building. London Earth/// exclude the speaker and cut-up all frequencies, ride the vanishing globe machine. Will it pay off? The banker-manager wondered as he split my 24 dollar shares with some distant hooker on the wings of a pterodactyl, thinking it was birds of Maya or other white man’s supposed mumbo jumbo. Himalaya Heaven said the stop sign – swoooosh – the pop shit was gone from all radios, waves silent, waiting for new noise, or for nothing. Back to the daze of music as information, Lady Biba smiled. Someone has to turn off silence, the button is in your hands – but who am I, I questioned after Gysin, what are words – is it sane to try trademark what’s universal – acid/// the obvious solution, speeches of Leary faded in from the silent kitchen, and someone took off on a synthesizer – globe machine turning, new planet burning, new colors flashing on flags of Venus, passing under free festival skies. There, there – the future – swoooosh – and the pop shit was gone for good. Machines silent. Word recyclers muted. Pushbutton songwriters deaf, their pollution useless, masses buying nothing. Pop production lines evaporated. The button is/// what button? New noise was emerging as she screamed bare into silent fashion airwaves, stripped off of all the corporate disaster – piracy, piracy on all frequencies – and the brain property returned to the meek, now righteously pissed off and waiting in front of binary systems, crashing with the colors flashing, obscure like God on holidays, or Buddha in the bathtub, the warden died a living death. Greetings from Zodiak Free Arts Lab – swoooosh – turn culture off for good, worth nothing in the hands of dwarves.