"SYMBOLISME PSYCHEDELIQUE" originally published by KSE, 2009/08/16.

One of two paired chapbooks for August 2009, both dedicated to the late SKY SUNLIGHT SAXON, this eight-poem, eight-page suite of poems is Volume 47 in KSE’s “Sound Library Series,” inspired by the incredible “symbolisme psychedelique” sound library album from early 70s France by Gerardo Iacoucci, a combination psychedelic-lounge-electronic series of film-score cues that is legendary among library music collectors/beatheads. I sent AJ a copy of this album in the spring of 2009, during a period when we were both also listening a lot to the further-out 70s/80s music of Sky Sunlight Saxon and Ya Ho Wha, so with Sky’s visions of “Universal Stars” in his mind, and fueled by the SYMBOLISME album, A. J. produced a work that, like an abstract painting made up of recognizable pieces, is both familiar and disquieting, and which can be re-constructed by the reader in a number of different ways. Using a shorter line than in his previous KSE chapbooks, and using lines that can be connected with their neighboring lines in multiple ways, all of which make “sense,” A. J. is taking his poetry to a new and more profound level…the only comparisons I can make are to the poetry of Piero Heliczer, some of Jack Spicer, or the visionary private writings of John Wieners that have come out after JW’s death, but of course AJK has created his own poetic aesthetic independent of any outside influences. Each poem contains a series of whirlpools and spirals of poetic lines/phrases that reminds me of taking the back off a pocket watch and studying the different wheels and springs and balances spinning and connecting and stopping and starting. Imagine being inside that watch, lurching forward and pulling back, through a series of funhouse mirrors containing alternating blurry and overly-sharp images of hairy hands, muddy sheets, echoes of rust, London stones, intimate sails, and side-table whispers. Shoot a monkey, grab a place to stand at the Taint Funeral, and score a copy of SYMBOLISME PSYCHEDELIQUE as soon as you can.
(Bill Shute, Kendra Steiner Editions).

TAINT  FUNERAL

Taint funeral
long passengers tasting their smoke
other hand birds
follow September districts
commentators
gaze
at panic stuffed rooms
shoot the monkey
the breath and crown
relative answers
fog blaze stairs
coconut church-bells
port of slunk days
bullets in bargain
turn attention to cottage reporters
sat to music
time tools past
up loudly
taint funeral
undiscovered eyelids
innocent-minded
pistols

UNTIL  THE  BLACK  SEAS

We heard murder
whispering wig roads
soliloquy
chill curiosity
another dead man
numbers swell
village hell
to be found in the crowds
stepping up to the empty
garden jeweler
sitting my stream
speaks in fire
guttering candles
roar
weeping glass
bleak business
the open town
a dozen loose-heels nights
back to the first voyage
holiday
tobacco
until the black seas

RARE  LUNCH

A story beyond rehearsal
outshone the blood-stains
thoughts blowing
slices of fact
caught broken

a heavy kick
pushing and pulling the world
foreign faces
jury of scarecrows
passed defense

heathens laughing
ragged hole in moments
grab your flutes
lifted dreams
sound of restaurants

the rare lunch awake
makes the night laugh

A  MATTER

Performers wore black
quietly turned clerks
side-table whispers
shook
drawing
people of broken light
Latin women – the opposite
army
singing for soldiers
in verse

hairy hands return to the morning
avert
crash dawn
drinking-bars
hollow, much passed

the sky whistled of a garden
murderer serpent
Saturday night
live longer, empty
just what is enough
memories screamed:
a matter!

BOOK  CITY

my first given time
hurried
stolen
try comfort
scared
considering against
book city
in love w/
book city
assent terrible soil
down step
alone
back to your shelf
the curious
moorland
of mind
sit beyond hope
book city
coupons
processions
a different angle
sit on your shelf
book city

NIGHT  MINUTES

Sentimental turned undecided
lodging sharply places
we path emotion
flower of chance
whitewashed hurry
far morning pallor

wear your cuts
sip money
thought and a bottle
round to the swollen god
question speaks for itself

leant behind
the kitchenette
wild sun
invalid ground
out of taken windows

puffing the token, crying
illness sinking him
living, knocked to her depths
lying night minutes
aware

ECHOES  OF  RUST  &  OF  ASH

red color hanging
rust & ash
calling their screams
learn in the street
loom on their smile
like a leaf
dread awake
crash face
instant
sky flute pass cold
hated minutes
come
in desperate doors
search silent
carnations
coughing roads
pavements
crazy
muddy sheets
night-tale cathedrals
echoes of rust
echoes of ash
taste into their cold
red color hanging
again

STALE

Damn your hearse
hear the chimneys
branches awake
sour tears of night

a funeral,
drum comfort
soundtrack for murderer’s
path

repeating after the devil
dropped beyond
the working class conscience
fallen chances
burn ears

London stones
intimate sails
sheets living
burning towards the flag
weaving at memory

known empty
shivered, rising
known stale