That is because Kaufmann perfectly exemplifies the KSE aesthetic: he is rooted in Beat poetry and psychedelia, he knows the important avant-garde traditions of the last 150 years, he reflects the particulars of his culture/region (and also such important areas for him such as Berlin and Paris), and he takes those elements and creates 100% original work from them, work that apes no one else’s work and that has a form and a feel all his own. Yes, his work can be surreal; it can have the post-Rimbaud rock’n'roll decadence of a Leonard Cohen or a Syd Barrett or a Jim Morrison; it can have a psychedelic spiritual exuberance in the tradition of Roky Erickson/Tommy Hall or of Sky Sunlight Saxon. But it’s always 100 % A. J. Kaufmann. Having worked with the man on three collaborative chapbooks, and a fourth chapbook that was a joint work but one where we both worked from similar prompts, I can testify to his amazing imagination, his devotion to craft, and his dedicated work ethic, even while living a lifestyle that would kill or sideline a lesser man.
A. J. has been working primarily on his music for the last 18 months, finishing one album and now working on a second, but we are fortunate that he took time out from his recording/songwriting work to produce the poems in LOVE LIONS OF PARIS. A. J. is a European Citizen of the World, and to such a man Paris and Berlin have a magical presence, perhaps the way cities such as New York or New Orleans or San Francisco or Memphis might to an American such as myself, and Kaufmann has spent extended periods in each city, living the poet’s life, with guitar and notebook in hand. Those cities continue to live on in him, even though he is back in his native Poland, and they animate and inhabit LOVE LIONS OF PARIS. Kaufmann himself explains the genesis of this work:
“Love Lions” was written in Paris especially for KSE and it’s got a strong music connection. One summer evening I was sitting and smoking in a cheap hotel room, thinking about glam rock, space-age poets and lost loves, listening to Marc Bolan and Tyrannosaurus Rex, sketching dragons in my notebook… an hour or two later I realized I’ve sketched something more reminiscent of a lion and I wrote down the line “I kiss / Drifting love lions / With a golden smile” which later, upon my return to Poznan, became the first line of the title poem. Most of the other poems were composed while humming imaginary words with a grungy guitar accompaniment, but the melodies have since been lost as we had no recording equipment, not even a laptop, in my room. Some of my friends think I used cut-up techniques to develop these poems or “lyrics”, but truth is I definitely stopped doing cut-ups last year. “Love Lions” is, in my opinion, a glam-rock version of “Siva in Rags”, with dusty beauty gone all shiny and chromed, with once dried blood now boiling to the sound of “All the Young Dudes”.
As always, it’s an exciting and fresh and dazzling poetic trip from one of the few 100% original voices on the scene today.
“Love Lions”
I kiss
Drifting love lions
With a golden smile
I blow
Ashen poppies
Crying clear and grown
I weave
A smoky song
Starving in the vacant night
I dusk
The crawling earth
Sing with the moon fools
I trip
Thru moorland stars
Immortal wild years
I watch
Blue darkness remain
Toying the fire hearted day
I sting
The noiseless clay sky
Love lions lay at my feet
“Vine and Starlight BAND”
My shell, my moon, my wonder
Gorgeous and white
Harsh torn fruit and time
You’re waves of bitter love
Waiting for the night
Letting me smile
You’re blind alone, my love is warm
I’m stepping down real slow
Hanging on your rocks
Clinking, darkening, gone
You’re full of stars and swans
You’re the bravest dawn
Glittering bodies squat my void
With night’s electric smoke
Fear and steps of a shapeless tramp
Sporting vine and starlight band
Discovering snow in his bed
My kisses on his hands
With the quiet tissues of wind
Statues of sand and the model sea
He owes it to the track, I guess
He’s never looking back
But he’s still an angry dove-child to me
I love him infinitely
“Dead Black Everything”
Where’s the night
The hollow crickets
Young thoughts wallow in the mist
Low souls still and weak
The free men
Monstrous flowers weep
Sudden knowing
Splashing glorious
On unchanging earth and foam
Master's milk that fills my cup
Nests the moon
And cloaks the sword
Broken chimed eternal one
You’re silver bees and opium years
You in ripened woods of chrome
You’re satin bells that weep the sea
Prince of hearts, the emerald warrior
Worth the mountain and the sky
Quiet moonlight, gone and trembling
Overtakes the evil dice
Gift to soft mad girls, a promise
Deep Arabian trumpet snake
Dead black everything, he cometh
Dusty heatwave cleanly served
“IRON SMOOTHED TRASH”
Your screaming heart’s just
Breaking glass in my room
There I dance, the screen and rope
Lamps and rain world view
Black I bay, I’m heavy birds
Captured in your tar
Silver slow, I rot and rot
Try a lonely star
Meet me under streetlamps
Happy packed down face
Ache and hate, I’m a million years late
Failed, in failure great
Smelling something climbing
What my body gained
Lovely one, the saw of death
Roughly I remain
Free line forms the stars
Body blazing lights
Stop the watch, recognize your foes
Become a glassy whole
Thru cigarettes and bareness
Driftwood, powder, ash
Windblown in pain’s moment
Iron smoothed trash
“Hippie Dream”
My face is dead, it’s a wasted whore
An eyeless cloud of futile blood
I crushed my name and restrained my soul
Drowned the prophet in me in a coffee cup
Was so easy to grow, even easier to fall
With a terrible shriek of ecstasy
Now I cough out fear and agony
And I miss the days of a naive hippie dream
I watched satellites and I cried for sun
On a storm night long like Sonya’s drink
I was stripped and wild on a punk rock stage
Was a cage of ruthless apathy
I was prisoner to murder, servant to lie
Obsessed with possessions, tortured with dusk
Trashing my mind in the endless flow
Of comfortable chairs crushing hippie souls
Bloody fireflies of death and forsakenness
Ate my soul alive, fled the earth when it crashed
I guess a little bit of friendship will do for now
I try to be your lover but I’m your favorite cash cow
You’re a theater girl, I’ve your words recalled
You gotta be perverse, if you wanna make it work
Take a long deep breath, it’s your chance to scream
It won’t happen twice in the hippie dream
“SEPTEMBER”
Death is a friendly bridge
Leave, everything’s ceased
Mingled with wine and loveless
September page and lazy windowpanes
Seas are crowded with pain
Soft as flashing waves
There’s nowhere I need to walk
The firmament is red
Everything slips beside me
All the men I love
Withered feelings laugh
I’m making the final step
To awake so strange, so suddenly
On a funeral long ago
The sky moans what have you done
For those already gone
To be alone on sand, so low
Aimless, whispered thru
Quiet, deep and done
On an island, watching you
Idiotic ships and paper clips
Crumbs of pirate bread
Endless was the day that cut me
When I awoke all dead
“MADHOUSE VISION”
Sneer vision dark
Snow these phrases
It’s a cabaret
Lions roared against the straight
Whatever I meant by that
Drinking god’s wine
Why you’re shouting
Hopeless case, you must be blind
Veins of Greyhounds
Take you nowhere
The unspeakable surprise
Catalogued or left alone
There’s the gleam I long to see
Perfect white in my heart
Merchant crystals on my lips
Shoes walk coke
And body spits
I am vast immortal steam
Age long deserts in your head
I’m still thinking of the red lawn
Yellow globes that drive me mad
I’m still painting lonely airports
Dripping shark sparks, wounded gray
Killing diet swollen cushions
In the madhouse where I play
“PAIN ROAD”
I’m on the pain road again
We go to the point, you and I
Just jagged wheels full of mud
Shattering the sun
I’ll give you this new-made ring
Try love a poor, ragged clown
The liquid beauty of sticky city
Could now be yours, divine
My bed cries on and on
Catch the wink, cause that’s the strip
Across the slow felt disgust
Against our sky dragged wheels
Against the dim and the waiting
Cold sank sun, cruel light
We’re holding hands and licking wounds
Trembling, whispering good night
Sea, the night flesh
Iron dew
Rain – a thought
No more
Face, dress
Thigh, silk
Tide, moon – a word
“NOISE OF DRIFT”
I retire to the black, to the great out
To the seas
Clear me out and beautify my dreams
Sun me up, I’m kissing death
The epitaph of words
Black the wave and thundering
Pagan drums below
Back beside the poetry fire
Single candle flame
Dark glass veils the angry face
Heavens yawn again
Hours pass, I feed myself
Indigo agony
Pass the cup, I’m racing death
Vibrant infamy
Torture stretched your pretty soul
Smelling sky, the low, the bare
Heart drained word, it’s laughing cold
Leaving black sparks everywhere
We drift in noise
Young and ice
These are our favorite hours
Dream crowds breeze
The strange visage
Anonymous rooms and plastic flowers
“VIOLENT GARDENS (PARIS)”
Immortal shadow drops from a common floor
A certain sweet taste hovering
I’m before romance now, dry gardens glow
Spreading tentacles of minor purity
Over bearded cannons like you and me
That’s her blood, moonlight alive
Paganini undone, just a horror face
That’s her dream, little eloquent bitch
Getting her kicks where bearded cannons play
It burns my life, madam, but I’m willing to stay
The town clock cracked, it’s forever webbed
In the prison wind, with the diamond fools
Violent gardens, can you finally take me there
Far from confidential eastern quietude
Where a fat French dragon
Is devouring my solitude
My heart is formless bones now
Wax lights strangling pain
Let me fade to crystal years
Warped unlike my fate
Candles, friends and wings
Kisses, tears and larks
Warm ominous void
Of Parisian eerie thighs
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