SMALL TALK AT BUKOWSKA AND LIBELTA: A poet in Poznan. - Poetry Chapbook, 2012.

“Krabo”

They say moon is the same for everyone
Streets are hostile or friendly
Nothing depends on your luck
You exist cause you’re taught to be handy

And in such rhymes and meaninglessnesses
I watch my friends perceive the world
their family, spirit, room – they make
photographs of joyous faces
while watching weather reports
from the bottom of a supermarket cart
they produce the trash
they later consume
and shit in the evening
their next morning’s bourgeois breakfasts

That’s why I scream to the same old moon, or sing, or write
on tenement walls
“krabo”
the only word ‘cept “samo”
I find powerful enough
to describe this toilet
called life
on Earth

“Poznan After Midnight”

I’m an actor turned hobo – deceitfully fat on the wealth of the city – sending poems to outer space on train’s smoke rings at midnight, walking to the engine’s high pressure rhythm – that sounds just like bop, if I were educated enough to know it, though now I am, only weaker – I grew tired, tired of river bank lovers, ancient chimneys and tenement stench, weakened by the load of death I witness every day while passing side streets, rural paths and railroad lines, looking for a place, a trace, a lover – but I’m tired of river lovers – as I said before, I’m a hobo, drunkard murderer and a million worse things than that – I’m older than the streets as you know them, and though someone put a stop sign in front of this body, useless heap of autumn-smelling flesh, I go on, dirty container of blood that could save lives if it weren’t contaminated with truth – venomous drops of fish jaw mornings on coughed out sidewalks force my phlegm to form poems, if you call them that, with bits of this blood, the juice I call my own, which will take me to knife fights in the docks, for a woman, a friend, whatever, and everyone will die on such morning, everything will end, there will be no tombstones, mourners or ceremonies – tenement lights go down – just the lonesome whistle of the first, welcoming brightening docks miles away, or last, train, bidding the city adieu – with its wealth and beggars and traveling hobos like me, me – who’ll be far away from death scene, riding the lucky train, laughing hungry with the heavens, cause I’m thin, thin as newspapers soaking in the slaughter of an oyster morning and last black and white cigarette in Poznan after midnight.

“When the Dawn Got Drunk”

Why were you sleeping
when the dawn got drunk
on freezing vines of night
pouring through tenement fingers
stardust women
placing bets
on drooling horses
drawing attention to dust
of pistol wings
shooting over the city
alit & bare
suddenly sure it’s leaking
nightmares into the void
of cruel electric namesakes
shining on bars
leaving the proof
of existence
on ghastly store windows
mirrors to hooker faces
loser matchsticks
bum & writer’s apathy
used to snails of midnight
creeping
over their work
why were you dreaming
when the dawn got stoned

“Last Words of a Famous Sailor”

Write faster than Dylan. Thomas, of course. How fast? How fast? The young poet intents to grab the cloud, moon, a solitary smoker in the shadow of the sun, whatever, whoever. He will never succeed. It’s not a matter of pace. It’s not a matter of talent. Who is it talking? Does my head hurt so bad, or was it just a suburban katzenjammer for a well-fed burgeoning scumbag. I intend to vomit. On your desk, headmaster, preacher, politician, pig. I intend to piss. It was never my, or the young poet’s, intent to write. Do it faster. You’re inefficient. I tried to draw an elephant in my cupboard, rhinos in a field of sunflowers, smiling, bathing in the yellow nimbus of whatever ambient music was playing around. Who put the tape in my recorder? I wanted to make, not listen, and act, not think, but schools changed that. I was lucky. The young poet grabs a cup of coffee from my latest mistress and chokes on blood. Pretending survival. I incorporate a manta into my pot mandala and float with it to kill the whale. In its belly a solitary smoker pretends he’s on the street, trying to grab the young poet observing him from 2nd floor window. Everything is hopeless, but the contestant on a TV show said amoeba is a defunct sailor. Guess he was right, or was it the acid I had for breakfast, including young poet’s urge to write. Faster! Faster! We can almost smell the streets you were raised in this time, if you continue at this pace and amount of detail we’ll publish your book in golden laurel leaves all across the pages, and we’re talking gold, as in golden archways of heaven’s dome, but you’ve gotta use these words. Heaven. Dome. At the edge of infinite quarrel, my mistress yawns and polishes her mirror. I am crazy. So is the intent I had when younger, so is the intent I’ll have in my death bed. Vomit. Piss. Or even shit. Who? What does it matter?

“Beatnicks w/ Parachutes”

Rust
gives rivers
brand new names
dust
shelves people
and their stain
rivers
flow
w/ brand new friends
women
love their
ramblin’ men

Drinkin’ w/ the dawn out of lady fortune’s shoe
waiting for beatnicks w/ parachutes

Landing zone
& who’d predict
wonders
that the fool depicts
angry
art
was heaven sent
angel
screams
his compliments

Drinkin’ w/ the dawn out of lady fortune’s shoe
waiting for beatnicks w/ parachutes

“Bone Yoke”

Seeds were already there. Fishes were swimming round, in sterile bowls of solitude, like plastic christs on judgment day, falling from the seller’s leper box. One for a penny! You remember dogs chewing on chink bones, music boxes swinging moog versions of rock’n’roll standards, flowers incubating in tar. Correct the wavelength. You are obviously sleeping on a rag of tiger eyes, sewn together they watch the sunset. I remember winter. Is it of importance, what you remember? Jobless motors of progress wish they were nothings and zeroes, but it is them to play the heroes when cameras come around on Sunday. Virus fingers type the void word. It is one word. What do you carry – the clever martyrs were levitating a long time ago, and plastic christs aren’t the first totems to fall – fuel that’ll ignite the fire, of what you call an apocalypse, revelation… who could predict the outcome of such a meeting? You were painting your women, I was writing mine, somebody told me our spirits might rhyme – of course, I never wrote this song, though this chorus remained for a long time tucked in one of my notebooks, with an accompanying note saying “slaughter”, and a phone number. I’m not sure who slaughtered who, or what slaughter was discussed, or who went to what slaughter, it only reminded me of Indians, people of the Maya, Inca, all the space-thrown tribes of earthdawn. And I recalled their words of bone yoke. Bone. Yoke. What do you carry? I am a tribal portrait. Complete with wristwatch chains.

“The Young and the Hip”

The young and the hip give thanks
to bungalow hosts
party pigs
lipstick leather belts
vomiting dawn on the world
reaching out
for another bottle of whisky
give thanks
to the wind that shakes fragile bodies
exposed to sun and moon
writing in tribal riddles
dressing in contours of sleep
furious, young
emblazoned
setting sails on sundown
drifting with sunrise, hooray!
screams of birds impale us
pirates execute us
sing us songs
written back when
the world was fourteen
give thanks
to the idol totem
thin on the TV screen
high on milk and vegetable shakes
when we were drunk on beer
cheap intents
& guardians
give thanks
cause we were there
for them

“Cotton Railway Blues”

I thought of a ride this morning, I was muttering through Pisces horoscope, she was naked on the bed beside me – we had good sex and talked nice, I thought of a church choir accompanying these words, if they would rhyme, they’d be perfect gospel, and I thought of the laughing priest who’s done my exercise today, over an empty page, or with an arthouse camera, stunned by the ripple in death bearing heaven – I thought it was going to rain – and if I were a bluesman, I’ll surely sing today, these words could work well with harmonicas jiving, or a bop song, with crazy weird pianos banging on a drumground of coke – I thought of that and a French maid I’d take with me to the railway, we’d work on the Pasadena rhythm, I thought of her lashes, then of the trees in the garden – what garden, asked the priest, and in doubts his debts were paid, no longer he needed supporting the skies, falling in flame anyway, on the day I was picking cotton – black gold picking for white trash, there in the orange container, drawn away from my thoughts. At last. Now here’s the big moment, whole world wants to listen – trouble is, I’ve got nothing to say but rubbish, rubbish I found while drunk or rubbish I wrote on a freight train.

“Bukowska & Libelta (1)”

Negro rhythm? Indian rhythm?
what are they doing in Poznan?
Polish rhythm?
Dock the rhythm
with the barges
French? Spanish?
Mix the language
with the stone
trombones
of our forefathers
space mothers
chalk sisters
coal brothers
What frame? And which
genius painting
needs one?
it is spread around
a few quarters
here, on the door,
there, on the wall
it’s sprayed from Bukowska to Libelta
like small talk
in the pubs and bars
around
in everything we inhabit
we are lucky to have such artists
Art? Art brut? What art? Why
art – and question me no more
for I won’t paint again
until rebirth
maybe then I’ll dip the brush
in small talk, brave talk,
slave talk – iconic volumes
of cave talk
and I’ll try to conceive a new world
outside of the page
but now I’m younger
than mad talk
and I qualify for milkshakes
at Wanda’s – nothing really special about them
only sometimes old sailors come in
and let me drink whisky
in her, I hear the rhythms
and paper knows no limit, like sky or brain
it’s clear, except for cloudy voices
you best learn to ignore: this is small talk
tycoons of death
their hands already upon you
way back from the cradle

“Hep Chord”

First bass note, numb, falls above the landscape of cymbals, walls are erected at instant, of freshly painted faces in war colors – death colors – pain colors, fervently aware and improvised on the surface of moonlit stairs, circling down the theater, and the audience is ready to listen, poets are ready to write down the night, scent of burnt potatoes, Joe’s grandma cooks above, if they have any smell, that’s the smell of this ongoing black, the black on Michael’s lips, the untold tale he yet has to offer, on the altar of sleeplessness angel, vivid break in character, off goes the drum. Shy solos follow. Was it a trumpet? Was anything “sounding”, “pounding”, “pumping”, or “screaming” – are screams necessary now, when they’ve become weapons of the mainstream, once silent in ignorance, now shouting against the flowers – and I’m speaking of wildwood flowers, bare before the wolf’s teeth, and the wolf in Isabel’s song was a rapist, nothing more, for she needed to be fucked right away. We’re hanging, can’t you see that? Hanging from the cliff of compulsory shells, naked to the wonder of creation, waiting for sound, but the first bass note is hovering, hovering still, and nothing really happens except the shy presence of piano and gentle waves of a trumpet, fueled by the warmth of a Negro's hand – a rare sight to see here – I shook it backstage, later on, and asked “what the hell were you doing?” “Shit, man… was just waiting for the hep chord”.