From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Books in the time of love (Longish)
Summary: Some of my friend's poetry
Date: 2 Oct 92 17:08:42 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In article <1992Oct2.142610.14752@klaava.Helsinki.FI> I wrote:

...about my poet friends.

I rummaged around in my directory, and look what I found -- some poetry
by my friend from New York.  This is copyrighted, so beware.
'Any thoughts on his verse from the r.a.bble?  I'll be sure to tell
him when I see him.  I think he's in Budapest right now.


Eden.  Hollowed ore legs paddle across cold stone.
       His eyes prance, on a new moon

          Painting their childlike glow
                     on ancient scrolls, among old stories rolling
                 and rocking till a Rumba extolls
                     in the silent gossip of the lathered crew
                                   where faces grew only beards.

See Eden.  As if God had a pinched nerve.
                        and ten youths twitched.
    Back & forth like a copper wrist
                      monument that lulls
    In response stone faces quake and cull phrases and
    Dulled paleness as in seizure,
   The Lord drew his breath
    And a borrowing spasm lesioned in flesh
    Swung through the gut of the room.
Looming in the sounds of oy, God stretched
his ache and like a wooden snake
   in parts hit grand.  Till flayed ends all
   came down in Eden.

We want Messiah now! as time unwound
        in perphelactics and
        God is not dead, nor alive
   But has daily orgams and subsides in Eden
        like onto the wet sheet-like faces
             that ride the mighty bright.
Bladder cold, as if constantly having to pee
                    though not having to
       so senselessly do I embrace the air.
       so relentless is my tongue
                       in dipping into my forehead
                  like some oriental torture
            where water projected on a screen
                      drips silently
          I summon her name
              through the misplaced nerves
                         in my body.
           The clock beats
              finding ticking obsolote and I lollygag
             a heavy stomach over my groin
              Like a proxy budd to sway
                            soul and mouth
                     in lip movements as in
                               Jewish prayer.



Three brothers laughed the day he was beaten
     Where they left him in the back of an alley
   only to be beaten themselves later
              for having left him.
       So they hated him the more.

"It's a strange thing to remember that
           and the day I hugged her and told her
      that I love her
     And waited for a Hallmark card to open up and
        swallow me whole".

His moustache seemed heavier today
      and pulled at his eyes.
It's a wonder his head didn't fall right off.
    stayed his place with the silence
     His mother bore fourteen years after his birth.
    And as he hugged her, being an early father,
      He searched his face like some empty cloth.

       His mother died meanwhile
                but he kept taking care of silence.
           safely bedded on rusted fields
                 whose backs were broke from the fixing's.

          It was a child's body
            reckless, quiet, wide-eyed in blooming
                   Frosting over his lips.
She was pregnant with him twice
     once with him, the rusted fields
       having broke their back from the fixing
    And once with his silence
         that mended the ephemeral
           and threaten him at every turn.
When one admits
 to having, actually
 admitted
 something to oneself
 one has gone
 All the way to the point
 of having been
 admitted
1:  I bring home the food
     In this family the breadwinner
     I work - like in Europe
     and earn so to eat well
2:  I am he who throws it out.
    And do the family a service so none shall get fat.
    sometimes I throw it to the pigeons,
       sometimes other places
       If others see - it is a waste.
       We each try to fatten each other.
       I throw things away.
Eastern blood, from your bitter words
                    I fill my nostrils

      My bread is not charred enough.
The Bloodless Test.


The Bizarre retreat
A hand holds the molested look.
Kierkegaard is no stranger to this bible.


A priest bows bound to a cardinal ruling.
Between these fingers rides the wavering gavel,
Woven into the genetic code of time erratic.


This is the static lord of smiles Musak
   statistics or more than just the hand that holds
   extended hooks to plagarine teeth, with dates
     copywrite the breath, meat & silk of man
    later of woman, of child, of woman of child
     in time
            of men of wives, of practicioned
             sacrifices daily mewed
     As if moored to his finding
     As if the muddled looks of Priests and Gods
       And semi-specles of bodies waiting, alike
       for the verdict.
       For the gift of negative.
       Splice themselves for the sunlight
        in the hand that holds
       Sealed off into the night of knowledge
         As onto a Petridish
         The boundless boundaries Corporeal
                 in their muted Zeal.
Fur Der Closet Romantics.

The windows - right!  Light fire!
Our food has lasted, sit
We, it seems, have also lasted - For now, atleast.
A bit of good sitting's due.

Shoes off - Aye, I've licked a few (in my day!)
with zeal, said
   just as they expected me to
  (It pays better in the end)

Can't expect the hungry
  to politely rub shoulders
  unless you've fastened your own belt
               to hide the ooze.

So close the windows
     perhaps our mouhts can't reach us
  Exiled, our heaving conscience
       left through the back door
       --been there a hundred times before
       It knows the way!  To be alright
         Is to be well
                  blown out
         As after the feat
           of remaining in this position, sitting,
         the feel of eternal style
           in the pattern of the carpet
              gently blushing out hulls
              with its chronomatic lulluley of choice.

Sun and squirrel have both returned, perched
  wrestling for position at the windows gone.

"Not on this landing - there ain't no sun
 and the heat when it (do) come(s) is asphyxicting!"

It brews with the dry stalks of men
  blooming in glass jar gardens, insulated
  and isolating as the winter itself.

The sun is highlight:  Eyeliner to the cold,
and the shrewder rats -- that grow coats and caps
climbing university halls like dandies -
cold & rats that are sweating, ramming as if running late,
     they both return
     Parched as the water-walled sounds
     echoing their retreat between the sundazed walls.
     They are finding their way to stare in at me.

     It is said the squirrels are cut, the cold refreshing.
     A call comes like a pool filled with children
     laughing, then there is a beat --
     The gap retains the parchments of summer
     When the heat and the clouds will both look in
     on all the drowned stalks, overfed in their infancy
      with brittle thoughts that explode
                                   in both artery & soul.

 
Her lips dry the rich summer's scent
    on the pale sheet of night.
Muddled as her thoughts
 and muted as the words she proclaims
that she thought of saying once.
 upon time 
      there is a thick horizon
         Mending its cliches into the sun.
    The puns fall quickly past the tongue
            and run into the seams of her eyes.
        she rises, like the 4 o'clock sun
                    over a disco
                    in the summer
                 
-- 
Marko Amnell
amnell@klaava.helsinki.fi
Graduate Student in Philosophy