Beat Poet

(Office day). This morning Sir W. Batten and Col. Slingsby went with Col. Birch and Sir Wm. Doyly to Chatham to pay off a ship there. So only Sir W. Pen and I left here in town.
All the afternoon among my workmen till 10 or 11 at night, and did give them drink and very merry with them, it being my luck to meet with a sort of drolling workmen on all occasions. To bed.

This pen and I work
till 11 at night.
I drink and err with luck—
a droll occasion.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 28 September 1660.

Inhabit

The sugar houses tilt; through open windows,
catch the drift of wine-dark voices in the rain.

The clapboard shingles drum a faint tattoo
and fences sag beyond the driveway’s rough terrain.

A clothesline hung with linens might swing
the distance from one windowsill to the next.

But space is paramount and plaster does the trick;
and paint’s the cheapest blanket to prime the deck.

We’re told a home’s no longer a place to live
until you die: we’re told the savvy thing is flip

the property before it turns into a crooked house—
So take possession, but mind how all is still a tenantship.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Catadromous

To my Lord at Mr. Crew’s, and there took order about some business of his, and from thence home to my workmen all the afternoon. In the evening to my Lord’s, and there did read over with him and Dr. Walker my lord’s new commission for sea, and advised thereupon how to have it drawn. So home and to bed.

I work all afternoon.
In the evening to the sea—
a raw bed.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 27 September 1660.

Appropriate

“Let us stay here, and wait for the future
to arrive, for grandchildren to speak
in forked tongues about the country
we once came from….”

~ Tishani Doshi, “The Immigrant’s Song”

What comes out of my mouth’s a tinny sound,
whatever comes out of yours is gold.

The mat my hungry sister wove three months,
you pay a handful of pennies for.

The dress that’s draped, metallic sheen
on shoulders of the mannequin, is cheap

as her perfume. Her legs, splayed open
in the dim boudoir, tell time rented

by the hour. You did not live that decade
when tanks rolled over bodies in the streets,

when martyrs lay in blood on concrete fields.
You did not see the bridges fall, the sky

explode with ashes. My solidarity, you cry;
you try to mimic, like a bird, the sounds

the fallen made. You gather stories not
your own and pin them to your breastplate.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Broken Home

Office day. That done to the church, where we did consult about our gallery. So home to dinner, where I found Mrs. Hunt, who brought me a letter for me to get my Lord to sign for her husband, which I shall do for her.
At home with the workmen all the afternoon, our house being in a most sad pickle.
In the evening to the office, where I fell a-reading of Speed’s Geography for a while.
So home thinking to have found Will at home, but he not being come home but gone somewhere else I was very angry, and when he came did give him a very great check for it, and so I went to bed.

Home, where I
brought home with me
all the house—
a sad geography, thinking
to have found a home
but not being home—
gone somewhere else
as angry.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 26 September 1660.

Certified

Here is my passport, my bill of lading, my one-
way ticket, my nowhere fare, my stub you’ve stamped

to certify. All night I clean the lint
from rusted laundromat machines. All night

I mop and polish schoolroom floors. All summer
while you go off to Florida or France, I tend

your mother’s bones, empty her bedpan, feed her baby
food as she babbles in the granny bin. My fingers

have pulled bodies of bitter melon from the vine
and splayed them open on the chopping board.

Come sit and eat with me sometime— I’ll make
a meal from seeds and pith, a sustenance of green

and verve plucked raw from my own nerve. I steel
myself, passing through each turnstile, bending

through each furrow, threading the factory needle back
and back into a hundred collars and sleeves— Eyes

that sweepingly appraise the education in my hands,
the dusky sheen of my corn, the perfume of my salt

and pickled shrimp, the bile I drop
into the soup to make me strong.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Trader.

The Fifth String (videopoem)

Another videopoem in support of my poetry chapbook, Breakdown: Banjo Poems. For this one, Steven Sherrill — the same Renaissance man responsible for the cover painting — supplied the banjo playing on the soundtrack. He uploaded it to SoundCloud, where I messed with it just a little and layered in my reading of “The Fifth String.” (I don’t have a very good microphone these days so the recording quality is a little primitive, but primitive seems all right here, at least for this track.) The footage comes once again from the Prelinger archive of ephemeral films, in this case two television commercials from the 1960s or late 50s, now in the public domain. I was a little worried that the result might be too weird, but Steve tells me he loves it: “The tone/look of the video is akin to what I paint.”

I might mention that, in addition to a sub-par microphone, I have been using very basic video editing software as well: Live Movie Maker for Windows 7! The version of Adobe Premiere Elements I’d been using before does not work very well in my new environment, and frankly, for this simple kind of remix, Movie Maker is almost good enough. It’s certainly a lot more versatile than the older version I had on my desktop. For audio editing, I use Audacity, which is free and open source — and so good nowadays I find I don’t miss Adobe Audition at all.

My thinking about these audiopoems and videopoems, by the way, is that they don’t necessarily drive more sales of the chapbook; if that were my primary reason for making them, I suspect I’d be disappointed. They’re just fun to make, and the publication of the book provides a handy pretext for spending many enjoyable hours exploring SoundCloud and archive.org. Plus, they will give me something else to do during a live reading besides just read from a podium. I do have this notion that audiences at poetry readings deserve first and foremost to be entertained.

Trader

To the office, where Sir W. Batten, Colonel Slingsby, and I sat awhile, and Sir R. Ford coming to us about some business, we talked together of the interest of this kingdom to have a peace with Spain and a war with France and Holland; where Sir R. Ford talked like a man of great reason and experience. And afterwards I did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before, and went away.
Then came Col. Birch and Sir R. Browne by a former appointment, and with them from Tower wharf in the barge belonging to our office we went to Deptford to pay off the ship Success, which (Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Pen coming afterwards to us) we did, Col. Birch being a mighty busy man and one that is the most indefatigable and forward to make himself work of any man that ever I knew in my life. At the Globe we had a very good dinner, and after that to the pay again, which being finished we returned by water again, and I from our office with Col. Slingsby by coach to Westminster (I setting him down at his lodgings by the way) to inquire for my Lord’s coming thither (the King and the Princess coming up the river this afternoon as we were at our pay), and I found him gone to Mr. Crew’s, where I found him well, only had got some corns upon his foot which was not well yet. My Lord told me how the ship that brought the Princess and him (The Tredagh) did knock six times upon the Kentish Knock, which put them in great fear for the ship; but got off well. He told me also how the King had knighted Vice-Admiral Lawson and Sir Richard Stayner. From him late and by coach home, where the plasterers being at work in all the rooms in my house, my wife was fain to make a bed upon the ground for her and me, and so there we lay all night.

To China by ship
we make the globe pay.
Returned to my corn,
I knock six times
upon the ground.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 25 September 1660.

Restless

Your mouth has left
the faintest stain

on the rim of the cup;
now I want to look

for a bungalow, a cape
cod, a craftsman

with wide bay windows
looking out on the river

over which birds fly
at this time of year,

not wanting to stick around
for the cooler weather.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Self-portrait with Breakdown

Selfie with Breakdown

In many respects, the traditional model of poetry publication in which individual author collections on paper take center stage strikes me as outmoded, capitalistic, and more than a little self-indulgent. Why else would my first reaction on receiving a copy of my new chapbook be to pose with it for a selfie? That said, this particular chapbook (or “pamphlet”, for you Brits) is a beautifully made thing, and I am over the moon with the production quality and the cover painting by my friend Steven Sherrill, which is such a good fit with the contents. Seven Kitchens Press chapbooks are very artisanal indeed, and I’m quite sure Ron Mohring (himself a terrific poet, by the way, who chooses to spend most of his free time and money promoting others’ work) sews them up on the kitchen table. He would probably give them away if he could, but $9.00 is a very nominal price. Read more about the chapbook here, and order a copy, if you’re so inclined, here. If you play the banjo, record and send me an MP3 of a banjo instrumental that I can use in an audio recording and I’ll send you a free copy. If you’d like to review it, email me with your postal address and I’ll ask Ron to send you a copy.