Monday, November 30, 2009

Robert and the Evangelist

This one is drastically in progress...


Robert has a paper cut.

The evangelist has maroon letter.

Robert wants to see Italy in the fall,

his mother is from Switzerland.

The evangelist wants his office

to stop smelling like mothballs.

Robert never drinks his Coca-Cola alone;

his mother is from Switzerland.

The evangelist never walks in the shade;

under the trees smell like mothballs.

When Robert travels across state lines

the grass in the previous state

wilts a little.

The evangelist travels from parishioner to

parishioner on a chopper-motorcycle,

chromed out!

One time Robert took a survey –

he wants to be married in a car wash.

The evangelist owes 39 CENTS to the car vaccum;

all his funds are tied up in equity.

Robert gently drapes cloth napkins

across his lap when he eats.

The evangelist carries a bottle of

hot sauce in his right boot.

Robert plugs his ears with

his fingers in all the wrong places.

The evangelist vowed to never

straighten his glasses by using one finger.

Robert owes his successes at the pub

to a well timed dart throw.

The evangelist surfs the web (!) looking

for natural cures to sleep apnea.

Robert swims laps with his

one-night-stand of two years ago.

The evangelist gets exercise

in a motel’s fitness center – no keycard.

Robert grapples with diesel mechanics

and tosses coke cans in the ring.

The evangelist takes time out of the day

to learn how to properly carve a turkey.

Word Problem

34.

A cook takes an order for a platter of turkeys: each turkey weighs one pound and is the size of a hand – in fact, it is a hand.

She uses two sets of tongs to retrieve the turkeys from the miniature forest walled up on all four sides with glass like a lobster tank – in fact, it is a converted lobster tank.

If each turkey consist of four fingers and a thumb, how many turkeys will it take to make the consumers forget about that one summer they spent blazing trails in the front yard for their Matchbox cars to drive on?

Paving Marathon

On October the 15th the most ordinary thing happened. A field (approximately 135) construction & road work companies lined up along the edge of a city park. Each company had two machines and two machines only: these units consisted of a paver and one 40 foot 18-wheel dump truck and a handful of men – two for the paver itself and one, two, definitely 3 for the dump truck. Oh, and of course the foreman wearing a brown hardhat.

A local boy – about the age of 8, but it’s really anybody’s ball game – fires a borrowed 9 mm glok semiautomatic pistol into a thicket of trees, and the spectators roar.

No less than 5 minutes later, the first dump truck hits the ignition and jumps from 1st to 4th gear, causing his crew to collide with the paver. Along the park’s perimeter are water and electrolyte stations that the crews take-advantage-of on this first leg of the race. All the spectators dig in and plant the bottom quarter inch of their heavily textured green and white and pink lawn chairs.

* * *

It’s eleven o’clock @ night on the Sunday two days after the start of the race and the sprinters line up on the paved edge of the park. The local boy releases a bird over a water fountain and cries as he prays Now I lay me down to… Every one of the eleven sprinters and sixty-odd remaining spectators rush the paving crews. The sprinters get stuck ankle high in the tar and skim a pamphlet on how to remove their track spikes. The spectators reach the paving crews before the barefoot sprinters stop for water.

By now the whole town is in attendance.

A handful of spectators glimpse the boy’s bird and pursue it. The surviving spectators storm past the pavers and jut their chests out to cross the finish line two paver links ahead of the field.

After the crews & sprinters cross the line 9 hours later, all the runners will bury the hatchet next to the bird on a short boat ride down the river and back – stopping just shy of the power plant parking lot.

Long time

I've been so remiss in putting up poems! Or writing here at all. Bah-humbug, I'll say. Let me toss up a few recent poems.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Power Point Poem

I have a power point poem on the way that is completely in its beginning stages. I'm so lucky.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Friday, October 9, 2009

The Man with a Tape Measure Arm

He tells me she’s the kind of woman

who knows how to

handle a bricklayer’s trowel


I remind him about the

time at the lumberyard,

and the bucket of grout.


He shrugs and his eyes release

3 teardrops. One of the drops

asks me if I’d like some coffee.


I feel hopeless, tell the drop why not.

The man closes his eyes and

extends his arm to the coffee pot


a distance of six feet, and tells

me it doesn’t break until 9’.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Iowa Writers Workshop

I can't help but feel envious of the people studying/working here now. But I can't help feeling glad that I'm not out in Iowa. Sounds bad. Then again, where did poets like Jim Goar and Zachary Schomburg and Marcus Slease go? Those guys have the style that I like. Maybe Iowa pumps out some tame sounding stuff; I don't know. I'm not there, and this could be out of pure jealousy. But I know I have a good peer reader here and a good financial situation at WVU. Does everyone who is respected nowadays need to go to Iowa? I think not.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Poets I Marvel At

I'm starting to compile a list of [poets I marvel @] because one of my favorite teachers ever, the guy responsible for infecting me with the bug (terminal, really) of poetry, my intro to creative writing professor at Waynesburg University: Martin Cockroft. He also taught most of my other poetry classes. He said that I should read and read and read those poets that I really love their work, poetry that I feel I'll never be able to write, but that I... want to write like, I guess? I like the first part of that last sentence. Still trying to figure out the end. But, look for my list, look for mini biographies and examples of their poetry and quotes (in many different media e.g. Berryman). Berryman is the one I am into now. I'll post one of his Dream Songs. This publishing engine will likely alter his poems structure but I'll see what I can do.

Berryman Reading

Berryman reading Dream Song 29 in his faux-Brittish accent. He's also quite... drunk.

Berryman

A lovely quote by one of the poets I marvel @, John Berryman:

Well, being a poet is a funny kind of jazz. It doesn't get you anything. It doesn't get you any money, or not much, and it doesn't get you any prestige, or not much. It's just something you do.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

FORM!

sigh... this blog butchers the form of my poems... oh well (for now!), the title of the last poem is EXERCISE. I figure that's all you need to go on.

Workshop Try

Exercise
Our gravel road
is steep to the point of
hallelujah.
We ride bikes – the neighbors say –
towards the grass shoulder,
and you alert me to a new notion:
grass is slippery – watch out for
cows.
Sometimes
neighborhood kids
grab our spokes, the chain-rings
piercing their hands.
I say it reminds me of Christ;
you assure me I’m being
myopic.
And when it rains, I’ve promised
to always put a bucket
(you prefer “metal pail”) at the end
of the ruts made from
larger tires than ours.
We can drink
at last,
but I can only ever
find a Dixie cup to collect water.

Long Time

Hey, long time no see BLOG. Well, grad school has taken a better turn. Just about finished grading my first round of papers, and I already have realized that I need to look into going about that a little differently. I need to embrace this 9 - 5 office situation, then I bet I'll have more freedom in the evenings to do some pleasure reading and writing. My biggest concern right now is that I can't seem to balance myself among all of my schooling facets. I've got to be a teacher, I've got to be a theory/pedagogy student, and I've got to be a poetry student. Why am I here in the first place? Poetry. But I care about what I do, even to my own peril and contradiction sometimes. Right now, I either have weeks that are weighted towards pedagogy, weeks towards poetry, or weeks towards teaching. And you know the real kicker here? I don't even intend to have this flux. So, my new approach is this 9 to 5 and we'll see how those cards are played out. I'd also like to get back to the intensity and passion I had for the poetry and this blog, my whole idea of poetry online, of a NON-concern with publication (professionally). Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice, or rather "not bad," but I don't think that should enter a writer's mind when they are writing or editing. If it comes it comes. Of course you need to submit, but getting down on rejections, that's just a little naive I think. Hello, Life, good to see you again.

Well, more poetic musings to come, I hope. If not, those few and proud, hold me to it!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Schomburg

Link to a couple Zarchary Schomburg poems that I absolutely love. This is what I want my poetry to be like:

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Poetically Powered

Feeling a bit off lately. I've been thinking a lot about how workshop went last week and wanting to turn something in that, I guess, they think is good or what they are "looking for." Yet, most of me resents this. So, I'm putting a poem on here that I likely won't turn in (at least not this week... might not turn anything in. I'm really fried).

Some Notices

1. 1.Charred men slowly exchange a bowl of water.

2. 2. A baker squeezes parchment out of a purple cow intestine.

3. 3. Gray typewriters catapult into recycle bins adjacent to the Hudson on a bright winter morning.

4. 4. Raw sewage in soufflé dishes, topped wi –

5. 5. I walked up a long, gradual hill last night – paved all the way (some fresh, mostly old and knowledgeable), challenged by crumbling sidewalks – in pain: I ingested fast food quick enough that nothing remained of my 4 piece nuggests and chicken sandwich by the time I parked the car (e.t.a. from restaurant = 3 minutes).

6. 6. Ancient Communists take up Vaudeville for an afternoon.

7. 7. Wooo! Free Fatty Acids!

8. 8. This is a car battery; it will be your husband.

9. 9. 9,

Friday, September 4, 2009

Deep Image

This is a poem from my other blog (AA/P) that I feel fits with what I am trying to accomplish on Jet Plane:

Vive

He draws the hills in meditation
with the lead on his tires.

They are thin, not unlike
the pencils used in
standardized tests.

The hills come smooth,
and rugged, with animal skin.

Leaves pass in a blur,
his morning and afternoon:
squirrel’s tail.

In his calf muscle
are deer with full racks
and frost.

Format

A note on the formats of the poems:

I had this problem with my other blog, AA/P, but for some reason my formats for the poems go completely askew when I post them. Just take that into consideration. The last poem, "Oddities," is supposed to be entirely comprised of couplets. So, there you have it...

Dusty Poem

This is a poem I found in the back of one of my journals that I remember being utterly consumed by when I was writing it. It was like I couldn't stop. I wrote probably half of it at an open mic and read it right then. Enjoy, I guess:

Oddities of Boulevard

M.L. London

Men and women surging against my path,

I put on a raincoat, feeling excited.

One child twirls a straw that makes howling noises;

it clips my sleeve and sends me into a frenzy.

The men and women surge, I rebuttal with echoes of my school teachers:

wherewithal of yellow desk chairs.

Before it gets loud – the surging –

my pockets open to the memory of my summer at sea.

I feel sand in the corners, and my lips

are a brilliant, muted purple.

God save the queen, a woman says, surging.

She picks up her toaster oven and moves away.

I slip back into the wooden hull of a boat;

my mother is statuesque against the brig.

The boat is our boat, but my father hasn’t signed for it.

Crew members scuttle the boat, and we are left out of the mad-dash.

Men and women surge – my path inhales

and exhales the beating of rubber shoe soles.

My mom carries me out of the water.

She sees an abandoned light house erected on boulders near a river’s mouth.

I weigh more than she does, so the sand compacts and breaks

and dissolves into stars along the sea’s rim.

Two gentlemen with accordions trot past me, surge in their step,

making it hot inside my raincoat.

I tried to smile, but their cigars caught me by surprise.

Somewhere I remembered I smoked.

Indian chiefs masqueraded their totem pole

as a lighthouse: so my mother was mistaken.

They welcomed us all the same –

but we don’t smoke (I know my dad does).

The street sweepers are too busy this time of year

to do anything about the melted popcorn on the side of the gutter.

It looks as if the crowd will clear

and men and women surge on my rocks.

My father always told me to drive standing up,

but I was never a fan of attention.

The joke was on him, I think, and before he could tear up,

gasoline became like the red chairs we had on our boat.

Perhaps the taxidermist could make a new one;

afterall, the joke never sank this close to the Indians.

I saw a taxi over the heads of the men and women surging.

I would have to take off my raincoat if they’d let me pay the fair.

The shore was light like yellow,

but my mother was far from my cradle.

There were bank tellers attached to sycamore trees

that told my gypsy-mother our dream was closer than the Indian smoke signals.

Men and women surge against my path with sticks and dowel rods,

and I can’t see through the sewer steam.

Our bodies wafted through pools of black absinthe,

numbing my middle-school days with pink elixir.

My mother and gypsy-mother wandered ahead

holding a Christ-torch with enflamed flame engulfed Black Christians.

Newspaper delivery boys and girls in pink gingham berets

trickled through the surging men and women, all on bicycles.

The red bell hop helped open the doors to a Gothic abbey

for my new sister; I held her thigh.

The thought of blood-elephants portrayed their breasts

to a jury of prostitutes, and I only looked on.

Any mention of my sister being pregnant made my mother sick,

but my gypsy-mother could only sit.

Men and women sure around my raincoat,

the buttons and lapels resemble the path.

Cry-baby-Daves and Dakes flourished for

our pocket money. My father signed for the boat.

And six gifted merchants traded purple belts

for a night’s stay in our adjoining satchel.

Red ribbons tightened in the hair of a new wave

of men and women surging against my path.

Tee-pees and horse carriages brought home my father;

my mothers and sister left me in a pine needle thicket.

They sat and chased a dragon on the clapboard ceiling

to the tune of an 18th century organ melody.

Gothic barriers to grotesque, jaundice serf

bombarded the doors of the building – windows depicted the flesh-maelstrom.

Lauren Bean and Parsley stew, split pea soul

drenched the petticoats of the men and women surging against my path.

Three sheets to the wind, my father remembered then ink pen;

the boat was never ours, and he complained about his knee.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Workshop: Try #2

Full Size

Matt London

This blanket used to have form.

It could walk into a restaurant,

and the waiter would snap out a table for it

just like that.

It cursed like a sailor, said he was its bride.

Nobody cared about its manners, they just

let it be… let it be cool.

One story goes like this

(and this is from at least 2 different sources):

it owned a fast car, something red –

cops would never dream of pulling it over.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

New Desk

On a positive note(!): I am starting a new desk fund and planning stage. It's exciting because I'm gonna get rid of the behomoth in my room now and put in a corner desk to better utilize my space. You say "blah blah blah, Matt, get to the point..." well here it is: I'm going to get a "cheap" black corner desk from Walmart made out of that compressed/composite wood stuff (who knows what it's really made out of) and take a silver sharpie and write my favorite poems, quotes, lines of stories, titles, and conversations on the desk itself. I got the idea from my very influential friend Josh Giacometti, but he did this to the walls in his room (outrageous, right?! love it).

Pictues to come.

Grad School

Grad school is harder than I thought, and it's only the second week still. It seems all I do is read, and, get this, it's not even the stuff I came here for. I've read a little bit of poetry, but most of my time is taken up with students' papers and a tertiary class that I've been required to take as part of my GTA-ship. I like teaching, so I don't mind that. I guess my real hang-up is that required class that I have right before my poetry workshop. So by the time I get to poetry, I'm completely cooked, as it is at 7 tonight and my pedagogy course preceeds it at 4 and I taught all morning. Whew, I don't know how I'm going to get through this...

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Read This


Jim Goar's book that I highly recommend to anyone. A friend lent me this book over a year ago in undergrad and it changed my whole writing sytle... forever. The poems seem like they were born with the illustrations and conventions of the book.


Workshop: Try #1

Poem I turned in this week for workshop; it's based on Jerome Rothenberg's work in Shaking the Pumpkin.

Sacrament of a Newborn Parchment

Matthew L. London

A man stands with his face towards a young tree. He thinks of garbage – condiment refuse. Two women hold 3 day old newspapers and look at the man. They draw leading men from Hollywood’s golden age in purple oil paint on page two and five. The man does an about-face and remembers the first time he had an erection. More men stand beside the young tree. The women become exhausted and use the newspapers to stuff in their shoes and put them on a metal folding chair for display. The men set the shoes on fire and recite the alphabet, leaving out the letters “D” and “W.” After the shoes become glowing embers, the women shout the Pythagorean Theorem and everyone takes turns improvising Anton Chekov scenes (not “Uncle Vanya”).

Monday, August 31, 2009

Other Blog

http://aapanzerpoet.blogspot.com/

DFJP Launch


This is my new blog. Yep.

The name is taken from two poems in Ron Padgett's book Great Balls of Fire, one of my favorite books of poetry to date. It's full of playful, absurd, avante garde poetry that a normal person would use to hack their rhinovirus into. It's perfect.

My first hors d'oeuvre of Padgett was his anthologized poem (Post-Modern American Poetry, Norton) "Nothing in that Drawer." That's all I'm going to say on that poem. Read it. It'll change your mind about contemporary poetry no matter what view of it you already come from. Oh yeah. The other poem is simply titled "Jet Plane." One of the best poems ever written because of it's very existence and what it sums up.

Drawer+Jet Plane= Drawer Full of Jet Planes

You, scanner, are welcome!