PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Saturday, February 23, 2013

A Whiter Shade of Concrete

Condensed by the night
& the rush
            like a gull that flies
                                    in the dark
            all I needed was something simple
            & pure
The requisite shadows tucked neatly
            into the ruins of the palisades
                                    in my heart
                        representing something that will remain
casually unresolved
            locked away where the seabreeze goes   
                        when it isn’t here
returning the sky to its default settings
            picking up the mist & setting it down again
                                    igniting palm trees
& laying out those lines of neon that blossom in the surf
            whatever I might have thought in the meantime
picking up the pesos
                        the implication these remnants betray
as though it was just another
day at the beach

Monday, February 18, 2013

2012 by Joanne Kyger


With the beauty and immediacy of an inexorable logic improvised on the spot, Kyger sings the questioning mind and open heart through the careful notation of the nature of nature, human and not human, seen and felt and imagined.  What Olson called “causal mythology,” and Whalen described as the “graph of a mind moving,” are woven by Kyger into an everyday “familiar recognition”―

 
 
             Remember how the heart is always located
                    by its place in the body, by the bottom of a mountain,
                            on the slopes to the sea
 
 
      Watching it go by as if owned by no one,
            the ‘watcher’ sneezes and disappears
 
 
                       momentarily


2012 is a suite of 9 exquisite poems.  Get your copy now from Blue Press.


Friday, February 15, 2013

Custom Machine

4 Wipeouts & a Funeral
Standing at the edge the
choice is yours alone so
why not take that extra
step & see what it could be
like to live
among shadows
dealt from the bottom
of a deck of dreams

Live from the Forbidden Planet
The distribution of the
divine graces plus seven
sacraments & the over-
whelming realization that
you can’t run from a gorilla

Christ dragging his cross thru yr flesh like a plow
She had that "Lets get
hammered" look in her eyes
& I said that I would meet her
half way there

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Italian Poets brought to you by Simon Pettet

The brilliant poet Simon Pettet has assembled a lovely & extraordinary anthology of some contemporary Italian poets.  It is well worth your time & attention.  Check it out here.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

MEMORY FOAM by Kevin Opstedal




This chapbook (which could be subtitled "Further Studies in Surf Ghetto Acoustics") features 14 poems, consisting of love songs & other distractions by this relentless poet of the California coast.  With guest appearances by Lee Marvin, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Mingus, Patti Smith, & a traditional Japanese mariachi punk band.

Published by Seven Fingers, Louisville, Colorado.

Copies are available through Blue Press.


Monday, February 11, 2013

Anointed by wet sand & a dirty blonde alibi

Between what you know & what you think
you know
                        searching for a meaning that you
make up as you go along
the wave pattern carved into every grain of
beach sand
                        & whatever it was I saw rippling in yr eyes
warm light once trucked in from the tropics
with haze attending (thin absorbant cotton)
so much the more radiant when seen from the water
            but we’re standing on the pavement
outside the Mexican mercado La Esperanza broken
bottles at the curb
                                    jagged amber
bronze       apricot      the color of gasoline
a string of sunset pearls tied around the neck of a
rainpuddle
                        Has anyone ever taken a DNA sample
from a cloud?
The evidence is that thick
held in 37 volumes plus a box that must be kept refrigerated
at a secret location
only you know & I know

Thursday, February 7, 2013

All the Way

for Ainsworth
 
Tacos & tea on a Thursday morning
a shade past the derivative “Where am I?”
answered in the Mississippi dialectic
dialed-in to a high-speed curriculum
beneath a sky that reads like a cosmic cheat-sheet
 
& you can taste the ocean in the morning air here
the streets cutting thru the haze as if it were Baja or Tangiers
with a California coastal accent that has marked me
since birth or perhaps before like every car I ever drove
up & down the PCH on wine-stained mornings
looking for the shit
& finding it
 
although right now it’s as MacAdams wrote “Whither goest
poet, aging in the night” & I guess I’m breaking even
with the tides doubling up on me no matter what the
forecast says there’s a pile of scrap iron rusting in my heart
& I can’t tell if it’s the wind or the leaves talking
but I swear I heard the medicine man say have a smoke
& call me in the morning

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Poet Todd McCarty Reading in Chicago February 16

The terrific poet, Todd McCarty will be on stage at the Dollhouse Reading Series in Chicago on February 16th.  Anyone in the area who gives a damn about “The Poems” needs to attend, as McCarty is the real thing.  His book FALL FOR YOU, which was published recently by Blue Press, is loaded with lyric somersaults, sly wit, & the kind of beautifully measured lines that can only be delivered straight from the Escher designed parking structure of the heart. Catch the reading, buy the book, & be stoked.

More info can be found on the Dollhouse Facebook page & their tumblr.
 
While you’re at it, take a look at McCarty’s tumblr page, Blistered Visions.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Money Pancho

Dismantle the heart
& put it back together
in some half-ass way
it still works
clanking, grinding gears
            relayed along the rusty curve of sunset
like a convoy of razor-pink flamingos
& stolen hubcaps
            anticipating yet another chorus of
            Cowgirl in the Sand
 
(The band couldn’t make it
            where’s my harmonica?)
 
Scrap-iron nasturtiums blossoming
                        above the seawall
shipped from Okinawa to Santa Cruz
& back again
            like a cigarette that died in the refrigerator
or your reflection in the shiny chrome sky
                        I can’t decide which
 
Please give me all your love
& 20 dollars
            I’m running on fumes & 4 bald tires
 
Whisper sweet nada
            & I’ll show you how long I can
                        hold my breath
           
If I recite The Day Lady Died from memory
            will it buy us a taco to share out on the pier?
 
I’ve got a bird that whistles
I’ve got a bird that sings