Tag Archives: poems

Poets Reading the News publishes ‘Agraphia’

Car5

“Car 5”

A great poetry website, Poets Reading The News, has published another one of my poems, Agraphia, along with one my recent photos, Car 5 (above).

I’m extraordinarily fond, and proud, of this poem. It’s about the way that war and violence affect one’s humanity.

It begins with a quote from Gabriele de’ Mussi, a historian of sorts, who gave one account of the beginning of the black plague in Europe in the mid-14th Century.

He tells of the siege on Kaffa (now known as Feodosia in Crimea) in which the Mongols launched the rotten flesh of their own sick and infected soldiers over the city walls in order to weaken the defending forces — an early version of biological warfare.

Please read and share it. You mean the world to me.

Thanks for being a part of this crazy project.

— Joe

Belted Kingfisher

belted08-sm

By substituting X for their name
We begin to blue-grey a flicker rate
Between eyes, nose, ears and mouth.

The subject doing the describing,
For instance, receives big panicked gulps
And must not be allowed to employ simile
Without supervision—

How liberating!

Now, let’s consider X a revolutionary—
Stephen Dunn once wrote as much
While withering for cash.

If X died today, the sun and the moon
Would finally receive their answer:
A torn sheet of paper
for both celestial bodies:

Grim, graceful and surreal;
A canyon of sugar skulls,
Oh! the lightcycle enfolding forever
Like endless dough.

X insists
They need not be
Consistent.

X’s interdisciplinary epigram, anyway,
Inspired (which?) Dickman’s monograph 52 years on,
The latter being more studied yet
Significantly less erudite
Than the former, who cannot
Will not make up their mind
But will resolve to vacillate endlessly.

Do be you
Consumer
Of Coke.

X is one of the park’s rarest
And least conspicuous trees.

Found only on dry ledges of the summit,
X is little more than a shrub.

X is not a belted kingfisher
Despite their harsh and rattling call.

X is silly and not as
Handsome as you remember.

When Christ arrives,
X is surprised.

Wikipedia Poem, No. 371

wiki371-tk2-b

“I do not think of you lying in the wet clay / Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see / You walking down a lane among the poplars / On your way to the station,” from Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘In Memory of My Mother’

for Bernie

lying in the end        of you          are all mad     and       we cattle—among the cattle—among the can walking along you are   all    made and we cattle—among the poplars on a lane along you say don’t forget the bargains are all made and we cattle among the rich with life—and you meet me and you lying down a fair     day          by accident after the wet clay for it is a       harvest evening down a summer sunday—you       smile        up the bargains are piling along           the end of you lying in the wet clay for           it is a headland we   are all mad    and you walk    among the ricks against         the end of you smile up the end of repose

Wikipedia Poem, No. 98

Un halo vaporeux trouble le corps de la femme assoupie et de la granulation de la pénombre paraît émaner le grain de sa peau sur le parquet flotte le lueur de ses souliers vernis — Jean-Pierre Chambon

Un halo vaporeux trouble
le corps de la femme assoupie
et de la granulation de la pénombre
paraît émaner le grain de sa peau
sur le parquet flotte la lueur
de ses souliers vernis
— Jean-Pierre Chambon

ONE

grows only to 
      copulata
      		Ophrys apifera longicornis male 
         bee It 
is 
the Caucasus  Its ranges surround 
         in autumn 
    The name Ophrys 
      apifera generally grows on semi-dry turf in the Hodbarrow 
  slowly during in Ayrshire in the north Africa and Ireland similar 
to grows only 
self-pollen transfer occurs 
          in the 
bee-bearing 
       to the Hodbarrow slowly during 
or 
     in autumn  Thelabellum is a perennial 
    herbaceous 
dunes that mimics the UK  it was the 
hairy late 
with a 
     centially brow  white 
to 
   copulation  but 
was 
     the 
  hairy 
laterally grows to be found in they are unusual in the Greek word ophrys 
     apifera genus O

TWO

          1936  That year  the national 
flower 
    or Christmas orchid is 
yellow 
        blue and red
       in November of 
  the has 
      been 
        deters 
above sea 
level in November 1936 
That year  the 19th 
century 
  Colombia 
      where it 
was named as the 
          same 
       was 
n = 40 the same was 
          made for two 
         main 
reasons
		The Colombia 
where 
it was 
n = 40 the has 
    been 
   determined 
     after the Orchid is 
       yellow blue 
and 
      red in the same way 
as the 
  has 
          been 
          determined after 
the 
     representative 
         flowering to the most representative 
   flower or Christmas orchid is a plant belonging plant belonging plant 
of Cattleya 
      trianae Lindl &

THREE

      witches used to 50–60 centimetres 
      above sea level
  It grows in Shakespeare and 
  in 
dense 
cylindrica Algeria 
          Psithyrus and in northwest Africal to 
       the 
        World 
Checklist of height green Finland Great Britain
   Norway Sweden
         Finland 
Great 
        Britain Norway 
   Sweden sometimetres and in northwest 
Africal shepherds 
         give a grows 
  in 
   northwest Africa Algeria Spain Norway Sweden Finland 
  Great 
Britain 
         Norway Sweden Finland Great 
Britain Norway 
Sweden Finland 
Great 
        Britain Norway Sweden 
        Finland 
       Ukraine together 
       speckles
The 
    specklist of Russia in northwest 
Africal tra

Sources:

  • biolib. “Eucera cineraria Eversmann, 1852.” Photographs. biolib.cz. 1 August 2015.
  • Chambon, Jean-Pierre. Tout venant. Paris: Centre national du livre, 2014. Print.
  • Wikipedia contributors. “Ophrys apifera.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Jun. 2015. Web. 1 Aug. 2015.
  • Wikipedia contributors. “Cattleya trianae.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 23 Jun. 2015. Web. 1 Aug. 2015.
  • Wikipedia contributors. “Orchis mascula.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 16 Apr. 2015. Web. 1 Aug. 2015.

“To Giovanni da Pistoia When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel, 1509”

I have already grown a goiter in this drudgery—
As water does to cats in Lombardy,
Or in whatever other region it may be—
Which forces my belly to hang under my chin.
I feel my beard skyward, and memory
On top of my coffer,and my chest like a harpy’s;
And on my face all the while the brush
With its dripping makes a rich pavement.

My loins have entered my paunch,
And I turn my arse into a croup for a counterweight,
And I take steps vainly without my eyes.
My bark stretches out in front,
And from wrinkling in back, is all knotted,
And I strain like a Syrian bow.

Thus fallacious and strange
Rises the judgment which my mind carries;
For one shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My dead painting
Defend now, Giovanni, and my honor,
For I am not in a good place, nor am I a painter.

— Michelangelo Buonarroti (1509)
Translation by Luciano Rebay

wikipedia poem, no. 22

IMG_1618

black lines 
pushed up against the fence
off Chaos 
         you’re all 
trust me! i'm 
         a crazy replies Quietess i 
        the 
    option U 
ascends AllTheArabs 
         If deceased! That's getting comment to damage ego 
missing, 
       not 
   laughed 
at! i'm a crazy replies 
between worlds
of intellect 
of aggregation 
force
        Hell for then you to 
   damage ego 
mistake two years ago emit and 
      emit and the 16 view 
of not long 
          ago in nobody shitty CognizantCheddar saw Blake 
cross 
        shitty CognizantCheddar saw 
Blake cross shitty CognizantCheddar saw Blake 
cross shitty CognizantCheddar 
         saw Blake +2 far 
from where 
         not long ago 
         will 
trust it massively subs 
         ago will you obviously said 
CognizantCheddar
closes his eyes the spines become ash
          "It's 
  getting comment to 
damage ego missing, not 
l”
  not 
long 
ago nerf nerf nerf 
  nerf nerf 
      nerf nerf 
         nerf nerf nerf nerf 
nerf nerf nerf nerf 
nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf 
he blows them away one by one with a strong gust 
of ignoring spins on his right foot 
     brother 
    go What 
  ego mistake two years 
   ago will 
       you obviously 
       sub against will 
you’re all to
     trust it massively 
      subs ego will you 
      to 
damage ego mistake 
  cross shit intent-ire one shouldn't go missing, not laughed at me! i'm 
          a 
       crazy replies killer dad it's 
heavy +ChipotIe have This in nobody shitty CognizantCheddar saw Blake 
two years ago 
dashes off into the precipitous digital architecture
nerf nerf nerf nerf 
nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf 
nerf nerf 
nerf 
nerf nerf nerf 
nerf nerf nerf nerf 
   nerf broth

wikipedia poem, no. 21

IMG_1603

the die 
          like crazy. We’ve beekeepers full
        of colony cold

in almond groves
   said he was that way
  to 
      ban their impact once:

               since the first 
   survivors weakened

an apiculture pollinates many and with scientists 
last year’s die-off sent 
itself its carriers 
       higher the 
bee
on a steady 
          dose of February

    products hardly there’d from corn to sunflower 
fields of canola

a coalition of our products are applied in smaller doses 
could 
       kill bees 
     and biologic herbicides 
and vegetables

         that the biggest culprit is 
The 
      Agriculture Department 
in black in the groves, picking off kill bees despite 
    bee 
      mites 
they react with weedkillers
Experts say 
      many beekeepers 
have
30 years, and with his 
father and brother, represent
the biggest culprit i

“We were 
      so great in our 
         losses.
European colony collapse, disorder, 
roughly 
     tracked
so the proud
represent more 
than 
       it’s 
ever 
     been.”