Tag: poetry

Volcano is No Volcano [HOLD FOR APPLAUSE]

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

A vicious life wrapped around symbols. What is the thing I want to tell you the reader is the same question as who am I as how do you want your daughter to remember you. A litany. As someone who taught her the courage to live as she wanted is the same as you as the clay won’t harden in such conditions is the same as grow. As the burning u-shaped chassis of the Volkswagen Jetta is to the tree. As hair-covered arms covered in ants. Develop love. Stick to it. What I know. Like white snow. Volcano is no volcano. The greater eyes retain you over man’s laws. And they’ve advanced to the point where you’re convinced you don’t remember the brand: Philip K. Dick. Nam June Paik. Open Mike Eagle. Donald Trump. Valentino Rossi. And more. On this week’s. Meet the Nation. [APPLAUSE] [HOLD FOR APPLAUSE] [HOLD APPLESAUCE FOR APPLAUSE] All art is taste. False. All taste is broke. False. The moment you call him divine. True. Red is blue / a wire monkey, / too. Remember that, Maeve? Syntax. In whose hand? Cheating. A projection. It’s sad the things you remember. My aunt’s hand. Why now? Wow. Disney laid hands. I’m afraid to reach out. Don’t be. Brown cow. And slowly cold rain in hair.

“Oh, I See A Roaring Noise, Roar”

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

I place one cheerio in my mouth and suck my lips I look around and moan I chew no teeth another cheerio in my mouth I stir my hand around the silicone plate my right hand a fist in my left hand I pick it up the cheerios with index finger and thumb equally with the left and right the index fingers rub across the silicone I pull and it doesn’t give another cheerio I want out of my high chair another cheerio I use my small hands to push off I’m choking I have resolved the choke to push her off from the table a little bit more the high chair does not budge chewing slamming my hands moaning a small smile eyebrows raise a gaze I laugh at my ugly father some coughing though no choking another cheerio grabbed in a fist another cheerio a pincer grasp I’m mumbling I like the noises I make I reach for the milk I pull up the silicone mat I push a cheerio onto the floor I push a second cheerio onto the floor I’m looking for something oh I see a roaring noise roar I bring the silicone mat up down up I hold it in mid-air I flip it I chew it push the mat make mouth noises flip it one arm up one arm pulling the silicone mat moaning pushing a quick drink of milk a raspberry I flick the nipple I intimate as though I want milk I refuse the bottle I pull my father’s sweater the wrist the arm I poke I poke I poke I bite my father no teeth dang it cough I scratch at his new tattoo scratch right hand left hand left hand scream scratch my father pulls his hand away I reach for the water am I drinking I’m drinking I pull the straw from the silicone cup and gag myself I reach for the silicone cup spill it across the table the water drips slowly from a small hole that has been inverted spin the bottle unintentionally I want water do you want water I drink from the bottle like a big girl I retrieve the cap from my father I groan into the silicone cap I push air and vague sounds from my throat I chew the silicone cap some more no teeth I drop the silicone cap on the floor more water drunk most swallowed some dribble down my chin

Vicious Mercy (Vermeer in Death Valley, 2020)

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

Leave Vermeer alone.

When I write The girl is dying I do not mean to enter the girl nor deconstruct her state of abstract goingness.

It’s a figure beyond an open window in a time of plague.

Disemboweled skywriting or the family name forgotten in water.

Which is to say: Vicious mercy becomes the uncountable gallop of the ruddy horse forging the sandy horizon.

Let the creature offenses stand in beauty among their rare pigments.

Honeycut, should I fail to mention light — What kind of poet is this? — but here!

Look!

Cherry and evergreen ring the moon like a bell unrung, you see them or don’t.

These next few moments of balance determine your eligibility for brief happiness.

Remember first to crucify the middle-ground; translucent, gathered up, mercurial, for modernity.

Mobility.

Into sun-sucked ink, oil, platinum, I vandalize form.

You, widely recognized as a modular prophet, briefly part the asbestos curtain.

Who, among these long-ago minted currencies, profits from the quietus of pulped paupers?

Ultramarine, of course, picked up and deposited here at my feet like seed, forms the reticulated reach of your life.

They do.

When they’re gone they’re gone.

Something else, especially if this chaotic rest goes unexamined.

Time lays a recursive trap in which most get caught.

From the Old English for eye-hole.

The skin that threatens to scream in from its triangular sleep, vanishing from the fog of natural history, just as quickly as it had long-ago been shed.

You suddenly appear vaulted and the sun is beautiful.

My favorite spot across the entire desert.

I am describing the man who offers the creature, spoken into long-to-go life, a bucket of sewing needles.

Mostly I see your bones and saddle.

Faithful reader, a sharp splash of light on the cheek come, potential space for potential space.

portrait in oblivion (isa)

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment
Ridgewood, NJ, August 2020
she says 			i can cook vegan
she says 			savory
				nutritional yeast flakes 
				harvested for good health
our face is probably the only thing of that scale
crushed red pepper flakes
our face obsessed in its desire for duplicate
i didn't choose this sacred hardware
our battle ax-thin XXX bride
prime butch dress cascading salvo
cachaça bottle thick hairy professor
				in the window sill
				go fast,
she says					the advertisements 
to the confident			are coming to
advertisers				shake you awake

Dear Oblivion

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment
Main Street, Hackensack, June 2020

Prayer peels soul from body. Robin-eyed memory of never known. The scent of winter jasmine, he writes. I ascent, with neither knowledge nor trace experience. Mouth crawls with the acid taste of spider webs. Begging, really. Dear Oblivion, I continue asking the drain — conduit from, passive voice, channel away — to do the hard work. Three-fourteen a.m., a mournful eight-legged poet struggles to drag a stone amphora the size of a casket across the backyard — no vacancies.

Nothing Moves in the Universe

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

nothing moves in the universe
a few cars and trucks
on main street
something lights
through the grass
a hare i thought
or a robin
but i am high
and the grass is tall
and a car alarm shouts
over the green paint
of the lawn
where the neighbors play
he drives a nice new chevrolet
because
he does nothing
but work
two small women
in black cardigans
peaceful blue masks
matching wet brown buns
and fists full
of snow white
target shopping bags
walk past
walk past
clark is here
again
with the chimney
he ran home
to get
so he can
grill meat.

Belt of Violent Hearth

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

Wikipedia Poem, No. 999

in the belt of
   violent
       hearth studies two
       least eat a
       good
god slowly 
foods (see a
       coated in twenties more the streets an effort to accept 
it cool care
   meals
more
tips
       to 
cause
overly autobiographical
naked sweet
       cool confirmed cases you
want
as much as much
less the earth eat
          a guiding
worldwide this weight intake the azure hearth studies show loss
they can put the weight and
much as washingness the out
the starving burning upon they're
      like
          glucomannan
can't
be show
          that
drinking buddies burning
lose
researchers
archers drink an expanding burning brass ant
as much more tips to be
shown to heart

Sphinx, of Cement and Aluminum

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

Wikipedia Poem, No. 998

the coronavirus show loses weight
overtly and as much as supplements
holy travel warning infects the earth

studied worldwide these researchers
fattening dozens of trusted sources
trusted trusted trusted at the source

the coronavirus show over time weighs poetry
and researchers may have the greatest risk
factors for weight trump is starving easily

and help you weigh less the studies show
the streets of a high-protein breakfast basket
drink and drug manufacturers spreading fatness

warming calm among the geopoets more than weight
unshavenly even confirmed calm among working members
themselves under their brains to cause tectonic poems

as much as of themselves as even 20 under 20
award winnder much more as much as of you can intake
their brains cause over 3 months of twittering states

last year when drinkers kept it cool connecting
my generations destroyed in the week’s trusted source
trusted starving and much much more of the study

show yourselves even under themselves even
under the delectable weight and thingyness
staggering upon the 20 more tips to the state filling

burlap skin bags of harmoney in the streets of high saturday
death chooses your weight avoid suggestive minds
contemplate 20 more tips to lose recompense on the el

and this weight after flat floating losses new york
studies the two leading causes of poetry
and much as much as much as much less

the state declares two causes for poetry
and then injects the virus straight
into their weight ballooned after triple angels floated care meals

more then ten weighty washing infected poets
source studies showing that drinking their weight
in glucomannan can put the starving high-protein break

begin late at least eat a good slow throught
then spread jazz eat time as much as washington state
first cool eyes has now been detected among the source weight

the mainland as much as the wasteland naked starving and
researchers see a magma coated cardinal first coronavirus
soaring destructive or descriptive at worst infected

this wait trumps an expanding power in the state you’re late
very many of them can install intakes into people who were
flying at half an hour body weight eat most fat of the state

declare a state first
cool cardinal eyes then
and now and again

be shown to be
brooklyn as much
as much as losing

1870

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment
chassepot rifle, 2019

thoughtless deference to free men swimming by
who mostly don’t—though sometimes must—
respect the point of exclamation! / part and not part

[sirens wail] [she moans]
bean can and bottle top; variable dimensions
are we talking about the made-thing or the making-thing
drifts into reverie

bamoun duala ewondo gunpowder
igbo kikongo lingala yoruba sango twi

both; i am the rooftop bar
i am the school of fish
basking on the sidewalk; red neon
no tricks; implicated lion; times square

i needed a title so i stole one
i needed an image so i stole one
i needed a poem so i stole one

words phrases and acronyms
we know ied compression of language
tetric choices lean against acid blonde
miniskirt robed in telephone pole
we imagine dirt lipped centrifuge hands
connected behind cross-shaped crane
scrapes human tissue cloudless sky

Dementia Landscape

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment 
a fire roars 
in foreign white ink a familiar name, no not familiar
a bone-inlaid key paws open the heavy vault door
one green eye one red eye laid over the mountain ascent
three deer-blood lips three fir tongues, teeth
        cast like needles over the valley 
                the temple
                the far-off 
                        glacial scar  
like oxen yolked
their gray pupils pull 
through fragile forests of madness, intensity
at least i think so and that counts for something
no one's mad at me
i'm famous and very rich
and remain lazy with no guilt
upon closer inspection: a mystic
hand-in-paw with a brown dog
9 clay pots, they're dancing
near prayer, spontaneous music of the weald.