In Paris on late Sunday afternoons
the boulevardes were usually deserted.
All the mannequins in the coiffeuses stores
stared out at all the people not passing.
(written 2007; in memoriam, Paris, Nov. 2015)
Posted in poetry on November 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In Paris on late Sunday afternoons
the boulevardes were usually deserted.
All the mannequins in the coiffeuses stores
stared out at all the people not passing.
(written 2007; in memoriam, Paris, Nov. 2015)
Posted in poetry on November 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »
L.A. holds out to me the long & needy arms of her freeway platitudes
a toothless girl called Sal with a spiel well-rehearsed who says
I know where you got the shoes yr standin’ in
There’s no way she does though I
hand over loose change before she’s had a chance to tell –
there’s a winter sun on Venice Beach
salvation on Desolation Row
city-ouskirts somewhere in sepia-tone
old shanty places held up by a few old Joes
refugees from the American 20th Century
drinkers junkies hobble-leg artefacts of
edge-of-the-world retro-romanced
comfort in the end-of-things
cigarettes at the gas station forty years unchanged
Edward Hopper coolscapes Sinatra clones smoking on
midday-sun corners street whores
no customers no men with any sex in them –
we walk the crackt streets of l’America
dusty diesel-choked at sundown
chasing a bleak deliverance dull mercury in the veins
those grey realms where old music comes thru the floorboards
chains rattling on the barn doors snakes in the toilet
scorpions in the light-globes shattered places
fracture-lines spelling downhome incantations on the peeling walls
love-wails across eerie fields of animals, feral folk, accordions
Uncle’s old Madam who smiles from the hallway
wartime radios signaling hatchet news –
in the catalogue of infamy she’s not quite null & void
watches daytime TV – b&w – with the sound turned down
between the starched white-collar sprawls of protestant dementia
and regions of true bygones where everything that lives
on the yellow-brick road never quite leaves it
where time comes out of nowhere and goes back into nowhere
and you have to toss to work out
which side is heaven which side hell
both as true Panavision as the other
ghost-town of entropy
still-life set in sepia and acetic acid
spangled brigantine in an opaque pyrex womb
that’s weather’d the storms of a hundred years but
never fades in its shoddy cocoon
homunculus of quiet doom
still blind and grasping in the amniotic fluids
a graffiti Bastille a sin-bin
not quite a decent gulag
where the fast-food joints & used-car yards
shoppingmallsshoppingmallsshoppingmalls
boardwalks littered with stale porn and
the invalid I.D. papers of missing persons –
metabolise this world disintegrating behind
steel-chrome scaffolds of righteous intention
imp-recidivist George W. Bush with his
chipmunk-voice men in jogging gear
feinting calypso of the hidden men
and Afghan sequestering in Guantanamo Bay
play no-rhythm maracas to the
Nostradamus roulette of happenstance
not seeing what I see though we see the same things
subjective fallacy flying through
uranium-yellow advertisements for postmodern subversion –
the ceiling-fan repeats the same refrain
shadows cast in different keys on the wall
victim of subterfuge
Monctezuma’s hoedown on the grand-slam speed-circuit
bats flying through haloes of halogen lights
millennial cheering stadiums erupting in
clinical bathroom interiors
a single Coke bottle that’s been rolling relentlessly along
the curbs of your mind since one grainy afternoon of the year 1933 –
Sal don’t live here anymore
Sal don’t live nowhere
she’s homeless
she gone walkabout
seeking the sacred edge
she got Oprah on the brain
morphology in the hand
a boyfriend who’s gone to handgun heaven
she brews a good short crucible in the Lackawanna Café
plays pool with the hired hands from the badlands
hitches horses to the Hogshead Tavern
ethanol vapours subduing redneck disputes in gulch of rusted sorrows
Rita Hayworth & exercise videos & heroin wars vying attention
for the bride-in-black and white-collar users of
convenience stores and $5 peepshows –
Sal don’t live here anymore
how many times do they tell us
megaphone fantasists broadcasting vice & ruin to the Mormon enclaves
exhausted in the sitcom afterglows of her opiate afternoons
hung-drawn-‘n-quarter’d by the jump-cut transformations of
security forces goose-stepping silent by the book
jut-jutting from Vietnam-Gulf War apocalyptic
Jesus-repairmen airing the bloody sheets of resurrected pain
wonder of wonders you’ve come to us again
second visitation of the forsaken man
sexed-up with hellsbane and gold
o beg in the palm of Mammon’s gain
swallow the shame of stockmarket billions
under the hallowed MacDonald grin
sulphur kissing the drain –
Sal doesn’t have anything to say
advertising poisons broken her tongue
stolen her feeble thunder
slipping down century’s edge
wet shoes hanging to her feet
her eyes industrial in the gloom
heaven-sent to serve how many years in the zone of pink neon
mannikin-escapades beckoning pendulous memories
in little-girl afternoons
but she doesn’t lack for anything in the Lackawanna Café
buffalo and incubi hanging off the wall
the death’s-head that stares in on the portals of forgetting
there’s no seaside in her little conch shell
only a string of fake pearls tinny jukebox songs
hypodermics of innuendo married to the talk-show mind
terrible frauds of lacklustre 4th-dimensional TV jamborees
hootenannies of the jawbone
jew-harp prodigies mouthing stand-up prophecies at
strung-out lights of the L.A. day –
there’s a mix-up on the media
scratching antenna waves and shadows that shout
secret codes of liminal delight
whole flocks of surrenders
bodybuilders Rastafaris heliotropes
leather daydreams Day-Glo diversions
chewing-gum sonorities
hailscapes
Billy the Kid reconstructions
& eternally the shopping malls
Honey, you got them shoes yr standin’ in right on Venice Beach, doncha know?
Sepia. Tones. Radio static in the gut.
But I can’t remember the last rites.
Star-spangled chatechisms absurd.
Tell them for me
could you.
(California, 2002)
Posted in poetry on November 4, 2015| Leave a Comment »
(in print in Australian Poetry Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2015; online at http://apj.australianpoetry.org/issues/apj-5-2/poem-Laccadive-Sea-by-Martin-Kovan/)
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