MARCELLUS

1.) Calling all eco-poets! Your help is urgently needed in the Delaware Water Basin. The shale mining operations there that you may or may not know about are kicking into high gear and the world will be changed. The topic may be large enough to reinvent the meaning of language and poetry. We must explore the realities of the practice and the layers of metaphor embodied in those practices. We must explore the interaction of the realities and the metaphors in the mind space of the affected, which in the final sum is anyone who likes to drink water.

2.) This poem is a dim groping at the beginning of an eco-poetics of shale. True to Butchered Switch form, it also manages to shoe horn in some personal metaphysical-style asides. The poem is a combination of works drawing on a poem-picture which is on display at the bottom. Interesting to note the edits which occurred between the two versions. Poem-pictures are like type writer writing, the choices are irrevocable. Further, their meaning is not contained within the words alone but only in the relation of those words to the space of the page and the shape and style and direction in which they are portrayed.

Enjoy you mother fuckers.

Marcellus

I.

A hem.

Don’t let’s

get into SHALE

FRACKING MAD

MAD SEXUAL

demonstration

a.) the mechanism of the state is peopled

by people convinced they are puppets

enacting only a stage rape

b.) the state is both the bodies

of a laid off investment banker

committing suicide to provide

fiscal surety for his children

and those same children

c.) the state is both Abraham and Isaac

without the presence of God

the act completed in silence

d.) giving out heroin to cure depression

below the aquifer

below the beyond

into the light

beyond yourself

or your rights

shooting a gelatin sludge ‘mud’

in mega (three million gallon) wads

repeatedly down the tube

to break up, or ‘frack,’ the shale

rape theater

relies on always bigger paying draws,

more fantastic rapes

a true 'living theater', a 'total rape economy'

Unacknowledged

a process develops

irony

is metaphor

just what is ?-sexual

crazy.

unholy

cynicism of a paper

law.

Such is fracking

II.

See?

The connection of your minds eye to your anus?

Investure.

the beetle,

scratching on the door

that summer or some frantic night description

taking all the time

up, snatch-w/ your hand

drinking the streets

cede their light

fails

so as the dog

for to bark and to leap from the dark

at you,

to you

the city says.

no it doesn’t.

I only thought it for a second

programmed

to call for language

so momentous to have written

Poems on the Nonce

I.

Big pig floats perverse in black space eternally burping

made gassy

by gastronomic cosmogony

of souls

relief

new buddhas break

through rise up

esophagus

become laser focus of

his crossed eyes meeting point

the prayerful triangle of no-space

universe displaced itself

but the wails of souls

keep the cogs of the wheel churning

so that he is laughing and burning

I feel for Big pig

He is the bubble around which no bubble can be drawn

He is the seed of the apocalypse

And ultimately definitely fiction.

II.

Stage of restless précis in streams Wet paper daisy Draw a discharge On a july night To libations And soft croons Floating through No moon

Getting acquainted Getting to know you Feeling Impulse Tiny imp twitching his sack To catch my eye and draw me back

Again This coiling gobbling orgy Attention Full force outlined Feels good Even unknown Also called the booby Trap

Unwind slowly By dripping drop of red dyed water onto scroll of paper

Getting Stronger But existence a positive feed-back loop of self generated delusion then what does strength matter?

Who wants to read Poetry solely composed of typos

Ashy mouthed gobblers Dusty worms and a house In the rainbow matrix Dark angles Molestation Absolution Press the impulse Like the arrow

Bad shit Illusions Apologies to the third world Apologies to the poor Apologies to the zombies Apologies to the legitimately cool Apologies to the rich ticks

Like an arrow from a bow Space of the hole Illusion of the show goes and goes Beyond control A tangled knot to tie your tongue So the words you end rub against the ones which you begun

H A R K

I.

in the phase of shards

I kept thinking of the pictures.

uncle with his motorcycle.

only with the ascendance

of the stage of the nascent circle,

did I realize they were a key.

II.

the door my uncle the key

became: urge to convey

how space impacts

our being as we move through.

most piercing

way to realize

is feeling of being

in a space not clearly demarcated

or very clearly demarcated on which you trespass.

in either case you’ve taken yourself in your own hands.

IV.

the hall is long and dirty green,

buzzes

with electricity, a space that rings:

all that is possible to do

and what all people have done,

evil?

portions

the hall’s walls unfinished,

rough framed two-by-fours.

empty warehouse rooms beyond

Oops, not empty

theres a cot and a kettle.

formerly casual silence deepens.

sound becomes a litmus.

you grow fur and fall down on all fours, sniffing.

suddenly all those funny little doors and hatches

passed on the way into the belly of this building

become hints

of father, darker doors,

like glass,

space reflects

a blurry self

who will not mimic.

V.

an old drunk who fucked up

sitting quiet at the picnic

of sidelong glances.

noone knows anymore

when exactly

he was born.

he doesn’t even know.

he’s just trying to eat his hotdog.

sometime in his teens,

he took his first swig of jim beam.

better than home, an earthquake.

night of flying motorcycles,

all the coolest vampires say

the sky is the straightest high way.

pictures behind pictures behind

A wet road

Vignette of Wyoming

Vignette of

A son a daughter who don't know each other

Standing back to back in the flats

The dust devils stir and flick their straps

The shakes mistake

Disconnected phone for a little peace

And quiet white

Sheet falling down drunk

Out of the chair

Remember better

cool calm drink of a long day picking grapes

*

E X C U R S U S

PT. 1: INPUT

What a fate, to be human.

Forgetful of why we are abashed.

Abashed before experience. Masters of form, with the codes and systems they culled and died for. Carried so long, down to this point, where it all drops in the dust.

This story older than time.

The last band of scientists huddled looking down into the dust where a circle was scrawled. Out of that circle came an image as if the reflection of water. From the other side Pythagoras squats at the dawn of time looking into the faces of these his children…

Beyond earth and its doings, beyond the heavens, beyond the voices of god, there is the god with no voice, this god called emptiness. Not an it, it does not exist.

It neither loves nor hates nor sleeps nor wakes nor moves nor is still. It does not change or remain the same. It is nothing yet is yet is not.

Contradiction no longer two terms canceling each other.

They are not accurate, yet there they are. Inside me and of me. If the desire to know the self cannot accept contradiction, it will only lead the seeker to replicate this distance.

I cannot know my mind the more I try.

This condition of writing. Urge to do what cannot be.

Jack Spicer said, writers all try to write the word which cannot be written.

Warming our hands over a sputtering fire for a while in the dark.

There is or is not a solid ground beyond our ability to postulate?

But that there can be the fire, that there can be the world, even if only dreamt

Not an answer but reason enough. Anyway it’s already moving.

Perfect mystery, tautology.

Pt 2: Output

dead before born. no matter what
sin pure. desire
but peace.
be forgiven. forgive.
encompass the world.
you who is me.
we who are we.
take it all.
strip it down,
feel penance
a celebration.
disproportionate
Symmetry

Serial Poem Part 3.1

Motion and Stillness

it all boils down. what are the bones. hurt and home and time. movement. the idea moving past you and inside you. then you are alone. then you cannot sleep. you want to be famous, but why. you want to die. be honest you little shit.

V.

We vultures.

We keep circling

presence of fog, in a boat,

each time we land

the lake swivels

we are on the other side again.

waiting game

graphed into wave form

undulating

laser slicing face out of a block

of butter.

VI.

The whistle sounds.

2 orderly lines

form unbroken

forever

blurry in a vast white.

somehow more white in the middle,

the white’s white anus

bursts to birth the black stitching.

VII.

pray

don’t throw a helpless whelp out on his ear

if you’ve work to do just point it out

we’ll be glad to help and if you want to pay

us for it

we’ll gladly accept your kindness.

Remember that

and the bar,

old drunk Galen in his cups,

“everything runs better with grease.”

But I, in my cups, thought he said geese.

I sneezed

imagining them

propping me up,

shouldering my weight,

tucking me in, companions

forever.

They work lard into their feathers,

get limber for the dance

dance around the stone,

wafting smoke of their last doober,

this is the night of prophesy.

cosmic goose shaman descends

honking whisper

the secret to me,

“put it all on the line with a shrug,

roost and eat bugs.”

Serial Poem Part 2.1

Psycho-Geography

IV.

the house rests
on the tip top of pointed mountain
our flurried doings balance the weight,
though we do spin and sway.

this world must be a dream.

Down in the little town
James Bond sprays machine gun fire
from a helicopter
and it is Easter and the plastic eggs
birth
money
crass
fantasy liquor
lady
got sweet
on my best friends
possessed them
they find me
as I walk to work,
pull up in a big rig
“get in”
“this is the 2nd time we’re going to the state store today.”

That’s how the summer descends
into your junk,
and your preening
foot slams
the gas the car blares
punk muzak in the traffic jam.

The jumble is consciousness
irony the output
the right questions decode
the VIP booth
an angel
unveils
gratis Vodka.
But to know her mind
will cost you
a cup of coffee
drunk slow, post-shift
conversing
in the just dawn
on a bench by some swirling river.