another poem
Current mood: angsty

sunday afternoon in a sandusky ice cream shop


i stand outside of
myself shaking in the
summer sun there are
things yet to do

moments left to pause
and think about
how if i was
frank o'hara this would
be the exact right
moment in my life to write a
list poem except i'm
not and i can't
ever seem to remember
an exact right time
for anything

so i think about
the old man who was
evicted from my apartment
building on 12th & spruce
after 38yrs to make
way for college students like me

i remember how he
liked to wear a
polyester jacket every day
no matter how hot
it got to be
outside and how the
last time i saw him
he seemed to be riding an
elevator with no real destination

i wear jackets too
made from leather
made from cotton
made from words & flesh
hung together with boyhood dreams
of suicide as if they
were a second skin
but i'm not the
red baron these hands
are not a sanctuary
and i can't really
say what direction our
dreams might take so
play it as it lays

i stand there thinking
about how melted ice cream
is a good representation
of our potential and how
that old man once
called me a spider
twice removed from miracles and how
this is as good
a time as any
to tell you that
it is august and
that my hands shaking

i want to make
a list of flesh & blood & poems

i want to throw
scrapes of this moment
to the wolves in heaven

hungry for words

whatever their final destination


John Dorsey

6:20 PM - 9 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

poem
Current mood: angsty

love in a language of howling dogs


i have learned to
communicate with bombs
a language of howling dogs

to bark at the
dead that which is
truly human

they say love can
be as terminal as death
if you do it right

do you sing in
the meteor shower?
i'd like to think
that is a hypothetical question

i'd like to know
that love has the
hypothetical answers

instead i name hurricanes
after ex-lovers but what
am i going to do about you?

love like a paper
heart painted on the
side of a barn
in rural ohio promises
washed away by the sun

there are stencils all
around this city stars
painted on the tongues
of howling dogs i
touch their secrets to
my tongue put up
wanted posters looking for
love but i am here
you are there
and
death is only a river away

our love doesn't understand
that it is a howling animal

it only knows that here
the dead speak
in a language
of meaningless constellations


John Dorsey

6:18 PM - 9 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

poem
Current mood: awake

untitled poem in two parts

i.

it is 3:39am
the time of night
when you start to
wonder if fire ants
suffer from hot flashes

someone has left the
faucet running again overflowing
with words like ghosts or seashells
with shotguns held up
to your ear while
listening to nirvana hum
don't make waves

ii.

it is 4:08am
the time of night
when even drops of water
sweat the courage of
their convictions like ike turner
out for a moonlit
stroll before being seated
in front of heaven's
angry parole board

and i remember only this:

the first time
i got hauled in
for questioning your love

they pasted a poem
inside my rib cage

and made me watch
it fly away

soft
like a love letter
barely held together
by the dust of
angels bones

John Dorsey

8:57 AM - 18 Comments - 40 Kudos - Add Comment

another love poem

the dance hall romance of the apocalypse


one day they will
examine our love
as if it were
a dance step
that never really caught on

& sigh captains
of our own particular disaster

our kiss will become
as sacred as the
sonnet a ballad hummed
on the east river
of hell where miracles
are easily forgotten

pawned off on dreams
that never really got
out much

they'll say we were
beautiful in moonlight

praying to godzilla on
bended knee

John Dorsey

1:28 AM - 12 Comments - 26 Kudos - Add Comment

new poem

no help wanted
for jessica

i want to write
a confession along the
coastlines of your
lips tapping my fingers
against the wind every
morning jesse james becomes
a dove inside my skin

no help wanted i
hold in a tired
breath you write a
sonnet become a love
poem every day you
tell me just breathe
signs are everywhere smiling
wide war can turn
grown men into beauty
queens there are flowers
only death can smell
here we plant seeds
of love in red earth
the poet's blood painted
on rocks printer's ink
is a pleasant memory

i wear jack gilbert's
tired gloves my heart
covers the sun it
is a puzzle i
can feel you gently
warming up to

John Dorsey

7:37 PM - 22 Comments - 42 Kudos - Add Comment

A Poem by my friend Yama Lake
Current mood: warm

Was touched to get this in my e-mail earlier tonight, thought i would share it.

for j.dorsey

sweet nectar of chaos
bit into like a hungry snail
crawling in the dirt around an infinity track
eating the grass
try not to get mugged, rolled over, or crushed/
spiral-shelled by larger feet
there is a cosmic runner around our heads
whose footprints leave poems in our hearts
leaves of poems in our eyes that blind
the snails
who eat the grass around this track you run
where
you are in kansas
eating poems for midnight break-
fast?
& by that i
mean to say
on the other side of the earth i saw you write a poem about midnight
& it fell upon me
like the sound of your voice were something real
touching
& teaching
the other side of the world to be
a poet
by reading midnight poems
sounded on light beams of infinite
dude, until
i cdn't help but listen
silent
& catchy jingles
you midnighted
my way you
always
so good at sharing

-Yama Lake

8:35 PM - 8 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

REVIEW OF S.A. GRIFFIN’S NUMBSKULL SUTRA BY FRANK WALSH
Current mood: awake

FIRST PUBLISHED IN ZEN BABY-


S.A. Griffin. Numbskull Sutra, Rank Stranger Press; Mount Olive, North Carolina

300pp. Folio soft cover, perfect-bound. John Dorsey and David Smith, eds.

w/ intro. by Carter Monroe; preface by SA Griffin. 25.00 US

First things first, one was numbstruck by the chance to discover thumbing through the SUTRA the marvelous eye, nose, and throat candy-- and brain candy besides-- of the multifarious flier and poster art duplicated -- and broadsides too and pics-- throughout that advertised and promoted the readings/spoken word events that SA featured in or was associated nearly with and the places and span and scope these public notices embrace.

Public and invitational recitals mounted by SA Griffin over the years especially that still and will in the far flung future matter to fans and followers.

This book representing now twenty- five years of poetry lived and shared , a legacy and vasty missive not about just so much entertainment and expressive relief-- affects consigned by the surface dwelling middle management to the shallows -- but always and ever more a rough housing of truth and beauty and everyday relevance and redemption through Poetry, while the state of poetry in America may at the same time become clogged and choked with imitators mouthing and bad mouthing the very outwards and outlaw idols being imitated. Still here we have it the illumination of the progenitor going about his working and breaking off pieces to sustain us on our way no matter what in the fall and spring of American. If we are poets deep rooted and down and dirty scrappers with a dog patch shanty in our cosmic-politan harks. Is LA a shanty, for better or for not why not if the words turned such raise the image in the poets eyes all the better to see to the play and the measure of the great city's parlance. This exactly where SA Griffin stands in mastery of himself and his shadow as the super-beatified bearer of the true news.

Many in the compendium of the NUMBSKULL SUTRA is there an instant where the poems in themselves may not "cross the line" going gone beyond words to a definite savor or a hard stark ambience forebodes the readers and listeners own recollection but it is the line and his facility and welding and wielding the line where SA's genius resides, genuinely necessary where they go and into and score the page even when those lines are single words especial in compact concise likewise measured stanzaic thought/breath units as one who knows as one must also be reading as if carried along rapids and white water of a current with an unopposed heart. At the same instant in time "reading" and "listening" to the spaces and silences of the white page that caps these necessary lines and their attending measures.

That is to get Griffin's drift and experience the poetry as one's own life is experienced as he does equally but uniquely. To the extent not just as a remembrance you are left with but as a pleasure that leads you to another fully engaged in life experience. In the meantime there's another great poem to get with and plenty available in this husky big-hearted book. Valid even when you may imagine in that moment that you're on the verge of a west Hollywood intersection left holding the bag but when you open that bag there is THE present. SA Griffin's soul is bigger than life totally with it and with the reader besides. So then like Bukowski or Micheline on his best behavior so is it with Griffin immersed in soundly in the significant rush of American poetry/spoken word toward not so much simplicity for no proscribed purpose is hereabouts but mystical directness like with d. a. levy and the opening jaw and the unfolding hand. Like Bobby Kauffman too.

All is not lost on the pursuit of us, nor on the others', no matter what sorry ass state of affairs or crisis even poverty and metaphysical despair, SA Griffin provides for. His poems his raves operate as universal handles on reality. Political and beautiful, since beauty which is just integrity across the board no difference how ugly or "common", is the most political thing of all.

While politics is personal when looked at in a practical way, unobstructed from relationship makes the whole concept and utility of politics moot and ridiculous. "Weapons Of Mass Destruction" , p. 29; the short and sweet, "Legacy to the poor of LA", p. 47. ;"I Choose Not To Believe In War Holy Or Not", [ on a billboard at Hillhurst Ave., a photo of which is in the book] p.85; "American Poem", pp. 198-200, all bear this out. Humor and the pleasure of swinging surrealism are infinitely more where it's at for Griffin.

For example, "Kisses In The Wind", p.224 is endowed with the Taoist crazy wisdom regarding the common and the profane and therefore sacred in turn when read silently or out loud to ourselves that becomes clear and present and recollects love as the first cause a if we needed one.

But there is more here in NUMBSKULL SUTRA almost more than can be dreamed of, so at 25 bucks this book is worth more than a barrel of diesel.

10:34 AM - 7 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

poem for juice
Current mood: amused

reborn on the 4th of july
for jason "juice" hardung


i think people tend
to forget that poets
can be assholes   i look
at myself in the
mirror more often than i
probably should it isn't
for the reasons you'd think

i'm over 30 underemployed
over educated and over weight
with a face only
a mother could love as
long as we're only
talking theoretically

but hey it's ok
because i write poems
every once in a
while because my eyes
sometimes sparkle brighter than
costume jewelery in an
off-broadway production of
joe orton's "loot" because i
look up and know
how the stars feel

i think people tend to
look at me in
black and white because
i was born with
high hopes and dashiell hammett's
wandering cheekbones i think
people tend to think
that if it rained
pennies from heaven
that i wouldn't steal
them from jerry's kids
and go strait to
a coinstar machine in
the middle of the
night and trade them
for more angry passionate
words but i would

because when i was
a kid i collected
memories like most people
collect buffalo nickels because
i've never been able
to take the suffering
of others at face value

i think most people
forget that i was
raised on the hopes
and dreams and words
of underground literary lions
that "bookwhore" doesn't have
to be a dirty word
that sometimes i
like to pass the
time watching heroes i
once called brother plant sunflowers
shaped like ghosts in
front of my grandmother's
house and that i don't
have to celebrate my
independence to know what
it means to be free

John Dorsey

7:16 PM - 24 Comments - 44 Kudos - Add Comment

Learning To Swim Through A River of Shit Released
Current mood: amused

The fine folks at Zygote in My Coffee have just released 2 in their 69 Flipbook Series, which pairs my chapbook LEARNING TO SWIM THROUGH A RIVER OF SHIT with Lisa LaTourette's THE ART OF BEING A QUITTER, the book is 62pgs. perfect bound trade paperback and is available at the www.zygoteinmycoffee.com bookstore for only $6.

A number of copies have already sold at both the CT Beat Poetry Festival and The Kansas City Feedbag sponsored by Offbeat Pulp and Killpoet Press. Pick yours up today.

8:07 AM - 5 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Another Poem
Current mood: amused

ct pool hall sidewalk poem


it is raining
i think to myself
we are all beautiful skeletons

i listen from far
away as shadows bottle
redemption along the mississippi river

where we are has
very little to do with geography

there is a thin line
between an erection
and death
or true love, in any case
i grab hold of your hand

the thin man waits
outside slurping the
ancient remains of a
milkshake he examines
a toothbrush in the
sunlight but it is
still raining there is
a stencil of a
decoder ring positioned near
the bus stop
signed property of captain courage
i wash away your lips

John Dorsey

5:03 AM - 19 Comments - 36 Kudos - Add Comment