He kissed her softly, lightly
a bumblebee's breath
The faint odor of royal jelly
permeated the small corridor
between their lips
He'd eaten another queen
The corridor disappeared
her lips disappeared
it was their last kiss
He'd eaten his first mate
an unusual male kiss of the praying mantis
--Virginia Valentine Coles © May, 2003
Responsibility, wonderful responsibility of poets. In the wall made of cloth, they opened the window Mallarmé dreamed of. With one blow of the fist they pierced the horizon, and there, in midair, an island was discovered. We almost touch this island with the top of our fingers. We may already christen it with the name we please. It is our leading point. That this point, this basket of surprises, of dangers, and of sorrows, is within arm's reach, this is what all those who are frightened by risks and yet tempted by adventures cannot indeed forgive. It is a fact that for two years, the problem of Spirit and Reason, posed more clearly than ever by surrealism, left no one unconcerned who had a taste for matters of intelligence. And even those who are too weak to accept the dangerous freedom they are offered, and who still live on the nice soft jobs of tradition, cannot help preferring among all the present works, those that express most perfectly the necessity of liberation. Without a doubt, a clear good faith and persistence of certain efforts cannot fail to command respect, and faithfulness to the spirit is all the more valuable when it compares with the inconsistency of many who had decided at first to go forward but did not persevere on the roads of boldness; reaching a certain height, but deprived of century-old parapets, they took such a fright that they did not dare to go further or to take more risks. Hence their sly return to accessory questions, to problems of form. They try to cling to secondary branches, to draw arabesques, to forget the essence for the form, to think no longer of the "why" but of the simplest, the easiest "how."
--The above is an excerpt from L'Esprit contre la raison, a short essay written in 1927 by René Crevel, containing many quotes from André Breton's Manifeste, as well as from Aragon's Une Vague de rêve.
PERHAPS
Should I sing a requiem as the trap closes?
Perhaps it is more fitting to shout nonsense.
Should I run into the streets screaming love songs?
Perhaps it is more consistent to honk obscenities.
Should I chew my fingernails down to the wrist?
Perhaps it is better to blow eternal jazz.
Maybe I will fold the wind into neat squares.
--Great American surrealist/spontaneous/beat poet Bob Kaufman, author of the Abomunist Manifesto, submitted by Greg Foster who reports from Ikaria "we have finished the olive harvest and are afloat in olive oil."
The movement of light intervention is upon me
Buddha casts her spider's shadow
blood flows from all exits, to no avail.
Kundalini is in the air; we go to gather wood
but the woodcutter is gone, so instead
we burn our thoughts, we prevail.
--Virginia Valentine Coles © 2001
I discovered Van Gogh
about the time I gave up baseball
in Santa Monica
at a cheap picture-framing shop
with my old man
in back
flipping a stack of prints
while Pop argued over returning a chipped piece of glass
the pain in the paintings hit me like flames
jumped out
a mad man's hundred-year-old livid fury
blasting me between the eyes
scalding my senses
and changing my life
like a first kiss
and today
driving
forty years later
I saw "Irises" again
in a window at a stop signal on Wilshire Boulevard
the light changed and behind me some dickhead began honking like a
fucking maniac
while I sat there wiping tears from my face
for the pure passion
in the vision of
Vincent's eyes
--Dan Fante, A gin-pissing-raw-meat-dual-carburetor-V8-son-of-a-bitch from Los Angeles collected poems 1983-2002, © 2002
To John and Dan Fante:
Stupid and Rocco
two
hound dogs
joined at the heart.
Bitches and bones
and a good slam of morphine
at the end...is all we can
ask of the dust.
--Virginia Valentine Coles © 2003
Avec comme pour langage
Rien qu'un battement aux cieux
Le futur vers se dégage
Du logis très précieux
Aile tout bas la courrière
Cet éventail si c'est lui
le même par qui derriére
toi quelque miroir a lui
Limpide (où va redescendre
Pourchassé en chaque grain
Un peu d'invisible centre
Seule à me rendre chagrin)
Toujours tel il apparaisse
Enre tes mains sans paresse.
--de mademoiselle Mallarmé
Please click on the photo below to reach the poetry site of Séamas Cain, an extraordinary surrealist.
SPRING
Don't bobble the ball she says
the blastula bates its breath
as masses of pink and white
burst under our feet
The lips of love are gules
on a field of sable
the female flesh
is heaps of guineas or teak and
the masculine tartlet
is a gruntful of tusk
Spring! Love blots its pants
and all is testimony
of childhoods to come
Sex without scaffolds?
There's no such thing
Girls bounce - it's procedure
Supine in the buttery
is that it?
Maybe the buzz
is the wrong way 'round
and all the cadets fracture
the flesh upside down, but
all the bouncing is merely perfect
and bounceless buntings are lookless
--G. M. Foster © 2002
RALENTIR TRAVAUX
Slow Under Construction
NOTE: In March, 1930, André Breton, René Char, and Paul Eluard--together in Avignon--wrote these poems in collaboration, attempting to merge their individual personalities into a poetry-in-common. The result is one of the most distinctive books of the surrealist years, not quite like those of any one of its authors working separately. The poems were written rapidly--the whole book in five days--each made of lines by at least two, often all three, of the poets. (Driving through the nearby countryside, the three friends saw the road repair sign that provided the title.)
BRANDING IRON
The glance that will cast about my shoulders
Night's undecipherable net
Will be like a rain in eclipse
Will fall slowly from its solar rim
My arms about its neck
THE USE OF FORCE
Don't shake your hair like that we can't see ourselves
anymore
It's all of a sudden full of workmen
Don't shake your hair like that or else the traveler
north
Disappointed may turn up in the south again
But do learn to curl your hair
for the benefit of stones
ALWAYS THE SAME
People are too brave
Some are under the bed the rest in the wardrobe
And those who have a candle instead of a brain
Do not offend those with frilly hearts
When they say we must make an end
You must realize they mean of fear
All sweetness bravery then blames the other virtues
Calmly ill-temper favors risk corrupts distrust
Society activities
BOUND HAND AND FOOT
If I've trouble following you
I kindle the lips
I enflame the silence
CLOSING TIME
We have retained nothing
Of our lessons on the rut and on splotches
On rhythm and on arithmetic
The resembling pillow
Will play hell of hollowing under our head
We have lost nothing
There's nothing for us to get out of
We let our bangs grow on purpose
We have been nothing
We toted misery's sack of coal
Before the magic lantern
We never woke up
NOTE by Keith Waldrop, Translator. English translation © 1990, EXACT CHANGE, a publishing house dedicated to 20th century experimental literature, especially books associated with Surrealism.
HIIPKRATES 2001
beneath the imbricated gut
the zone below the last rib
under the navel tumulus
slow fires burn
insurgent flush
crest of desire bleeding at the head
lobe of unsleeping coal
a sick heat a red kernel in the livid coils
a lesion a lump a knot
and a flush of red salt and piss
glum surprise at the curve
of the forked stick
rising sign from the sea
new and dismal zodiac
cut quarter of the mood flat
as a raft on the turbulence of foreign voices
flexuous hosepipe leeched to love-flesh
a sac of urine swings at the knee
a new pain an organ note
gives gravity a groaning name
fetal curl cub-like on a cold slab
pierces through the lumbar joint
and only one leg frozen - no it is not painless
the light burns in the lower torso
it's no statue having the lime burned away
more like Cowper's gland on fire
the wound making it's sharp self felt
searing yields to morphine but sleep is a stranger
semi-lunar fold of Douglas pulled and sore
hours surrender to days - catheter is an ugly word
poor fossa navicularis gaped by a plastic tube
hooks drag at the space of Retzius
my body groans at the yellow wall
at the yellow duct pendant to my thigh
at the bag of urine knocking my leg
the continuous ache of the joint
small stabs of flame in the groin
each on it's own candelabrum
burning under a cowl of meat
thin flint spalls caught in muscle
I've known since childhood that death
is already present it's here with me in my skin
this is no superficial consolation
it soothed me then - it soothes me now
--G. M. Foster © July-August 2001
WINTER SOLSTICE
The leaf scraped of energy is veined
to formulate a branch, the seismograph
tuned to waves modeled like a long sigh.
Water, stunned by degrees, stops in its flight,
a cold bird counts three, then fades like a flame:
the charred remains of summer's delayed dead.
The tongue's a rapid leaf, any old man
may mock a chrysalis with butterfly words
until the secret of the rose is out ---
that day the root will vow the sun forgot,
meaning and sound will drug his head like wine
and the dead limb decide for the live bird.
But the season's tongue continues to stop and start,
thawed and frozen, like the cold and hot heart.
--Charles Henri Ford
HUNGER
I only find within my bones
A taste for eating earth and stones.
When I feed, I feed on air,
Rocks and coals and iron ore.
My hunger, turn. Hunger, feed:
A field of bran.
Gather as you can
The bright poison weed.
Eat the rocks a beggar breaks,
The stones of ancient churches' walls,
Pebbles, children of the flood,
Loaves left lying in the mud.
Beneath a bush the wolf will howl,
Spitting bright feathers
From his feast of fowl:
Like him, I devour myself.
--Arthur Rimbaud circa 1871-1873, from A Season In Hell
BLOOD
It is the thickest blood on this planet
The feet, that slip and slide in spilled lakes of black blood
on back roads marked with rusted dead-end signs
They don't fit into any shoes
not Nike's, and not Reebok's, though they
make 'em across the sea and sell 'em to you and me
for fifty times their value "tch" none of them can hold the blood
that coagulated not so long ago, in the lower extremities
of off-color corpses, strung up from trees
like, drying figs or, hanging potpourri,
to sweeten scenes of Southern gallantry
Before cushioned insoles and arch supports
there were feet that sank in rusted chains,
and uhh backs that cracked beneath the weight of slave names
like Jones, Smith, Johnson, Williams, or even Hilfiger...
And black butts that bore marks forever from irons
that preceded those for pressing and curling naps
yanked straight, before relaxers, weaves and pink lotion
Branding irons children, now that you've crossed the ocean right
Step up here lit-tle nigger on the auction block
and open up your mouth
Right, good strong teeth, good muscle tone
you oughta pick a ton of cotton,
must be worth ten dollars maybe more
See here ladies and gentlemen how much can I get
for this here barely used, top of the line...
Fast forward to Calvin Klein
and modern ownership tags for black behinds,
courtesy of Ralph Lauren A.K.A. low, low,
well how low can you go?
Call on black consumers if you want the cash flow
'cause they quick to flip and spend up all they dough
and don't front money, act like you know
We give it up to the Brook-lyn malls
We give it up to the Uptown malls
'cause the white folks figure ain't no questions for a nigga
that material possessions can answer
Keep us preoccupied from what we wear to what we drive
while our mothers are dying of cancer
We tuck our low self esteem in Euro-trash jeans
overpriced shit from Donna Karan
as we toast with Hennesey to covert white supremacy
Hiding the thickest blood on the planet
we wearing it under our clothes,
the way God dressed our souls
but, check how the proud blood flow through 1996
Adding fuel to the flames of some bullshit brand names
'cause we couldn't see past the next pair of fat kicks
It is the thickest blood on this planet
The blood that, sprays and spills in buckets
soaks and stains the nightly news, but fuck it
a colored life still ain't worth but a few ducats
That blood can't be contained by any mind that cannot see a
great black forest for all these cracker trees
I'm talkin' about Afro-Madonna, and child, and child
and child, and child, and whoops, there goes another one
And momma don't know the answer so baby gots to Guess
Oh say young blood, you wanna tell me
what George Marciano, ever did for a negro, a Boricua, chicano
brothers and sisters their pockets like blood blisters
Ready to pop, ooze, and drop cash so hot and so fast
it makes a spark
"Yeah mommy 'cause now I got my upside-down triangle
my designer question mark"
OH WHY ASK WHY that shit don't make you complete
It's vanilla concealer for your chocolate heartbeat
Pumping the, thickest blood on this planet
while we take it for granted that
more Selma churches won't be bombed
more bullet riddled bodies won't be embalmed
Another cop won't, commit murder turn around and get a raise
while we pickin over the racks from white owned Doctor J's
to Modell's, Macy's, and Sak's
Shit they just think we ain't never gon' change our ways
and finally answer back:
"No suh, Ise don't want to wear yo' britches
No suh, Ise don't want to grant yo' wishes
that all us negroes"... shall continue to hide,
in your shoes and your clothes, as if we should take pride
in your savage traditions, in genocide
All the spirits you extinguished and never batted one blue eye
Yet your vulture's on our culture like white on brown rice
Bleach our blood and sell it back, special price
on this blood that races through the African veins of the child
on his way to the mall, in White Plains
to catch a confused, lost, land-stealing Columbus Day sale
on a Fila jogging suit, for his brother in jail
That blood, is your blood, it's my blood, it's our blood
It is the, thickest blood on this planet.
--Sarah Jones from LYRICIST LOUNGE, volume one © 1998 OPEN MIC RECORDS
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