Three Sound Poems by John & John

[n.b. my "Clips of Desire" were to have begun running here today but they are not ready. Here are three poems for a single day to honor the contract (it is still Wednesday) until my clips get clipped]

Ductless Dual Organ Delivery

Other Living Machines

The Time That Expatiates

Combine No.3, rip it open and eat the flesh

Nicotine Suite (No.20)

the stain at the base of the skyscraper
as object lesson. spoiler alert:
the master gets screwed. whatever
it is you are trying to say, Hegel has
already had something to say about it.
I'm late for the exculpation, gotta hock my
wariness and get game-faced. will
round two be a repeat of round one?
Caffeinated Leisure Magazine has
roadkill on the cover and a centerfold
diagram for all the laundry you've
been avoiding. I say "you" see, then
I say "we" see, then you vote for me
but I lose anyway when it is found out
that I read a book that time.

Nicotine Suite (No.19)

next to me a life is being planned
 "...& work for a really cool company
  and have a great house and car
  and be able to travel and have
  lots of vacation time and…"
there is a hole in my pocket
that can't be taken seriously.
somehow tweak your truths
seems to be the moral, color
me untimely, stay outside the lines
but the threat is from above.
core muscles are to prepositions
usage as what is to an oven
where all the burners are slanty
and even the racks inside?
  you're into abstract huh? is
still making me smile.

Nicotine Suite (No.18)

every head is a thoroughfare
or at least a 4 way stop. my
machinery noise period, and yeah
that one that dropped, not much
happening to sustain the connotations
of "break-out session" though when
the young and innocent say "trippy
  as fuck" maybe things are not
a total loss. should have bought
some bottled air and a packet of
silence, but there isn't time, the lights
have dimmed metaphor and the
podium is heated for the massacre.
is it a literary allusion if no one
knows the referent? Bowie's "maybe
  I am from outer space" period with
Alabama plates & alligator jerky.

Nicotine Suite (No.17)

abecdarians chap my ass
with their x's, and their j's
so often 'just'. just cuz
they're rude don't mean
I gotta like them. but
they tell you true, gotta
give em that. take the possum
on the fence last night
when I went over. no need
to worry, I'm not chasing.
what, bug catcher are ya?
leftovers, scavenge. and that
skinny tree is getting you
nowhere, but kept slowly
up up away up maybe annoyed.
ah nature, I feel at one with you
in metaphor, like when jeans
were so tight they had to be
zipped with pliers. guess
I'm the plier now.

Nicotine Suite (No.16)

with the glasses, I thought
blind, but maybe sonar?
all hail the worst rationale
and control maintenance
or they question "loyalty"
insinuate pink shirts, my
Hello Kitty galoshes. how
would you explain this to
a five year old? ass with
nose to follow. "I can die
  if I want, that's just the way
  it is around here." video
game as life coach. someday
I want to see a Richard Foreman
play before I die
but so far, no luck.

Nicotine Suite (No.15)

stalled opening stilled craving.
someone said only Brigit Bardot
  should be allowed books 
  that extend over the knee. or
it may have been boots, my memory
is textual and slips in those
wet leaves where you are falling
awake again due to the twitch.
the theft of a theft is a T square,
but the cheat of a cheat is justice.
I don't pretend to understand
but the only words I have, set me
up to take the fall for doing so.
The Bell is a Cup until it is Struck
is my favorite title but not my favorite
album. Where was I in the life
in question, did I have motive, means…?

Nicotine Suite (No.14)

stood too close to the sun
too long an eternity a year
maybe two, now can't tell
what, if it's just a candle
up there behind a cloud,
the light is flakey, these
hands in the fire still cold,
guess too, a bit blinded
selectively, gray tincture
of light always now, head
stuffed with meat, filler, but
a felt echo in the column, a wet
tearing emptiness to drop a pebble
into hours and weeks and
waiting waits for
abyss' answer

Nicotine Suite (No.13)

baby's in the blanket
but not with me, dreams
I cannot sign for. the
squawks got up, a while
was a bus. hoses
snare the head, muscle
opens tank, scrawls
'wash me' on memories
no one put there. where
there's a want, a smoothie
stand is sure to follow.
Not me though man, crying
  fuck when the bag dumps
I got an hour of overdue
teasing vinegar still
from the plains east of here
a rat without predators
a bar fight set to summer of love.

Nicotine Suite (No.12)

there is a secret in this poem
that one of the other poems
can reveal. when we're done
you will know. I remember reading
Wier & Pouce, I remember reading
somewhere that they have
these fast replicating organisms
that generate the changes
in airline flight prices, and they're
very reactive to everything -
aftershave, barometric pressure,
unconscious guilt - and nobody knows
shit about them, they just pour another one
in when the last one's dead. soon
there's gonna be a popularity contest
and the prize is that I get to be
miles away   watching a column
of smoke clear the tree line.
I can't compass the epic on a break
it's like an unfinished basement
mooch mouth on stutter eyes like
18 hours of stream television
I didn't watch.

Nicotine Suite (No.11)

there is nothing outside the library
just me, and some pedestrians,
birds and cars and the surprise of
sunshine. where step on a crack
means eight books in the backpack.
the fuse in front of that point where
apology will not even be heard -
how short is yours? does anger not
burn down with time's slide, or, hello
  my friends, Ms. Rock meet Mr. Hard Place.
beauty, is it cheap? if I was a foot taller
I think I'd be a foot dumber. all this
channelling of grump. overheard:
 "so I go, then this charge at the porn
  store has nothing to do with you and
  he goes rar rar rar." minutes
caught in amber, not amber, coal.

Nicotine Suite (No.10)

poetry'd broken reader assists. when
passing over into revery
check for the nightlight, it might
appreciate it. label the envelop
you keep your secrets in something
uninteresting, 'auto parts' is good,
then slip it under the ice tray
in case there's a fire. my mind
went blank there for a moment
all I could think was this mechanical hum.
drum fingers on brick. place can
against forehead for contrast.
this poet came up and asked if I was
and what I thought of this of that,
waiting, as it turns out, to get pissed
that I think what I think. this is a
non-paying job with questionable
bennies. watched the remake,
Let Me In - not bad, I feared the worst.
I'm too tired for poetry right now.

Nicotine Suite (No.9)

a bagpipe masterpiece
on a post-it
brought me to my knees
a man walking by says
  what are you looking for in that pile of excrement? 
I stop and swipe sweat with a sleeve
say, something I lost. you lost it there?
he says smirk like a billboard.
this jumping-out startle, not to feel it
but recall, third fly on empty wall
that little tongue to wire from it.
no I say I don't know where I lost it
I've never been here before.
all the circuits in the building, that
stage, cauldrons cold for the kitsch.
  then why here of all places? he says.
just playing the odds, I say
but he'd walked away.

Nicotine Suite (No.8)

get a gut, but why so real
"dirention" or something
butt eye cant
sowoent. a life-sized apology
praising a table with its surface missing
then sitting surface missing
paired on a mauve propadeutic
like glass mats to wipe
your afterthoughts on. mauly-entendre.
insert title. I'm just a little
monophon, short and stout
can't point at it, like with the surface missing
harms held suspended
ankle wrinkles in sport sandals over socks
document the tines of an
orchid stitched to a hard thing
a paving stone maybe
"undercome" it reads

{Speculative Poetics Series No.2}

Spark in process, in object  ~ at The Price of Fixity

{Speculative Poetics Series No.1}

at The Price of Fixity... (jlo's blog):
 The Spark {Speculative Poetics Series No.1}

*<> *

Nicotine Suite (No.7)

not present but counted, think of it
like the cheese left out, the slight
greasiness of the bag, overnight
stays with distant relatives, polite
down-looking while they say a prayer.
it's all last minute, a fact even if
the creationists are right - 7 days
for a world, no wonder it is full
of procrastinators. the silence
on the line feels live, contrast to
the deadness of so many eyes
"welcome to _[blank]_" unblinking
but narcoleptic pro forma and
salaciously bitter dregs. did I
find everything all right? the philosophical
dimensions of the question stop me cold.

Nicotine Suite (No.6)

tweet tweet says the sheep and I know
something of what he means, enough
to kill the lights on the monolith. there is
a welt on my back, where the master's
whip made a world and it's going through
rapid and brutal industrialization, hence
the rust stains, my bed's a wreck. I only see
it mirrored, inverted, hence uncertainty
about the flags and newscasts. if the
spirit is a bone, but it isn't is it… too much
junk mail for the finer tuning, well
look who's transcended trash taking out
and look who's learnt the crawl. thin
coffee and space exploration but my bed-time
reading haunts the snooze interlude
between alarms. some monstrous baby-thing
screaming put up or shut up like a fife playing
drill sargeant and no, but if you hum
a few bars I'll see if it all comes back
to me, like the life I lost for witness
protection, like my number back in '83.

Nicotine Suite (No.5)

there is drip, miles of the sound of it, wet
like the noise of every book in the library
being silently read as viscous rain
bouncing from the umbrella of
what we thought we knew all too well.
baby at mother's breast
where mother is monster shrieking the
whole time with breath of Kali. I am
wordless, this is not me, I and not-I
passing in the courtyard, not-I failing
to notice, with breath like honey'd gasoline
and I with a tongue of ash
ever parenthetical.