post the launch

Had a very interesting time experiencing the 60+ crowd that showed up for the new gallery launch, and getting a feel for the whole process, as bizarre, in its own way, as any other process; though, perhaps you expect (unfairly?) a little more from an institution that is involved in something called 'art'.

Plenty of characters and strange hangers-on - myself included. Have quite a bit of work happening based upon it - and related issues - the following two pieces are the closest to being viewable in their formative state.

art aureaucrat

A man who'se after his own heart
he waits for lecturing to start.
Grey dreadlocks, muted greens and browns:
artistic chic on him abounds:
The primitive, the tribal look:
an iphone under fingers put.

(Technology's an open book.)

In gallery he has a stage.
The people the unwilling page
To take direction from his mouth,
like birds delayed in heading south
We learn what's now, what's then, what's best
He is the proof: no more, no less.

(The question is the answer, yes?)

But wait a while upon his words
See how they form, see how they herd,
Particu'ly from he enthralled
Who—piss so high against the wall—
then points and shouts and says: 'Hey! See!
My culture's best, so says me!'

(But always, wind-assisted, he.)


poet in the house

Rouse! Rouse!
indigenous mouse
there be a poet,
in the house

There a panic
(a naughty word)
what might he say?
what have they heard?

look, he's gotta haiku
look, he's got a pen
I'm sure I saw a villanelle.
was that a sonnet, then?

So,
I called
my local politician
but she was out of the office
at the moment.
the last they'd heard from her
she'd fallen down a bottomless hole to everywhere
in the middle of a topless building estate centre-left to nowhere
and they couldn't find the right form
anyway.

could I call back?

I called my lawyer
and got his voicemail from Tahiti.
it made my ear wet
and my mouth dry

I called the police
they told me it was a domestic dispute
so fffffffffffffffffffffuck off

I called my therapist
and she said it was all in my head
take those skittles I gave you last year
NOT THE RED ONES
lie down, think of the impermanence of the soul
then dance on the head of a needle full of smack
I hung up and ignored her completely.

though that didn't work either.

I called the television station
and I was put on hold for exactly the next three eternities and three quarters
I missed the next evolutionary leap
the return of Christ
and over four million new iThings
though I did learn all about the coming summer line up
from a woman's voice who sounded like a porn star's real lesbian-lover
good news: I enjoy sitcoms

I called an exterminator
and he came for a call-out fee of $666
(including goods and services tax)
but all of his chemicals dried up
each time he crossed the threshold

he bought a sandwich and left

I spat in it

I called the local mafia
but they were scared of giving the game away
besides, they were to busy watching Sopranos
(reruns coming this summer)

then I called the poetry council
and BANG they shot him dead
since that worked better on stage
and, they told me—tapping their nose
to show their fearlessness in the face of cliché—
for the aesthetic energy of its
narrative denouement

and with his dying words, the poet was
forced to agree

with both them,
and me.

we got the bastard just in time
before he played around with theme,
shifted open verse to rhyme
and really truly fucked our scene

but he's still in the house,
indigenous mouse,
how do I get him
Rouse? Rouse? Rouse?