Kora & Roan © copyright 2004 by Larry Bierman & beggarbooks.com Norman, Oklahoma ~iii~ We are out of context, i.e. we are all out of context. I use the word extext because even normal words have double meanings. If context is a place then that place has been taken by some other reality, or some neo-reality, a quasiality – as in “each event has it's own.” Each object/action must be taken on its own. Any definitions become counter intuitive. Whatever is can never be in that the process of becoming has already occurred. Change is only necessary when totals do not come out as whole dollars. The poems are chosen, though the process is more synchronistic and anomalous than purposeful or constructed. Whatever structure may have been applied is as a result of force of habit; this is, one of many chapbooks I have produced. There is no unity of mind. There is only a fraction. Our psyche is divided into mind units. Replay is self-awareness – this has been demonstrated. Action and repetition create a contextual illusion. Any performance of this work, even a casual reading, makes a set. This is not context. It is overlaid image. Much as an actor performs in front of a “blue screen” so that whatever background can be applied later, these poems stand against the white noise which is the essence of contemporary life. Larry Bierman Norman, OK Wednesday, August 11, 2004 ~iv~ That we are alive. That we convince ourselves. That time passes. That we are connected. That no two people. That people know too. That life lasts. That lasting lingers. That lingering has consequences. That consequences must be paid. That situations evolve. That circumstances spin. That no good will come. That life is good. That ends have means. That moments mean more. That connections fray. That people regardless. That we near. Theology Here we begin to outline what might be the appropriate contents of a human mind. Bliss has been this: zero, unencumbered emptiness, an ego with nothing to confess. ~page 1~ Killer Good Looks Kora has been alive long enough to have friends who died years ago and to have friends who are murderers; who are still in jail for killing friends, who have been dead for years now. It is with some reluctance that she introduces one acquaintance to another. They shake hands and start shooting. Your Mode Delete the sundown. Put an owl on the handle. Wobble down the walk. Let the night freeze tight. A girl's mind is so nice. No pockets in her outfit. Intramurals keep us dry, the Spanish intramurals. No way till summer heats. Flowers seed themselves. Gavottes sting the radio. Bees break against glass. People yell to thank you. Malicious possibilities lurk. A big moon blinks on hold. ~page 2~ Celebrations Throw Kora a party. She needs a grudge. Diva Date Mambo was folding plastic sacks and Roan thought it was raining. It rained and he thought she was running her bath. She was talking on the phone but he thought the TV was on. Her door was closed so Roan imagined no one was home. The postman came late and so didn't bring the mail. Mambo put away groceries and ordered herself a pizza. Where did she put the check if she didn't pay the bills? As the night progressed he accomplished less and less. ~page 3~ Rhetorical Questions #1 What is he thinking? Was there an idea? Who had this thought? Can we see now? When was it important? Could it have been? Rhetorical Questions #2 What? What? Clouds Fade as Only They When Kora died the mirror came alive. Clouds rolled across the otherwise sky. Pages in the windows curled in unison. Something like shadows from Venetian blinds, Kora lived her life reading between lines. ~page 4~ Accounts We have no lack of lack. We have all the need we need. Surplus is in demand. It may be more than enough. It's less than we can stand. Starve the stricken. Feed the fat. Shortage is in ample supply. Communicate the breakdown. On second thought, don't. You're deluded if you think. You're screwed if you can't. Do you really value anything? Then put a price on it. See if it sells. Fine print guarantees. Action “It's time for our 3:00 p.m. improvement,” Mambo says and pours iced tea down her leg. It's a big spoon day in Mambo Land. Give that baby its thang and play the armpit band. ~page 5~ Mambo was Humongous Mambo wrote a big black hymn to the lemmings among us. “Glory to the end of numbers!” She was so double-jointed she could stick her little finger in her ear and pick her nose. This morning making biscuits she was dancing on the flour, She was rolling in the dough. Her toes are powdered white. Her arms are soft as bread. If no one smells the bacon then Mambo's still in bed. Handsome Remembered Ray Milland was a movie star at the beginnings of plastic surgery. Remember his X-ray eyes, those films all in black. ~page 6~ As Armadillos Head for High Ground Past 2:00 a.m. and the rain sounds, which at other times would keep me cozy under the covers and fuzzy with the dog, have me awake wide and at the windows. Ten inches in two days, televised images of submerged trucks, trailer homes full of muck, big men in tree houses and snakes taking refuge have me restless. Kora said, “Those clouds look big and heavy.” Roan asked if they needed wheelchairs, if they were that fat. And Kora laughed. At about that same time a new car hydroplaned off an interstate bridge into the roiling Wichita. A girl drowned. Hundred degree days and not a drop for the whole summer. There were wildfires in the woods and heatstroke at softball games. The governor asked folks to pray. All prayers answered this week way past the point of blessing. ~page 7~ Daddy's Boy When he was a boy Roan sang in the choir, swam in the relay and studied nature. He believed in Jesus and won trophies. They said he was smart for his age and when he wasn't being silly he was cute. Now stout in the middle, middle-aged, middleclass, politically middle of the road, a middle American marriage and all the love an indifferent Heartland can muster, he no longer sings in the shower nor competes. Trophies get dusty, lose their luster The lesson of the sinner's hair is that Jesus had dirty feet, ate meat and bled. If life has a payout it's like a coupon. Though, after the lawn's mowed, the game is over, after barbecue, the kids in bed, Roan belches in his recliner. Ah, heaven. Belongings Kora gave and gave and well. ~page 8~ Write Poems About The Mexican road worker in his insulated overalls. The young programmer who used to earn 50 grand a year and can't get his van out of impound. The owl in the backyard. The old woman with her four-foot rough-hewn walking stick. The biggest house in a small town. The aged man with his spotty tattoos. Music as a mélange, or excuse. Context worn thin, as per ambiance, malaise, degraded environment, gauzy paradigms, dispersed diasporas, collapsed dialectic. Magazine readers in a bureau waiting room. Women who bleach their hair, dye their shoes and say “ain't.” Death in an oversized wheelchair. The crazy man living across the corner. A library book sale. Girls jogging together with cell phones. Clothes on hangers in the trash. Elderly slackers. Time to spend. Neo-punks who wear fur and drive big trucks. The freedom to want, whatever. Ladies who mean well. Gentlemen. ~page 9~ Asleep@Work The telephone rings and bones shatter. Once again flames shoot through this air-conditioned hell. Jack mumbles corporate scripts. Boy, does he get an earful. Totally Disposable The last words you may ever hear have gone in one ear. Each creation dissipates, stases in places and not even a cracker to munch. Jack, you haven't been fasting. How many women on how many cell phones before the world implodes? Geek Streak The boy who calls himself “Hz” just finished downloading four-hundred seventy-four critical updates form Microsoft. The mainframe blows. ~page 10~ Blisséd Clouds fray and fall from the ominous sky, a ceiling like creation. Splatters of water make everything messy. Here is were Roan starts his pain complaints -- the eyes, the elbows. Why has he been smashing into doorjambs? How many times can he slip on one step? Fizz Kora rides a Ferris wheel made of dreams and soda. In Time You can watch the grass grow. It's not that things are that slow. It's that the grass grows so fast. ~page 11~ The Dada Saints for Craig Duncan Meet Brad and Kelly to do the display window. Our art sits on the edge of chaos, feet in gloves, painted dummy parts, unattached arms and legs, a doll, altered paintings from the garbage and thinly masked abstractions. Later Kelly Brad and I tour the Native American Art Train parked on the neighborhood track. I love the pot called “Shifting Sands” and the basket woven from movie film. John Brandenburg sits in a folding chair making verbal copies of each object. Tomorrow's rearview headlight. Very Sick People The patients this morning all speak in past tense and rapidly. They see no clear present much less future. Much less. They talk about going to school, how it's been sixty years. They only know what was taught. ~page 12~ Buz Smith Buzzy's been chewing gum stealing software and breaking the wings off statues. “Why should concrete fly?” He wants to know. Buzzy's been burning family letters from 1865. He wants to forget the Civil War. He wants a watermelon sky. He likes sugar ice and snow. Won't say why. Buz has his own business keeping old people safe from little kids, His advertising budget includes two cans of spray paint and a knife. Worked Every working day for six solid years I have sat at this desk staring at rough red bricks. Being buried is much like this. ~page 13~ Mistakes I woke up with a black mark against my name. Mother always said I had a talent for confusion. Today I will write into the night on invisible paper. All I know is I have no say so. Hush my mouth. I will fling little thoughts into the storm. But if someone will open this pill bottle . . . If someone will paint the sky Klondike blue . . . If the technicians would please. . . ~page 14~ Story One man steals the identity of another man. The identity the man steals is of a man wanted for murder. The identity thief ends up on death row because he cannot prove he isn't the person whose identity he has assumed. Meanwhile the real accused murderer reads about the case in the paper and so takes the identity of the man who stole his identity. In this new guise he begins to investigate the case against him. Knowing that he was framed, he finds out that the person who was supposedly murdered is still alive. The corpse is that of an anonymous suicide victim whose identity was taken by the person mistaken as the murdered person. The original victim's quandary is to untangle this mess without endangering himself, knowing that the person who is supposedly dead is in fact alive, dangerous and aware that he is not in jail. Fortunately, there is a girl. Lunch The woman with the deformed right hand moved not much faster than a fence post into the white tile-lined bathroom. Behind the door she hacked and coughed, spitting up disgusting noises for minutes. No one was hungry after that. ~page 15~ What Works I will put you in a comfortable chair. Conveniently located, the table stands below our elbows but above our knees. If it were any higher I could not look up into your eyes. How soft is your skin, Marie? Over the Mountain The big hand points at 2 a.m. while the little one points at the exit. Baby just about made herself sick. We knew he was gay, gay, gay but he never confessed it. Outrè Pick the numbers off the curb. Roan will not buy a car. He lives on trash and thinks about the pennies we owe him. Jack obviously took the food, took the clothes and papers. Who ate that can of worms? ~page 16~ Fate The bird is gone and so is the dog. One tree didn't live but the other hangs on. Let us step over this stone in the road. You know where I'm going but why this load? Let's just get through this hole in the wall. It can't be less. No, more is all. Let's get over this bloody barricade. If we only had stilts, I guess we could wade. Why didn't you know this needed to be done? Progress isn't ever finished. We need plans and guns. ~page 17~ There Is a Woman in China The feathers of morning glow white as Iceland. The blue vinca flower hides under the wooden stoop. Birds nest in the basket hanging in the corner. Hands up like a robber's victim, give the wind a proper name. A closed fist holds questions but no one needs the answer. Mother with her water bucket hide the knives and money. Something like blood oozes out of something like stigmata. Right roads may be wrong but every step is so long. Now that the dead remember dreams are real as they feel. One hundred years of plotlines and the phone rings nonetheless. ~page 18~ Murders in Time The victim is sent back into the near past into circumstances which precipitate what was at first thought of an and accident. Because one victim fails to be killed, in effect is not a victim, a second attempt is made. Historical changes occur and the hero, here known as Jack, becomes someone else. A private insurance investigator picks it up but only because he is openly gay. A clue? Evidence comes to him via the beautiful daughter who is mysteriously unaffected. She has a photograph of the weapon. If not for cryogenics no one would be able to follow the money. The suspect is poor, i.e., has no credit. Jack declines any help but gets it anyway. The investigator turns. Before anyone knows what's going on everything is just the way it was, only now there are stains. Like so many other crimes this one goes unsolved. Everyone knows. Gorgeous Frogs All I want is to get warm but the women won't leave me alone. ~page 19~ Directive Admire almost anybody that has no fat. Your Book There are more pages of introductory material in your book, Gerald, than I have ever written. What am I saying? The paper your publisher used is thick and creamy, acid free and linen. Wish I could be so real. Wish my type were cold. No, if I could I would print my poems on the moon. The ladies will understand. If Joe had a Feather Women on the patio feed an abandoned nestling. It follows them like a dog. ~page 20~ Mambo's Garden How elegant! That bumblebee perfectly set off your acid green beach towel. It doesn't seem to care how your hips rumba. Symphony First a pool of clarinets bubbles a melody over a fountain of flutes. A ripple of violins accents to swelling cellos. The oboes on the shore snore in beech chairs. In the clouds a single bell, a non sequitur of cymbals, rattles and a trumpet trill ride Rhinestone trombones. The woman in a tuxedo bows to a storm of slapping flesh. ~page 21~ Kora Zone Mamselle Kora come let me pluck the 21 strings of your heart. The ink freezes and I cannot finish my verse. Kora, mamselle moi, I saw the saddest thing -- a gray cat with a dead mouse, a toy hearse and black crepe. Kora, your song makes us dance deftly as moths till our shoes bloom. In my head the flames of space spinout distant and cold. I'm as African, Kora as any man from the cradle. How your fingers tingle against my pockets. If we are good I know we will get to go to the new moon. Don't, Kora, leave it. ~page 22~ Sheriff's Sale – Today What a disappointment among the rusted autos and broken guns all the bicycles have flat tires. The only decent looking slave has a game foot and more debt than equity; not worth the trouble to chain him. Need to change some laws, push the legislature, get some good blood back on this auction block. Alas, a Landscape (to be seen as a cheap print in a humble abode) In a forest the color of fire the air turns bitter cold. Flames let loose and fall. The naked trees stand like black veins in the eyes of evening. A blue moon smokes over the lower fields. ~page 23~ Fair Day Roan left his griffin at home not knowing it could be shown. By the time he got it back puzzles were in the pudding. Jack was juggling spades like he was digging graves. Now, there's half a man, but, the devil, can he blow horns! Any other mortal would bust lips. Makes like a cavalry's charging. Roan took Truth, that virgin bitch, out to clip her wings. Clip! Clip! O, she's perched right now. Too bad about his griffin. Unemployed I quite my job last week. I was working with a crazy woman and couldn't take it any more. I feel much better, thank you, taking a bubble bath and listening to Edith Piaf in full-dimension Stereo. ~page 24~ Cinema Jack went to a movie last night with Billy Bill. They saw your classical guy flick, samurai. Three hours long with operatic deaths. Billy Bill spent a good deal of time looking at the very thin, twenty-something man two rows down and across the aisle. The man's leg pumped up and down nervously through the entire evening. Once he seemed to laugh, but it could've been a cough. Beautiful spasm. Who would laugh at such slaughter? Jack? Bill drew every last detail down to a smooth sinew. Perhaps he has this thing. Or just an eye. Afterwards everyone went out for a smoke. Liberated Blues I'm so free my eyeballs create whatever they see. I'm so free you know what I think before it's a thought. I'm so free the word Wild is way too mild for me. ~page 25~ Haute Couture She wore a dollar bill like it was a Bill Blass. She knew better than to put on her cancelled check. Credit can cover everything but she likes being seen. Living Proof Mother of turnips, this land is hard. Tie teeth in a bow and bite the stone. The wind stole the pillow and sleep. Another egg-yolk colored sunrise. The lion's not real but for real. Don't stage a coup sans acteurs. Let them have equity with truckers. Tomorrow's weather freezes today. Here everyone works for tears. If you see a runner hide in the barn. All the folks in town have gone. We thought we were dead for sure but it was only Jack's socks. His sense of irony is kind of rusted. How can a face maintain that puff? She, Billy Bill's mom, claims to be. We know a fiction when we meet. This was at the Blue Water Club, you know, over by the Hell-O Motel. ~page 26~ Kora on the Battlefield Roan takes a cross-country bus home. By the fourth day he is not happy. The mountains do not pass fast enough. His only friend got off at Winslow, AZ. His self-exile took him farther than a field. He brought a book but some jerk took it. The stranger-girl next to him leans on him, falls asleep on his arm; it grows numb. Outside the sky's like powdered milk only nothing's falling, nothing's blowing. Volcanoes exploded 60,000 years ago and the ground is still torn to shreds. Travel I am going to Ireland to see a pink sheep. I'll be retiring this week from the IRS. I want to china paint. I'm hungry enough to paint cherries on saucers, on teacups. I know all abouts. I study the betweens. I, like it was yesterday, got these sandals at the World's Largest Shoe Store in Denton. Not for luck. That's not right. Just my size. Don't forget my military service. My benefits. My husband's supplemental. I am a princess. ~page 27~ Obituary Complaint Please, list the weight of the deceased. We need to know by how much the mass of humanity has decreased. Attention All documents in this office are printed on specially made paper. Paper designed so as to be shredded easily by hand. All documents in this office must be shredded before disposal. All documents must be disposed. Please, use your hands here. ~page 28~ |