Featured Poets
Table of
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Vast and Various and Unspoken
Better’n Posterity! A little Wow Now!
You see what you don’t say, see,
Or, say what you don’t see. Say,
There are “languages in air” (trees)
You do not see them (you are insects) and
Then you cannot speak the language anyway
So you are stuck forever inside your head
Seeing most amazing Thing of Danger to Change
The Whole World and so you go: Mffla
Prakalakashakatakalulu, and
You are not even Finnish yet!
But see ing as how ev er y th ing
Changes into oth er thi ngs you
Have stirred up bees' hornets' helmets
And people are looking wisely, or as wisely
As praying manti can look at you
The stick the walking stick the sheleighley
Not even knowing how to spell shellayly
Door stopper is (or, becomes) dictionary
Dictionary becomes (or, is) (you were born with dictionary as)
Your favorite word because it is all words
Nah that would be Alphabet Universe. Or You.
God breathes slowly. Here comes the Unspoken Word.
God is a solitary salsero in the Bronx, all the poems
Are in the fireplace -- kindling. The Book
Of Book props window open. But Fire
Escape is broken so Fire does/does not escape
So they open the refrigerator and there you are
Still waiting for them to understand the crucial
Mffla Prakalakashakatakalulu. Luckily (Luckily?), you
Forgot to die frozen so perfectly blued life-like. But luckily
(Luckily!) Madame Tussaud is right there to bid on
Your cryogenically-preserved salsero voice
Singing about the “peck peck” of pigeons
As if we all did was that pecking
We all all day just peck peck
Like pigeons do do
Everybody wants
Comforts of the middle class
Nobody can pay for them
Another deep political philosophical conundrum
Famous Model wearing Kleenex bikini speaking
Through Gertrude Stein’s brain
Voice in bikini
Stuck on prairie, desert
Stuck in ocean, river
Stuck on subway, the Token Rider and Her Staff of Mighty Beings
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Sir
The Captain of the Committee to Create Committees
To Form the Institution clenches dagger twixt his mustache hairs
And plunges like a safe
Out the seductive window
Ahoy! Speak, you Motherfucker!
Mffla Prakalakashakatakalulu!
Bob Holman
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The Unspoken Word
Hello?
Hello?
There is no talking! This is dumb piece
of paper covered with blotto stains
grease lips all over it.
Can the can't.
Eat the words.
The core is language.
Eat that, too!
Once upon a tiny little once.
But often, more than likely. What happens is this:
The truth is in the telling, the tasting.
Add salt.
Corrupt the pipeline.
Art and Industry swagger down the aisle, hand in
claw.
I have been asked to speak to you
but my tongue
has another opinion.
Right is wrong.
Whenever her fingers slide into the machine, Africa winces with pain.
Terror and treachery make fine breakfast.
As I was saying towards end of line, prose.
Taste a fat chunk o' prose. Is all prose, baked, wilted. Except rose.
Freedom is pregnant with democracy's bastard, all lies. The poor cannot get to sleep.
Steady goes the junk food.
Merciless climate,
The homeless congregate for more than warmth.
Slow reptilian devolution. Music is bought and silence is the price. Meanwhile, there is
no meanwhile. This is not the end. This is.
PS
Will respond more fully when moon rises and I can read the book
To sleep
Bob Holman
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Snake
All of it and all the time, Snake, you and your shedding. Try shedding your heart like you
did your skins. Understand the new color spectrum, sung to the strum of bees. Unspoken
word.
And that's what I'm waiting for, way back in the back of the bus, deep in the cavern of the
bus, the place you didn't even know was here, darkest blackest screamingest soundlessest
soullessest place you call Unspoken and that's where I am, that's where I'm coiled and
waiting, under that stinking seat, down under where the axles grind the road to bits, down
where there's dirt to pay, where the poem is prayer but you never learned to pray.
Bob Holman
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