Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Three, for Judy Grahn, Ann Quin, Drum Hadley


In the Chamber of the Goddess to Nowhere

In the chamber of the Goddess to Nowhere
I was taught 3 things:
Don’t underestimate your ability to breathe.
It is not necessary for men to stamp out the earth.
You don’t have to do everything you want to do.
But you already know these things, she said,
when you have nowhere else to go and nothing makes sense
you can always come to me, said the Goddess of Nowhere.

/larry goodell / placitas, nm


Queenland

Imagination is smarter than your god

goddesses of the goddess of god, my secret benefactress
heritage line of feminine soul, sole creator of the
energy of man
how embarrassing to admit it for the masculine race
the race to dominance won & then possibly lost.
A lost face in the process of rebuilding
until all are truly equal, man woman child
animal plant kingdom, queenland.

/larry goodell / placitas, nm


( Hope )



the above from NB 68

all from Foxhole Prayers, poems 2009 / larry goodell / placitas, new mexico
these are for Judy Grahn, Drum Hadley, Ann Quin, AND Gino Sky . . . . 

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

A Direct Hit Not Aiming



Today
crappola ticky pot.
Today
pray question where am I
shorted out electrode
trod on lightly
lightening cut in half
tone-deaf
no
toad happy
yea!
 throw it all in a pot
 & stir it up
 I am-m-m a meditate
 a medical no
 a Mediterranean 
 meditate tones
 over my head
 all of comedy falls to the floor
 today I mediate
 between the warring factions
 I am the warring factions
 but instead of warring
 I do my media trope 
 where am I when the sunlight comes
 where am I
 not in bed
 the answer to both questions
 is the same
  I am that self-same thing
  I am trying not to get into the lotus position
  forever
  prana
  I’m full of it
  it charges through me
  like thunder cut in two
  since my warring self
  jumped on my opposing self
  & devoured it
  half of me is all I have
  the half of a clap of thunder
  claps the half of a bolt of lightening
  and becomes it
  blends into half its former self.
   I’m drawn in.
   Sitting on a futon
   Western fashion.
   I am out.
   Never part of anything
   totally
   pravana
   is another way to say
   om
   oh my
   oh why
   oh me
   oh my
   pranava Donna
   don’t
   intone
   don’t
   do anything
   the donut with the hole
   taken out
   it was never the donut to start with
   it was the filled hole filled,
   the empty left over
    I was the center of nothing
    I’m a stupid American
    who never fit in
    I don’t even like donuts.
    I like holes better.
    Holes
    I don’t have to eat
    they eat me.
    What’s left of me.
    I can’t be Eastern
    because I’m Western
    and the two they say
    never meet,
    and besides
    I’m half.
    I want what’s over there
    on the other side of the not-fenced-in
    place.
     But I am always here
     adhering to it:
     this “here” place.
     A medical nation
     Mediterranean
     meditating
     on not being
     Mediterranean
     in a terrain
     unfamiliar
     as unfamiliar
     as here is
     I bring my
     kundalini out
     by pouncing on what I
     haven’t got
     I haven’t got a face
     prana
     pranava.
     The teeny half-ass force
     I administer.
      I’m bigger than shit
      the half of me left
      insists.
      I’m outside something that’s disgusting
      plus being what’s disgusting.
      I transcend it.
      So I’m centered on being diffused.
      And there’s only
      half of me all scattered out
      left.
      Which is enough
      since it’s all I need
      and all I ever was.

      I was never
      my whole imagined self
      anyway.
      I am the young thing
      ha ha ha ha.
       I am the force within
       unleashed
       ha ha ha ha.
       The world does not revolve around
       me
       ha ha ha ha,
       I am revolving around with the world.
       The world, earth
       revolves me
       the world, earth
       involves me
       takes me with it
       in a fit of continuance
       thrusts me, unknowing
       most of the time
       along.
       They say,
       those who read their books to me,
       those voices that read along in my head
       when I read
       all my life.
       Half of my life passes before me
       as if a dream.
        Steaming
        hot cakes.
        Ha ha ha ha.
        Tonight
        a media trade off
        silence enters in
        what supposedly doesn’t exist
        gives quiet space
        to the entire history
        of football.
        Football conquers:
        I lost.
        I should have gone with the main force
        but I was too thin.
        They hit me and I fell down
        the last to arrive
        running around the football field.
        Or was I.
        Come to think of it
        I was never the last.
          I was always at least
          half there.
          I’m half the world
          this undying egotist in me
          my imagination
          stares
          back at me.
          that’s
          my real half self.
            Here I am having gone west
            in my family
            until I’m here.
            Done.
            Half baked.
            Turning outward
            I was going to say
            inward.
            Tonight
            I don’t fight it
            I massage my cramped lower legs
            and go back to bed
            learning to lift up
            from where I am
            without levitating
            which is disgusting anyway.
              I left up in the half of me
              which is all of me
              in my imagination
              anyway
              and go to bed
              ha ha ha ha
              go back to bed
              ha.
                  Hi prana
                  force that’s
                  chock full of it.
              Pranava
              om
              oh my.
              Ha ha ha ha
              ha ha ha ha
              tonight
              becomes tomorrow

              ha ha ha ha.

              Centered
              at heart half of it
              thunder claps lightning
              bolts thunder
              comes each one
              towards each other
              thunder
              lightning
              we could use some rain –
              without touching.
               They just
               bypass one another.
               The two halves of my imagination say
               which is half of me
               which is all of me
               left.
               The quality of the feeling lasts
               or the better half wins.
               The lightning just passes over
               the thunder
               this is my rain dance I can’t
               not being Indian
               do.
               I can’t do anything
               I’m just a stupid half-assed
               anglo
               angled toward voice.
               That’s not true
               my self-esteem
               steams over
               and says I conquer
               self-control
                I am
                self-control
                I fuse into one
                like a candle burning
                like nothing you’ve ever seen
                like a snow dance.
                I can dream can’t I?
                Cant.
                It.
                Chant by
                enhancing
                it.
                Snow
                blow
                cold
                meaning
                into
                close
                winter
                evening  .
                Moisture
                hangs down
                ready to drop.
                 Drip drop
                 the completed cliché says.
                 Snow drips into water
                 having first been rain.
                 Or was it mist.
                 I was mist.
                 Now look at me.
                 I’m human.
                 Half-human.
                 Watch out.
                 I might do it.
                 Don’t do it
                 my conscience says.
                 What is my conscience?
                 It’s my no-no self.
                 Outside my imagined self.
                 But my guardian angel
                 will protect me
                 ha ha ha ha.
                 Ha ha ha.
                 Throws me out of harm’s way
                 for another day.
                  Yes I do believe in you.
                  You who-who.
                  You who-who you.
                  You who, half who-who
                  are me.
                  My true half me
                  I am happy more or less
                  to be.
                  Or not to
                  bungle it up.
                  Bundle up
                  it’s winter.
                  And go to bed.
                  Get you out of my head.
                  There is nothing in my head.
                  Some one Eastern tells me
                  to be.
                  I can never be without the real
                  self I am.
                  So there.
                  Tonight
                  I am lucky
                  to be a part
                  of myself.
                   I am now
                   thoroughly happy
                   I am a part
                   of myself.
                   Finally
                   I do belong
                   to something.
                   Finally
                   I am that something
                   that something
                   that is such an
                   important part
                   of myself.
                   They don’t ever
                   want me to talk about
                   anything that has to do
                   with me.
                   So I won’t
                   I’ll show you.
                   I’m all out of myself.
                   I threw myself up
                   in the air
                   and was last seen
                   nowhere.
                   I am not there.
                   I am not there
                         are you happy?

                   Ha ha.
                   Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

                   Let it
                   rain snow.
                   Precipitate.
                   Meditate.
                   I will learn to do it
                   tho it means
                   stretching half-way round the world.
                    Drip drop
                    I’m gone
                    into my want.
                    I want cold.
                    I want winter
                    I want snowpack on the mountain.
                    I want people to go away.
                    They won’t.
                    But it might
                     storm
                     and sing.
                      I sing the blues
                      for the truth.
                       Is truth still beauty
                       beauty aloof?
                        Is truth forever
                        aloof?
                          Or does it light down
                          a bird
                           those cranes I saw
                           flying in formation
                            so close over me
                            in the bosque cottonwood grove
                             of the river of my life,
                             dividing me
                              two & two.
                              No,
                               in two.
                                In two
                                I am
                                 part of one.
                                 In tuned.
                                  Attained.
                                  A peaceful
                                   rain.
                                   The birds I remember
                                    migrating late in a warm winter
                                    keep on going
                                     as truthful as truth is.
                                     The idea on my brain.
                                      Gone away
                                      to come again.
                                       May pleasure be peace
                                       and beauty in the truth that we
                                        come back again
                                        to where I am no me.
                                         Just what I know
                                         stares me in the face.
                                          The face I don’t see
                                          unless reflected.
                                           All I see now is
                                           uncorrected.
                                            I see what I do
                                            and will be me
                                             till I’m through.
                                             I will be me
                                              until I’m through.
           




larry goodell / placitas, new mexico /16dec
from Beyond TV, poems 1995
photograph by lenore goodell

Friday, June 5, 2009

Poetry Guts

Speaking Chicken on Snake, colored pencil
drawing by Lenore Goodell ca 1973

Poetry is from the gut of the mind. larry goodell
*
Writing is never easy except when inspired. lg
*
The less poetry is concerned with the everyday existence and the rhythmic talents of a people, the less readable that poetry is likely to be. Louis Zukofsky
*
Form is never more than an extension of content. Robert Creeley
*
I think I could say what nobody thought. Gertrude Stein
*
No ideas but in things. Dr. William Carlos Williams
*
If poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. John Keats
*
Poetry if anything gives us a sense of everything. Louis Zukofsky
*
Poetry convinces not be argument but by the form it creates to carry its content. Zukofsky
*
A simple order of speech is an asset in poetry. Zukofsky
*
Simplicity of utterance and song go together. Zukofsky
*
A lyric has to sing. A poem has to read. Sammy Cohn, lyricist
*
Performing is allowing your soul to dance through the instrument you're playing. Stevie Wonder
*
When I take a breath and start to move, I construct a sentence. It is what happens when I exhale. A 'sentence' is logical, it has integrity and consistency. It does something. Lee Connor, dancer & choreographer
*
These breaths, of course, can and should vary in duration, as they are not literally the length of one breath of the body at rest, but rather like a spoken sentence, with possibly a subclause or two; or, using another comparison, like a melodic line a flutist might play in one breath. Doris Humphrey, dancer & choreographer
*
Our religion is the poetry in which we believed. Santayana
*
"We are hamstrung by a fear of being miscellaneous. The book-trade, accursed of god, man and nature, makes no provision for any publication that is not one of a series; and masterwork is never one of a series, neither is vital invention. It has its place in the historic process, which is far from the same." from Ezra Pound's letter to John Crowe Ransom, 15Oct38
*
Language of poet(ry) often allies itself with song, not oratory. Louis Zukofsky, A Test Of Poetry, 1948 (but I can't now find this in "The Test of Poetry -- lg)
*
The complications of rhetorical ornament (similes, metaphors, conceits) in later times seem to have created a printed (and worse, a bookish) poetry written to be read silently rather than to be spoken or sung. Zukofsky
*
It is the hardest task for even great poets to limit the number of words used to maximum advantage. Zukofsky
*
Condensation is more than half of composition. The rest is proper breathing space, ease, grace. Zukofsky
*
As poetry, only objectified emotion endures. Zukofsky
*
I was already a convert to the Romantic spirit, and myth in that spirit is not only a story that expresses the soul but a story that awakens the soul to the real persons of its romance, in which the actual and the spiritual are revealed, one in the other. Robert Duncan, p42 The Truth & Life of Myth
*
Poetry must be as well written as prose. Ezra Pound, 1885-1972
*
Objectivity and again objectivity, and expression: no hindside-before-ness, no straddled adjectives (as "addled mosses dank"), no Tennysonianness of speech; nothing—nothing that you couldn't, in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say. Letter to Harriet Monroe, Jan 1915, Ezra Pound
*
Literature is language charged with meaning. Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading, 1934
*
Literature is news that stays news. Pound
*
Poetry is the passionate pursuit of the real. larry goodell
*
It's impossible to write of what one has written or lived, except as the day is, out the window, now, explicit. Ken Irby
*
I'll publish right or wrong: F ools are my theme, let satire be my song. George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824
*
There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. Gertrude Stein

Rare Art







































Art
smart
fart
lark

part
heart
part
pert

tart
Sartre
mart
art

mark
shark
bark
cart

flirt
art
dirt
art

shirk
art
murk
art

lurch
nark
search
dark

wrench
ranch
raunch
ark

park
arch
ark
art

flirt
flaunt
flush
mart

raunch
ranch
wrench
rank

rack
heart
rank
cart

bank
mark
prank
art

flank
bank
crank
art

tank
cane
nark
ark

snark
quark
park
arc

fart
art
bard
mart

bode
mode
abode
Arp

carp
are
cart
tart

art
acclaimed
muck
mart

flush
gush
to blame
are

tar-
get
far
art

pit
hit pit part

girt
dirt
abode
dart

dig
ditch
a bull
lark

pull
rich
chart
apart

chart
tar
rat
tap

apt
pat
par
art

rap
pat
par
art

parent
pair
poor
art

peer
pour
out
art

pour
dip
out
a stiff

art
a riff
rear
apart

mar
the are
the air
care

apart
are
tar
rare

a roar
arrears
adore
a mark

are
cane

cone
art

a car
roar
cart
a core


care
co-
coined

aren't
anchor

aren't
an art

aren't
aint

isnt
art

our
ancient

aren't
rent

aren't
aint

part
art

are
our

our
art

art
art

art
art

art
art

art
quark

quirk
quick

quote
quake

kook
quad

clock
stopped

our
cane

art
crocked

our
tame

part
potted

planed
planned

plowed
lost

lark
art

locked
ought

ancient
aint

oink
ark

aint
oink

ink
rank

awkward
auk

outward
ought

are
R

are
argue

ow!
arch

ouch!
chart

chalk
art

our
solo
lark
couch
chart
shook
nine
howls
art
garden
guard
song
soar
solo
roll
rot
tarot
tarn
right

taught
a tot

rare
are

tah
tah

tah
tee

rare
ah

tah
tee

tah
are

tah
tee.






larry goodell /27Nov83 / placitas, new mexico

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