Wednesday, December 7, 2011

wood poems




split wood poem


          um
          ╹
          um
          ╹
          um
          ╹
          um
          ╹
          om
          ╹
          ohm
          ╹
          home
          ╹
          hum


front view of split wood with some digging stick poems 




digging stick poem

   

                 stick stuck rainbow ~~   ~   ~~  ~







                 unstuck


digging stick poem



several wood word objects, acequia willow necklace, peace dildo, word blocks . . . by larry goodell


I've found it relaxing to paint wood digging sticks & other wood pieces found on the property
with water colors and I do put words on them when can . . . and on the blocks . . .
opposite "suggest" = "apoopoo"
opposite "stars" = "fuck"
opposite "calm" = blank


larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 3 dimensional poems

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Space Helmet & a link to photographs of more "object" poems . . .




















(Put on mask with a cone on each side pointed out from the ears
hold left hand up palm out & move it from left point of left cone to
center, put right hand up same position & move to the right)


(read)

Right at that point where the Space Helmet
is indistinguishable from the Headdress
we will start on our long trek back
from whence we came ____ ____ ____ ____ ____


larry goodell / placitas, new mexico
/ this is from 21Jan1971 but I no longer have the double cone mask/headdress . . .

and here are photographs of "thing" poems, object poems & a mask, poems that come to life in at least 3 dimensions, their made parts conceived mostly at time of writing . . . http://on.fb.me/tNgSuy

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Un-Poet






















Unappreciated
unacknowledged
unappetizing
unresolved
uninhibited
unbent
unrepentant
unappealing
unadorned
unfulfilled
unapologetic
ungodly
unabashed
unhinged
unabridged
unacceptable
unbearable
unbalanced
unbecoming
unbelievable
uncommon
uncompromising
and every other word following
un –

– self-absorbed
and compassionate.


larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 18Oct2011

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Doing What You Want (Mobius Strip Poem)




















...nothing whatsoever to do with poetry or the crafting of it but that doesn’t stop you from doing what you want on your own time becoming a weekend poet or part-time poet or hobbyist poet with dreams that someone cares for crafting poetry that gets you lots of money if you charge a lot for products the American public wants which generally means you work for a very large company which has...

(or, for example, starting anywhere else and continuing)

...crafting poetry that gets you lots of money if you charge a lot for products the American public wants which generally means you work for a very large company which has nothing whatsoever to do with poetry or the crafting of it but that doesn’t stop you from doing what you want on your own time becoming a weekend poet or part-time poet or hobbyist poet with dreams that someone cares for...



















larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / from Creator Tricks, poems from 1996

Friday, September 16, 2011

A Dip Into Notebook #29 (1981 to '83)


. . .

F R O M I N S I D E O U T

to Gloria Frym

We are all different in our flaming innards.
We often forget about how different our insides are
— so concentrated on the cosmetics of our lives we
forget the inner turds, the concupiscent brain coils
and differing intertwining follicles of the innards —
all those differences those blown-up electron
microscope pictures show us of ourselves — with
things walking around or floating or just hanging
there — all of them different, therefore is it any
surprise our styles of writing differ each to each -
or should if we have a mote of honesty in us - since
that's where it all comes from — down deep in
the inner turnings, bags, glands, cells, coils, frame
and inner frame and gushing different paths all
contrary and aglow with life, the sparks off the fire
of different suns moving our inner beings, weights
pulled by moons each in a different place oozing up
and back meeting airwaves matriculating up voicing
out each in different voice. The views of my voice
from a different peak or valley or plain.

There are no schools of writing, only the
differing pulsating breaths of poets each singing
out if honest to the tune, what our very centers
say, what came up from me to you today.
/27Jun81

/ larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

. . .
. . .


N A I L D O W N





OH








TICKY








TACKY








NAIL










DOOR








FELL ON








MY LEFT








BIG TOE NAIL










DROVE IT








INTO








GROUND








TOMATO







WORMS








UNDER








THE COMPOST








PIT.








/ larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / added on blank last pages 10Jan89 /

. . .

. . .
. . .









. . .
. . .
. . .



The Avant Garde Academy


Man in smart dress suit:
The Avant Garde Academy brings you the latest that’s news. The very latest news, nothing but the latest. We decide on every bit of information that leaks out. Now this morning it was pot-boilers in Canada. Artists determining the pop-wave farther and farther North. Everyone knows the Canadians depend on the Americans for their latest creative wave and we’re pushing them farther north. All of our major cities are now puking out sheer– creative energy– each as a local point for the arts, puking them out. Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta– each of them puking them out. The second "them" being art.

Voice 1: Dustin Hoffman eats sugar cane pussy.
Voice 2: Marlon Brando eats finger fairies.


/ larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / Aug81

. . .
. . .


(drawing extending from a rubber stamp print, by lenore)

Note: these just some random things in Notebook #29 which includes many much larger items . . . . larry

Sunday, August 28, 2011

4's -- Three Four Line Repeated Poems








  #1
17Sep67















  #2
1Oct67














  #3
2Oct67


"burst brain spasm lover" (17th of September 1967) is probably the first of the 4's I experienced and at the time of writing these one-word-per-line items wanted to repeat as the accordion shape allows . . .

"cross pitch . . .' came 1st of October 1967 & "hung nursery . . ." the next day.

these are the first of many more up through the years . . .

part of archiving is rediscovering this stuff and wondering what the hell to do with it and as when I wrote it not knowing what to do with it . . . so I'm putting these vestiges here for someone to enjoy . . . larry goodell

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Focal Point, for the Six Directions, by larry goodell

    cover of the 7 cards that make up "Focal Point"







    (Directions: 
    1. Put this card on the outside of a door.
    2. Inside, put the 6 cards on walls, ceiling & floor.)






(North Wall)






(East Wall)






(South Wall)






(West Wall)






(Ceiling)






(Floor)




Procedure: Place these 6" by 1 1/2" cards at eye level on the appropriate 4 walls and center of the ceiling and center of the floor. Ideally it will be an empty room and the cards can stay there as in a gallery setting with the "title" on the outside of the entry door. For reading them simply go to the North wall, read, go to the East wall, read, South wall, West wall. Then stand in the middle of the room read Ceiling (Up) then kneel and read Floor (Down). Anyone wandering into the room reads at will.

I performed "Focal Point" in the late 60's & early 70's various places including Keller Hall at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I did one other 6 Directions poem-installation over a year earlier in December of '67,  and it is here: A Bag for the 6 Directions

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Poetry & Etiquette



       The first thing you do in a book of etiquette is ask yourself "Is it permissible?" and when you answer yourself that it is, you go ahead & do it anyway. Of course it is. It is okay to send money to a person in lieu of a gift if you are unable to buy a gift & send it. It's cheaper to send money than packages anyway. Go ahead & do it. If someone serves you a knife a fork a spoon pointed toward you go ahead & turn them back the way they’re supposed to be. Your host may be some Sufi-Sikh witch doctor who was raised in Lower Slobovia, New York, & is trying to influence you. Laugh & eat, & get out of the situation.

       If you get there too late & all the food is gone think that you might have been poisoned anyway, & when they’re out of beer don’t drink the tap water, it will make you sick. Think of your planning not to drink & how awful it is once you’re all geared up to drinking. Everything ends & the day comes anyway.

"On the Wings of Song," dropped by them onto the earth.

Will absurdities ever
end yes they
will yes they
will
when you
  come back
down to
Earrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrth.

       Dare to think it is possible to do what you are going to do, and do it. A bulwark was never spent by a theft. Three cheers for the function & one for the category. Think your head through, & back to the other side.

       Poetry is an exercise in thinking thoughts, music in the ears. You walk down the passage of your ear canal & back out again. You bless your wife your son your daughter your house your ideal construction looking out on a volcanic stem like an upside down mushroom, and when you see the rainbow is no longer there hard rock reality gets to you.

       Etiquette is the carrying on of the mind. It gets to where it's going & passes through space. Do what is right no matter what. Etiquette is harder than poetry. Carrying yourself without demanding that you dominate everything, unless of course you deserve to, dominating it anyway. That's the opposite of poetry. Poetry is when you don’t care, etiquette is when you care but don’t give a damn. Poetry is a wall that's breaking through. Etiquette is a dam held back. Amy & Emily handed you a bejeweled hand with long polished fingernails. Now you put on your kid glove & handle things carefully. Don’t let not knowing something stop you, but admit your ignorance without going too far. There's a stepping stone anywhere as long as it's on your property, and if you don’t have any property you can still walk.

       Go ahead & do what you thought you couldn’t do, by doing it. Bit by piece, a lot. Bite off a huge chunk every day & don’t give anything away, until you have reached where you’re going & are there.

       That's the difference between etiquette & poetry –  one's coming and one's going. Do you really live on such a pint-sized shelf that you cant listen to something odd. Have you ever been startled by anything? Of course you have, you just cant remember.

       What's wrong with the public schools? The only poetry in them is under the desk. That is, if poetry bit her between the legs she'd probably scratch her ear. Most teachers are just so much wet soap. There are younger ones,  just as there are younger doctors & lawyers, but they wont speak of poetry & etiquette in one breath. Perhaps they never will. I will go on and do what is present to do. Today we have a list.

Write San Diego.
Write Ecuador.
Write the insurance company.
Run off postcards announcing your radio show.
Send them.

       Be friendlier all the way around. Perhaps that will help. Think of others as your mind boggles, work solidly without interruption. Work & play, etiquette & poetry. Poetry is so easy, it's the aftermath that's questionable. Poetry should he called afterbirth. By constantly beginning you are constantly ending your former task. That way, truthfully, you can reach your way out & still be a family unit. Stepping apart, & then everybody wins.

       Doing something gracefully, falling, gracefully into bed, or say, standing up, walking. Dancing. Poets should dance, all the time, set them to dancing. Be kind & truthful. Why not. Because you’re a perfect devil?

       Language will teach you things you never knew, & why not? Sex guides the words, home. Or accepts them, at an emotional pitch, or tosses them back. But ride with the day.

       I am Emily Post's vacuum system. Actually I'm making fun. I hope I entertain, but if I don’t call me Arbuthnot, or some old thing. Still dinner was wonderful & took so much preparing. Our garden passes through our mouths & down into the empty canals there. Generously we help each other with our selves through our lives. The evening learned something from it.

/August 14, 1977
                                                                        Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico





Saturday, August 20, 2011

Poetry and Pleasure

covers of 2 homemade Japanese bound notebooks.
poem is from the kirsten flagstad one, NB 26, 1978























  Is poetry pleasure

Or pain.
Is life anything at all.
Yes, it's arguments
And catching the ball
And then winning.
The heart beats
The dog runs
How the adverbs cluster
Around the nouns
In the absence of verbs.
A verb is to be
Or not to be
If I may repeat
The question
What do you do after the soap opera
Is over.
These are rarefied airs
They wont get you nowhere
Except another addiction.
How to make prayer not work.
How to not do anything at all.
How to trust and yet be separate —
The beginner's fall.
The peach trees are blooming
The cherries Just popped out
The bees are amazing
The smell stuns the nose.
Is poetry anything at all
Except a nosegay for improper poets.
Poets who do things under the table
While they talk of God.
Or preachers who clap their hands
And besmirch the patio
Calling on their dreams
To be cone all night.
When I say prayer I mean
Calling on the rivers to be mountains
To be beams
To hang over your head
And stay there.
I mean calling on your dreams
To mean something
Which they wont except
Keeping afloat in a boat
While your dream drives through.
And there is tomorrow
And today is a windy day.
March comes in staring like a bull at September.
Advice has lost her consent.
Troubles send their messages to God
He answers I clapped my hands
Send up a toy.
They send up
He dies
They lift their skirts
They oogle and dance
And call it the Oogle Dance.
Night people
Hangin out
Make it day.
Day people
Workin out
Make it night.
And so the fight begins
Between night and day
Poetry and song
Which is here to stay?
Green tea.
You don’t know the swamp unless you
Fall in it.
No matter how many years
Youve microscoped it
And teethed on It.
You may make it to Paradise
In a boat
But dont tell me what
Youve got caught in your throat.
 Your past history
 All those sexual flings
 Youve covered up
 Those honest little secrecies
 You hide in your purse.
But to stay there
Is the time of day
A day in which it stretches on
Long enough to stay.
The light like some bold attack
Launches up in the sky overhead
And stays there revealing all
And to all alike.
The lopsided hill
Becomes a bulging spine
A lake turned to bone
To live on
A sense of history
Running back and forth
And getting trapped
Getting so high
You fell on your back.
You didnt know poetry could
Go so far to please
Or what it's all about
Would be such a shout
A door slammed in your face
A box full of jeans
A lifetime supply
Of raffle coupons
A chance to win you won!
You crazy son of a gun.
A quiet way to come up
And give someone a boost
Exacting nothing more than what is given.
The creative act
A Venus Fly Trap
All hinged open
Ready for the food that feeds it
A Passion Flower
I have never seen
Friendship in unison
Sings a tune —
After-work talk to
Rounds of beer.
Im outside the harmonies
I hear —
A slap on the back when
The back Isnt there.
The creative set is a rack to hook your dreams on
That disappear and arent part
Of somebody
But palpable fruit setting.
On the last leg
Of the day
On the last limb
Of the tree
Or anywhere
For that matter
Where there’s a you and a me.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 5th of April 1978

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Garbage Poets

poet reading Garbage Poets, 
photo by Lenore Goodell        

 

 (pull black garbage bag  over head  — hole cut for mouth)


I am being disposed of
Do you think I like it?
They threw the poets out with the garbage!
And we dont
Like it.
It's getting crowded in here
With all these poets—
Poets and garbage and poets and garbage
Or as somebody said recently
Garbage.

They threw us out with the wash!

Their radioactive lust cannot reduce me to dust.
I'm a lump on the landscape.
Poets in the garbage poets in the garden—
Bean pole poets, broccoli poets
And now
Rotten tomato poets.
Poets in the garbage forever! Wait a minute!
I want to get out of here
I am out of here.
(take off garbage bag revealing shirt  with garden peas)
A ragged world's record pea poet.                                          
A pea    poet yes    a    pea poet.
Larry Goodell the world's record pea poet.
                                                                                                             

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / december 1978











Larry reading Garbage Poets in Austin, Texas, February 1982 - Photo by Gene Fowler

































Thursday, July 7, 2011

All Ears











































































































     Being a poet
you're constantly in source of the origins.
There is no other bell to tinker with.
There is only the finished sound you make
as you make it—all else
is duplications of it.
The wit,  swell & well
of the words as they, origin, out
flow,
come out of there like out of a hole.
You rhyme it or place a dime on it
but you dont
tinker with it —
you let the bell sound
sounding it as you do
which is the pulling-apart mystery
of all that you do
that you carry around with you
when you're not playing it.
You are a poet when you arent being a poet
once you are a poet.
It hangs on your face
and meditates on your breast.
You remain unpublished
as long as you do
because the source of poetry has
nothing whatsoever to do
with publishing itself —
that is an artificial invention
of the printing press.
The source of poetry has
nothing whatsoever to do
with making money.
That is why it is so admired
and feared
by those who can do nothing
but rake in money.
That is their only vested interest —
making money
and that which is so pure
and sings so shamelessly of itself
goes by them as
a threat to their own
way of life —
it is so urgent of itself
what they hear of it.
Poetry is so
urgent of and through itself
as it comes,  inspired, out
out on top of itself and the voice, glottal,
poet voices on the paper out to
the few in contact,
the utterance of itself
in mutual friendship—
the sheer delight in knowing it exists —
that's what I am
when I concentrate from the waist down
and sing from the belly up
the art and aardvark of these sounds
the Zorastrian delight of
its wings
its current day
happenings,
the ritual of its founding
the finding of its saying
once and for all this
is poetry this this
is poetry I am
the poet of its voice
speaking I am
the poet of myself
speaking, go on song sing
yourself off
naked
sing out sing on
the wording bark out
off the amplified
sound of a larynx
barking
melodious as speech isnt
the wording voice of workaday weaving
into the talk that is melody
song-word songs.
I am the voice
I am.
The poet knows
only
the poet at the ear of
the source
knows —
what is coming
what they are hearing
as they are hearing it.
Ears don't lie when eyes see first—
the hearing of the center which says only
what it says,
is visible only
to the voice
the risk of
hear-saying it
hearing, you see it,  say it.
Say it you hear it see it.
The mirror of life is
saying it again
long after you've gone from
the image of life
long after you know
what you're doing.
The voice remains
there
and voices of
the community of poets
we are saying it infinitely
who identify the same source
which is multifarious as science
and can show up in any
neck of the woods —
the vibration of spring
coming —
coming,  it came out
to save the world
or save the saying of it
from saving the world
as it does what it does
at dawn
at the shaking of the earth
at spring
the yellow crocuses first
the iris reticulata
the crown imperials
bursting out of the ground
like rams horns meeting
with a clash.
The quiet that follows
anything as noisy as that
is serene.
What is a pastorale without a flute
or at least a French one,
the peace of a quiet French song—
or here a night song
like spring in words
cinco de mayo
victory for what we are
in the quiet confidence of self.
Of ourselves
gained
slowly
here
poem hung on garden gateway
quickly
here
confiding
only what it talks of
up and through itself.
It threw itself up and through
itself
threw itself out
of my eyes recognizing
that old voice on the page.














/5May81
(holograph copy of the original manuscript)
larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

This poem hung (by way of 2 eyeholes) downtown in an Albuquerque United Artist exhibit in the 80's.


page 5 of the orginal writing on 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 sheets, showing the curve 
I was faithful to . . .


































lg / 1981



Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Disturbed Hiatus & The Hill (2 poems using the same object)

(Larry reading this poem which is fun to make & do: disk 18",  hole abt 7", put copy of poem & directions on back)

The Disturbed Hiatus


Right in the middle of everything he dropped everything         (drop & catch)
Until everything was the Sun turning around the Moon
And then the planets turning around the Sun
Until everything was everything again
And he picked it up and looked at it
It was a disturbed hiatus, a nervous pause               (shake it)
A vibration in space, a tingling in the fingertips
It was himself in the very middle of himself
His navel, a bagel, a doughnut, a hole                         (hold over mouth)
He played with himself there until he
Dropped it again                                                            (drop & catch)
And he rolled around it and expanded into space
On one side     and another.                       (hand on one side then another)
He was in the middle     he was in the middle            (hand framed thru hole)
He was in the middle     he was in the middle
Threatening to be connected again     that's why he was nervous   
                                                                           (stick  hand out thru hole, retract)
Threatening to be connected again     that's why he was nervous  
                                                                            (stick hand out thru hole, retract)
Threatening to be connected again.              (stick hand way out thru hole)


larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / mid 60's


simply part of the poem






poet's side with poem attached












on the wall is Bruce Lowney's lithograph of the hill we see out our north window































The Hill


the hill that comes up thru the Calendar     is the tip of me     rooting down
planting in the planning     the divisions of labor
how do I find the key to fit his pleasure     wanting more as
more sinks out under me     & the Hill in arch time     piƱon     & juniper
rises thru the slow breakage of the crafty art scene    
                                                                   tearing those curtains down
exposing bare windows &     the apocryphal dawn     the hill behind the house
the house behind the man     the man behind the garden    
                                                                   the garden in the village
the hill behind the village     the morning that we share carrying off with the hill
the petroglyphs that climb the ridges of those hills     & meet where
the dawn vision meets with the clan     the eye where men meet    
                                                                   in ships from the mother ship
in stormings of the border     in blue space union    
                                                                   & fight die spill down washes all apart
& meets to come up with     the hill in rising morning    
                                                                   the man behind her wandering where
she gave us all the pleasure     to know in her stroke     cupped     hand is it    
                                                                   arm of God
covered with the fine hair where I see him stirring    
                                                                    larger than the life I live entering it
to come where I carrying her     float in the middle     the calendar surrounds &
turns from the hill down doorways     out the garden door     adobe
in & out her lock     pleasure & key     the hill goes knowing out the village     & me
the man in wide band follows out the messages     out of the book &
into her hand.


larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / Spring 1973 / from The Book of Ometeotl,
last performance book in the Ometeotl Trilogy . . .Bruce Lowney did this  lithograph
of the hill when he was living in Placitas . . . 

Followers!