DADA LIVES

Larry Goodell presenting "The Fool" in the Kiva at UNM Aluquerque, New Mexico, 1968

hear this here (mp3) or here (wav)

Dada lives by plucking out a toilet
and parading it in the Louvre
next to the Venus of Badlands.
Dada dissolves the duende and
enters the blood of the poet
who ought to know better but never does
as he utters beauties to inspire painters
to make money off their paintings.
Dada is dead so must live on art
by destroying its critics and then wondering
were any of them good looking.
Being dead so long dada
sticks out on all fronts
and imposes itself on all movements
laughing at the hypocrisy of ego
and sticking its tongue out from
every subway poster.
Dada cannot be because being dead
it’s not heard of by any but a few
who pass their art courses
then go out to force people
to look at art as if it’s better
than "wall art," doodads for the happy couple
fighting in the next room.
Every publication depends on
the cremated remains of dada.
Every musical composition
is strained through dada’s ears
and sets people’s feet dancing
in drunken dives by the sea shore.
Every painting & sculpture
gets extruded from the backside of dada
before being praised by know-nothings
in the art world.
Every critic writing about
the post-modern marbles in
his empty brain
depends on being dead from dada’s
act of savage love.
Every general & admiral &
military maggot
depends on dada’s rotting corpse
to give them life and vitality.
Dada lives by history’s denial
it can still be alive,
giving birth to absurdity, blood to hypocrisy,
meat & flesh to greed,
its bones to the drumming ego of the human race
carrying on vainly
as dada laughs its last laugh’s laugh.
　

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 29Dec2012

the photograph from the "Daily Lobo" is by Mel Buffington.

Summer Rains & Newly Fallen Snow

front

back

2 poem/sheets glued back to back

so you can flip it over to read

the other poem --

lines cut out for borders

(so you can see thru)

an extended haiku for John Brandi

larry goodell

1975



Firecracker Soup (original Introduction)

INTRO

(original)

        Writing is an act of life for a poet. His improvised airs are page breaths. It's not for me to know what not writing is since I'm always being written with. The pauses are that: pauses, and then I write, my right place and time only once for that esteemed occasion. What a relief to surprise myself -- only the makeup of myself with all my severe limitations screens the joy. Or perhaps makes me ordinary. A release into semi-guided fun of my own essential one and only tongue, wagging a new tune that goes till done and not to be mangled with rehashing but is the sacred text of my Goddamned condition. It's always a score a reading aloud at time of writing, a recital – no, a concert of words--hell no, sentences, scores, a going high, a take, a progression, an undulating song, with tips: they say performance. In front of an audience it repeats. And now a book.

        The farther from the left margin a line or word begins the higher the pitch in delivery. The bigger the space inside a line, the slightly longer the pause. The word with a single underlined letter is emphatic of course. Line endings are a pause, however slight. And any directions, usually italicized, to the right of the poem is part of it: what needs to be done or donned, a fact arisen at the time of the poem-writing.

         I am writing to get to a different place from where I began, where it feels better, some kind of musical word clarification through pun and performance of the airs laid down. Mysterious muse-ic cycle of the Earth, what little bit of it I know: think only of gifts someone might enjoy and even read aloud a time or two. /2May89

*

                 "Writing is an act of life for a poet            whose improvised airs are a page breath. For me the words

      speak through pores"

We didn't use this introduction in the publication of the book in 1990, but now in reflection it may have some value for those interested in my poems. I remember Philip Whalen telling me that he was surprised that others would value his "scribbles" since it would do him just fine if someone someday would read a poem of his and get something from it.

"The trouble with poetry is, there are too many tap dancers," I remember his saying . .

*

Well, gosh, I was a tap dancer in my early teens, but I value the pure breath of poetry that knows few boundaries and the freshness of ever new dance continues to engage and intrigue . . .

love to all, and I'm ever grateful to Cinco Puntos Press for publishing this book.






larry goodell
/24nov2012

A Lead In To The Middle Ages (class notes)

Please see A Lead In To The Middle Ages  for the end product of all these little class "notes" . . . the intense reading did jar me a bit and altho it was mostly a gathering of quotes it was a fruitful thing for me . . . thanks for looking . . . (added this note 24nov12) . . .
-   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -
as interested as I was in Dr. Joseph Zavadil's class in Medieval Studies, June-July 1969 at the University of New Mexico, most of what I did was draw (doodle) draw draw and evidently it occupied a few other students' minds too . . . 

this led to delaying my paper and working on intensive full-time reading August 7th to the 9th of September and handing in a bizarre compilation of quotes from my studies which included a big share of Jung and became a "volume" called "A Lead In To The Middle Ages" . 

. .  Dr. Zavadil was not impressed saying that the academic world was more of an advanced degree "factory" (my word) and so I got a (deserved I guess) low B in that class . . . these are simply the class notes that lead to "A Lead In . . ." .

the subsequent studies entitled A Lead In To the Middle Ages simply absorbed me to the point of defeatest obsession . . . but was like a foundation in my mind, no matter what Dr. Zavadil thought, and was just what I needed, to take off from . . .

THAT'S A POEM, from napkin to printed page . . .

I was invited to Shiprock at the Navajo Community College to talk to Robert Hurley's journalism class and read my poetry to a very responsive audience of mostly Diné . . . in the morning I had breakfast at the THATSABURGER and while sitting there entered the dreamy world of paradise (it seemed) and wrote this poem on napkins . . . (the typed text follows the napkins) . . . 

                       THAT'S A POEM



How do you write a poem. Poem on a napkin.
Think about the size of the paper you're writing on.
If you're doing it in your brain only, there's no limit to
     the length of the line you're going for
But on this here napkin they gave me at the Thatsaburger
I've got about 5 inches from left to right.
5 inches to write what my brain thinks &
      translates from brain language into American English
         and if my brain thots keep going in a long
            sentence I've got to wrap the writing of it
                back to the left margin, indenting
                   each time so I have a stepped
                      stack of words, diagonal
                         in until I've just
                            about run out of
                              space!

So I've got to wonder if this is a poem or not
What would any other language have for the word poem
or would there be no word at all in some tongues
for poem!
And then how would you write one: I guess you
     wdnt bother.
So why write a whatever it is.
      Well
I've got this napkin and I've got this Bic Micro Metal 
      ballpoint pen
And I've been called a poet for so damn long
I don't know what else to do in a situation like this.
I've finished my ham, egg, cheese on whole wheat toast
      sandwich,

2nd napkin!
By the way if you write on a napkin, put another napkin
      under it because the ink bleeds through the one
      you're writing on.
And I've finished a couple cups of coffee, refills free!
Got a little container of milk so I can have that in my coffee
instead of that damned non-dairy creamer. 

And I must say two-thirds the way through my breakfast sandwich
it was so good and the light was so clear
and the place seemed so open & spacious with its
      blue & white tile floors
      and the Navajo guys & gals & that little baby
      were all so enjoying their breakfast
      the infant was just sleeping
that somehow I felt like I was in heaven.
How could there be any more in life than
sitting here in perfect contentment.
But what is perfect
and is there any such thing as heaven & can it be attained
right here in this corner booth at the Thatsaburger
in Shiprock New Mexico.
If you want to know the truth the astounding presence
      of that gigantic volcanic core spectacular rock
      Shiprock, rock-with-wings,
      is so present in my thots tho I can't see it directly
      from where I sit
That I must get up: it is so overwhelmingly there.
I want to see it.
Is there perfection, is there any kind of heaven.
There is a kind of perfection, there is a kind of heaven.
I just experienced it.

3rd & final napkin!
But is there a poem. What is this thing.
Why did I write it.
      Well
maybe it's just a letter
like my Grandma Goodell used to write
to all her brothers & sisters
maybe it's just a way to bridge
the gap from me to you.

larry goodell / Shiprock, New Mexico 3Feb94

People really did laugh at my wordplay poems
and especially my poets reading spoofs . . . 
& nature & gardening . . . audience 
almost entirely Native American.

TumbleWords brought writers/poets to local communities in  Southwest states . . . this is University of Nevada Press, 1995 and "Thatsapoem" is included . . . 

Traveling the University of New Mexico Department of Art Faculty Show 1980 by Gaston La Plum

DOGFISH
A floating shield shape, or shovel head. Decorative art, progressing toward the edge 
with relentless uninterestingness.

OLDGUY
Dated duality  (2 canvases side by side).

ADILDO
"Butterfly Chair."  Illustration for Ms. Magazine done by the wrong sex.
"Kimono Series."  Illustration for Vogue Magazine with unfinished head.

EVEAPPLE
"Triad III & I."  Children's woodblock collage painting, but less spontaneous.

INEPT
Paper swallows the uninteresting flat rectangles that hover below in idea-less squalor.

INTRUSION
A master craftsman of other people's decorative ideas.

POKE
Pretentious useless plates, in a beautifully functional display case.

SMOTE
The token aspens painter.

PENIS
Stodgy, ill-painted pseudo realism– the worst painting in the show. 

FATBAG
Landscape lithographs with hairy skies—looking rather dirty, overdone & cloyingly ugly. An insult to Placitas.

"Interior spaces."  Lacks the large Bernard Buffet signature.

LAZYPRICK
S & M bondage images so popular now among jaded males. Picture area cluttered & totally contrived– except for Wedding Dance Fetish I– should have stopped there. Sequels even more artificial .

RACQUET
Decorative womanhood, at least lower keyed, some color sophistication but top heavy.

LOCUST
"Blowing Sand, White Sands." Some sense of the old mystery in photographs.

JACKSPRAT
Energetic pencil landscapes perhaps overdone –  dancing V's set on the ground like restless lawn sprinklers.
"Corrido Blanco." Backpacking assemblage/ collages in chained & strapped cases. The medium is the interest.

WIDER
As usual,  artists taking on words as if they've just discovered them. The words irrelevant to the images, or at least dissipating possible image strengths. Drawings/words poorly done.

HERNIA
Again the mix of photo and drawing/lettering in unbalanced juxtaposition, but in this case, with no strength on either side. 

DIXON
Decorative sculpture at its pseudo art-deco worst.

COGWHEEL
Could be a nice child's boat except for the pretentiousness of its "art" — which turns it into a cumbersome expensive object to maintain in a gallery.

WINTERS
Lithographs of Bresdin forest floors.

CLINCHY
"Marsh Romance." A photo script into some strip of world where humor didnt die and art takes on some wings.

NEEDLER
"Inscapes." Mondrian/Cubist notecard series for a new Hallmark line.

ABORING
"Nightfish in the Garden." Exquisitely done wall-art appropriate for high level dining rooms.

Gaston La Plum



Gaston La Plum, International Roving Critic, left me this critical piece back in 1980 when he was in Albuquerque and viewed this faculty show. Since I just ran across it I'm making it available for the first time . . . I've run into La Plum several times in my life but I'm presently out of touch with him although Dr. Elmo Acadork has recently heard from him in Paris . . . I have no way of telling who "Bad Art" is but I include the drawing since it was clipped to La Plum's piece . . . All of the above artists were on the faculty at the time of this show. larry goodell

Family Portrait

drawing by Lenore Goodell

FAMILY PORTRAIT


in that Valley        a different colored string from each finger     

so that one of another      each knew the other      in Love's Dream  S 
stablished     higher lower firey icey headed     empty headed in 
come come the Serpent round the Sun the S’s       from seen Heaven 
Spillway Rainbow
Joel Ai Rainbow     Son Bird     holding Brewster Feline watching 
Clem Moonrider      the Pointer      still pup    
Full Hill landless Lord over Laughter       he saw him tricking the Sun     
the Father    Bird.    Yoked     Poet       holding     hidden Bowl of Ometéotl     
& Other times the Staff     or Book    or ME
under Whirl around the Sun in vacuum-headed       icey     quest     
Search out       find in leg of the Valley      the dip in Care for 
Fam i ly       Family  portion spread out from Her touch strung hair     
Fishless    Hair
Pisces      morning      sewing      drawing      whirl in birth of swimming
headdress      wood on wood birds flying to the star under many circles
serpents      all tied to the ends of rainbow strings from his fingers
passing as I say to her voice      passing thru his     wood on wood
knocking       the country is blind       & the land he needs for a house
to grow up on for the son    & all them her hand constant voices interrupted
tied together going out in seen thru eras    
March, June, November, & Soon     Seeing it it is all too sugary 
let them have Sight

a little bag of sugar     a   larger one of salt       
one of Chile & all earth's pleasures
one of bones to bang against each other & prayer 
one of winds, the thumb almighty 
one of little mudheads trying to emerge 
one of a stick pointing direction 
one of fertility red leaf lettuce 
one of awkward hesitation     an empty cradle
& the last the little finger from the rainbow string 
the center of the ear      & hearing what you see       

I  see my hands & the garbage on the wall 
owning the spaces    where the eyes can behold      her wonder & his there
where it is directed      & coming back in dreams     we oughtnt to cling to    
who knows?       "prefer the Unknown" where the colors come down in the Spring
December      burning & burning on the head      over the head    
into full light.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 9Dec73

This was printed as a duende press broadside at the end of 1973, for a holiday hand out to friends . . . attaching strings with little objects hanging from my fingers proved to be impractical, although I made the 10 little charm-objects, but the strings tangled up immediately . . . but the poem remains as a further testament to 3 Dimensional Poetry in my life . . . things hanging on strings from my fingers appeared in my thoughts along with the poem . . .this wonderful pencil portrait of lenore as fish, me as sparrow hawk, our son as a younger bird . . . in a way generated the poem and was natural as the main part of it . . . love to all and to all depiction of families . . . larry

Above, As Below

The landscape of ovary ripoff seclusions

bombarded into gangs, inclusions for life,

secrecy the manhood between their legs as

the overpopulated rats turned into mice:

            above them

            in Las Vegas condominiums

            oriental jet lag & lost dimensions

            turned the rat-race Americans into

Secrets beyond control.

Gangs had only the dare, the cop-out, the chicken

to avoid being square as they sniffed

and drew their designs of hate calligraphy

down through the halls of City Hell,

ever downward the road shot up through their arms

as the girls learned too, to scar women.

            No different were

            the Halls of Royal Hill

            in the non-hell plaything

            of Whitman's lost America

            high up in corporate supposed innocence

            behind closed doors in taxicabs

            first-class diamonds touching

            forest fall out

to afford any kinky thing you wished

build your mansion number two above

the hearing of the can-toters &

graffiti worshippers--

the ovarian landscape sinking

into a poison of itself

            the City of Security

dumping, madly, anything, protected by buddies on

the City Council

down the drain,

and blaming the housewife's bad water

on her infrequent chlorine.

           

            Linked from Las Vegas, New York, Chicago

            linked in arms from L.A. Hong Kong linked

            Tokyo & Philadelphia linked

            Bonn, Carthage, the Middle East. Icons of power

            in a downplay of history, the men

            with fat ties have no

            moral disgust

            and the Christians are wheedling ninnies.

The gangs are all that is left of moieties

secrets in the shared dark

tattooed upside-down crosses

covered by handshakes:

            there is no

economic belonging down here as

the mirror image up there of

the beheaded saints of tomorrow

the corporate lesions of world hate

teaches security in the classroom

the gangs circling the schools

for victims.

One wrong look, one step beyond

the rivaling suffering black men

and factions rule the world more

possibilities of different packs

breaches of contract, rivaling

rivalries, as

the poor get more

of themselves only,

the only heroes the billionaire

football players, the sports facade

of corporate bustling.

            How do I get out

join, join, but not a union

when you have no work and

your buddies pull you down spread

disunion all around

            billions

more in one world planet

            can't

escape the ground

            and twice as many

splinter groups

bend hate out of the tough

facade that is family

non-planning.

You can't be too tough

to die.

To die is the why

            for your buddies

            while above

you live in lawyer's arms,

a paid jostling out of prison

in mansion number three

your numbers are populating

as the rich get more

of the poor,

and the last plan is after

all female earth parts

are beyond recall

to stamp out the inner city:

exterminate the warring poor,

concentrate them to work

building your pyramids

of abundant rape

and the wealthy fascist Las Vegas heaven

the Super-Rich knows

your call girl

is just as rich as you.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 15Jan92

              from Lizard Bowl, poems 1992

San Ysidro de Placitas retablo painted by Juan Wijngaard of Corrales, New Mexico

The Avant-Garde Is Dead So What

for Christopher Shultis

(written in November 1995)
 hear this poem read with improvised piano

Avant

      pickle-dee-doodle-ee

Guard God.

Guard God!

Pick up a rock and carry it to the navel of the Earth and drop it in.

Ask three times

      this is twentieth century America ness pa?

      this is?

      twenty-first century madness?

You’re not mad you’re sadder than a bladder.

Breathing in and out practicing Tai Chi

      because he’s not a football star.

Say nothing for three Mahatma Gandhi’s.

Cut a fiddle in half down the middle if it’s not worth anything & and you don’t want it anyway.

Conserve.

Make some chutney. Green tomatoes and apples and raisins and ginger and cinnamon and on and on.

Boil art in it until it tastes good.

The avant-garde is by now well pickled. well heeled, well potatoed, picked over till

not even the carcass is left.

The weight of a dead bird.

A way to not be able to fly into the 21st Century.

Flap

                                    FLAP!

Flap

                                    FLAP!

I CAN’T EVEN GET OFF THE TABLE!

   HOW ARE WE GOING TO ENTER THE 21ST?

      With a ding dong?

      With a merry merry have a canary?

      With a post guard tough love syndrome where character counts?

      With a pillow with moss on it from an endangered tropical bonanza?

      From Campbell’s soup quietly put to rest and never pop-arted again?

      With a giant bang or gross whimper or just a nothing at all not even a sigh

            a whisper or a kissing sound?

      With just the same old thing again but more people, more people

            and a helluva lot more endangered species.

      With a gun in every hand and every man an octopus and

            every woman a hydra-headed Dillenger toting weapon?

With just a little mercy.

With just a little sobriety.

With maybe a good night’s sleep.

With maybe an appreciation of the dawn.

Not hung over

not all drugged

not just so tired

not weirded out or anything just

getting up to greet

Number One.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / from Beyond TV, poems from 1995                                            

Teddy Feelia at the Onyx

Teddy Feelia’s new work “Brushed Nuances” is hanging at the Onyx. All the aahs and oohs of the opening have been collected in a large urn inside the gallery. Gallery owner Robert Shoeless the 3rd went through a dozen canisters of Danish butter cookies and uncountable boxes of wine at Teddy Feelia’s opening.

His abstract gouaches and holy water based watercolors of Catholic nun stripteases and muted priests’ behind-the-altar jack-offs caused a tide of decentralization in the gallery mob at the opening. Everyone wore black patten leather boots, perforated and holy jeans and off the shoulder T-shirt remnants and danced, destroying several insured Feelia pictures to the grunge mix Teledildonics – “Art has been annoyed beyond existence,” Teddy piped as he brushed by one of his Brushed Nuances, this one of a pig in heat mating with a sunflower while zombies picked their noses and paraded around barely seen through the overlay of gouache and tarnished sequins.

The show will come down the day after Valentine’s Day so take your lover to Brushed Nuances and add your nuances to the sticky canvasses and be sure to dump your oohs and aahs in the urinal just inside the front door.

Highly recommended.

Gaston La Plume Albuquerque Soiree Society

On (origin of "Lang-goiter-age Poet")

Card front and back. Audience sees the drawing of a wall light switch. I read from the "instruction" side. I use a pull chain light socket (which you can hear being turned on & off) . . . I think this is the first time I used the clumsy term "Lang-goiter-age Poet" for the then raging current fashion of writing, especially in San Francisco . . . (written in '84)

audience side of card

poet's side of card

Gaston La Plume, or as he often preferred, Gaston LePlum, was a visage that claimed to write some of my poems, as he did this one in 1984. One time in a gallery in San Francisco I saw a very elegant gentleman signing the guest registry and when I went up and checked the signature it was GASTON LA PLUME. So I have seen the gentleman but have never met him but he does insist on his presence on rare occasions in my life.

bastille day, 2012

Thus Slam

Langoiterage poets devastated the New American poetry and criticism and the MFA glut continues this in acanemia. Thus slam.

Americans love audiences & understand competition above all. Something had to fill the vacuum. Thus slam.

Dr. Elmo Acadork, 2010

A Vision of Taj Mahal (purely armchair) & Portrait of Judge Thomas - 1991

Poem with improvised keyboard music back up . . .  

 or, you can hear me read just the poem

this poem is from 1991 poems, Fugitive ABC's.

          Taj Mahal.

                    Burp furor.

These are some little things that don't have any meaning.

"If they have no meaning, why write them?"

I write them because they have no meaning.

                              Is he a high hope Pope?

Or a magnificent downer.

                    He's a meaning hog.

          Lay French out for German to scarf.

          Watch German, watch Japanese

          Watch Black, watch White

          Watch mixtures.

          The chemistry of the Earth

Test tube babies, choosing the sex of the infant.

Don't drag your down into depression.

The biological time Assumption of our Lady of Seniority.

The Goddess of the Goddess of the semi-artificial man.

Artificial inseminal stupidity.

Oh the wonders of . . . . the wonders of . . . .

          What was the subject?

The Goddess of the Taj Mahal, biological slums

the arch new man playing with his beanbag.

Germ warfare. First animal-to-man graft in 1964.

          Oh the wonders of

          man-o-pause.

The Pause that menstruates.

          PMS throws "she's on her rag" out the door.

          Mood control. Intelligence for all including the Barbarians.

          Artificial insemination ovulation.

          Brains without bodies!

          Chemicals to banish sanity.

          Moral horse pills.

A vision of an armchair reveler.

How much fun can you have sitting down?

          Transplantation ultra-centrifuge.

          Two halves of the brain reading two books at once.

          The Empress, favorite wife of a Mogul Emperor

          dreamed up the Taj Mahal.

          The Goddess of the dream was her imagination.

          Eternal life, deep frozen, comes to light.

          Who-Am-I pills.

          A beautiful dream in marble.

          My rolling desk chair travels.

          I can't afford a ticket but I write

          And the world's marvels turn into marble.

          The vision of the Taj Mahal took dope to

          bring it into reality.

An old Sage appeared before the Emperor

and offered an architect the drug

Super-thought for brain to brain links.

I am in your brain regenerating your organ,

the organ Bach played on.

Meaning so big it demands acceptance.

The architect drank the unknown drug and

the wondrous Taj Mahal brain-linked to

the Empress vision revealed itself in all its

lack of clichés.

Poetry is brain stimulation, energizing lost cells.

The late Lord Brain, eminent English neurologist

said scientists must clean up the bathrooms

of their laboratories, roll up their sleeves

and deal with the aftermath of their deposits

in the social world of now.

Responsibility to the population density of the

A Bomb

B Bomb

C Bomb

D Bomb

E Bomb

F Bomb

G Bomb

H Bomb

I Bomb!

So the architect, sage-drunk, finished every detail

of the Taj Mahal plan, vividly, meaning

"gem of buildings."

  

And, eight-sided, it grew white high,

minaret slendered,

on a platform of red sandstone overlooking

Jumna River.

Persian gardened such as in Kashmir.

And the dream wrought from the Empress

favorite of Shah Jahan at Agra

can be seen under bright moonlight

reflected in cypress-lined pool

to all lovers of armchair onyx,

jasper, carnelian the inner false tomb

of floral marble screens

surrounding her & his pretended thereness

as the sun strikes intricate dawn up

lighting the jeweled cenotaphs

           Kuwait, Saddam, Haiti, Yugoslav

          Khmer Rouge, Tainanmen Square, Prague

      Berlin, the Kurds, Ethiopia, Detroit, Tibet

    Jerusalem, L.A., South Africa, Romania

   Austin, the new Nunavut, Japan

  Aspen, Washington DC, Russia, Magic Johnson

irreversible ozone anti-viral depletion

monster ingenious notorious gene-splitting

immunity murderers, genetics in the deep-freeze

thaws,

the real dead are under the Taj Mahal

17th Century reflection of the gasping obstruction

of the near end of the 20th

radiating cancer balls on the pool table

"I have been saying for 30 years

to stop this Population Monster,"

Norman Barlaug of the Green Revolution says

but the gangrene of meaning intervenes

in the no-hospital future, the no hospitable now,

"If we can't do this then

it's a losing ballgame,"

                    &

putting human waste back

in the soil, rather than the rivers.

We are what we waste.

He faces the portals of a slower Second Green Revolution

through the daze, through the days going by

the pattern of the poets growing

a spider web of words spun hot out of the body

no meaning, just song, long.

          So saying

I cover the time

bomb

          the cloned people passing out

from lack of intervention

if everything is left to its own waste

it composts

          the oncoming, incoming

snow

knows.

The human-oriented news

confuses.

The focus is all us.

Us'ens.

No lessens.

Oh vision that took 22 years to build.

Take a hundred, near Delhi,

tomb of beauty I can't really see.

The imagination of nonsense is my goddess.

Honesty is the best

back-pocket policy.

Put your money where

your heart is,

or your heart

where hope.

High hopes.

Are hard.

A simple hope

isn't simple

an epoch crashes

into the questions it has raised:

Inside the great echoing dome

echoing whispers and a cat's purr

here

my little house

is all I don't control.

Brain to body gives up to

link fate

our Lady of Grandiose Principles

echoes

from the real tombs underground.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico
December 30, 1991
from Fugitive ABC's, poems from 1991

Portrait of Judge Thomas

you can hear this read, it's a bit over a minute  

I uncategorically deny that I did nothing, 

said nothing, or pretended to do anything 

that would cause anyone any harm anywhere, 

whether they were connected or not connected 

to any organization under my thumb 

or having caused sexuality among any of my 

employees, or did I ever produce indecent sperm 

in public or pretend I was top jock or bottom 

jock, and I absolutely do not recall any 

amoral, certainly no immoral flaw in my superfluous 

character which shall remain a shining example 

as it always has to our youth, our office girls, 

who have the immaturity to scream every time I 

flash.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

New Year's Eve, 1991

(Two poems from the last two days of 1991) lg