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

Anthrax Avenue

photograph by lenore goodell

And tacky tacks

commingle your double

time in despair pair

off

you can hear me read this here . . . 

Sex creates fun

fun creates parties

parties create alcohol

alcohol creates dope

women create men

men create half a dozen killing enterprises

made in New Mexico

tragedy crosses the border

everything gets reversed

in the car of the future

the home of the triple car garage

the spoiled brat of the past produces

spores of unbreathable future

time travels backward and ends in

the Pope’s lap

the poet’s rap.

Anthrax Avenue ends

where the Batmobile dead-ends

and has the last laugh in Carlsbad

where the radioactive wastes burp & throw up

hungover from a national binge.

We dropped our guard now everybody

hates our backyard.

That’s what you get for sucking the sucker

                        of secrecy.

Trying forever to pull the wool over

            the sheep’s eyes.

We are the fat lambs led to slaughter

by a government that doesn’t know where it’s going

except to the decimation of the universe.

namely the best of all countries eliminating nature

a one species world, namely ours,

with robot greenhouses and cattle ranches

roaches and ants and aphids we try to murder.

Yes the problem is a preponderance of egos.

Human humans that are not too human.

We’ve made lots of progress the “we” tells me from

                     the pulpit

and yet it’s true: Mozart, Anna and the King of Siam

Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha love and compassion

yes, tolerance.

Tolerance and democracy.

Back to the Earth, my only home

as I return home.

Home again away from home.

That home of hate is not my home

but a fundamental cult

of backended young male assholes.

Breathe deeply. Garden

practice husbandry

follow the stars.

Act like you got sense.

Disorganize.

Follow your dream if that includes

the world of Jane Goodall

Woody Guthrie the great cathedrals

and the kivas

the natural order of recovery

day by day

from the drunken disaster of greed

building houses so big no chicken would live in them

light lightly.

Here with humility to shape me

if I let it.

Let it out

in the music of communicated life

to the jazz beat of the heart

the hearing of the soul

the giant helping of helping others

for dessert. 

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 18Oct2001

this is from Oh Cabezon, poems from 2001, over 10 years old . . . remember anthrax being sent in letters to Tom Brokaw & Sen. Dashiell, but then that's only the time the poem is written in, and a month after 9/11 . . . the poem touches on New Mexico, the WIPP project, Los Alamos, drunkenness & greed, gardening, compassion . . . (heck that's about all I write about) . . .

Oh Fertile God

you can hear this read here

Thank you Fertile God.
Oh the gods of the ocean expanded

into the clouds for the garden gods

oh the garden gods the dancing gods of

            the earth of the other earths

            of the many earths of many

                        universes

                        all singing

                        from the mouths of the oceans

                                    clouds and gardens

                        farms and forests

                        mouths of the singers

                                    the birds and lions and panthers

                                    and buffalos & wolves

                                    and elephants and opera singers

                                    and folksingers

                        and everybody in praise for the

               good in the good days

               the good in the bad days

the good ways in bad times

the everything that is, that we who can

work on better:

oh the great enjoyment begins at

                                    any age

as old Fertile Gods you come up from

this Earth, as always you have and will

as the roaring goddesses and mindful

            pleasures of the whole earth

            manured, turned over, furrowed, planted

            as we all sing out

            in speech ways

            in words of the language of all earths

            all earths everywhere

            we work for our food in precious ways

                                        you give us

mindfulness is your dance

                        in the vibrating atoms, harmonious booming

            with salsa backdrop as the tropics elate

            the richness of orchids perfumed and night

                        of foreign moons

            we visit on all Earths

            we relate in our singing how

            singing makes it work and work to play

and harvest

our voices in

the mantle of tropical heaven

here on Earth

as all heavens are only

here on earth.

We weave to be true

in the dance to you

oh Fertile God

            of all the Earths
Thank you.






larry goodell / placitas, new mexico
from To Hell With Mumbo Jumbo, poems 1998

back of reading performance copy (what audience sees)

       

back of reading performance copy,
what the audience sees . . .

text side of performance copy

List of “Thing” Development in Larry Goodell's Poems

reading performance from the Staff of Ometeotl, poems with cloth backings, photo by Wayne Jones

"pizza" storage boxes for items needed for presenting certain poems

Note: this is basically a guide to me to get down the chronology of the development of my poems
which often have materialized (at time of writing) a picture of the thing which I then later had to make by hand in order to use in the presentation of the poem. I will add illustrations to this list as time goes by to remind me when I did various things other than reading from a poem to an audience.

“Cycles,” a long poem on a paper loop to be read and finished anywhere, 15Oct66  (published in Cycles, 1966)
✬
(A New Land, a novel, to be read aloud, 1967-68.)

✬13 Halloween poem on 13 IBM cards to be shuffled & read. Oct 67.

✬A Bag for the 6 Directions, Nov67.
A one-liner on each of six cards, the cards placed in an empty room, one on each wall, floor & ceiling. Rodey Theater Reading 3 Nov67



✬Wherever She Blows at Old Town Studio March & April, 1968.
“Theatrical Poetry - Mime - Mixed Media” by the Universal Mind Dance.
At one point poems on paper torn apart as being read.


"Iris Leaves" & "Off-Center" calligrams, May68. drawing/diagram/poems


✬Making It 15May68, Larry Morris’ class, 68. stacked boxes with 7 different “definitions”
of poetry acted out by poet & audience



✬The Fool 21May68, Steve Rodefer’s class. poet acting out aspects of human history silently while audience read texts from cookbook to poems on scrolls & objects.

"The Fool." Poet Larry Goodell (pictured above) reads in the Kiva this Wednesday at 7 p.m. Taylor Mead, of Andy Warhol fame, has said of Goodell, "he's an Aztec Goddess that makes me feel like a Grecian Urn." A life-long resident of New Mexico, Goodell is editor of Duende Press and also of the local poetry magazine Fervent Valley. His reading is free, courtesy of the ASUNM-GSA Poetry Series. 

(Trip to Mexico Jul68, Pre-Columbian Adventure)

Word Mandala Sep68.
Magic Box #1 & #2, Amulets, Sep68.

The Staff itself (6 ft cottonwood) materializes 1Nov68.

✬The President, 13Nov68, New York House, Placitas. “Event” poem enacted in Placitas with
masks & texts for the participating audience.

✬The News, 29Jan69, University of Albuquerque, shuffle poems read from painted oatmeal boxes.

(1st Garden, Apr-May69)

Holy of Holies, June69 (unfinished)
Headband – thing and words, Jun69. Poem written for the preparation of a headband.

✬NWSE Up Down Center, Aug69-Nov70, UNM. collaboration of Lenore Goodell drawings set out on floor and poems by me as I moved around to the directions. published in Caterpillar 13.

✬Paho, Mar70. Poem with each line hanging from a string wound around paho, unwound and read as unwound. UNM

Wind Unwind Poem for Lenore

✬Great White Brother, Oct70 – Dec70. Harvest mask, staff, balloon, infinity sign on forehead,   FART the name of God. Gray mask in dream, Yellow snake in Olson dream.

I am an animist.

✬Space Helmet headress poem, Jan71.
Hand movement to cunt-bush poem drawing.
Poem of pumpkin with pumpkin aura seen & drawn & turned into headdress to present the poem

✬Sun disk with poem on it, with snake headdress, willow necklace, & Babylonian sun priest robe, and drawing of upper “middle class” couple.

some contents of one storage box

Digging sticks poem. Hands touching & poem.
✬Song, Arrow Cloth Poem to Lenore with beans & seeds in it.

✬Rolled up Poem in a bottle to be unrolled at time of reading and placed on the ground.
Tunnel object sighting poem. “Delight.”
✬Christmas Cupidoll poem with rattles & chant.
Tree ornament poem.
✬Om Phallus Cunt Ease, poem for a birth, with spider woman & twins cottonwood root carved figures.
(Winter Solstice in Kiva/Hogan, 1970)
Poem to be Burnt, 19Jan71
Onion in white box, 7Feb71
Dead White Christian, 16Mar71 (poems with drawings only)
✬Poet’s Curse Poem (beating rock with sticks) 12Mar71

✬Staff of Ometeotl
poems with elaborate cloth backings & hung on cottonwood
staves, with oval magic box-table with compartment of masks & needed items for specific poems in the series.

✬Bowl of Ometeotl. even more elaborate with large hanging backdrop of cloth Sandias,
several costume changes and all poems on different shaped backing. Cloth arcs with stuffed yoni-lingam in the middle on floor.

✬Book of Ometeotl. attempt to return to the “book” with poems with furor necessary accouterments.

✬Blue Spaceman, Apr-May73. with procedural statement, large round cloth covered blue box with breast cover & dangling fish. inside are masks & muscle shirt (made for me by Lenore), and 7 dildos different lengths with silk condoms.

✬Face of Velma  (unfinished) Dec73-Feb74
✬The Garden of Ourselves, 26Apr-27Jul74

✬Mom Dass, 13Aug74. Poem with wig and dress and hand-held mirror with poem on back.

✬Dried Apricots, Dec74-Jan75. Several booklets, one a play, one secret only for men.

✬Hot Art & Other Plays
Alfalfa, 5Oct75, Left & Right 12Oct, Captain Armor 14Oct, Hot Art, Body Palace 21-22Oct, The Football Game 24Oct, A Fifth Apart, 23Jan76. Several performed at the Vortex Theater in Albuquerque, directed by Ned Sublette.

✬Clothesline with clothespins to hang and pin poems to for reading at an event reading.
Set of poems on large scrolls that are water colored on audience side with poem on reading side, hung from clothesline.

Poems cut out according to their shape on the page and appropriate designs water colored on back.

(to be continued)
 larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

more storage, box poems masks, muscle shirt, radio mask etc.

Larry in a reading performance of the Bowl of Ometeotl in the Thunderbird Bar, Placitas, New Mexico 1972

Allen Ginsberg in Albuquerque, Thunderbird Bar, San Felipe Corn Dance 1967

from a letter to poet Robert Peterson . . .