1832

BLUES CHOIR

Obstacle course
Finagling
Sure I can help with that
No, no problem – problem

A twitch in the eye
The poems can only be
About surviving this

I am tired of survival mode
I find it absolutely demeaning
To pretend it isn't disguising itself
As how we live now

This bomb shelter morning
I'm swigging from the shower

It is a feeling I don’t want
To memorialize
Until it's truly dead

I want to be soaring in my metronome
Not shrugging off the ten pound chain

To understand this feeling it helps
To have played a string instrument
How furious it makes me
To play along it's the only thing
I can think about anymore

The communitarian impulse
Sings the blues

Kablooey sings the blues
The family of man sings the blues

I am turning green and singing the blues

The orchestra trying to memorize
How to make your hair stand on end
Will get there when it's good and plenty

The good souls who eject paragraph
After paragraph, o admirable industry!
And none of it worth looking at once

I have no bandaid
For M'sieur Tarzan

The space between
Is trying to be my favorite subject

When you wake me
Don't tell me about driving the car
Off the side of the post office,
That's my dream

In America we love cars so much
(How much do we love them)
We want to have them buried with us
And we love to see them blow up
(On TV)

I love TV so much

It is a vestigial attempt to recognize community
As a service that can be provided
For a nominal fee
I.e. taxes

The British pay for TV with their taxes
And what does the phrase mean-spirited mean anyway
What does it look like, the average soul

The average soul collection, now, that
I can pick out of a lineup

You've got your Marvin Gaye, your Al Green
Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Band

Actually that's funk
As in what's that funky smell
Making this party
So instantly memorable

Ah perhaps now would be a good time to mention
That for a while there I wore Joe Brainard's shoes
And have several copies of Pierre Reverdy
"In the original"
And perhaps it would not

There is never a good time to prove one's lineage
Except with brave deeds with the yardarm
On the field of valour
Where you better not wear velour

Unless the high spirits
(Back to soul math)
Of the shrinky dinks
Have made you to loathe
Clack-factory deists
Such as Mr. Dean Young
A personal favorite of mine
Whose proofs of lineage
Go totally unnoticed
Except by me –
I'm looking at you, Dean

Dean is a frequent soloist in the choir
His collections include Skid, First Course in Turbulence
And the difficult to locate Design with X
In which he thanks David Sylvian né Batt
For providing the soundtrack to the poems

David Batt's dad caught rats

I don't have a soundtrack for these poems
It's five in the morning and I'm joking my fury away

Which is better for you
Than googling up some eggs

Play your eggs at a moderate volume
And don't neglect
To register the car

Furious I find lots to neglect

For example I have never spent any time
Rehanging doors
And have only once dipped my hands
Into a box filled with hinges

I'm not what you might call "handy"

I'm living with someone
She's so warm
When I jump out of bed to write this
That I spend ten minutes
Dreaming that it makes any sense to get up

She is waiting for me
To say something loving
To do with her
And do it too

If we're truly tired of singing down songs
Let's don't make her wait