July 19-25, 2004: Marc Awodey, Scott Malby and T.L. Stokes

Bio (auto)

Burlington, Vermont poet Marc Awodey is also a visual artist, art critic, educator, and a past Poetry Slam Nationals haiku champion His poetry has appeared online since 1995, and has been sporadically in print publications since 1980 Literary credits include Writer’s Journal, Humanitas, The Vincent Brothers Review, Poetry Motel, Defined Providence and many others His books New York a Haibun Journey (WPC-Minimal Press 2003) and Telegrams from the Psych Ward and other poems (WPC-Minimal Press 1999) are both available on Amazon.com He has also published many chapbooks, and all of those are out of print.  Awodey recieved an MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1984.

The following work is Copyright © 2004, and owned by Marc Awodey and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Do not go Do not go where I will go as geese ascend from rain lit roofs, and fallen portraits  .snowy cinders fill the city’s square a porous souvenir .of .what .never .was and likely could have never been-   this laughable imagined thing If I have lingered like a cough if I have loitered on the hope of meeting you- please look the other way .While .you were .here in mind, .I ground my ink .to cut  black glyphs into a mountain face and knew .you thought you labored near the same- .I knew it is not well        for anyone to do this thing, .I should have warned you- shot .you .down unselfishly offended you instead we spoke of nothing .but the brightness .of a day .Do not go .where I have been- to the devil’s el train Chicago .drunk under steel palm trees- .do not see .what burns my eyes what melts on a sad continuum .and the rot of insignificance .Please don’t be so madly keen I pray you see a vicious dog, disgust, the gut and not a flame of burning chakra wheels the holes that bleed  .to kiss each rising .solar .tongue   .of bloodless mercy, a greasy sky a glass of gin .the .setting sun            Do not go where I am lost to go- epistling on hoar frost  defaced I comb a matted maze of brain brine window, so my everyday a green eyed ocean- green eyes pray that you will find .a precious nautilus shell to hear, and if you even smile to dream to go where I have gone may you never find me .Never live this poem .Do not look too closely at my dust my book my ghost  dear friend, .my friend a rose just kick me in the head let me swing like a Judas fruit .a rake alone for you must never go   .where I have been.       .Do not hear what I have said dear .friend should I dare to elegize  upon my truest lie     again .dear .friend  .please do not go where I’ve had to go Do not draw near where I remain. Detroit back down here to memorize your sounds caterwauling at River Rouge sweat muscatel, and motor oil, sunken junk bulldozer tires- caterwauling at River Rouge I am a husk             of blue crayfish and sunken junk bulldozer tires- my insides out a carmine flag I am a husk   of blue crayfish signs of the times    assaulted tan my skin insides a carmine flag high on the phrases of your slang Signs of the times assaulted twice mad tracked flesh sweat muscatel and motor oil high on the phrases of your slang I thumbed back down to memorize your sound. White Crane The olives have ripened and wrinkled into slumping claws, siphoned clouds linger over crummy scabs .the boulevard is not so quaint this time of year, late spring.  .Waxy roots dive to drink beneath steel caged linden trees, as a splashing taxi cab jostles toward the wet underbelly of a burned out block behind the museum where we once met but i could never understand Let us see just how little we need to comprehend Let us recuse ourselves from the ordeal, as we .now .bent like box elders confess all despite our knowledge of the crime Perhaps it was a hoax? say nothing- but of course i will be interrogated drooping, his flaccid jaw was slapped against nylon ropes and questioned questioned questioned questioned My head is full of thugs I know nothing .about .poetry .It’s not .about .poetry it’s about pealing off layers of TE Deums and dunes and flying like a white crane over Lake Michigan, to a place where his beard may grow no longer That is what made the scales fall from my eyes Or was it gazing into HER Byzantine strands wrapped round creamy .graceful .pillowing hands I- but to dream of it fanned out over a sea of azure lawn it’s about doubt about that piggish slander, that lust and the blood stained Grand Canyon too- red dust, a gleaming hot meander it’s about more than one loss you see? a flick of the knife down to a fetid soup bone marrow,  o.k but tomorrow .my .name is already typeset onto their black and goldenrod .Gotterdammerungen .broadsides  i speak of we- and you, and you .and .this is the ground, a grizzled land of .chalky, wasted, relentless hues dunes .a banged up ear .sun set poppies .the freshwater sea’s .icy .cold nipples ennui surveys my half way latitude, yellow .sleeves .i glide .glide .bereft  of any creator or creations .or .remnant inch of snow on the iron ore-    i am my own dumb creature, decayed, and shrink wrapped .starved  .within a dented lisping din .condemned for .unknown .transgressions  .and so my back is pressed .against their bricks .and i am needing   .to say .and needing something .to say about what needles .me .400 verses of meaningful pleas yet 300 more units of insulin  .all at once .something .about .someone’s .lies .fare .wells  “a fine day .goodbye .it was a very fine day” .and at the time  .there were three, then one, then two, now three .again I’m sick of it Every monument is futile The seroquel helps a little, but i swear, not nearly enough     .Your Volkswagon disappeared too quickly .My tears arrived too slowly

From the land of crooked smiles; a series in progress a From the land of crooked smiles I told you before, it’s crooked You weren’t listening It’s twisted I steal pens from banks, paper from the unemployment office And I don’t suffer from a hostile world I’m hostile because the world is suffering, my flaws never the wiser for being under the wing of all discovering light What crops of tears I have yet to harvest What moments of joy to realize What contradictions to ponder Morning excites me b Commencement Address Friends and students bring your wine and bread Let us revel in that lonesome city of lost ideals, of deserted colonnades, streets paved in rusting cobblestones, each stone a rock our minds threw against the status quo and when or if enlightenment ever comes we shall see who drowned in blood, was declared insane or eulogized posthumously A poetry of ideals is a form of erotic love, a yearning for what is not, a recognition of the spiritual separating who we are from all we might be, leaving us unsatisfied The heart knows what mind does not Each can exist without the other but at what cost? Lowell’s spiders bow from their webs of easy chairs reading the Encyclopedia Britannica straight through like a novel and what they remember most is what somebody else has written about, scholars out of office, bobbing for apples in a vat of rotting cheese c The power of naming Make up a name, any name, say, Lust Lust did this and Lust did that I met Lust slumming We went to lunch Lust laughed I paid When lust barks I pant like a dog Lust smells like a bouquet of eels my nose wrinkles round The shape of Lust is a viola played between my thighs Lust crawls slowly out of warm beds Lust is a blond, Nordic woman Lust is that waiter, the one with long legs bussing the table of lost souls Lust tells lies I can’t help but believe in Lust is a blind riveter A scar on wounds A laughing buffoon A stammer, a drool You see, it all starts with a name But what if it wasn’t Lust but Pain instead, or Love or Greed, or Joy What would happen then? d A heart attack This landscape of cramped room whose hand wraps you in itself and squeezes till breath heaves and eyes pop like a startled humming bird, identity hanging on a heart throb of time flashing, whispering, nodding, drowning as if you’re carried closed wing into the singing yard, the uncomfortably familiar so close, out of reach, mixing up the critical mass of your fear e In Normal, Illinois We do not accept unsolicited submissions That awesome girl next door is a lesbian You’re overqualified for the job we have in mind.