5 poems and a little thinking by D.A. Powell

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'Is it the nature of beings to coalesce? I think sometimes that artists, like other lower forms of intelligence, want to “belong.” Or rather, that they want to not belong in some similar ways. They want to belong to the outside, and yet to be recognized by the inside. It’s a conundrum. Because, really, in order to belong to a school or a movement or a gang or a pod, you have to—whether you’re willing to think about it this way or not—move towards a “center.”

'Maybe it’s peculiar to our time, in which actual schools (academies) proliferate and spawn, that we’re seeing so much centrism. What we need is more eccentrism. Who isn’t tired of the contemporary qua contemporary? Who isn’t bored by innovation for innovation’s sake? It has, sadly, become the mode du jour. Not even a school. A monocultural fish farm. An orchestra in which everyone is trying to solo at the same time. A tin of silvery bodies falling into place. I imagine that each of those fish must have thought it was going in a new direction. But all the other fishes got there at exactly the same time, and thus the great net encompassed them all.' -- D.A. Powell, Poetryfoundation.org


Basic D.A. Powell Info at Poets.org
D.A. Powell's Books
Great Expectations: D.A. Powell
D.A. Powell Interviewed and Reviewed @ The Rumpus
D.A. Powell Interviewed
Audio: A Poetry Reading by D.A. Powell


5 poems

[dogs and boys can treat you like trash. and dogs do love trash]

dogs and boys can treat you like trash.---and dogs do love trash
to nuzzle their muzzles.--they slather with tongues that smell like their nuts

but the boys are fickle when they lick you.--they stick you with twigs
and roll you over like roaches.---then off with another: those sluts

with their asses so tight you couldn't get them to budge for a turd
so unlike the dogs: who will turn in a circle showing & showing their butts

a dog on a leash: a friend in the world.--he'll crawl into bed on all fours
and curl up at your toes.---he'll give you his nose.---he'll slobber on cuts

a dog is not fragile; he's fixed.---but a boy:--cannot give you his love
he closes his eyes to your kisses.---he hisses.---a boy is a putz

with a sponge for a brain.---and a mop for a heart: he'll soak up your love
if you let him and leave you as dry as a cork.---he'll punch out your guts

when a boy goes away: to another boy's arms.---what else can you do
but lie down with the dogs.--with the hounds with the curs.--with the mutts




[my riches I have squandered. spread with honey]

---a song of the prodigal son

my riches I have squandered.--spread with honey
the arval bread in my pocket and nary a farthing

lived for a spell among roaches in a rickety squat
between the alcohol detox and the catholic church

peeled my plump white bottom.---a sauvignon grape
[now exsiccated: the wizened sultana makes no golden cake]

crouched in the gulleys.---wiped with leaves
cooked roadkill: topped with government surplus cheese

snuck in underage at club 21 (2121 21st street, long gone)

wastrel opal-throated bird:--a moulting quivers along the pinion

I fear my mucus:--its endless volume and amorphous shape
a demon expelling from my lips.--the moon wags its tongue

each dull morning the mirror imagines me a future: older misshapen forest: stinging adder and sprawling spider

the way to haven seems interminable.---I creak and shuffle
listen, you wilderness: make plain and let me pass




[the heavenly noise of domesticity murmurs in the kitchen:clink]

---a song of the last supper

All love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain—Sir Phillip Sidney

the heavenly noise of domesticity murmurs in the kitchen: clink
plates are cleared and stacked on the sideboard.---desserts shimmer
taking coffee black: antidote to the drowse of too much wine

use it up wear it out:--ain't nothing left in this old world I care about
a damasked table surrounded by bachelors.---some already parted
regimens of azt, d4t, cryxivan, viracept and early slumber

across the table a handsome bearded man.--his foot glances your shin
you'd sink with him beneath the empire mahogany:--lift the perizoma
receive the host:--his wounds.---your faith:--the sash around his waist




[slightly foetid. foetal and stooped. an afterbirth of rags]

---a song of Lazarus of Bethany

slightly foetid:---foetal and stooped.---an afterbirth of rags
myrrh-soaked pus-stained the cracklings the matted hair
but having heels.---I flushed out from my mortared vacuole

then the coins were lifted from my eyes:--my lord
because holy is the viscera.---he seals me waxen
plenary dermis:--unbroken and unblemished
once more in the trunk and legs orbicular-----yet

am I not dust?---when I move through the world
the air receives me.---as did the dirt.---as does his kiss

[this is what you love: more people. you remember]

this is what you love: more people.---you remember
to say "of all the men I know" and "your nice friend kimber"

but it wasn't always so.---living in a big shoe and knotslips
in your bed the size of taxes---[or texas? you don't read lips

as well you should]---some hearing loss due to family
in your ears: homilies and hominy and decidedly no harmony

no wonder the bad seed topped your list of favorite flicks
having that brood crush you down into the mattress:--you kicked

one fell out and the other nine said "rollover, rollover."
who could go to sleep with the sound of music?--and the hot covers

now you only regret men unbedded.--unwedded to your cheek-y
desire to lift strangers from taxis.--or texas: why be picky?

but you've gone "gee" in your ratings:--shirley temple and madeline
volunteer work.--neighborhood meetings.--you even bring the gelatine

[I was a priapic boy: the prow of a galleon]

---- Hook

I was a priapic boy: the prow of a galleon
breaking through the warm carribée.---avast

the babysitter and I playing hide and seek
no search party:--just him wrestling against me:

chained to the armoire.---a belt in my mouth
my knobby prisoner embouchured by his breathing hole

I was always a lost boy:--swept into the nevernever
one among the private order.---who hung out

long after dark.---caught lightning bugs.---who
erected forts: buttressed against quizzical adulthood

who were hairless and soprano and angelically ungendered
whose dirtiest word was “balls”---those things we lacked

a strange kid would yank our underwear up our cracks
he and his nasty friends hid by the creek and smoked

“mama wants to know what’s happened to your shirt
how come you come home without it?”

he said I had pretty hands.---as he tied them to the dresser.

I was the boy who dreamed he could fly

I do believe---[clap your hands]---I do believe
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p.s. Hey. As stated yesterday, I'm otherwise engaged all the way across Paris this morning checking out the tools of the holography trade, and I won't able to engage with yesterday's comments today like I usually do. I'll behave normally tomorrow. Today you get some poems and stuff by or about D.A. Powell, a poet whose work I like. Maybe you'll find it interesting too. In any case, that's what's on your plate. I want to wish an ultra-Happy Birthday to my beloved friends and d.l.s SYpHA_69 and Math T. And I'd like to along pass this request from blog newcomer MarkDP which appeared among the comments yesterday: 'Hi to DC and all on this respective blog. I'd like to shamelessly plug my own just to get it seen by anyone willing to take a chance on a newbie. Having been greatly inspired by my recent inception to the whole blogging process and the Userlands book, I'm trying to set-up a forum for young writers, artists and photographers living in the highlands of Scotland to get their work showcased on the net. It's incredibly hard for any creative types to find an outlet in this region, or so it has felt that way. I would greatly appreciate anyone looking up my blog and posting comments giving any advice or sharing their own experiences. Looking forward to any feedback at all xx'. If you have some time, please give his efforts a look. I'll be doing so later when time returns to me. Lastly, warm greetings to all of you, and we'll catch up tomorrow. See you then.