Sea of Absurdity

(...) I loaded my sacks with strange
stuff and ran down the mountain, across the
desert, and into the Sea of Absurdity.

_______Joan Jobe Smith,
from "Land of a Thousand Dances"



i read some
joan jobe smith
today
a little gerald locklin
on the tube
troops were still dyin'
in EYE RACK
joe brainard was right
"death is a funny thing"
whatever happened
to "three dog night"
"the door"
these new kids
aren't bad
but i've lost
all the really good stuff
artists who said
something
stuff about living
and dying
the ones
who showed you
other people were
FUCKED UP
just like you
they gotta be here
someplace
the janice joplins
the billie holidays
in among the ruins
with the beer bottles
and unopened letters
the shit-stained shorts
and dirty socks
i feel like
some german kid
where in hell
are all the jews

stephensaul.com

Key of E

koppel
oprah's book club
defining "is"
and h-i-v
9/11 hard-ons
shoved in our face
hairless cunts
and pussy called cake
all burning
burning our eyes
as we kiss
our last
in the jagged shade
of atomic blasts
fire burning fire
i'm a deaf man
in a sea of fire

website: stephensaul.com

Few and far between

I've been having a hard time churning out poems lately, or at least poems that are any good. :) Here's one I kinda like, tell me what you think!

Bits of burnt prayer fall on my
blinking eyes. I am vivid
snapshots of other people’s
blues. I resonate a thousand
years since the first lover
said goodbye. Whispers
of yesterday’s thrill echo
on my lips like desert dust. I breathe
now held under water, under
glass, under a picture frame where you
stare at me laughing. Choking
and coughing and screaming blue
in the face but you can’t hear me. Burning
fire in a summer rain I said goodbye, pray
I come out alive. I come out
at all.

because i wrote this in november, but it happened 7 years ago january

so i haven't gotten any feedback on this poem from anyone yet. i don't know that anyone else has even read it. anything you guys can give me would be appreciated. particularly the end. i sorta subconciously stole the last two lines from a poem i read this semester. and because of that, i keep wanting to change them, but don't know how. thoughts? questions? comments? concerns? donations?.... :)

It’s November. Been raining
all day long. But as I walk
to my car it turns to snow.
Big. Thick. Wet. Chunks
soak through leather coat,
knit hat, brown hair. Should
have brought my umbrella. Like
the last day I saw you.
Smiling.
Wheels skidding on ice
as I pushed you from parking
lot to inpatient. Your hand
suddenly like a child’s
slipping out of it’s protective
mitten, twisting with
wonder as if the air carried
radiation. Eyes reflecting
icicles dangling off
doorways. I paused then,
creeping up the sidewalk despite
bitter cold. Tried to memorize
your face, reborn, healed
by snow, so that later,
as I watched you die,
watched your breath become
ice, slowing, freezing, I
would remember you like
this. In wonder. As if
you knew. As if comforting me
in advance saying—“Now, now.
There, there.”

Mass Confusion

Oak K, I know this is really confusing. Something might be wrong with me but there were lots of fun salvagable ideas in here that i thought would be worthy enough to share.
As Drunk as Always,
You beloved wine drinker
The Hadj

Purchasing the William-Sonoma Kissing Booth

I. Finding Love
What happened
to the old days when falling
in love meant a trip to the soda
fountain or making out
way back in the theatre or even
just pretending we were kissing.
I prefer hanging my ass
on the beats of the DJ
so she can check my
tag and find I am on sale.

II.Clothing
Maybe we could pick out each
others clothes for a date. But
this time I want to wear
the sportcoat from Value Village
with the bright green pants, not
the tight leather fetish costume
she picked out last time.

III. Ameneties
When we pretend to be rich
behind my flat, like where Yves
drove us around in our Bently,
not me driving us in my Honda,
that does not mean sleep
in different beds and talk
infrequently.

IV. Food Items for the Villa
I thought we could light
drugstore fireworks and drink
Champagne from upstate New York
on special for $5.99, and our faces
could glow radiently like a large
paycheck or estate on the lakefront.
Tomorrow though, we'll still
eat bagels rather than
Egg and spinach souffle
with pomagranete torts.
We'll continue drinking
canned and artificially flavored
Henderson's Coffee rather
than enjoying the spectacular
aromas of Dean and Deluca.

VI. Order your Catalogue Today
And when we start kissing,
putting up our walls against
the rest of the world
can we bring everything
in our relationship together,
catalogued for the buying pleasures
of the American publish?

We could sell our impoverished
kinkiness like a blender, or
the beat up car, or the crappy coffee
and hang it all on the walls of a booth
where we'll just sit, kissing,
playing records with our
headphones on, ignoring
the rest of the world
as we bought it from the catalogue,
the one that makes us better
people and holds our
relationship together.

I'm alive I'm alive...

Gosh I miss you all... I need to check this more often and actually take 5 minutes to post something. It's been a crazy year so far. Too much going on and not enough time to realize that I'll be graduating soon and I have to find something to do with myself. I have a few ideas, but actually choosing one and running with it absolute petrifies me. Any advice from the alums?
I'm back early because of NC duties and I'm bored to death. No one is here so there's nothing to do but I can't seem to get myself to go to sleep. So here I am. I'm excited for last semester's Opus to come out!! (didn't quite make it for exam week) Even though I couldn't make it to meetings once again I got to do the layout design with Glenn and get a little preview of everyone's poetry and short stories. I also have 3 poems in this time! (My bio contains DPS love!!!) :) For those of you who had advanced jack with me last spring, Blue Monday, Rythym Raw and Essence of Red got in. Also, my project with Jesse Montano will be part of the Undergraduate Research thingy (I don't remember the name of it). Basically I'll just set up a presentation about the project and show the completed works. It was really exciting to be invited to do that! Anyway, now that I'm finally posting I'm babbling so I'll find something else (perhaps my bed?) to occupy my time. DPS love to you all!