Sunday, October 23, 2011

Chimes Street Poets & Artists



Marie Laurencin
“Apollinaire and His Friends”
1909

Chimes Street Poets & Artists
__________________

Forget It
Revisiting Chimes
The 5 Perfections
Chimes Street Apartment
Apollinaire and His Friends
Greta Garbo
Charting the Progress
Unraveling It
Show Me Its Face
All the Lies
The Dance
__________________

Forget It

“I must forget
how to write”
—John Wieners,
“Saturday, 3/8/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

she tries to forget—
how to write, unlearn
what they’d taught her

last night she dreams—
nobody taught her how
to do that kind of thing

but even dreaming—
she tries not to let it
fuck her up completely

Revisiting Chimes

“I must learn not—
to write, instead watch
with my 5 senses”
—John Wieners,
“Saturday, 3/8/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

it’s all sorta sad—
that she’s gotta fight it
but time is that way

maybe someday—
she’ll love it with all
these passing dayz

and sure enough—
déjà vu wordage later
thru my fingers

The 5 Perfections

"the 5 perfections that
are the 5 hindrances"
—John Wieners,
“Saturday, 3/8/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

she looks in the mirror—
another day ruined
hangovers kill the day

she decides to return—
to the huey p. long campus
for her class reunion

the mirror cracks—
her hands are swollen
the devil makes her do it

Chimes Street Apartment

“there’s a strange
man-boy in bed”
—John Wieners,
“Saturday, 3/9/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

tiger town at night—
not much different than
way back when…

same desultory ache—
how could this side street
have been once her home?

but then it wasn’t home—
even back then when she felt
so hippie gay doomed

Apollinaire and His Friends

"Oh for the days of
Marie Laurencin”
—John Wieners,
“Sunday, 3/9/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

apollinaire in the center—
picasso & his dog to the left
two of picasso’s mistresses

marie laurencin paints—
another delightfully coy
insouciant portrait

miss wieners along with—
miss spicer & miss mcclure
at big eric’s place

Greta Garbo

“It is poetry day again”
“Sunday, 3/17/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

ray charles on piano—
somewhere in another room
he fills the window with light

last night she thought—
she say greta garbo for one
instant, then she was gone

she felt greta garbo again—
this time alone in every
blood, nerve & brain cell

Charting the Progress

“we contain the souls
of our ancestors”
—John Wieners,
“Sunday, 3/17/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

chimes street the edge—
of college campus exiles
all those young hippies gone

she didn’t care much—
for charting the progress
of her lost soul back then

so much envy, disgust—
her gay psyche working
overtime just to survive

Unraveling It

“transmitted to us at birth”
—John Wieners,
“Sunday, 3/17/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

unraveling it now—
seeing all the str8t snags
and hetero syndromes

it’s not very easy—
who wants to be diligent
with one’s own doom?

and yet here she is—
poking around, perusing
her flashback poetics?

Show Me Its Face

“we all know how death
travels these days”
—John Wieners,
“Sunday, 3/17/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

tonight they’re dancing—
the dance of death all over
america sea to shining sea

see all the ballerinas—
doing their cute pirouettes
their little spike shoes?

and those butchy boyz—
at football games, hold that
tiger… and then hold me!

All the Lies

“you think you’ve
seen it all”
—John Wieners,
“Sunday, 3/17/58”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

it gathers faces—
and pictures of the heart
from our lives

it charts the progress—
how each action unrolls
with or without our will

so that each of us—
has their own poetic
how we tell all the lies

The Dance

“the human voice is blue”
—John Wieners,
“Sunday, 5/10/59”
The Journal of John Wieners
707 Joy Street

fast as I can write it—
the list of the living gone
over to the dead

gone ginsberg, creeley—
wieners, orlovsky, lavigne
kerouac, cassidy, burroughs

beatniks slide thru—
rooms of 50’s drug addicts
turning into 60’s hippies



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