Thursday, September 3, 2020

Pete Smith : Three poems


         
                              


2017. (PRESIDENTIAL TYPE)          December 6 2016.           

(After Jackson Mac Low's The Presidents of the United States
of America, 1963, using his grid)


1.       Donald Trump's never seen a door
                     that his American Typewriter
                               cannot fish-eye
                                         into a wall.
          Call him Cochin and he'll
                     Footlight that
                                         into ox
          and with his trusty ox-goad
                     this Century Schoolbook infant will
                               say
                               not door, not door, wall,
                                                                 not door.

          This Concrete Roman will mark
                     the heads
                     of contrarians in Deja Vu Serif
                               and in Goudy Old Style
                                         he'll hook weaklings
                     into New York 
                                         High Tower Text,
                     and to a watery Requiem he'll
                               dispatch all vacillators
                     with a just word
                                            from his Trump
                     Mediaeval mouth.


2.       The Donald will pose       in any doorway
          like a Linux Libertine
                     with an eye
                                         on the Playbill
                     while fishing
                                         for Bank Gothic ox-strength backing.
          With Literaturnaya,           Palatino Arabic        and SimSun,
          he will goad friend and foe alike
                                                              into slamming doors
                                         behind him,

          but, mark this:  if he is
                                         Akzidenz Grotesk
          waiting to happen his Easyreading headlines
          will continue                    to hook his followers -
          running water         for parched Neutraface mouths.
                      

3.       Come in Ionic No. 5,         the door is a little ajar
          still.                         DJT's eye is firmly shut
                     to News Gothic, Times New Roman
                     (too many fishy words) and Syntax.
          Without irony                  The Quick Brown Fox
                                         Jumps Over the ox-eye daisy
          in Helvetica Neue,    whose tweets goad half the Nation.
                     The sole strategic door
                     is confuse and bamboozle 
                                         but still promise
                                                              Utopia.

                               The mark of a font is its Impact
          and Trump's head flits                          from Dom Casual                              
          to Terminal                                  in search of a hook.
                     Tower's Stymie Bold Condensed is him. 
          Know him too
                               by his friends -
                               watery mouths
                                                   every one -
                     Bastard                              and Breitkopf Fraktur,
                                   as a broken future
                     splints                                         a broken land.






PSALM FOR OLD AGE           March 2018

          Tonight the pull & pulse
          of temporal transmitters
          morphs out of stasis,
          the resurrection of Eros’ bones
          in sung stone & a 'membered
          genital-worm of desire
          conjure a mounting shimmer.                                  
          We climb towards it
          in our practiced, elderly way –
          bronchioles on steroids,
          our deep lungs so grateful
          for this airing.
                     Between tumescence and eruption
          there’s a magma of shapeshifts,
          a rapid shuffle of fantasies,
          ghost memories,
          as coked-up neurons keep losing
          their place in the dance.
                     We
          make up new steps, negotiate
          a way between myofascial pain,
          arthritic non-sequiturs
          and weak bladders to hit a stride,
          shed centuries and arrive
          bellysouls filled
          with giggles
          & good will.
          Selah!





POETS        January 2020

          Poets are, on the other hand,
          a different kind of military,
          and when they march together
          soon make clear how unparadable
          they are.
                    
                     And don’t speak to me
          of Generals — if they had one
          they would never acknowledge
          it. Some scouts might count
          among their number, but their names,
          jurisdictions, missions are beyond
          the beginning of agreement.
                    
                     You can lead poets to water
          but they’ll keep fingers crossed behind
          backs and croak out unbaptized songs
          in different anarchies.
                    
                     Given the choice between being
          on the firing squad and the target
          it’s hard to predict where the poet
          will stand. More than a few
          will choose both.
                    
                     The best words are for eating.
         
                     It seems strange to have come this far
          without mentioning music.
                    
                     Some there are who choke on air;
          others are attracted to the radio
          and let propaganda, dressed up
          as rhetoric, erode imagination.
                    
                     Some mistakes are epic.
                   
The poet knows that Mother
          Teresa’s tears, collected into ampoules
          injected into veins will cure
          nothing; knows this
          without cynicism.
                    
                     In light trance or deep
          meditation the poet is haunted by news
          that is always stayed.
                    
                     The poet tells a lover
          These fingers. These fingers,” the poet
          says, “have logged a thousand miles
          in, on, or about — the premise is —
          your flesh.
                    
For each sweet sickness a sweet
          cure the poet writes, in cursive on antique
          paper pinned to your pillow.                      
                    
                     However intimate its breath
          the poet does not address the poem to you.
          Is that justice? Pardon? Oh, but of course, the poet
          asks the questions.
         
                     The poet in the corner seat
          at the window counter
          at Renzo’s Café
          stirs 
          &
          sips
          as he listens
          to the world
          exhale,
          watches Grand-
          view Park’s day
          unfurl





Pete Smith writes out of place and out-of-place (Kamloops environs on stolen land). Forty years working with/for developmentally disabled folk who carried additional burdens - trauma, psychosis, trauma, aggressive defences, trauma, fucked-up attachments from abuse and/or neglect, trauma, uninformed societal discriminations, etc - honed his poetics of “inclusion, refusal & despite”. Believes he can give up writing any time he wants to. Poems, essays and reviews in such places as jacket (1st series), W, Capilano Review, The Gig, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Crayon, Oystercatcher, Poetical Histories, Wild Honey. Fifteen chapbooks; a trade book, Bindings With Discords (2015) with Shearsman. Has been above/grounded three times: Strum of Unseen (2008); A New Love/ An Aching Stone (2016); Sing . . . Despite (2019).