Louis Cabri : Two poems

Best By

 

 

Pull the doors
off, river
shadow, protector

from flame
the silhouetted
body

propped against corridor wall
black and yellow light
re-simulates yellow light, re-simulates black

Behind and above, voiced shadow
points to elevator
down, Times Square

Questioning the instruction
turn and enter
a pitch volume

The name
Times Square
mathematical

algorithmic
predictive
by “the third

unconscious” what?
and by Verso that
first person pronoun will buy them

discounted
‘Bifo’ and
Joque, “protectors”

in critical
function sense
of art

the way
doing extinguishes
doer

Breton
and his arcane flowering
ego

hates the sea
visits Gaspé
writes of seabirds

all these names
become trinkets I
dream, become

toute cette époque
attroce, nous sommes
de plus en plus conduits

à la voir
à travers
son rȇve

“I” dream?
our dream
becomes

 

 

Image: “Arcane” by Cayusa

 

 

backseat game snap

 

 

Dawn of a new era, bro.
Era of the arse, bro.
Dude. Era of the Art of Nice.
Midnight at the Butt Light, dog.
Don’t say it, dog.
R u policing me, dude?
Just sayin’, bro.

Manpower, dog.
What about girlpower, dog.
That’s “man” and “girl”, dog.
Dude. Girlpower’s different.
Equal, dog.
Girlpower’s different.
It’s workforce, dog, it’s a stat.

The WEBB out there, bro.
Sale at Foot Locker, dog.
Dude. It’s astronomy or whatever.
Dog.
Double-U e b b.
Nasal spray, too.
NASA, dog.

Oh yeah.
Scooch over.
Same universe, bro.
No way, dog.
Norway.
No spoofing.
Am I, though?

Fact.
It’s Windows, dog.
Same uni, bro.
What about manservant?
Dog.
Gimme Lipton Ice, mom.
Some lip, bro.

It’s dog-eats.
What, dog.
Dog?
What, dog.
Bro.
What, dog.
Dog.

 

 

Image by author

 

 

Louis Cabri’s recent poetry includes Treazure Chewings (available at https://ryanfitzpatrick.ca/modelpress/) and Hungry Slingshots (New Star Books).

Louis Cabri : Compartmentalized Comportments

 

 

 

“Orange” by Fizchev

 

Part 1

Character

“Shakespeare made us.” — Harold Bloom

He said ‘stand by’ — this
is

October, and implied:
Stand by, pomegranate, in

disa-
rray

of pickles . . .
and doesn’t

look at
all like Bottom, though

surely came rimshot
cymbal stand-

ups
from some kind, bottom of

another other, perhaps
cargo ship’s

bilge sailors scour.
Good bad movie.

Langston Hughes’s sailors? What have “beige sail-
ors with large noses” to

do with
him, they’d say. This is no sail-

or — agreed.
No ship’s Cap’n Awesome.

And, wait for it (. . . a few days . . .  just a few weeks . . .):
THAT SHIP SAIL

duh huh?!
Or — ?

Cut to b-
uttercups and birdsong.

Nor has he, the Times will
float, Bottom’s allergic way-

s — due crowd
condescension

at the least. Harold, then —
we get: What is he?

 

 

Part 2

i

The Sound of Jurisprudence

Secretary of the corpusculat ask, —
for the raisin pud-

Ding theory of das
Atom — is history — it’s not October anymore,

not in jurisprudence —
do juiced prunes dance?

Say it and you perf-
ormed it ’round

here still it’s
an offgas, these elections, and I’m a gust of this

electron-distant
door, through which the sound —

creep online:
juiced

prune danc-
e trying to be a

thing, one vide-
o anyway why

’s it up
to attract a child

“this video for you, I made
before going to work.”

 

ii

Video (videam, videor . . .)

So much for Miltonic effort.
In the famous opening lines, “disobedience, and the Fruit

of that Forbidden Tree. . . .
With loss of Eden,” he’s got dive-

rging vowels and consonants,
notes Reuven Tsur: “sounds of ‘forb-

idden’ and of ‘Ede-
n’ in-

cluded in [clued in
to — glue — ] ‘disobedience’,”

formative backg-
round for staid arg-

ument. A word is being blocked! while
don’t think of it, not that one

what word, think!
writing a poem, and . . .

nope, so / this way
to cognate

spelled p-e-r-v
stress on that first syllable,

 

iii

Discontinuum

Juiced Prune Dance Man,
“before going to work,” pale roundest face

above, where I’d’ve
wanted forming

background moon. Without edges or glea-
m, he’s no white plate.

Poe’s “chilling and killing”
no background mat-

eri-
al

either (and imagine backgrou-
nd checking

him) — literally
his sound con-

verges in foreground. The algorithm
result:

unfortunate — I don’t want
it ranking, and understand

now
why a great poet out of

character
— Bob Perelman: homage! —

would undo Milton’s gr-
ound next after Poe’s

to rid the alphabe-
t

of sound
reverberate reverberat-

ting,
minim-eyes-

zing
eve-

n
phetamor to isolate-

d
m-

omen-
ts, for mature ejaculation only.

 

 

 

Louis Cabri's poetry includes Hungry Slingshots and Posh Lust, both with New Star Books; Poetryworld, with CUE; and The Mood Embosser, Coach House Books. Poems from the same series as "Compartmentalized Comportments" appear at thetypescript.com and in the print poetry magazine out of Vancouver, Some #1. He teaches at the University of Windsor.