POEM FOR J FRANZ

Poem for Jonathan Franzen,
Poem Called "Death of the Book"


And they cried for it was called a Kindle,
and they cried for it came to burn books,
and burn all books like a first-growth
.........forest. Made by wizards! And full,
they claim, of magic e-ink, that assembles
itself in the dark like crowds. Because
someone’s getting burned on the bonfire
later, and his name is Book, The Book.
Some homeless guy. He’s gross. We hate
him. Stay in your cardboard box, old man!
The Book sleeps in his box and dreams,
and dreams of dirty oral, and is awakened
by big hands lifting him out. The crowd
of e-ink whispers to itself, the crowd of e-ink
huddles together, held in the hand of some-
one larger. And there goes the match,
...............and there goes the newspaper.
To read the first Kindle by the light
...........................of a homeless trashcan
fire – the experience beggars description!
Makes description a beggar wearing finger-
less gloves. He got holes in his pockets and
holes in his socks and the soles of his boots
they open to speak. Every time he reads
a word it slips out of him somewhere. It slips
out and the beggar cries. He just wants to be
able to hold again what happened to Anna
Karenina. Killed by the train of progress,
beggar. Killed by the demon belching smoke.
The arms that would hold her own book
lopped off! And the reader staring down
at the tracks, watching the e-ink assemble
around her, “Oh the youngest technology,
Anna Karenina!” cries the crowd out to her body.
“Oh she is cheap and light and everywhere!”
And all of her penny-elongated, and 99 cents
...................................................on the Kindle.

It Is Not Really Necessary

Someone left this comment in response to my poem over at Poetry Northwest and I am posting it here because I love it so helplessly much:

***

Hi,

I guess I am too old, and not familiar at all with the poet’s expression that is called poetry. It seems that putting lines into a narrow column is the criteria. Poetry of old was written in Stanzas that bore complete thoughts or at least were followed by a stanza that completed the above stanza. Some of the poetry by exquisite poets at least had a rhythm, were not typical, but at least understandable to a limited degree depending on the times in which they were written. There is also such a thing as free verse, and maybe that is what it is all about. I really don’t know what the poet above is driving at: the past atrocities of whitemen??? Maybe. Is she of Native American descent??? If so, perhaps I am right. I would like to have known what point was she trying to put across. It is not really necessary. I don’t understand and I don’t care for the overall composition.

Maybe it is because I am rather limited in my degree of knowledge of this country or of far past times. I mainly majored in Science, not social, but biological. I just don’t get modern poetic expression because it seems to follow its own rules. That is about it,and I do write poetry most of it with a degree of recognizable old fashioned rhyme. I am not saying because of that it is good.

I suspect my poetic expression would not be of any interest to a publication of your nature. Thanks for reading, hope I did not offend anyone, not meant too.

An Old Guy in His 70′s,

Tony

***

TONY I LOVE YOU 

I LOVE YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

Dear God in Heaven,

When will you transfigure me into an Exquisite Poet

Signed,

A Past Atrocity of Whitemen???

If You Are Gonna Post a Photo of Yourself, Why Not ... Post ALL the Photos of Yourself

PEOPLE.

EVERYTHING HAPPENED 

WHILE I WAS AWAY

My little sister got married and I was

a Bridesmaid

The night of the rehearsal I looked normal

THE DAY OF THE WEDDING I DID NOT

Look at that rat

She is a rat who is hungry for Bride

And then of course I fell down:

It happens at about minute 2:14

YES that was a Hummer Limo

why would I NOT 

ride in a Hummer Limo

every second of my goddamn life

What are you, jealous

Now let us Refresh our Palates

with some Boxcar Children Art

Oh no

The perpetually-five-year-old

dumdum Benny is completely 

overwhelmed by cupcakes

He scream to know how many cupcake

there are in the world

THEN

I did a reading with Lemony Snicket
IN A VETERAN'S HALL
and this is the only photographic
proof anyone has of the event 

what is WRONG with me

I am a angel from heaven

and my big chubby knee is coming

to kill you Daniel Handler

(Buy his books he loves poetry

and carries poems in his wallet)

I hate you

I am the Devil

I think here I was trying to fake cry. 

Crocodile tears

of the Tricky Filthy One

EVERYTHING HAPPENED
AND THEN IT WAS OVER

THE END

The News

Well, it happened. There is going to be a book. Octopus Books called me and said, we would like to publish your first book Balloon Pop Outlaw Black next summer, and I said go to hell I hate you, an octopus can't even read, how does it know what books are good, and they said your book is made of bubbles, underwater, and we read it and we liked it, and I said WELL FINE THEN, and then oh my gush are you kidding me, I am going to have a book.

There's a time when you're shut up in a room all day writing long crazed metatextual poems about Popeye when you do not think this will happen. You are mostly happy and crazy and flying on the power of writing a book but when you aren't you are thinking, "This will never happen, I am alone as the ants under the rock (ed. note: you are mixing your animal metaphors, change this to something about barnacles on a shipwreck's hull later) and no one will lift it up to see," but then they do. And it does. But the book did not happen because anyone was looking, it happened because you were shut up crazy in a room all day thinking really hard about what if ... Popeye ... HAD INK FOR BLOOD??? So it goes.

The official announcement is here. Enormous congrats to Ben Mirov also!

NOW FOR THE GOOD PART

Choice Reactions from My Mother

"Looks like the Octopus ... latched on ... to you with all 8 arms!"

"Well, I think you're going to make poetry popular again."

"You're going to bring poetry to the young people."

"Balloon Pop Outlaw Dark is a great name. It really sticks in the mind."

"One way or another, you caught ... the eye ... of the Octopus!" (She then paused, seeming to realize that "the eye of the octopus" was not a thing.)

"You're blowing up like a train going downhill and no one can stop it. Tell everyone to get out of your way, because if they don't, they will be killed."

MEOW

I am not a Trekkie but maybe I am the biggest Trekkie in the world if I am the only one who's ever noticed that this man has an evil cat-face on his forehead:

It evilly grooms its whiskers! 

It holds a tiny evil paw up to its mouth! 

It just ate a small raw morsel of human being -- 

and that small raw morsel was -- 

your Gaze

Obscene Freeze-Frames from Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series

The oldest Doozer spreads for you, he is naked 

and unashamed, even in still photographs

his antennae seem to quiver,

his whole body is one sex organ

and he is smooth between the legs

My guess is this is a blowjob monster? 

A bj monster. A buzhay monster

(my pronunciation of a French sex act)

Why do nightmares always 

come in through the ceiling

FYI

I have two poems in the new issue of PANK, about rubies and hell and alphabet machines, so you can go look at those if you like! ALSO, I should have posted about all these a long time ago, but I forgot and then it seemed too late but the magazines are so nice to print you in the first place so I will say it here: I have poems in the last or the current issues of Denver Quarterly, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, RATTLE, Hayden's Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, and The Journal. (The Journal actually has a new website, and you can read "The Perfumer's Nose in Profile" here.) Thank you magazines! I love you very much. OH, and the graphic designer Anne Bryant illustrated one of the poems that appeared in Poetry Northwest, and that has never happened before, and you can see it here. THANK YOU ANNE BRYANT THE WASP LOOKS REAL

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