Two poems with hyperlinks that may resemble musical interludes or segues or stitches. (Also, word on twitter from Jeff Melnick: Clem Snide is touring this autumn.)
Andy Warhol, Piss Painting, 1961.
"Lunch" by David Saint John
Even the morning dreams of it
Bent over those torn envelopes or steaming
Papers those Cubist towers
Of paper clips and pink erasures
We think we understand so much but nobody
Ever mentions the secrets of lunch
We plan to meet in some cafe
As the sunlight pours off the buildings
Onto the striped canopies the umbrellas above
The white tables
As usual I’ll be late
Stopping on the way to look at books or scarves
Wondering how you’ll tell me
Finally to go screw myself once and for all
The secretaries leaving their martinis
The executives phoning in from God-knows-where
I even knew a man who ate lunch
In typewriter stores driving all the clerks mad
Leaving cigarettes burning on the display desks
Rye seeds in the immaculately polished keys
Even poems in the carriage
So here we are again bent over
Those inscribed tablets those endless commandments
Of the menu
Where the choice of wine is blood
James Joyce once said or clear electricity
"Love Poem" by Paul Hostovsky
I love this poem.
I would do anything
for this poem.
I am not above
stealing for example.
I stole in the past
and I stole from the past
and I'd gladly steal from your past
for this poem.
I would lie
for the sake of this poem.
I would lie in the face of this poem
just to make the poem face me.
Just to feel on my face the hot, sweet, faint
bad-tooth breath of the poem.
I could sink to anything.
I think I could kill.
I think I have killed
for the shape, the sheer
body of this poem.
Look how beautiful,
feel how impossible,
this slender, limned thing
weighing next to nothing,
saying next to nothing.
Saying everything.
Everything.