JΔM>

Paul Siegell

ungovernable press
2008
 cover image:

Last sunset of 1999, Big Cypress, FL

(One of us took it. We can’t remember.)
(((Whooo’s got my publisher?)))

Special thanks to the editors who first supported these poems:

5 AM: “J∆M> (CROWKEEPER’S SONG)” and “the read wheelborrow”

Kulture Vulture: “anything to stay warm”

MiPOesias: “E.T. POEM HOME”

Otoliths: “05.27.05 – Jam on the River – Great Plaza, PA,” “12.29.05 – Phix – Grape
Street, PA” and “mr mint”

SAWBUCK: “DAY OFF SHUTTLE LAUNCH” and “FORT SKATEBOARD”

Shampoo: “THE AFTERNOON SET of 12.31.99”

Three Rivers Review: “EPIcureANS PAY FOR FeeLINGS”

VOX: “The Winged Minute”

w/; I still need
*05.27.05 – Jam on the River – Great Plaza, PA*

a
mystical
sound
transfixing
tattoo:

sheet music—
the five-line staff

spiraling the numinous

forearm

of a Memorial Day-festival
attendee,

laid

like a prayerful,
black leather

strap

of tefillin:

Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing.

*The Winged Minute*
—after WCW

Among the mist

and reentry
I saw the 7:55
in red
on a digital
clock radio
soothing
swanlike
unruffled
to broadcasted combat
sound-bitten killings
and bulletins bombarding
upon the workday wakeup.
*E.T. POEM HOME*

fixin’ to do a little space walking, the domestic sentence is—

so says the spokesperson of the spokespeople

breaker breaker—
we just got lifted / got we just flung / we just got view

crossed the B Franklin Br with the cyclist in your psyche—

took Astronaut Ave. out to the empyrean

operated the apparatus of paradise—

ULTRA CONCENTRATED JOY dish liquid, refreshing lemon

breaker breaker—
we see now the cosmicality / see now to the thru

the feet-foot of the lice-louse—

“Two shot in Southwest Philadelphia”

the teeth-tooth of the geese-goose—

“Female sprinters leapt off the blocks on a Chinese island”

stutter-stepped in suffixes, wound up all -en -est -n’t -ized

& now, Willy Wonka doesn’t wanna without his eye patch on

breaker breaker—
we wanted to know if there was n.e. new news w/ ewes

bike-psyched, washing dishes, spinning vinyl flying saucers:

for all the DJs sick on their turntables—

repeat to the beat for another “orbit” scratch technique

but oh, how apropos:

my coworker’s a portable putting green behind my cubicle—

(“Am I to abandon my post?” ponders the Foolosopher—

“Or just my assumptions?”)

landing on Astroturf, a-somethin’ very outer space about it—

so says the spokesperson of the spokespeople
*12.29.05 – Phix – Grape Street, PA*

So don’t tell me Dionysus no longer exists—

Fans with old amphitheater fins, this cover band’s

searing the day’s enabler and catch:

Music a mouthful of black beans and blueberries—

Dionysus is drenching the minstrels!
Notes of bananas that never last, notes the navigator knows,
the changing nature of the fire in the microwave.

Dionysus is mist in the vineyard, is rife on the sidewalks,

waiting to pay and get stamped by the bouncer.

This ain’t some lettuce and tomato meal. (How many times
has such a sleep befallen?) Nor
the lost cap of a dead pen stuck within the sunlit cemetery
of the previous century—

Id-written, wine-aligned, this

is feeling
of dance
when you know
all the words—

words familiar yet as strange as rain: Dionysus is

listening, lets Pan stay up at least till encore
(alas, the only goof outta his crew at the bar
who has work in the morning)—

words with excellent plans for New Year’s Eve,

words when the right music arrives,

releases you.
*DAY OFF SHUTTLE LAUNCH*

keen
beclouded
intention
tailpipe
light seconds
painting fire
love evoked
seer oasis elixir
spilled liquids
when the employee of the month fucks up

open
upend
whatever energy
those American emotions
exotic toxins
a gothic glitch
bottle
steam
the rails
I’m not eating enough pizza

ramp
about place
ahead
underwater owls
what comets cannot
origami games
open the penguin
roots with wings
all niced-up
a book of poems entitled, illegible

to give rise to energy the size of stars, or some similar humdinger,

to generate X-ray radioactive earthINorbit rockNroll written events,
where we and the music turn into each other like light of a wavelength,
to fit into the blueberry atop the great Phillip’s screw head and turn,
to yield definite evidence and sufficient justification for how I feel
my employee-particles have to behave, as hot as a parking lot, with
whatnot & the wherewithal and any other thin hints at that, to rest
eager, to lurk in the unsearched & shades of all envious events, before
the intensity of being so close to the stage and sun of this experiment
peaces out—
I can’t believe you bought money for that thing!
 *EPIcureANS PAY for FeeLINGS*
—for Jerusalem Goose

This? Healthy?
This is highly un~
healthy, so no more fiending
for those alluding quails—

“O.
K.,” Molly said. “Mess clean’d.
I’ll crack & marry Juan, that great
nEEdling ass of an
id,
& pay Odie, my ex-, off
w/ them two spoonfuls of tasty mush that Nick Half ‘the tEEn’ (my
legal hero inside the wingless method room) traded w/ me

for a rain-wet book of matches back at the sad end of the Royal Al Co.

Hall”—Loosely, this Nation

rolls its dilated eyes & atlas~axis joints w/ the warning angelic,
yet appears forsaken
in dusty coat & cane for walking—

While sensation sEEking, be careful

not to trip over children:

I once overheard a little girl say, “Witalin.”

 *THE AFTERNOON SET of 12.31.99*

It starts in the lobby of a marble hotel, like I’m there for a convention or
thumthin; ahm:
I swing outside the glass turnstile doors to trade w/ the valet for a microbus,
but my old
friend “Chevy” is there, in the lot, beneath the awning & suckin’ down a huge
red balloon. In silly-
high helium-voice, he says: “This is great! You gotta try this!” and I laugh! &
I laugh myself
aloud, OUT of the dream & into the tent I lay sleeping-bag’d in at PHiSH
Big Cypress!
What a way to start a day! New Year’s Eve 2000, indEEd!—Lounging on
the folding chair
of the good morning, I follow w/ eyes the ants in the grass of a warm
winter’s day. They seem to
know. What they do to survive. Foraging. Painstakingly gathering
around the uneasy
beetle in our campsite. It seems to have an injured wing. OK, I
understand—I feel the
pressure. “I have to pee,” but don’t need to experience a port-
o-potty to do it. I’ve
seen some others walk out to the car-less patch of grass near
our site, so I decide,
well to wander. I leave my sandals w/ the folding chair
& glide off, greeting
hellos to those along the way. Real conversation sounds
blending & cooking in cool
camps. Folks. Kin—A few feet past our area’s last, there’s a
strip of sand which dips
down, as if there true used to be a small stream or canal there. I
ask myself, “What the?”
& realize there’s a cow bone, dead in the sand. Dry. Ball & Socket.
Looks like a femur. This
Reservation raises&slaughters livestock. I jump over it w/ my
bare feet, back safe
onto green & softness, then find a spot to release. Nice.
Liberation. I step in
shit—When I finish my piss I step in shit. Human goopy shit—
Someone squish’d &
the mystical spaces b/w my toes now know it all too well. Ah,
I didn’t notice before, meh,
but cute little clumps of soil’d toilet paper have even been left
behind. “The Clean
Vibe” my ass! I head back to the cow bone & sand gully to wipe
off the freakin’ man-
feces. Nice. Where’s the Green Crew when you need them? I’ve
gotta wash my feet—
I go back & tell no one, but my feet are a mess. Salem notices,
softly laughs, says,
“Dirty Hippie,” & softly laughs, but we both know the truth about
our post-
Garcia selves. Knowing I’m not, relax’d & listening, I feel like I’m
at the beach
in this chair. I see grass & underneath that: dry dirt/earth, & Trey knows
the Piper’s
what’s worming around underneath that—My gaze angles up & sees
a dynamic, trans-
parent cloud of dots. Gnats. Swarming on about as if some bell’d
juggler deftly
containing the region of air his goofy beanbags were in. “Why
do gnats do that?” I
ask aloud. “All cluster’d up like that, in one tight spot. What
are they doing?”
Samson’s girlfriend, Suzy, answers w/, “Mating.” They’re
both bio-scientists
taking grad classes at the U. of Pennsylvania. Ivy. As the timbre
of her voice reaches
me w/ the sound of her “ting,” for a microsecond, a flash, my eyes
still w/i the cloud,
a science class’s diagram of the grand & negatively- charged double-helix
wink’d at me. 100% Sober.
A true hallucination! It was like a constellation frozen for a fun
moment in the movement of the
gnats. A split-second show of the molecular homes for hydrogen,
oxygen, phosphorus,
the carbons in the helical phosphate- ester chains, & yes, the
cross-link’d purine &
pyrimidine bases. Amazingly, for an instant I saw it, but told
no one about it—Wait…
were you ever taught that that dark, leafy, castle-like presence
in Van Gogh’s
Starry Night is actually a large, cemetery-marking cypress tree? Ah,
Y2K—Fuck these
pessimistic prophecies! Safety first—Hemp spirals, indEEd.... We clean’d
up our Big Cypress camp,
pack’d our gear, & headed out for the Afternoon Set: It was N.Y.E. but
still in sun & just
off to the right of my crew: 18 Day-Glo green-caped superheroes of the
scene, one of
which was w/ child: a partying father w/ feathery newborn boy—It was
the soft li’l
newbie’s bouncin’ phirst show! But, strange vacation, this baby was w/
toy: a smaller day-
glo green plastic blow-up doll: the film-famous alien of dark-angled eyes.
And o, Salem
totally call’d it: it was: “The 100 percent most calming thing in
the world.” Whoooooo’s got my cameraaa?

December 31, 1999

Big Cypress Reservation
*the read wheelborrow*
—after WCW

mopping up fallen
eggs

oozing beside farm

hands

more than thot

depended

upon crippled dog

“Useless.”
 *FORT SKATEBOARD*

Were we tag’d “LaZy” b/c we change the channel w/o tryna heal
it? All-American! Our War’s
grown up & famous: Tomahawk forts/Colonial fife&drums/Civil
enslavers/“No Man’s Land”/
Atomic harbors/Frozen walls/38 parallels/Electric dodgers/Narco
Busts/Desert flares & on thru
Sept.11: NightVision videogame air-strike news mass-competing

for livingrooms: ½staff flags & soldier toetags/drunk-driven autos

& lung~fill’d smoke/bullet-fill’d students & suspicion-fill’d votes

It’s so absurd, but I bet you will defend me more after I’m drafted.
*anything to stay warm*

sitting
on what most soles side-
step—and if they don’t,

breath is held—

roofless hands
hold hood and hat, aiming
vapors: the city’s sidewalk

exhaust, in,

to a face unable to be seen

 JΔM>

roarRoarROAR Historically:
do I look like a scapegoat? pigeonholed w/ a lazy leftwing? do I
look like a bulletproof vest?

—as unpredictable & as mythical as living illustrations of rockNroll—

Mom&Dad, truly, it’s

J ust A bove M adness:

How I USA CartoonExpress SaturdayMorning Lego & Nintendo>
How I Darth> How I 1980USHockey Pelé & JohnLennon> How I moonwalk Tony
Hawk Halley’sComet & LymeDisease> How I got call’d in from recess by lunch
aides to watch the raygun-educating CHALLENGER smoke & firework
ON THE AIR, like TienemenSquare, then in for the freeing of the BerlinWall, like
NelsonMandela, & later: how Bush Sr fax’d in a Storm to scorch a Desert>

(but now back to...

How I V: The Final Battle> How I inline online “Safe Sex” & “War on Drugs”>
How I breakdance headbang moshpit stagedive crowdsurf bodypierce & NewWave
El Niño> How I MTV SAT #2 neglect & suicide> How I Rap & “Grunge”>
How I EasyE & MagicJohnson> How I Cobain Garcia BiggieSmallsTupacShakur>
How I Lollapalooza Bosnia RossPerot H.O.R.D.E. & A+ misspell Potatoe>
How I RodneyKing ButtafuocoMenendezBobbit ClarenceThomas & OJSimpson>
How I Flight103WorldTradeWacoUnibomberOklahomaJupiter & Exxonda’bomb>
How I Roots FraggleRock Cosby WonderYrs RealWorld XFiles & d’oh!>
How I FreddieM Kavorkian MattShepard YizchakRabin & WheelchairSuperman>
How I IronMike AirMJ TigerWoods CalRipkin & ünse ünse techno ünse>
How I HipHop phish SKA & Goth> How I heroin ecstasy “nugs” & Ritalin>
How I Declare my Major> How I Change my Major> How I Rent
Field of Dreams X KIDS PCU & StarWars(again)> How I 1,000,000ManMarch>
How I HubbleSpace Heaven’sGate Hale-Bopp ArtBell & TheCelestineProphecy>
How I PrincessDiana & MotherTeresa> How I HowardStern & LillithFair>
How I Impeach Clinton & Kosovo & Colorado/420> How I Sosa&McGwire>
How O, the InfoAge ain’t all the Rave> How all our heads be haunted & hazed>
How I change the fucking channel—
How I VH1 & Viagra> How I free Mumia&Tibet> How I fire Woodstock in 1999>
How I JFKjr & WTOSeattle> How I LatinPop & Howl I chEErs: HappyNewFears!

www.shalom_good_home.com

but beware the Uth you underestimate: both the Skateboarder & Scarecrow
can always uncage a brain:
 the greatest festivities of our generation’s roll
gather’d
hiking the peaks & releases alive

*CROWKEEPER’S SONG*
on tour
lyrically trancing for answers
potential
in venues on wild flights
tether’d by
gravitations
tickets to dionysian shows
kick’d down
to lift cheers & motivate the lighting of
glowstick
irresistibles for lion manes & o female shoulder
blades.
 w/; I still need

Paul Siegell is the author of Poemergency Room (Otoliths Books, 2008)

and the “parking lot attendant” over at ReVeLeR @ eYeLeVeL

paulsiegell.blogspot.com