Toilet Immunity; Or, Omnium-gatherum of Diversity into Unity

[fishjim]

Shit List; Or, Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity

You'll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are:
gosling shit (which J. Williams said something
was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout

shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit,
sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit
(awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit,

horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar shit (so many dark
kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby rhinoceros
shit, splashy jaybird shit, mockingbird shit

(dive-bombed with the aim of song), robin shit that
oozes white down lawnchairs or down roots under roosts,
chicken shit and chicken mite shit, pelican shit, gannet

shit (wholesome guano), fly shit (periodic), cockatoo
shit, dog shit (past catalog or assimilation),
cricket shit, elk (high plains) shit, and

tiny scribbled little shrew shit, whale shit (what
a sight, deep assumption), mandril shit (blazing
blast off), weasel shit (wiles' waste), gazelle shit,

magpie shit (total protein), tiger shit (too acid
to contemplate), moral eel and manta ray shit, eerie
shark shit, earthworm shit (a soilure), crab shit,

wolf shit upon the germicidal ice, snake shit, giraffe
shit that accelerates, secretary bird shit, turtle
shit suspension invites, remora shit slightly in

advance of the shark shit, hornet shit (difficult to
assess), camel shit that slaps the ghastly dry
siliceous, frog shit, beetle shit, bat shit (the

marmoreal), contemptible cat shit, penguin shit,
hermit crab shit, prairie hen shit, cougar shit, eagle
shit (high totem stuff), buffalo shit (hardly less

lofty), otter shit, beaver shit (from the animal of
alluvial dreams)—a vast ordure is a broken down
cloaca—macaw shit, alligator shit (that floats the Nile

along), louse shit, macaque, koala, and coati shit,
antelope shit, chuck-will's-widow shit, alpaca shit
(very high stuff), gooney bird shit, chigger shit, bull

shit (the classic), caribou shit, rasbora, python, and
razorbill shit, scorpion shit, man shit, laswing
fly larva shit, chipmunk shit, other-worldly wallaby

shit, gopher shit (or broke), platypus shit, aardvark
shit, spider shit, kangaroo and peccary shit, guanaco
shit, dolphin shit, aphid shit, baboon shit (that leopards

induce), albatross shit, red-headed woodpecker (nine
inches long) shit, tern shit, hedgehog shit, panda shit,
seahorse shit, and the shit of the wasteful gallinule.

- A.R. Ammons

[Bernard]

This is the most beautiful poem about shit I've ever read, which doesn't sound like a compliment, but is. I've been back into reading Baudelaire recently so I'm in the mood, you could say.

[milly balgeary]

The other night I started collectin poems I've written in fugues over the last year or two. Some are OK, some are not. I was gonna give it out to some friends as an ebook. I've got like 60-70 pages of them!... i was gonna call it, "3am poems for drunks". i hate formatting it in the same font, so i do one, then i find something else to do. i'm not even sure who i'd give it to. some girls i know i guess. but most dudes i know are like, "poetry, wtf".

 here's a couple i personally like:

room to room

earlier i went from room to room
i turned every light on
i went out
i hoped that someone had come
while i was gone
someone like a skeleton

and it would be waiting for me
in my bed
and
willing to take me onward
to the islands of the dead
where the bars never close
where nobody ever knows
tomorrow

the dogs the dogs the dogs


i have crossed too many wild dogs to get here
i have fucking fought these fuckers
with their jaws like white ice
cold and melting
they come down hard on flesh and bone
i have crossed them all to reach your abandoned heart
in the yonder temple lies the crystal bath
upon the water wreathes an ancient seal
and upon this seal there is inscribed a note floating
"fuck you, asshole."
i know when i leave, the dogs will follow
until we reach a forest shallow
and they tear me limb from limb from limb



New Love
 
 
I’ve loved one really good life,
 
 
I’ve been in love on New Years,
 
When midnight fell, I was in love no more.
 
 
I can hear the branches quaking in terror,
 
I can hear the breath of your air,
 
I can find the light that has walked into the room,
 
I can hear the sound of the lamps being lit.
 
 
If it were the last good life,
 
the last of the good loves, Would I stalk it like prey,
 
Would I tie my heart into such knots that they are forever there,
 
Hungry for the dark-eyed inhalation of her eyes.
 
 
Upon my gravestone they will write,“The Dead Belong In Hell”
 
And I will live forever, in that idea,
 
of a Place beyond this one,
 
where the light comes less, and the dark wakes, and love stirs,
 
beneath the veil.
 
 
Your breasts and your stomach,
 
LIke ivory blocks, built from intoxicating light,
 
I will chase you like a devil,
 
Into the ballroom bedrooms of my head,
 
I will crack your knuckles and lick your pussy
art works of ancient days,
crazy-falling,through a dark haze, and there are trembling faggots in this maze,
 
while the car warms up in the winter, 
I can DRIVE away
but I WON'T,
I will load my specific version of my life,
The one that I use the most,
The one who dies the most,
The one who love the most
 
Brothers, sisters, there will be love in this maze, the kind of new love garbage,
cynics rail against, their bodies falling into a deluge,
as bodies collide.
 
There are ministers speaking their prayer,
But I don't listen as I rifle through you,
Your eyes and your mouth, your tits, your cold tits, hanging like hanged men,
your crying eyes, your trembling mouth, your heart like a neon red sign.
 
Your pussy speaks to me in a foreign language,
I drink through the wild cries,
the Possessed dark, the tribulation of it, trials, traps, and torn membranes,
Crazy quilts carved out of love, I hang in your eyes, I hang in your mouth,
within your breast, within your breath, your heart goes and goes and goes,
and I struggle in. We die on each other, our blood frozen, our eyes like gravestones.

[milly balgeary]

here's another couple! i don't even remember the dead baby. i remember the lita ford one though.


The Dead Baby
 
There was a dead body in the street,
His car lay off the bridge,
His girlfriend’s head lay in a copse,
Upon his chest was written in a marker
all of his desires, all of his handles,
all of his idols,
All of his frozen drama, trapped in amber.
Flypaper ideas whisked to and fro,
a newspaper in training.
His girlfriend’s baby cried in the snow. It was soon to die.
The baby saw strangers come,
Owls and rats,
Foxes,
The baby cried, with skin blue,
The moon gaped, an open pit,
White like a fresh coat of corpse paint.
The baby trembled, its knees like white clouds,
Close to rain, As ice grew over the baby’s face.
The coyotes came in. The owls hooted, and the foxes slid,
Elusive, through time. 


I am Lita Ford And I Fucked A Grenade

I am a woman with big breasts standing in the middle of a crowded mall
I have explosives strapped to my lower back, and I am standing in the middle
There is a crow on my shoulder, and there is a knife in my genitals
For carving up men who try to take me unaware, 
To cut their nipples off, and suck them dry like sunflower seeds,
Tough and ornery apple chunks,
Listening to Lita Ford in my car, driving over a thousand young hungry hearts,
Placenta dripping like cow udders in my white hands, 
I strangle a thousand, or ten-thousand dreams, with my eyes.
 
I watch the children explode, each curve, rod, line, sync
Goes toppling and wavering, smoky blood, and blood soiled underpants,
I eat the viscera of a young girl, my nails black with old blood,
I do a little dance, while listening to Lita Ford, I break out my smile,
The smile full of teeth and pain and light and anger,
Seething inside me, growing towards some final gesticulation,
Some final birth in some final millennium, a lightning rod,
To bring this whole thing to its knees, and the birds of Bethlehem to fly
Each bird croak an abyss, each bird feather a rune upon a hair shirt
Each abyss a mouth upon an electric pole, leering blood.
 
I am a woman on a bus, tranquil and shiny gloss and petrol
Rubbed on my clitoris, my eyes like Lita Ford’s,
Ozzy Osbourne on the seat next over, a pale corpse,
Rock and Roll dead, eyes piled in the back to go on astral tours
Dismembered babies stacked like lightbulbs at home depot,
Ready to get stocked, stacked, and sold for pennies,
I’m ready to get stuffed like a turkey by clammy dicks,
Sharped into stakes, burning with gasoline, while the men scream,
Here comes that Lita Ford, to crawl spider-like over the ceiling of the bus,
Dropping shit, 6 feet deep, for the hags to circle in.
Hags of Hell, please, steamed shit on plastic K-Mart plates, 
Forks in boxes, bandaid needle stings on fingers, 
HIV positive chimpanzees run through these aisles, 
I like it, I’m Lita Ford, playing Rock and Roll Suicide,
Got grenades

[fishjim]

Shit, Milly. Good shit!

I am Lita Ford And I Fucked A Grenade

and

the dogs the dogs the dogs

are the holy dung. And I like the idea of "Toilet Immunity" being permission for any of us LPTJ'ers to just post our own poetry shit here. Throw it against the wall and watch it stick. Or slide.

[jebreject]

I never write poetry any more. I wish I did, but I feel like crafting good poetry is about 10000x more difficult than fiction, and I just hate the process of rewriting and editing a lot more when it comes to poetry. Also I don't keep up with poetry, so I feel like I'm not really contributing to any sort of dialogue with poetry as a form. Which, I mean, I don't think that's necessarily important, but it's something I think about. When I get home I'll post some recent ones. I did get one published recently by a really small Michigan-based press ran by a friend of mine, which lead to me reading poetry in front of people for the first time in several years, and which went well, but didn't exactly inspire me to jump back in to the world of poetry.

(Milwaukee's actually got a pretty decent scene, as it were, though somewhat fractured, and I wonder how well everything will keep going without the omnipresence of the wonderful James Liddy.)

[fishjim]

Cool, jeb - your shit is welcome here! Poetry is definitely a different thing than fiction, which I personally find next to impossible to write. Love reading it, though.

I've had a couple spells where I ground to halt and stopped writing for years at a time. Finally got my groove when I started having fun with it. Sharing can be part of the fun.

OT: Figured Ginsberg would have something to say here, and sure enough, opened to p 58 of Planet News (1968) and found this:

~

It will come on the railroad, beneath
     the wheels, in drunken hate screaming
     thru the skinny machine gun, it will
     come out of the mouth of the pilot,
     the dry lipped diplomat, the hairy
     teacher will come out of me
     again shitting the meat out of
     my ears on my cancer deathbed

[jebreject]

A couple of recent(ish) things, not particularly related to feces:

SCORCHED EARTH LOVE SONG #2

Here: a song for charred blackened flesh
for reclamation by earth and sound
helicopters buzzing like electric bonesaws
teeth biting sucking bittersweet marrow
watching sunsets with hopeless fervor
hollowing out homes beneath great dark trees
sap like ogre blood dripping down arboreal tongues
clenched fist tight around thoughtless mind
harrowing heartbreaking in a world without
sandworms or heatsinks broke down highways
all things made of glass shall too come
no one rides but might loudly sing nightly
for dead soldiers and dead doornails
for fathers everywhere with tongues like snails
slimy fingers calloused thick and manicured
flowers exploding from lips like pink fire
eyes like rotary dial telephones
or seas under starless skies

Swim in the ash of old settlements
manufacture resentment that could be grown naturally
act hard for the sake of your daughters
smile broadly for other men’s wives
your backyard is a desert
your body is a coal mine
birdsong is breathed through miles
of carpentry and compulsion
each lie an interstate
each soft sigh an exit
each chance to forget
ensures you’ll remember
each long day praying for the night
waiting for the heat to break
waiting for a dog and his boy
to come rescue you

When they do finally come
the boy makes the sign of the cross
and kisses you good night
before siphoning your gas





HEAVEN IS HUMMING

Heaven is humming tonight
Like a finely-tuned electric typewriter
Like a man learning to sing

Reaching for the right pitch,
Stumbling but never–

And I with my own humming
Plucking away in the dark
Always stumbling

To you who invented the adding machine:
I lay before you my greasy palms.
I set here all my prayers, tied in a bundle,
Organized by tongue. You
Feel the viscous oils dripping
Down. You

Washed yourself
In the ladies’ room
After.

[fishjim]

Jeb - !!! - this is hot shit. Seriously. You've got an ear for rhythm and rhyme and off-rhyme that's worth exploiting the fuck out of. I hope you're turning your poems into songs, too. This is something I will never be able to do, and anyone who can do it and doesn't is giving the finger to pitch-impaired people like me.

[jebreject]

Thanks Jim! I'll post a couple more later.

[fishjim]

I've still got

When they do finally come
the boy makes the sign of the cross
and kisses you good night
before siphoning your gas

humming in my head.

[jebreject]

I've never felt very confident about my poetry--I'll like it immediately after writing it, and then hate it and be embarassed by it almost as quickly. That one's stuck with me though. I'm really proud of it.

Thanks a lot!

[fishjim]

A while back Antero asked me to record my dick poem, so last night I did. This morning I recorded a couple other poems to give it a mixtape feel, and lo and behold -

Dicks 'n' Dirt
http://www.well.com/~fishjim/dicks-n-dirt.m4a

This is my first shot at recording myself, so feedback welcome. Apparently my voice after 3 or 6 beers (for the dick poem) is slower and sloshier than my voice after toast and coffee (for the other 2). Live & learn!

[fishjim]

Doing some winter cleaning around the cave and came across this poem by D.H. Lawrence.

Love this shit so much.

~

GIVE ME A SPONGE

Give me a sponge and some clear, clean water
and leave me alone awhile
with my thirteen sorry pictures that have just been rescued
from durance vile.

Leave me alone now, for my soul is burning
as it feels the slimy taint
of all those nasty police-eyes like snail-tracks smearing
the gentle souls that figure in the paint.

Ah, my nice pictures, they are fouled, they are dirtied
not by time, but by unclean breath and eyes
of all the sordid people that have stared at them uncleanly
looking dirt on them, and breathing on them lies.

Ah my nice pictures, let me sponge you very gently
to sponge away the slime
that ancient eyes have left on you, where obscene eyes have crawled
leaving nasty films upon you every time.

Ah the clean waters of the sky. Ah! can you wash
away the evil starings and the breath
of the foul ones from my pictures? Oh purify
them now from all this touch of tainted death!

[fishjim]

x-posting this hot shit from coldforge to the septic tank.

This is something I very rarely do—publishing these things, at any point in their lives, in any place—but I figured I'd see what happened. I just wrote this tonight and have not at all revised it.

I would be a Suckling,
Given over to flattery
And devoted to games;
   And I would raise a foolish force,
   And acquit myself ably;

I’d love my many joys and works—
A single stroke on the page,
In happy relation to my art;
   And I would tumble from this world
   In cheerful reason.

But I was born to poor humor,
And this world has found me
Unreasonable;

My stroke is pocked and punctuated
By the drops from this old unhealing wound,
The malformed seat of my vigor.

I would note well, though
How Suckling died, and where,
In dreadful dearth of reason;
   And note the iron in his ink,
   And bear him pity.

[coldforge]

Thank you for the inclusion. I thought that this place was exclusively for scatalogical poems. Mine has got a bleeding groin but no poop.

[fishjim]

Nah, the premise here is that poems are shit.

[coldforge]

INDOORS

It was easier to come out with you
Into the fields, where birds made no claim
On my poor knowledge and flowers grew
With no thought but to declare God.

Within I had the old problems
To cope with: turning from the Book's
Comfortable words, I came face to face
With the proud priests and their intolerant look.

1962

[fishjim]

Shit yeah.

[coldforge]

And here's another new one by me. Not as good as above—not yet worth transcribing to the computer, best let it sit for a while—but I feel better about my work than I perhaps ever have.

[fishjim]

Can't read a word, but if it's as runic as your script, chances are I'm gonna love it.

[coldforge]

and craggy, too! it's an affectation at bottom but i love it.

[jm]

I can only make out about 60% of that.

[jebreject]

I can only make out "corn dog"

[fishjim]

I see "Nutella"