The St. Charles School

A Wandering Prophet Has no Place to Lay His Head

2006-04-19T15:23:00.000-06:00

Hey, Burton, long time no Cy
you say, already pawing through the fridge
like a racoon, barking at your own joke.
Who left the pie in the window, scratched
hobo-codes on my door, Sucker Here,
Good Cooking. Spare key under a begonia
by the backdoor, oldest trick in the book.
Flash of teeth like ivory Scrabble tiles:
Nothing here but leftovers, let's
go buy me a pizza. Vita: Knox Piasma,
twentysomething, brokenbraked train,
dandruffed charmer, leaping from
boxcar to boxcar like so many sofas.
Knox the friend-crash, Knox the vagabond-prince,
holding court over burgers, cardboard
crown like a crooked beret on your head.
Hey Cy, let's do a renga you decree
through a crawful of my fries:

the runaways and geese
hitchiking their way down south:
it must be winter

pigeon, now that's good eating,
ya throw in some wild turnips

old friends, like old fish
and leftovers, start to stink
after a few days

well-travelled is well-seasoned:
dust of six states on my feet

shit which reminds me
I need to use your shower
you say, which is fine
by me until you add I need to wash my socks,
those fuckers by at the Washateria charge too much.

So You've Noticed

2006-04-19T15:15:00.000-06:00

how nic-nerves and
nosleep bleach the brain
til every detail crackles
underfoot like kindling,
flatlight dry leaves and

goddam that broom
in the grip of the mexican
girl scraping louder and
louder until it’s the sound
of the scalpel sweeping

the yellow from your bones,
you the man with midnight
pinkeye steel bucket station
fluorescing unevenly
as an old movie

where everyone smokes
and seedy blondeshells divebomb
across the screen like comets
before rocketing back to their
stockinged dayjobs and

hotshit your eyes open
for 40 consecutive nights
the seconds sizzling
drops on the hot-tin
burner the crackling cherry

in the lips of the cinquenera,
red as the shell-plastic chairs,
spare a smoke?
sleep is cheap but insomnia’s
free, if you know how to ask.

(Another one from "The Greyhound Sessions." I wrote this one weeks later-- ironically, every bit as sleep-deprived as I was during the trip itself.)

The Lineup

2006-04-19T15:12:00.000-06:00

so maybe we’re the ones standing
toe to heel in florescent hell.
maybe the joke’s on us, maybe
(step right up have your tickets ready)
we’re loving every minute of it.

grayslacked janitor shoeing off
the few milling like cows
around the tiles he’s mopping, watch it
he says this shit’ll eat right through
your soles, it turns gum to powder.

boarding for gate 9 to houston
will begin at 2 ayem.
are we standing here for a reason,
are we standing here
because we have to stand somewhere?

texas-dusted teenager
neurotically flips his zippo
open against his jeaned thigh,
one-two, one-two, sparks
spackling denim like neurons.

buddy gave me this before
they shipped ‘m out to yugoslav
he says, shocked by eye contact.
his smog-close mouth exhausts
a hot dry wind, fire in a far-off town.

minutes settling like ash
on the shoes and shoulders of the dead,
waiting with their pennies. charon guns the engines
and gums a toothpick. are we any lovelier,
the gray sifting into our hair too—

This one from my unfinished series "The Greyhound Sessions" about this long-assed bus trip to see my sis. Man oh sh!t, I am never bussing crosscountry again. It's like land of the friggin lost.

Through Jack

2006-01-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

I love Leigh's new work, and for those of you who haven't seen more of the Diane poems, they're just splendiforous, n'est pas (spelling)? I wrote a new one too about Jack Graham from UNO. Well, not about him, but he's in there.

THROUGH JACK

Jack naturally led the movement from color to color.
Jack had himself to blame, so I say and so you say.
Jack says hollow trunks hold the fevered acorns.
How about philosophy? "When Sartre came on the scene,"
paintings in the window of an Indian Gallery
big wampum he done said, cat's wild for his bread,
Mr Bones: there but for the grace of that rare old bird
the begonias have blossomed like the thick tips of your breasts,
you whose heart I was born to hassle, that movie
Jack saw with the skull-scattered painting

A cold house
the skyscraper branch
bears no fruit
fruit being symbolic for my new children
real holy laughter! Jack! Through the river!
Don't expect me to know your Kerouac breakfast
lunch dinner, my Jack is a terrific Jack, 61,
fair hair, confined to the bed, raises his hand each christmas
O that this too too solid Jack Jack raced his wheelchair
remember dear Autolycus, to thine own Jack be Jack
leaf, folded in paper, the note's ink paints the brown vein
whose amazed citizens stare heroin dumb in the basement
feeling their cold hearts, O love me Apollo! Bring in thy sum-pump!
laying flat half of downtown New York is Jack's bilious whale-skin tongue.
Purple, a new phrase, a color for the civilized age.
And done.

Diane

2006-01-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

I wait under a tree for you, Diane,
red hands. Washing dishes
for the hour we were supposed to spend together.
Here is my navy blouse, here
is my kiss, here is the extra key.

Mother Night

2006-01-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

I have seen her walking in and out
and down, she has chuckled
up the stair and I have seen her
on the roof in nightgowns, like my mother.
Once, she opened her mouth. Out ran
molasses, slowing my hands
from squeezing her eyes dead shut.

Pigeons go Home

2006-01-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

Standing on the roofs of
any number of Volkswagons, we fold
ourselves like fishwrappings into paper
planes or origami cranes or children's
newspaper boats, hoping to fly or float
over a bayoufull of projects. Here,
take my wings, I no longer care
what happens, they're slick with tar
anyway. Black water, brother
river, take this feather,
and another, and
another.

The Coons of Old New Orleans

2006-01-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

I wrote this one afore the shit his the proverbial fan. Here goes:

THE COONS OF OLD NEW ORLEANS

Somewhere behind the honeysuckle
by the preposterously pink house:
there-- among the bees, a flair of color in the air
thrumming like a hummingbird's throat--
a whimsy of checkered diamonds
dissappearing from the corner of your eyes
behind the garage before you're sure you saw it.

Harlequin, poor player, battered
checkerboard of a clown, how many times
must I chase you from my trash cans
brandishing a broom, you poor bastard?
Even the racoons under the house
know better than to try that in broad daylight.

Pierrot, that white-faced hobo, peers
into the screen of the window-- all eyes
and ribs and chewed-up legs, cartoonish
smell lines rising visibly from his coat, the little dog
so lost and hopeless he's hilarious,
dreaming of fresh-baked pie.

And somewhere up on Frenchman Street,
they're burning the houses down, one by one,
driving the squatters blinking from their dreams
out into the night like so many mimes
to wonder how it ever came to this--
to wander off into the smoky streetlight
like Charlie Chaplain in his threadbare moustache,
weeping to roaring applause.

Hang in There, Baby!

2005-08-16T21:40:00.000-06:00

This is a poem I wrote for Dan. One thing I really liked about "Personism" is how having a recipient, an intended, a target even, how all that colors a poem and breathes a kind of crazy life into it. This one's for Dan, as I mentioned. I'd love to see you guys get off your duffs and write some new stuff dedicated to me, or each other. (...I seem to recognize all the poems I'm seeing so far... old stuff, guys? Whatsa mattter, not writing lately?)

Here it is:

HANG IN THERE BABY!
for Dan

I can still see you clawing up turf
red snarl curdling through the marigolds
of the suburbs in their manicured lawns and
my god, what a waste, those
shallow beds torn grass black nails
sheeting the street like a blackboard to their cars

Monday of the dead: lead foot spines cracked apostrophes
on the faces of the few red-faced living who stick out
so much they’re invisible, hands out like a line of question marks
rattling cups bones dice words like coins
at the scarecrows staggering with their nametags
HI MY NAME IS into the lurid whiskeybreath mouth
of Borders Hades Starbucks GUEST SERVICE ASSOCIATE

Grinding books stones teeth into a thousand days
spent folding coffee beans into origami cranes, do you miss
yourself as much as I do you articulate bastard,
shamble home past a thousand newspaper machines
tuned to a dead channel crying WAR! crying LOCAL ZOMBIE
SLAIN god damn the carnage crying POET EATS OWN BRAIN

Sketch

2005-08-16T21:23:00.000-06:00

the secret lives of children: just what are
the little angels really up to.

at three thirty-three they cluster
around busstop poles like ants
to lollipops

and watch the cars amble by
like benevolently indifferent hippos

as the bus passes ursiline:
plaid skirts and buttonup shirts flapping out—

termites flexing wings
and floating out from the corridors
of a just-cracked open board.

somewhere, a unicorn
impales a Barbie, the little bitch.

view through the window: a flock
of black-jeaned teens, rawking
like crows against their parents.

but they’re not looking out, in
the backseats, hands on
each others’ thighs: waiting for the weekend.

Amber Hour

2005-08-16T21:18:00.000-06:00

An ant halts its oak-bark march, looks up to see
Light thick as honey.

On these streets a continual snow falls
Which never touches the ground. When the town
Of Pompeii turned to stone,
Soft ash settled for days on the gray hills.
There, as here, the air was full of gulls
Which never seem to land,
But here the cars are sloughing CO2
As rush-hour redlights jelly as they cool.
He growls and grips the wheel:
He is afraid; he will be late for chemo.
Sunset like a glass of beer—yellow,
Yellow as a dyed cell.

Don't Look

2005-08-16T17:03:00.000-06:00

The sky a glaucous eye, enveloped
in a razor-sleeve wind raking
through my shirt. I stumble down
brownstones, hearing the voice
of a bird, a yellow bird an azure
tree against the clouds and bruises and I
am trying, really I am.

Abandon

2005-08-16T17:01:00.000-06:00

We bungled like ragdolls, haggard
down the backyard hill, sneezing
and shirtless, glistening and red
on the trampoline, all night
with our Oreos and gin, watching
the TV that never worked, deaf
from static but we stole it anyway
snickering into the dark.

Sketch

2005-08-13T18:22:00.000-06:00

the purple martens back from sabbatical
with stickers on their wings that read mexico, cuba
beliz, have you found jesus, argentina
and they cling to the trees like monkeys
crying hi hi hi hi hi.

and on the lawn
the clover waves its little hands
like an idiot cousin.

anyone who says
it was my fault wasn’t
there, or doesn’t know
what the hell they’re talking about anyway.

Alice in the Underworld

2005-08-07T18:18:00.000-06:00

All our dawns and still
I stare at the little hairs of your arm.
You are gone, fallen down some well
In your mind, but your face is warm
And your body breathes without you,
Sucking the morning light-motes in:
Whitecaps in a whirlpool. Slaughter the ewe,
Pour out its blood to pool in this fen,
To be lapped by the hungry dead.
Hoarse throats, those denied burial:
The blind one warns the All-father’s gone mad.
Whispers in the dark: you tell
Me what he did to you.
I hold you till you’re gone, chasing
Rabbits through small holes till morning blooms,
Sucking color from the ground—daisies.

(note: getting this darned thing to format right is a bear. This poem is supposed to have a raggedy left-margin (some lines are tabbed) but this website just sucks 'em all to the left no matter what I do.)

2005-08-07T18:10:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone!

I've now got everything set up, with all y'all's emails and useraccounts and everything.

So, here's the idea: I wanted to use this Web-log to keep in touch with what you guys are (or aren't, as the case may be) still writing. This is more-or-less for creative writing only, not keeping-in-touch sorta stuff; we can do that via email and phone.

I'd like to post the following kind of stuff here:

1. Poetry itself.

2. Thoughts about poetry.

Most specifically, I'd like to see what you guys are doing with our "movement," Juxtapositionalism. Are any of you still either writing juxtapositionalist poems, or at least working in ideas we tossed around in the old days? I'm finding a lot of my poems are still recognizably of our "School." But maybe that's just me.

More later. Consider the gauntlet thrown!

Adam

2005-07-22T23:11:00.000-06:00

This is a site for poetry written by members (and friends) of the St. Charles School, an informal circle of friends who worked and workshopped together from about 1998 to 2003 in the New Orleans area. I'm still figuring this Blogger site out, so hopefully I'll have useraccounts up and running for all you guys soon.

Until then, I remain

your servant,

Adam Wry