jon leon
boxd transistor
“Machine Talk” appeared in Shampoo 21. “Guns ‘n Ammo,” “Dakota Blue,” and “Tracer” appeared in can we have our ball back 19.0. “Possibles” appeared in Kiss My Grits No. 25. “Munitions,” and “Re-make/Re-model” in Aught 13. “Sunset Cove, 1957” appeared in Shampoo 23. “Vagabond Rose (American Nude)” Pettycoat Relaxer 7. “[Sic] Transit” appeared in Kiss My Grits No. 27. “some thoughts on poverty, pornography, and promises” in Kiss My Grits Feb 2005. “Withheld Postscript” in hutt 2.1. “Pink and Blue Blankets, Pink Light Theatre” published as Legget Press broadside #08.
copyright © 2006 Jon Leon & Coconut
To the creator of “Pornographer In Green Shoes” and
“Prussian With One Ear,” Heather Brinkman. For her
unconditional support and encouragement and for her
devotion and fanatic interest in poetry and human
beings.
Wir kampfen mit der sprache.
Wir stehen in kampf mit der sprache.
—L. Wittgenstein
MACHINE TALK
Your yellow arm on my torso.
Post
cards of
museum
gallery salon
restless lamentation. hatchets
husbands new directions.
clock fifty years ago,
could we know of this turmoil.
Not to destroy it:
minister failure
"Who knew?" this construct
monument... ill attempts at prosperity
Across the street:
little girls,
pouty lips,
black hair.
When in
Las Vegas "I love you to death." I called.
GUNS 'N AMMO
The perky baristas house assassin
in greyblack.
The black
red wheel station-
ary walk
way down Wickendon Street
through the harbor bowels.
got over
East Street
Beethoven num-
ber sixteen.
Snap me backseat intimacy
to tell you something extended
to somewhere shaking
on Atwells right instead
sidetracked. Of course forgot it.
DAKOTA BLUE
The world is the poorer.
urinating in
downtown
Manhat —
The other side
of the English Channel
in your sum
mer vocation
gratis abstemious.
Lifestyle choices:
L'Oreal Paris
scowling theories
in exiles, rough drafts
of your own obit --
Those buildings. Eureka.
Peroxide blonde
clapboard housing
photo-
graphs with
your grandfather's
accordian
slung regally over his neck not here
opposite the telephone wires.
TRACER
Everyday over again out fit.
So there's no distinction there. People,
person people sometimes tennis skirts
living to glamor-
ize child's mind.
Playlist:
ten everyday, work vita.
Where? Champions
under blank govern-
ing bodies down
orders.
The same at midnight.
Simpatico orders
lower trad —
What? United. The
natural standpoint.
Same bank two blocks away,
doltish quarters. These modes.
POSSIBLES
Note take corner confidante.
What relish for the aleatoric:
chatting infidelities
telling with/
to.
Again you shelter chandeliers
head, sides wrong you, behind the window
thoughts; though in consequence through lists.
The balustrade,
flickering walk lamps,
heights flickering, dig.
In cogito where the stitching in your
halter, pushed bosom. I'd endure pitch-black
more delicate punch-
ups exclaiming,
"Now that we're in the working class."
Laps, faces, a pieta before
pimiento walls.
NO PROGRAM
I came out for nothing. No
shake-ups. No incendiary violence.
No subject : object. A constant shake-up
for nothing. This disease I know
maybe it's a drag but for what else.
Nothing about penitentiaries appeals
to me. Nothing off-hours. No
thing who stole my piss in
cleaner toilets. Nothing waxing
Eric Rudolph hand in hand.
MUNITIONS
We made our way into the woods do you remember.
You first where we were foreign. Today in town
last the trickeries of labor. Caved in to a circuit board
of verisimilitude or something like it. Many men
bound to the fragrance of find contentment in
the action of. There hosts of ladies many men out.
Where ladies' bodies vie for or ladies turn radioactive
we are back in the steel forest. We are where the past
stopped where men raped infants and murder many men.
RE-MAKE/RE-MODEL
Explanatory what can we say. No erasure of difference.
Anything setting not eager or silent. Booming alleyways
backdoors the midst. We're proving it this segregating focus.
Less and less on anything moving. Clearly in that arena
or any course irrational. About what do we present
public movement. Tendencies vice anything moving.
We're good druggists. Records and ball today thinking
sophisticated other at thirty. Speeches stark action stumped.
With to ask tearing off characterization. In speeches
removing eyes right, sockets ditches, digging burn.
Themes rough manifesto on anything moving but are
finding no movement. All day long until lice. Where
discount looks foreign rows. Cognition, results, etc.
NOT A FAN
You can help me learn constellations
and engineering. I'll lay the barrel
at your feet. We can sway agendas;
fell swoop. Expiration close but overlooked.
*
Hot matches. Long square slopes.
The trash can lid overturned. We
checked out your oils for empathy.
I found your nudes the next case scenario.
*
Telecommunique: broadcasts alfresco.
Squirming eyes all over the tabletop.
Save the sound of ticking spoons.
White cloth on the hothouse steps.
*
I'll invariably try to work that into it.
Chagrin, oh chagrin.
FLEA JACKET
I watched your talks rope meters.
Neck first into the bustling street
farce. We can't all blocked feathers
you pigeon. Gang me in '98.
That was South inevitably — quite deft.
*
The problem with the Producers.
What we aren't learning : what we've
cost. In Grozny perhaps with little
Persephones, creep. You stick it out;
it gets cut, no?
*
The prize fighters domesticated their
prison, swept cuts. We found our
junk den. Hiding with our head
in our crotch. Damn necks snapped.
*
Ask them wails come soaring.
Conflicts diurnal.
VAGABOND ROSE (AMERICAN NUDE)
Will you please help us young duck.
What morality. Only once thorny you
caught/complete tryst gone.
No holds — Luck.
Complete black complete bloodred black.
Hear ye hear ye you hear you cavalcade
balance walkaround w/
nose in shoes, steep walk-up
kicking tin, & fast sting — cavalier.
Say cannot that's learning i.d. us.
Tourniquet give
out stretch your wrist out
one block this way.
The best can be better. Bodies stop-out.
The better the tech-
nology the better the conquest
learning about disinfectious
turn the r a d i o on
learn about mono mono
learn what is
no good learn about
one road going tangent to
you civil.
Call me virile.
The countryside found us eager backstabbers and primitives.
I can't find nothing here in the striplight ::
moviehouse - massage parlor
- backstreet - clinic -
found here
where everything is here
"Kick some Dukakis
kick him hard"
ablactation
why we don't work
the shortest distance from
a point to the vertical or y-axis
X prepared to break off that
dangerous liaison.
Why don't we all have a little fun for once.
Whip who possession.
God give me who? Refunction.
SUNSET COVE, 1957
after Alex Katz
moontop______________________________grey coast
island to islet________________________________pencil water
antennae________________________________jump
__________________________________miniature catastrophe
orange sun fruit sun________________________:: mahogany beaches
play in the middle ground midsky mid drop slammed down on the shasta sea
happiness is a truckbox, 4 paper boats
o those
eastern nights
they'll crush you
down they'll crush
your mothers
anything the color
fandango
afternoon we drop anchor
and swim out to the concentration tunnels, once there
we spare glitter fish their atelier
i steal their striped sox
2 dimensional par
this is heaven
[SIC] TRANSIT
For-
Her eyes are lobelia-blue, fire-blue now in her
burnt face. Her arms are the colour of the chiffon
scarf that she wore last night at dinner. The hollow
in her neck is as fragrant as tobacco and her flesh tastes,
I tell her, of water-lillies and pears. She says, "water-lilies
and pears ... what a mutinous sort of salad," and
I say "for God's sake, don't be whimsical."H.D., Kora and Ka (1930)
Frustrating alliance Enjoy sailor
Glue America, Bingo —
R.M. was buying and selling.
We all thought the world was getting small
and it is; hours smell so brackishly long here.
The house is a plague sitting on a little bench.
"A sublime and spontaneous Art..."
Dear _______ : it was a very real symbol for us
that we could not afford to butter our toast. Alas,
we have had our first taste. Girl tropico ::
girls topic, entropic.
But the girlies are so myopic. Aha, soon!
White cloth on the midnite table.
No sound save the ticking of knives.
TIGER-GOLD EDITION *
simmer the hype
laser-cut acrylic
68" x 68"
koka peepshow
(c) the artist
a black leather
sofa below this speed-hype
circa '92 :: present actor
onsite, Jesse Kola
vehicle
safari fast forward decade
nouveau leitmotiv
aha, continue straddling position(s)
proposition circa :: neon mini
desire to lie
affixed like a czech
modeling-school dropout, dopeout
soundtrack: Italia-Disco
'it's hard to be a man when there's a gun in your hand'
would lie
w/ a snow leopard
on Eastern European Beaches
vixen skin
'I was feeling sensative to the issue,
I was this valentine'
eating glass candy
airing our Persian rugs
thrustxperviousxthrust
avail. 01x29-03x26x2005
*by Jason Irwin
some thoughts on poverty, pornography, and promises
* In a "Letter from One Poet to Another" dated 5 January, 1811, Heinrich von Kleist wrote that what the poet would most of all like to be able to do would be to convey thoughts by themselves without words.
WE LOVE THE RABBIT'S CATCH
Any song sung costly. Those harems masking
the culture of north North America? We love the rabbit's catch
when it foolishly slips the gamut.
I thought of miner's flesh
and flickering screens, the sounds muted, the whole time ~ technicolor.
IN THE BACK OF A CAR, 2003
for Amy Pleasant
soundtrack/thistle (how 'bout it)
wego wego
For every scar : what one is seeking
One supports the view the view- chromes
sea enemies/
whisking
In a period :: In disproving, probing
the idea that
defining concentrating working & that,
bonding together bound apparent the
auxiliary body smoothed blanketed with & that,
contort missing bound and given (from "Unknown (1)")
It is 10:15 of a Tuesday. My face
is breaking out in bleu. It's cramped
here. What one is seeking. Are finding.
Turtle wax in nite lots, scents. What it
she, having handed kismet
a fin like all at once
the segue from acute loneliness
will dislodge and scamper over
into the ____ compartment.
Between stones and dirt
what are we trying to make possible.?
PRISON GRINDER
The sleeper cells were some luxury. I caribou you.
We began tragedy with comedy. We began avocation.
A pigeon for a pigeon. My silence.
I think it was we who descended a staircase,
were rejected, directly. We confiding in we,
outlining moving picture stills. We on the corner of where.
It was all we for a couple years before it was you
and me. Now where is that now? With us we hadn't
seen I though I thought I was where. I was there.
I was thinking about I making a book called you.
The binding stitched with the lining of your halter.
A few meters into it I broke the ruler. Then you
broke through. I screamed gosh. Where had we
gotten ourselves then hear me? Gotten some signs
back of those years before the other you who'd
never met I. I'm trying to disguise we for its
corrosive effects of passion. I'm a soldier
in soldier garb who wakes up your lover to ask
favors of us. I think it was I past who was scheming
without knowing it. You broke into my anatomy,
jailbird we. I busted you out and threw open the overcoat.
We slept in cast iron sheets 'cause the down was privy.
Us was nothing and isn't though the coasters
were missing. No that's not how remembering is.
We thinks there was some dark alcove
or forgetting brush in the sidewalk. You thinks
I saw we in the glare of the reflection in the window
of the coffee shop. I did my bills there. I smelled
your cheeks from Boulevard. I was in the cemetary.
After you, after me. Your hair was the measurement
of distrust. The Gods seduced we and them was
there to bear witness to our startling disclosure.
I put my plain clothes back on for the holidays.
We did it electronically. Us put my machines
back together. We operated out of the recesses
of confession. We were a box of white rose petals
I imagined leaving on your doorstep before I
bought the Zenith tranistor to replace your interests.
Us was the tuner. They turned me on. I banded
with your exclamation. The speakers smiled so hard
they busted. I repaired over winter break. When
I want my stranger back got back to work
we were where? Still hoping. I can tell you everything
about we in one glass when I run into us and Le tre eta.
We'll be comingling on the side of the road
with our collars turned fur coasts with them around.
PINK AND BLUE BLANKETS, PINK LIGHT THEATRE
for Heather Brinkman
The Ronettes made sense then I'll have a cappucinno
for once but no more
fountains
and no more
rains the stores here are no good for us.
I thought sometime we'd be splicing
pool cues on the eve of some terrible flight.
Fights
ranged.
Flights more, no. Are getting on in your years,
you.
I know they will never build a foot-
bridge to knowledge it would be much too
easy, anxiousness makes sense only for the
hopeless. You think H.D. was right
about stuff. I think so too.
Is an extension of yr fingertips.
It's possible to forget you are living
w/ scoundrels, & that you should, but everybody
laughs at perfection. Maybe the cows are
perfect and you are glass blades
slicing me up for being the pretty animals
in motelrooms in noir movies. Thank you fr giving
me Jean-Pierre Melville & Debussy I will give you
more contemporary filigree when someone
invents what they mean.
He was right "we have thrown away the most
powerful of all things in literature" we have sensed power
a testament to uncertain capacity. It was something
hanging around Black Mountain some fifty yrs after the death of.
The night is calmly closing its gate while you rebuild
the coliseum that last vestige of permanent escape from which
no lite will save life. Will not the twenties get us modern.
WITHHELD POSTSCRIPT
for Jennifer Moxley
I'd die for this as surely as I live for it
knowing now you have to bear the poor quips
to know you don't like them I'll be your Russian
subversive I'll be your future enemy cost
wonting I will go into the auctionhouse and emerge
a hunger artist I will go into your bed and
come out the sheets all white sheik of southern coasts
I will go up far north to make eight millimeter
movies with barnum & bailey soundtracks fiesta
in faded Levi's I am the edge of the sea I am
the brink of the desert the prickly cactus and
your song for Keats letters light in air reflect the faces
of New England kites the foliage wrecked in the cleft
of little breathing machines I am the plastics
you influenced to adulthood
EVEN IN THE SCINTILLANT METRO
to proceed with the ego-damaging case
one g. county sherrif with blood-pasted schnoz
like a possum's crushed entrail, breezing witness
scoffs grand jury refusal of videotaped evidence
scene reports concocted delivery in front
of indictment, pivot, i swivel toward accountability
as in the same, arts broadening, narrow focus
we were raising the bar (stool), we were
clubby and meant it, scattle distant alarms
brought nearer to judiciary claims, ends minus,
god weeps the hawk, tasers' rapid fire even
in the scintillant metro
VOLTA
silence coming on like stray dogs
lithonia not paying its insurance bill
slaughtering continues in darfur, thoughts
of a young horror, from the emboldened
cutaway— verse on days, i had become
unemotional, brambered bodies on a futon
the poor are still here, they are amongst
us, i wanted non-impatience, forms
combing back, i had become tangled
bodies on a beautiful couch, in the picture
described is an orange comfortor sweat-
laden sheets in the picture arching
FEMININE EMBARRASSMENT
Kisses were invented to translate these
nothings into wounds. -Durrell, Mountolive(1959)
Hello air. Fog face. Face of a wishing flower ground down
by Florsheims. In summer I cram my poems
in the green suitcase, shred them at Oakland Cemetary
and take a banana bike back to Moreland.
I take you aside in a crowded bar. "Monitor to monitor," I say.
What a tenuous prospect. Petty abstractions & non-
figuration. "...'Any broken phrase in plaster/ will do in these
postmodern times, you asshole.'" But that was
c. eighties. And J. Hughes was riding around in his convertible
choking on suburban vomit spiced with a clown's
wisdom. The diamonds have all crumbled back into dust
Le tre eta. We will not face-off in the street to
paint a faded portrait of accountability soured. If I were
ever to touch a glass of shiraz again I would eat the goblet
of succulent dire. If I sit with the swans I will feed them black
rum and glass for glass annihilate your paroxysm yellow—
animus vertere.