Unshod Quills

On the theme of Secret Life

Oh Lie, I Thought You Were Golden: Courting Neko Case

I: We’re Spinning and I Can’t Stop Looking At Your Eyes

Neko, we’re two halves of a tornado.
We grab each other’s braids like twin sisters
and tug the pretty off our shoulders. Go,
in circles. No one survives this twister.

As soon as we flip the first car over,
the whole town scatters. They’re praying for us
to fall apart. Let them have no quarter.
Let them scream for days in an upturned bus.

If you let go, we’re done for. Don’t let go.
Death’s the only thing you can get for free.
Is your scalp bloody? Mine too. Don’t let go.
Wrap your hands in hair and say victory.

We need each other. I’m stuck. I’m bleeding,
spinning around in a dance you’re leading.

II: . . . and the Crowd Ran Away Covered In Feathers and Feedback

Spinning around in a dance you’re leading,
I’ve become dependent on vertigo,
every breath as heavy breathing,
and every black as the wings of crows.

Make me a fist with your dominant hand
and press your knuckles to my head like knives.
It straightens my sight and starts up the band:
it’s me and what birds that we left alive.

There’s just one chord, but it rings forever.
You’re the only one who can stand it here,
watching dueling feedbacks choke each other.
There isn’t a room that our songs can’t clear.

Nobody’s leaving ‘til ev’ry amp blows.
The band is drunk and you’re ready to go.

III: A Haymaker Away From the End of the World

The band is drunk and you’re ready to go.
We leave. It smells like hominy outside.
We’re sixteen again. Two tramps in the snow,
falling down and rolling when we collide.

It was play, but now you’re punching me hard.
I catch you in the chest with my right fist.
For just a second, I let down my guard,
hear the blood from my nose hit snow and hiss.

I bet civilizations went extinct
when something that does, suddenly doesn’t.
Let’s go back and look. Don’t bother to think.
Watch them trot out their dead by the dozen.

We stand up and turn around. You’re leading,
to a party with some songs worth heeding.

IV: We Always End Up Staying At Home Arguing Over Things We Did In Dreams

To: A party. With: Some songs worth heeding
shoved into our pockets like restless hands.
That’s the invitation we’re repeating
to each other, like we don’t understand.

It’s not like there’s anywhere worth going.
(The graffiti at Gabe’s Oasis? Gone.)
It’s not like there’s anyone worth knowing.
(They don’t dream: they just pass out on your lawn.)

Look. Once, I dreamt that we were in a flood.
You were an attractive librarian
and I was drowning. You mentioned your blood
before you let me go under again.

I’m almost sure you did it for the rush.
You think your blood is much too dangerous.

V: When You Try To Scare Me I Just Say “Ooh la la”

You think your blood is much too dangerous?
I’ve got a heart-attack in my pocket,
veins that pump nothing but bruises and rust:
they say my eyes must be in your sockets.

You could sing through the Acuff-Rose songbook
and not find a tune that scares me enough
to look away when you unhook
your bra and toss it off into the dust.

There’s only a bit of sex in this crown.
Here: the bathroom light makes you monochrome,
out of the shower and looking around
with a towel hanging off your hip-bone.

Your blood tints you pink and then disappears,
but it’s only red and white, salt and fear.

VI: Those Fuckers at IHOP Could Have Just Put Me In a Booth

But it’s only red and white, salt and fear.
Don’t worry, it’s just a nifty last line,
It’s nothing obsessive, nothing severe.
Shit, I was just trying to make a rhyme.

None of this is actually about you.
Every one of these is about me
and how clever I must be to construe
an empty bed into some poetry.

You ever go into a restaurant,
watch them take away all the silverware
except the one for you, like they forgot?
Table for seven, down to half a pair?

So I lied. I want you. I’m weak and flushed.
This home we never had was made for us.

VII: Barreling Down the Boulevard, Lookin’ For the Heart of Saturday Night

This home we never had was made for us:
a place in downtown Minneapolis
where the marquees run thicker than forests.
Their lights kiss the snow and whisper Miss’s.

We get all dressed up and then stay inside,
dance in the living room where we belong,
hitch-step and laugh about hookers and brides,
to prove Tom Waits right and our mothers wrong.

Scratch that. Instead, a farm in Wisconsin.
You still have those two broken pianos?
Put them in the pasture, out in the wind,
and let the rain pluck their strings when it blows.

Oh, the pianos have been drinking, dear.
Shake your shadow sober and bring it here.

VIII: Women With High-Powered Weapons In Your Precious American Underground

Shake your shadow sober and bring it here.
Darken my table with blackness and sweat.
Slur something sordid into my ear
like a baroness with a clarinet.

That melody sounds a bit unsteady,
like the one in that song by your friend Dan,
where everything good is dead already,
walking through rubies like they’re grains of sand.

And we’ve all seen how you brandish a sword:
one handed, calves flexed, your bent little toe
up in an arc I know I’ve seen before.
It’s the greeting of persuasion. Hello.

You say it backwards before you exhale.
For all our turning we can’t catch our tails.

IX: A 1970 Wolf on a 1968 Cougar

For all our turning we can’t catch our tails.
Wolves can be like that when they mate for life,
tracking each other, looking for details:
the scent of your fur, some blood on a knife.

From your hairline to the tip of your nose,
there’s a lupine slope that lowers your eyes
and lines them both up like X’s and O’s:
degrees enough for a hundred Julys.

You’re the only one who’s a wolf, let’s say.
So, I’m a poacher. You have no season,
and you leave my crosshairs in disarray
when instead of teeth you give me reason.

Someday I’ll shoot you and muzzle your snout.
If I could, I’d heat up your bones and shout.

X: Weighing Skin and Silence By the Pound

If I could, I’d heat up your bones and shout
at this winter that buried us in white,
snowed us in with our devotion and doubt,
an urge to purse our lips and kiss the night.

That voice of yours is bigger than us both,
and it moves for miles in this weather.
It migrates like a parrot when it goes:
primary colors, primary feathers.

Everyone’s flesh looks warmer than mine.
Especially yours, fair but thick, stretched taut
across your chest and guts, your skull and spine,
your breath and your blood and your blues: hot.

Let me crawl in your body and inhale.
I bet you’re warmer than fresh death for sale.

XI: Murder Ballad

I bet you’re warmer than fresh death for sale.
Catwalks and railcars and kerosene dreams,
all heating you up and draining you pale.
Head under water, those bubbles are screams.

Dredging up time from deep in the soil:
Letters. A lantern. An old bassinet.
Grandmother’s kettle, brought to a boil.
Head under water, your throat’s getting wet.

I need to know: when you opened the door,
could you feel the water calling your name?
Now you’re learning what an undertow’s for:
a home no one sees for broken old waves.

Head under water, you squirm like a trout.
This isn’t anything to sing about.

XII: Budokan (Sort Of)

This isn’t anything to sing about,
but I wouldn’t stop you if you started.
Look at the things we’ve learned to live without.
We’re endless. We’re the nearly departed.

Your voice is cinnamon and estrogen,
just a bit too powerful to be sweet,
but that can be charming to certain men.
Open up. Let’s compare our crooked teeth.

Start me up a fire and a scandal.
Come on now, Virginian, sing me a tune.
Some Cheap Trick into your hairbrush handle:
Oh southern girls, you got nothin’ to lose.

Feverish and hungry and mostly good,
I heard love ate a man right where he stood.

XIII: Letter From a Sycophant

I heard love ate a man right where he stood,
so only get as close as the distance
of a drum: Crack. Boom. Snare heads stopping wood.
Over and over ‘til you get the hint.

Here’s one: I’ve got a weakness for redheads.
Waitresses. Bass players. Women of risk.
Pull me apart and examine my threads.
Spindles with miles of lives that I missed.

I know some weird things happened here, somewhat:
we ruined a town, you killed me in a dream,
I put you in a watery grave. But,
still, solitude, and not you, is my theme.

Okay. One more, now that I’m understood.
I’m terrified. Are you terrified? Good.

XIV: Bangladesh

I’m terrified. Are you terrified? Good.
We’re the last two tigers in the circus.
Our fur is gilded like sun-withered wood
and we’re too old for anything but trust.

We spend the whole day pacing our cages,
with a feral feeling spinning on top.
We need to act our size and not our ages
if we want the spinning to never stop.

Tonight’s the night. Let’s darken our white chests
with their insides. With their souls. Run ‘til dawn
and then nuzzle back up in nature’s breast.
Sink all your claws into her and hold on.

Never, never let go. Never let go.
Neko, we’re two halves of a tornado.

XV: As Necessary As the Jaws of Powerful Animals

Neko, we’re two halves of a tornado
spinning around in a dance you’re leading.
The band is drunk and you’re ready to go
to a party with some songs worth heeding.

You think your blood is much too dangerous,
but it’s only red and white, salt and fear.
This home we never had was made for us.
Shake your shadow sober and bring it here.

For all our turning we can’t catch our tails.
If I could, I’d heat up your bones and shout:
I bet you’re warmer than fresh death for sale.
This isn’t anything to sing about.

I heard love ate a man right where he stood.
I’m terrified. Are you terrified? Good.

Author Biography:

Ryan Werner is a janitor in the Midwest. He plays guitar and does vocals in the sleaze rock band Legal Fingers and runs the music/literature project Our Band Could Be Your Lit.

A sonnet on the theme of America and a translation of Rilke on the theme of “Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond.”

Eclogue

I heard a soldier on NPR speak
of an Afghan widow who, in a field
of blooming poppies, stooped low in the mud;
she’d been at her work for hours: “Crazy,”
he thought, watching the white dress go blood red
with flower stains of decollated bulbs
with a curious amount of leisure.

As in a gallery patron’s treasure
hunt, where each find is found, say, like the daubs
of Hofmann’s blasted and fragmented bed
of sanguinary chunks, lit by hazy
afternoon, she’d toss with a horrible thud—
he realized only later—the gross yield
of a land mine, which made the basket leak.

The Death of the Poet

There he lay. His pale face, propped up, then fell
to balk at the steepness of the pillow
as the world and what of it one can know
were being ripped from his senses ever so,
relapsing through a year of listless hell.

Those who saw him then did not know the grace
with which he was at one with all of this—
these thises: This depth, this meadow, and this
water that was being put upon his face.

On his face, there came indeed a vast tide
wanting him and looking for him with care;
his mask is, with the fear no longer there,
as tender and open as the inside
of a fruit spoiling in the outside air.

Sonnet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Mark Olival-Bartley

Der Tod des Dichters

Er lag. Sein aufgestelltes Antlitz war
bleich und verweigernd in den steilen Kissen,
seitdem die Welt und dieses von-ihr-Wissen,
von seinen Sinnen abgerissen,
zurückfiel an das teilnahmslose Jahr.

Die, so ihn leben sahen, wußten nicht,
wie sehr er Eines war mit allem diesen;
denn Dieses: diese Tiefen, diese Wiesen
und diese Wasser waren sein Gesicht.

O sein Gesicht war diese ganze Weite,
die jetzt noch zu ihm will und um ihn wirbt;
und seine Maske, die nun bang verstirbt,
ist zart und offen wie die Innenseite
von einer Frucht, die an der Luft verdirbt.

Rainer Maria Rilke
1875-1926

Author Biography

A concatenation of  sonnets from Jamie Iredell

-on the theme of sonnets

Easter Sonnet

This Easter Sunday God delivered eggs
And coffee, magazines depicting tramps,
And my hangover from killing the keg
Of Pabst, which kept us dancing to the amps
All night. The bands: no good, really. Bad lamps
Casting dull light in the cigarette smoke
And skirts sequined like nuclear cherries.
My love, upon her laptop, can provoke
Unchristian desires in men. Men who poke
The fabric of time and space that ferries
Them from chatroom to chatroom searching love
Out the way one buys a Mercedes. She proves,
Even to me—a Spenserian—Christ,
a resurrected teenage feeling: a clenched fist.

JI

Buying Bread

I wonder, should we go ahead and buy
the white, I said. She said, with you always
it’s white, never wheat, sourdough, boiled nor fried
loaves. You won’t change, and I’m the one who pays.
Not now, I said. This discussion again?
How can you go on living with yourself,
she said, not changing your life when you can?
It’s fucking bread, I said; choose from the shelf.
But it’s not just the bread, Jamie, she said.
I’m changing. We’ve grown apart. I’m sorry.
You want sourdough, I said; it’s in your head.
‘Cause I’ll get sourdough if—now stop crying.
She said, sometimes I wish you’d understand.
I said, always you wish I’d understand.

JI

Unbearable Affliction Materializing

I’ve traveled across deserts and tumbling
mountains, down through old forests, scolded dark
green with shadows. I lost one while grumbling
over a hundred bucks to rent a car.
And now that she’s away in a west far
from the three months it took to leave the cold
grip of my dependence, my feet falling
have found this cave in which to write this bold
appeal to you, my audience, my old,
old friends. Do I still wish to taste myself
in her hair? She was one who broke the sole
from still-good loafers. She wanted to help
me keep my feet from running off. And, scared,
I ask you now, are we ever prepared?

JI

Elegy For My Empty Beer

Together we beget the world from tabs
Left soaking in monkey spit on hardwood
Scorched black by leftover cherries from fags
And wrinkled with coasters crusted with food.
I love that we revolve the lights the way
A circus passes by, only distinct
In memory—as corndogs, apple pie—
That prices drop each drink we meet the brink.
But you are bad. Each sip you disappear.
Your love fulfills me as you drain away
And you are not you, nor me, but we are
Commingled in the blood where you won’t stay.
Yet you’re still here awhile carousing me,
My mug refilled, lips poised, ready to meet.

JI

Author Biography

Jamie Iredell wrote Prose. Poems. a Novel., and The Book of Freaks. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Gigantic,Opium, and Avery. He was included in Dzanc Books’ list of “20 Writers to Watch.” He lives in Atlanta.

Samples of the work of Spanish poet and artist
Yolanda Mora

Yolanda Mora on Lipstick

Notes on Sonnets

I can roleplay a sonnet with syllables
That fit in boxes, mujer acurrucada en una caja,
Highjacking me, kidnapping me –
Too many mirrors make beautiful green egg-face,
And green is for hope,
The size is important, the syllables, and numbers, numbers.
I hide myself inside onion peels blankets,
May Day is your day.
I studied Spanish sonnets with their own rules, I think, I think.
I remember
Shakespeare, translated, so no rhymes or sounds or.
Everything.
Missed.
So
I try to make a sonnet out of this school storage:
First, I’ll read Shakespeare and count, count
the boxes, the pace, rhymes and all.
Fit into it, fit, fit, like Tori Amos did
when best seller was punk rock´n´roll.
So
my lover came by with blood roses
Or
the blood rose was mine, I am mean,
I am mean.
A hypocrite, unbalanced young lady
of a Shakespearean age of gold.
I fit in my bed, rough orange peel my sheets
and blankets: I sleep all day and
in the night you are all bright sun.
Art is a mirror, a Francesca Woodman photograph
so
you see your own faces, your sonnets; out of this,
a transformation like a fairy tale
and delightful to watch others’ horror.

YM

The Box

-on sonnets

I can role play a sonnet under the sheets,
Green egg-faced woman to be in boxes –
May Day is your day, like orange peels.
I hide inside these blankets, woman, missed,
Can’t deny the syllables, hopeless.
So, a Francesca Woodman photograph,
Art is a mirror and I am mean,
I scared people with my pace, my face
Best-seller rock´n´roll, as Tori did;
you can´t fit into this box, like a lover.
Trespassing , spazzing, god I am fat,
Fancioulla, green mirror for hope, my base,
If you all see your image, my Art’s hoses –
I fail all the time, like a falling star.

Yolanda Mora on Lipstick

Author Biography

Four paintings on the theme of sonnets from acclaimed painter Peter Halasz.

Please click once on each image, and then again, to view in full size.

"In the Dim," Oil on Linen, 72x36, Peter Halasz 2009 - on the theme of sonnets

Artist Biography

Autodidact painter Peter Halasz was born in San Diego, California, in 1974. His paintings of primeval and numinous landscapes, haunted portraits and figures amidst ghostly vistas have been shown in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, and in Turin, Italy. He is currently an artist in residence at the former De Graaf flower farm  in Sandy, Oregon, and is occupied with painting the foggy morn… more on Peter at www.peterhalasz.com

Six Poems by David  Curtis

Ambiguity of numbered events

– On When We Two Parted

It was never two
it was three and/or more
three rotate two, shift
three rotate, two

before that the left over numbers
the dead carried
propped up on shelves
and in card board shoe box

the big D

then yes, then no
repeats five times
now break
30 days of sulking
silence
maybe one more unopened letter

DSC

adapted from Peter S Lucking

–  On Lipstick

Background
prevalent among the Sumerians, Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks.
Later, Elizabeth I with red mercuric sulfide.
For years, rouge
only promiscuous women
true societal acceptance
By 1915 push up tubes were available, and the first claims of “indelibility” were made.

Raw Materials
wax, oil, alcohol, and pigment.
beeswax, candelilla wax, or the more expensive camauba. Wax enables the mixture to be formed into the easily recognized shape of the cosmetic. Fragrance and pigment are also added, as are preservatives and antioxidants, which prevent lipstick from becoming rancid.

DSC

none of this looks

– on Transportation

clean shiny version
inhabits invisible places
wears filthy socks
walks anonymous

dead and dying
take me
to racist old folks Denny’s

for a Grand Slam bees wax
Florida all the sudden

DSC

that place seems better than this place

– on Mirror

same people arguing
justifying their habits

my life stopped at such and such date
whatever this is it isn’t life
eventually I hope to have a life

maybe I will take yours

DSC

To indifference then

– (a toast to Sonnets)

to fear of losing
to mock interest
to violating policy

to religious indoctrination
and Nation in general

to the giving up one vice for two others

to missing the boat(s)
to throwing lines

DSC

third name (getting closer in shape)

– on Sonnet

Decisions at early ages
Volunteering ‘else to remain
Anonymous  brown masses of
Angels. I won’t say thank you or
Lift mock trials nor will I pretend
To know if “no” in 2007
Matters when compared to the quest-
ions of 2011
I’ll occupy my time until
The appointed hours whether they
Come or not I’ll follow you ’round
(Place holder line)
( )
( )

DSC

Author Biography

David Scott Curtis, born 21 August 1964, is from Las Vegas, Nevada. He practices architectural design while being a father. Sometimes he writes. David is a member of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective.

A Sampling of Literary Collage From Portland Writer Kevin Sampsell

– excerpts from a larger project

Kevin Sampsell on transportation

Kevin Sampsell on "When We Two Parted"

Kevin Sampsell on sonnets

Kevin Sampsell on mirrors

Kevin Sampsell on beasts

Author Biography

Michigan musician and writer Joe Secreast on the theme of sonnets.

toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat

how about a little boat of riddles
sailing on a sea four inches wide
stuck fast on a mud spit in the middle
waiting on a moonless sort of tide

how about a meteor from outer
space makes its way into the sky
carves a name converting any doubter
into a man stands just a half inch high

how about a stained blue book of puzzles
waterlogged and dried a thousand days
the pages salty weep and softly rustle
at any slight touch crumble away

sit down my boy and gently take the wheel
and steer it any fucking way you feel

Author Biography

Joe Secreast is a musician and writer from Marquette, Michigan. He likes motorcycles and extended bouts of heavy drinking, interspersed with the (very) occasional moment of clarity.

Joe Secreast on the topic of sonnets.

toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat

how about a little boat of riddles
sailing on a sea four inches wide
stuck fast on a mud spit in the middle
waiting on a moonless sort of tide

how about a meteor from outer
space makes its way into the sky
carves a name converting any doubter
into a man stands just a half inch high

how about a stained blue book of puzzles
waterlogged and dried a thousand days
the pages salty weep and softly rustle
at any slightest touch crumble away

sit down my boy and gently take the wheel
and steer it any fucking way you feel

Author Biography

Joe Secreast is a musician and writer from Marquette, Michigan.  He likes motorcycles and extended bouts of heavy drinking, interspersed with the (very) occasional moment of clarity.

The video art, music, direction and lyrics of  Portland artist Posie Currin.

On Transportation – “Looking Out.” 

Tunnel vision – from Currin’s Hand Cave series, a cave of a hand is fixed over the lens, and the viewer is brought along on a brightly lit trip along roads and highways unlike any others. A journey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s322T93EZLk&feature=related

On Beasts – “Walking Moon”

An exploration of the archetypal. Future fraction. Woman as god type, and  in the afterlife, traversing a landscape – umbrella, cape, cloak; all tools brought from the mortal world and put to brilliant new uses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGXhcHnB8Rc&feature=related

On Sonnets – “Four Signature Movements”

A piece centered on working with Gurdjieff dance  movement, the Afghan dance  lends itself to the introspection of being covered and moving in ancient forms without the luxury of familiarity of environment. Made with Portland artist Rebecca Steele.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-E7OLyM1-Q&feature=related

Artist Biography

Posie Currin is a Portland based artist who received her MFA at Portland State. Her work includes film, sound, photography, installation and social sculpture. Currin’s methodology in her current work takes liberties with chance and embarks on a kind of journey that has the potential to create new perspectives and understandings both mentally, physically and physiologically.  In her current work, Currin is investigating and questioning the balance and tension of things in and of themselves using dance, video and sculpture. www.posiecurrin.com