Two More "Regular" BEAMs

The BEAM series is continuing to grow & develop. I've been on hiatus from it for a few days. It could easily become formulaic. Nevertheless, I have a few new ones that I think are worth posting. This first one is called "Cafe":

napkin-neat cafe decomposition

poster-plastered walls represent fresh being
repetitious modes of sensual self-sacrifice

not recoverable by any stub-cottony means
lightning track-lighting long-swallow lit-smoke

my grey-guts spattered on a table

unstructured strength it could be, cherry-red cowardice
parallel shadows unplaced by any given

finally flight is taken from time's impossibility
for solid substance, death's lettuce-deluge

self-maiming can't be where this winds up

This second BEAM is equal parts Berrigan & Thom Yorke. I composed it sitting in Gleaner's Cafe in South Philly, watching an all-too-familiar situation develop. "I" here isn't me. It's everyone who's ever been simultaneously thwarted & despised by a desired love-object. "You're so fucking special.." as the song goes. Can you imagine Ted Berrigan fronting Radiohead? Anyhow, the poem is called "Creep":

your fingered rosary has no red
your clutch-clasped hands no gravitas

I'm inclined to play creep w/ a bagel

off-white dough gets kneaded
black-shirted blue-jeaned green-horns

indented floors absorb sponge-light
looks for line-riches, coffee-crucial cafes

leg strokes render you from his palm
in paisley like an Oregon farmer

ploughs couldn't be more shared
as you leave me, hardly, knock-kneed

So, there we are. I have a bunch more, but it'll take some time to determine which of 'em are worthwhile & which ones belong on the dung-heap. Stay tuned-- my next post will be a radical reevaluation of Jennifer Moxley, pursuant to a trip through her gorgeous "Imagination Verses". Peace.