Gregory Severance

This is my nephew's band and I highly recommend checking them out at one of these shows.

Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow by Michael Musto

My comment to Daily Musto at villagevoice.com:

whereby
slowly spiraling
tangle zoological intentions

rushed
speech passive
universe pressed across

ledger
of principled
melodies hushed tickle

appearance
orchestrations of
dag-blasted nameless opacity

14 June 2008

folks
wrap frailties
round yonder oaks

yelping
their cares
cut with rhythmic

ignorance
methinks quite
distinct oblivions enjambed

fumbling
hands trace
routes modify fear

20 April 2008

town
drank the
dew glimmering fattened

legend
silent earth-lit
heart wrapped souvenir

read
across receding
absence perched there

breaking
into gritty
elsewheres of shadow

2 February 2008

which
might veer
toward a thousand

short
afternoons clenched
in examples evidently

wholesome
figures saying
two names wavering

contradictions
naturally sleep
reels peter out

13 October 2007

clung
to riversides
long-lost overburst afternoons

strange
when written
from timidity stuttering

whereas
reverse that
vast presence simply

shall
these edges
even and absurd

- 28 October 2007

Post card poem sent to Jason Thime.

Rock and Reel

cordage of history
blackboard reciprocity yo-ho-ho

reflected through meshes
toward figure spoken

of infinitely clenched
notions wavering contradictions

distance really wholesomeness
purring heart reels

13 October 2007
New York City

A post card poem sent to Dan Barth while I was on vacation in Cape Cod during the first week of September 2007.

---------------

children
lost shapes
inhalations heavy mind

phrases
tremble sublime
flicker transparent veil

voyage
scatters sunshine
frisking with time

beyond
averted unreal
broken land relics

-----------------

I gave a title to the poem but I must have written it directly on the post card because I don't see it in the notebook where I wrote the draft.

IS IT IN HIS FACE?

time
is there
in closure's kiss

clearly
nothing like
the is baby

devoted
multitudes enunciate
prayers of escape

philosopher
harvests tears
tenderness and awe

On Saturday there were many Sacred Lotus seed heads at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on the Lily Pool Terrace and one plant in bloom.

Sunday's postcard poem. The picture on the card is a Berenice Abbott photograph of a NYC streetscape at Cliff and Ferry Streets in lower Manhattan dated 1935.

AS FAR AS PHOTOSYNTHESIS

such artificial variegations
dream as if
logic stillborn and

whatsoever recognition obtained
only fitfully dreams
yes everywhere sky

again geometries of
jostling constants in
bee-space call ehs-ehs

engaged elsewhere as
pollinators yelp awkwardly
bababa ascertain meaning

TAKE ME FOR A RIDE-RIDE

but a cup
of thick coffee
yet spoke for

then mainline transport
screens vexed instants
coiling sweaty instances

until slack-jawed gestures
draw collectors of
inexhaustible exercise-books in

perhaps prematurely dulled
and echoing slip
phased cries of

go ing hom e

fe mi fe mi fe mi
fe la fe la fe la
fe mi fe la fe la
fe mi fe mi fe la
fe mi fe mi fe mi
fe la fe la fe mi
fe la fe mi fe mi
fe mi fe mi fe mi
fe la fe la fe la
ku ti ku ti ku ti
ku ti ku ti ku ti
ku ti ku ti ku ti
ku ti ku ti ku ti
ku ti ku ti ku ti
ku ti ku ti ku ti
ku ti ku ti ku ti

viewing
only that
pointedly carefully-ticked-off rhythm

although avoid unravel
scrupulously toward
the

style
but I
can't vadoo vey

hey
DC-7 explosion
imagined war memoirs

back home
laying in bed
never able
to remember
the correct form la ying lie ing lyi ng

experimentalist are you experimentalist
have you ever been experimented?
conduct of life succumbing to

so cial just ice moo vement

two people sleep in a car in front of Mojo cafe
elementary misunderstanding
the seats are reclined back in the sedan

ba ck ho me

the undiff erentiated day in a fam iliar place
seem ingly familiar tho se rows of bu shes are much
that old map of Lo ngIsland still hangs on that
at the bot tom of the stairs anchoring our lives
deep sea fis hing he
re

a steady May bre eze out of the west keep ing summer
my over worn den im jacket and my shoes are over
I boug ht an orange cap in Mexico City airport as a
never gave it and now have appro priated it for myse
lf

sat on the be ach in two different spots
wea ring fu ll black New York Ci ty reg alia
did n't have ti me to pack Mon tauk clothes she sa
ys

Sitting on the uptown 1 train this morning reading Subterranean Kerouac by Ellis Amburn. At the 34th Street station a woman in business attire, around age 60, boards the train and sits next to me. I notice in my peripheral vision that she's making an effort to read the title of the book I'm reading. As we approach the 42nd Street/Times Square station she asks, "Reading Kerouac?". I say, "His biography. One of the biographies." As she gets up she makes eye contact and says, "Long live Neal," smiling broadly. She exits on the other side of the car, grinning and looking back at me with bright eyes, disappearing into the holy chaos of the platform.

Sunday June 4, 2006, 1:30 P.M. New York City

Runner huffing and puffing sounds like a female. How is that? Must be the pitch. Sitting on bench. . .Hudson River Park. . .layers and layers of clouds many many shades of white blue gray light pleasant northwest breeze.

We (M., C. and I) saw Clyde's and Renee's artwork yesterday in the basement gallery on East 10th Street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A. Clyde's wonderful layers and Renee's delightfully emotional figures and interesting daily drawing practice.

I have with me here the paperback edition of The Complete Poems of Hart Crane edited by Waldo Frank (1958) that I bought used at the NY Public Library a couple of weeks ago, it has that old book musty smell that I love.

All of a sudden the sun burst through the layers of clouds high above my head for a brief intense moment and now modulating in intensity as registering on the paper of this page.

Time to depart this bench with the images of H.C.'s "Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge" to take the clothes from the washer and put them in the dryer.

Whirl the hedges
Harrumphed a big supper
Yass helpless red dusk
Superhighway old timers
Mindful insisted a used car
Void upside down
The shadow sadness
Taking pictures unnoticed
Well-ordered sidewalks
Actual night forms

-------------------------
Starbucks cafe on Broadway and 51st Street with the music volume turned up louder than usual. When I first arrived, Frank Sinatra singing. Office workers and tourists . . . young couple at the counter along the window looking at maps and guidebooks . . . speaking a European language other than English.

PomPom Press

Issue #6 of POM² is now available and they've been kind enough to include a work by me. Please order a copy of this unique and interesting publication from their web site (link above).

"POM² publishes poems that directly engage or respond to work published in previous issues, with the aim of making the magazine's contents the 'property of many.'"