Doom Done Slang

Already woke, spare the joke, barely spoke, rarely smoke
Stared at folks when properly provoked, mirror broke
Here, share strawberry morinin, 
Gone and more important spawnin'
Torn in, poor men sworn in
Cornish hens switchin positions, auditionin' mortitions
Saw it in a vision, ignorin prison
Ignoramuses enlist and sound dumb
Found em drowned in cows dung, crowns flung
Rings a tinkerbell, sing for things that's frail as a fingernail
Bring a scale, stale ginger lingers
Seven figures invigor
Nigga, fresh from out the jail, alpha male
Sickest ninja injury this century, enter plea
Lend sympathy to limper simple simon rhymin emcees
Trees is free, please leave a key
These meager fleas, he's the breeze
And she's the bees knees for sheez
G's of Gs seize property, shopping sprees
chop the cheese drop degrees to stop diseases gee wiz pa!
DOOM rock grammer like the Kumbaya
Mama was a ho hoppa, papa was a rollingstone
Star like Obama, pull a card like oh drama!
Civil liberties
These little titties abilities riddle me, middle C
Give a MC a rectal hysterectomy
lecture on removal of the bowels, foul technically
Don't expect to see the recipe
Until we receive the check as well as the collection fee
More wreck than section Z
What you expect to get for free?
Shit from me, history
The key, plucked it off mayor
Chucked it in the ol tar pit off La Brea, playa
They say he's gone too far
DOOM'll catch em after Jumar on cue lacka!!
Do what'cha gotta do, grarrrr the rumors are not true, gotchu ma
No prob, got the job, hot barred heart throb
Scotch Guard the bar the with cotton swabs, dart lob
Bake a cake, sweet
Jamaica trade in treats on the beach make her skeet til her feets meet

Rap: "That's That" by Doom, from his album, "Born Like This" 2009 

On Pelicans, and Life in General

"His [Charles] statement to himself should have been, 'I possess this now, therefore I am happy,' instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, and therefore am sad.'"
-John Fowles, from "The French Lieutenant's Woman"

Drunk with pines and long kisses,
like summer I steer the fast sail of the roses,
bent towards the death of the thin day,
stuck into my solid marine madness.

Pale and lashed to my ravenous water,
I cruise in the sour smell of the naked climate,
still dressed in gray and bitter sounds
and a sad crest of abandoned spray.

Hardened by passions, I go mounted on my one wave,
lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once,
becalmed in the throat of the fortunate isles
that are white and sweet as cool hips.

In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles
charged to insanity with electric currents,
heroically divided into dreams
and intoxicating roses practicing on me.

Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves,
your parallel body yields to my arms
like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul,
quick and slow, in the energy under the sky.

Poem: Pablo Neruda "IX" from his collection, "Twenty Love Poems" 
Photograph: Tony Rohrbach

Rhode Island

The Kronosaurus was a big fish,

Saw its 100 million year old bones

Hanging stiff as collars in Harvard

Natural History Museum.  But I was supple,

Still swaying, skin soaked with sun

And sea salt, fingernails smelling like

The blood of sport fish and the rot of bait.

                Point Judith Jetty

                Crash and spray of high-tide

                Distant, billowing sails, silently escaping harbor

                         Green, red, blink, blink, blink

                Mouthful of IPA, lips salty

                Squid on a circle-hook

                Autumn star patterns and a waxing gibbous moon

                Light house spying

                         White-into-sea-glisten, whoosh…whoosh…whoosh

                We caught a three foot eel at one in the morning

The Kronosaurus was a really big fish!

Each of its 40 odd teeth measured 10cm and resembled

Conical spear-tipped arrow heads. Its bones were found

In the wastelands of Queensland, where it’s as dry

As the smile-less straw-men of Harvard Square

Who walk by like human deserts, each parched and barren

Expression thirsty, each personality an arid island.  But I

Was still reeling, the drag of my mind clicking

Click…click…click…clickclickclickclickclickclickclick

The love of life pulling, testing my taunt line.

Charlestown Breach-way

Casting into the rip, letting the current

Take our scud 200yds out into the deep sea

Where the blue fish waited

Primed with leader shredding, arrow-head teeth

Open bail, fingers feeding out the mono-filament

Feel him hit and take off

“Set da Gaddamn hook like fa’ fackn’ times!

Now ya feel ‘em, dat bastad of a whore’s mother!

Hook ‘em good an drag in dat blasted son-of-a-bitch!”

Ocean spraying off the point into my face

Rocks slick with slime and fish guts

Like sweat and blood on a UFC fight mat

Saw him jumping way out there in the chop

Pull, reelreelreelreel, pull, reelreelreelreel, pull

Guide him in, grappling hook through his side

Grab his gills and feel all fourteen of his pounds

Watch him puke up a handful of shiners

Give him to the Guatemalans who will boil him in milk

To the West the sunset against propped up poll tips

Melts into a seemingly forever twilight

To the East Block Island, where tonight they are catching

Shark, gleams like stars against the inky Atlantic horizon

I bet the Kronosaurus was a terrifying beast of a bitch

Its tail alone the size of a passenger plane

Could turn a boat into toothpicks with a single swipe.

It was the ultimate prey-er , nothing near tame about it

Unlike the plaid patterned civility of Cambridge

Where the surface of things matter most,

Where image is the fittest trait striving to carry the species,

Where style castrates any sort of energetic pulse.

Where as the Kronosaurus would simply eat you.

But it’s strung-up behind glass, leaving us only

A nasty, toothy smile, and a wink through hollow eyes.

Poem: "Rhode Island" by James Gagnon

Silkscreens: "what once was" and "photosynthesis" by Dan McCarthy

 

The Octopus Frontier

1.
A pleasure palace
on the octopus frontier.
Perhaps that's
the answer.
An eight-armed whore
in the cabin
of a sunken ship,
the walls covered
with obscene octopus pictures.
She beckons to me.
Passion and gin.
Why not? 

2.
A homestead
on the octopus frontier.
Perhaps that's
the answer.
A flock of chickens
in front of a cabin
at the bottom
of the ocean.
They seem contented
scratching in the sand
for oysters.


3. 
An intentionally ambiguous poem

on the octopus frontier.

Perhaps that’s

the answer.

The 8 faced whore siren muse

Sits on the rocks, inspiring ships to sink

The wandering mariners metaphors drawn

By her obscenely beckoning songs,

Shipwrecked on the jagged hopes of

Whiskeypassions.

Why not?

4. 
An irresistibly treacherous messiah

on the octopus frontier.

Perhaps that’s

The answer.

A flock of smitten disciples

Kneel in front of her hungry rocks

At the bottom of the ocean.

They seem utterly contented

Scratching in the sand

For her pearls.

Poem: "The Octopus Frontier" Parts 1 & 2 by Richard Brautigan; Parts 3 & 4 by Patrick Lynch 

Silkscreen: "What Once Was" by Dan McCarthy 

Night Highway 99

We're on our way man out of town go hitching down that highway 99 Too cold and rainy to go out on the Sound Sitting in Ferndale drinking coffee Baxter in black, been to a funeral Raymond in Bellingham- Helena Hotel-  Can't go to Mexico with that weak heart Well you boys can go south. I stay here. Fix up a shack- get a part-time job- (he disappeared later maybe found in the river) In Ferndale & Bellingham Went out on trail crews Glacier and Marblemount There we part.Tiny men with mustaches driving ox teams deep in the cedar groves wet brush, tin pants, snoose- Split-shake roof barns over berry fields white birch chicken coop Put up in Dick Meigs cabin out behind the house- Coffeecan, PA tin, rags, dirty cups, Kindling fell behind the stove, miceshit, old magazines, winter's coming in the mountains shut down the show the punks go back to school and the rest hit the road- strawberries picked, shakeblanks split fires all out and the packstrings brought down to the valleys: set loose to graze.  Gray wharves and hacksaw gothic homes Shingle mills and stump farms overgrown. 

*

Fifty weary Indians  Mount Vernon Sleep in bus station Strawberry pickers speaking Kwakiutl turn at Burlington for Skagit;  Ross Dam under apple trees by the river banks of junked cars BC Riders give hitchhikers rides "The sheriff's posse stood in double rows Everett flogged the naked Wobblies down with stalks of Devil's Club; run them out of town"  While shingle weavers lost their fingers in the tricky feed and take of double saws. Dried, shrimp Seattle smoked, salmon -before the war old Salish gentleman came; sold us kids rich hard-smoked Chinook from his flatbed model T Lake City, waste of trees; topsoil, beast, herb, edible roots, Indian field- farms; white men dances washed, leached, burnt out minds blunt, ug! talk twisted a night of the long poem and the mind guitar "Forming the new society within the shell of the old" 

mess of tincan camps and littered roads. The Highway passes straight through every town at Matsons washing bluejeans hills and saltwater ack, the woodsmoke in my brain (high Olympics- can't go there again) East Marginal Way the hitchhike zone Boeing down across Duwamish slough and angle out; on. 

*

Night rain wet concrete headlights blind Tacoma salt air/ bulk cargo/ steam cycle/ AIR REDUCTION eating peanuts I don't give a damn  if anybody every stops I'll walk to San Francisco what the hell "that's where you going? why you got that pack?" "well man I just don't feel right without something on my back" & this character in milkman overalls "I have to come out here every once in a while, there's a guy blows me here" way out of town. Stayed in Olympia with Dick Meigs -this was a different year; he had moved- sleep on a cot in the back yard half the night watch shooting stars These guys got babies now drink beer, come back from wars, "I'd like to save up all my money get a big new car, go down to Reno & latch onto one of those rich girls- I'd fix their little ass" - nineteen yr old North Dakota boy fixing to get married next month. To Centralia in a purple Ford Carstruck dead doe by the Skookumchuck river Fat man in a Chevrolet wants to go back to L.A. "too damned poor now" Airbrakes on the log trucks hiss and whine stand in the dark by the stoplight big fat cars tool by drink coffee, drink more coffee brush teeth back of Shell hot shoes stay on the rightside of that yellow line Mary's Corner, turn for Mt. Rainier -once caught a ride at night for Portland here. Five Mexicans ask me "chip in on the gas," I never was more broke & down. Got fired that day by the USA (the District Ranger up at Packwood thought the Wobblies had been dead for forty years but the FBI smelled treason - my read beard) That Waco Texas boy took A.G. and me through miles of snow had a chest of logger gear at the home of an Indian girl n Kelso hadn't seen since fifty-four Toledo, Castle Rock, free way four lane no stoplights and no crossings, only cars, & people walking, old hitchhikers break the laws. How do I know...the state cop told me so. Come a dozen times into Portland on the bum or hasty lover late at night. 

*

Portland Dust kicking up behind the trucks- night rides- 

Who waits in the coffee stop night highway 99 Sokei-an met an old man on the banks of the Columbia growing potatoes & living all alone, Sokei- an asked him the reason why he lived there, he said, Boy, no one ever asked me the reason why, I like to be alone. I am an old man. I have forgotten how to speak human words. All night freezing in the back of a truck dawn at Smith River battering on in loggers' pickups prunes for lunch The next night, Siuslaw. Portland sawdust down town Buttermilk corner all you want for a nickel (now a dime) -Sujata gave Gautama buttermilk. (No doubt! says Sokei-an, that's all it was: plain buttermilk) rim of mountains, pulp bark chewed snag papermill tugboom in the river -used to lean on bridge rails dreaming up eruptions and quakes- Slept under juniper in the Siskiyou   Yreka a sleeping bag, a foot of snow black rolled umbrella ice slick asphalt Caught a ride the only car come by at seven in the morning chewing froze salami riding with a passed-out L.A. whore glove compartment full of booze, the driver a rider, nobody cowboy, sometime hood, Like me picked up to drive, & drive the blues away. We drank to Portland and we treated that girl good. I split my last two bucks with him in town when out to Carol & Billy's in the woods. Foggy morning in Newport housetrailers under the fir. 

*

An old book on Japan at the Goodwill unfurled umbrella in the sailing snow sat back in black wood barber college chair, a shave On Second street in Portland. What elegance. What a life. Bust my belly with a quart of buttermilk & five dry heels of French bread from the market cheap clean shaved, dry feet, We're on our way man out of town Go hitching down that highway 99. 

*

Oil pump broken, motor burning out Salem Ex-logger selling skidder cable wants to get to San Francisco, fed and drunk Eugene Guy just back from Alaska- don't like the States now- too much law Sutherlin A woman with a kid & two bales of hay  Roseburg Sawmill worker, young guy thinking of going to Eureka for redwood logging later in the year Dillard Two Assembly of God Pentecostal boys from a holy-roller high school. One had spoken in tongues Canyonville  (LASME Lost Angeles-Seattle Motor Express) place on highway 20 LITTLE ELK badger & badger South of Yoncalla burn the engine run out of oil (a different car) (Six great highways; so far only one) Jumpoff Joe Creek & a man carrying nothing, walking sort of stiff legged along, blue jeans & denim jacket wrinkled face, just north of Louse Creek -Abandon really means it the network womb stretched loose all things slip through Dreaming on a bench under newspapers I woke covered with rhododendron blooms alone in a State Park in Oregon. 

* 

"I had a girl in Oakland who worked for a doctor, she was a nurse, she let him eat her. She died of tuberculosis & I drove back that night to Portland nonstop, crying all the way" Grants Pass "I picked up a young mother with two children once, their house had just burned down" "I picked up an Italian tree-surgeon in Port Angeles once, he had all his saws and tools all screwed & bolted on a beat up bike." Oxyoke, Wolf Creek, a guy Coming off a five-day binge to Phoenix An ex-bartender from Lebanon to Redding Man & wife on a drinking spree, to Anderson Snow on the pines & firs around Lake Shasta -Chinese scene of winter hills and trees us "little travelers" in the bitter cold six-lane highway slash & D-9 Cats- bridge building squat earth movers -yellow bugs I speak for hawks. Creating "Shasta" as I go- The road that's followed goes forever; in half a minute crossed and left behind. Out of the snow and into red-dirt plains blossoming plums Each time you go that road it gets more straight curves across the mountain lost in fill towns you had to slow down all four lanes Azalea, Myrtle Creek watch out for deer. At Project City Indian hitcher Standing under single tarpole lamp nobody stoped we walked four miles to an oak fire left by the road crew, shivered the night away. 

*

Going to San Francisco Yeah San Francisco Yeah we came from Seattle Even farther north Yeah we been working in the mountains in the spring in the autumn I always go this highway 99-"I was working in a mill three weeks there then it burned down & the guy didn't even pay us off- but I can do anything-  I'll go to San Francisco- tend bar-"  Sixteen speeds forward windows open Stopped at the edge of Willows fro a bite grass shoots on the edge of drained rice plains -where are the Sierras- 

*

standing in the night in the world-end winds by the overpass bridge junction US 40   and highway 99 trucks, trucks, roll by kicking up dust dead flowers level, dry,  Highway 99 turns west. Miles gone, speed still pass through lower hills heat drying toward Vallejo gray on the salt baywater brown grass ridge buckbrush blue.  Herons in the tideflats have no thought for States of Cars -I'm sick of car exhaust City  gleaming far away we make it into town tonight get clean and drink some wine- SAN FRANCISCO NO body gives a shit man who you are or what's your car there IS no 99

Poem: "Night Highway 99" by Gary Snyder from his 1996 collection "Mountains and Rivers Without End" (typography changed)
Print: Shepard Fairey

Here is a GREAT expansion and gloss of this poem by Geoffrey Skinner!