Lescatre and Fechin

it is

what it is to
dip your hip to the swaying
of the ship that
surely goes only your way
when sunday sundries
and so-called political parity
part red-faced in pro-people pose
peering unending into eyes
less than an inch deep
thoughts whose reach exceeds
inevitabilities of existence
or inches toward them achingly
seems if your radar
picks up anything which makes
movement for it's sake
decide then
what it is too

purity of essence

propulsion of etheric origins
energy only percieved overtly
overheard perspectives easily o'erlooked
punch ouch poke easy oops
older predilictions offer exactitudes

Poems: Robert Lescatre 

Drawing: "Manuelita" by Nicolai Fechin, charcoal on off-white paper. 1930

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