Improvijazzation Nation - Issue # 52

So the skeleton walks up to you with the money (he's heard you can be very
easily bought.)  Naomi is  turning around in her white butterfly dance,
reaching  home with motions as  ashen as clouds.  The lover walks through,
still smelling like the devil&you don't know what do: the offer is
tempting, the job is fine, but something about this place is
disarming.  Maybe it's the fact you feel like a visitor; maybe it's the
force which permeates the air.  So you walk away, with the laughter
rattling in your ears like bones.

A crow speaks to you on the way out: "You did the right thing, you
know," he says.  He has  wily eyes.  His raspy voice is the sound of
smoke. He is standing on a shovel which is wedged in the ground.  "I'm
digging your grave," he tells you nonchalantly. "I hope it will be done by
the time you die."
***************
Andrew Penland, 2001

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James Dean saw the gypsy princess
in the sun of St. Andrew's saddest
summer, where snakes wandered through
a lake of holy water, and every dreamer
realized the tightrope strung across
this life (to be walked too late
in the age.)

the air orgasmed, full of circus tickets;
calendars winked conspiratorily at clocks
as
seconds ran away from every passing day
and the judge found every firefly unguilty.
cigarette smoke haunted the air like regrets
of ghosts (whispers in French.) the summer faded
(all summers do) and when James Dean

found his princess again, she was an angel
who had given up smoking and sex.  the music was new and
heartbreakingly pure; spring brought echoes of a ripple in
the stars, a prophecy of kisses, a pantherish night.
you could choke on the taste of these questions,
whose colors are secrets in the painting of this:
flowerful, soft and imperfect as the memory
of the summer's last sunrise before autumn falls.

Andrew Penland, 2001

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"freaks"


as angels decay
they are rebuit
with parts
from dolls
and broken watches

and sent to slowly
fade away
in a freakshow's
afterglow,

where they watch
a (c/k)at  (cheshire/krazy)
jump over golgotha
like evel knievel

and unbeknownst to them
the audience behind
it
is staring into them.

(they are
the freaks.)

Andrew Penland, 2001

BIO:   my name is Andrew Penland; I live in Concord, North Carolina.  I work in an
art supply warehouse.  I enjoy cats,sweet tea and grasshopper cookies.   Check out my website by clicking on my name, above!

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From Illumination Millennium:


The Mannequin in the Shop Window

Can not touch her, plastic face, dreaming she is alive
Glass window between us, mannequins are lively if you believe
Untouchable women heighten desire, quiet passion can thrive,
No fear of being stung, live women swarm like bees in a hive,

Speaking to a wall of a woman, satisfies needs to be heard
Her silent stare demands sex, live women never say that word,
Mannequins are like other women who lie still making love like dead fish,
Seeking a woman different from reality, every man's wish.

Fantasy girl, low cut dresses pearls, lace lingerie peeking,
Control her every move, a human doll, inhibition weakening,
Her wooden expression comes alive on a Sunday country drive,
Passion from our fiery hearts melts plastic burning us alive.

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Protests

Please, blow up buildings in the name of killing technology, kill me,
Clog my traffic with a picket line to save the rain forest, Someday I'll get
home,
Raise my gas price to keep me from driving destroying ozone, I can walk,
Ban freon so the atmosphere can regenerate, I will fry in the heat,
release animals from the test labs, so I can die from Cancer Alzheimer's
disease,
Take away hamburgers and all meat, spare animals, I can starve,
 Take away marijuana, I can go blind from Glaucoma, die from Aids,
Make sex illegal, so my name will die out,
I can live in a closet to protect you from my dick,
Ban cell phones, I can live without interrupted meals and brain cancer,
Ban cars, I can live without BMW Mercedes luxury, driving me down,
killing me in the street, on foot  pedestrians, hunted, endangered species,
Ban electricity, living in the dark, reading, eating by candlelight, new
romance
of love under dead lights, no ringing phones interrupt.

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Fucking Gas Guslers

You fucking gas guzzlers paying two dollars a gallon
Are destroying this world.  Park your four-door luxury
and hit the goddamn pavement for once.  You work
in Santa Ana raping the poor, after work drive to Emerald
Bay an hour away by fucking nature killing Toll Roads.
South County Assholes driving to the south
One to a car, toting cell phones smoking the dope
of this age, Land Rovers eating 10 mpg gas,
All terrain Vehicles too large to fit in lanes
clog our smoggy skies with the shit from your
vomit reeking asshole of a tale pipe. Fuck Henry Ford
with a rusty tail pipe, a criminal who invented cars.

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Unpublished:


Psychics Wanted

Are you stuck in a dead end job?
Have you been able to predict the future?
Join Psychic University
We will teach you to see the future
Read palms, see through clothing, x ray vision,
Are you a gypsy wandering the country side
barely making a living as a carnival freak
prostituting your body
to bearded ladies and carnival barkers  
Psychics, Astrologers, Tarot, Readers needed.
Earn Big $$. Work from home. Set own hours.
Please call for info.

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Standing on poetry

Stand on a soapbox with a heart full of poems
find words perfectly aligned
in stanzas beaten and cut to the pearl,
never pausing, fearless when spoken, Poetry
is  lightning. Slam and stomp lyrics to sear metaphors
into the brain.  When Shakespeare
stands on the shoulders of sonnets, poems sing
from mouths of icons like Hamlet, just as God stood
on mount Ararat and slammed poetry, in 3 minutes or less,
 without props, God spoke to Moses who chiseled poems
on tablets, undying poetic commandments,
if poetry is the chosen word, invigorate my poem
with the strength of David, immortalize these words
flying from my mouth to slay Goliath, here I stand in the Coliseum,
 to kill or be killed, I am a slam poet,
Poems spoken in this life echo in the next,
Your day in the sun has come if you stand
on the shoulders of poetry, follow these poets
into greatness, speak the immortal lyrics.

Submitted by Howard Yosha... Howard also has a book, "Illumination Millenium".
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