Monday, November 8, 2010

Poem 40 – American Picture

[One final collaboration. Ralph Kolewe asked The Tolerance Project to respond to the photo, "This isn't Whitman's country anymore" (see photo below) for his InfluencySalon.ca section, Frames. We collectively obliged, although various sources seem to attribute this poem to one of the following authors:

(A) Kevin Killian
(B) Dorothy Trujillo Lusk
(C) An unknown member of the Hobi [sic] Native American Tribe]



American Picture

Some words are tasteless

The dog accepts no treats from “Obama”

There’s no 13th floor because their God is a prolongation of ego

Founder of the little-known group known as “The Family”

Only turned up as “solid” in the denial column

What are you saying, Bob?

You are breeding from the lower side of the curve

Something American, Canadian, or viscous

How would you like to have a magic mirror?

Joan Retallack begins with geometries of attention

The class of mediocres has the right to an epaulette of red wool

I am the swift uplifting rush that happens once duration enters

The turtles speak to my bele chose

In order to distinguish the pictorial object from a readymade

Each participant reads their Behavioral Self-Portrait aloud

This is not to say that people with accents are haters, of course

SOME PARTS HAVE BEEN LEFT OUT, AS YOU SEE (pointing)

My body is on the chair. I don’t shave my legs. 1 is already a stand-in for 0

This is a real-time engagement with form

I will never stop praising my Lord for this prosthetic

You’re branded by the objects you love

Everyone has one special sensation

A Neighbor is the one who by definition smells

Kyle, you have to keep making your macaroni pictures













Saturday, November 6, 2010

Poem 39 – A tongue listens to a war

[The Tolerance Project was asked to submit to another anthology, this one based on Sean Labrador y Manzano's McSweeney's column "Conversations at a Wartime Cafe", with the subtitle: a Decade of War. Sean's questions to contributors were: "How has the first decade of war [in the new millennium] shaped your social fabric? How has the anticipation of the next 10 years of war, a forever war, shaped your outlook?" The Tolerance Project contributors came up with the following response.]


A tongue listens to a war

Driven out of Lebanon warm air opens the lines
Slow moving vowels grip glottal, we pucker
Hiss of splayed gullets marks the gaps
Their right legs slightly forward and left feet turned out

The future blended American would be less intelligent
By definition shall be internalized by targeted anathema
They all run and play together, his eager body quivers
In coy reprisal, discursive suicide fits the niche

This polymer web of four-time relationships
With whom we cannot be reconciled in lamblike game
Scribling and Lying spread Faculties of Profit and Credit
A fantasy of tea & truth and there there below

These anarchists split a magnet for the Ignorance Frame
With the Assistance of a Friend in the Peak
A roving Fancy Burlesques that Sacred Rite
Porn for the whole soul goes to Issah as peace

Let me cruise the blue flame of you or shatter
Velvet curtain of culture deadly teevee scree 

Decorative laminates, moral recovery, picnic ware,
Just this side of heaven is a hole called Rainbow Bridge

Sean cannot rely on symbolic layers of hum
Guaranteeing that Christian will get the aphorism
Bright touch blood your earth language affect
Get ready for permanent enlargement of your dearest part










Monday, November 1, 2010

Poem 38 – "Child soldier"

[The Tolerance Project was asked to contribute a poem to a forthcoming anthology in response to Canadian "child soldier" Omar Khadr having been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for 8 years, since he was 15. Information on the anthology is here: omarkhadranthology.wordpress.com]


"Child soldier"
(for Omar Khadr)

A child has an imposition from which he can redeem himself with six points

Planets move so that soldiers sketch with chalk over the singe

Women feel burning and pricking of heat inside

Tracing their hands or pictures of ships where paws and bellies hung

But sand has a terrible secret

I think plain, clear language could make it stronger

“Very good, only they breathe

In the background is a piece of classical architecture

He holds a small camouflaged pillow in his left hand

I forgive your ancestor’s beautiful thoughts

Statues representing dancing figures

What the Boardroom shoves through the porthole to sea

With this little soldier doomed grow monster

Tribunal earrings shown full face and aligned in depth

While writing this, I am bloody as well as greasy

Hot about the mouth of the womb

If the vest of childhood the thread of peace

Sometimes the colour of humid ashes

Outside the veins and in the hollowness

Small black bodies mingled with milk

If unable to deliver antibiotic borders

Inside and aching, pricking and hardness

And if such humours turn into cold wind

And they fly up to the heart and lungs