City Night

An early example (1977) of my stream of consciousness poetry. And, no, I have no idea what the hell I was doing with the punctuation in this. Perhaps I was using them in the older fashion, as pauses for reading aloud. I just don't remember but it's kinda strange.

I was rather enamoured with using slashes to combine words in odd ways. "Para/fables" is, I think, a grafting of parable and fables with the additional use of para meaning to the side of or along side of.

When I look at it now, it reminds me of a rap lyric. Not when I wrote it but there are flowing rhymes and rhythms throughout and a bit of lyrical sensibility. Obviously neither the content nor the vocabulary is "rap" as we know it today. And I have the fairly widespread white boy musical disability: total lack of musical rhythm. But word rhythm is something else, I can do that. When I read it aloud, even I, beat deaf cripple that I am, can find a pulse to it.


City Night

High pressure elation shooting

from the tips of pain-encrusted

nerves toward the silent and endless,

(mouthing syllables of lost distance)

emerging from para/fables

crooning their own versions of night

in a lustful craze that burns,

burns elves as if they were fagots

distilled from a different substance

(apollo in antitonal) visions seems

mirthless and without poesy...

sigh draws nigh unto completion

encased in competition,

enclosed in a deep dark city sensation,

pins stab in flickering neon,

irresistible flow of millions as one

rarefied and diversified entity

pushpulling pleasure and pain thru sieves;

gyrating madly and noisily there,

here in a/the centre of far flung sadness,

happiness yet floats a banner:

singles, couples, groups, the whole: kinship

of one for another, miracle rated (ranted),

communicationslanted, bantered offhandedly,

horror binds/winds fear/intoxication,

discounted hopes on sale (by mail),

scandals prattle everywhere in scores,

outraged public mores (they cry: more!),

too downed out to listen (vitamin-Q),

too upped to stop (caffeine on the brain),

(question: what/when/how is sane

relative to anthill city life?)

the hill is a razor sharp knife;

not occam's razor, for how do

you define these variables?

(the razor has serrated edges.)


October 1977
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