These poems are a kind of pure poetry that reflects the the writer’s life work of interacting with language. For those who are drawn in, this work can take on an importance that permeates how we think and hear and see and live, complete with an ongoing sense of play and utter joy in the manipulation of words. Each poem presents the possibility to experience something outside accepted structures of meaning. In a time of pervasive finger wagging, Coolidge doesn’t tell anyone anything, but invites us to hear something never heard, to think what’s not been thought, to set off into dream, to discover a new world, to make a new world.
Stone Basics
Beyond Mammoth Cave is a lunchroom
where the food is made of camphor
and no one can see but can chew
behind the eats are long sticks wet with neglect
and a shoot of rubberized charcoal to slide
by which you get to certain passages
and slots and climbs and tuna fish on breaks
a complete garage of shoe polish
where transparent violet cats prowl through
they lead you and you’ll see what forms
byways to far things or no things just view
a concatenation of bronze stairways to domes
cellophane fans and the ubiquitous gallery
this is all so far beyond where I live
that I can’t fucking believe it
gold lashes in an aluminum receptacle
a map on which the heart unwinds
Expert Mania
By the lace fence I passed the leather board
a blown white mist as dumb as your chin
the greaselights of Charley Chaplin as a shill
to the person of these rooms a hooligan
persiflage in clapboards you’d die to see
huh? we don’t use those words in this house
Swan uses a “tobacco cigarette” lady or tiger
when is the flag on that ball going to pop?
thanks for the mammaries grown in a treetop
a shrink of that basis will not get ahead only
clay pots that drip as deep as you can think it
a dollar a smell at the sink next door of all time
I read Snow Fury then read it again no strain
a calypso with a megaphone not to be missed
did you see what that elephant wrote?
a procession from the lake of diamonds to say
the lady’s a bit damp so I’ll take up backgammon
learned from Ray Bremser in Bordentown Reformatory
when he stubbed his needle on a Williams album
let me see how it goes in low voice
with a crack in a pricelist of Rex Barker dolls
forget the signatures time the fun till it balloons
stop catching the results of the fist
You Think This Is Wrong?
Thought I heard a propane moan
but that was just Jaws behind the hedge
he’s looking overeager for somebody’s mother
or a loosened kiddy’s slab of balloon
just when nobody’s
Jaws is just another name for
slip these on man’s charm is broken
the rest is all the way an ocean feels
no good dragging the bottom
or else
This fish see grew up among
the country’s violins
that’s the way they get kind of carried away you know
a copper penny for your lacy returns
a burnt toast labeled “Hoagie”
Eventually Jaws gets directed by John Singer Sargent
pictures will never see any of these persons again
just ask Tippy from Dullsville
no more Sleepy no more heart’s breath no more Jaws
but now here’s these testicles ten feet across
Traced Red Dot
Hello I’m Jack Jerk
I live with Molly Ringwald in a hutch
the streets outside the Barleycorn Stretch
they burst it all slims down to a point
a golden ginger ale of rockhewn source
buy Grotex it helps your cusp
always thought a corpse would tell me what to do
skin pulling its surface moisture
Barbizon sauce personality like a peanut
just need a new parrot and sink a pressure capsule
grotesque what happens to the lasted soul
a bad mouth liver pills in short bursts
maybe nothing but shirt in strong daylight
a punk trains his fist on the green monkey
it’s Bruce Surtees capturing latent death
stacked along contention lines black gleam salt
he’s now contented he saw his wrist
rosy featured landschaft grass as a pointer
this all comes from one hand’s limited desk
clear before the metal starts flying
Icing at the Corners
I came to the planet in the desert
where there are tubes underground
shock tubes Buster Crabbe in
all the dependable serials you ever see
the locked Hitler of elevator fame?
no? pour you lick you date you
an animal farm in my capital fun zone
think we can lap ourselves? Swanny!
the idea was to part myself like hair
give me a rumble seat and I’ll call my double friend
snow diamond chevrons on the pole wall
soon someone will close all your closets
glubglub came the sound of goulash breakup
and we’re out on the sound no grist few tears
I can’t forget those burlap-covered signs
The Swimmer
The swimmer
trips up and goes home
soon he’ll have to stand for everything
existence it’s troublesome
the wrong trees go bleak
there are fasteners on the stew
a porch tips up and the grunts come out
the blue of the sky is solved in cement
there are pictures but not one is solvent
the swimmer rustles in shadow
nobody wants to hear his strokes
these persons recede when they are due
now the world has gone and done it
nothing he thought was true
but parties everywhere under blue glass
no thanks I’ll wait till I get home
the weight of a skull upon his shoulders
a friend of the Balloons that trespass on dust
but the swimmer just takes himself off
he reaches an arm
Now available from Lithic Press
Clark Coolidge is the author of more than fifty books of poetry, including The Crystal Text, Poet, Now It’s Jazz: Writings on Kerouac & the Sounds, At Egypt, Alien Tatters, and The Land of All Time. At times associated with the New York School or with Language Poetry, Coolidge has forged a unique career, almost heroically following his own prodigious interests and curiosity.
Poems reprinted here with permission.
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Heavy Feather Review 