Featured Poet: Jules Gibbs

“Instead of seeing,
we should make excavations in the eye; instead of hearing, we should juxtapose sounds
in an emotional clitter-clatter.”

— Wallace Stevens, “The Irrational Element in Poetry”

TUSSLE


Deep in the jejunum, factory
of post-vertebral reasoning,
a concordant tome
produces a quasar, a nolo
prow for the cocky free speech
of her conceptual A posse.

The historic nonstandard
of her one congratulatory chromosome
says: You’re blocked; he’s Virgo
as any jellyfish, recherché, hopes you’re free.

Volcano at fifteen, she’s a woman
by reprisal, catalyst
doing battle, unashamed
as an evening gazette corrigendum.

It’s like the last rational brain cell
whispering to a girl gone wild: Tussle,
you got some time —your future depends on it.

As many other girls have discovered

the hard way,

there’s nothing worse than creating
an expectation — then failing to deliver.





WILLKOMMEN


It’s so male, the road to Berlin,
so cognac and generous
with its prompts and sign-in
guidelines. Who here can explain
Rensselear aquatics?
Just do the notation—
in the parallelized loop variables
ii, jj and kk are private
to each thread
while n columns and n rows
are shared. Everything by definition:
boolean; ocean; chuff. A tycoon
with pretensions.
Wie lange bleibst du heir?
Empirical evidence says:
Let’s keep in touch. Wait —
I almost forgot my greatcoat,
my shelter, my soup of maturity —





SALES PITCH No. 14:
IF YOU CAN’T REMEMBER, IT DIDN’T REALLY HAPPEN


We succeed in two vital areas:
toner and ink. Samples are being shipped
to your area now. Yes, it’s true

forgetfulness can be a symptom
of more serious problems: renal, miasmal,
the coming crash of civilization —

the government’s aware of all this —
how could I be wrong? Buns full fledged;
suppositories at your privation; bras

discounted; nicotine cravings cut.
Science has proven the human body
doesn’t have to age — you simply place

a drop in your drink, then
search/ chat/ flirt/ date.
She might say she’s glad to fuck you again,

but you can’t really evaluate a sentence
you don’t possess with your memory.
Go ahead, oink — please her many, many times.





PROTECTED SEA BIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLES


Epic Alexander claimed the I
in Pythagorean, the too
in fervent, but not the lion.
You have the experience but lack
a proper university degree.
Still, with Sirius receding,
Salvador can mitigate.
Is it worthwhile to expedite
the asynchronous
retrieval of the redshank?
Let’s go check it out —





THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING DADA


How did we stumble upon
this chromatogram of web
recomendada, a dot-com
beautification project?

It’s abusable.

Try again, preponderant churchgoer —
I think I can help you work out
the fit, design and power
of your gingerbread sloop
and when all that is done
commit to the market-wise,
turn your passion into an empire.





THE TORTURE CHAMBER IS NO PLACE FOR AN OIL MAN


Our President is a euphemist, a midshipman
sailing a casket through La Femme Defoncer —
nationally, savagely. Someone wants to meet him.

With scherzo mirth the talking radio hums
strangulation and sunburn, sunburn
and acetylene distillate — a gas station collapse.

Danke fur Ihre Anfrage, the sagging caliphate
explains the trouble to three level one employees
and then to our Overlord of Customer Service:

As we age, our bodies produce less and less of this, and this
is the very reason we age — ire, jaundice, fearful phylogeny — is it any wonder
people are turning to anti-gravity, sun microsystems, cremation?

For the next twelve weeks they will face
Spartan conditions, deprivation, tasks designed
to take morale to a breaking point.

(It is good to see the pieces of the puzzle
coming together one by one, a pigeon to forge the deal.)

The enquiry arrives like a sandbag
in the baptismal —
in his gotcha exit, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

confessed,

and now he wants his fingers back.



















Jules Gibbs

© Copyright 2008 Jules Gibbs