Dale Jensen

Dead Horse Argument

no wt hati mad e adh or se
ic antke ep tra ckof ti me
e veny ours
sofol low me    for a ver

now that i’m a dead horse
i can’t keep track of time
even yours
so follow me forever

  WHAT    MAD
 CRACK
EVEN YOURS
     LOW     FOREVER

forever even that can’t follow
i track    so now
keep yours i’m of
dead time    a horse

fore verev enth atc antf o llow
it racks on ow



Are You Trying to Tell Me Something, Camera?

ominous of      accompany completely background
sense unease over viewer
tenuous thumbs      when first appear they heighten
tense the tease the fast curves of a mountain road

driver      never time to stop the body
feeling dread builds up a wave impending dry wit
by virtue then      a neighborhood of watch dog fangs
reeling after an eerie portrait and troubled fingerprints

     morning wakes up in a hole on a golf course
     the night a jet has off      plane landed      
     his nose had weeks that follow      
     this to sweeten the mob drawing    many years    engine scream
     kindness like a metal clasp 
     yearning breaks up      line drama     despair straddles fantasy



Haunted House (Coronavirus 6/15/20)

i can’t be a radio a person
i can’t even your front door
the biography of today’s sky
i remember the light
from your seventh story window

clouds floating on celestial oceans
your telephone’s hazy account of it
song of windows    song of moons
song of laundry phoning itself and
gloves deputized by vagrant airplanes

i’m really here at the airport
i really am the airport here
here am really i the airport you
thought i’d really said but
it’s only the cattle from your sedan’s engine

haunted houses    they define the streetline
cover up the keyholes with ectoplasmic tape
how long i’ve been stuck here is up to who knows who
the doctor with the cone over his beak is hammering
on everybody’s door today    this plague
defines you until it is you    i hear myself
but can’t tell where the noise is coming from
                so please                holler



Summer Wine

gh o stsp as sgl as sesof su mmerw i ne
toe ach o ther ont heir su mmere ve

w ho says the dece a sed
exi ston lyinw in ter

sto rmsco me th rough
e motio nspa as sover mo unt a ins
the irc oo lcl ear a irre ma insf ory ou
asy ou vent ureo uta ftert thef ur y

thet a teof thew in eis a lmo stm et all ic
li keso me thing tha twill la stfo re ver

    ghosts pass glasses of summer wine
    to each other on their summer eve
    
    who says the deceased
    exist only in winter?

    storms come through
    emotions pass over mountains
    their cool clear air remains for you
    as you venture out after the fury

    the taste of the wine is almost metallic
    like something that will last forever

  O    PASS             SUN
TO EACH            SERVE
          SAY          CEASE
EXIST ONLY
SOME
 MOTIONS            MOUNT
THE                 AIR
          YOU         OF             FUR
THAT                                   MOST
LOVE

    exist the you    almost is air
    mountains over taste only of pass
    the winter    wine for emotions
    their ghosts in cool summer wine
    of glasses pass    remains metallic    clear

  IS             YOU           AIR
                  O
THIN
            GHOSTS
                      PASS



No Hats

my mother can remember which family that had were no hats
here and there said their prayers     that they hauled up shrieking
sigh and it were aimed at your head
fear and mighty a ghost to his constant accumulations

what seen weird things hiding in the guidebook again
sparingly     further would find instead of your intellect
shocked     probably were     if the next ball thrown were an entire planet
carefully although none of us knew who exactly was translating it

but she could still add     still nerve
strictly been one of the face of the young man
she’d hoped was pleased to the thatch
bleeding that had walked own other people’s everything
which said nothing     only moonglow
cut out and scream in the moonlight     alive a thousand more years

Dale Jensen was born in Oakland, California, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and received a master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Toronto in 1973, with which he said goodbye to academia forever. In 1974, he embarked on a career with Social Security that lasted until 1999, when he took early retirement. He lives in Berkeley and is married to the poet Judy Wells.

His poetry, which is heavily influenced by the Surrealists and such cut-up writers as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, has appeared in such magazines, journals, and anthologies as Talisman, Lost and Found Times, Ur-Vox, Poetry East, Inkblot, Convolvulus, Dirigible, and many others. He published and edited the experimental poetry magazine Malthus from 1986 through 1989 and continues to very occasionally publish books through Malthus Press. He also has published seven books and four chapbooks of poetry: Thebes (1991), Bar Room Ballads (1992), The Troubles (1993), Twisted History (1999), Purgatorial (2004), Cyclone Fence (2007), Oedipus’ First Lover (2009), Auto Bio (2010), Yew Nork (2014), Amateur Mythology (2017), and Trump Tics (2020), as well as an ebook novella, Why I Moved to San Francisco (2017).
 
 
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