Scott MacLeod


THE BLAME

mysterious red white blue 
galled philosophy
of the anus
the knee prevails
poets intone / their outrages
Odysseus, strapped, whiskers
whispers to Cyops
the foot is fate
the blue precarity
arrest! indict! convict! remand!

bodies are tears in quicksilver-
blue-ceiling horror, cattle ranch
song settles on revenge, the saloon
blue water derailed, the sun
error parks in your spot
absorbs speech, breath, fire, nouns, vocabulary
like calendar returns the present into the present

sphincter portal presents to the sausage
the scene the builders refused to see
the marvelous stone head of the coroner
ficus strangulensis on the brink in the early 90s

I think I am a shepherd
a no-good shepherd (I see no sheep)
I wake up in a ditch / alkali / mud filled ditch
I have led myself to this damp creek
I’ve lost my phone charger / phone book / gold watch
whatever you do, don’t walk into town

I walk cross eyed in this midst of pigs
into the shadow of a valley of pigs
my body falls into the middle of the creek
diverts its flow / my Old Spice and Axe
confuse the mosquitoes, they stare at me
from their saloon, through rifle scopes
I’m in the center of their cross hairs
in the middle where the cross hairs cross

urination privacy and humanity
are gone first, even before
modesty / my days flow
and from the saloon downtown
the cries of hecklers forever

a great deal can be said for the nebulous
beginning to extend the habitual, the fixed, the volatile

the Blame is a comprehensive bequest
of Christianity / the Christian god

concentrate on the fourth step
understanding and wrecking value
and the other black alchemy of the pen
under imagination / mortal atmosphere
desire touches us at the Assumption
its faulty dry faith in language

An Eagle, a Lion, and an Ox walk into a bar. The Eagle orders a Stinger from the Scorpion bartender. The Lion turns to the Ox: Why the long face? The Ox snorts: Because this boat’s sinking and I haven’t been served yet.

An oil fire starts in the kitchen. The cook’s beard is in flames. He jumps overboard.

the boat is called the Pandora
the so-called Pandora
out of SoCal

Carl, the captain, did DMT before breakfast
sits silently watching the Holy Ghost leave trails

curious, Pandora (Curious Pandora?) fucks Luke, and Jesse
reads the lines while sitting among her female inscriptions
the written corpse has no value locked up / calligraphy
marks every envelope / collected texts / shredded 
on the floor, cut up, unlocked, ghosts animated
the alchemist is unable to follow, describe or name
the primal imaginary / so he exaggerates
for almost 3000 years

what is wrong with me
is the concealed fire



HISTORY WAKING UP

linear gave way to mosaic puzzles
as if nothing is a sound
spontaneous ephemera 

oppressive integrity after years of sadness one by one
the broad precarity of belief in revision
released from the possible
sublimated within enthusiastic dancing in the fire

the neologism is full of god
and other artists
inappropriate delirium in words
the meanings of a looser sense

ingestion of strange phase-space
that never repeats an oath broken
at a place extracted from
half-redacted notation experiments

the self disintegrating the vast 
fields of a future 
mysterious courage

the eyes more beautiful 
twitching, trembling 
between specters

a predatory sky
in a broken bowl
rushing through

the fire in the shape of flame
in room twenty-three
littered with broken eggs
pointless telephones ringing
by the radio, gangsters 
plot escape routes
inside the car the strange heist
is published nationwide in newspapers

room 23 is on his route today
the patrolman’s last day

the bees are sonnets
history waking up
prayers for the sick
in jars

Scott MacLeod. Doing serious work without taking it seriously. Since 1982. seriousprojects.com.

He notes: "THE BLAME was written out of and into Jim Leftwich’s The Blue Seam, with an added pinch lifted from Lori Lubeski’s my original enthusiasm. HISTORY WAKING UP was also written out of and into Jim Leftwich’s The Blue Seam."

 
 

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