Jim Leftwich


HEY, THAT'S MY HAT


routing outerbackwards
Vast nests estimate
Rootbound rounders
Vats wrestling
Ventilated
Boots in a bag
Big grunting gnats
Big growling germs
Big grinning geese
Big bad bats
To be the battened beats
Gold toes groaning
Youthlessness

Kudzu poetics of the
Ice plant blooming like
Kudzu by the river
Down to the sea
Knit vines winding
Ice plant poetics
Of the oceanic
Ocean in the river
Down to the sea
Green gorge gone
Jumping toothless
Toothpicks
Between the river and
The hat
That floats
Beneath the waves
Hey! That's my
Hat!
That's my hat.
Go forth with
Thy broomstick
Rhyolite miners
Green and pink
Self-Hypnotized by
Your youthlessness
Big bag of grinning germs
Find the cost the
Coast the
Cosmos of Freedom
Buried in the ground
Nor grinding
ground dawns jumping
Mythic fingers junket
The Myth of It
It
The detuned mirror
The shattered utterly Urn
Nor fire wherein our smoke
Unruly rudderless
And ungovernable
No one any less than
Running off the edge
Of an empty
Signifier
Urgently unto none
No stopping soft
Shoulders and no
U-Turns jumping the
Urn thumbs up on
A swivel
Urgently jumping thumbs
Until nothing known unlike it

Otter Creek to Otter Lake to the
Open road rotting ripples
Like a riot in the pike
Like the Tiger Muskie
Ibogaine the crack in
The Johnson Dam
Fly away
On a goldfinch
Like a Gold Mantle Ground Squirrel
under their useless eyebrows
My viny new years beyond me
bye bye linear line
Bye bye
Goodbye American Woman
By the light of
A Vermont Moon
Yes hey who
That's my beautiful hat
By the who who they
Yes hat what
By eighteen o'clock
By his pork pie hat
Errors my noir nor
Your noir never rivers
The night lit
By an open
Moon

Bent
Rhyming
Noon
Run like a Rune
To it's Ruined Rant
Eyebrows high
Eyebrows low
The Low Yo Yo
Yo Yo
The way that a hat
Acts like a hat
Heat it up hey & high
By the light of
A hidden hat
We hint

We think like a hat and
We hunt with a shoe
They did it to me and
They'll do it to you 

Eyebrows in Vermont
Jumping the
Rules
Never normalize a nerve
Unless you know the
Known Unknowns

That's the key to the
Highway beehive
Being herein
The Noun
I do not Doubt it
flee the sleek ink
until the knot dogs
Blink barking sax
Next beat broken
Barking nexus
It looks like my hat
Because it is my hat
X marks a spot
On a spotted dog
Got dog if you want it
Warm as the Warmest Worms


(Summer 2022
Nevada) 
 


Ego Igloo Ago


Got cat bit hut eat.
By my sky.
Juice us gut much cute.
By why sly.
Be bin bone bunt barn.
Bay bus bean bot brine.
Go humming is jet karst.
Rig rug ragged.
Roof. Floor.

Gush 
Roving Vents
Ripe
Vantage.

Jostle kiosk
Umbrella.

Our open
Onion
Yolk
Yolk
Pie
Yippee
Orange yellow
Olive yantra
Isthmus
Itching
Helium
Generosity
Science, science
Solvent
Xeriscaped
Concentric
Suitcase
Globular
Ego igloo ago
Curvilinear

Gambling
Depth Chart
Eh? Oh.
Hugely

Nor
Gone
Game
Grooming
Minute hem
Knotty
Gritty
Lupine
Red Clover
 
Xtra Xtra

Clusters
BoX
SoX
Zoom
Zipline
Voltaire
Verlaine
Cost/Benefit analysis
Deficit
Coriander
Detroit
Gibbous
Damp dent dim dot dune
Heliocentric
Fontanel
Garment
Reinsinuated
Fellaheen

Few
Yearly
Umpteen
Totemic
Yolk
Yolk
Yolk
Oily
The oily oil
Just one
Just fine
Flat as a bell
Finesse
Not
Jut
Jolt you
Tennessee
Two mulch
July
Kerouac, haiku

Yak the clock.

Yes,
Just two, why?

Jumping on the
Minute, minute, minute.

No
Nocturnal
Jones
Generic
Noggin squared again

Mud dog madly
Cat mask

Magic wax.
Magic gem six.
Gem six box cut magic.
Squiggles jump.
Found six jumps.
Two twice jumping.
Tea.

Just in time.
Times two.
Kinetic rhyming jumps.
Static strata.
Juniper.
Furry nimble fuzz.
Curse of razzle.
No future. No fun. No fair.
Zoning.

Nifty sifting flair.
Jagged squall gutter.
Jagged, gutters.
Kafka for no reason.
Dirt dark yet knoll lunch.
Dusty old dust.

Jam jalapeno
Goldilocks
Yam diagonal
Yes
Jumble of squiggles

Nor none on the norm

Golden Norms
On the
Half-shell

Giddy, width
Tidal tufts of jelly

Ruse rusting
the
Sycamore

The knot,
Do we jump it?
Yes, yolk the yam.
Jello, like jello
In the desert, like
Eating 
Jello in the desert.

Next dog Jesus
Judas next dog
Samson textual
Tiresias the two
Seagulls square
Knitting Light
Floating the Yam
Years of Work
Dying of knots
tooth sky decay
edit by knack
Tulips two kiss
Bibles behind
The blue blue barn


(Summer 2022
Nevada )
 
*

varieties of asemous experience

sparat speret spirit sporot spurut spyryt 

parats perets pirits porots puruts pyryts

*

varieties of asemous experience

spiait spibit spicit
spidit spieit spifit
spigit spihit spiiit
spijit spikit spilit
spimit spinit spioit
spipit spiqit spirit
spisit spitit spiuit
spivit spiwit spixit
spiyit spizit


(summer 2022)

*

Stravage

Whiffing self sponge
$150 cosmos
$15 chord

*

Land of Many

Laad
Lazd
Labd Lacd
Layd
Laxd Ladd Laed
Lafd
Lawd
Lavd
Laud
Latd
Lagd Lahd
Laid
Lasd
Lard
Lajd Lakd
Lald Laqd
Lapd
Laod

Lamd
Land.

(Summer Olympic Peninsula
2022)

*

Land of Many Too

Landz
Landy
Landz
Landa
Landb

Landc Landd
Lande

Landw
Landv Landu

Landf
Landg
Landh

Landi Landj
Landk Landl

Landt

Landm Landn Lando
Landp

Landw Landr
Lands

(Summer 2022
Olympic Peninsula)

*
 
The Museum of Concrete Poetry

conffuckkingcrete
CONFFUCKKINGCRETE

(Summer 2022
Olympic Peninsula} 

*

The Tomb of Concrete Poetry

Hear Lies
Thee Con
Crete Poe
        M


(Summer 2022
Olympic Peninsula) 

*

H
EAT DO
ME

It w
As 5
5 degrees
Fair in Height
At 6:3
0 PM in
The sm
All t
Own of Cl
All 
Am Bay W
Ash
Ingt
On l
As
T nighght

(July 30, 2022
Olympic Peninsula)

*

mud mud mud

aud mud bud
mud cud mud
dud mud eud

mud fud mud
gud mud bud

mud iud mud
jud mud kud

mud lud
mud mud

nud mud oad
mud pud mud
qud rud sud

mud tud mud
uud mud vud
mud wud mud

xud mud yud
mud zud mud

Summer 2022
Port Angeles
Public Library

*

Untitled Permanent Drift

Untitled Draft July Untitled
Draft July Sunny Permanent
Location Separate Untitled
Draft July Location Draft
Draft July Separate July July
Sunny Separate Location
Separate Untitled Permanent
Uncanny Raft Vocation Drift
Rift Tanager Stunning Seeping
Parrots Untitled Draft July
Permanent Drift Seeping July


(Summer 2022
Olympic Peninsula)

*

EMPTY NONPOROUS SURFACES

Too clear to stain
The testy Air

Revolving vantage toehold
hyphenated Handlebars
navigate unhinged tubers
Candy bars and phonemes

gluten flea lutes
and fluted
refutations

two beat news to hidden
hints entwined neatly
noted hewn at twinkling
Views from indented
Tents for cheating pews

tortilla clippings no till
cartilage leaping like
nippers and dill

Blue knowtes
Tablature
Two bee shore
Yarrow by
any many barbed
Totes bestiary
Tea brewing
Torrents
By wheelbarrow

Roosting rheophile the
The the
The the the
Kiss of utter uselessness
Live your true inventions
Ventilations
Corrugated cement
Corn on the right neck your
Vacillations
The joy
Joy the
By thee weighghgh the
Joy
I'm on it or over
It on and
On

directions
tire lack soiling
with manual
Mountains

The them
In No Variable umbra
Vocational
Tantrum
Versus rhythm

Other cymbopogon &
Romanticist phosphates
Drinking refresher
Water
Waiting
The seer reef shrinking

(Summer 2022
Olympic Peninsula)

Jim Leftwich has noted:

This morning, while waking up as slowly as I want to, I have been remembering a couple of thoughts from Gregory Bateson.

First, the syllogism in grass:

Men die.
Grass dies.
Men are grass.

And second, the distinction between number as counting and quantity as measurement:

You can have exactly three tomatoes. But you can never have exactly three gallons of water.

I remember a book entitled The Fringes of Reason, published at the end of the 1980s. One chapter was about game rules. Your religion, if you have one, can be analyzed as a game with rules applicable only to it. The same with your job, if you have one. The same with your favorite traditions and lineages of poetry. Basketball is not tennis. If you're not playing tennis, then the rules of tennis do not apply to whatever it is that you are doing.

I am an American poet. This summer I have been reading John M. Bennett, Robert Creeley, Jack Kerouac, Ted Berrigan, Jeffrey St. Clair, John Buckner, and Gertrude Stein.

Sue and I have spent the past two months on the Olympic Peninsula, not far from where Thomas Lowe Taylor spent the last few years of his life.

The librarians at the Port Angeles Public Library gave us tee shirts that say "Read Beyond the Beaten Path". I am wearing mine as I write this.

Read Bennett. Read Buckner. Read St. Clair. Read Tom Taylor, aka Anabasis.

You are a quantity of grass inexactly dying. Don't let anyone tell you what you should not read.

 
 

previous page     contents     next page