Jim Leftwich

Quasibio & Pseudobio

______________

Thomas home mask
Sonic effortless Jefferson
Tijuana juice banana
Taxation Jackson

Time yearless northeasterly
Yesternoon jewelry July


Kentucky ring finger
Knottish
Erring
Key
Ye ringers of dead notes
Did
Jump ship
Rue the
Jangling
Etiquette
Jutting from
Rose suits our purview
Toys ejected rote
hotly whorled and
wrinkles vying curved

I was born in
Charlottesville
Madison Heights
Greensboro
San Francisco
Roanoke
All of the above


I live in
The Hoh Rainforest
The Pando Aspen Grove
The Mojave Desert
The Colorado River Basin
All of the above


Azure pure manure
Zygote zephyr ziplocked
Xeric ricochet
Existential pencil cholla
Feral railroad toadstool pigeon


Fig levee
Expropriated Priapus
Elsewhere heretical
Shrewwd worldplay
We are level on the leg
We are appropriate
Dr Dust
Verily unto the dew


Unto anew
Knew it tall
Pewter few
Popping view undue
Upper screw
Yew askew
Yews askew
Yew into in two
It is a crew
Yew renew
Through and threw
Flew the coop
Jewels in lieu
Moo moot mew
Hew and skew
Ewe emu amused
Ewe no mown moans
Yule and kew
Ululations
Onto
Onto
Onto
Let it loose


Like I was saying
Only in a poem
Open the clock
For no other reason
And will be saying
Again as soon
As I finish with this


I will be fishing
By the grain
Of a spoon
In open knoll 
Season
With a poem
For a clock


Oh
O


Xanadu winding
Down
To the man from
Prufrock

Xanadu winding down to
Xanadu
Defeated by the
Quell of
Queen Jane


Winding roadside sidewinder

What time was it

Eat eternal Eatery
Role praying
Yucca Dawn
Utility build
Yucca in infinity
Up lollipop
Iip lollipop
Pita bull dog
sandwich
In the sand wars


Humus too new
Knew too much
Nylon hymnal
Lilliputian
Illiberal lollipop
Lumberjackal
Ulterior missive
Lost in the interior
Humus too soon
Lullaby out


Yearlong
By the book
Juxtaposed
Yearning in four eggs
Yuletide knuckle knuckleodeon
A loop inside the pool
I told them not to fold
Their golden mold
The milk-check 
The weathering cheese


Quivering Countless
Non-disclosures
Ejected thermally jaded
A blue herring
mirage in the mirror
Kentucky is neither
Yew nor lollipop
Rue the opening clockwise
Two unto the other
Tip of the tongue and groove
Two much of piano Tuesday
Pita on the riot
Yew the jimmied pew
Elsinore younger than France
Keep up the stiff upper lip work
The work poems leap
Or else a few portable
Tooth slippage
Cue the blue vents to pirate


______________

Oxbow
Colorado River
February
2023



poemanates

______________

1.

Daring detours
Dripping dovetailed
Dust mops


Rectangular
Glandular
The skylark
Numerical sundial
The proverbial


Hilt
Jolt
Yam jam
I stilt bolt damp
Unbuilt
Soup


Pop puppies
Oval
Opal
Offal
Oh ohm om
The papers


Homeward
The workplace
Home town
Your jacket
Your jaywalking
Home teeming


Doorway
Out the window
effortful


Aquarius lungfish
Quilting saltines
acquired squirrels
Attired in taste tests


Stilted milk unbuilt
Milk milk on stilts
Don't forget to
Milk your quilt


Question society
wander aloud
Debone the wind
Edit your heart
Enough
is never enough 
fastener food
drifting forfends
Early in the evening


Every finger reads its riot
Verb until you dry rot
Every worm is an adverb


Read him the dry rot act


Hijinx javelinear
Verbatimid
Bat, an average bat
Harpoon avalanche
Hierlooming


But
What about
The poetry?
Until
until & unless


Hi
Hi
Jester pox?
socks forfend


2.


Daring doubletakes
Deeds divided
Doorways &
Forfendable dumps


Confabulate
Fabrications
Gated communists
Read fortifications
Grated cheese nerves
He is not yellow
Quietly blue
Who conflated
Edifications
Yellowing adverbs
A window on the worm


Wary us 
Waving
Eavesdropping
Earsplitting
Soulsalts


Salted settling
Splitting sorted
Sulking


Asking adventurous
Aimlessly amortized
Authoring


Ambient lightning
Aslant truthiness
Autumnal & lumpy


Syllables
Syllabus
Soapsuds
Sunday school
Slant step
Soup spoon
Spindrift
Sandstorm


Xtra Xtra
Creed all about it
Code of Sigils
Codex camera
Xenophobic oligarchy
Xanthippe vs. analytic patriarchy
Xanthus, also the yellow horse
Daring darkle
Deviled egg drop soap 
Forfend fender blunder
Fizzling blender
Greed all about it
Hotel of Signals
Birdhouse of the gods
Bathtub of the birds
Notes & Surfaces


3.


Nearly dueling doubletakes
Narrowly nearly
Nimble northwestern
Nut art


Juniperil
Junkettle
Jumpersona
Kleenex
Laminated
Lumpy
Proletariat


Pipsqueak
Puppier
& Puppiest


Hovering snacks 
Custom forwarding
Cloud cover


Caring cerulean
Cirrus coeval
Cumbersome
& Cunning


Daring
Deviled eggs may or may not care
Distance Forfends
Dogfood house Forever
Furry friends faring well


Faring felt
Garbled gables
Gestural gelid
Given iced waterfalls
Grommet gravity
Grueling gravy
Fit unfolding
Further


4.


Container ship chip
Seal sea stacks

Freeway way back
Backlog logjam

I think I'll sit
Down on this bank
Of Southern California
Sand and
Watch the
Aquasemic river flow


Reality is a river
Reality is a road
Reality is a metaphor
Every error has its ear
We are standing on the starlight
We are wandering the windrow
We are stammering in our hats
Like a yellow canoe
On a desert lake
Given the toadstool camphor bear
And the gaslight windowsill hat
And the baked canoe
Baking on a desert lake 
We are aeolian
We are a cairn
We are two ducks diving
To the bottom just to
Drink our way back up

Reality is supply chain
Just in time time
Clock counterclockwise


5.


Aquasemic
Sasquatch
Aeolian
Sequential
Aint no sentence
Simplexity
Amoeba
Solstice
Autumnal
Succubus


Amoebasemic
Aestheticalibrated air
Anaphora audibleeding
As between
So beside


Syllables singing
Soft letters
Reality is already
A poem
Forfend unto
Gelid horses
Yams unless
Houses until
Useless writing
Undresses
Itself
Inside
Inevitable
Opal and
Oval offal


_______________
Senator Wash Reservoir
Colorado River
California 
February 2023





Poems Are Water

______________


gas as ash bash
bush rush rust
bust best rest
test vest vast
last cast cost
host most lost
list mist mast
mash cash rash
dash ash as gas



apple please
barrel relic
cutter terse
dotted edits
error orts
furry rye
gaggle glee
hammer merge


Skin ominous balloon
Fervor escape
Surfictional climate


Estimated enigmas
Embellished
Prismatic toe tusks
Askew alfalfa albatross
Gustatory belt sandwich
Systematic solipsism
Lawn gnostic foetus
Rentier
Fractal remuneration
Facticity
Leg drummer
Tooth serum
Egg drama silicone
Humpbacked iguana
Orange lawn humming
I prefer knotty worm fur dust
Enigmatism effoetl effortly


Belt
Cat at cat bat bait cat flat
Cartwheels


Goose duck goose coot duck
Hat duck goose poem hat
Hat taste form goose goose
Utter hat goose lunch lurch


It is 12:04 in the morning
In Arizona but I am
Across the River
In California
This could not have been
Written anywhere else


I am writing in the
Twenty First Century
Only time now once
Return On Investmentation
Popularity contestreamers
Pitchforks are forever
Ok on Om
Mummified ohms
Mortified onions
We are
Present in Their Future


Mirrorcosm
Long fungus seance
Musical sea
Of tranquility
Nor roaring
Non fracas slants
Nonsensical seams
Nanoseconds enough


Empathy dog quirk quorum
We roam the shirk rug path

Empathy path quirk rug
Empty pith quitting snug

Empty bath biting bugs
Energy swath cook hug

Eater employs empty eggs
East of everywhere else

We cook the biting path
We eat the crooked pith


We canon mop cloak
Arribada wriggling
A succinct
Distend


A poem is designed to be read slowly, and more than once.


sign and resign
sign and signature
sign and design


inner nerve
jarring ringers
knotty tyro
lesson sonic
message ageless
narrative hive
narrowly rowdy
ossa salve
parrot rotting
quitting tingles


Fresco flung
Glimpsed seedlings
Aspersed documents
Auscultation
Smoke Tree
Forty four acres
Far up in the southern hills
East of West Memphis
Easier done than said


Emptier gleeful
Realism will tell
You a story
Remember the alarm mop
Remember
To brushfire
Your teeth
Emblematic platitudes 
We are not a narrative
Remember
To remember
That realism
Is a dogma
Narrative platitudes
Hire our teeth
For timber


kaleidoscopic provocations
zodiac provocations
xeriscaped provocations
yearly provocations
washable provocations
allegorical provocations
binary provocations
cautionary provocations
duple provocations
durable provocations
effective provocations
fallible provocations
volatile provocations
ulterior provocations
useful provocations
gullible provocations
gesturing provocations
habitual provocations
jestering provocations
kudzu provocations
laminated provocations
rectilinear provocations
simplified provocations
totipotent provocations
mutagenic provocations
noctilucent provocations
octagonal provocations
portable provocations
quarterly provocations


They say
He lost his fastball
I say
His 2-seamer?
His 4-seamer?
His cutter?
His split-finger?
What about his curveball
His knuckleball
His slider his sinker
His change-up?
He can still paint the 
Corners with a spitter 
In the high 80s


Emulsion wastrel
Wending wrinkles
Woke stretched
Wunderkind


Embattled
Echoes who lens lens
Walking stick
Wetter legumes
Whistle stoppages
We aside from we


Did do dot data did


Rat retch rite rot rut
Rad red rid rod rude


Further on
Town dyed rode
My jagged
Company shoes


The tired true tubers tied


Crust carbon dioxide box
Hatch batch monoxide
Bony cartwheels rust


Implemented oxide
Oxygenated crimp


Parching pumpjack
Mixed intersects 
Modes marching I-Ching
My national
Emergency cleanup
Money is a death wish


Mossy hallway dirt
Letters recombinant
Memoranda


Non-disclosure antipoetics
No mint fob stickers wind
Metric tons of tongues
I rain pass rolling hat chips
I'm water lens chocolate battery
Mashed potato toe mush
O bashing shadow detached
Subjective setting
Settling sun hopscotch
Logic polysemous
Playhouse


Desert Varnish
Coordinator Class


We were having
A heart-to-heart
Self
I said
There is salt
In the ocean
But possessive
Pronouns have no
Reliable function
My self
Nodded at me
From our
Mirror
We have
An understanding


Good for us
Good for the cosmos
Bloodpoems
Navigate
Chariots ample valves
Home team away
Tripwire innate
octagonal plasma
To putrid islet


Unleashed holographic
Representations of
Realities


Everywhere else
We wear it slant
Who dwelled
Wherein inhabited
Quadrangular assemblies


We cheat mice
Clear Rice
Twice


Toucan ointment uncanny
I can anoint
I can canary


Porridge porous ridge ridge
Proposed condiment ensemble
Patching chin chin patting chin
In the middle of the
Road and Things
Mesquite & cottonwood
Dog control masculine accent
Leasing leap sing
Sea lingering
Seeps
Leaking deep beeps
Less quite dog
Measly sea


Mozarabic mussels
Not a helicopter
No more helix anymore


Hug the tiny
Highway
Tightly
I ate a banana
While you were
Sleeping


Formica
Silica
Aloft dazzled
A distinct suspend
Asbestos


We desk green summit
Essential sailing nails


We sense the salt
Mail lingering tales


What about false
Equivalency in bad
Faith you do it too
What about changing
The subject that's
Not even a poem
Nice weather do
You like blueberries


We are not even poems
Red desert pavement
Is mostly black
There goes one now
Hummingbirds
Unparalleled
Utah is a day away
Go find one for yourself


Bread and mosses
Many things
Got one of these
For nothing
Disseminated
Frequencies
And longevity


Waggle calligraphy
Rigorous repetitions
Dysraphism, raphesemics
I was driving my riding
Lawnmower down the
Information Highway
When the winds of
Changes shift
By now we are all fa
miliar with defamili
arization / as artifice /
Nor disjunction as a
Strategy / Ostrich Nanny /
The poems of Frank O'Hara
Are infested with Freedom .
O'Hara infected Ted
Berrigan. Outriding the
Intermountain Back
Roads, we don't belong
To any tradition. In 
Medias Res Medias
Is a good name for
A moving company. 
Particle board. Plumb
Bob. Such fine
American feet. We
Are proud of them.


oil boil toil toll
roll rill dill dell
bell belt melt
felt fell well
will mill milk
mild wild wilt
tilt jilt jolt bolt
bold old oil


Omen Foments
Harmony is oceanic
Momentary


From George Oppen
The volume of the moment
And from Alice Notley
Moment containing omen
Now and every now we know
The volume of the omen


The waterwolf werespiders
Eating through my daydreams


Sleeping bag cool coot
Riverpoems drift cool
Tree coot coot drift
Wing coot coot coot
Scooting like a dream
Clock like a dreamclock
Every day dawning
A little later than itself


of course the former Sovi
Et Un
Ion
is a one-man axle
Of Ev
il
A fiery wheel
Of murderous
Oligarchic Capitalism.
Do you ever feel
One step ahead
Of yourself? Like
Greta Thunberg
Or Wayne Shorter?
Rascal caliber
Bursa calx to scale
Name five cities
In Ukraine
Cheating Ok
But no Chatbots
Randomly railroad bear
Ballast roadkill anthropocene
How, exactly, are
Sanctions something
Other than the war
Crime of collective
Punishment?
Calisthenics in beryl
Cows handsome
In their butter


rubble blemish
sudden dendrites
toccata tablet
umpteen greening
vacuum umlaut
witticism cosm
exits exist
yammering hammers
jazz


Urgencies
Thundering
Rainbow
Ditch


Eh pollen
Passional
Percolates


Hammer emergency
Agency / Mind is
Consciousness is
A causal agent


Easterly windings
Urgent egg hunt
Orpiment & Oxbow


Raspberries rascal rupture
Elemental self-furbished


Blueberries
Nice weather
Moreover
We are blueberries
Move on
Kinetic politics
Life is mostly weather
Oil slicks & salt licks
I could have been
A poem


______________

Lower Colorado River Basin
California & Arizona
February & March 2023




10 Hicucu

______________

toe foot fing
er toe foot
finger toe

toe error
ginger boot
toe wing foot

foot germ err
or roe moot
doe fur goop 

root door foe
berm hoe fir
ear mood loop

route barn deer
floor hot mode
for fire soup

roust float forks
burn plot mire
deep lode soap 

rooster burn
sleeps bloated
pilot code

mirror soup
leaping coast
al codex

minor seep
ing sounding
index lost

index mir
ror creeping
silent ghosts

______________
On the banks
Of the Colorado
River near the
Cibola Wildlife
Refuge Arizona
February 2023

Can't Step in the Same Stream Twice (another kind of bio note)

I was thinking, am thinking, will be thinking, a while back, now and soon, about the title for a book of my poems, perhaps the last book of my poems that I will see published. One never knows about these things. At 67, I am relatively young for an old poet, significantly younger, for example, than two of my primary publishers, poets John M. Bennett and Mark Young. No one should be surprised if both John and Mark are around longer than I am, but again, one never knows about such matters.

In any case, there's less time now than there has ever been. If there's anything I want to do, I had better be working on it now.

In the past four decades, John has published well over a thousand pages of my work, some of it in his periodical, Lost And Found Times, and a lot of it in book form from Luna Bisonte Prods. I lost count long ago of how many pages of my work Mark has published at Otoliths. He published one small poetry book of mine a couple of years ago, and he has published many hundreds of pages of poems, visual poems and assorted prose pieces in Otoliths, his quarterly magazine. He may have published over a thousand pages as well.

A couple of months ago, I was in California, on the central coast, gazing out over the ocean towards Australia and Japan. I remembered an evening from a long time ago, also in California, in a little club called The Inn of the Beginning, when the woman I was with turned around to face me, and said "no public displays of affection." A lot has changed since then, pretty much everything that makes any difference, but for some reason I have always remembered that one small, seemingly insignificant moment.

Maybe I have remembered that small exchange because I think public displays of affection are actually quite important. Bear in mind that there are many kinds of affection, and many ways of displaying affection publicly.

Public Displays of Affection are controversial to some extent almost everywhere, based, to cite a few examples, on age groups, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation. For some groups, public displays of affection are forbidden, and in some locations they are illegal.

In these times it feels like an ethical and a political issue. Advocating in favor of public displays of affection should be counted as a stand taken on the right side of history.

I decided to use Public Displays of Affection as the title for my book. I could make a case for never using a different title.

I am an American poet, active in the last quarter of the 20th century and (so far) in the first quarter of the 21st. With Sue, my wife of 36 years, I am living and traveling in a van, mostly in the western states.

Jim Leftwich
—— written during Pride Month, 2023, in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada

 
 

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