Lynn Peak, solo mission. 18/03/10

Me and Marx Together in a Hot Tub.

I met Karl Marx in the hot tub at my community centre pool,
Last week.
I was shocked, but I've come to expect
The unexpected.
I asked Karl Marx about Das Kapital,
Then I made a Groucho joke.

Karl Marx looked at me like I was an asshole.
But I was just being friendly.

I told Karl Marx
That I had been thinking
About creating
My own
Manifesto.

Karl Marx got up,
Toweled off,
And left without saying good-bye.

Of Night.

The old man was dead,
When I got home.
But I thought he was sleeping,
So I went to bed.
Left him in his easy chair,
To rot.
Or fester.
Or just sit there,
Until tomorrow afternoon.

It'll Never Fly

Leo Cooper, in a bid to become jet propelled,
was hard at work in his basement workshop.

His nose, as they say, was to the grindstone.

Leo Cooper's anti-gravity boots might as well
have been powered by unicorn dust.

It'll never fly. I told him that.

Leo Cooper took a break, went upstairs,
made Sanka for himself and me.

I took artificial whitener.
Leo Cooper? He takes his Sanka black.

A Poem About Leo and His Uncle.

I don't know if Leo Cooper, the real Leo Cooper, has an Uncle, Ray or otherwise. I assume not. Don't take it personal, we are all Leo Cooper.


Leo Cooper was at his weird Uncle Ray's place,
For the afternoon.

Weird uncle Ray was as old as dust.
As old as lies.
As old as treachery.

Leo Cooper and weird, old Uncle Ray,
Were digging graves,
In the back garden.

"Not so shallow!" barked Uncle Ray.
"Make the walls even!" demanded Uncle Ray.

Leo Cooper dug graves all afternoon.
Not too shallow,
Not deep enough to disguise,
What always would be.

Hands blistered,
Face streaked with mud and sweat,
Leo Cooper sat with weird Uncle Ray,
Watching the summer sunshine fade into the end of the day.

Slowly sipping cold, tall, sweet lemonade,
Each lost in thoughts of their own.

5 Year Plan.

Henry Slade Talbot is coming back one day.
I know this,
I read it in Plain Truth magazine.

Henry Slade Talbot has been down so long,
That he's in a bowl full of cherries.
He's a mess.

And no amount of pain,
Torture,
Bloodletting,
Horrors unspeakable,
Will keep me from getting on the next bus out of town.

I'm on my way to lie,
At the feet of,
Henry Slade Talbot.

The reckoning is nigh.

Veronica.

Here's the story of this weird girl I knew when I was eight years old. Her family joined a cult and moved away. I wonder if she's ever written a poem about me?

In 1976
You and yours
Walked into the blackout.
Blinded.

Veronica called
And someone listened.
They found you
Hiding.
Hidden.
Blinded.
Bitten.

Lunar Eclipse.

Venus Flytrap vs. Bug

The boy and myself made this.

Fuckin' Rat.

Paranoid Love Song #3.

I’m hiding in this cold, dark alleyway,
Digging at the base of my skull with a protractor.
I know it’s in there.
Somewhere.

I was on my way to see you,
When someone began to follow me.
Silent footsteps,
But I knew I was not alone.
I took evasive action.

I’m being watched.
It could be the old woman collecting cans and bottles,
Or the silhouette in that dimly lit apartment.
Or the paperboy,
Or the family next door.

Why couldn’t it have been you?
Staring into my eyes?
Our love, more powerful than this,
Remote controlled listening device.

Why couldn’t it be you?

Paranoid Love Song #2.

I would have called,
But I can’t say my name,
Over the telephone line.

Just when I thought,
Everything was going to be,
Alright.

I saw this story on the news,
And if I can do one thing,
I can read between the lines.

I heard what that,
Foreign correspondent,
Said.

About you.
About me.

I should have called.

Paranoid Love Song #1

I’ll be the aluminum foil,
Over your living room window.

If you’ll be the microscopic microphone,
In my smoke alarm.

No microwaves from any CIA satellite,
Will ever reach you.

As long as my voice transmits,
A scrambled frequency,
To whoever’s been sneaking around here all night long.

And if I ever see a black helicopter,
Hovering over your favourite spot.

I’ll send out a signal with the electrode,
That’s implanted in my head.

That’ll confuse those fuckers,
More than you or I could ever dream.

In which the boy and myself go looking for eagles.

There was evidence on the ground...


We saw their home...


Sam found leftovers...


But no eagles did we see.

Another Poem About Leo

Holy crap, I'm on a roll. Here's the second (as yet untitled) in a series of poems about the fictional life of Leo...

Leo Cooper found himself sitting in a small tavern in Dublin, Ohio.
And he didn't "find himself" in any spiritual or existential way, either.
He just walked in and there, seated at the bar, behind a half-pint of Budweiser, was another Leo Cooper.

Shocked, the original Leo Cooper quietly took a seat in a booth by the door.
He pondered the menu and settled on a pint of lager and a steak sandwich.
Waiting for his food and sipping his beer, Leo Cooper couldn't take his eyes off himself.

Leo Cooper found himself sitting in a small tavern in Dublin, Ohio.
And he didn't "find himself" in any spiritual or existential way, either.
He was just sitting at the bar, behind a half-pint of Budweiser, when in walked another Leo Cooper.

Shocked, the seated Leo Cooper watched in the mirror behind the bar as his other self took a seat in a booth by the door.
He reached for a peanut from the bowl in front of him and took a long drink of his beer.
Cracking peanut shells and nervously fidgeting with a racing form, Leo Cooper couldn't take his eyes off himself.

What if the two Leo Coopers got drunk and started a fight with one another?
Would the sky fall?
Would the sun continue to rise in the east?
Set in the west?
Would this clock continue to tick?
Or is it already broken?

Poems About Leo

Since I've recently decided that I am a poet, and since this revelation was reached through the guidance of my associate Leo, I have decided to write a series of poems based on his fictional life. I don't know much about Leo, so as you read these poems please bear in mind that any resemblance to the real Leo, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Right then. Here's the first (as yet untitled) in what I hope to be a wonderful collection of poetry involving Leo...


Leo Cooper left our hometown in a taxi that he stole from a 7-11 parking lot.
One should never leave their vehicle, taxicab or otherwise, idling in a 7-11 parking lot.
Not in this town, at any rate.

Leo Cooper drove his newly acquired taxi as far west as the gas tank would take him.
He abandoned the car at the side of the highway and hitched a ride into the closest town.
At the Greyhound station the coffee filled Leo's mind with tiny, brilliant explosions.

Leo Cooper, at a different time and a different place, could make one hell of a cup of coffee.
That former Sabre had nothing on Leo Cooper.

When our hometown falls into a giant sinkhole,
When stars collide and this place goes spinning off into the great, wild unknown,
They'll still be talking about the day Leo Cooper stole that taxi from the 7-11.

I am a poet. This is a poem.

Leo always asks for a poem when I speak to him. And I think to myself, "I'm no poet, why ask me?" Well, I've changed. I have decided that yes, I am indeed a poet. Why not? So here, dear reader, is a poem...


ME AND JOHN CAGE IN A DIVE BAR.

I met John Cage one night in a little bar by my work.
Some nights I stop in there for a drink before I go home.
I like the bartender, but some of the regulars can be pains in the ass.
John Cage was drinking a whiskey sour.

I had a ginger ale.

"Is this a song?" I asked John Cage.
He sort of sighed and ordered another drink.
"Sometimes," John Cage said to me, "I just like a quiet drink, okay?"

Okay.

"But you're dead, John Cage.
Don't tell me this isn't poetry!"
John Cage just sat there,
Staring into space.

Corpse Money

1.

They've found six dead children about twenty blocks from my house.

I'm not waking up to this so I hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. Seven minutes later, some kind of personnel carrier is involved in a major accident that has one of the local bridges shut down. I assume bodies are strewn all over the roadway, so I hit the snooze button again and go back to sleep. I plan to stay in bed until the newscaster inside my bedside clock-radio delivers some happy news.

After another seven minutes some more rationing orders are proclaimed, but it's only butter and I could care less. Snooze.

A handful more seven minutes' roll by and I am eventually rewarded for my patience by a cute little human interest story about a boy and a dog and a rowboat. As I reach across my bedside table to turn on the electric kettle, I realise that this is going to be a bad day. I'm down to my corpse money and the rent is due.


2.

The corpse money is sixty dollars. I found it some months ago in the jacket pocket of the first casualty in my neighbourhood. The guy had been shot in the forehead and left to die in the front seat of his car. Some local kids found the guy and I was the first adult on the scene.

I was putting on airs of responsibility for the benefit of the kids, ostensibly looking through the corpse's belongings for identification or some other pertinent information, when I grabbed the thin wad of folded twenties. I instinctively pocketed the cash, although at the time I wasn't overly concerned about my financial state. I was hoping to find the dead man's gun.

As I said, this happened months ago. Things have quickly changed around here. Shortly after I came into possession of the corpse money the police all but stopped performing their civic duties. They still patrol the streets, but there's no way they'd respond to a call about one lousy dead guy in a car.


3.

Things have taken a drastic turn for the worse since I got the corpse money. There's the fighting of course, but I don't suppose sixty dollars could be to blame for all that. Even I'm not so paranoid as to lose all belief in coincidence.

The theoretical feces began to make contact with the proverbial axial-flow oscillator shortly after I returned to my room that fateful day.