Valery Oisteanu


BREAKING THE CRYSTALS

Heidi Jones, Joyce Johnson, Janine Pommy Vega
A trio running through Tompkins Square Park
Drinking at Five Spots, at Seven Arts Coffee Shop
Fucking on the bench with a beat poet
Crazy all the way to Bellvue
Jumping from the fifth floor through a closed window
These are the women of the beatitude
The Beat voices, some in love, some on mescaline
What are they waiting for, I ask
They are waiting for God to show his face
To talk to them to sing to them
Meanwhile they are reading self-confessions
At the Barnes & Noble Bookstore on Astor Place
And the clear path can be seen
Between the white books, between the white sands
Past the white stones, white flowers, white chairs
There is a male hunter tracking the women of the Beat
Tracking the philosophical void
Between "cranial guitars" lying on the floor dying
I'm listening to the voices
Of American poetry
Watching the river turn into a sexual waterfall
Watching the eyes watch me
Red lips, moving lips
Like the moving flames of the candles
Watching dimples turn into wrinkles
Watching beauty turn graceful age
Nude angels depart on cabalistic air balloons
They are throwing books like sandbags
Poetry is a dead art and poets are dead meat
The clouds creep into my belly, into my pockets
Down the stairs, jumpstart the reality
Poets are cooking soup for Tibetan Llamas
But there is nor more Tibet and a very few good llamas
Let's invite women poets into the soup kitchen
We are in line, post-Beat, post-Hippie
Post-sexual revolution anarchists
Welcome psychedelic sisters and brothers
To our underground garden of desire

 

BENJAMIN PERET-CENTENNIAL

Would it be a rain of frog legs and brie at your anniversary?
Would it be a parade of tandem bicycles driven by boy-girls?
A statue of a giraffe will be erected at the Place des Invalides
Everyone will be eating a cake made of wax
St. Benjamin will be enshrines in Mexico as Santo Peralta
Your heart belongs to Remedios Varo
And your smile belongs to surrealists everywhere
You were the original source of pink humor
Insulting priests on the streets of Marseilles
Your talent gushed out like wine fresh out of the barrel
Like flying jellyfish colored in red
Like a blue blooded lizard copulating with a dolphin
A torrent of lipsticks bursting with perfume
An explosion at the abandoned Turkish baths ignites the sky
The phone rings like an old blues song
Inside your empty closets a storm is brewing in your hollow drawers
On the bed a soldering lonely pillow
From flames long extinguished
For your Benjamin Peret we cut our wrists and paint the walls
Long live your poetry and french fries.

 

WOUNDED GALAXIES

(1)                                                 Moons-of-Venus Ballroom

Hello hello, Orion, hello Betelgeuse
Hello distant neighbor Alpha Cenauri
In this high-speed world astronomical errors are galactical
Earth calling, calling twin stars, calling all the women who are
                                                                   stalking my apartment
Firelfy planets, fireweed supernova
The Csmos is full of spacejunk and iron garbage
Fire and wood in vulgar mood
Pluto is made of prosciutto, Venus with a penis, and Neptune with a
                                                                   Typhoon
Worse than burning books is not reading books
The farthest quasars are rushing towards me with the speed of light

(II)                                                 These Are the Dark and Secretive Places

Navigating through the links of wounded planets
Far from constellations of jealousy and possessiveness
Far from concentrated violence, far from IV and HIV
Feel it, the furious pin of a planet swinging, screaming, hollering,
                                                              Laughing
Signals that never reach other constellations
SOSS, Save Our Solar System
Astronomers are due to arrive at the end of the millenium
At the end of the second millennium
A theory of schizo-genesis is about to be reincarnated
You can not step onto the same mistake twice
Far from magnetic fields,
Far from the rings of coiled, convulsive rainbows
This is the taste of a surreal universe
Take off your jeans, take off your clothes
You are in the Venus Ballroom
Venus with a penis
I cannot fail to observe gray hair in your pubic hair
The cosmic dealers are collecting all the grey beards
And the artists are obsessed with death
With private death, with ugly death
Death can be beautiful but I cannot describe how to enter the
                                                                    Enchanted domain
Two candles are burning on the altar of Zen Dada
Just step between them

(III)                                                               The Kiss of Buddha

The blue wind blows the summer out the window
The green wind whips the trees across Second Ave.
And the pigeons are landing on the funeral officer's head
The East River is raving in a woman's voice
Around the city of eternal death
A fog of steaming asphalt
The autumnal equinox is a full moon
And the ghost of Ezra Pound is flying overhead
Good night Mr. Pocketknife
Good night Mr. Pickpocket
The airports are shut down and no one can land
We circle overhead for years till we run out of life
This is the kiss of Buddha, the golden silence
That comes shortly after the crash landing
Prepare for crash landing
We have thirty seconds before crash landing.