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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609402952 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wings Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 120 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Keith Flynn is a former lyricist and lead singer for the acclaimed rock band The Crystal Zoo, the founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, and the the author of four poetry collections: The Book of Monsters, The Golden Ratio, The Lost Sea, and The Talking Drum. He is the recipient of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publisher's Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, and the Sandburg Prize for Poetry. He was also twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for North Carolina. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Read an Excerpt
Colony Collapse Disorder
By Keith Flynn
Wings Press
Copyright © 2013 Keith FlynnAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60940-297-6
CHAPTER 1
ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY • On the Boardwalk
Sequestered in Atlantic City
where Dinah Washington flirted
with Billy Eckstine at The Blue Orchid
and every lightning-streaked storm
mumbled its pea gravel of rain
and grumbled out to sea.
Where I bought a classical bust
of a woman with a mirror for a face,
never broke down at the blackjack altar,
tabled my expectations, and all were met
as the Ukranian doctor confronted
the Nigerian slugger.
Where the realm of the gull and piper
perfectly intersected with the boardwalk
and its candy factories of nubile
Oriental dolls and steed-mounted
Genghis Khans, in Brooks Brother armaments,
holstered Shamanic come-ons as lions of industry.
Where the petite angel of my dreams
pouted in her sleep on a Puerto Rican flag
while the bitter antibiotic of my seed
glazed her rising breasts, and art deco
trumped the disposable concrete tower,
cranes managed by Mexicans charging by the hour.
Where the dollar is hidden and is King,
seeping through the shell-streaked sediment
minute by minute, where the soul, clenched
in its shell, admires the body's muffled heartbeat,
trailing the dribbled potency of the moment
like cheap perfume, where the Tropics meet
the Hamptons and both succumb, where
the prelapsarian middle class of all rotted
American Dreams comes to be fleeced
and calls it fun, where the spiral helix
of our DNA is mounted and washed gospel
clean, licked by so many tongues.
AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND • Rembrandt's Mirror
When the money first comes it seems a waterfall of silk.
The aristocrats want their likeness to display a mauzy gaudiness,
lest they be confused with the riffraff, but reflecting the discipline
and sobriety of a good Protestant employer. Easy to grease
the portal when you're gazing in the mirror and pluck
yourself a doe-eyed, pudding-faced daughter of fortune,
and fill your castle with artistic indisposables, stuffed armadilloes
and historic spears. But when the patron cannot find himself
in your eyes, the vision becomes opaque, the paint layered on,
and the tribal elder becomes the young sophisticate.
Refinement is the catchword of the day, Italian baubles
and Grecian columns, and when a council of your contemporaries
is given the heavenly opportunity to sit in judgement of you,
it becomes a drunken wilding of merry men in the forest clearing,
the fire lighting from below their night watch of long knives.
And when you are stripped of every possession save your mirror,
just big enough for one man to carry, it's like all predictable things.
Cotton-colored moths fly out of the barren closet, youths toss clods
at disreputable fellows whose names are spoken in hushed tones by
their gloating fathers. In the shop windows the splendid visage blurs.
All that is left to paint is tender ugliness; the eloquence of splattered
glass, mercy shavings from the ostentatious tree, balanced above modest
stacks of Christmas gifts, with balled ornaments in the darkened room
clinging to the boughs, whose mirrored surfaces fill with your shadow
and shatter, razored carols waiting for your bare feet to clatter through.
BERLIN, GERMANY • European Political Discourse and the
Paranoid Style
What small harm there was
now saturates the greater good.
A vivid first feast of wind,
purity in the form of coercion,
lards the crisp air with recognition,
and those tarred thereafter harden
with resolve. Success has many fathers,
they say, but failure is an orphan.
Their tolerance crusts and sizzles
underneath the lava fall,
congealing into new real estate
as the calamity recedes.
But Berlin still bears the shadow
of the wall, and the tribal
convulsions secrete their hopeful
flares, fomenting inside the wrinkled
features of trusting immigrants, who
brick by brick, build their ghettos
from the remnants of the State's
failed experiments, and ride to work
in the back of the bus, whose
righteous anger explodes a cafe,
or fills the subway with terrible gusts.
Who were proud to be present
when the Great Wall fell, they say,
and then it fell on us.
BARCELONA, SPAIN • Gaudi
We cannot tell if we are swimming
among the branches or the roots,
the doorways open into clear blue sky.
The tree outside the window is my teacher,
he said, and Barcelona, she is mine.
Jellyfish float through our bedroom
like lamps carried by parishioners
through catacombs. Catalonian rock faces,
whirlpools and eddies, brazen dragon scales,
clouds on the move; these were the building's
skin-tight costumes. The room's penumbra,
doors opening one into the other, torrents
of tile, and the whale's interior as imagined
by Jonah, shot through with layers of light.
Haloes of wrought-iron palm fronds explode
into space and warn the fence to listen.
The gold and olive ivy climbs translucent
stairs and spires of coral swirl, littered
with saints, all in a jumbled muscular
column toward Heaven. Marble fish
are sliding one against another, sleek silk
tapestries of fin and bone that follow
the sky train to the mountaintop monastery
of Montserrat, whose cliffs were cracked
by the clap of the Crucifixion. Deep thickets
of pleasure, with steel guardians, frolic
around the parlor like nickel-plated cats.
The heart of God is grazed by the fountain's
feathers. Teeth like torches come flying from
underwater and sink into the hillside.
The hinges of the city loosen and shift,
cars disappear into tunnels, like coins in
cake batter, and land in the dancing park.
The windows burst, mouths opening.
Barcelona's frescoes sing and sing, but
the buildings are stillborn, already
weathered by wind and rain, the future
constantly erected in God's honor,
canceling Time's appointment with decay.
HAVANA, CUBA • Nearing Havana
(being watched by a soldier)
On the plaza the faces of the young girls
like geranium petals on a brackish pond.
The barrier between twilight and nightfall
is filled with the ghosts of the Revolution,
an armada of American cars from the fifties,
like a bounty of white blood cells flooded
into the body as a defense against oblivion.
Unseen stairs and the lethality of armored
illusions cause the myth of the world to swell
as the streets swarm around my heavy shell.
The East Germans say that the Chinese
should understand Berlin; they have the
Great Wall, constructed with copious amounts
of peasant blood over nineteen centuries.
Something within that doesn't trust a fence,
sees a pathway in a pile of bricks,
cannot find the green reed in the white mist.
I have not seen the sun go down from the steps
of the Acropolis, but I have disappeared into
the purple flare of a sunset beneath Clinch Mountain.
The country is a shadow whose words are overcast.
The Cuban horizon is closing fast,
and in a godless country, the citizenry
has learned to row away from the rocks.
Three girls in their funeral dresses
search the city dump for discarded baby chicks
tossed down from the hatchery on the hill.
Sometimes what is lost wants to be found.
The black and white photos show happy rebels
in fatigues kissing the ground. There is no road
built upon the sea, nothing to unknot the shifting
tides of memory, where the litter of promises
makes the mind go wild. In the beginning
was the Revolution, and death followed
behind it like a nursing child.
COLLODI, ITALY • Speaking In Tongues: The Diaries of St. Pinocchio
I
Coupled with a lacquer of forgiveness,
I keep several versions of the Truth
at the ready. "Don't let them kill us,"
the baby dolls cried; but my hands
were the enemy and would fly into
evil before my mind could catch up.
I could have done it once, but now
I can't go back to being silent, and
I am a child in this new country who
has forgotten my own language and
can speak nothing but yours. Only
hours before Gepetto loosed me from
the log, I told the carpenter not to hit
me too hard. Unsettling as this was,
he forgot and carved an ear onto my head.
I heard Gepetto's poverty and vain
mocking liberties with the Truth, his
golden wig a dead give-away, until he
tripped over me and I banged his shins,
felt the skin of his fingers in my open
mouth, feeling for my tongue. That would
have been enough, but with the bonus of
legs, me and the Devil had to dance.
II
I took my first best chance when the cops
busted Gepetto for shaking me down.
I pedaled home to his studio on a stolen bike,
made my dislike of his paintings fully known
with my own strokes of blown color, my fury
unearthed, then I heard the tedious chirp of
little Jiminy, a tiny black cricket who had
haunted this hut for a century, and admonished
me with vague platitudes about rebellion
and skipping school, but I mashed him
with a mallet and thought nothing of it;
his splatter didn't matter, 'cause I didn't
hang around to visit with the other kids,
or do the things they did. My spirit was
clearly loosed; and I knew what I must do.
III
The nose thing began unexpectedly,
looming off my face in the middle of
a minor misadventure, but soon I
perfected its pitch. Like a fly fisherman,
I could slowly throw it out a safe distance,
even when I was telling the Truth,
to throw my mark off the scent, or
to upset the tension during a plea-filled
soliloquy, I might change the tint
of my skin or grow the nose a bit.
Timing is the essence of Tragedy,
after all, and panic can be your friend.
In the square I danced and fenced and
did my flips. My hands came off with
the gloves, which shook up the poor
peasants who slaughtered chickens
until their arms were sore. Braced
and balder, I stood taller beneath
the thunder crunch of laughter, and
wine always made the whiny curses
of Gepetto fade completely away.
IV
Sure I look pathetic now, no one hoists
you on their shoulders for telling the Truth.
Before I was a boy, my voice was all I had,
and only when settled in wood was I able
to convince Gepetto to free me. Even now
when I leap the brook, it will snatch my
voice and force me to chase it until I stand
beneath the waterfall and it soaks back
into my throat. The old red oak had stolen
my finest notes, the only song I knew,
until I burned him through and through,
muscles of fire, orange and blue,
consumed the tree, freeing my song
to return to me. Once, after my voice
jumped a crow and flew for days with
the bird's black wings, did I think of
giving up and never saying a thing,
just let my actions speak, but clearly
Gepetto enjoyed that crow pie as
much as me and told me how he
longed for my song, though my dance
was fine. The old man delighted
at my sarcastic lines and would always
take care to pay me my share, when
the crowd begged the puppet to sing.
V
Hey, I've been a donkey without shoes,
chipped hooves and sour straw and it's
the reality that gets you every time.
Find a dime on the road and some
toad-faced rabbit talks you out of it,
or better yet, says bury the money and
through some bit of hoodoo honey in
the Land of Miracles you'll be stinking
rich, all your foibles forgotten and gold
in your teeth. Focus for a second on the
scene brewing in the street and fire will
take your feet. Try popping up and down
on them pegs for a second and you'll
start praying for strings and fingers
and forget all about who's really running
the show. We're all a hungry stomach
from the boneyard or the ash box, ain't
no blue fairies floating down all Catholic.
We're just sent here to wait, and God
takes his sweet time, like a snail on
a railing, he's got all day, plays flute
with the fishes, and blows the sky all
out of whack. It's sad really, and I'm
too damn hollow to get all misty on you.
VI
Onstage it's Dream City, and whatever
spell is cast by the deities there, rings in
the dreamer's cuckoo skulls for all eternity.
Poison yourself with a wish and every
swishing tail is yours for the taking.
I'm not making this up, you get in first
person and the crowd's collective yawp
will swallow you like a gum ball. Fall in
line and the royal we can do anything.
I get my suspenders tight, shoe buckles
bright, and we talk down to them poor
fools who paid their fee to see us perform,
hot-wired to the puppet master who speaks
in adoring tones, worn records riding their
familiar groove. First one moves, gets it,
I squeal, and I down the applause like tonic,
the chorus line, the pitter patter of my little
feet, the old man's pride and joy, and I
look in the mirror like everyone else,
100 percent flesh and blood, mimicking
the teacher, but I'm just a boy, I say,
can't you see, a boy, a boy, a boy.
DHARAMSALA, INDIA • The Exile
This is my last letter. The first one
disappointed in a love triangle has
lost the game. Some things upon
which I've aimed were undoubtedly
innocent; but that is for others to decide.
I've tried to rope the world in countless
ways and have done the best I can,
with tangled prayers and no reprieve.
The danger in the Beast is its seasons.
The morning star enlightened Buddha
and his first words formed a poem
out of the desperate ardors,
adders made of words, blind as a boxer,
striking out at every sound.
How do we discriminate?
The map is linear, but poetry is
circular and continuous,
untangling as it tells.
DOTHAN, ALABAMA • Alabama Chrome
There is no crime of which
I cannot conceive myself guilty.
— Goethe
Hard to explain away
Holy Ghost power ripping at a tongue,
or a pig boiling in a vat of shine,
duct tape holding together
a Malibu, shading a dog asleep
beside a possum skull chewed down
to the bone and the sheen
on that tape is Alabama Chrome.
Still waters house cottonmouth nests
and test the depths of an Easter
baptism by a West Virginia
coal mine apostle handing out
Holy Roller popsicles and New
Testaments, two for a dollar.
His shoes have holes in the soles
and carry a satchel with crosses
made out of Alabama Chrome.
Pompadours signify a trickster
made slicker with a combful
of axle grease, trees stripped
beneath a dozer like matchsticks
rolled in the teeth of fourteen
illegal Mexicans handing tobacco
in a ramshackle locust post lean-to,
and the odor of fajitas that smells
like home, six inch shoulder gash
held together with Alabama Chrome.
Tattoos with more cover-ups
than a DC barrister, maimed
fingers and feet and acetylene
torches forming Jesus sculptures
for sale at the healing, six miles
from the border, out of the trunk
of a Buick Regal, whose busted
quarter panel testifies to the enduring
strength of a live oak, growing alongside
the sacred swamp, whose gentle nature
belies the road sign on its trunk, mile
marker formed by strips of Alabama Chrome.
Handsome warlocks, strapped to strip
malls, and mauled by the perfection
of the window shows, grow stories
packed with prison grits and sugar tits
and drop poison pellets from their
raven beaks onto the lips of sun-streaked
Meth-pocked blondes in the windy
parking lots of ritualistic pawn shops
and close-cropped itchy trigger teeth
gritted in the Marine recruiting station,
whose volunteers choose grief over
nothing, and shaving lotion in their
sweaty palms help jack the microphones
on the parade podium, faulty wiring saved
once again by a slab of Alabama Chrome.
First there's a funeral, then a trial,
judges killing time with stretchy statutes,
whose busted claws grow back in
a generation like crawdads, whose only
sin is proximity to poverty, and fractured
fairy tales with family trees raised
on probation, and sentenced to speaking
in tongues, are gigged on Confederate
cinderblocks, cut and shot with
Pentecostal backslides, artistic outlaw
fanatics, whose sexual gymnastics atop
cigarette machines crack the secular
windows of the gray institutions, and
no reflection is shown, with holes sealed
up and renovated with Alabama Chrome.
EL PASO, TEXAS • The Future of an Illusion
In El Paso, Texas, mid-August, 1982,
and it is so hot the trees are chasing
the dogs around, muggy as donkey guts.
This must be where the Devil goes
on vacation, I think, marooned in a brown
Chevy van, parked sideways in an alleyway,
with one eye peeled for the cops,
having a conversation with a prostitute
who is anchoring the bus stop bench. Forty,
with Gladys Knight lips, and fading already,
her last words as she started to pass out,
the proclamation that tonight she would
smoke herself straight into Hell,
downhill all the way. She rolled over
on her sled, as her feet fell asleep first,
and her cigarette dimmed, its slim
crack-laced surface tipped by
a glowing cinder on the end.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Colony Collapse Disorder by Keith Flynn. Copyright © 2013 Keith Flynn. Excerpted by permission of Wings Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Atlantic City, New Jersey * On the Boardwalk,
Amsterdam, Holland * Rembrandt's Mirror,
Berlin, Germany * European Political Discourse and the Paranoid Style,
Barcelona, Spain * Gaudi,
Havana, Cuba * Nearing Havana,
Collodi, Italy * Speaking in Tongues,
Dharamsala, India * The Exile,
Dothan, Alabama * Alabama Chrome,
El Paso, Texas * The Future of an Illusion,
Galapagos, Ecuador * The Agnostic,
Flynn Branch Road, North Carolina * Assuming the Conception,
Flynn Branch Road, North Carolina * The Blues,
Gaza, Palestine * Easter in Palestine,
Grand Canyon, Arizona * Election Day at the Grand Canyon,
Labadee, Haiti * A Navel in the Middle of the World,
Hollywood, California * The Director,
Springfield, Illinois * Lincoln's Life Mask,
Islamabad, Pakistan * The Birth Mark,
Jersey City, New Jersey * Gray Power,
Izu Peninsula, Japan * The Seven Islands of Izu,
Srinegar, Kashmir * The Force of Compassion,
Frankfort, Kentucky * Appalachia,
Lourdes, France * The Brides of Christ,
London, England * Henry VIII,
Morris, Illinois * The Perfect Game,
Mumbai, India * Rendition and the White Dwarf,
Nanking, China * Nanking, 1937,
Northampton, England * The Silver Surfer,
Omega Institute, New York * The Night Train to Omega,
Osaka, Japan * The Blue Teen on Train 52,
Paris, France * The Resurrection of Haute Couture,
Pristina, Kosovo * Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,
Quantico, Maryland * Using the Enemy's Arrows,
Queens, New York * Facebook,
Kigali, Rwanda * The Reckoning,
Tuva, Russia * The Throat Singers of Tuva,
Linares, Spain * Running with the Bulls,
San Francisco, California * Coffin Not Included,
Tulsa, Oklahoma * A Poem in the Shape of Tulsa,
Hermitage, Tennessee * Old Hickory Gets The Bends,
Useless Loop, Australia * God Gives Us Each a Song,
Ute Mountain, Colorado * The Silence,
Vitebsk, Belarus * "If You Are Chagall ...",
Venice, Italy * Eros Thanatos,
Washington, DC * Present at the Revolution,
White Rock, North Carolina * Being, Non-Being, Becoming,
Xavantina, Brazil * The Tipping Point,
Xanadu, China * Cinema Xanadu,
Yangtze River, China * A Rolling Story,
Zmjibar, Yemen * The Arab Spring,
Zermatt, Switzerland * Creationism,
Zanzibar, Africa * The Startling Invention of Chairs,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,