FEATURED POET: LEE BALLENTINE

FIVE POEMS BY LEE BALLENTINE

DETACHED RETINA

I am almanacked by the sacred texts

of the liaison of all languages broken into pieces

& spoken now by the mirror of blue larvae

the kinship of formalism as heliotrope

the color of winter contemplating the sky

& its solemn halo cauterized by clouds

solomon's box of light burned through and thru

by the tidal wave's sapphire tremor

its blur cracked round by horse somnambulism

and this glass passport of the observances

of the ascetic consciousness of wayfarers

their clothes burning in ivory flames

a convulsion of the piano's wrist along the corridor

of colored inks dancing on the crown of my head

stabbed eye of wax and lead

& clairaudience of the historical dynamic, fearfully made

clairvoyance of the mother-of-pearl light

that is duelling with the river

clairvoyages of pince-nez fast as thirst

in a state of burnt spangle

my obsession broken loose from darkness

& in its blue glow of blue forgottenness

mangonels, pieces of the derangement of the senses

dissolved in an skeletal umbrella

& not least, reflective orb smoke of swirl

& lamp clusterdom, broken into pieces

of all languages

GAZING CRYSTAL

what do you see, she said

when you look into your gazing crystal?

* * * * *

I see clouds bursting as the wind

blows a woman with her face shining like a century

over the roofs and gardens

of the eminent jurats of the city

I  see a doctor hung with razored skulls

I see the ailments of naples cured by prayers of thread

myriads of stars and children exclaiming

and a dead dog strung with colored lights

I see ten thousand people perishing

and tents of paper brushed with digestion

an old card table dripping with saliva

and the smoke cacophany of pistols discharging

I see a penumbra of broken crockery

and letters spelling out "afterlife"

rising over the roof of the sun

and magicians pissing out magnesium

I see a cloud blue with lovers' deaths

a thick silver bracelet on a hairy wrist

colored jellies put up in colored jars

and thumbs tied together

I see the mummeries of magnetic songbirds

hopping on the branches of a tree of moonlight

flying crazily through leaves of iron money

pursued by a child with a stick of willow

I see the dim air of a sleeping landscape

painted with artifice the colors of jerusalem

and hung from the walls of the city of oranges

a knight with his arms and legs cut off

I see the pamphlets of dead weight roses

I see the books of eyes and elements

I see the infamous trade in peacocks

and the whirlwind of the earth voluminous

I see all these things this early morning

I see all these things when I look

into the gazing crystal

* * * * *

after a long pause, she said in a lower voice

tell me once again

what do you see when you look into your gazing crystal?

* * * * *

I see a pavement full of moving shapes

I see a glossy lake of shallow mud

I see the shadow of titanium birds

moving over your face while you're sleepng

I see the history of dead images

I see the history of forgotten lovers

I see the history of a people anaesthetized

and the peace of brutality sacrificed

I see a quiet wood and an earthen clearing

a fire and two children sitting

and the moon rising like blood

over their shoulders/over their shoulders

I see a marble palace

I see an open window

and a pool inside filled with clear water

and you and I in it, bathing

* * * * *

and after a pause, she said with a smile

tell me

what do you see now in the gazing crystal

* * * * *

I see you opening your robe to me

and your body shining inside

and myself standing before you

kissing your breasts with tenderness

I see my hand tracing the midline

from your hollow throat

down to your navel like a portal of circumference

down to the join in your legs, slowly

I see from your face as I touch you, you are laughing

I see from your face as I touch you, you are solemn

I see from your face as I touch you, you are shuddering

I see from your face as I touch you, you are groaning

* * * * *

and after a short pause, she said with a serious look

.

.

.

come here

come here and put away your gazing crystal

POEM WRITTEN THIS MINUTE

(or)

POEME FOR VACHE

(or)

THE SUICIDES

there are the dada suicides and there are the beat suicides

there are the suicides who loved life and those who loved windows

there is the lugubrious suicide of the toothache

and the opulent suicide of the frayed raincoat

the perpetual suicide by many small upheavals

the blurred suicide of notebooks and mediocre anger

the circumspect suicide of black bread in thick slices

the stupid suicide of wits entangled with wheels

suicide of cold hands warming themselves in the waterfall

suicide of loose lips and sunk ships and tight shoes

suicide by singing & suicide by swinging

suicide by razors & suicide by papers and tapers

suicide by cop

suicide by money

suicide by pockets filled with stones

suicide by leaving stones exactly where you found them

suicide by horses running directly out of the photograph

suicide by falling off a high vertigo

suicide by striking poses and ignoring the station clock

suicide by wearing the right clothes in the wrong neighborhood

suicide bombers and suicide tyrants

suicide by office coffee grounds

physician assisted suicide & chambered nautilus suicide

fashionable suicide & fissionable suicide

suicide that walks up behind you and puts a piece of paper into

your hand and you open it into flowers of delirium

suicide that wraps its arms around the marble column in the mirror

and holds on until all the door open and a newspaper bursts into flame

suicide that kills you

suicide that brings you to life

there are many suicides

and I recommend all of them at once

all the world convulsing and your hands on the wheel

all image and all damage going simultaneously

wouldn't that be suicide at its best?

going up slowly like the air rising in tides of sky

and all the suicides going off at once inside

flashing as they go

THE DEAD BODY AND THE LIVING BODY

in a gesture particular to him, zorro took

the lovely dead body and the lovely living body

and blindfolded himself to see if he could

enumerate their differences blindfolded

the living, upon being touched lightly

with the handle of the saber

uttered a "quack" and the dead, unprompted

uttered the same "quack"

and taking off his blindfold, zorro

looked at his oscilloscope

and saw that indeed the two "quacks"

were virtually identical

and the dead sat up and said

"you know pal, if you cut a couple of holes

in that black blindfold

you could see everything without taking it off . . ."

and zorro walked out of the lab

leaving the bodies behind

and leaving behind the country of the vaqueros

and leaving the country of the ranchos

and leaving behind the sun and the moon

and the seashells made of fear

and the stones of blood

and the limp of the bull in the small corrida

and leaving the campesinos

and leaving the revolution

and the books about it

and the daguerrotypes of the generals

and leaving behind the nearby village

and its old fruiterer

and the young meat cutter

with his red-stained shirt

and the power outages on the coast

and the hotel lobbies

lit only by starlight

and the bodies locked in embrace

and he rode north to where his US cousins

tiny creatures

gathered around an oval table

every afternoon for supper

and listened to the old RCA radio

that was bigger then they were

and he stood in line at the motor vehicles

and took a number

still wearing his blindfold

with the two holes cut out

and that is how all the brouhaha began

AGAINST ANGELS

against their colors

tamped down at the edges

packed with dreary light

their streaming airs

roughed of hesitant speaking

and watchover equilibrium

against their chemistry

of wits, feints, and sag

that cuts through bruisy clouds

to the top of particular static

the weight of flesh and flesh similarity

their rising, insistent pressure

and light of rotation, weak flexion

and small orbital burns from fingertip crucibles

against angels living, but especially against angels dead

their bones drawn up where muscle atrophies

ligaments dried

and that the body, what remains of it

grows another, perfect self

from the dry cipher

of its votive, calciniferous imbustion

and against this calcination

flamed in tissue of impoverishment

against angels, but equally

against skepticism we seize or inherit

angels’ plausible, redundant metamorphosis

but mostly against angels themselves

angels of no color

that move past rushing freeway drivers

as if they slumped at the wheel

then hurry, light-like, through shade, through sky

angels simulcast and monoglot

and when their minutes turn on an invisible axis

and the breath of passing birds is their echo

     against that too . . .

and so, against ourselves

the flowering, angelic, florinaceous brain

depressed in its brain pan

pushing out flame through the nostrils

the formulae of witness

to look

  not with with the eyes

     but with the tongue

and fire of the hand

fire of the circumference

to see, not with the nerve mass

but with toenails, coffins, telescopes

engraving memory

not only in the spine residues

and stone molecules

 of angel electricity

but upon searchlights, pinheads, papyrii

upon the carved sand grains

and boomhead skins

drumming now to alert us

called out of sleep

into frictionlessness

and against that too

*****

Lee Ballentine had the great pleasure of knowing both Philip Lamantia and David Gascoyne and shared with David Gascoyne a serious interest in nitrous oxide. Lee's poems have appeared in Abraxas, Caliban, Exquisite Corpse, Mississippi Mud, and in hundreds of other magazines and journals worldwide. He calls himself a surrealist rather than a neo-surrealist, believing that surrealism, which is always and forever new, is already neo-surrealism. He notes,

Surrealism is important because it expresses the prerational impulse that is central to what we are. Science has its place but the magnitude of our problems is human and irrational. A logical, game theory analysis suggests that we give up and work on easier problems than racism, greed, and the endangered environment. Surrealism teaches us never to give up.