Poems by Charlie Keil
the center
99% of known spider species have 8 eyes
depending upon how you define “known”
35,000 to 45,000 species are so
and another 45,000 may yet be shown
if our 6th Extinction doesn’t get them first
mapping the fires “down under” the past few months
shows us a cash ring around the continent’s perimeter
hot hot hot and generating their own lightning
gods and goddesses take flight including Demeter
in other words the desert center is about to burst
was reading Weil’s Gravity and Grace before going to bed
before the fire I set in dreamtime
swept through a SW city
trains attempting rescues went up in smoke
one of those Dresden or Hiroshima fires can’t count the dead
it is really hard to believe we are not curst
is it belief or is it be leaf
some 8-eyed leaping spiders
have “brains” in their legs
as Ursula Le Guin said, “One need only act,
without fear of punishment
and without hope of reward:
act from the center of one’s soul.”
Peter Paul Rubens, The Rape of Proserpina, 1636-8. Oil on canvas. Wikimedia.
money owed
money owed after divorce is aliMoney
if it was only a partnership: paliMoney
if you’re too stressed to do legalities: acriMoney
keep the lng in lngo
& the poo in poop
ambiguate Capitalist letters
while remembering eden ahbez saving the big letters
for God and Infinity (or was it Eternity) only
keep the big letters for
Eden Eternity equality Essence = 4 Es?
as in EZ duz it?
and for the Saints
as in O when the Saints
go marchin’ in
small e for entropy
big S for Sacraments
whenever i throw in a little foreign lngo
it’s to remind us that there were many more languages
just a few centuries ago
what will the lngo of your locality be a few centuries from now
how now brown cow
i never saw a purple cow
i never hope to see one
pyramid pointless
the many
connections
between money
& war money & poets
keeping score bad money
driving out the good said our
Aristophanes beside Aristarchus
way before pound/olson/burns/k9s
opting for the spoken over the written
rites before myth food before recipe me/we
how far do we want this pyramid of power to go
before we pull the plug on thuggery skullduggery
Eye of Providence on the $1 bill
lumpen
looking up “lumpen” from the left margin
lots of less-than definitions easily lumped together in clumps
sluggish-thuggish uprooted-disconnected lowest of low
starts with marx circa 1850 coinage regarding the lumpen proletariat
one definition is simply those who will never make the revolution
so; lumpen intellectuals lumpen bourgeoisie lumpen shopkeepers
lumpen you and me lumpen we
in 2019 on the eve of labor day weekend & trump thinking about nuking hurricanes
99% of humo ludens collaborans lookinkinda lumpy
alice coltrane’s Ptah the El Dahoud becomes “trolls under the bridge again
what ill we do! what’ll we do?”
return to laughter
captain bligh couldn’t enforce merriment
the near-blind fiddler tried his best for daily-dancing on the Bounty
play is the way
tethered husky invites hungry polar bear
the boxing mad march hare defies the fox
loren eisley played chicken bone with kit
a light is lit a light is lit
each nursery rhyme challenges time
create a fresh groove that will fit
& dance moves for kids with hooves
imagine every song a local hit
millerton freeze hands in air lift a knee
furnace village palmbeachay full of clicks
sheffield shuffles stretch taxi jive
graph a dance with a catcher’s mitt
propper props induce new lyrics
crazy lyrics push odd melodies
old grooves crave fresh feels
create new looks for meals
slip the yoke with a joke
call me ford inner
i will respond
ashes in pond
take Spirit
beyond
every
pipelines and wet market delicacies
(may we see the wet market menu, please)
pipelines
mega-tankers
oil spills
giant facilities
big corporations where no one is held accountable
capitalist control of the “two-party system”— (emily d’s dash to death)
“invisible hands” of the globalist homo sap sap know-nothings
compete to rape EarthMother
strangle or smother us
with their profitable pollutions
& viral spillages
going from village to village
and then to the airport
localists growing their own food
building clean energy infrastructures off the megagrid
living simply that others may simply live
easily pleased
we can DO something each in our peachy eachness
& encourage all the peace and ecology organizations
to do a People’s Impeachment Tribunal NOW
a Global Organization of Democracies, a GOOD, could
tell bankers and corporations to keep agribusiness
out of the rainforests
this is the safe&sane plain&simple way
to put an end to pandemics
keep the virii in their 1000 diverse bat reservoirs
don’t let them spill into civets (SARS) or camels (MERS)
don’t blame bats, swine, pangolins, birds & bugs
keep the visible hands of the competitive marketeers
from smothering us all
serve the Mother
don’t smother
Who pays for the rainforest clear cutting
paving the way to a palm oil or banana plantation?
Who can afford to pay for
gourmet bat steaks
raw civet liver
ssssmoked camel tongue?
flesh surrounds bones
thank Gaia for chicken soup
letit go letit flow letit blow letit glow
o solo meo
woke up to
snow
turned up the thermostats to burn some oil
fold undies from drier next to furnace fire
&
fret
over coronavirus-19 popping up everywhere unseen even in litchfield county who
dared to bring it here inspiring fear & sexual fantasies galore the ravens
come
&
go
muttering of michelangelo
our inferior birdseed petering out the suets in cages pecked down to fragments
winter gripping us
again
&
again
thank Gaia for chicken soup
An ouroboros in an 1478 drawing in an alchemical tract. Wikimedia.
turning the corner
woke up around 4 and couldn’t get back to sleep
counting atrocities rather than sheep
in search of primitive processes now! in the moment & how!
a way of catching up with angie’s loss of memories, times, and places
reading ross on fred’s eternal return last night
“which frames existence in terms of endlessly repeating cycles”
from now on let’s turn each page into stream-of-con
each page like a 78 rpm record or two 45s separated by
@xtarisks * * * * *anon
my mom’s mom used to say “think of the starving armenians,” so mom
passed it on
& now i gift it over & over again to my kids and grandkids the eternal
heartburn
hertz shmertz over kurds pushed to invent confederalisms decentralizings returns
to the forever of classlessness & timelessness
why the hurry?
cohere and co-hear the consequences in perpetual looping
make sure the songs never end (keep the Tiv rising interval in my head)
. . . . . . . . pauses to buy our daily bread and bits of cheeses
everything-in-process pleases
let it go
let it flow
let it grow
what do we really know?
absolutely nuthin’
Listen to Charlie Keil’s collaboration with Jack Clarke here.
