Sunday, April 27, 2014

Steven Karl's Dork Swagger





The daily= some theorizing
and punk music collapsing into bird
song, nostalgia,
Whitman in a Misfits shirt, dialectic
of real and fake gold chains,
recognizable forms allowing readers
to settle in under the surface
of references and tone, punctuation
like the swat of a tuned
snare drum, direct address
to a leaf with full sincerity, it's still funny,
the becoming-nature chaos
of everything that exists
represented by torqued
narrow lines spilling
down the page,
the notes are an amplifier for
the book which is a poem
which is a guitar mostly but also
a couple hundred lead singers we love
then don't take seriously,
the protest song is hidden in
the drone of the I Wanna Kiss You song,
the protest song is protesting against
itself, the protest song is a list of friends
represented by centipedes, the list
of friends becomes every-friend becomes
friendship becomes Frank O'Hara
loving everyone we love then talking
shit about them with us later, the point is
the cat still has fangs when it's purring,
the point is that the static is
vulnerability, the point is

"Bonfire getting low
Need more things

To burn"