outlaw poetry and free jazz network

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010...1:50 am

todd moore | instructions for reading dead reckoning

I write poetry the way some people bet on roulette. I write poetry the way John Dillinger robbed banks. I do it compulsively, I do it quickly, I do it incessantly, I do it explosively because writing poetry means engaging in an act of unpredictable psychic aggression. When I write a poem I intend to assault you. I need to pull you into my long unforgiving nightmare war. And, make no doubt about it. My poetry is an assault on your person, your identity, your eyes, your skin. When you read one of my poems, you enter into a minefield that is not of your making. And, believe me, you may think you know where you are but you don’t. The thing is, when you detonate one of my mines, you’ll lose more than your legs. Reading my poetry means nothing less than engaging in an act of guerilla warfare. And, if writing is not war, then it is nothing at all.

And, I’m always writing poetry which means I am always at war. You might see me driving down the street. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. You might see me prowling a used bookstore for Kell Robertson or Tony Moffeit or John Yamrus or David Lerner chapbooks. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. You might see me hunkered way down in a movie theater seat with a sack of popcorn and a big drink. That doesn’t mean I am not writing. I am always writing because whatever does the writing in the blood and the bones of who we all are never shuts down. Never lets you alone. Keeps throwing snapped sticks in the bonfire of poetry somewhere back there or down there in the long torture and burn of the writing.

And when I go to my office to do some serious work, I’ll sit down and write a book of poetry from scratch, from a few lines of this, some thrown away lines of that. If I need to I can write twenty poems in a day. Or, more. It just depends on the mojo, the way the good stuff is coming, the velocity of the poem, the way my blood is igniting. The lunatic duende and when that appears it’s like Raymond Chandler’s Santa Ana winds and I can feel the faint cold touch of the butcher knife right at the jugular. And, the blood has to dance before just every poem, the blood has to dance because I am always at war and war is just simply a long and intricate Orange Blossom Special ghostdance with death.

DEAD RECKONING came that way. Shaken straight from the dreamgut along with the pulse of a title from an old Humphrey Bogart movie based on a David Goodis novel. I love stealing the titles of old noir novels and films. Maybe it goes back to the primal cave painting days when an artist hunter pulled a handful of blood out of one of those huge, slaughtered bisons, then ran into a cave and smeared the blood on the wall and in that torchlight the blood smear almost looked like something maybe a face and that made him go out and get more blood so he could do it again. It’s really all about stealing the blood and making dream images out of it. Aggression and war and poetry and blood. We have Guernikaed our way through thirty thousand years of painting and poetry and blood over blood.

the way

i write
is strictly
fuck you
no cap
ital letters
no punc
tuation
the words
jammed
together
or all
smashed
up like bro
ken glass
crushed
pop cans
& used
condoms
the ameri
can sen
tence is
either a
stutter
or a
scream
& i’m
waiting
to watch
it explode

From DEAD RECKONING, due out in 2010 from Epic Rites Press.

When I am beginning to put a manuscript together, I start with my desk first because it’s usually piled high with both new and old poems. There is no order or logic for the way I put a book of poetry together. It’s part arm wrestle, hundred yard dash, left hook right cross, half assed guess, pact with the devil, a conjured ritual of fictions and lies and I lunge through the stacks of paper on my floor. With DEAD RECKONING ninety percent of what I wanted I found there and if I didn’t find it there I wrote it. And, once I got going it just poured out of me the way that The Name Is Dillinger poured out of me, the way that Working On My Duende poured out of me, the way that The Corpse Is Dreaming poured out of me, the way that The Riddle Of The Wooden Gun poured out of me, the way that Russian Roulette poured out of me because once I am going, once I have launched myself into writing a book of poetry it almost feels as though I am driving a fast car down the interstate with my foot pressing the gas pedal right down to the floor.

i never know

where a poem
is going it’s
like a car
w/an invisible
driver a
dream that
is begging me
to watch it
a bomb that
longs to
go off i
never know
what a poem
is going to
tell me
because the
talking is
all words
over words a
sleep of fire
a speaking
in tongues
the lines
ache beyond
aching to
implode
every poem
is a dead
reckoning
a strategy
for getting
so lost no
psychic map
cd ever
find it
every poem
is a death
song &
death knows
that i
love to
sing off key

Rob Plath would know exactly what I am talking about. He nails it perfectly in this poem from A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY, Epic Rites Press.

written on a napkin in a dive bar while blacked out

birth is
a sadistic
mechanic
who built
pissing-shitting
lying-raping
killing-dying
skin machines
& sent them out
to do 360s
over & over
ripping up
the beautiful
inanimate
wilderness
of heaven
w/their vicious
animate
fleshy wheels

I love the explosive velocity of speed in poetry along with the wild genius accidents of red hot words. And, that is the way DEAD RECKONING works. It’s like a book of poetry that secretly longs to be a novel except that in this novel the words don’t track across the page like long fat prose sentences but instead dive minimally down the page toward the violent wormhole of desire waiting at the bottom. DEAD RECKONING is THE BIG SLEEP of poetry because like Chandler’s novel, it has no plot. If it has any semblance of plot at all it’s the subversion of plot. And, remember, postmodern plots in poetry don’t exist except that they do. You just have to feel around in the dark for them or wait until the plot hits you like a slug fired from a long way off. When I put a plot in a book of poetry, it’s like having a black widow waiting in a bouquet of roses.

love is

Love is the blank space
in a magician’s hand

It used to be a red ball
maybe a coin,
the queen of spades,

a dove
so disoriented
by fingers
it flew
towards the sun
only to be eaten
by a hawk.

From THE BROKEN AND THE DAMNED, by Jason Hardung, published by Epic Rites Press.

And, DEAD RECKONING doesn’t have Philip Marlow either. Who needs a detective when you can fall in love with the mystery of poetry, murder, blood, and all those killers waiting in the rain? Who needs a solution to a mystery when it’s the very essence of the mystery that you’ve been after all your life? Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd when you can roll in the ditches with shamans?

If you hustle the line, you know there is something so dark and magical and alive and dangerous about writing a book of poetry, especially under a self imposed deadline that it almost seems like a sentence of death. The whole time I was working on DEAD RECKONING it almost felt like death was standing halfway in and out of my office door. Sometimes it looked like he was trying to stick his finger in his ass, sometimes it looked like he was trying to masturbate. Except that he didn’t have an ass to stick his finger into and he didn’t have a penis to play with. He was made up of nothing but bone, casual lint, and black air. But, it didn’t matter because the more night mojo death tried to work against me the more it only heightened the atmosphere, stacked the odds against me and I always work best when the odds against me are all the way through the roof.

Writing poetry is like playing virtual roulette. There is no ball to spin, there are no numbered slots for it to click across. It’s just you, death, and the words in your head and you are betting your blood that you can write something at least as good as anything out there and maybe better than any dream you’ve ever had. Just you, the words, and death. That’s the ante and when you start writing the ball is in play. John Yamrus knows that kind of minimalist action better than anyone. This time the bet against death is DEAD RECKONING. The next time it will be DILLINGER.

instructions

for playing
russian rou
lette first
put the
bullet in
an empty
chamber
spin the
cylinder
3 times
quickly
cock the
hammer
back lick
it off for
luck & the
black taste
of death
then point
the pistol
at yr head
take a
very deep
breath ex
hale slowly
& let yr
finger fall
in love w/
the trigger
the way
that maya
kovsky’s
did the
shock of
the click
cd kill
you