I CLAIM THIS MANTLE

of the Good Gray Poet.

I claim this mantle: King of May.

(c) 2014 lee sharks

from Pearl and Other Poems:

http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429895012&sr=8-1&keywords=lee+sharks+pearl

TEKATAK

"Dinosaur Whitman," (c) 2015 emily eissenberg

TEKATAK
from Pearl and Other Poems

Restless, I entered the chat room with Jack

distended in speech & hyperlinks

& lonely from solo work of scouring

vast archive of internet banks &

Google Books & encyclopedia sewers

& hundred thousand fibers of

work-frayed hair & scholar hat

& bleak-slouched shoulders &

motionless butt of sitting, numb

& flittering thoughts of argument

moth & outbranching

vain bibliography brain

colorless emotional & restless

for love

& the formidable robust muscular

                  bonds of human text:

for Sunflower Allens &

rose-sick Blakes

asphodel Williams &

blossomdeep Annes

but in the chatrooms & forums

                  & journals & blogs

the text was too abstract

                  woven layers wan & flavorless

soil too thorny or shallow

                  or deep:

no proper soil for the work

to seed

the only ones who could read

                  were Jack & me

& me & Jack, & our reading was a lovely

                  tekatak plant.

I am a lovely tekatak

                  I have no history or culture

a flower of no particular nation

                  relaying my clean fragrance

no asphodel or poppy

no gingham print patch of sassafras

or Appalachian sawtooth grass

no shield-flat plains of Asian paddies

or rice-ripe rows of sun-red grain

no chickadaw tree of tan savannah

or arboreal star of trilac plant:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed

I wasn’t one.

When pearl-wet hair of willow draped

I wasn’t there.

My wet fronds wave in lavender ponds

                  in seas no eye has ever seen:

Indian Sea, Atlantic stretch,

Corinthian bays, Mariana Trench:

All earth’s oceans are too deep

                  its plains are far too shallow

even rarefied air of moons

is too blood-rich & thick

for tekatak’s tremulous branches

I spread across every continent, and across

                  every continent’s origin

and at every continent’s conclusion,

                  there I am, a tekatak blossom:

luxurious and single,

                  particular, disparate,

a disparate particular layering of

                  single luxurious fragrance

alike to each who smells me,

                  whoever smells me, respiring

the singular unique sameness

                  of each to each his single

                  breathing—this—this breath—

                  this breathing—

the breathed out perspired flavor

                  of his diet & habits &

                  climes

the scent of these things each

                  to each nimbly parting

                  the individual fibers

all truckling to sunk-down

                  shoots & roots &

eager to receive

the tekatak-lovely tekatak stalks

                  & tekatak feet &

                  tekatak flowers

Of all particular continents,

                  flavors, diets, climes,

& also the ozone husk of these,

                  invisible distillation

the produced offspring of everywhere

                  & nowhere, native alike

to canyon-sediment nomad pasts

                  & passed over oral traditions

to musk-bright neon modernities

                  & homogenous rows of Tai Pei

                  McDonald’s

to refugee camp futures of displaced

                  workers & pidgin-ambivalent

                  lingua francas

to furred ashtrays of dank

                  Alexandrias & machinegun tons

                  of child Crusades

to spaceship moons of forbidden books

                  & Caribbean classrooms of colonial

                  daffodils

to crowded streets of Bollywood screens

                  & traffic-thick lanes of Bangkok

                  anthems

to North African ports of island palms

                  & Jerusalem mosques of desert

                  dates

Among all this, remarkable fact:

I have never been seen, no

                  soil bears me

Everywhere-wide is too thin

                  Nowhere-thick, too deep:

except your marmoreal branches, Jack,

                  the tekatak plant wouldn’t BE

(c) 2014 lee sharks

from Pearl and Other Poems:
http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429895012&sr=8-1&keywords=lee+sharks+pearl

The Gospel of Cranes, Chapter 1

Jack Feist, Dharma Unicorn

image (c) 2015 R William Lundy

The Gospel of Cranes

from Human Testament, ms in preparation for New Human Press

1:1 This is how it begins, the book of Feist, a voice in the night:

2 In those days, the light of men waxed dark, and literacy was a crunched, bent thing, and no one knew how to read;

3 But all were in love with the gleam of prizes, and the heaping up of degrees and credits, and professorships, which is vanity, and the sound of one hand clapping.

4 Now, Johannes the Catfisher was self-publishing in the desert, railing against the Academy, calling all to repent its journals and presses, crying, “Come out, come out, from your hallways of dust! Come out from your classrooms of madness and money!”

5 As it is written:

What living and buried speech is always vibrating there, what howls restrain’d by decorum.

6 And his words drew a remnant from the academies, and many from the schools, and churches, and websites, who went out to the desert to learn from him, and wear no name but the Human name.

7 For the world was dark, and all was a sea of trackless data, its spark grown dim; and many were searching for a fragment of the light, and the children of men roamed, hungry and scared.

8 And Johannes was a man who had left behind billions, to clothe himself in rags and skin, and seek God’s face in the dunes, among the rocks, and change his name for a bearded image, turning all that lay within him to the crying of his message:

9 There comes a child of man, bearing words in his mouth, whose form is a twig of light; he spreads his arms, and wind goes fierce before his feet, and where they alight has been made ready: the earth leaps up to greet him, an ancient newness leaps to its feet.

10 He shall speak with the voice of an ancient poet, as a resonant sound from his people's throats, and well up from the bones of those with no voice, a vibration of leaping verbs, a time machine in their sternums;

11 Those who have turned away, he will call back, and those who have buried the voice, make new: a strange cracked voice of leaping joy, surprised by laughter, a gasp in the throats of his forgetful ones;

12 To his wayward ones will he call, and seek; and those whose voice grows faint with crying—you weeping ones, who have lifted your voice in the hallways and rooms, and raised your voice in the weary night, and now grow hoarse with loss and shame:

13 You shaking things, oh you will he draw to himself, and hold; oh you will he call by name: and your own pale voice, so hoarse with night, he will draw to himself, and carry;

14 Oh you, oh you, you weary ones: it is your voice he shall lift, and the cry of the ancient voice is your voice, echoing; and the cry of the future voice is your voice, renewed.

15 I call you to abandon your names, but he will give you a new name, ancient and trembling with newness.

16 And it came to pass in those days, that Jack Feist went out from the academies, and made sojourn in the deserts, to learn from Sigil.

17 For he found no proper soil in the cities of man, and its universities were a barren saltpan, and he grew weary with life in its weariness.

18 And when he had finished reading, straightaway he shot up, as from a dream, and heard a voice, saying, “You are my Secret Book, in whom I am well pleased. Go out from the academies, into the deserts, and let not your works be published in the eyes of men, but let them be your hidden words.”

19 And Feist rose from his bed, and left, to wander the deserts, where he was sustained by the words of earthly angels, and took no bread, but was attacked by the dwarf for forty days, there to be broken and remade.

20 And this is the first of many signs, that Sigil had to pass away, for the Feist to be raised up, so that Johannes went into the desert, but Jack Feist came out: a starving man began the fast, and a new man left, well fed. (He who has eyes, let him see.)

(c) 2015 lee sharks, property of everyman

SENTIMENTAL MURDER FOR MY STUDENTS

SENTIMENTAL MURDER FOR MY STUDENTS

America, I'm afraid to die, because I didn’t grade my students’ papers.

18 lousy checkmarks I gave, & barely read the papers.

America I'm afraid to die because of anxiety for ungraded papers,

& because of my new baby who made me not grade their papers.

America, I lied to you—I didn’t even open the files.

America, I'm afraid to die because I don’t have a job, & no one will hire me to teach at their college.

I groveled at my students’ feet—7 years of brainsharp lectures & glistening marginal comments, 7 years of radiant diagrams, for 7 years I gave them life.

America I raised my students from the dust, I put the breath of close reading inside their brains; America, I taught them laughter,

my whole disgorged poignancy of soul disgorged in 1000 stuffed folders of diagrams & notes,

thru outer space I traveled, riding the lions of mind & grammar,

all the way past Jupiter in an engine I designed with the power of reading—

& also friendship,

& don’t forget friendship,

& don’t you ever forget about friendship, America—

& when I got out there past outer Jupiter, I had to turn back for the papers, because I left 'em by the side of the bed.

Instead of sleeping, I graded papers. Instead of reading, I graded papers. Instead of discovering new cosmos of Thought, I graded their papers in bed, then forgot them.

America I was so in love with my students I gave them my all, I murdered them, I destroyed their dewdrop minds, I gave them a reason to cry & sing with the grading I did in my spirit.

Everyone got an ‘A,’ America, if y’re even concerned to know.

It was an ‘A’ they earned thru the power of grading, & because of love, & because of courage & vision.

It takes courage to grade when y’re riding a lion, when y’re flying it past outer Mars. There were no mobs or protesters, no police brutality & not much resistance from a corrupt bureaucracy bent on preserving its power, sick at heart, but if there had been, it wdv taken courage, & I wdv graded ‘em anyways.

I wdv given the mobs an ‘A’ & the cops an ‘A’ & the cruel face earthly evil an ‘A’ in the magnanimity & bigness of my vision.

I wdv given each one of my students a triple ‘AAA,’ a grade of ‘unicorn+,’ a spaceship percent I designed with my mind, & flown it with them to Jupiter.

No one wdv needed grades ever again, not out here on outer Jupiter, where the lions are tame but also wild.

I’ve always wanted a tame-wild lion pet, America—I give me an ‘A’ for that.

On Jupiter my students wdv understood the sacrifice represented by my crown-of-thorns grading, the notes I took on the side of my mind, my mental building blocks of blackboard clarity combined with nervousness & unicorn powers;

how I made a lasting impact on their lives by flying them on their lions to Mars;

how I murdered them because of kindness;

how I murdered Jupiter, & lions, too;

how I gave up sleep & food & murdered myself to have enough cash to grade them;

how I made each grade with love & a pencil,

& also Microsoft Word;

how I murdered Microsoft Word, & all the systems of earthly power,

replacing them all with blue cyanide pills, because of kindness, to tell them I think their lives matter;

to teach them citation by killing their parents;

to instill in them a sense of value;

to teach them the power of reading;

to teach them the way I taught them things;

to be admired for heavenly diagrams.

I’m afraid to die, America, because I don’t have a job come January, & if the job search don’t go no better than last year, this is my last term teaching.

I’m afraid to die because I loved my students too much, and murdered them because of kindness,

even though I know I am an essentially noble character, blinded by my tragic flaw: kindness.

Even though I know that.

Even though I know I killed their parents to teach them about close reading.

Even though I know it was kindness.


II.

America if you won't hire me, I shd go to law school, & when I graduate from law school, sue the law school, then take away my degree & murder myself by waging atomic war on the Academy, for refusing to hire me,

then save myself by redeeming the Academy by forgiving it for being dead with atom bombs, then spit on it & make it give me a job in its lousy radioactive classrooms, then research a bunch of articles on Google about negotiating a hell of a job offer, then negotiate a hell of a job offer:

“You can’t have unicorn powers as part of your job offer package.”

“Do you want this, or not?”

& act like I'm ready to walk away, if I don’t get my unicorn powers, because I'm ready to walk away, if I don’t get my unicorn powers, because I read how to do it on Google,

& eventually when they fold & offer me unicorn powers, THAT’S when I’ll walk away:

“You dumb muthafuckers I have a law degree, why wd I teach in yr stupid bombed hallways for 45 grand a year?”

then sue them for not hiring me sooner.


III.

America, we’re not best friends

& you don’t want to hire me,

but even if we were best friends,

I know that when you became famous,

and/or nationally or internationally popular,

and/or were adopted as correspondence partner to the stars,

and/or became the subject of a high stakes bet between popular factions of the popular kids that the most popular girl in school cdnt teach you, a nerd, to be popular in two weeks’ time, by prom night,

& she taught you to wear trendy 80s clothing & contact lenses,

& in the process the popular girl came to see yr unique inner specialness, became convicted inside her inner heart because of shallowness & unkindness, through you, as a kind of figure for the value of personal sincerity, social integrity, & being willing to sit with unpopular kinds if they are yr real true friends,

even though it means you’ll be kicked out of the mean popular kids faction, & derided, because secretly they have betrayed their hearts, & know it, & express their self-guilt & premonitions of shallow fake-seeming worthlessness by maybe pushing you down, or bumping into yr lunch tray so it gets food all over your shirt—

but who needs those bitches anyways, when you have real true friends like these ones?—

Point is, I know that if all of that happened, at once, to you, you wd probably hire someone else.

Because of popularity.


(c) 2014 lee sharks, property of planet mars