vertigo diary by larry sawyer -- book preview

7/29/2019 Vertigo Diary by Larry Sawyer -- Book Preview

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VERTIGO DIARY

LARRYSAWYER

B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ]Buffalo, New York


2/12

Vertigo Diary by Larry SawyerCopyright 2013

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey GatzaCover Art by Andrew Lundwall

First EditionISBN: 978-1-60964-137-5Library of Congress Control Number: 2013932521

BlazeVOX [books]131 Euclid Ave

Kenmore, NY 14217

[email protected]

BlazeVOX [ books ]

blazevox.org

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3/12

11

A BLINDNESS

We were served fresh, hot slices of the red white and blue.Then crawdads, potholes, and aria-humming policemen.

Spring was a masked phantom, leaping naked from a rope into the creek andyou said your shoulders were ripe

red as ambulances.

The silt in our throats made dunes, mouths agapegawking up at summertime jets

hummingbirds left tiny autobiographies on windowsills.

The rumor was we were hard of hearingafter school we diligently practiced our disappearing

bicyclists echoed off through autumn woods brittle matches:winters we were on the brink.

It was thenwhile mother was outside busy changing the skya soldier on Main Street was seen

plunging headfirst fromthe diving board of thatmovie house marquee into the fog.


4/12

12

HA HO HUM

If the women are happy

in the trees above the farm

well guard the clocks.

In sour buckets

filled with spring

on purpose we wait for the army.

But will they appreciate new songs?

Watch this poem sing about

mistreatment

at the hands of

the protagonist

in a choose-your-own-adventure

in which we,

while wearing the most

scientific shoes, assert with

no small dissatisfaction

that his majestys marvelous lake is

merely cloud.


5/12

13

Intrinsic to our suffering

acceptance like a wheelbarrow

carries all our definitions of comedy.

The challenge then

is for the

overripe clichs, as they fall, to

rather float skyward.

To their telegrams I respond

with a ponderous liberty freed

from the fog of sleep.

I wander the countryside,

useless as the

door of a church.


6/12

14

BUT MOST BEAUTIFUL OF ALL

The browning edges of the photograph are the outskirts of a map, in which

may be found the beasts and drooping trees living green in the memory

and we inhabit those regions, completely forgotten until once again

we glance into that other world and return to that day that

haunts us at the edge of a table, which pretends to go unnoticed

but now we are aware, and this awareness is an elevator that

carries us upward in our minds.

What we resemble most upon realizing these invented scents

at the cliffs edge is that a photograph is a scalpel

performing the most delicate operation.


7/12

15

UNITED STATES WHIP COMPANY COMPLEX

But we, and the very tops of our hills

Oh, and if only for chance moments

But she shot me directly in the twig

And Im a big dummy for believing it

But in those days even the music boxes.

Our cataclysm, our accessories

On a mission narrowly averted

Two precious self-portraits

Swabbing at our duhs, these

Excruciating thingies

But she kicked me in my speaking part

Squarely in the script

Should we be sitting still for portraits

Else moment to moment shrugs

Autumn is such degradation

And I Europe and you do, too

Like we were nothing, birds are kind of not

Friendly, look they fly away.


8/12

16

PSST

Post-future we glimpse

[see Diagram of Risks]

what I call

moment salads. Such

quantifying croutons, although

their exegesis is insufficient dressing.


9/12

17

MYSUNFLOWER

Why was each momentsuch a miniature Troy? Grief is

the calculus you lack. Dont

kill yourself over it. A raven sleeps

in each fold of the wind.

Notes about me arelocked in a glance across an

omnipresent table. Its useless, according to

my analyst, to ponder dogs. Were outer space

primates. Meanwhile the continent

ticks. No one groks the combo.

This coin is the lord of your hand. Her

dress is plural. Such greasy wine.

Wheres the zookeeper with the

bill? Under the piano of summer, were

deep as beans.


10/12

18

THOUGHTS OF SUMMER

Such a huge erect tree

A flagpole to some, Freud saw a cock.But it is spring that wields such power over our bodies.Hello, sadness, wrote that horny French poet Paul luard, and IAgree that I see a huge tree sticking the middle of a flirtatious eternity.I mean imagine doing it in a dressing room while trying on poetry.


11/12

19

VERTIGO DIARY

Anyway, why monkeys?

Which is a question anyone

would ask. Smile no

matter how much elation

graces the outage, fjords

clacking.

Get it? Aluminum

orchestras, plunger Romanticism.It was stopped up.

Hecates iffy

gaze, unguent,

tames history. None of the

government elevators work.

Tomorrow: chemists wearing

saucy watches.


12/12

20

DISPASSIONATE APPASSIONATO

The mountains on the bottoms

of shoes. On sinless display behold thesubway. Thanks for nothing we shout thanks forketchup and goo. In words faithless, figurative,especially enlivening. Instead ofants, children, lilacs, furniture, terrorists,the furnace of men, nasturtiums, alligators, hymns.The city accessorizes itself with sirens.

In words faithless. I know the citywith its fuzzy numbers.

Numbers that sometimes bubble like a fountain.Numbers that emit bricks not clouds.Chaos of veined streets, some clogged arteries.The projector plays itself.The citys striking single-mindedness loomscartoons, lions, ice cream, ferns.

Each store window metastasizes into another sale.My fear of the language. To describe anunlocked gate. A whale barks in parody

on a sign, its oceanic nearnesstoo close to our table for comfort.But the carburetor of our ambivalence likethe Imago Mundi, the earliest known world mapshows a circular landmass with seven islands, the third ofwhich being where winged birds end not their flight, thefourth has light brighter than the sunset, and thefifth lay in complete darkness.

When I was younger I liked the thundering.

To lie in darkness and listen to the sound of my voice.I would pronounce words like diaphanous.I didnt have a terrific appreciation forrope. There is an ideal series of eventswhich runs parallel to the real ones.

vertigo diary by larry sawyer -- book preview

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