Sunday, February 5, 2017

Michael Dec - 5 poems



Michael Dec was born in Highland Park, Michigan, an enclave of Detroit, on February 5th, 1956 and has lived in the area ever since. Aa well as frightening people with his "literature," Dec practices a form of noise music that evolved from garage rock and tape collages into something that disturbs people even more. He has been married to his wife, Mary, for 28 years, and is basically a nice guy. 

***

1. Progressive Digestion to the End

I felt a house die in my stomach

Beans on the cob in aeration grease with
Sunshine cola oh dying from the waist down
Waste down, hammer toes, fish bouquet
Unheard-of light screeches on a dime
The ladder is the best of masters as you decode
doctors' handwriting in the blinding snow
It's a state in which we  are not allowed to dream
The immersion of an insurance policy in shellac
and no tight post-war budget to worry about
"The highest school and the knowledge of which
is taught here is nothing but the complete, entire
abandonment of one's self..."


***

2. Ham Fuel

Wood grain bubbles emergency crews
Living rooms living in the past, pre-arrival
breakfast has to stop since
the diner had to dine anyway, washroom & all
Road hung on a kite frame, flaming petulance
on broadband, holes in the background music
Free maps at Mobil the five remaining Mobile stations

A road of scallions & empty sheet metal
In a culture of death they took the  dentures from
my kneecaps and rifle rack
(Contact mic in carrot juice)
The fromdestination in Happy Poop is all about
the cause and effect of railroads
On the flag a flaming dumpster --



***

3. Reverse

A chocolate locket melts in yr sister
Ant-men drown in diet coke
The mirror trick in a service station:
"This mirror's invisible until you fold it like so."
Some loaves of bread are just staring,
others frozen in a scream
Cut your eyelashes, all of it's a holographic projection
A piano detuner on an umbrella shaft
You have fish, you have teeth to grind
One hole and the command module is shot
Though areas know me, I'm constantly on vacation
From the end of the earth this will
guarantee me a bee degree, transcluscent wheelbarrow
is my own strength smeared on all the streets
in the subdivision

***

4. Happy, the Suburban Campus
or Annoying Virgin Princesses
Cobblestone flower sandwiches had to be flown
in from Maine with the scorpions
Numbers stations still festoon a hollow in flat feet
Earth just sits like a table lamp; he went to
type on paper, she sawed an electronic trumpet
They call that "pick six (heads)" in the business
My god, baptist farts on the wind today
A sublime kick at the rivalry of rabid skunks
If you don't feel the vegetable pull right now,
crazy glue a keg of gunpowder to a Great Dane
inside the biggest metropolitan area near you...

"Everybody knows this guy, 'The Matador,' is as crazy
as a shithouse rat...
Nobody ever takes a word he fuckin' says seriously"

& being not of this world one might experience
severity, simplicity, purity, clarity, luminosity, transparency,
unity, unicity, and identity

His wardrobe carries Bolivian knives to gestation,
when all emerged horn-rimmed

***

5. Angular Tarpaper


Don't boil a Tinkertoy at this altitude, attitude
or Westinghouse commercials...you can be sure and
that's why we need computers, cuz man, nobody is perfect!
In a kaleidoscopic auto plant the city government collapses
from internal rot, like your daughters were in salt,
insulted slide rulers a hirsute pool table
Burma Shave signs modeled on the pre-limbic system
and freezing rain

UV rays deflected by raining ashes
There was a laser from her eye
that squirmed down a rathole with a purple 8 ball
Cloudy pancakes display razorsharp teeth
in a mirror that was smashed on the road three years ago

No poultice