Rich Baiocco

I am real like the dead poets
you trust, the writers written before
your birth; my existence is authentic
but not verified.

I may ask, are you real?
The truth is
A truth is
probably. possibly. prolly 

if given 3 wishes I would worry
over the first one & waste it
asking the Genie to take all 3 away.
Later I’d regret that & wish I had a wish back.

“1 more” sez the Genie, who tricked me
& never took away my wishpower  
in the first place. Stands before me, verified
but inauthentic - 

this Genie. An aunt gets sick, maybe cancer
- 1 wish left - and would I prolly feel family pressure
to wish her help? Possibly. Probably
this is true.

My breastbone is sparrowful waiting for your words to bleed
Through the blank days of New York. I wish to charge you, laughing
Like all the lost friends I want to wrestle and outdrink
—look how these black sparrows have rushed 
to leaf this naked winter tree—
But somematter is the thing:
I have grown better at missing You than loving you, I have grown
with you gone missing. And while you went missing,
For reasons so mystically personal,
Pinched were my heartbreaths
By cats claw and outcold passed love.
-Though who was there to care?-
And you returned a sparrow too, turned blue.  You are
The bluebird that escaped bukowski’s heart, Since.
I’ve pressed the heartbeat of your sorrowful breast 
With my thumbs
And been clumsy with your new sincerity.

*from Death In A Rifle Garden by John-Vincent Greco

you can buy it right here from my friends in Kansas at Pioneers Press for $4.
buy everything - their catalog is a treasure trove

~rjb

Stalin changed his name to Stalin from Jughashvili.
Man Of Steel - did you also know he wrote poetry in his youth village?
Faulkner wrote poetry before becoming the iron authority of Yoknapatawpha, his fictional county.
Faulkner changed his name to Faulkner from Falkner.
A clerical error, perhaps, a chance to stake your own claim
on history. He was 5 feet 5 inches. Unsuitable for the U.S. Army. 
Stalin had a gimped arm. Was 5 feet 4 inches. 
Wore wedges in his shoes.

Fake it til you make it
personal. Revenge 
Men of the 20th century, this is where we part. 
Too many sides of the argument, too many views to point at.
Too much free information to support an authoritarian state.
Too much appropriation to control where your work will go.
To whom will your work reach.
To whom your work will speak.
This is the Century where all stale and staid Industries will fail.
Where states will separate.
Where power will disperse like ink itself bleeding off the card faces in a cardholder’s

tiny

clenched

fist.

Could Stalin allow Stalin self doubt?
Was there room for Terror to allow remorse?
Public appearance is everything & nothing
infuriates a control freak, 
unable to hold water in his lap
without a fish tank,
like a portrait of the pacific ocean
in an enemy’s home.

The lengths we go for hiding
truths. Remember how they called him friend? The Allies, the Great War, called him Uncle Joe, who knew what a gulag was? Back then where was wikipedia & youtube?
Behind curtains,
20th Century men with their 20th Century power.

You know Faulkner had a brother who was also an author. 
Faulkner had a brother who was also an author, imagine.
It’s true. John Faulkner. 
Well actually it was John Falkner.

This Is the Poem That’s Going to Get Me Out of the Mines

by Ron Riekki // Juked 5/7/13

Jonathan did it. He teaches at a university in Washington now.
Or Oregon. I forget. But he said he gets fifty grand a year.
To teach creative writing. That’s like winning the lottery.
I make thirty grand and my lungs are turning into a collection
of twisted lies. I cough more than I think. I asked Jonathan
how he did it and he said he didn’t know. It was like God
napalmed him with luck. He got some award for a poem
about a goddamn lake and suddenly they pay him a thousand
dollars to read for fifty minutes in an auditorium filled
with students who don’t want to be there. I tell him to seriously
tell me how to do it and he said you have to make sure
there’s a lot of mist in the poem, that they can see the mist,
feel the mist, and then just go from there. He says that poets
love mist. They want so much mist in a poem that you can’t
see anything else other than mist and then from that mist
you have something really beautiful peek through and then
something really ugly peek through. But it can’t be too ugly,
he says, or you’re fucked. And he says don’t swear. He says
you want mist and beauty and a touch of ugly and every word
has to sound like it’s linked, like it’s a big game of Scrabble.
He says that the real important thing is that you don’t have to feel
anything writing it. Don’t get caught up in the poem. That’ll trick
you, he says. What you want to do is be a little mathematical
devil and just plot that shit like Stephen King, but with so much
thesaurus crap that people think you have a Ph.D. If you do that,
they’ll give you everything in the world. They’ll eat your feet.
They’ll kill your children. They’ll throw money at you
like it’s made out of cotton. They’ll light random Vietnam villages
on fire, if you ask for it. They’ll drive a bellhop insane,
if it’s your wish. He keeps going, a long list. I ask him
if he could set up a reading for me at his college. He says no,
that they only give money to people who don’t need it.
The more famous you are, the more money you make,
the more we pay you. If you need it, we can’t give you a cent.It’s a rule. Then he’s gone in that way that humans do, just disappears and goes back to his life and kid and perfection
and I think of mist. I keep thinking in my head, “Mist, mist,
mist, mist, mist, mist.” With all that sand kicked up in the air,the mask strapped to my face like I’m in Shanghai, the sawdustof air I live in, all day, I keep thinking about that goddamn mist.

by Czeslaw Milosz

I have always aspired to a more spacious form 
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I’ve devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.

There was a time when only wise books were read,
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity,
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

Berkeley, 1968

gnade:

I don’t read/write/like poetry (in general) but this little book is an exception. DEATH IN A RIFLE GARDEN. Just got a box of these muhfuckers in the mail yesterday. I literally thumb through this every couple days. Get in on it.

up with it

(via wearepioneerspress)

wearepioneerspress:

We’re setting up a section on our site for staff recommendations.

Soon we’ll have Jessie, Thad, and Rio’s up, but for now here are Adam Gnade’s Pioneers Press staff picks!

FkN SwT! Adam Gnade -  badass writer/musician/homesteader/and Pioneers Press folk hero - recommends John-Vincent Greco’s Death In A Rifle Garden . if you haven’t already, buy that sucker right here for $4. Buy Julia Eff’s zines too. all of em.

~rjb

this is not a poem even though it looks like one.
believe me, it’s not.
my girlfriend’s out of town and i kinda feel like a piece of shit cause i should be with her, but i’m broke. 
but i have things to do. 
both. 

who am i? 

not the person i want to be all the time, but getting there. 
getting where?
2 months ago we picked up out of the blue and went to Panama for a week - on a credit card - and now i can’t even go with her 5 hours in a car to Los Angeles.
pick your battles. we pick our battles.
my friend’s wife gave me a giant lemon last night from their small tree.
it was so gigantic it felt symbolic. metaphoric.
when life gives you lemons… 
say thanks.
take love from where you can get it. take support for what you need. 
know what you need.
need to keep working. need to finish things i’ve begun. need to be at the forefront - the cutting edge - of my own being.
my body felt like quitting last night, but i stayed up working on a new story for Pioneers’. they won’t quit so i won’t quit either. they’re creating their future
and im creating mine.
your brain can do extraordinary things when it is exhausted, when it pushes beyond exhaustion, when the house is quiet, when your focus doesn’t waver, when you are bold, and ugly in form, and sober, and searching, searching, searching yourself.
i got one sentence beyond quitting, then fell asleep.
but it was a good sentence.
a big sentence.
a sentence beyond what i thought i could do.
woke up early this morning and hiked Tamales Bay for a few hours. 
found 300 beached dead jellyfish stranded on the rocks in the new shallows while the tide was out.
felt like a sophisticated life-force was announcing itself
in the form of a prototype that was not developed enough to sustain here.
yet. 
reminded me that last night my friend showed me Google Nights (or something like that). blew my mind. you hold your iPhone up to the sky and it tells you what star constellations you are looking at. GPS. 
saw Jupiter. 
ive seen Jupiter thousands of times, but have never known it.
i don’t have a smartphone. 
felt like a sophisticated life-force was announcing itself.
felt good to hike Tamales Bay
this morning after writing one more sentence than i thought i could the night before. 
felt like the story wrote itself while i was hiking and not thinking about it at all. 
felt like a sophisticated life-force was announcing itself.
saw a snake.
saw a giant slug.
saw a black-tailed deer.
came home and made some more Death In A Rifle Garden zines.
came home and made some tomato sauce.
my girlfriend is still away and i wish we were together.
at least now the house smells like tomato and garlic and basil.
at least now the house is covered in zines.
gonna finish writing that story now.
gonna drink some beer when i’m done.