Excerpts from Jared Joseph’s poetry manuscripts, Yizkor and Il enjoying muselé in général but feel dread, finalists for the 2015 TS Book Prize.

 

from Yizkor

 

NOW I AM A MARSUPIAL

Daring in piles of birth

Pouches

The wreckage is regenerative.

There are scattered brain cells

Sure-sells generating movies

 

This film my life is

A B-Movie.

This fascia is Vaseline

This body skin

Holds together the padded actor

I kickbox to save my life.

I kickbox my wife my way

I kickbox my way into a million dollars

 

My way is heralded.

 

My way is the new way

My natural new way is law

Is heralded the primordial

Clam soup

The pearl-tongued clams resemble diamonds

 

diamonds

diamonds diamonds

diamonds diamonds diamonds

 

They are pearls.

The pearls come reassembled

The pearls are come

The come assembles dollars.

I’m coming on camera on a million dollars

 

My pheromones are Chanel

My moans are Bengal tigers in Chad

Italy space & time collapse on my cock & i come

I come to in my dream of a million dollars

I suck global dreams in my intl. dollar dreams

I’m living the dream.

I dream in your instructions

I dream in this instant

I dream in your initials

I dream in instinct zoos

My dream fund is funded by a million million dollars

Of funloving

I simple, I have to come.

I simply funlove the girl i love

I simply rublove the boy i love.

In the marsupial glove we hide & make love.

We make love in the hide on the TV

 

In the TV TV

There are levels of watching

Awash with whatever

Disintegration awash with win

Wash of eros & Vaseline

New bodies with winbirth or

Are our stuntdoubles of each other

Of the time of our life we’re having

The time of our life recklessly hours

Wading under the grey Chanel

Clouds of the beach

Over the beach

Refuse in the trash

Heap of eros

 

Everyone go inside & channel!

It’s yoga time!

& everyone comes inside.

everyone comes.

everyone wants to come in the mirror

Everyone come & go!

Parade private cunts

Across the stiffy of sand

 

SUCH A SUN

the pencil-sharp part performs the ground

the ground performs sand the sound doesn’t

the sand doesn’t hold writing long

the sand beckons writing

 

the sand beckons after traces.

i walk a signature along it

i walk a leashed signature along it

the sand doesn’t hold writing long

i repeat my themes upon it until I

repeat my themes upon it

 

i till the whole morning underfoot.

by night i walk heavy upon the perverts

the sky light perverts in the dark

they search the brief sign in the eye

their eye oils brief signs in the eye

i don’t give it i don’t sigh

i sigh to myself.

i sigh to myself verbs

a lip-song held trip-wire

tight

a throat-song or chokewire game

 

Where’s Cheryl.

the thing about Cheryl is

Where’s Cheryl.

i hear a love man talk about Cheryl

i hear a lone man talk in love about Cheryl

the thing about Cheryl is

Where’s Cheryl.

Cheryl doesn’t hold out long

Cheryl doesn’t hold writing long

This line repents & is not about

Cheryl’s death

 

Cheryl’s death is all about.

The end line lies about the table with vermouth

the table is sopping with vermouth

this is the end of vermouth

the end is vermouth

drink death down the gullet!

death to vermouth

long live vermouth

long it lives in the mouth

& other mouth vices

& noises

& other animal-making

 

Now i am a jaybird.

i live among the copies

behind my life is violets

 

THE VIOLETS COPY IN THE BRUSHGRASS BEHIND

the violents copulate & brush behind the scrub

we fuck & fall away like brushstroke

Cheryl & i

 

brushgrass like an oil painting

brushfire we fly away the waitress

the waitress with child

the waitress scatters us away with glasses

vermouth glasses & ghosts.

pink lady stains from a pure clear mouth

a strain mouth pretty pure

Our beaks are black.

dark our beaks at our backs

are our black tails hedged & angled

we wrestle with the angles

math across the door & lambsblood

we spill the oil & the bread

we get us wet

we fill us with what

with what

 

fill us with what we want.

lord give us strength to copy

fill us with what we want

we want

to copulate in love

to violate to blank

to violet.

to violet

to copy in love

to xerox the deity

 

xerox the deity

Where’s Cheryl.

she blisses at the slightest provocation

she’s blissing on the ground with others like us

like us, i am on the bough with others

others like me

brothers mothers

nothing the others

as we utter with pleasure & ruse

repetitive herds of blackbirds rue

as we utter with dainty want

it’s us we want

we want us.

we want our daily want

us we utter with deity want

give us our daily bread

give us our olive oil

pus the violets

boil the violets

 

now i am a jaybird

 

Now i am a giraffe.

 

i step lightly under tall trees with cloven hoofs.

the tall trees with the cloven hoofs.

the tall trees with their morning dew clause.

they froze one day to give to me

 

i have a mind.

i have half a mind to munch these palms.

the other half gallops under fruits the day long

 

in a forest passage of date palms

i ride under the sugars of the palms’ dates.

the sugars are natural & inside.

the sugars are & inside

i don’t turn around.

i don’t fuck around.

i gallop toward & the passage grows with my distance

 

i gallop toward & the passage grows as my distance grows.

within my distance the passage grows.

it grows.

if i turn around the distance grows.

groves fold, fall.

i turn around

 

We went on a date

I was predating on

More girls

 

now i am a giraffe.

i step lightly under the tall palms with my long yellow neck.

the tall trees with the long yellow neck

browned in the sun.

the fruits leaned one day to grow spots.

bluish-purple spots with bristles around the spots with natural & with sweets.

like my tongue 20 centimeters long

i eat the spots.

i like my tongue long.

i eat the spots despite the holes

the holes are pits where the trees will grow

palming through the soil a distance will grow, grows

they grow from my distance, the way my distance grows

 

 

 

 

 

in a desert passage there are perennials.

high desert perennials.

Hi, desert perennials!

 

there are sweet desert ephemerals that grow old that grow low.

that grow low.

there is innumerable cold

close cold

 

i close.

i close my eyes that by law closes the distance & makes night

makes night sigh.

long blooming yellow flower marches through july

like my birthday in may.

what the fuck is a giraffe

 

mama, what the fuck is a giraffe?

my heart is a giant glint.

my heart is a raft.

a giant raft is from where

the skin graft comes.

the skin graft floats from the giant raft

the giant raft stuck on rocks like a pier in the desert

it’s cold enough to snow.

there’s enough cold to grow snow!

i grow low.

the dates are post-.

the dates are most munched &

 

Less girls.

You are a giraffe.

The world is inappropriate.

You make it so.

Your spotted skin like fois gras.

You are a giraffe.

You are a giant raft on faux grass.

You are the skin graft from the babboon’s ass.

After much sun damage you are more than faint liver spot

on the verso of the vellum.

Too much rain on the long leather.

Ten elders stretched you a long distance.

Your hoofs hammered with hard feathers.

Hard levers & hard feathers.

You are a giraffe.

Close your eyes & close off.

Go to the desert

 

 

they call me Dubstep Lightly.

my first EP was Tundra Rub.

the refrain was what the fuck

is a giraffe on Passage Palms, a song.

i live in Tel Aviv. I speak a few tongues.

they lengthen my one

 

i munch foie gras on faux grass all day long

on golf lawns.

i like it long.

there are more girls than bombs.

there are more girls

Less bombs.

there are as many dates on the palms

as anyone

i swan & sway

i, wanly, say.

i, like fronds, have no issue.

i have no mom.

 

my brain is as pink as my pink gums.

i tissue & go.

this city is a dew clause

you know, law?

i close my eyes & the lights don’t.

they don’t stop.

they don’t go lower.

they don’t grow lower

but they don’t grow.

 

[Acknowledgments: large and ample thanks forever to Delirious Hem, No Time To Say It, and The Claudius App for publishing several of these poems individually, and to Strange Cage for publishing the chapbook mammal, in which all of these poems appear.]

 

 

from Il enjoying muselé in général but feel dread

 

[126]

is your own erotic sense

hot? i mean are you hot

are you like a florist

moving through hothouse

flowers against the weather

a photo of air & green

very often very little red in the structure

of an often flower sometimes the petal

structures are the hot holy secret plastic forest

you are skinning for me to wait to die.

i am taking my bloodless time but.

but truly working on it in the given stress.

of living in this alms giving off an atmo

sphere give up your atmo

sphere this place

it’s either vol 1 or 4 i can’t

remember it doesn’t matter

the universe is made this way

of many atmos

of who will split atmos

i can’t quite give it my atmos

i can’t give really any thing at all

 

[123]

& if that

laughing

doesn’t

sing

 

Momma’s gonna

buy you

money

 

[228]

it is worse to be long, than it is to live

 

Rank’s open pages hiss

 

Rank’s open pages these

 

these open pages jizz

 

his is a mine for years

 

this book I cover only kisses his

 

[209]

But Tom I am so fully careless.

 

Persuade me that some time inside America.

 

It’s like correct motions, however my dress underneath

 

My knees

 

But Tom you mottled girl aren’t waterproof.

 

Aren’t water-proofed gardens in your hands

 

In your hands so tall you cheated oh I’m sorry.

 

Persuade the floating disc to hit my face

 

In the face, my student’s face that I persuaded

 

To tattoo my face, I talk to someone.

 

Someone’s interrupted, intimacy muttered, aloe into someone

 

Over here, who goes like that, Jesus is that my car

 

I want to make sure to care you out of jail.

 

Tom I constructed you from Dahl, a black girl

 

& a hand behind the back that seems a lot

 

of dusci, your name the towel that protects me

 

‘gainst the poison sumac disco swarming in the gentle,

 

Less gentle breeze, touch your students, that that swarming

 

Is everything just discus to you, Tom? America

 

Should have been cars on that kind of

 

Trust bungee tied between two trees & if

 

The car doesn’t hold it explodes, so does the river,

 

[225]

7 thin zeitgeists in my hand

 

wallop & limp from the well

 

my lifelong is pretty line lifeline pretty long Pretty & long

 

the songbird isn’t toothfloss

 

Mamma’s gonna buy you a garden plot

 

pot to put your life in, elder bones

 

singing by the creak the flowers yellow security cameras

 

camouflaged among the flowers to record my finish

 

i imagine fetish sprouting from my bones

 

carry a finch to me to Elysium.

 

i will chainsmoke the attempts upon my life.

 

i will chain a smoke upon the waters

 

i will make attempt upon my life

 

& succumb to glass fits, hard embroidery

 

difficult houses, snakes of passing

 

wicker lashing tongues do not brocade the

 

barcode’s pretty coming

 

did we come, mine hand, did we

 

we did

 

we did duh

 

 

 

7 zeitgeists for my house

 

 

My house doesn’t live in this country or bush.

 

He drinks Aquafina & tastes river

 

[Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Brandon Shimoda for raking some of these poems into new poem fragments in his journal Ancients beautifully.]

 


jared-joseph-photoABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jared Joseph is boring.

AUTHOR STATEMENT

“I am one hungover, hungering that is, one repeated in hunger. I suffer, that is, one repeated in suffering. Suffering is not over. I perhaps am so condemned, that is, one repeated in the chain.”

“I labor in the work of Paradise and yet, as yet another in the linked and sometimes discontinuous passage of his life. And to labor with life is to labor with a system correction, that is, a correction that is systematic of his own experience-like eraser of experience.”

“And so to labor with life is to labor within systemic correction of experience proper, his own, like an error, like an eraser of experience that will be, of the life that once will be. It is a construction projection of an Irish goodbye, of an experience-eraser, it is a construction project of a new sense and of a new form of social experience we are getting along and see how they shrine the word together.”

“Then the work in the work of Paradise is not a work of art solely but a correction of experience-pain, it is not subtle.”

“I persist in, this but, not as a writer nor an artist. Or at least not alone, I am also Jared, not that alone, but as a lender of experience, as a laborer in experience; like a laborer that experience-pain fully tries to go correcting the erasers from his road in the experience of censors.”

“Like we are separated, we are repeated. Repeated that, that rite, that rite tries to impugn individualism, and the illicit winnings of the individualists. Individualism is the excess that the terror ‘gainst death desperate ‘spects to pitch against the face of life yes, look-persist on this, permit me if : go against the putrid man.”