DUFUS 9

A Poetry Journal

©2004 Lummox Press

Edited by RD Armstrong & Ed Jamieson, Jr.

Well, kids, as Summer fades into memory, here comes the next issue of DUFUS.

This issue features Jack Foley, Louis E. Bourgeois, Scott Wannberg, Todd Jackson, Ellaraine Lockie, Todd Moore, Shanna Baldwin-Moore (no relation), Michael Neal Morris, Jayne Lyn Stahl, Denis Robillard, Charles Ries, Steve Dalachansky, Randall Rogers, Donnie Cox, Corey Mesler, Victoria Locke, Jeffery S. Taylor, Sam Silva, Ryan Barr, Frank Anthony, RD Armstrong, Hank Beukema and H. Lamar Thomas.  

The bulk of the poesy was selected by Ed, though I still kept my hand in the game a little bit. 

Most of the poets came to us via the Lummox Journal and they were referred over here, where poem length is of no concern...as you will see as you scroll down.  There've been a few changes: if you've been here before, you'll notice I've left off the cities where the poets are from.  Also, there are no bios.  A friend of mine, Steve Goldman, has told me repeatedly that it's the POEM that matters, not who wrote it. 

Submit a poem to Ed the poetry editor or visit Lummox (link above) and read Ed's bio (staff link) to see what he likes. While you're over there visiting the Lummox Empire, you might want to buy something from the "merchandise" section - you know, support the operation that brings this stuff to life.  If you're looking for other places to submit your work to, I suggest the LSW Links.  Hell, it's all over at the Lummox...everything you need to know (even some things you don't want to know about)... 

To submit feedback, click here - I'll respond to any reasonable email.

Normally I don't promote my other projects here, in DUFUS, but I've just published a new book and it may be something you might be interested in. It's called LAST CALL: The Legacy of Charles Bukowski and it's a collection of poetry, fiction and essays that reflect an influence by the old man on small press writing...at least that's my opinion. Look for the "typer" and it will lead you to a more descriptive page.

Well, we hope you enjoy this issue.

RD Armstrong

DUFUS 9

NATA

not brooding but some

activity of mind

behind

your smile:

your small size

(always looking up!)

your large eyes

not inquisitive

but demanding

your old world elegance

your awkwardness

“So how are you?” you asked

greeting a friend at the door

in your pleasant, deliberate English

He answered grandly, gesturing with his hands,

“flourishing”

you didn’t understand

hesitated

and asked again

he answered, with the same gesture,

“flourishing”

still not understanding,

you ushered him in

I saw that hesitation

often

you wished the world

to go smoothly

to proceed with the grace you imagined

to be part of your vie bohème

and yet

things happened

things you couldn’t control or account for:

flourishing

And Martin Baer

dead these many years

Where is the painting he made

of you with the little girl face?

“I know I don’t look like that any more,”

you said sadly

If I remember,

there was lots of blue in that painting—

for the virgin Martin saw in you?

Tiny Nata,

everyone towering over you

“She’s mad,” said Josephine Carson, “absolutely mad”

but she loved you and may be welcoming you now

“Martin Baer—everyone’s least favorite painter,”

said Jo,

“even if he did look like Jean Cocteau”

I heard him praised by his friend Robert Duncan

Measured phrases that brought him vividly to life

What a wonderful picture you took of Duncan in his prime!

And how sad you were when you thought he had forgotten you:

“You can’t expect everyone to love you always”

But we all expect that, Nata

you no less than anyone else

we all expect love

and moan about sorrow

but you were quiet about your bad luck when you had it

or at least you were to me

I see you seated at that table

(the one in the photo with the rose)

serving me tea

and I suddenly realize: That’s the table in the picture

Yes you said, happy about my realization

I felt at times that you evaded intimacy

despite your dinners and lunches

and the young women who loved you and came to learn from you

How you wanted a “set”

something left over from Europe

a group of intimates

who spoke of art and laughed and made you feel free

Now, Nata, you are free

of even the visual which was your primary sense

free of all the images that crowded around you

in your darkrooms in your long journey from Europe to the New World in your small light-capturing apartments in your heavy tears in your long life in your deep longing in your Polish words in your home for the aged (where I could not bring myself to visit you) in your dear life to which you clung with such persistence in your death in your death in your death

Jack Foley

Maggie

There is a lady at an open window, staring into the yard; a mockingbird
foaming at the mouth.  She wants to reach out and make love to the
bird; she wants to become one with it.  The mocking bird is dying of
arsenic poison.  Maggie at the window has set the trap.  She is weeping.

She has not slept in years.  She is afraid of dying alone.
 

Louis E. Bourgeois

Ride slow through the shrapnel
 
 night registers at the sleep cheap wunderkind hovel
 it signs in as Mr. Night
 but the desk clerk still believes his intuition,
 tells his dog that Mr. Night is just another fool named Day,
 trying to play games.
 In every large crowd,
 in every crowd that one day might exist,
 they hawk the same cool drinking stuff,
 cause the sun just won't pack it up anytime soon and go home,
 in every chance meeting,
 in every wary negotiation,
 we ride slow through the shrapnel,
 promising each other we'll meet up at the end of things,
 when the pontificating smoke disappears,
 when the edges are visible, and the
 language doable.
 In every broken vowel,
 in every bathroom on fire,
 in every wounded species,
 we ride slow through the shrapnel.
 I hear there are nurses around somewhere,
 who will mend us.
 I hear your democracy scratching at the window.
 It's having a bad bad day.
 
 Scott Wannberg

Another Accident

Traffic is backed up.
Another rolled Explorer.
A firetruck parked
diagonally on one side
and an open ambulance
on the other.

The woman
in the driver's seat
is holding her left arm
and staring
at the passenger
seat.

Something important
was no longer
on that seat.
 

Todd Jackson

Poetic License

Her hair is dyed medium blonde

That's what Lady Clairol says

Her hair is the color of chocolate

Both are correct

One is the truth

Ellaraine Lockie

Todd Moore

Poem for Jimmy

My hands
        Trembled
as I held
        The manila
typewritten envelope
that issued forth
no clue

and yet I knew
and dared not doubt
it had to be from you

I held my breath
and opened it
and saw your words were there
and then my happy scream
sent everything
flying in the air

and as each paper
silently settled into place
the years of tears
of all our pasts
came streaming
down my face...

Shanna Baldwin-Moore

Slam the door when you go

When you go, slam the door

so I'll be sure you've left me

lying here in the barely dawn-lit room,

your shadow passing by the window.

Don't step lightly over the threshold,

but stomp confidently.

Marching is not an angry sound,

just the certain noise of going.

I'll never push you out

but try to let you go.

I'll try not to hold you in,

but I can't promise

when you're gone for good

that I won't clutch the air

where you once stood laughing.

I'll be desperately seeking

the punchline, beating my breast,

angry that I can't control

your going, loudly or softly

(please leave with a shout!)

out that hard, painful door.

Michael Neal Morris

0 my, 0 me.

          (in memoriam Gregory Corso)

0 my    0 me
0 vanity of
vanity
can it be
I've landed in the holly-
wood of poetry.  0 me
can it be vanity
thy name is poesy
where moloch himself is
brought to
his knees by
poet-tasters  name-
droppers   scorners and
mourners    famous
defamers.  O my
0 me   can it be
the world's as small
as crystal ball  and
fragile as a toxic wave
upon the shore where only knaves
rant and rave about some slave
they call beauty.  0 my
0 me
0 vanity      myopia and hermes
like scotch and bourbon
never mix    can it be
the poison is the fix
and truth prevail where
ego fail.    a pox on them
that make a sonnet of
fame imprisoned in their bonnet.    0
can it be
the cure be on it  like gin
on tonic
the muse prevails
where all else fails   no self-
promoters
poets be.    0 my
0 me---  thieves of
fire  ever we
who rise above
the fray to see.
 

Jayne Lyn Stahl

All The Big Daddy's of Beat are Gone
 

For Allen and Bill

All the Big Daddy's of Beat Are Gone
Ginzey gone
No more Howl or Blake Sutra's
CherryVal Indi CubaCzech SanFran wails
in the night

Lonesome Bill
the trick-writer( rider ) of Lawrence too
gone to forever-bed in his beat pajamas
and cut ups
a 38 by his side and a juicy joint
for the journey.

Both partners
in crime
now
keeping time now
showing us the Eternal Beat
inside the clock of the
world walking
through the Badlands
of Nightmare Morphine Coda Ville
No Queer
No Fear
No No KNOW

Marrakesh Mexico
New York Bunker Blues
no more
squeeze  your eyes folks
like a hairpin trigger
but don't ever cry,
the pain will dry.

The Angel Headed Hipster saints are gone
but not forgotten
Gone to the Big Beat Hotel in the sky-

Numero Neuf Gite Le Coeur.

Originally written Sept. 3/97
Revised July 21, 2001
 

Denis Robillard

SCHNOOK

I should have ended it two years ago.
But I am a lazy lover.
Lover of predicable routine.
Thinking it might grow into fat
happy romance.

You wanted to live together.
I wanted one night a week.

You wanted me to be present
and bend to your needs.

I wanted to remain true to my
true lazy nature.

I guess that makes me opportunistic.
The kind of guy women talk about
when they recite the ways in which a
dog is better then a boyfriend or
the many uses of the pickle they keep
in their refrigerator.

Sometimes I think only another man
could see what divinity doth lurk in
the heart of a schnook.

But still I should have known.
I should have ended this fantasy
that you and I would live happily
ever after - sooner.

Kiss a frog, get a prince in pond water.
 

Charles Ries

organ trio @ the bluenote

a couple of drinks @ the
bar
for some             <blue  note>
one
else
          (  organ  trio  )   is
spotted tissue              ison
the  dis   in         te / grate
if ever the 2 were real     or
gans   -  see within
the combo these possess
ions              to fallow
                                              groan   s   s  nag  s   oar
   tone
                                              lent    blunt       beet
bent  oboe
                                              net      belt         snag
the    buttons
is ob(li)vious  to deliver the
                                                  jump          now you
twist the average
                                                                    into
pleasantries & like the end of

everything @ the end of which there
                                                                    is
little of no more again be/tween the
                                                                    lube &
gorn of A  _  ^  ~
 

Steve Dalachinsky
 

The Post-purchase Fugue

There’s nothing

Worse than

Playin’ the

Aesthetic

Game

Wrong.

Randall Rogers

chet baker wore khakis

posed on stage:
dark suit,
trumpet in his hand,
stark & glassy,
vaguely sinister,
a beautiful face
with a smile
as mysterious as
the mona lisa's --
 

a film-noir scene,
come to life

playing a kind of
jazz-haiku, with
an ache in his tone
that hints at the dark
secrets hidden behind
his distant stare

each phrase, suspended in air,
like a trail of cigarette smoke:
"my funny valentine",
"this time the dream's on me" --

small truths, falling
from the bell of his horn --
cool indigo,

the place he sang from,
utterly untouchable --
like a child singing
to himself, as he plays alone,

the sound of
solitude for sale.

nobody knows
why he climbed
inside the darkness
of his own soul --

stumbling down
street after mad street,
determined to find
the closest point of departure

accommodating
all the people
who wanted to see him
crash & burn --

all those good-time,
i-told-you-so brothers,
who can now smile,
as they take their last,
righteous shots

at the "golden boy",
the "great white hope"
of jazz trumpet --

a jazz icon,
ultimately reduced to a photo,
in a meaningless,
madison avenue (GAP)
  sales campaign -

"chet baker wore khakis".

Donnie Cox

bird on the wing

you traded
your cabaret card
for somebody's
idea of paradise

& now --
you're standing
outside a club on
52nd street,

the rain, beating
a philly-joe solo
on the brim of
your fedora

can't even get
your fucking foot
in the front door
of the jazz joint

they named for you -
bird, the man
who could glide over
chorus after chorus

smooth, sure, & fast
as your little sister's
ass, & never run
out of things to say

bird, "liberator of paris",
"king of bebop" --
gets another royal
welcome home

so, what now --

the jazz clubs
are being replaced,
one-by-one,
with strip dives

& they're playing
rock & roll
over at the
paramount --

claiming, bop's
just an outline
of the past,
a graveyard ghost.

but you can
come with me --
if you wanna go
to kansas city

a place where you
can play without
a goddam license
& you won't have to be

charlie parker with strings;

you can be free --

a bird-on-the-wing...
 

Donnie Cox

The Flesh Failures

Thinking we had the formula
for the creation of new life
with the chemicals of our lonely
bodies we rutted with
deep heat. For months we met
on the white pall
and went at it. You have a kitchen
between your legs;
I cannot eradicate it. And those
days of fire, when we
were angels in theomachy, are sores
now. And all we made
in that underground laboratory,
was a monster,
which goes by the false
name remembrance, a manmade light..

Corey Mesler

Welcome To The World

My friends keep

Sending birth announcements

Children

Grand children

I sip coffee

View the slide show

Of silent babies

Pink rage

Their curled feet

Like clubs

Victoria Locke

The High Hander

I yelled out

‘Whoever is without

  sin cast the

  first stone’

And I got hit in

  the head with a

            rock:

  and goddammit

 it was Jesus

doin’ the

 throwing!

Randall Rogers

My Brothers, The Pigs

Corporate

Hog farm operations

Are worse than Hitler….

How can we kill

And make live in

Such barbaric conditions

The smartest animal

In the barnyard?

Should we soon except concentration

Camps for dolphins?

Randall Rogers

Home
 

Chain linked fences, beer bottle
Shatter art
Some godly smell like a dead dog rotting
Something like a condomless wrapper
Syringes, else movie props
Graffiti threats and recommendations
Children that beg for food
Women that beg for drugs
Rich men that beg for sex in flashy bars
With neon sign sycophant fraternity
All of this,
Under the most fantastic hued cloud sundown
That the ones on the other side of town
Can't see but traces of, from all that light
They pollute themselves with.
 

Jeffery S. Taylor

Like Buying the French Version of a Velvet Elvis

On vacation

In Paris

And worse, bragging

And making my

Cousin get one too

 In order for him

         To

“get some class”.

Randall Rogers

PARADISE AND AGE

In those strange revelations
of the years and days
by which creation weeps
and breathes
and deeply prays
in this waterfall of words
...this spilling
of emotive thought
among the lives and wills
my teachers bought
with their brushes and their quills
and their wringing of the hands
where an idea understands
the cause

it is my  hope
that the truth has been revealed
and all of the musive beauty
dressed by God
or peeled by thought
to perfect nakedness

and held aloft.
...in that moment such breath spoke
on the page
and as well
within my mind
where love and smoke
and tears
turned aside and coughed
in those strange revelations
of the months and years
that wrote the story
of its paradise
and age....
 

Sam Silva

nano
 

untitled had a nightmare
many computers and headset domes
welcome to the brain spa
where they tickle your cortex
gone stiff with undead momentum
when the newborn talons of electricity
rake your skull
penetrate
excite the depressed cells
salty lips and complete relaxation
no dancing here
no singing here
blip blip
unless you're a glowing young girl
and the security guards can posses
the camera over your rippling dress as you spin
over tenacious tentacle chords
through the illusion of orange air freshener
the first time
in the dull leather console
cache
punch and cookies
blip blip
songcity massage, sunshine for the tireless
mind. the venue is spotless.
a brave new world
with pleasures and leisure and niceties
and complimentary refreshments (a bowl of mega watts)
no dancing here
no singing here
blip blip
so throw us all into the magnetic massage.

Ryan Barr

Lunatic Syringe

Lonely Saturday Nights Before Early Mass

When you wake up night
is always an adversary
strange voices talking
out in an urban jungle
drums of the ElksCohol
dancers defy the walls
take over your streets
The American NRA Hamas
Barely ahair separates
the Neanderthal drives
of these daily workers
from Blacks in Ruwanda
ready to take back USA
 

Frank Anthony

Status Report 2

Been reading about Africa again

That dark continent of

Seemingly endless

Sadness and barbarity

(there but for fortune go we)

Tsk tsk tsking my way through the

Morning paper shocked at tales of

A woman drowning her five children

Or a man who devourers his victims

Or a group of racists dragging a man

Down a road in Texas until his head

Bounces off – all this is simply

HORRIBLE

AWFUL

What’s wrong with people these days

But when an entire country is

Divided by (un)civil war and one tribe

Decides that its neighbors deserve

Nothing better than to be hacked to

Death and raped and/or vice-versa

It barely makes page ten

Or how a woman is raped

In South Africa

Every seventeen seconds partly

Because the stupid SOBs believe

That fucking a virgin purges HIV

From the body

And now AIDS and HIV is

Pandemic decimating the population

With an efficiency that puts Hitler

Pol Pot and Amin to shame

Striking down first the intelligentsia

Then the artists then the teachers

Then their students

Leaving the ignorant to find their way

Or simply wait for death to finally

Appear and take their last

Pitiful possession

I read on and on my heart growing heavier

With sadness as if tears might fall

Here as I sit reading the paper

Over coffee and a croissant

I read a graph that says I’m older by ten

Years than the average black African

That I earn more in a week than

Some make in a year and

I notice there is a growing

Pressure in my chest

As if boney black hands were

Reaching up off the page

Pushing me pulling me begging me

As if each word was a small round

Stone and each stone was piling up

Each paragraph a bag of stones

Stone upon stone

Being stacked there

Against my chest

So I might know the terrible weight

Of a continent forgotten

Each stone a soul

Lost to ignorance

Each stone a failed wish

Dumped at the foot of

An uncaring world

By the time I finish the article

I am so numbed (stoned) that

Even the next page with its

Numerous well-fed models

Posed provocatively in lingerie

Stirs nothing in me

It might as well be a dead cat

Squashed flat by traffic

Or a small round stone

Lying innocently on a

Weed-choked sidewalk

Where candy wrappers

Blow down the street like

Urban tumbleweeds and

Africa finally makes page one

RD Armstrong   

Martina in a Liplock

I had Martina in a liplock when the
Earthquake came to town
She mumbled something about how
No one had ever made the Earth move
Like that for her and we got married
In Central Park.
Ten years later we're laying on the couch
Watching Lawrence Harvey
Play chess on Columbo
And she said,
You're not like you used to be.
Twenty years later we watch the Millennium
Roll onto the beach on a TV in the mall
And I realize that our life
Was like doing coke.
You light that spark the first night
And spend the rest of your life
Trying to fan that
Ember into a flame again.
Thirty years have come and gone
And I still feel the tremors
I laid Martina down on the couch
And I sat up and
Read Raymond Chandler to her
As she moaned with the pain
I could feel she was leaving me soon
After awhile you get used to the
Earth not moving anymore and
Just an occasional tremor
In the heart can get you by...

Hank Beukema

SHE NOTICED

The sexy twist of his lips
As he said all those things
He didn't mean

Little word stones
Plopped from his mouth

Shattered her rippling
Heart pond

Like glass

Victoria Locke
 

as a general rule, i love the wrong ones

trying to be cool
with her
in the front
seat as i drive,
her
boyfriend in back
and a joint circulating.
"when's your birthday?"
she asks.
"January," i say.
"January what?" she asks.
"twenty-third. why?"
"just wondering."
 

Jeffery S. Taylor

Drive He Said

Leaving San Bernadino
He said Drive
He said Drive until
You hit Detroit
I was 19 and He was younger
But he had the car
And he had the gun
So I gobbled up
Some of the
White crosses that
They had come to L A
To take back to Motown
She laid back there
With that haltertop
And those pink shorts
And I had already pictured
Us without him
And we were running
Always running
Fields and streams
And no haltertop
And no shorts
They were smacked out
And I was speeding
I would talk for oh
About an hour and
Every once in awhile he
Would say, Good, Buck, good
Keep drivin, man
I was a New York boy
And wanted to see the
Grand Canyon but
After about a Chevy Chase minute
He said Drive, he said
Drive until you hit Detroit
I drove the entire length of
Route 66 in a Falcon
With bald tires
Through the Rockies
Through Amarillo
Through the snow
Through the drugs
Through the fear
But I made Michigan
And I said goodbye
On the Western coast
So I could go north to Holland
Where some friends left
A light on for me
I don't even remember their names
But I can still see that
Halter top and those shorts
And that gun and
Hear him say Drive,boy
Drive, he said
Drive until you hit Detroit....

Hank Beukema

BLUE WINDS AND ARTIFACTS FROM INTERSTATE 40 TO GEORGIA 78
 

Wind, wind, sleek wind blowing,
coursing its way through the last of winter,
bending through the plains, the peaks, the cities,
planting itself in this town between the hills,
where raw silk and T shirts conceal and reveal
all the fleshy confusion about just what the temperature is.
    You thought you had me figured out,
what blue jeans go with which linen jacket
and how long it would take for me to miss the rain,
and I¹m doing it now, missing all the rumble, the gray spotlight,
the shout of a crashed wave at full moon midnight.
Mendocino County, big waves, big rivers,
true land of the lost souls,
and it was home for a while, for a while until I missed
the sound of diphthongs and southern vowels...so I loaded up and ran,
one love on the horizon, the other in the land itself...
    And now I miss the waves?-never satisfied,
        always Being-Towards, direction doesn¹t matter.
            I¹ll not go back, but the flight East? This is that:
Choppy drive into town, the windows are smeared
with jellied smoke, tape player fast forwards to Preachin¹ Blues,
......a flat road into the swamps, gun across my chest......
    Oh, oh yeah, let me tell you something, the journey is art, is life,
not just whim, always feel on the road, shout
    or a whimper, doesn¹t matter, I gotta go, I gotta go     now...
and the pine trees shake, shimmy and shake from highway winds.
It¹s all a haze, all heat, like that, a hot, wet wind.
A scratchy tango emerges and jerks, ah, Gardel, had enough
of Piazzola, give me the mourning stuff with a whiff
of dance and kiss, I¹m filled with romance, with desire,
    and yet there is no object, no she, no other, but I am filled,
and it¹s called longing, longing for those legendary sweet
winds of late spring,          whose touch is the life
    of a thousand flowers, a thousand lakes and rivers.....
and here I am on the road: The Road...SouthEast:

          dodging time, running.
I wish I wrote songs. I wish I could touch the heart just one
more time. And then the mists roll in, the air cools,
    and it¹s late winter, late, late winter.
Well I¹m always digging the strangest weather:
either standing naked on Pacific in Alaskan winds, sleet like
    cold arrows when January takes a stand...
Or walking dirt roads in the scorching summer,
         tinitis cicada roar...yellow sun so close, unleashed.
And just at that time when cold is too cold
                            and hot is too hot,
when I swear I can¹t keep on in extremes the rains come, thunder breaks the
shell and the land fills with the winds,
the heavenly winds, moderate, soothing, and always on time.
        It¹s all about romance. Go figure.
Of course the metaphor is change----isn¹t it?
    Great winds and charged ions.
Sometime in the Sixties St. John Perse leaned back on a rock
    beneath the Savannah sun and thought about this,
but I¹ve never found anyone who wants to talk about that,
so the scenes are solitary moments reaching Spirit, never flesh, never.
Catalogues and roadsigns flipping by, who really wants
     the forced dialogues about spending money?
Desire is better than that. Meaning erased, the bad side of our times laid
bare in images that do not relate. "Catch Oem alone
    on the road where all they can do is think."
Oh man, don¹t give me the hermeneutic for Bill Gates and a Sunrise,
    don¹t, please don¹t interpret big tits and a car...
yeah desire, better long for what is thought, my thoughts, my fetish
for what is felt, for things felt: and the secrets of economy
wash away by the fast roadside, I don¹t want to buy anything,
I only want to feel..........        breath, cool streams, a wave,
anything but the bibles of this fin de siècle science
where Sex and Self express through purchase.

    Desire is better than that.
Moving forward, the purpose of evolution is to go UP the ladder.
Continuing on in the clutch of highway winds:
resting in the desert where the hills push back
    the roar of truck and caravan, sounds like a storm,
feels like Santa Anna, the road, how strange, walked
a hundred yards out in shade of the red mesa, still the din
and blow bounces in Mahler rages of ambient disaster,
but the sky just sits and radiates blue, blue contradiction,
        blue envelope around a petri dish gone wild,
    I don¹t like it, it¹s creepy, back in the car I drive
a little bit slower. I don¹t wanta contribute, I don¹t wanta
be a part of this great hoax and horror, but I am,
and with sound and split winds I barrel out I-40
pushing my own storms agenda on the naked earth beside me.
Sometimes it seems a signature is the last flourish we have that says "I"
in the world. Rush me something grand and changing,
    a release from the ordinary, the stereotypes,
pick it up and throw it out, toss away the mass,
        the character trait that is always expected.
I remember arguing Dasein, that perhaps objects couldn¹t have    IT,
now I disagree, now I see, yes, empirically,
that the winds do have Dasein, so much more than these
soul stripped dreamings I am left to lead on wandering ground.
    Scene: March Lion breathes heavy in the tall grass...
I heard a catamount scream in the September night,
    no one - no thing can chill like that.
            Everything stopped.
                Wind=Vehicle.
So as I signed the credit card slip at a convenience stop
in the Christmas tree peaks of northern Arizona,
    I thought about my name on the page,
the difference between pronouncing who I am
                and that of the feral I wish I was.

Alive in a place where the pain originates,
still thinking in terms of id, ego, yeah libido too,
sad because I can¹t connect, can¹t breach the space
between word and contact, where history
muffles the need of pronouns to posses,
and language as meaning is abandoned, moves off track
from intention to action, and that¹s the pain,
the source, like a subway turnstile locking and unlocking,
a recognition...not a cure...we understand what we want,
and damned if the best wind blowing up out of this tunnel
is that of a freon blast from subterranean lungs.
    Yeah, I¹m running, hell hound hound hound of heaven
                        on my heels.....
the legendary image fading in my rearview mirror smiles.
       
Oklahoma in a flash:
    Yield, a warning sign: Prairie Fires Will Kill You.
Tiny heat waves ripple steam through the dust.
Yellow smoke pierces the high white clouds.
Grand motions sweep, small images swirl,
the cottonwood and sage blossom, yet the winds
still roll with cold thunder and the challenge of light.
    Detour, I wanta go home. Right now everything just seems
                      ...but how?...and that¹s the note,
    the trill that signals Change or Die.   Sudden lime horizon:
I see a tornado blaze across the sky.
        Touch me, I¹m afraid
                        the rest is a blur.
And I move on towards the gentle Appalachians.
Pale white steam rising from the Roosevelt reservoirs,
those hills, those ancient sway backed, wet green hills,
green I cannot number, shades I cannot name,  but home, yes,
green home and soft earth. And when I have reached
the high lakes and gotten out of the car, tossed the keys
into the laurel, I will be home.  Cool, cool evening,

a season of peace in these breezes, and I swear I saw Garbo
out on the lakescapes, pure Deco beauty out of place
but fitting in, and that¹s alright, the four winds gather in,
and yet another destination waits, another storm,
another life building in the kaleidoscope eye of the sun.
And I feel the winds, sleek winds blowing off the hills...

H. Lamar Thomas

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Hello, RD.
Thanks for including my work in Dufus. Great to be there together with Dan Fante. I met him 2 or 3 years ago in a book fair in Charleroi, a big town near here.  He signed the copies of his books I had taken with me. Best from Belgium,

-- Éric Dejaeger
 

The latest issue of DUFUS is awesome! I just wanted to thank you for selecting my poem. -- Ryan Barr

Thanks for [including] the poem in DUFUS # 6, the issue looks  fantastic. I  sneak peeks at work for  one or two poems--like little micro hits to get me through a sad day of devices. I'm almost done getting through it. One liquid word at a time. Nice to be included with such heavy weights as Lyn Lifhsin and  J Locklin. -- RobiPoet

Bless your tired old heart for publishing my pome, RD.  I showed it to the woman I'm loving and she said "I'm becoming a celebrity!"  I don't know what to say anymore.  I'm so sick of people, but you're this special magic joy that manages to get to me.  Thank you.  -- Robert L. Penick

Absolutely wonderful issue of Dufus.  The quality of the poems is outstanding.  You should be very proud of this one.  All your hard work wading through submissions was worth it.  -- Laura Stamps

strong issue.  read thru a whole bunch of people.  Glazner lives down here.  good to see you included people like Church, Lerner, Locklin.  the whole issue is really a good one.  and I like the way you've divided it [DUFUS 6] up with locale and concept, and morality.  the more I see the war the more I wonder what somebody like Goya or Picasso wd do.  maybe poetry is truly the last good country.  but then what do I know.  --Todd Moore

LINKS

Eskimo Pie Girl

Larry Jaffe

Gerry Locklin

Christopher Mulrooney

Scott Wannberg

Other Lummox Poets

Cesar Chavez Tribute

The San Pedro Poems by RD Armstrong

DUFUS #3

DUFUS #4

DUFUS #5

DUFUS #6

DUFUS #7

DUFUS #8.1

DUFUS #8.2

LUMMOX JOURNAL & PRESS

Recent Photos of Events & Craftsmanship of Raindog NEW PHOTOS

Todd Moore's Wolf in the Cornfield

Todd Moore

NEW from Lummox Press - Rebecca Morrison's Raining All Over 

A Seasonal Haiku by Rebecca Morrison

JUICE ONLINE - POETRY LINKS

Four Sep Publications

POESY Magazine

The Temple Bookstore

The Artwork of Dee Rimbaud

12 Gauge Press publisher of ROADKILL by RD Armstrong

Remark Ezine

Abalone Moon Ezine

Zygote in my coffee Ezine

Thunder Sandwich Ezine

The Chiron Review

Open Wide Magazine

This site updated Sept. 2004
 

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