All the content of this website is © Copyright erbacce © Copyright on individual poems
remains with the authors; nothing may be reproduced without express permission.
If you download a copy of erbacce all copyright rules still apply.
Josie’s Java
Shutter down six miles from
Midtown when rain falls
seek shelter
News
Papers In
Side
The coffee was poured with
negative reinforcement
This place named from
gardens the Irish planters
long gone
Lifelong neighbourhood
residence
the shoeshine will never be the same
one day till’ insanity
living in the here and now
seeing what others cannot see
and I…seeing what they see
or not
you and me baby until the wheels fall off
sang the band on TV, a rock-n-roll band
music with a hallucinogenic effect
one day until insanity
or better off dead
with no tears or reason to cry
only whispering wind to ease the image
colors from the grave spark
and little lady disappears in a wink
maybe her spirit rests in a sinless color
flying among stars from heaven
circling the moon as crystal thoughts
to be remembered
here and now
with only one day till’ insanity
you were my crutch
no title
Liquid large and salty flow, that which divides it
Vast and flimsy ethereal blue, scorched white copper bronze
Division’s a dome done deal,
Dumb none but I,
I am not yet
I wait
Unborn of a silent scream
Gaped quiver ripple wrinkled flesh
Composite of structured splits
Code coded copied chimera
In high bred hybrid
In limbo
Anthracite black awash awake
Polar pulsing plexus
Elected flexing felted frame
Burnt bolted neanderthal nuts
Mine mind mined melted deep
Blast blinded rip
In it am I
Surf cerebellum surface
Four fold folded found
Midst neural chatter
In cogito ergo sum
Processed as process
Proceed as animate
Imitate the primary version
I prefer not to mire too long
This journey’s a mediated mirror move
Thrust upon trust tread light
Still born forms aspire to entice
Wave lengths unfurled
Record intent
in deep gulps
Air as searching fluid seeps
To set a skin
Define a form
Enclosing as a winding sheet
A shape
From which a shadow might
Eclipse the searing sun
Ingested entrails newly glow
Grow to lush in hum and hue
In hexagon held
Deep scented colour
Swells vascular drains
Rejuvenate cosmic nod
A solid six, faced to the sun
For unified maximised effect
Tangential tangle in rooted ness
Seed soup shoring home
Wrought icons of the future
Allowing solstice rise
In stilly spheres
Orb of orbital reasoning
Spins thought strands and weaves
A fabrication floss as mist
To cloak the spectre
And muffle dissent
Such is the construct
Perceived as beauty
Grey flecked pink flecked white, cast shadows of players
Who speak with their hands, stroke the construct
Invoke green man to regeneration
Read multiplication
That’s it
No questions
No answers
Soak silence
In oily scum
Rainbow on water
And the scales
Of dead fish
VODKA TONIC BLUES
the regulars rent me for seven hours
a day. suzanne finally fucked me. she
was terrible in bed. she said she loved
me and wanted to eat chicken with rice
all during the sex. when i stuck it in her
mouth it was the worst thing i could have
ever done. she even wiped it off with her
pants. she made a scene leaving but she still
comes into the restaurant talking on the
phone and drinking vodka tonics saying hi
and pretending not to be looking at me.
After the Baby Funeral
“I’ve got all the time in the world”
–Mark Sandman, “Radar,” Morphine’s 1995 CD “Yes”
“I don’t care how dead he is, he’s the sexiest man alive”
–overheard in a record shop (referring to Mark Sandman)
It was juice, jazz, joss, jissm we called
on for comfort (gospel of response/recall)
after the little white box
we couldn’t and couldn’t not
look at in the church
was lowered into dirt for the leaching of its linen
Dead babies play at the feet of Jesus
or so the preacher oiled us, but
dead boys played on the stereo
rock-hard while we cooked and fucked
as if we needed meat to replenish the flesh the savage
god exacted
Exposure
A leaking gas pipe and the front of a modest
terraced home collapsed exposing the interior
of a private space to the world and I, for one,
could not stop looking.
In the living room hung a seascape painted by
an artistic uncle the sea looked frozen and
large waves appeared as snowdrifts. Yet
the painting was overshadowed by light brown
wallpaper with huge sunflowers on.
The same paper was used in the two bedrooms
too except in the bathroom that had yellow
ducks on pink background.
Passers by averted their stare truth can be so
intrusive we don’t really like to know that
much about other people (except their sex life)
workmen came and covered the damage with
tarpaulin, it was my house and I had lost my
last illusion but took comfort in the fact that
it was my wife that had chosen the wallpaper
in the bathroom.