from Sermons and Lectures by Matt Hart

"I believe in desperate acts, the kind that make me look"

Both ways when crossing my fingers behind my back in the street

where the traffic's terrific, and I'm making a promise

that I know I won't keep to talk with you soon about

Kant's metaphysics   One reason after another in a multitude

of classic styles and miasmic colors   Stop and go emergencies

for any occasion and every budget   Vroom vroom vroom

See ya later, alligator   All I want's to write more poems

to be a good husband and a father and a teacher   This lecture

brought to you by anxiety over an interview   Heading home

from my current position/employ   I think about the people warm

and sleepy in their houses   The icicles dragging all our gutters

to the meadows   Snow or linoleum   Is anybody happy  Is anybody

torn in the talons of an eagle, a red-tailed hawk through the eyes

of a storm   And if anybody is, then can anybody fix it

Is anybody willing   The situation's lonely and I'm already forty

Weirdly, the whole world's right here with me   Right here

beside me, but nobody's home   I walk to the store for a twelve pack

of something, or light bulbs or toilet paper, coffee for the morning

Orange marmalade, English muffins   Tonight we'll think

our faces off, and then I'll do some sleeping   Longer than I can

remember I've wanted to amount to more than me, significantly

and anxiously, and not to be a negative and not to wear a mask

This message directly to you is a plea to hear back YOUR message--

any message you want   To hear you in my headdress   To see you

on my doorstep   3127 Manning Avenue, Cincinnati OH 45211

And when I pull your strings, you can set me on fire

And when the Jawbreaker's finished, you can

put on my shirt   We'll blow each other's covers

then we'll walk the red carpet   into the rapture

we will dance on the escarpment   our arrival

a surge of inter-mangled re-connection

Poem by Ben Gulyas

slowly
what is left
is cast upon the last star--
in long walking wishes,
legs of running water
they are dreams, really
shifting from face to face,
a commotion of voices...
oil lamps of flickering eyes
set to near boiling
far and away...
a strange old dream,
a bridge of birds...
the farthest storks
with translucent wings...lifting...
between mesmerizing moon
and mesmerizing earth...

a hint of crossroads...
a hint of boxwire...
the intransient dust of the mouth
slowly lifting
above those trans-Mongolian bones...
with horses standing on the grass
waiting so far away...
you can barely
sleep...

broadside by Ben Gulyas

Directions / Seaborn Jones

The wind sharpens itself

on a man's face.

A woman brings rain

in wooden bottles.

He gives her a fist

full of flowers.

She eats them

one by one

then exhales petals

that take the shape

of a child.

The child sits

on the man's knees

while the man

tells a story

that he cannot remember.

He is drunk on rain.

The woman

sings a song

that she has never heard.

She is drugged by flowers.

The child wants to know

which way

the world is.

The man points

in one direction;

the woman, another.

Detached / Kathy Prescott

 

I dreamed I was decapitated,

all the while reminding myself

to relax my shoulders,

so as not to interfere

with the cutting.

Not so bad, really,

only the guy holding my hair

would describe where

the blade was heading,

being helpful.

The cutter - another gentleman

(historically correct, 

so preferably French)

did the work. Inch by inch

he made it to bone.

And I could tell, but it was not

that bad - just a little weird -

after countless birds prepared,

more Julia Child than

Mary, Queen of Scots.

I think we were standing

at the ocean - yes.

My body, left with

faculties and sight,

watched the fellow with

his sheathless sword stride

down the beach with my head,

swinging both.

No one said anything about me

being headless.

Surrounded by the

sounds of surf and

attracted by the smell,

I played at the edge

of the water. Seeing

small shells and creatures there,

I picked one up

and washed it off,

taking care not to spill over -

more Manet than Bergman, really.

Charmed, more than I ought

to have been (considering my plight)

by every aspect of the place -

grains of sand and vast

blue sky. I experienced the

scene as permanent -  

fleeting - not at all. A kind  

of odd sensation, really,

(more feeling than a thought)

like matter over mind.