Live Nude Poems

          We who have sold out are working on dreams of sheetrock and vasoline Don't tell us we are shallow We were denied your lonesome road and guitar music cursed with our own choices which were to go to work           Your smoky nights and poverty they all at least pretended to care when you took a notion to go out and lose your mind We put on our nigger jokes and coveralls laughed as we hated everything, ourselves especially and had no tears           The pretty words, carved rocks and canvas you decorated? We buy tigers or big eyed kids on black velvet           Our curses are not for your freedom or songs of protest They are for the dues we paid They are for turning around one morning and finding we were nobody           Yes we are working on dreams We who have sold out.

I've posted this before, on a depressing day probably just like this one. This poem makes me feel better. That's all I have to say on that. It turned out worse than I thought The champion defended his title then Eldridge Cleaver came on to talk about his reasons for becoming a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Grandma and I damn near fell out of our chairs Went to town and got crazy drunk Came back home, called you long-distance after cruising and drooling Mainstreet again This is my last wish and love poem It is as follows Want to hold the wake at noon with plenty of acid and rum No friends and relatives Ghost music by Hendrix and the Byrds drowning all sound as you fuck me to dust beneath the chickenshit Mormon sun. Links:  http://www.limberlostpress.com/authors/161embree1.html

I have this bad habit, you see. I don't read books inasmuch as I read authors . Once I get my hooks into something good, I want it all. Which leads one to unfortunate (but lucky) circumstances like owning everything Peter Matthiessen ever put to paper, an ouevre which will give me lasting pleasure into my dotage, or owning all the volumes in the Poems of the Millenium series. I despair even of completing all the books in my library, let alone the 5 or 6 or 20 new ones I pick up every month. I tell myself I have no other public vices, and I purchase at will. So, recently, in my desire to buy all the Ed Dorn I could get into my system, I picked up his last book, Chemo Sabe --from Limberlost Press --a beautiful oversize chapbook of poems written as Dorn was dying of cancer. Light holiday reading in other words. The papers on this book are exquisite, the type is large enough to read comfortably--not always the case--and it's generally a fine product before you even get to the wo...