Deadly Pollen

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Title: Deadly Pollen
Author: Stephen Oliver
Release Date: March 9, 2004 [eBook #11522]
[Most recently updated
August 2, 2004]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEADLY
POLLEN***
Copyright (C) 2003 by Stephen Oliver.
DEADLY POLLEN
Stephen Oliver
WORD RIOT PRESS
(c) Stephen Oliver, 2003
Books by Stephen Oliver

Henwise (1975)
& Interviews (1978)
Autumn Songs (1978)

Letter To James K. Baxter (1980)
Earthbound Mirrors (1984)

Guardians, Not Angels (1993)
Islands of Wilderness - A Romance
(1996)
Unmanned (1999)
Election Year Blues (1999)
Night of
Warehouses: Poems 1978 - 2000 (2001)
Deadly Pollen (2003)

Ballads, Satire & Salt (2003)
Recordings
Earthbound Mirrors, a selection, Stephen Oliver,
Ode Records Label,
Auckland, (cassette) 1984
For more information on Stephen Oliver visit:

http://people.smartchat.net.au/~sao/

Cover design: Pina Ricciu.
Cover image: The Lithuanian Bison,

engraving from J. von Brincken, 1828.
Acknowledgements: Antipodes (USA), Biff's Quarterly (USA), Brief
(NZ), Catalyzer Journal (USA), Comet Magazine (San Francisco),
JAAM (NZ), Poetry NZ/26 featured poet, San Francisco Salvo,
Spreadhead (USA), Thylazine (Aust).
An Actual Encounter With the Sun On / My Balcony At France Street:
a parody on Frank O'Hara's 'A True Account Of Talking / To The Sun
At Fire Island' who in turn based his account on Mayakovsky's more
robust poem, 'A Most Extraordinary Adventure'. POETS' PALACE: a
name given by the author to an old Kauri, weatherboard guest house in
France Street (the upper story of which he occupied in the early '80s)
near the prostitute's strip off K'rd, Auckland. Various 'emerging' poets
& artists lived downstairs at intervals during this period. As the last of
its kind in Newton Gully this 100 year old wooden building was finally
demolished at the close of the decade.
Deadly Pollen is published by
Word Riot Press
PO Box 414
Middletown, NJ 07748
USA


http://www.wordriot.org/press
ISBN 0-9728200-2-7
Typeset by Word Riot Press in Bembo
Contents
Deadly Pollen
0. 'ZIONISM:'
0. 'You return to the stupa, yearly,'
0. 'The stones collected. Ground'
0. ' "With digital, there is no past," '
0. 'How is it the floating island'
0. 'Mediocre raiders lie in wait.'
0. 'Time passes - that pressure in'
0. 'Hugely, our indifference squats -'
0. 'Circuit; right hand wise,'
0. 'If streets had cobblestones'
0. 'A Public Works draughtsman'
0. 'Pyrrha, your dewy hair,'
0. 'The flames above the wall,'
0. 'Once cradle of civilization -'
0. 'Forty thousand tons. Space'
0. 'A giallo antico moon framed'
0. ''The Breaking of Nations' '
0. ''A line is taking a full-stop'
0. 'Buildings off the crustal shelf,'
0. 'Generalization of Old World'
0. 'CEOs in castles cascade'
0. 'Footprints for satellites?'
0. 'Is recollection seeing anew,'
0. 'So. Earth's most dramatic'
0. 'I wanted to reach my hand into'
0. ' 'Your breasts in the mirror,' '
0. 'Alcatraz not Minoan ruins.'
0. 'Do words bring to mind flat'

0. 'Serpent-backed bridge profiled:'
0. 'One quadrant of sky turns,'
0. 'Barrel of the sun, gun-wad,'
0. 'Rubbed off sky exposes an'
0. 'The day combustible as a'
0. 'Compression of bees,'
0. 'Scent makes the air visible,'
An Actual Encounter With The Sun On
My Balcony At France Street
Deadly Pollen
ZIONISM:
to carry forward the cultural gene -
O bright-lit destiny
of the chosen!
The child's bouncing ball lands in mud
on the other
side of the wire;
footsteps are paradoxical in a minefield.
His heart
ticks fast as a metal detector,
slowly, the yellow ball rolls to a stop.

Proposition: to advance onto ancestral
territory, or return into gentle,
familial lands,
a footfall journey backward. His eye
shrinks the land
to desert.
*
You return to the stupa, yearly,
to seek your return. You wish to

come back as forest deer but
that deer is extinct. The stupa is a rock

upon which your dreams founder,
yearly, - you return that which

you do not have. Meanwhile, in the
West, under ragged skies and
beneath a
hundred spires no longer dreamt of -
attendance comes
tumbling down;
each stone, unturned, in an emptied
space within a
space caved under.
*
The stones collected. Ground
levelled and swept. The first cubicle

erected with four windowed-walls,
an open doorway. One man
on a
step looking out to sea. Civilization
open for business. Soon, marble


was made smooth and square. The Idea
locked into permanence.
Curiosity
stimulated commerce; others came and
conquered then
went away.
That first step never forgotten became
a throne -
history's seat.
*
"With digital, there is no past,"
says Jean-Luc Godard. Either way,

the button is redundant. Voice-command
is thought - the fear deep
and futureless
as history, desire to appease which
remains