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:?
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?
ISBN 0-9728200-2-7
Typeset by Word Riot Press in Bembo
Contents
Deadly Pollen
1. 'ZIONISM:'
2. 'You return to the stupa, yearly,'
3. 'The stones collected. Ground'
4. ' "With digital, there is no past," '
5. 'How is it the floating island'
6. 'Mediocre raiders lie in wait.'
7. 'Time passes - that pressure in'
8. 'Hugely, our indifference squats -'
9. 'Circuit; right hand wise,'
10. 'If streets had cobblestones'
11. 'A Public Works draughtsman'
12. 'Pyrrha, your dewy hair,'
13. 'The flames above the wall,'
14. 'Once cradle of civilization -'
15. 'Forty thousand tons. Space'
16. 'A giallo antico moon framed'
17. ''The Breaking of Nations' '
18. ''A line is taking a full-stop'
19. 'Buildings off the crustal shelf,'
20. 'Generalization of Old World'
21. 'CEOs in castles cascade'
22. 'Footprints for satellites?'
23. 'Is recollection seeing anew,'
24. 'So. Earth's most dramatic'
25. 'I wanted to reach my hand into'
26. ' 'Your breasts in the mirror,' '
27. 'Alcatraz not Minoan ruins.'
28. 'Do words bring to mind flat'
29. 'Serpent-backed bridge profiled:'
30. 'One quadrant of sky turns,'
31. 'Barrel of the sun, gun-wad,'
32. 'Rubbed off sky exposes an'
33. 'The day combustible as a'
34. 'Compression of bees,'
35. '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 featureless, not the disorganized?weather it truly is, as much a part of?the breathing stars as constancy of rock.?The 'Mr Whippy Man' weaves?Greensleeves in and out of suburbia; a?caravan in search of a trade-route -?via the village that never existed.
8
*
How is it the floating island?detaches itself from horizon in dream -?its first appearance, otherworldly,?but of this world, a wheel loosened?from the world's ratchet, out of time,?riding above it and inhabited by?folk fixated upon a particular?theorem-thought; elevated imponderables,?whereby you access this island by door?set underneath as you sail under??Islands, a dream of round towers!?the sudden rush of water under hulls.
*
Mediocre raiders lie in wait.?Teeth clack in sleep, dreams fraught?with ambush.