Dale Jensen
(USA)
Control Chair
rotate from chair walk
into the luminous world
what i see is what i mean
i have been riding here for centuries
the rocket engines had decelerated automatically
escape pods tight self as an initiate
his heart hammered in also he’d hit the atmosphere
this landing set to absorb the back of his mind
breathed deeply in calm
once in the starless darkness of night
a dream came to me and touched my hand
i am you it said i am your child
that you followed until your suppression of light
fathered the shadow that you now remember being
the acceleration couch aimed his face to an infinity of stars
he fingered the survival mounds then stroked and their breath
he already knew because he knew the local air its fullness
his limbs seemed to navigate themselves their momentum in his sight
blinking difficult to move further an unknown animal
once i reached into the mirror and patted the animal on the other side
its touch played like music across my fingers i knew it would bite
i have never seen anything more scary in my life
i have been sitting in this control chair for centuries
the lights of maybe imaginary stars passing my peripheral vision
or maybe it’s only through imagination
so violent the start of descent that i keep watching it
that it sings calmly to me whatever it is
that its eyes focus something i’ve known all my life
that i will pass it on to you seemingly tame and strangeless
that somehow you too will recognize these skies
Fall Harmony
a grey fallen leaf
looking like a used condom
on the hard sidewalk
The Grasshopper and the Moon
i don’t need to see
what is there
i need to see
what isn’t there
the coldness that opens the door
the warmth of the snowstorm
the blinding light of clouds
the comforting darkness of the sun
the frog has been at the bottom of the well for centuries
every hundred years the grasshopper visits him
the frog says i don’t need to talk about philosophy
i don’t even have a knife or a plate
but i can see the moon from here
every hundred years i can see the moon
it’s such a wonder i need to look at it now
and besides tomorrow morning you’ll hop out of here
all you real things you just float away
and the moon i know
i know that’s not real
Lightbulbs Are Delicious
whenever i write
it’s always in the darkest part of the house
here she said
here are the molecules of light you left
while your shoes were having dinner
demons congregate in the basement
they saw this happen in a horror movie
but this time someone left the light on
and they can’t see a goddamn thing
lightbulbs are most delicious
when you pour tarantulas over them
then roll eggs around over concrete
windows will gather around you to watch
you can teach them songs about the great outdoors
Drawn From Photo (for Gerhard Richter)
i believe that the beating heart the cold strokes defining the trees
the deer its blur the first sketched line
i could never see past the weathered brown planks
only wood darkened no sunlight
i believe in god as a fog
to where your garden breathed i touched mystery
grass drawn against a white wall where
over the wide eyes’ spark shut door the deer blur
motion seen through a window
that a camera hand would be unstable
have past the cameras the sketchiness of birch trees
final as cut the fence fallen down
over the sidewalk and at last the artist’s initials
harsh abstract traffic the two letters clear
stepping sketchily over leaves
At the Scales
osiris lay in all preadmission instructions
leave all jewelry torn into pieces
the next step may involve anubis crawled
across the desert care of your health card
where your heart washing is important
verify the site onto a scale with a feather
caring for you have washed your hands
is your heart too light?
is it too heavy? anubis
and the doctors watch the electrocardiogram
carefully to see if you travel to the afterlife
or sit forever in unconsciousness
oblivion as another laboratory test
still-breathing fragments stuck there forever
____________________________________________
Dale Jensen reads at the Berkeley Poetry Festival 2011 :
http://dale-jensen.blogspot.fr/
____________________________________________
Dale Jensen was born in Oakland, California, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and received a master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Toronto in 1973, with which he said goodbye to academia forever. In 1974, he embarked on a career with Social Security that lasted until 1999, when he took early retirement. He lives in Berkeley.
Dale’s poetry, which is heavily influenced by the Surrealists and such cut-up writers as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, has appeared in such magazines, journals, and anthologies as Talisman, Lost and Found Times, Ur-Vox, Poetry East, Inkblot, Convolvulus, Dirigible, and many others. He published and edited the experimental poetry magazine Malthus from 1986 through 1989 and continues to occasionally publish books through Malthus Press. He also has published six books and three chapbooks of poetry: Thebes (1991), Bar Room Ballads (1992), The Troubles (1993), Twisted History (1999), Purgatorial (2004), Cyclone Fence (2007), Oedipus’ First Lover (2009),Auto Bio (2010), and Yew Nork (2014).