Worms

god cut the river that made the bank
the devil made the fish that eat the bait
for years they swam around in a tank
but they were destined for a plate

because of the crime rate...
they lost their soul mates...
there was no great debate...

the devil just liked to watch.

- Chris Mansel

Bixby Canyon, On The Wing (for Neeli, Ivan and JLandry)

from the night I spent standing near the cliff's edge
I saw cancerous cells being carried from the beak
of a mother's beak to the waiting mouths of crying birds
As they were fed and retched and learned to fly
a twisted reflection appeared, like dirt on a windshield
the next step in water would reach hundreds of feet
scattered among the clouds, abrupt to one's memory
the first lines of constellations irreversible to the flutter
wings falling from the sky


- Chris mansel

Anemone

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Let's Atrophy The Departed

The barrel of a weapon is pointing at you, in fact its alread beneath your skin and if you were to stop you might actually smell the ammunition a finger pull away from your disconnected brain matter. Just how do you expect the blood and bone surrounding it to stop the blast?
Where did this weapon come from and why is it pointing at you, well it is simple really, just stop and think. No seriously, just stop and think. Come up with it yet?
When you close your eyes do you hear a terrified voice screaming, "Movement in the treeline!" Do you hear, "I.E.D!" Do you hear, "Crash, code blue, sorry sir, you can't come back here!" Or do you hear "The driver was drinking and had a blood alcohol level of..." Maybe you hear, "I want to join the National Guard."
The poison is coming mother and father, sister and son. The wind is going to blow your sand castle into the sea and all the shells along the shore are just gonna give you that thousand yard stare, it's nothing new to them.

- Chris Mansel

After The Turning of The Wheel

Possessing a dream can lend to the eye someone once said and that entails that you are awake in the dream. This defeats the scientific makeup of rapid eye movement and wouldn't that be a ticket to drag down to the market and sell by the ounce. In a dream a man cross himself in the traditional Cathoilc prayer north/south/east/west and assumes the stance of an animal on all fours. He begins to growl and behind him an engine starts up and out of his mouth fires three rounds of ammunition. Upon the eye of the dreamer blood splatters and the chorus of singers erupt on the car radio mounted to the engine block. The man breaks the stance and jumps back and begins tearing apart the engine and eating it. He stops before ingesting the radio and thus the music does not stop. In a dream color can lend to the viewer a better reality, a market shift in the process whereupon he or she will feel they have expierenced something no one else ever have and they will feel the need to share it with everyone else. This begins the dreaded art of advertising and the downfall of conversation after the turning of the wheel.

- Chris Mansel

Butterflies ( for Neeli Cherkovski)

Transatlantic butterfly
Translucent cocoon, on metal railing

Protected species, your frail design
More precious than ancient Chinese inks

Butterflies in the story of creation
Grace landing on the head of the serpent

Kept in captivity under glass
Adoring eyes do not remove the pins

- Chris Mansel

Bob Dylan

Dylan says modern recordings "atrocious"Tue Aug 22, 2006 1:30 PM ET


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Dylan, who released eight studio albums in the past two decades, returns with his first recording in five years, "Modern Times," next Tuesday.

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it's a losing battle.

"Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

Down By The Riverside

Wash me down with alcohol
Leave a little in the bottle
I’ll be sending for it in the spring
Pull me back from the throttle
I’ll be going down the riverbed in flames

A house of detention with sunlit floors
Pushing a mop over the seat where I sit
Send the bottle this winter won’ t you dear
They won’t let you open your veins here
Cause I’ll crawl inside when I done with it

All nightmares have come true
I’m alone in a room with you
Take a picture and throw it in the fire
I’ve endured your final lasting ire
I’ll be going down the riverbed in flames

Chorus:

I have constrained and walled myself in
I’m the opening to hell that invites in
Those who go down by the riverside
Down by the riverside



- Chris Mansel

Apocalypose Now

Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.


- Francis Ford Coppola

God's Times of Death

The graves of eastern religion are horned
There are no birds in the Holy Land…
Television prints the pages of the Koran
The divine now illuminated.
Martin Heidegger writing,
“Every spoken word is already an answer.’

Confusing language with prayer, with war
A Jewish Star becomes a Muslim emblem for
Sobriety, hell must be approached like the first
Insects to the corpse, the anguished state.


- Chris Mansel

Well for Water

When the darkness finds you it looks a lot like the light. Many artists and writers are ill informed as to its illumination. Change becomes hunger and anxiety when faced with every new day, each new work, the feelings of adrenaline and despair mirroring the same level of intensity.
There is no logic or specific lecture you can draw on to endure what is happening to you when you discover a talent or desire to create. The synapse clicks and its rotors counter every movement until even acts of sexuality or daily requirements of living become contrary to the process of living.
Shakespeare wrote, “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” Medication is what makes an artist an individual.


- Chris Mansel

The Hickory of Oak and Down Crucified Man

Part one

Brokered from a well of broken spirits, noosed, a rope of blood from the neck before. Wearing church slacks, coat and tie throat slit from the bushes jumped onto the wagon seat. Throat slashed from ear to mole, shrieks of horror and bodies lying in state. Contribute to the drying well before you start home. Won’t be coming back to services tonight. Scalp feathers on the axe hanging on the wall, and a slow fire burning and water on the road. The next day a holiday and horses in the pasture, the smell of gun powder riffing up through the over night pass in the hills.
Later chain gang baking in the hot sun, perspiration beading up like a widow’s cheeks on Christmas morning. Gray faces in a Mississippi graveyard hoeing Alabama dust. The sermon won’t have a wishbone or a plate of beans. Glory is in the stones you pull up along the way. Young boy walks his fingers across the 88’s, the rugged cross-burned down into the coals of hell. Nails holding together the axe head to pine and a copperhead on Waterloo shores where Indians once boarded a ship. Brown skin weighting in the water that turns over itself.
A young lady from Texarkana rubs her dress against the fence. The warden’s niece on her way to church watches the water cup passed from bucket to chin. Years before the depression stretched to the shores of Africa and the coastal lands of Germany. Before the war struck an industry of disposable labor. Before the chain gang became the factory window. The young lady eased her skirt from her bare foot to the snap of the hosiery safety pin device, a sight surely to make Uncle Remus pour out his whiskey to shuck oysters from the side of the road.


- Chris Mansel

Half A Decade

I’m a moment of quiet clarity
Of indecent integrity
A conceitful exposing light
A frail and open permissive night

I’m a window open to the floor
A bed at night with a whore
A lamp that burns butter for monks to pray
I’m a writer you’ve never read who doesn’t go away

An artist who would carry a tree to a stone
A reverent and lustful tome
An escaping rat from a docked ship
I’m all of these on this list


- Chris Mansel

Brooklyn Visitation

I’m thinking of you Allen
In what was once the area of the caregiver?
The restless inhibition of a lonesome traveler
Doomed to celebrity and not to sex
This asylum riddled Oedipus wrecked
The diagnosis of cancer
The transgressions of idyllic marriage?
Allen marrying on a May Day street
While Chicano worshippers roast in effigy
The office of the president

Noise would run to your window
Hospital beds turned to puzzle floors of black and white
Coffins carried of migrant workers
Shot while tossing lettuce into baskets and not into salads
The corporate dining room looking over
The hospital parking lot
The grounds dingy with rebellion and water bottles

Allen your gentle heart swarming the sutras for sound
Calming the protestors with a gentle sigh
The Internet now reaping the revenue of your reporting from Chicago
Set it now Murrow would have said

Allen your penis in the sawdust of a master’s degree dissertation
Allen your poetry read at the trail of a lover in Italian magistrates diction
Allen the de-colonized Jew Buddhist Lama resting above the blackboard
At Brooklyn College
Allen your songs of Blake in the hymn books in eastern seaboard schools

Allen what is the phrase of your humanity, where is your soul
I’ve seen you on my bookshelf and wondered
Allen is there no natural condition



- Chris Mansel

Louisiana

They found the Ark of the Covenant when the waters began to recede
You’ve never seen New Orleans look the world more in the teeth
Not since the Daily Crescent in 1848 set its type into print
The world was always looking for the ink in the fold to indent

Butter lamps and the luxuriant of America pulled to the rivers edge
Slaves from Haiti and Africa moving towards Rampart Street’s ledge
Buffalo meat hanging from the street lamps and sold through the door
Followed by a caravan of murderers, politicians, thieves and whores

Sunsets when the masters hide in the field and the slaves embark
When the hail falls like a lariat and the smells carry it into the dark
The berth of Ship Island covered in the ashes of Marie Leveau
Even today all the cypress know to turn from black to blue


Throw the boat astern even hell burns
Cast off the lines and lean into the turn
Louisiana, Louisiana even heaven can turn


- Chris Mansel

LIstening Post

A void of apprehension
Orchestras of technique and noise
Reversed upon the learning of speech
Irritating the ventilation of sound escaping

The wing-span of birds considered and measured
the lapping of a brook controlled by movement of stones
to refit the narrative of nature, to reuse the listener
the rights of our brethren in the asylums
who were taught magic and dismissed at their peak
to destroy the tune bound by the white whale

the invocation of a seizure
the choreography of a starless night
the sound of sunken ships jostling about in the dark Atlantic

that is the sound, that is the music, that is the poetry I hear…


in my soul.



- Chris Mansel

The Relief Boat (Oren's Aboard)

Ten days in the kingdom of evenings falling
A new shepherd lies down by the creek bed
His decisions are like widows speaking in a dream
And all he sees is what rolls around in his head
All he sees is what rolls around in his head

Tree touch the garden floor and the rain never falls
Insects in a sea circus are corpulent in their dismay
Dreams are like shadows of kitchens on narrow walls
The weather ashore is garnered even as it loses its way

Buggered and dirked by a Thessalonians darker side
A fellow traveler with worse rolling around in his head
The custom being to kill his children and sleep with his wives
He travels until he reaches the creek bed and goes inside


- Chris Mansel

Presence (After reading a poem by Hank Lazer)

12:00 am. the day after Easter, Jesus’ birthday
my brother in law sleeping behind me
recovering from surgery, already suffering from Multiple Sclerosis
cancer and other deformities, his spirits high

the hiding of Easter eggs he watched from
the sliding door in the living room
recalls the wreck we saw yesterday on the way home from Birmingham
out of his head in pain, going in and out of sleep he saw the body
on the stretcher with the sheet pulled over it
hearing on the news 4 U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq

delivered the day before we left to go to Birmingham
IMPORVISATIONS by Vernon Frazer 697 pages
Kind words from Frazer in the package
My words seem to matter but only to the point
When they cease

- Chris Mansel

Vice and Vengeance

The dead burn as well as the living; a man who is afraid of fire would say this. But as he rolls in his squalor the world follows in the steps placed before them. The working class, the laborers, those below the poverty line revel in the hard work of the passing day, they take pride in their ruin, they pass as they are born. If you think you can defeat them your life is as meaningless as the squalor in where you reside.

- Chris Mansel

9th Street InGloria

3:46 in the morning and the tide has shifted

(gravel burnt by cigarette lighter
collected and hot glued to masonite)

the image is of a hotel window being removed by
force

black paint is applied and human hair from hair cuts
is attached to the corners of the piece

words are inscribed detailing the contents of the room

3:48 in the morning


- Chris Mansel