I thought about where I was until I was there where I thought I understood— the town talking to the city and the words not wasted there— but they couldn’t hear what it is I’m hearing by way of destruction & abandonment & washing up on another shore— being interviewed by Slick Entrepreneurs, Savage Impresarios & Media Moguls of Information Technology— flash-mob-chatroom-forum-blogspot- hashtag-digital-virtual-lifeworld scenarios— illusions of immanence, verbal hallucinations, the voice coming up out of the typewriter— extremely loud, painfully clear— but the kids, yeah, the kids, they don’t even know
what a typewriter is.
. . .
Enhanced Insignificance
Totally engaged in the quirky appearance of the beaded raindrops on the chromed caging of the shopping carts outside the supermarket when “the wife” says something funny but the synapses have fired again and your eyes are already locked onto some scintillating physiognomy
cutting across your field of vision.
Back at chez poet the grass almost knee-deep, the paint peeling off in palm-sized flakes, stereophonic growl of Captain Beefheart churning out of the hi-fi speakers; on the upside it’s no longer so excruciatingly painful that everyone knows you’re a reprobate apostate committed to idleness
and rancorous unsuccess.
. . .
A Poem for Chroniclers
In the darkness or in the light— staring into a corner impacted with stoicism and dirt— a brick won’t break your heart but a young girl most certainly will— in Le Chat Noir or the Crucifix Bar or some other bohemian dive in the City of Light— where a bunch of hoary old surrealists are sitting in a dusky booth way in back waiting for the dice to fall and the future ghost-writer of your plagiarized autobiography is just now learning the cost of love, the price of hate,
and the letters of the alphabet.
. . .
Ignition Minus Ten…
Down along the dark nexus of axiological bewilderment commonly referred to as my “youth,” I came of age in an age of questions to which no one seemed to know the answers. Still in the eighth grade at Portola Valley School, California, I went to a party at Medway Forest, a hip local commune, Day-Glo and notorious, freaky and fascinating, music by the New Delhi River Band, and was handed my very first joint by none other than Ken Kesey. Could I have said no? No way. The die was cast, the rails were greased, and the rocket-sled of cumulative empirical wisdom aimed through the portals of newly enhanced perception was now standing by
for immediate blastoff.
. . .
The Turnstiles of Sin
Think about the doors you swing open in front of you and the doors you swing shut behind you and all the rooms you cross to get from one to the other in the long arduous trek across time & space. Think about a player or a swordsman or a healing king—or just any other way of thinking. Think about the virgins and think about the gods, about the sins that are deadly and the sins that are not. In the kitchen, sagacious but skeptical, you pull where it says “OPEN HERE” but “OPEN HERE” breaks off in your fingers
and the damn thing is still unopened.
. . .
The Age of Enlightenment
When I saw your ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful on TV I knew it was over for good. The last time I saw you we were waiting in the greenroom, you handed me a blue drink, smiled with your yellow teeth
and a red light went on.
I thought what if this was a dream and it was a dream. I thought what if this was real and it was real. I tried to change the channel but the remote control was now a baby porcupine and my fingers
were a bloody mess.
. . .
© Mark Terrill
Mark Terrill is a native Californian and ex-merchant seaman holding no degrees or diplomas whatsoever. He shipped out of San Francisco to Asia, Europe and North Africa, where he studied and spent time with Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco, and has lived in Germany since 1984, working as a shipyard welder, road manager for rock bands, cook and postal worker. Recent publications include Laughing Butcher Berlin Blues (Poetry Salzburg, 2010), a collection of his translations of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, An Unchanging Blue, Selected Poems 1962-1975 (Parlor Press / Free Verse Editions, 2011), and Down at the Gate and Change Remains Suspended (both Feral Press, 2012); other new work out or forthcoming in Upstairs at Duroc, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Hanging Loose, The Café Review and Section 8. Currently he lives on the grounds of a former boatyard near Hamburg with his wife and three cats.
