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| ***BIO*** KARL KOWESKI: I'm a 34 year old displaced Chicagoan, now living on top of a mountain in Alabama for reasons that involve a woman. I was the lead singer/banjo player of the now defunct country/punk/disco band The Screaming Shits. Now I just work in a machine shop and write articles for porno mags. |
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| The Uncollected Letters of the Last Poets |
| by Karl Koweski |
| My dear Yoshi, How goes the life of the penultimate poet? I write you now as I alleviate my hunger with a ripe, juicy, organically grown tomato. I trust the muse finds you receptive to her lyrical gifts. And thank you for including your latest magnum opus in your last letter. “The stillborn grace of morning finds my sweat socks folded asymmetrically on top of my mahogany bureau, scarred and pitted from the cigarettes of lover’s past” is a spectacular powerhouse of metaphor and barely restrained emotion. I’d place it up there with some of my lesser works. Which reminds me, Yoshi. I did it! I know I’ve been threatening to since we first began this Selectric serenade all those years ago, but I won a rather sizable pot at last weekend’s Phish family reunion Texas hold-em tournament. The pot consisted of a half sheet of blotter acid, three sticks of the reefer, five exquisitely crafted chapbook collections of my very own inimitable poesy titled “the savage muse elevates me above the small press mediocrity” (which I used to buy into the pot with; talk about gambling on the muse, ha ha ha) a Nehru jacket, seven hundred and fifty brightly colored beads and sixty dollars cash money. With the cash and the LSD, I inspired Arturo, the local inkslinger, to tattoo LAST POET on the small of my back. I won’t lie. The pain was excruciating, Yoshi. Like a million sharp penknives stabbing my soul by way of my kidneys. But you know what? It’s imperative we suffer for our art, Yoshi. Even at the expense of a few drops of blood and a few drops of tears. Of course, as with all great metaphors and all my metaphors, this metaphor goes deeper than the skin above my tired ass. Like the tattoo artist inking his work into a living breathing body, the Poet should capture the poem on the living breathing page on the first attempt. No editing. No self-censorship. Carved in the savage flesh. For all eternity. That’s what we must do as true poets, Yoshi! What I do and you almost do and what BJ wishes he could do and what all these ignorant fools comprising the small press lacks the capability to do. We must become egoless vessels for the Muse, channeling the words unmolested to the page from the cosmos. We must be well aware of the empty spaces or we are aware of the silences in Miles Davis’s music. Remember, we are the last poets. Also, would you like seven hundred and fifty brightly colored beads? your’s in every conceivable way, ~Cuntly ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- my friend, my mentor, my reason for drawing poetic breath, Cuntly, your latest brilliant missive finds me at a creative crossroads. I’m beginning to doubt if I really need forty word titles for all my poems (especially the poems which are shorter than the title itself) Ordinarily I don’t concern myself with such things. I’ll just take your profound advice and channel the muse directly to the page untouched by ego or what that jackass Polack at Zygote says about me… and about you… and about me and you… together. Lately though, I have to admit his merciless mockery has been getting under my skin. I know you say he has no comprehension of or talent for poetry and his lust for women has clouded his mind, but, gosh darn it, Cuntly, I went to title my new poem “lugubrious mementoes shifting down giddily to me from the tenebrous twilight tendrils of mankind’s first bitter morning” only to find out the dumb Polack had already created the title… in order to make fun of me! What are the chances of that happening? So I don’t know what to do. I’ll follow whatever instructions you wish to pass along. This jealousy these hacks harbor for real poets like you and me and the wannabe real poets who are still intelligent and soulful enough to contribute the annual twenty five dollars to our glorious Poetry Placement Program is what’s keeping the small press from ascending to its rightful place among the academics. Every day that passes that your poetry is not taught in the universities is another death spasm for this blighted country’s educational system. I guess that’s what happens when you shake up the establishment with poetry that dares to stare the monster in the face. The Philistines publicly flog you in a hackneyed column that no one important bothers to read and then crucifies you out of fear. Not that I’m comparing myself to Jesus Christ. If anything, you Cuntly, would be Jesus Christ. I’d be St.Peter. B.J would be Mary Magdalene. And that Polack would be Pontius Pilate, washing his hands cause he plays with his dick all the time. Not that I believe in the tenants of Christianity. Like you said, there’s only the savage void and the immortality that a finely wrought poem brings. So long as its published in print and not on the internet blog journal, or, even worse, a social networking site. Well, Cuntly, that’s enough of a rant for now. Ha ha. I hate to even waste the ink and paper on that Polack. He don’t even spell it right. It should be two “l”s, right? Who cares. Oh, by the way, I’m really excited you took the plunge and got the LAST POET tattoo. I know how much the words mean to you and how long you’ve been contemplating the act. I can’t wait to see it in the flesh, next time I visit the bunker in Georgia. I can just imagine touching it, feeling the skin raised up like welts delivered by the cosmic leather belt of the ineluctable muse… LAST POET, indeed, growl… And, yes, I’d be more than happy to take those seven hundred and fifty colored beads off your hands. An ass-load of beads and maybe three or four feet of string sounds like the perfect way to spend a Friday night. thanks again for your inspiration and almost unconditional friendship. ~Yoshi McPish ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- dearest Yoshi, First of all, please don’t let that plebian Polack influence one word of your art. And it is an art of the highest level, one or two, perhaps three tiers below mine, but miles above his pseudo journal entries cut into the shape of a poem. It’s obvious to anyone with any inkling of what the true definition of poetry is, that he doesn’t hear the eternal internal song of the cosmos. Let him and his Zygote buddies rot in their delusional hells, scribbling crass post Bukowskian claptrap about women’s yoohoos and drinking beer. And the women are even worse! Half of them writing confessionals about being sluts or odes to their darling kids. That’s why I was so adamant about no women being in the PPP core group. Women don’t have the antennae needed to receive the wave lengths of the muse. That’s why I know I have the right life mate in Cytherea. She realizes her limitations and she’s happy just to take pictures of flowers. And she’s getting quite good. Cytherea and her cousin, Jimmy O’Shea often take weekend excursions into the country to photograph he flora and fauna. They get along great. Cytherea and Jimmy. Wish I had a cousin I was that close to. But we poets are solitary animals, toiling away in savage isolation. Just as it should be. The only friends worth having are friends you can write soul-baring letters to with an eye toward eventual publication. Yoshi, it’s a damn shame what passes for poetry has come so far away from what poetry should be. It’s a theme you touched upon somewhat convincingly in your poem “the ineluctable muse demands more than sporadic line breaks to create mammoth cosmic symphony of cherished love, while the pretenders to the throne of poesy perish in the egregious flames of sophomoric prosody” published in the Fall 2007 edition of Beat Meat Quarterly. If you remember, I was the featured poet for that issue. It was in that periodical I unleashed my lament for chained dogs quartet and I daresay the poetry world has never been the same since. I still keep that issue next to the bed stand, next to my implacable Moleskinne notebook and my framed photograph of Miles Davis. And a vial of Vasoline… For my new tattoo! Not what you’re thinking, pervert. My LAST POET itches like the dickens. Which is how poetry should be. An infinite itching no amount of scratching on paper can alleviate. I’m sitting here at the shrine before my Selectric altar (thanks for the Christ comparison, by the way, I agree totally and I know when I die my poems will rise up three days later and live forever, especially since I only submit to print publications), drinking some leathery Bordeaux with just a hint of oak and chocolate. Even though I know you’re an apple martini kind of guy, I think you’d like this. Cytherea is getting ready for another weekend excursion with Jimmy and another cousin, Owen, which she’s really excited about. Apparently, Owen is an excellent photographer. She’s shaving her legs as I type this which I guess helps her maneuver through lush vegetation in order to find the more obscure flowers to immortalize on film. I’m signing off here to give my girl a chaste kiss on the lips before she leaves. Anything more than that effects my rapport with the Muse. Fortunately my girl understands this and we’re both mature enough to realize sexuality only has a marginal importance in a strong relationship. keep the poem alive, ~ Cuntly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- my friend, confidant, confederate, my shining angel of the vocabulary apocalypse, We are racking up quite a correspondence, Last Poet! I was feeling a little lonely and vulnerable last night so I reread all our notes and letters we’ve written. And wow! It really weaves a tapestry of artistry. it’s better than reading any novel I’ve ever paged through. We should try to make a book out of it. Every word is poetry, every letter the truth. It’d be required small press reading. At the very least, b.j and Padre Buke would buy five copies a piece to stay on your good side. I even thought we could title the book “Shimmering Aeroles of Light Surrounding The Naked Bulbs of Our Poetic Genius”. Something profound and eye-catching like that which also offers a nod to our integrity as purveyors of the sacred metaphor. On a lighter but somewhat less important note, I hope Cytherea has fun on her photo excursion. I’d love to see some of the pictures she takes. Her photography, a circle of life as reveal by the jpegs of glistening flowers are a revelation and an inspiration to me. You can tell Cytherea I even wrote a poem about her cute little hobby titled “the swollen petals of dew-struck tulips opening against the savage arms of the terrible morning mirrors the life/death struggles on the sun, the moon and the stars blossoming hither and yon in the flowerbeds of the storm-washed heavens.” See that, Cuntly, I’ve still got it. Fuck that Polack. I mean it! I’ve got to say, Cuntly, not even deep down inside, I’ve got to admit, I’m jealous of your girl. I envy Cytherea. Getting to see you everyday… Getting to witness your genius, first hand, your immense powers of observation and impeccable taste for hipster music, to say nothing of your infallible taste in wine. She gets to see the world through your eyes. And then to go on a nature romp with two guys. What I wouldn’t give for that! One person I can say I’m glad I’m not is b.j. I received another sulky note from him yesterday. He typed it on his manual so I’m guessing he yearns to make our Selectric Serenade a trio. I think not. I don’t think we want posterity to capture his whining. He keeps his shirts buttoned up to his forehead, I wish he’d keep his cry-babying pent up the same way. All he does is go on and on about how he hasn’t written a poem in months, ever since you challenged him to write a poem that doesn’t feature a punch line at the end, he’s been dry as a bone, metaphorically speaking. I guess in my return letter I’m going to tell him perhaps its better to write nothing at all than to write such drivel as favored by the mouth-breathers at Zygote. And to think he had the potential to be a solid lower mid-tier poet. Such a shame. It’s still nice to have him and Padre Buke around as our personal sycophants, though. He actually inspired the Muse to inspire me to pen a poem concerning his dilemma, a copy of which I’m including with this letter. Take care, Cuntly. A chaste kiss on the lips for Cytherea… Makes me smile to think what you gave me before I left. Don’t forget to send the pictures on her return. thinking of our last night together, ~Yoshi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yoshi, Not much time now to pay tribute to the typer gods through the nearly forgotten art of letter writing. I find myself in the feverish grip of my lovely queen. The ineluctable Muse, the only woman a man ever truly needs. Like a maelstrom brewing across the poem-born ocean of my mind, I feel another batch of poems about the savage injustices of keeping dogs chained up forming in my mind’s eye. Soon I will give myself over to it. And I won’t even have to edit. b.j has also been writing to me regularly (haven’t mentioned it cause I know how jealous you can get regarding my letter writing time, you little scamp) expressing dismay over his inability to write poetry. And really, I was expressing dismay over his inability to write poetry when he was writing his feeble approximation of poetry. People like b.j and Padre Buke have their place. At my feet, as it were, with their checkbooks in hand. That said, I did enjoy the poem you sent along. “The sissy scientist experiments with poetry that matters in a tentative attempt to prove Cuntly’s theorem only men with clear cosmic connections with the Muse should tap the immortal keys of the savage celestrial typewriter” is a very astute commentary on the mysteries of creating poetry. it also doesn’t hurt that my name’s in the title. Ha ha. But seriously, you should consider including my name in more of your work. Also, I’m afraid I won’t be able to pass along any pictures from Cytherea’s latest “nature romp”. Apparently her camera card got switched with the card from one of her cousin’s digital cameras. All I can say is her aunt will be greatly disappointed if she ever discovers her son is a flaming homosexual with a penchant for photographing penis. Well, Yoshi, I’m going to cut this short. It’s time to embrace the metaphor, the greatest of all poetic enigmas that eludes so many of the small press scribblers. I see a ten poem night happening. I can almost feel the poetry world from it’s most lofty academic to the mostly lowly Zygote prose cutter holding their collective breath for my next magnum opus. I can feel the magic radiating from my LAST POET tattoo. It’s time to get to work, old man. the Muse is at my mercy, ~Cuntly |
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