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Living for the Ecstasy Sect
31 pages, chapbook
First published January 1, 1989
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October 8, 2014
Mr Watson has another book of poems I much prefer. Some of the poems in here are a little too poetry-slammy for my taste, and I did hear him read some way back in the late 1980's, and he was great, but now just having this little chap to read the poems just don't jump off the page enough, or draw one deeper into the page.
Though there are exceptions, offering the more dense readerly experiences I look for:
in a bright lit room, a fly, strides
torn time edges on the verge of avalanche
twin temples beat, squeeze the violent bead
a jazz parade of the underjoyed is dear enough
from Prologomania.
And in another, entitled Birth Daze, his dark vision jumps out and grabs the reader's eyes and drags them through the dark fecundity of his serpentine mind:
When I stabbed she came, she said
She said let this be the last nail in a coffin
Of time ending -- now -- that's what
She said before the blade broke
Against a petrified inside ...you
See it was agony she remembered
That what faith gave birth to was stone
The island tangent to two continents
A tied off knot in the digestive tract
Of the metaphor
She hoped would take her home
It was the bulge of rat in snake belly
And then it was her baby, yes
It wrapped itself around her waist & squeezed
It was the bead
Sweat between two oceans
An isthmus of sacrifice savages crossed
A million irrational equations ago
In migration from the soil her feet walked,
Once.
Which would probably go over at a Slam, but which also offers twists of logic and imagery that can be savored (however disturbingly) reading after silent reading to oneself.
Though there are exceptions, offering the more dense readerly experiences I look for:
in a bright lit room, a fly, strides
torn time edges on the verge of avalanche
twin temples beat, squeeze the violent bead
a jazz parade of the underjoyed is dear enough
from Prologomania.
And in another, entitled Birth Daze, his dark vision jumps out and grabs the reader's eyes and drags them through the dark fecundity of his serpentine mind:
When I stabbed she came, she said
She said let this be the last nail in a coffin
Of time ending -- now -- that's what
She said before the blade broke
Against a petrified inside ...you
See it was agony she remembered
That what faith gave birth to was stone
The island tangent to two continents
A tied off knot in the digestive tract
Of the metaphor
She hoped would take her home
It was the bulge of rat in snake belly
And then it was her baby, yes
It wrapped itself around her waist & squeezed
It was the bead
Sweat between two oceans
An isthmus of sacrifice savages crossed
A million irrational equations ago
In migration from the soil her feet walked,
Once.
Which would probably go over at a Slam, but which also offers twists of logic and imagery that can be savored (however disturbingly) reading after silent reading to oneself.
Displaying 1 of 1 review