Artillery Magazine

Byline: klipschutz

  • POEMS "Stealing Life" and "The Lugubrious Game"

    POEMS
    “Stealing Life” and “The Lugubrious Game”

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    Stealing Life

    Closer and closer to fifty,
    years turn months, weeks, days,
    and I have trouble staying asleep.
    Around two I get up to read
    in the living room, then lie down,
    this time on the couch, turning
    the transistor radio to KGO,
    distracting myself, returning,
    life slipping away. For now it is okay,
    pages left behind in the big red chair;
    the disembodied talk show talk
    an angry lullaby to quiet my own.
    Readymade, it came again tonight:
    One night I will simply not be here.
    Which is not okay. But not okay
    is okay too.

    —Klipschutz

    The Lugubrious Game

    With my love
    in my cold, old, dry hands,
    I privatize my urges,
    launching myself
    into blank interiority,
    falling into shapelessness.
    All the remaining energy
    leaves my body. It is strenuous,
    abrasive and draining work,
    and it is beginning to feel absurd
    in a way that it never did before.
    Perhaps even this uninspired pleasure
    will be denied me
    as I grow even older.

    —John Tottenham[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column] [/et_pb_row] [/et_pb_section]

  • Poems "Kiefer Lights a Big Cigar" by Klipschutz; "The Poet’s Garden" by John Tottenham

    Poems
    “Kiefer Lights a Big Cigar” by Klipschutz; “The Poet’s Garden” by John Tottenham

    Kiefer Lights a Big Cigar

     

    & waves the heavy machinery into place

    He rearranges the rubble

    speaking whichever language suits the occasion

    He & Tony saunter through a tunnel in the South of France

    “It’s my gesture” is what he says about his art

    His use of lead & straw reminds me of a Jack Gilbert poem

    Kiefer & Werner Herzog must never meet

    If they have, they must never admit it

    (When Gerhard Richter met Stockhausen

    neither one was left unscathed)

    Kiefer carries the weight of the world on his shoulders

    & shakes it off with a flick of his cigar

     

    —Klipschutz

     

     

    The Poet’s Garden

     

    Without these words, without these needs,

    how much simpler life would be: free

    from invidious and irrelevant comparisons,

    resentful longings, and obscurely realized

    self-actualizations: a life less whole,

    a lifeless hole… but a destiny, at last,

    within my control – striving

    only towards resignation,

    a worthy goal.

     

    —John Tottenham
  • Poems "Imagine That" by klipschutz; "The Poet’s Garden" by John Tottenham

    Poems
    “Imagine That” by klipschutz; “The Poet’s Garden” by John Tottenham

    Imagine That

                     for YC

    By klipschutz

    Rachel Cusk flies first class

    and drives a hybrid.

    Waiting at the bus stop

    I raise my hand.

    If I change the names

    is it fiction?

    What if I keep the names

    and make up lies?

    Or is that like saying it’s a poem

    if it rhymes?

    Thomas Hardy’s pen made hay

    from country towns.

    The Poet’s Garden

    By John Tottenham

    Turning the empty pages

    of all the un-chronicled phases:

    the mythic lift, the staggered decline,

    indelibly etherized in real time.

    All the plans that were never hatched,

    preserved in ink-stained chicken scratch.

    The finer points that will never

    be unscrambled or unfurled,

    circling the drain

    of a chronological netherworld.

    My legacy a burden, not a gift,

    through which no one wants to sift.