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“The beat’s only a dream unless you dance,” John Godfrey wrote and read at the Poetry Project on February 28, 2018, as I thought to myself, “Have there ever been truer words written?” True words are what you get at a reading that John Godfrey gives. The occasion was the fairly recent (two years ago) publication of his selected work, The City Keeps, that stretches back to the early sixties up to the present circa 2014, but at Saint Mark’s on the 28th, John read mostly what he’s written since then so that is what you’re going to get on the Vimeo below, the newest stuff. Enjoy.
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https://vimeo.com/261654562
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I’ve typed out the title poem, The City Keeps, for you to read.
The City Keeps
Frosted moths dance over your sights
Your cycle is interrupted on ‘AIM”
For the third time in ten minutes
you cross corners past an old
Latino, toothless porkpie, fists full
of his own pants, thoughtful
He stares at a short-haired
sturdy tan stray, of proud
saintly restraint in relations
with the domestic class of dog
How self-reliant, what inconsolable
carriage, safe only alone!
Do not be so moved by everything
that belongs to the city
Glazed brown-sugar wheel troughs
Zhivago ice desert street light
but not quite a night for
burglars to call in sick
Not a night for discontent to
surge in heavy boots of principle
Hands are not clasped in power-chain
of mutiny, the sun will
only bring ripening, towards
ego-damage on some clawed doorstep
The creeping lying reflexes stretch
cheap ants, empty pillow
stains, strange remorse in light-
impairing clouds, there’ll be enough
bleakness for everyone, for zealous
missionary lovers standing-in us
bartenders and bargirls, nights throwbacks
Do not be so moved by everything
that clings to the city for its shape
in preternatural drag, narcotic
morning liquidity scare forgotten
as the showgirl, seventy bucks richer by
evening, floats out of The Frisco
coin-op clit spread booth tease
ringing her high and wet, fantasy
transformed into equally useless chains
clinking through dense rooms, drowning
out anxious shouting childbirth’s hours
when cold new light carries the tattle
when the name mentioned ricochets and
rises to heaven from the walls of
the prison, illumined by window visages
Steer clear, O victims, for rubbing fingers on
my teeth are the least bit of mud and
a roasted, frazzled corsage from the coast
There’ll always be someone else slicker
among vagary lumpen metallic waltzes
They all motor talent sparring whole platoons
in music truce stemmed from manifold
least-elastic lux, they on top of it alright
Do not be so moved by their fanfare
so close to the bottom of the city!
It is my luxury to recognize their painlessness
to associate their unpleasant lusts with
preservative acid fruits, delayers of decay
I suck in their souls in order to say
they belong here, all velvety with suspiration
and I esteem their resistance, sunless
and the glowing concaves of the city pour
desolated accretions born of still fists
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The City Keeps is published by Wave Books. You can check them out here:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/
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By the way, John was kind enough to send me the poems that are not published yet to be included here, those that he read at Saint Mark’s Church on the 28th. Enjoy.
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Best Mosey
Ratface dooryards squeeze
food smells out of hoodie
Whetstone girl with
a jugular scar
And you best mosey
‘less your name Rosie
Where the arrogant
mood gets unspun
Where six-bed blues
gets surely undone
three windows high
Slings heart in her
camouflage rock
From where I see
it the question
stands out fine
You have to move
the crate first
In the sink
you’ll find blankets
Your thoughts call to
me as they wander
into streets of chill
Ripening inhibited
Sound of car door, mutters
Quick glance at her
Braids reflect on car window
Baby, you’ll never
see Julius again
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Slab Stone
Call it seldom, part fatal
……part design of my own
The ruffles never happen
……and then there she is
Slab stone steps for a change
Feral eyes or water beads
……on brick by streetlight
If they are, so am I
The question is narrowed to a conduit
……insulated by appetites
and leads to the business end
……of all gravitation
Not how they’re hanging but why
Not when invented but for how long
Time hastily leafs trees and throws them
……through windows
I’m so tired and I don’t mean
……that barbecue now
I hear the trees sway like
……independent-minded women
Waterfront in all its crenellations and
……lights in all their ivory
Every time of day supplies a chord
……and demands a melody
My exhaustive and exhausted repertoire
In protection of the guilty alone
……would I brother a judge
Not flames, a steady cool drizzle
……to muse on from the breezeway
Wait there, someone will be along shortly
……to watch you unseen
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Always Full
Passion in public
…a current, hot or cold
but always full open
Renewal
…the sticky arm
…of the cherished one
and the braille
…of my abstraction
In debt to an
…exquisite mind
who hangs pictures
…the length of
the excitement
Nerves stand on
…cables of the bridge
There is a starburst
…Go to it
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The Hotseat
A plucky bitter wind
…tugs on afterlife
First question:
…What’s the odds
…these neighbors
…survive
each other
…A room in which
…bricks show through walls
Nonetheless
…harmony
Rarity exists
It’s all I can do
…to lay my
…hambone down
on a low ceiling of smoke
…and radio waves
The cemetery boasts
…a hundred cats
and the vigil is
…on the hotseat
The air of peace
…might surprise most
when I breathe
Instead brick presses
against my forehead
…where idiosyncrasies
…float on Styrofoam
Peace is not endless
and I have only
…a very few seconds
…to make up my mind
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Umbrella and Eyes
All’s in motion, mostly retreat
like water to leak, like trees
to bird’s-egg-green paint
It arrives, rain of misty expectorations
The human voice carries feet, not yards
I pick up my roots and flow
So different in temperament
umbrella and eyes ascend over
rooftops up the dress of sky
It is home in a hotspot, grease
on the side, manifolds of appetite
Further from the skin, great pain
Mandibles sadly responsible
Panache to panache, trees heavy
with sweaters have long residence
and no obligation to shelter
The very young step forward
A retouched sky, ghostly
jurists behind it
Air with grimy disregard
waves hallway to hallway
which is when we meet
down here, where the gods are
Kerchief
As with all other brands of decline
No one meal tasted ever again
Never the same hand on the banister
Face lifted to the light
on a fork of lyrics
The window glows with it
awake or asleep
Gusts toss the kerchief of faith
like a demand for immodesty
written on tree bed sodden
with her perfume
Presume that what rises is pride
Overlapping drapes
of facetious questions
She cuts through
with words for you
At her disposal the blank
envelope falls from a pocket
Hidden by breasts a key swings
Full extension hand plucks
from institutional floor
the unsoiled unsealed packet
that proves who she is
As-Good-As-Mine
Breath-temp gust moist lips late with runny hours
Pre-existing borders I can’t tell from
rhymes I hear in a vacuum
Roscoe comes on after dark air heats waves up
Let’s say my next step is finality and
the one after is empty staves
By autumn I don’t mean powdered bones
don’t mean uproot olives
Decline tells in a tarnished yellow on masonry
Shawls in late afternoon fruit plucked with insight
Multicolor ladders wait for frost
How many earth days equal winner take all
Horizon at your-guess-as-good-as-mine level
Leery dissent of the glut come to rest mid rotation
In all directions unhoneyed speech
Table shines under your hand that spreads like
a puppet airman on the last planet he would ever expect
Affinities or Being
Labor at affinities or being doesn’t feel
One of us does either and tells no answers
Your wetness is my dream of vulnerability
in a time of tinsel eucalyptus and ferrous youth
Just slip me some juices they are sap to me and
make my chest a poitrine
Make my eyes see the difference between twins
Reason takes her sliver out
and the box lid closes over sunset
Soundtrack: Hawaiian yodel
Your saint name in the middle endangered
Your wetness spreads a shiny blot
in the MRI of starved impulse
Antimaccassars from Madagascar
your elbows press down on
your hands limp in air
Good Outcomes
In April you try plans
Turns into May
Best thing is I don’t know bleep
Take dressing for sun
Time after time bad target
Elevated by ungodly machine
is of good outcomes
Of all sacks what sack fits?
I call you without lines
Does anything come of no one?
And turn into sand no salt
Deep hole it all disappears
Guttural languages: lost
Sliver in tragus: rare
Armband from funeral home
Don’t go away in madness
Don’t go away too sure
What a devil says computes
Go ahead, have a hey-day
Sun squeezes into tight sky
Man walks blocks in search
Divine Bones
Windshields float light…Nowhere lacks a lass
…Twos, threes, solos walk…don’t stroll
14th Street Waltz for Winds
…Minimum posture: intent
High in the heavens –
……well, not
…Threnodies of tap
Shoe gargantuan
…Head-of-pin shoe
Tap tap
…tapped-out
……Spare a dollar?
Have George Washington
…nary slept here?
That’s called a squint
…Less eager comfort
Temp’ll overnight rise
…to foggy alarm
My breath my noose
…Red vinyl boots nag
on a woman with divine bones
…Vapor softens her brown chin
Coat belt loose
…Feet in tears
Double Trap
Bridge of guitar
Lovers on it
Elsewhere, a chapped
sort of space mask
for dude breathing
On 14th Street lowroad
Stunning unmatronly
grandma with grandson
she raises, washed blue
of their denim matched set
And you say, play
the rigamarole like you
used to play it, and
I say:
Who dat? Who you do?
and play the muhfuh
way a double trap say
Back to today
Intermittent frisson
Coarse heart still soft
Carnival Fluid
Complexion of daylight and pretense
Nightfall and soulful prudence
Nothing really nothing to turn off
Street corner elements who kept rents low, ago
Indigenous and autonomous, same time
When carnival fluid drains they
move to Queens
……Acrostic windows there
……really make a muse out of you
…Clowns stretch out under trees
…in the backroom
River of quarks
…Iceberg of buboes
…Earth-defying humans
…Infinity minus one
Waxed
Lucky in
…the wrong bed
White boy in
…the wrong hat
Tropical depression
…moon shines
……the wrong night
So who wants Mr. Right in
…the same dress
……she wears?
It adds up, payback
…The course waxed
……for speed
Stalker ripe for
……whipping chair
…and news cartoons
Folk art in the hands
…of assholes, you’ll
……never sleep
Conscious banjo knee explodes
Deep river jubilee
…in takeout quilt
Sink without a bed
…to spoon in
Got broken code on me
…she says
Red and blue random
idiot lights
Night will be
…no less dark if
I dream of
…safe sleep
……on streets
The Idle Short
You don’t know them unless you learn ropes
Town-size kid with spacious daydreams
Brother a shade against mashed Studie chrome
Deep-freeze snow as temp plummets sound on
Temptation closes-in on maple roots
Crystals make drug-like appearance
Chemicals with religious fumes
Now the years are late and one city per person
Star of all dogs with jets in the sky
I read a banknote in the underpass
Democratic train wee-hour doze
Phones drop from Z-slackened hands
The Bronx in an hour
Underground: oppression on parade
Enormous men non-athletic
Petite woman wig private eyes blouse
fit tight to modest breasts brown
against tropic colors of cloth
For even the idle short rest
short end of stick short hairs
Bugs
Trees less filthy after violent rain
Ships ride in moon rings
All of Olympus the Vedic crew and relativists
swallow soft matter
Safe house stinks of Shinola
Some noisome relic behind my eyes
Panty line of blue dips between street facades
So few children braid street door numbers anymore
Matrilineal dialects gone makes bugs in my head
Vapid mainlanders unaware walk on hand-helds
Make me merciful O Dog in pandemonium
integrity and ill health to forgive those
who do not know they are surrounded
Wrong Truck
In darkness the plaintiff reciprocates
Same unbreathable dust
Mercy in poultry sleep
Eggs and cutlet on pedestal
Sky flares and ground takes punch
Wreaking physics, wings scoop over
Rubble the least imported product
They will discover who doesn’t lie
Woe to the heirs
Commit memory to photos
Scratch and sniff unhygeinics
See how fleshy is hunger
Tranquility no term of address
Wrong truck blows up tomorrow
No surprise, it happens right
Feel it without feeling
Shocks to the head
The System
The system that works is
one of the forgotten
A law you can guess at
if only you can observe it
Like hammocks don’t
care which human is real
Only you will learn that
fucking in trees is for nymphs
Don’t mistake that for a law
Depends what your stake is
Marbled steak sweepstake
or high stakes
You get a flash come up with
prior results one of which
is extinction
The sea levels with you
Royal flush in sulfurs
Four of a kind in acids
Where you came from
is no place to go to
Bedtime approaches for H. bonzo
Not for all the horses on flags
Not for all the eyeballs in seas
Tighten straps on mask
Protect hair from micron dusts
Skin from searing forge
No more separate ways to go
Sands of fantasy fall in glass
Conjugation at the bottleneck
Time will be relieved of math
Last LED’ll crap out
Last inarticulate pain buried
No one left to hide
One Air
There is one air over the wall
It is a stride ahead this Friday
Land falls like raw sugar and the poisoned flood
kicks the plastic out of their teeth
Speed gun on theatrical skies
Can’t go through this alone
Still there are too many in town
Eye-candy rumpled stunner runs in flood
stretched sweats across brown Texas skin
while those with only wrapping cloths
covered heads above river
to Bangladeshi mud scarp
Sky as overfilled sieve and
grave as salve nothing to nothingness eyes
Whimper little baby…Little baby cry
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Unhappy Folklore
The composition goes loopy the longer he plays
Reeds bust the windscreen
Dresses unfurl and furl throughout the Savoy
Ecstatic discipline for small fee
The beat’s only a dream unless you dance
Seventeen-chair blowout, Casa Loma
Van Vechten takes the dream to darkroom
Couples take the street as real
Liberty so momentary
Jim Crow one car behind
Drive home that third-hand Packard
past dark windows of unhappy folklore
Race to the Side eighty years on
Hands on the wheel, wheels on the shoulder
Driver’s-side palaver is racial
Dash compartment is
All conveyance is racial
Color deepens to be alive and ride
Halfway free should you die
Granite Bowels
I count lit windows
Less dread sparkles on lapels
Water whirls by river railing and
first-quarter moon clings
like an off-white crawling man
I cut myself off at the Sunoco
I imagine myself sun-baked lizard
When I am young and flight then
is more than survival
Now it is to defend pillow case
and boudoir of a goddess
Trace of black lip gloss
in her granite bowels
Acute feelings of my body
don’t come from my body anymore
Glass and steel without glass humors me
Die or cover my head with scaffolds
Forboding is a comic kind of reckless
So, I want ululating grief?
Far from frontlines far from peace
America
Civ Dis
Watch you don’t step
…on my shine, punk
Between my elbows
…and my glasses
is No-Fly
Between my fly
…and my thigh
is outer-space capsule
You just be quiet to we
Hanging ‘ffense, mon cul
To all non-binary guerilla cadres:
…His gender mind’s
…a scant two inches
To all multi-maroon intransigent cliques:
…His color lacks obedience
To all fernhead body-downs:
…Lay them down
…on denialers’ werewolf
Ain’t no living wage
…in Armor Garden
Ironic camouflage is our exposition
Subvertationist catwalk knows time
Observe without you hide
Change mode of muck wash
Can’t predict change
So change like it’s yours to do
Them who back walk
don’t see the curtain drops
Don’t see the separated
…baby head ain’t Martian
Them who back walk:
Stay in their way
29XI16
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John Godfrey with Bill Kushner
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John Godfrey with Bernadette Mayer