In the 1960’s, Ziohat held poetry readings for a few select followers in secret caves. Like the impressionists in painting, the early poets were scorned. A few rich patrons financed the building of a luxury cave complex where wild parties were held and poety was written on the cave walls. They called themselves the Xyiwa poets. Ziohat condemned the dependence on the traditional University system for validating the decadent standard for poetic excellence. Some of the early works were moderately incoherent, and meant for shock value such as this wandering verse by Jack Chelka:
Forbidden Cave
by Jack Chelka
The scrub
cave way
often not high
not hiding
entrance to danger:
spikes and crevices of stone
Inside
never gone to.
Outside fire
guardian sits
Mob on fire
slays him
evil curiosity
wandering flesh torn inside
falls and torments
spirits savage
many hours to death
screams louder
softer
spikes and crevices
broken gasps
stone and stream gurgles
screams many hours
guardian spirit
greets the dead.
rather be outside
The Xyiwa poets can easily tear apart and destroy any formal form of poetry, making it unrecognizable. Here’s an example by Douglas Gilbert that shows how a haiku can be distorted into nothingness:
COLD ENDINGS
by Douglas Gilbert
For the festival cry
many at the reflecting pond
see each other see
a lunch time in the park
a man gushing blood on a tree
cops jumping back to catch a
trial day for the
collapsing man on marble
his woman crying by
our exploding Sun where
couples in weeping willows
release spirits from ashes
by meowing lions
lambs in meadow’s lake
for all to
ripple still waters
with sneezes deadly mocking
Here’s another fragmented style by Douglas Gilbert:
INCOHERENT ICE
by Douglas Gilbert
Lost cake
no birthday
deeply my song
in twists confesses
Flat note dance
in double time confessions
floored hard
fallen
With me gravely
deeply jam
rasp my horn
berries red
Lonely the night
leaky eyes stain
in fog lashes
for ships on ice
coldly stoned rocks
bleeding red confessions
Flat death
smashed cake,
deeply un-noted
twists turn to
song gash,
betrayed icing
The Xyiwa poets often ridiculed the poetic forms by including them with a non-traditional internal rhyme scheme. Here’s an example:
MRS. CLAUS HATES SONNETS
by Douglas Gilbert
Santa Claus left her
a sonnet to read:
The romp of love beguiles, a playful horse
my heart a rider gripping spirit’s trip
a bit of banter falls from saddled lips.
A candor canters, musical in source
a clip-clop hoofing it, my fruit is tossed.
Her lust is cantaloupes so sweetly quipped
yet love’s a cherry deeply red of lip
outspoken rips in bound’ries’ gorgeous loss
I know you love me mole and mountain bluff
I show my cards, won’t raise to bluff a love.
It’s real this deal of sharing zeal, a bliss
no gamble oneness riding thought enough
to join two souls, a coup by doves
who fly with coos to play the music’s kiss
Mrs. Claus hated his bluff –
rarely did she see
his cherry lips or cheeks
She could play
with farce no more, for
the fantasy wishes
in unlabeled boxes
would not suffice
for Mrs. Claus who
wrote free verse
while Santa was busy
Santa answered
delightful letters
from giddy children, but
she received letters
of rejection from the
poetry editor,
a trochee donkey
iambic like an ass
Mrs. Claus hated when the big one
went away on Christmas,
when the snow looked like
semen dried up and flaky,
his departing stomach
like a pregnant indulgence
she could only wish for
Finally, one Christmas
when no more
could she count the
melting snow flakes on her tongue,
count the elves, the reindeer,
the orphan toys, her emptiness
overtook her sanity, and
she took an empty sleigh
to drive into the city of sin,
her naked body wrapped only
in a fur coat, a pocket
for her Santa cell phone
She left the sleigh,
tied the reindeer to a lamp pole,
strolled the streets showing a leg,
singing “Ho, ha, ha”; Heaven’s
white tears covered her head as
she peered into loneliness
waiting for a finger of love, but
she spied a lost little girl
She hoo, ha, ha’ed the girl
’till the crying subsided,
asked her name
found a Lisa
“Where’s your Daddy?”
She didn’t know,
said he went for a quickie walk
She would look to find him as
the snow thickened, her head covered
with a white crown of sorrow. Lisa skipped
and jumped close behind her like
a newly born calf not
straying too far, waiting for an available tit
Mrs. Claus walked, showing a leg. A man
appeared from nowhere, laid
his hand on her thigh
like a roadway, followed the path
Eventually he noticed
her glistening tears. Looking
in her eyes, saw
he knew her
once before
Just then, the
Santa cell phone rang.
The Elf Secret Service said,
there’s been a sleigh crash, and
Santa is dead.
The world was wrapped in gloom
as Mrs. Claus
brushed snow from her head
Joy fell from artificial boons
and wrappers filled the ocean
With a poof
unreal gifts
vanished in a twinkle,
elves all banished
to a realm of puff
Starlight appeared
on Lisa’s tears,
a word on innocent lips:
“Can we all be married, Daddy?”
With a ho, ho, ha
and a ho, ho, ho
they vowed to
do better with love
to listen to snow
gust up and swirl,
to see a gift like a crystal
had already been born
APOLOGY BY ZIOHAT
When we were partying and scribbling poems on the cave walls, I never thought about preserving them. I suppose that even though the walls now appear to be blank, there must still be some residue, chemical imprint, or subtle difference in the surface that was temporarily protected by the pigment of the writing. We could bring in some experts, but we really don’t want to reveal the location of the cave complex to any outsiders. However, I have found some old photo’s of a party where the walls are visible in the background and I’ve been able to read some of the old stuff.
I’m sorry, but most of us were relatively young at the time, and although I put on a show as a Guru promoting poetry readings, the ostensible leader, I was really just excited about a rich older woman who took more than a casual interest in me. I guess, foolishly, I just thought of the poetry as a gimmick or excuse for an orgy. The older guys I guess must be dead by now. Looking back, it was really stupid not to publish in a book — after all, we were too drunk to memorize anything. Well, a few kept notebooks and did do some vanity press books. Doug has stuff out now, but not all of it is authentic to the movement — ah, well, I guess I shouldn’t be such a snob, especially as he’s been gracious enough to let me use this blog site…
…And now that I think about it, Jack Chelka hasn’t always been that consistent either because he wanted to be published in the Mainstream press, but still wound up broke in the creek. Anyway, here’s a few different ones:
SEA SHACK
by Jack Chelka
Below the tide line
a shack sits on my sorrow
on her grave in shallow soil
spotted ramshackle place
lair of the leopard who
could not but kill her nagging.
Wave crown like a lion’s mane,
erosion has left
an ocean opening for
pain’s swirling wash and drain
The beach shack of this leopard
shall not stand as
roaring sadness bites me there
where I will tell Guilt one thing:
eat me as prey,
pray me down soiled
blot the blood in spots
before I die awash
FRYING LAMENT
by Jack Chelka
If feelings were enough
I could just be sad
like Swiss cheese
but there’s a hole
in that argument
You don’t know me at all
never asked to listen to me
’cause you say your tears
speak for themselves,
mine don’t
being too few, you say
If you’d let me speak
I might cry too
with an explanation that
I made the oceans
Let me fish in peace
and I might gut our problems
fry love in olive oil
stuff your poem in
a green pepper, sweet
and sour with a note from me
that doesn’t rhyme but’s
on rice paper that’s edible
I’ve been thinking about how to organize Jack Chelka’s scattered poems because I think the style varies quite a bit. I suppose I really should wait a few years until I’ve synthesized it into a more intellectual presentation, but I decided to plunge ahead with my primitive first draft. Ok, so I’ll embarrass myself a little. Jack would have liked that — he always thought I was a bit pompous considering how he suspected that I really didn’t know anything(I think I once overheard him call me the “fake Guru”, or maybe it was a curse word…) Anyway, here’s my first attempt.
Jack Chelka often fretted about his sense of identity, and pondered Love as a loss of ego:
ON DISAPPEARING
I spread myself
to be without boundaries
to conquer, to control,
yet diluted drop
doesn’t taste of
blood, soup, love
that I take back
when feeling loss of identity
Not I would be
if lost in love, but
who
is an owl, and
what a hoot feathers are
shedding
But, of course, Jack could often be grandiose. Here he imagines himself being God:
BEING GOD
I awoke this morning
finding myself not a cockroach
as in Kafka, but
as God
Everything is a bit much.
Therefore, I put all humanity to sleep,
except for one
You foolish one:
I give you
the power of Love, and
a baby
I know you will give it
the infinite Love
I have infused in you,
because this baby
is you.
Teach yourself, and
when you’re finished,
help me to continue.
I have many billions more
to surprise
with laughter
Jack experimented with the re-assignment of word function. He forced the verb to be noun with an article: “the IS” — beingness; preposition with verb also used to force the verb to be a noun: “with COULD” means “with hope”…
eeHuh Light
sanguine pump in the played
the laughed love gushed
with could by the wished
the is by the bleed
a duel duet sings
the where ever light
up pump the huh down
duh the why burden heavy
beamed out the shadowed
the light by the be
sings the shine
on flashlight, onward
Jack liked spoofs. Here’s a spoof of the song “Anything Goes”:
ANY SONG
In
the
fun
the sun
is magnificent
warming the scent
to tent all the
tender ways,
and anything goes
well,
decamping a passion
lighting a fire
drinking desire
wellsprings a choir
so,
anything goes
On
the
march
the strut
is parading love
blowing our horns
to vent all the
kisses saved,
and anything goes
Drum up a throbbing
trumpet a
heart beat
glide with a
trombone smooth,
but
In
the
sun
the fun
is significant
warming the tent
to scent all the
tender ways
and anything goes
Well, that’s all for now. Geez, I’m thinking of deleting this — I don’t think this selection does justice to the body of his work — I think he’s done better. I could leave it for now, and I’ll search for more — I know I remember there was a lot more that was better…
