Featuring Marc Olmsted

DRIVE-THROUGH PHARMACY

Long wait - music piped out - Lone Ranger theme, 

Bach’s spooky Toccata and Fugue - 

some Ringling Brothers circus music 

all on a repeating loop -

Red spray paint on a wall

word balloon

with a grinning mouth

I thought at first an octopus: 

FRESH OUTTA JAIL

JURY POOL SELECTION

I.

Dressed as a serial killer for the murder trial

On the transit downtown to the court house 

a knife cutting the winter dawn sky awake

“I may be butchering the name” said the clerk

to my 3 hours of sleep 

- I am not a daywalker -

Filling out the questionnaire after raising a hand sworn in

II.

Still have to come back!

I saw the defendant

(Law & Order classic thug)

& thought

“Well he’s totally fucked.”

I’d upped the ante

This time hair unwashed, not pulled back

Beat-up motorcycle boots

A Halloween Michael Myers t-shirt

& instead of Nike

It says Mike

And the curved checkmark “just do it” brand logo?

A dripping bloodly scimitar

The other prospective jurors

wouldn’t look at me

“Yes, your honor?”

Got home to the e-mail

RELEASED FROM THE PANEL

ASTRO-MAN

(For Bob Branaman)

So the artist I knew age 90 checks out -

I saw it coming 

asteroid at the back 

of the solar system -

Bob - you’ll do o.k. and you 

went with love, frankly I’m ready to join you

The dark weight of heart’s grief 

even as my kitten purrs

that dark wine

(For Andy Clausen)

what have I become

that this old age has Caliban made? 

a hoofed shambler none can save from time, the great evener

he lost his leg 

to giant poetry 

& then dragged down into 

Homer's dark wine

where poems may still be 

honored, my first thought was "folly" 

don't waste another second 

he's ten years ahead of me 

no more lies about the fame of poetry 

his death the same 

day as the 

murderer 

who got away 

with it

Marc Olmsted has appeared in City Lights Journal, New Directions in Prose & Poetry, New York Quarterly, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and a variety of small presses.  He is the author of six collections of poetry, including What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost?, which has an introduction by Allen Ginsberg.  Olmsted's 25 year relationship with Ginsberg is chronicled in his  Beatdom Books memoir Don't Hesitate: Knowing Allen Ginsberg 1972-1997 - Letters and Recollections, available on Amazon.

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York City.1999. Edited by Alan Kaufman. 685 pages.

"Outlaw Poetry, basically, is a stance against academia and the writing degree establishment. Outlaw Poetry is also a stance against the politically correct in poetry. Outlaw Poetry comes along at a time when the arts in general and poetry in particular are moribund, stale, boring, cowardly, candyassed and dead." —Todd Moore

This book of ‘outlaw poetry’ is the best collection of alternative small press work I have ever read. This is a sprawling, motley collection of rebellious, non-conformist verse. The editor and poet Alan Kaufman set this book in motion after the death of his friend- the beat poet Jack Micheline in 1998. It successfully assembles for the first time in one volume the greatest outlaw voices of the post-war period.

The collection is mammoth and from a variety of diverse voices & is structured through loose, highly arbitrary categories: American Renegades, Slammers, Meat Poets, The Barbarians, The Carma Bums, The Unbearables and the like. You will also find largely tokenistic contributions by cultural icons, such as- Jimmi Morrison, Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Richard Brautigan, William Burroughs, Ken Kesey & many others.

I first came across this book about ten years ago and was able to read in one hit literary legends such as d.a. levy, Harold Norse, Jack Hirschman, A.D. Winans, Todd Moore, Gerald Locklin, Jack Micheline, Steve Richmond and many others for the first time. One of the book’s weaknesses is that it includes too many minor writers without giving due significance to others, such as, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Snyder and especially Charles Bukowski, whose estate, according to the writer John Bennett, was demanding more than the $250 paid to the other contributors.

In the opening acknowledgment section of the book, Kaufman praises Neil Ortenburg, the publisher of Thunder’s Mouth Press, for providing adequate space for his literary bible: ‘Most editors starve a book; Neil said, “Let’s double its size!’ This generosity allowed for the vast and unprecedented sampling of about 270 poets in this book.You probably won't enjoy every poem but you will have to admire the energy and the spirit of personal expression and rebellion evoked throughout.

These aren't the voices of nerdy wanna-bes sitting behind the comfort & anonymity of their personal computers & MFAs. These are authentic voices of those who have lived the life of street 'warrior-artists'. This stuff is real, raw, with nothing held back. Everything is permissible, with no subject taboo- explicit sex, drug taking, homosexuality & the measured scalping of mainstream values & cultural icons.

If you are unfamiliar with ‘outlaw’ verse and not riveted to your ways of thinking, you will find this book fun, fascinating, daring, exhilarating.

You can find some affordable copies of the Outlaw Bible on amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Bible-American-Poetry/dp/1560252278