The Project Gutenberg EBook of Deadly Pollen, by Stephen Oliver This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ** Title: Deadly Pollen Author: Stephen Oliver Release Date: March 9, 2004 [eBook #11522] [Most recently updated: March 17, 2020] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEADLY POLLEN *** Copyright (C) 2003 by Stephen Oliver. Deadly Pollen by Stephen Oliver WORD RIOT PRESS (c) Stephen Oliver, 2003 Books by Stephen Oliver Henwise (1975) & Interviews (1978) Autumn Songs (1978) Letter To James K. Baxter (1980) Earthbound Mirrors (1984) Guardians, Not Angels (1993) Islands of Wilderness - A Romance (1996) Unmanned (1999) Election Year Blues (1999) Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978 - 2000 (2001) Deadly Pollen (2003) Ballads, Satire & Salt (2003) Recordings Earthbound Mirrors, a selection, Stephen Oliver, Ode Records Label, Auckland, (cassette) 1984 For more information on Stephen Oliver visit: http://people.smartchat.net.au/~sao/ Cover design: Pina Ricciu. Cover image: The Lithuanian Bison, engraving from J. von Brincken, 1828. Acknowledgements: Antipodes (USA), Biff’s Quarterly (USA), Brief (NZ), Catalyzer Journal (USA), Comet Magazine (San Francisco), JAAM (NZ), Poetry NZ/26 featured poet, San Francisco Salvo, Spreadhead (USA), Thylazine (Aust). An Actual Encounter With the Sun On / My Balcony At France Street: a parody on Frank O’Hara’s ‘A True Account Of Talking / To The Sun At Fire Island’ who in turn based his account on Mayakovsky’s more robust poem, ‘A Most Extraordinary Adventure’. POETS’ PALACE: a name given by the author to an old Kauri, weatherboard guest house in France Street (the upper story of which he occupied in the early ’80s) near the prostitute’s strip off K’rd, Auckland. Various ‘emerging’ poets & artists lived downstairs at intervals during this period. As the last of its kind in Newton Gully this 100 year old wooden building was finally demolished at the close of the decade. Deadly Pollen is published by Word Riot Press PO Box 414 Middletown, NJ 07748 USA http://www.wordriot.org/press ISBN 0-9728200-2-7 Typeset by Word Riot Press in Bembo Contents 1. ‘ZIONISM:’ 2. ‘You return to the stupa, yearly,’ 3. ‘The stones collected. Ground’ 4. ‘ “With digital, there is no past,” ’ 5. ‘How is it the floating island’ 6. ‘Mediocre raiders lie in wait.’ 7. ‘Time passes - that pressure in’ 8. ‘Hugely, our indifference squats -’ 9. ‘Circuit; right hand wise,’ 10. ‘If streets had cobblestones’ 11. ‘A Public Works draughtsman’ 12. ‘Pyrrha, your dewy hair,’ 13. ‘The flames above the wall,’ 14. ‘Once cradle of civilization -’ 15. ‘Forty thousand tons. Space’ 16. ‘A giallo antico moon framed’ 17. ‘‘The Breaking of Nations’ ’ 18. ‘‘A line is taking a full-stop’ 19. ‘Buildings off the crustal shelf,’ 20. ‘Generalization of Old World’ 21. ‘CEOs in castles cascade’ 22. ‘Footprints for satellites?’ 23. ‘Is recollection seeing anew,’ 24. ‘So. Earth’s most dramatic’ 25. ‘I wanted to reach my hand into’ 26. ‘ ‘Your breasts in the mirror,’ ’ 27. ‘Alcatraz not Minoan ruins.’ 28. ‘Do words bring to mind flat’ 29. ‘Serpent-backed bridge profiled:’ 30. ‘One quadrant of sky turns,’ 31. ‘Barrel of the sun, gun-wad,’ 32. ‘Rubbed off sky exposes an’ 33. ‘The day combustible as a’ 34. ‘Compression of bees,’ 35. ‘Scent makes the air visible,’ An Actual Encounter With The Sun On My Balcony At France Street Deadly Pollen ZIONISM: to carry forward the cultural gene - O bright-lit destiny of the chosen! The child’s bouncing ball lands in mud on the other side of the wire; footsteps are paradoxical in a minefield. His heart ticks fast as a metal detector, slowly, the yellow ball rolls to a stop. Proposition: to advance onto ancestral territory, or return into gentle, familial lands, a footfall journey backward. His eye shrinks the land to desert. * You return to the stupa, yearly, to seek your return. You wish to come back as forest deer but that deer is extinct. The stupa is a rock upon which your dreams founder, yearly, - you return that which you do not have. Meanwhile, in the West, under ragged skies and beneath a hundred spires no longer dreamt of - attendance comes tumbling down; each stone, unturned, in an emptied space within a space caved under. * The stones collected. Ground levelled and swept. The first cubicle erected with four windowed-walls, an open doorway. One man on a step looking out to sea. Civilization open for business. Soon, marble was made smooth and square. The Idea locked into permanence. Curiosity stimulated commerce; others came and conquered then went away. That first step never forgotten became a throne - history’s seat. * “With digital, there is no past,” says Jean-Luc Godard. Either way, the button is redundant. Voice-command is thought - the fear deep and futureless as history, desire to appease which remains featureless, not the disorganized weather it truly is, as much a part of the breathing stars as constancy of rock. The ‘Mr Whippy Man’ weaves Greensleeves in and out of suburbia; a caravan in search of a trade-route - via the village that never existed. * How is it the floating island detaches itself from horizon in dream - its first appearance, otherworldly, but of this world, a wheel loosened from the world’s ratchet, out of time, riding above it and inhabited by folk fixated upon a particular theorem-thought; elevated imponderables, whereby you access this island by door set underneath as you sail under? Islands, a dream of round towers! the sudden rush of water under hulls. * Mediocre raiders lie in wait. Teeth clack in sleep, dreams fraught with ambush. Orders intercepted, encrypted to the house style. The litterateur tracked back through his ISBN to no man’s land - the robotic verb activated, sent in under barbed metaphor strung out where trees once stood as camouflage. The voices from his hill-bunker a wind turbine. Accusations tumbled in the night. For months he heard soft hammering, mimicry; they failed. Could not beat back the weather on his chosen ground. * Time passes - that pressure in space again - return of the unoriginals tinkering with the power-box - such fine work - setting traps out for darkness. Time passes - talons curve and hook - how the mouth chokes with ash. Feet drag muffled under dungeons. Time passes - that pressure in space again - a new proclamation from Semiotic City - this custom built dome and aquarium light, pulsing: henceforth, no corners to hide around - no zone permitted for surprise to leap. * Hugely, our indifference squats - unleavened as fear, blood is contained within news footage. Archaeologists stop digging deserts because of landmines. Camels wait for sand dunes to drift into ridges - blue flags flutter back at Fort Apache on brave white trucks (what gets through is the scent of coffee). A footless boy hobbles past, bargain hunting, a life at odds & ends - smoke drifts over Manhattan, out across the Hudson river as from a Bedouin campfire. * Circuit; right hand wise, homage to the sun - as did ancient Celts, Scythians, too - host to the Milesians on their last leg to Ireland as the first Celts castaway - whose home precinct the Black Sea, the right hand to the centre; memoried in standing stone circles. Yet homage to a sun as walking pillar of fire, with hell for a coronet? The world’s breath and mystery end here, earth’s innards engorged - sprawled redly coast to coast. * If streets had cobblestones blood would flow in tatters - torn flags to a revolution lost. Streets smoothly ease to drains. The cut deep, and blood wakes from its blackness, crushed as berries in the runnels of a wagon, oozes its oil from the body’s casket - til flesh becomes porcelain, perfect surface for moon, ice, the glass-edged sky to play upon; in silences deep as birch in the bayoneting dark - and leaves finally resemble paper money piled up under the turbined lamplight. * A Public Works draughtsman spent thirty years designing the City Sewerage Reticulation System he eventually hoped to escape through - a masterpiece! A prairie dog would have been proud of it. Complex of accented runs, angles, drops, sluices, pumps, ditches, endless unbowed archways, treatment ponds breaking into sunlight - the architects of Athens would have been proud of it. Only on paper - not one trowel lifted! miles and miles and miles of it.