Scott MacLeod


QUITE A DAY

for Shom

scrod poppin
litter ah sure
been town’d
lately, trolled
folded, olded
been cut and
wasted, read
acted, reacted
protracted, pre-
dated, prorated
and underrated
quite a day, really
been quite a day



THIS WHOLE MIRACLE

the goose song steps up, oozing sonic gore
limp militant discovered in power thong
watching movies in a nearby trench
the short-range keeps to itself
adaptive take-out pleasure
in fully wireless Bayreuth

& cheerless apartheid, shopping after an agile sex comedy
lunges towards altars and beds, her own star fancy
rolling around on the showroom floor laughing
that cum-gulping gag riveting as an ass fiddle

& to me this whole miracle thinks like a skunk soldier
stealing sweet sales space from the cowardice coalition
their unwound hive vacancy biting liars dice
and novelty talus glands of the conquistadors
seeing un-miracles through opaque alphabet goggles



THE BLESSED

do not blame too many of our crazy fucking children
all of them jagged and angry, looming at the fringe
writing to the dead in the evening with vials and needles

wandering back through the day’s unexpected glimpse
arms full of long documents, frightful injunctions
obstinant, damaging, disconcerting and even gruesome

abandoned cars, boarded-up and abandoned buildings
a different alphabet standing sentry at every door along the way

put this into words inside the swallow's head
through cracks in limbs and gaps in bone

a mindless man keeping himself well out of sight

the rhetorical gesture of pointing at phantoms
the blessed undelivered and unopened

as worshippers
smoke-break



FUCKED OR WHAT

endless (as much as)
bleeding crew
(is what we are now)

we know we are fucked
(or so it’s said)
it breaks my heart

we are fisherman
of a mountain of sand
ana-ah-ka-wee-ta-kah

nature made us
what we are now
has failed us

I mean the
ghost                boats
on shore

we’ll be traitors
spies, swimmers
fucking writers



Scott MacLeod has been presenting live, time-based, conceptual & static work in the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally since 1979. His installations and paintings have been widely exhibited in the Bay Area at venues including Southern Exposure, The Lab, George Lawson Gallery, and SFMOMA as well as internationally in the Czech Republic, Belgium, England, Italy and Germany. Visual arts awards include the San Francisco Art Institute’s Adaline Kent Award (2000) and a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Visual Arts Award (2001). His fiction, poetry, theater and critical writings have been widely published in the USA and abroad, and he has co-produced several international cultural exchange projects between USA, France, Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. He lives in Oakland, California.
 
 
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