ed markowski | valentine’s day

ed markowski | photo in a junk drawer

PoetryDispatch No. 300 | November 24, 2009

ED MARKOWSKI

photo in a junk drawer

i show up under a tangle
of shoe strings rubber bands
& holy cards left over from
my mother’s funeral wearing
a long sleeve black flannel shirt
mime’s make-up & black wayfarers
that on this frigid january 11, 2008
still reflect the light of an explosion
dead center in both lenses back into
a drooping smile that disguised two
fractured eyes as my third grazed
blinked & wept in the seductive scent
of a malignant blossom before waking
as i slept in an aluminum lawn chair
on skinny jimmy’s sagging porch under
a pewter moon gripping a flame tempered
tea spoon that held the delicate & delirious
soup we fed each other under lock & key
in a cellophane bubble of oxygen
deprivation rocketing back to that
deserted planet we discovered in a
sun starved upper flat above jupiter
avenue the night of july 22nd, 1972
thirty sad & suffocating days before mary
splashed down somewhere off the coast
of nowhere & drowned in the shallow
golden bowl of a souvenier spoon from
coney island on the hood of doc magee’s
64 galaxy in an alley with no exit behind
vito’s tel-star bar & pizza.

ed markowski | three by…

Poetry Dispatch No. 296 | October 23, 2009

THREE BY MARKOWSKI FROM MICHIGAN…
THE MAN WHO BREATHES POEMS— MOSTLY SHORT, SOMETIMES LONG, DEEP BREATHS. HERE’S ED ON HEAVENS GATE, SHADOWS, AND A TIMELY SCARECROW –NB

Heaven’s Gate

she kissed me where
the beach turned mean
an hour after winter began
we drank the draino
we loved each others others
with dread & disease
cascading down for seven years
every black cat that
crossed our path had
all nine lives reduced
to none then blew
two flutes for luck
& love was blazing
bleak where one last
look confirmed our sex red
big finned fleetwood idled
in the shade & panic
of a ponderosa pine
on the outskirts of
a one way window
in a half horse town
between three pains of
shattered glass we laughed
& crackled twice as crisp
in the heat of a
sixty watt light bulb aglow
with sin & sensation &
lies laced with honey
adrift in the dust of
an ancient desert on
a mattress stuffed with
amber roses that scented
those nights we free fell
from the ledge of
orion’s lips & rumbled
through a sheet of stars
then drowned in the depths
of a souvenier shot glass
from mickey ratt’s rio roadhouse
when i was doc hologram
& she was ma darker
on cloud double zero at
the heaven’s gate motel.

death bed
in the calm between tremors
her vow to guide me
when i get there

after
the argument,

barn
yard chickens

shit
on my shadow.

halloween
aaaaaaparty
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaathe
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaascarecrow
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaashows up
aaaaaain
aaaaaaan
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaed
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamarkowski
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamask

ed markowski | resurrections

Poetry Dispact No.285 | June 8, 2009

ED MARKOWSKI

Here’s a man who lives and breathes poems. I can’t imagine a day goes by that he does not nail at least one or two. Magic-morning-Markowski.

Here’s a brand new beauty by a poet who can do it all—short poems, long poems, fat poems, skinny poems, story poems, list poems, lyric poems, talk poems…haiku, haibun, you-name-it: “Hey, have I got a poem for you!”

This is one of them—making a little something out of what appears to be nothing. Damn right skeletal. Reminiscent of the late/great American poet, Robert Creeley, father, I’d suggest, of the thin poem strolling down the page. Poems that take on weight

one

or

two

words

at

a

time.

–norbert blei

resurrections

on
the

day
i

was
god

i
resurrected

cheney
mao

custer
stalin

amin
sherman

jim
jones

rasputin
batista

manson
calvin

mussolini
franco

kim il sung
kim jong il

the
ayatollah somany

&
hitler twice,

hung
them,

returned
religion

to
antiquity

for
eternity,

resurrected
kerouac

carver
capote

dickinson
groucho

fellini
munro

babe
ruth

jesus
lennon

lucy
chaplin

desi
zeppo

julia
child

maris
mantle

oakley
twain

harrison
holiday

patsy
cline

colonel
sanders

joyce
blake

sexton
stowe

duchamp
picasso

johnny
cash

hank
snow

knute
rockne

hemingway
hackett

jim
beam

jack
daniels

elvis
twice

every
woman

who
ever

wanted
elvis

but
settled

for
less

then
died

too
young,

got
loaded

with
all

of
them,

then
woke

up
naked

with
a

bleached
blonde

named
sheila

who
gaps

plugs
at

fat
jack’s

kar
klinic

out
on

route
twelve,

on
the

lawn
in

front
of

her
rusty

double
wide

behind
three

fading
but

still
kind
of

pink
flamingos

in
a

place
called

eden
acres

just
this

side
of

the
tennessee

state
line.

ed markowski 5/30/09

Editor’s Note: Markowski has two short stories due out in the next two issues of smokebox magazine, titled: “1986” & “Beyond the Mountains.” Don Wentworth’s Lilliput Review will be publishing a broadside of Markowski’s short poetry titled “Drunk with Religion” Markowski recently performed at The National Arts Club in Manhattan & at The chautauqua Institution with Cor van den Huevel & Al Pizzarelli. His country western & statistical haibun can be found at Simply Haiku. His short poetry most recently appeared in Phillip Rowland’s journal of short poetry NO/ON.

ed markowski | a poem and a note

Poetry Dispatch No. 255 | October 11, 2008

ed markowski

(a poem and a note)

Ed Markowski seems to be one of those writers who awakes, walks, eats, drinks, works, plays, loves, sleeps, dreams poems. I don’t know this for sure—but I suspect it. Like the old ad for Jay’s Potato Chips: “You (he)can’t stop eating (writing) them!”

I suspect ed markowski could easily write a poem a day–or more. Most of them pretty damn good poems. Keepers.

Often he’s playful, always thoughtful, occasionally political. I’m sure he prefers the long art of a short poem to the short life (politically) on things. Nevertheless, the poem is where you find it, feel it—at that moment. And put it down.

Granted, there is a ‘momentary’ zone some of us writers are fortunate to enter almost at will. A free zone, inner time zone…the kind of thing that happens when we are consumed by that which we discover to be writing in our heads—all the time, till it finally falls in place on paper.

You nourish that, court it, stay connected with that long enough…and you enter a state of what I compare to ‘zen awareness’ where everything you see becomes a poem. I suspect, here again (and finally), that ed markowski knows and religiously occupies that zen zone on a momentary/daily basis, honoring it all—feeling it flutter inside, alive in the place where words grow into telling images of revelation.

I’m not quite sure what ed does for a living—then again, it doesn’t matter. It’s pretty obvious. He lives to write poems. –Norbert Blei

an american dream

by ed markowski

the garden of eden featured
synchronized dolphins two
roller coasters & fire eating
vigilantes who fashioned each
rosary into a noose while we
pledged allegiance to a flag
that shed its skin & became
a snake beneath an oak where
the guilty women hung their
wombs at one time or another
every raisin used steroids
at the major league level &
bloomed into barry bonds the
baseball mirage who charged
an adoring autograph 15.00 for his
illegible boy before a windstorm
uprooted the virgin who was packing
apples into the pie she crushed
for christ at the church bake sale
last week in alaska every cherry blossom
that drifted down in washington d.c.
exploded while a man cried out the
box was always more nutritious than
the burger before a horse broke loose
from a carousel & won the kentucky
derby by a nose i walked eight years
in the president’s shoes only to
discover
that
the
earth
is
flat.

[Source: Author…new poem, first publication]

norb,

right now as far as print mags go, i’ve got…

8 short poems coming out in a magazine called “labor.” jim daniels, who is a native of detroit & is the chairman of the creative writing department at carnegie mellon in pittsburg is labor’s poetry editor.

this haiku…

[Editor’s note: Sorry, wish I could print it, it’s a beauty, but first rights are elsewhere]

is due out in a british print / haiku mag called presence. presence is a top flight mag in terms of content & production.

have these two poems…

[Ed’s note: Sorry again. Same excuse]

due out in a very tiny but well respected mag called the lilliput review.

have a large number of short poems due out in the next five bottle rockets. the editor, stan forrester has a backlog of my poems. bottle rockets is well done & a lot of fun. the mag comes out of windsor, connecticut.

have two haibun due out in the winter edition of simply haiku.

have a short story due out in the next smokebox. the story is basically a letter from charlie manson to his mother. i’ll forward the piece to you.

so, that’s what’s out there now. i’know this will seem contradictory considering the list above, but i’m not all that bent on sending things out.

it’s like in another life i was a chef & now i prefer to cook for family & friends.

as much as i like print mags, i think poems & stories travel much further on the internet. after all, the most visible magazines (the new yorker etc.) have online editions.

i get invitations all the time from fledgling e mags to send poems. i realized along time ago that it’s not necessary to be published everywhere.

over the weekend i received an invite from an ezine in india called the taj mahal review. turned it down.

stan forrester asked me to write a 10 part piece on my experiences at the naropa institute.

i turned that down too. told stan, “that was 30 years ago, anything i’d have to say would be totally inaccurate. i can’t quote alan ginsberg or gregory corso thirty years after the fact, besides the most interesting part of the trip was the 2 weeks i spent in jail in central city, nebraska. my girlfriend had to live in a pup tent the whole time. she’s the one with the story.”

so , the new yorker would be nice & maybe some day i’ll get there, but if not, that’s ok too. the small press really is the backbone of american arts & letters & that’s gotten me on a bill with billy collins at the national arts club & on a stage at chautauqua & i’ve been discovered by you who i have the utmost respect for. in my book, that’s pretty good. the small press has been very very good to me.
ed

Ed. Note: Other small poems/haiku work by ed markowski to be found on my site devoted to the small poem: Basho’s Road

ed markowski | candidates 9/3/08

NOTES from the UNDERGROUND… No.150 | September 9, 2008

THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE

candidates 9/3/08

election news a woman spits up sticks & stones

sharpening the darkness of her smile a poet

the color of a crow on the clothesline is perfect

-ed markowski

Editor’s Note: Sometimes you leave it to the power (political) of the poet to find truth in words. More of Markowski’s mastery of the small poem can be found at: www.bashosroad.outlawpoetry.com . “Candidates 9/3/08” will be posted there as well. –Norbert Blei