Heart X-rays A Modern Epic Poem (PM Pamphlet)

G.H. Mosson; Marcus Colasurdo

ISBN 10: 1629635138 ISBN 13: 9781629635132

Publisher: PM Press, 2018

Synopsis

Heart X-rays is a twenty-first-century beat epic poem that ranges across landscapes and voices, with appearances by Banksy, Pussy Riot, hip-hop, the down and out, the up and coming, heartbreak and joybreak, while exploring the mystery we call the human heart. A collaborative work between two poets and working-class activists, Heart X-rays is a poetic memory of today written in the alphabet of a future.

About this title

About the Author

<div>Marcus Colasurdo is the author of 11 books, including the underground classic novel, Angel City Taxi. Colasurdo is the founder of Gimmie Shelter Productions, a non-profit organization of artists whose performances benefit homeless shelters, feeding programs, and other worthy causes. More recently, he helped found Soul Kitchens in Baltimore, MD, and Hazelton, PA, which provide free meals to those who need them. G.H. Mosson is the author of two books of poetry, Questions of Fire and Season of Flowers and Dust. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications and has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize. He published the journal Poems Against War and an anthology of the same name. He practices employee rights and disability rights law as well as general civil litigation in Baltimore, MD.</div>

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Heart X-Rays

A Modern Epic Poem

By Marcus Colasurdo, G.H. Mosson

PM Press

Copyright © 2018 the authors, jointly and severally
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62963-513-2

CHAPTER 1

Below the Tower

Out of the dream machine, far
from my parents' daytime haul, out
of these mirrory blank smiles, far even from
contraband nights of metamorphosis, unplug my sight;
out of the screaming pass & fail, no longer below salivating
billboards, beyond values bartered and sold, far
from the scramble for value, far away
from the famished addicted wired walkers
of the fattest cities, away from the obesity
of replicated sameness, utopia's five-dollar whores,
  release me toward
    an elixir that nourishes
even men and women who anchor themselves
to encased hearts, whisk me past
oasis of freedom by shopping, past
where the shut-down towns are turned
into plastic and steel theme-parks;
  phoenix-heart soar
     through less — quirky
        and wobbly as any close friend —

What thin tower is this
and where are the magicians
among the lines at the monolith's foot?
I hear the people grumble, impatient,
sleepwalking through a chant
they barely recall. Whose ziggurat
winds up toward speechless skies?
The shamans have been slaughtered
  and the hum of their hints
blows a distant breeze

elsewhere. A nation of talkers
mobs airwaves with gossipy tongues —
  remote on —
  remote off —


Field

Dreams of underwear cannot hide my nakedness —


Always time for song.
Don't wait too long.
Teased by wind? Why pretend?
Listen. Birds praise
Alphabetless days
Of the sun's clock
Above the tick
Tock. Grassy toes,
Curled up nose,
Summer's rose.
Crying eyes
Of a lover's smile
Pause a while.
Invest my heart
For those cave days
Roseless
But not afraid.
Love, prevail
Amid the tales
Until words fail
For even you, dear,
Must burn and fade
(flare anew)
But not today.
Fade, song,
With autumn's long
Shalom to winter's
Shanti of snowfall.


Youth's the time to fly, why cry yourself
dry, slide to the beaches where sunrise
melts to sleeping bags full of wet and dark beginnings,
ride to the basketball court to dunk dreams, jet through
chattering cities, late-night parties, backroads, who knows?
You'll join us, soon enough, old men in closed rooms
where we decide where to sign the document
and to whom it must be mailed and copied,
inching the social wheel forward, comma by signature,
from "confirm the fact" to "confirmed fact"
as the kids dance around a mandolin of images.
  From fire, life,
     From experience, char,
        From the char, knowledge,
           From knowing ... gardener.

Green desire, sustaining sun, take me too!
The universities employ paraplegics of the heart,
geniuses of computer programs and robotic bombs
who publish explanatory books that dwarf the wide world,
but I have drunk too much of light's fragrant pooling
on a summer sunflower's heavy head drooping
toward the good soil, yet erect and still waiting
in the bright meadow blaze for the symphony of bees
to be made so sober.

Wait, I have to check my iPhone.
I'm not your brother's keeper, but here, keep the change,
homeless dude, wasted hippie kid, hip slacker who clutches coffee to stay awake. Bring
in the big trucks, dozers,
  huffing excavators, replace trees with box stores,
     dig deep down and level.
Haul up the earth, thirty feet below, and process
it into component parts, sell colored gravel
for landscaping, and fill dirt to pack the cleared plots.
Let's frame another suburb, join us.
Use this coupon. Plant private gardens.
Call it yours. Where did the birds go?
Buy more. Who took the worms? Lock doors.

What did you do today, honey?
It's hard to describe, my duckling,
Everything I did can be fit into an idea.
O sweet spicy duckling, I fear I am fading.

Who wedged the universe into an alphabet
within a computer screen? Scroll through
all the way. My homeless heart cannot fit
into any safe deposit box. It just left town.

Look, here come the birds, here come the butterflies.
  They land on fences, on starter trees.
     They arrive.

Behind your tears,
  The past, behind your
     Past, this dirty web,
        Behind each thread, ants
           And spaceships, dinosaurs and
           Hurricanes, a baby's smile,
           A sky of feeling, swift flight
           And beautiful falling.

Fuck the man and his motherfuckin' plan
Who I am? My mind goes back to Abraham
Understand — I ain't changed by brand names,
name games, sold lines, bought pain, time schemes,
dream chains — not rearranged —
Put yr hands up & say, HEYYY!
  Rhythm rooted
     Get to it

  Turn time
     Into music
for there ain't no escape from the mindscape
  Ain't too late to dig deep and relate
     Don't wait for
"Payday Holiday"—
      "Gotta change the diaper"—
         "Pass the remote baby"—

Fuck the man and his motherfuckin' plan
Rewrite the scene
  Ancient dreams!
     Gotta scream
        Baby-boo stay true
           If you bruise, search too —
           Well, who loves you?

JAY-Z was a hero to most
but he never meant shit to me
selling the bling bling death race CEO-mask tool-faced
money-strut circle chase loud-noise light-blast
to erase history "for once a pimp,
always pusher —"
  I don't need gold watches to tell the weather
Fuck the man and his motherfuckin' plan
How long will it take to understand?
Why make the golden calf loom larger?
I'm heading inward
Gotta be a dodger Just holla!
All in no chaser Let's go! Get bothered
  Universal seeker
     Mind slave never
        Nevermind the sellers
           Be your own weather
Fuck the man and his motherfuckin' plan
  Shut off devices Heal and get better
  Faith is a vision Love through the never


Street Scene

while you
are walking,
your head cradled
in your phone,
your ears plugged
with plastic,
there is no way
to alert you;
while you are
walking, cooing
to pictures of yourself,
there is no way
to warn you;
while you
are walking rectangled
into hypnosis,
you cannot see
me
waving my wild arms
from
this
upper floor
window —
but
beside you,
matching your stride
with familiar eyes,
the rapist
is
wearing
those
cool
shoes.


Charleston

after the shooting (June 17, 2015)

Tonight, I don't know which God
  you're praying to.
I can't tell which flag you salute.
I am not certain
  if you believe in ghosts —
but tonight, I hear them singing:
  Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel
and I wonder just what
  the cemetery shovels are burying
tonight. Suppertime has long passed.
Can it be that the mouth
  of your port, Charleston, still tingles
with the taste of flesh in chains?
I hear the coded talk-talk
  and the magnolias sweat down
whispering that the hood and torch
can now be measured in gigabytes,
in radio screech, and the law
for some is a coloring book
crayoned with burnt flint,
yet still, they sing:
  Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel
History imparts her lessons
only, it seems, to those
who still believe
in the learning.
The walk toward
wisdom routes
through Golgotha, indeed,
but arrows not
toward suffering
or so the long song
promises. If the mapmaking
of human minds
  learns from our hearts
elasticity ... can you still think
  that the sun favors one
     and not the other?

For a century and a half, the nation's doors
have opened wider and wider. Tonight,
one hand is extended your way, though
  I do not know for how much longer —
as nearby
  and closer still
     another voice
        has joined the song.


Leaving the Gift Shop

I.
Let's commence the Literature of Me
It's so practical I'm endlessly fascinating
Even in the fascist army, anyone can write a memoir
That bum ranting on the corner doesn't get it, does he?
So what he had a vision as a fifteen-year-old hitchhiking on a highway.
His father didn't beat him anymore, did he? And he avoided butt raid
When he snuck away as the drunk snoozed off. That vision of G-d
Didn't include me, did it?

Blow this out yr ass, I'm back on stage!
In the Literature of Me, you'll weep when I weep,
Laugh when I laugh, go with me to Mom's house
For a reunion after a silent year. You too?
When did relationships become so hard?
Wait a second, I have to send a tweet and answer
Four emails. I need a soda. In the Literature of Me, I eat well
And don't gain weight. It's like a T.V. show.
Except, I'm the T.V. Get over yourself.
No clear glass window but just a front row seat.
And because it is loud and famous, don't you run and come?

II.
In practical cars with practical eyes, I don't
want to drive on practical roads toward practical goals.
Who are the old ladies thinking of shopping on Saturdays?
Will they readjust their wall hangings today with the retired man next door?
As we pass each other in opposite turning lanes, I X RAY this stranger
who putters today's freedom through errand
after errand and glimpse a low mist
about us with a faint strobing gray hue
like a living language and looking back at me
waiting with mute patience
for my allegiance under some vast flag.

III.
Techno-Human Poly-Trans-One
Facebooking the mothering void into insta-image
And history to infobite

  Joe's heart shows up on the assembly line looking for a date:
  Do you like poodles or bulldogs, noise rock or classical music?
  Gotta go and accessorize the heart.
  I can shake your hand or run you over it's such a crowd.

  Sold the land to TACO ABC
  Got a bunk bed at 123 FURNITURE

Poly Trans Morph Reducto One
Twittering in front of invisible bird notes
Quote unquote the silence until it's deafeningly loud

Here I stand, with a bouquet of fragments
And a buried heart
And above it looms the mannequin and her atomic clock

IV.
  Memo to File: If we turn the mystery into a tourist site, the people will
  stand in line even though they are lost. This way, Hollywood movies
  lead the way into longer lines toward roller coasters, and really, even
  I can't resist them. Kids aren't potted plants and someone has to
  occupy their engrossed eyes. Their parents are even worse because
  they dress in our identities. Identity for sale! Identity for sale!

V.
Where is the key if I am the prison?
If you are the key, how am I your jailor?
Can we uncage from this age-old lockstep
if I sing your song, and you sing mine?
Mother, I am not like your brother but also a teeny toy soldier.
Father, I am not you without the car accident and bad marriage.
Dad, can I grow as tall as your skyscraper heart buried in tears?

Mom, I want to help you dance naked among high school ghosts.
Let's create a path by clearing.
From the perspective of learning, everything can be good.
Let's dance the oldest dance of friendship.
A friend helps you sing around the fire and walk wounded on the road.

Let's call the road, time.
Let's call the journey, us.
Let's call the hints, maps.
Let's call the lesson, love.


Soul Kitchen

  1.
All up and down
  the broad flanks of the Susquehanna,
on both sides of the muddy Mason-Dixon,
across state lines of mountain laurel and pine,
there's a work dance in progress:
a culinary creation
  gestating a brand new nation something
aromatic being prepared
  in the kindhearted sculleries,
something fine and fresh
  being served up with soul.
Read the recipes, one and all!
  Something human is happening here.
These angels are necessary.

  2.
And so, an idea began in one empty belly sound
became word
and the word gurgled true
like a white-hot tattoo:
simple and terrifying,
choked and near broken,
the word whispered out
as a scream of exhaustion:
  Hunger.
And truly, it has been said
that the voices of the famished
are the last to be heard until
the dead once again
sing clear as birds and
towers of wealth
have crumbled to sand and
stranger becomes friend
with the reach of a hand....
  All who hungry, shall be fed
and the words became the work of nourishment;
and the words became the many who heard them;
and our dance began again.

  3.
What a sight to see
this sharing by degree
in a sanctuary free
where hope demands no fee.
All kinds come through the welcoming door:
all colors, ages, languages
of the Lord. Sometimes, it seems
that my country's whole history
walks toward me
in the late afternoon light.

Some come off the windblown streets.
Some come empty out of silent rooms.
Some come grateful for their child's next meal.
Some come searching for that special one.
Some are veterans of economic war
carrying too many losses
  and too few wins.
Some seek merely
  to hear a voice besides their own.
Some come with their brains
  in fiery debate:
which bills to pay, which ones can wait.
Some have lost their future
  before it began: taken
by accident, taken by foreign conflict - taken
by the money changers, taken by slashed wrist
political pens - sucked up by syringe and rotgut -
taken by fire in the real estate night -
future pink-slipped on a black ice road -
lost in the gloom of the factory's last day -
Sometimes, when the world turns toward cold
  only one question remains if
     the future is sold
        and hope has been repossessed
what exactly is left
  in the place called home?
     Perhaps tomorrow expects us to answer its question.
        Perhaps we have always known that.

  4.
Indeed, I see notion turned into motion a
moving circle of engaged energy
radiates out like karma in action:
50 pairs of hands in a mudra marvelous 500
fingers efficiently flying a
fandango of fabulous feet getting
busy at the very burners
of home-cooked resurrection.

It's a blue-collar
  blue-aproned ballet. ...
It's a two-step peel and prep.
It's a mighty nice slice and dice.
It's a shimmy-shake boil and bake.
It's a three-course tour de force
  with a salad to open and
just exactly like you're hope'n,
  there's music in this menu:

It's a meatloaf moonwalk
  and a fried chicken cha - cha it's
mashed potatoes and stewed tomatoes
  and German-speaking coleslaw.
It's a righteous rumba of ravioli
  and meatballs sauced aplenty -
down the street — it's 10 bucks a plate —
up here, it don't cost a penny.
It's taco tango, with beans cooked twice,
with salsa and cheese and jitterbug rice.
There's creole shrimp
  and pierogies in butter there's
a man and woman
  kissing each other!
There's Bolshoi burgers
  and thick beef stew -
there's jambalaya and pasta fazool.
There's a ham that's hummin'
right off the bone -
plus greens and yams
from way down home!
There's carrots and celery
in a chicken soup waltz -
a clam chowdah too
that's low on the salt.
There's a line dance of pies
from apple to cherry -
key lime sublime
and a bowl of strawberries.
  More coffee?
  No problem.
Just let me take in
this dance of the sacred cooking fire,
this hand to table to mouth to belly
to deep soul satisfaction,
this mystical plate juggling.
Just give me one more minute
so I can become just as full up
where I feel my heart growing
again - spoon by fork -
aroma by aroma - just let me inhale this -
so I can remember where my truest nourishment
comes from.
Just
one
more
minute -
if you please;
and
while
you're waiting
maybe take a moment
for yourself.
Take a look around at
who's knocking
on your life's door,
waiting for you to open it again -
take a quick second for that, will you?
I'll be right back
with your coffee.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Heart X-Rays by Marcus Colasurdo, G.H. Mosson. Copyright © 2018 the authors, jointly and severally. Excerpted by permission of PM Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: PM Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1629635138
• ISBN 13: 9781629635132
• Binding: Pamphlet
• Number of pages: 32