StarCat/CatStar
StarCat/CatStar is dedicated to the memory of David Bowie, that cosmic subversive who’s returned at last to his ethereal home.
StarCat/CatStar is dedicated to the memory of David Bowie, that cosmic subversive who’s returned at last to his ethereal home.
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TWO POEMS<br />
BY KENNETH SALZMANN<br />
Author bio: Kenneth Salzmann has been active in literary publishing and<br />
programming for 35 years. His poems appear in such publications as Rattle, The<br />
New Verse News, Home Planet News, The Comstock Review, and many more. He<br />
lives in Woodstock, NY, and Ajijic, Mexico, with his wife, editor Sandi Gelles-Cole.<br />
Stage Directions<br />
Read these poems aloud,<br />
only aloud<br />
on days when you tire of ranting in Brighton Beach beneath<br />
the El and in all-night eateries; read these poems aloud<br />
when you are finally clothed in nothing but a cloudful sky<br />
mountain ocean meadow New Jersey.<br />
When you have stripped true among strangers<br />
sound is meaning ebough.<br />
And when you die die naked upon leaves that collect in<br />
dank piles on the forest floor, on sands where seaweed<br />
and driftwood collect on patches of black ice, and let your<br />
bones be seashells.<br />
No truth: not in things.<br />
And when you live live in fierce nakedness, in naked drive,<br />
live in trumpet solos spun through dingy Manhattan<br />
apartments on scratchy 78s and let your nakedness be<br />
meaning enough.<br />
A man can only be, not mean.<br />
And when you love love fears and flaws with fierce<br />
nakedness, love naked need that collects in lovers’ eyes<br />
and trumpet solos, love imperfection and let your lover’s vow<br />
demand oblivion.<br />
The ice-sharp sound of trumpets<br />
melts like ice.<br />
A self is only equal to, not you.<br />
Read these poems aloud,<br />
only aloud.
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