In the words of Mr. Malby:
"When among singing birds, it's not wise to crow about yourself.
I'm a rooster without portfolio in a barnyard of hype.
From Coos Bay, Oregon, I invite you to *google* me."
We are pleased to present the following selections and links to additional work
by this mesmerizing poet at the end of this document.
At Hardscrabble Creek
Water passes over rocks
whispering of baptismal suffering,
of endless mysteries.
I'm unremarkable it seems to say.
Essence of water and blood my destiny.
My hands get dirty.
I am bound by insatiable appetites,
by the unfathomable and dark graffiti
marking with scars my private sanctuaries
and yet, when I was born
the world began again, knowing neither
of success or failure but asking
all the questions that really matter
echoing inside me: I am not alone.
From hip, bop, punk rock,
lyrical and concrete. Up from New York,
Black Mountain and San Francisco streets
come incantations caught
in the head lights of my own mind
calling for an end to hypocrisy.
Be real, they say. Be honest.
No voice stifled. No cruelty condoned.
No injustice unredeemed.
Copyright © 2005 Scott Malby
Cheap Cig's!
What was I to it?
Had it less spunk,
done a song and dance
or even whistled
I would have kept it.
I took it for a drive
and chucked it.
I mean my self respect.
Now, it's hopelessly
addicted. Panhandling
for cig's and change
on Commercial Blvd.
Copyright © 2005 Scott Malby
On the death of Robert Creeley
"Meditate on the word's distractions
and see what you find."
Paolo Honorificas
a.
What is most difficult to hear comes in whispers,
as if one good or bad deed secretly craves another.
This was supposed to be about Robert Creeley.
It's about us all. A meditation on broken things.
Where should I begin? With found thoughts?
Condensed emotions? The history of American
words in the latter half of the 20th. century?
A history of chance meetings, drugs, dreams
gone bad, sad faces, mental illness, art, human
frailty, exile, war and a hunger always unsatisfied
rising from the failure of words to sustain.
A time of dismembering voices; lost, haunting
the lonely ghost towns of exhaustion. A time
burdened by global meltdowns, plots,
body bags and the dirty laundry of countless
human humiliations, a breathless time pleading
from the dark house of its corrupting century.
Struggling to be made whole again. You tell me,
was it a house of seduction, tragedy or horrendous
humor. Did it validate the power of words or rape them?
Did they represent a blessing or cursing, did they
matter or mean anything at all?
b.
Let me tell you what I saw and heard.
The cultural scene was like watching
a movie. The screen filled with violence
and loss while three rows down, two
young lovers were lost in some beautiful
time warp. They choked on their own
awkwardness. They spoke in tongues,
like saintly deceivers deceiving nobody
but themselves while the advertised
special, brittle and two dimensional,
flickered on and on and on.
c.
The twentieth century Hitler bug wears a mask.
He lives around the block. You wouldn’t recognize
him. He comes in the form of twisting reality
into a virus, mutating truth into a preconceived
point of view. He's taking a leak in front of you.
His end justifies his means. He could be an artist.
He could be a radio pundit. He could be a popular
religious televangelist. He could be taking Prozac
and sporting a crap eat'n grin. Guaranteed,
the Queen of Hell as the Sister of Satan
is still feeding him lines like: *See, in my line of work
you got to keep repeating things over and over
for the truth to sink in, to catapult the propaganda.*
d.
Last year I was diagnosed with a bad case of Optimism.
Today, everything smells like poached fish. I ramble on
inconsequentially like I'm bandaging wounds, clearing
congested lungs, distracted, wondering; if there is truly
a God of infinite compassion, grace and power,
who organizes heavenly things and resides in our thoughts,
wouldn't we all have wings? Robert Creeley is dead.
The artist in him hunted with the mind of a gun, stalking
the craftily elusive word that was too beautiful to die,
so he killed it and mounted it and became one instead.
e.
Robert Creeley is dead. People sucked up to him.
I never met the man. He published sixty books
and I have a suspicion that if he lived longer
he would have published sixty more. What was
he afraid of? Was it the curse of the 20th. century?
His words are copyrighted, their own medium
of exchange. He wasn't Whitman. He wasn't Ginsberg.
He was Robert Creeley. He was better than most
and more than we deserved.
Copyright © 2005 Scott Malby
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