SELECTED POETRY

by
BEN MYERS

NOTE

It�s strange and exciting that some of the best poetry and wordplay currently being created is not to be found in the pages of traditional poets or writers, but in the randomly generated unwanted SPAM messages that fill our e-mail �In� boxes daily.

Advertising viagra, penis extension programmes and all manner of other shady ventures, these e-mails are often crammed with poetry and prose that is wholly abstract, yet strangely effecting. What does it all mean, these post-Burroughs technologically-driven visions of the early twenty-first century? Who knows. Who compiles these little slices of nightmarish landscapes of conjoined adjectives and hybrid scenarios? Maybe we�ll never know � and that perhaps is the beauty of SPAM. It�s anonymous, disjointed, detached; the soul of the writer stripped away to leave only words to be unearthed like scriptures form the future.

In an attempt to make some sense or order of these cryptic daily missives I began to compile the best messages, occasionally doctoring them slightly to make them a little more readable, yet only spending only a matter minutes on each in order to retain their original feel. Each title comes from either the subject line of the original e-mail, or a particularly memorable line within it.

� Ben Myers

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AUGUST NORMANDY

At the rising of the new moon
a one-legged mosquito
infects the neck-cracking Eskimo in
Panama reading a novel by fire kettle light.

Once he cracked Polish night club Passover bread
on Michaelmass Eve beneath
the timber roof of a ninth-born pauper
breeding needle bath greens
like a ninth-rate ox feather;

but now he�s a nerve-tingling overlap
a fault needle gathering night letters
- palm honeyed by the ocean�s compass
and as sour as a milk cart in August Normandy.

� Ben Myers

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ALL YOUR CASH IS MUD LOST

the paper hunt chases
narrow-throated
palsy-struck
pack animals

their passion-kindled in
international oak beauties
an oblong-void
in the zealous party

an orange daisy
pressed in Sanskrit pages
offers a one-sidedness;
a wily net fixer newly-awakened

by the motorcade ballast
of the morning champion
returning in a pearl blue
paper-coated
musk bag
dripping mud pie
red eye
paracoto bark

more night-wandering in ninety-one,
once again out-of-print
open-aired and alcohol scented
a papyrus column
a paper clothed
and paint streaked
metric system
an oily organ desk

that�s nothing but a
multiple-toothed
one-hoofed
pale-livered

middle-witted
orderly officer
mew gull

� Ben Myers

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YOUR HEALTH, THE MUSK BAG

your neighbours lost their alarm clock today
your neighbours lost that fat today.

many nice things suck
yet you inherited a small dick from your father
the fountain of sperm

one good turn
gets most of the blankets
but your muscles are nothing
if you can�t show them off

ever stop to think and forget to start again?

� Ben Myers

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THROAT-SLITTING CASH

the lap ring troop leader is
too-aged for rod-polishing now
he�s thrice-sold the old
nickel gray back-spiker
to a trencherman philosopher
a steel merchant of the topmast shuttle shell
who first saw the sewer crow tread cradle steps in �88

- another animus injuriandi
for the witch that totes a broom
with an opium smoker�s pistol grip;
all pseudo impartiality sliced away
like fashion scissors through braid wool bonnets
discarded in Russo-Turkish snow.

� Ben Myers

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EVERYBODY WINS!

state-pensioned
lilac-banded
iron-worded
buckle-beggared
ever-smiling
self-motivated
seven-figured
well-applied
with tooth and toil
and nail

he�s a high-towered miracle man
king of
the tourist-crammed
condominium colonies
a soot-colored
point scorer;
his aluminum family
pillow-shaped
and locked
bottle-tight.

� Ben Myers

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CAN'T SLEEP?

Moon-mad noble-looking
one-eyed Italians in patent leather
nimbly side step with
mid-air thrusts.

Neck-deep
pearl-fishing night herons,
native millets with broken beaks
sing one-sided words

at multiple-speeds
yet perfectly poised
- neither dead nor
mud-splashed.

� Ben Myers

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YOUR HEALTH VS OUTBOARD MOTOR

ocean-dried by a cypress palm
the sugared out guide
is night-enshrouded and
once removed by the old-line

nine-eyed, night-haired parochial
Owls, nebulous and newly framed
against ninety moon-white
naked-flowered morphine Mecca�s

open-hearted she shares
an oath on the stairs
to purgatory

to mis-eat like pale opal-tinted Mongols
neck rot naked
tailing molding edged passions
and breathing heavily

a non-Bolshevik
in the valley; his outline stitching
unravelling
forever

� Ben Myers

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THEY

She's the apple of my eye
she's a mother hen
sturdy as an oak
in spaceship earth.

He�s as ugly as a mud fence
all washed up treat him like dirt,
put him in your pipe
and smoke him.

You�re both in hot water.
spring rain versus autumn gold
shall I compare thee to a summer's day
or the darkest winter dawn?

� Ben Myers

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