Issue 14: Billy Cancel
when i joined sifter’s union blissville chapter things were on
the slide much wailing from between the barges hotels &
saloons all pulling out around then kingdom of slang was much
disturbed by the arrival of strangers blindfolded men armed
to the teeth roamed the capital’s streets insentient modulator
operated upon a cautious wait ‘n’ see policy military firing range
keep out was referred to as otter cove adjoining blue shallows
contaminated silt from the dockyard choked it put that in
your troubadour song have sprung from the rotten
wood of old ships to receive this fried slice of trauma raw
in the middle furthermore much aggravated by these condiments &
excessive seasoning am peering electric through dark charcoal
orchard blossoms all dressed for radar with
gleeful precaution against
toxic shadow lapse only when all 6 trucks filled
with outback pass may we turbo charge into
soup the end of the last party i recall
was heralded by
a series of
gorse fires
in cloud basement you play hard ball & chicken meanwhile
like crap through a goose i go from cubicle to apartment
stocked with unsettling details montage of black ‘n’
white images follow anonymous bric-a-brac mostly as i
sit awkward awaiting noise & light & watch with the sound
down as you bumped up to the lead chase a phantom
stag beyond the dark sizzling sun all this in just the 1st 7
minutes seeing the greatest cars in the world destroyed
doesn’t compare at dreg rendezvous when
the big picture got small on-screen graphics showed my pink
pixel heart breaking in two was time to gain the friendship of
strange men as the custom prescribed something to wash
the trail tech nerd block little pixel chap came saw me we
bounced the 1st 4 letters of his name off against
the database slap a network code on this &
call it a multiplayer son but
they won’t engage your if
you can’t beat it blue
print these
angels are tired
watched through the strains of a fever sunset-that-pulled-
-everything-down dvd bonus with the bit where even
celestial county gets 2 feet of snow fragmented sometimes
grating soundtrack i would give it 3 stars danger point though
remains my holiday fave won’t shovel the stock drift from
my door hip park vendor i’ve already got my hex
options sorted in compensation for my damaged crop a
tribunal awards me the severed head of an animal your
angst variations of all smoke no roast means i was willing to
remove bad luck from my body & enter the arena alone winter
shall overlap into large parts of autumn spring to a milk salmon
backdrop gobbler will dream of being office thin his
doctor prescribing horn buds to be moved
to the center of the skull & to only hunt
in the clouds & catch
a fly every
100 years such low budget ape man
parodies i recall sitting at my table of
scrapbooks in cameo bone yard with
the other retrospective chancers
hometown castaway eyes leaking blue high over gauze coast
bright cliff meadows with a gutful yes an unusual greenness
to that place below where roads muddled through & i drew men
horses & other things i liked raised a glass to knock-ups rip-offs fed
upon thistles ‘n’ thorns got
seduced by gangrene am still
waiting patiently for that retrospective
nick name revision want to go somewhere new? yes then put 2
contact lenses in 1 eye none in the other while i threaten you with
schism between content & form since there’s a glitch in the source
code do you want this fix in hexameter or prose? my fledging
attempt to avoid scorpion riddled holes while seeking 32 magic
coins in a frantic 20 minutes was subdued by jackdaw havoc dazzled
snag novice with half-slope then jackdaw havoc unremitting sequence of
all devoted until jackdaw havoc when you gonna begin vague sugar?
after jackdaw havoc sometimes the claw instead of the nail would
have done spark marshal that tight default radiated some grace
upon our brittle spectrum hey billy it was great to meet you & see you
desalt the herring i run a monthly series at liquid split called decay
night would you like to read? yes
Billy Cancel has recently appeared in Blazevox, Other Rooms Press & Bombay Gin. His new body of work GAUZE COAST has just been published this Winter by Hidden House Press. Sound poems, visual shorts and other aberrations can be found at www.billycancelpoetry.com
