Tuesday poem #137 : Jake Kennedy : from Kobayashi the Will

10.

One of the Transformers might rework itself from a giant robot down into a sleek car; the most intriguing part of the transition, says the samurai, is the middle-stage in which the Transformer is neither robot nor car but simply a becoming; Hanshiro as a ghost telling a story of ghosts: educating the clan about their already-happening dissolve into the realm of spirits; John knows how this works, too, and I have seen him sing “Coney Island Baby”—with a sneer— because the sonority of the music—its very romance—is in a battle with an army of two-bit friends; basically, the clan wants H. to resolve himself; when he arrives at the inner chamber, the ancestral armor is exposed as carapace—and it’s also the exquisite anticipation of his own hollowing; it’s as if H. hardly believes his own fury and part of his physical power is the delight at his own relentlessness; a man arrives at a gate and asks permission to tell his story—this is where H.’s narrative has brought them



12.

Don’t explain or apologize, said Nadya to Slavoj, don’t flirt or pirouette, don’t balk or simper, don’t hesitate with me; I carry the bamboo blade, half in my gut: there never could be a story more sincere: in brief, our shit gets clogged in the prison’s pipes and we must take our own hands to unclog the works; it is embarrassing to talk with the hilt wanging like this at each syllable—and yet that is the truth! Tonight Hanshiro Tsugumo is replaced by Nadezhda Tolonnikova; 1630. 13th day of May. Fair skies. Extremely hot from early in the day. Clan journal… into 2013. January. Cloudy skies. Extremely cold—her blood all over the sewing machine; an early shot establishes the complexity of the court: a map; or this is how bodies become lost within the compound; ludicrous convolutions of power; [narrator] when she arrives before the warden it is shaming to be in the presence of her simplicity / resolve / such clouds / a greater hunger / not understanding it he… what role do women play in the film / in the cellblock / in the country? Miracles arrive, as she needs them, in the form of her own unwaveringness to remain “this complexity”; Slavoj cannot understand it / the Counselor cannot understand it / the warden certainly is at a loss; there is nothing to eat, smoke, or read—there is no work: merely ruin or slavery; the sewing machines are engines but they will not levitate the barracks; the fog lacks self-confidence, too, and can only keep them hidden for so long; H. and N. emerge through the air: doors for others

Jake is no stranger to the grass always being silver lining the golden parachute a bird in the hand. He is a proud Thug. These poems are from a longer poem entitled Kobayashi the Will which will be published soonish in a letter press edition by Greenboathouse Press.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan