Dan Sicoli

Dan Sicoli is the author of two poetry chapbooks from Pudding House Publications, Pagan Supper (2002) and the allegories (2004). In addition to co-editing literary magazine Slipstream (web page: www.slipstreampress.org), his poems have appeared in numerous litmags, e-zines, anthologies, and poetry audio recordings including Chiron Review, Comet Halley, Blue Fifth Review, Bathtub Gin, Open Wide Magazine, 2River, Rockzilla.net, Peshekee Review, Atomic Petals, All Shook Up: Collected Poems About Elvis, La Bella Figura: A Choice, Re)verb, Italo-American and Italo-Canadian Poets, American Contemporary Headcheese, and Jack Hammer Lobotomy. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Recently, he has explored mixing poetry with audio sounds with other artists, and released a CD of audio poetics, along with musician Joe Malvestuto, entitled Close That Cellar Door! (2004). He is also a member of Ice 9, a local poetry performance group.

of our complete diaspora

i wanna go back before a caucus of crows

pitted the unarmed sky

and the sun became a dreary and perpetual companion

i wanna hear the way they do

i wanna touch the machinist

of a thief's mind

get my hands full of the grease mud

full of the time blood

full of the powder soot

full of the shiny precious

full of the ephemeral ghost

our mother was a flightless angel

exempt from celebration

where is the fruit of thy womb?

 

i wanna go back to new year's day

find a haven from which to launch

disaster's flare from the fuming soul

of malcolm x

turn spotlight on carnivale

breathe the caustic scent of animal

dig greedy fingers into yielding flesh

then abandon recognition for mountain cave

buried under gravy sky

all for camera so enormous

eyes become genetic failures

i wanna go back and douse the guitars

with stolen gasoline

in a ritual ancient as memory of the last war

i've seen red light ignored by guardians

i've heard them exploit unoriginal language

first uttered in our childhood

adopted trains are coursing through a polluted country

where i once recited it's name

amphetamine rain slaps our streets

like stunted dervish ballerinas

i wanna go back to new year's day

and try out for the team

i'm not quite ready to

ignite the dugout

there's no sadness in letting another

heart throb in pain

let the muscle ache

let the music work it

i wanna go back to new year's day

hide out in the finest hour

where days fall away like bread crumbs

and are then covetously consumed by instinct

where counting of moons is arithmetic

where birthing of child is religion

where science is a hot ray of sun

burning early morning papers

into ashes to be swept away in drainage streams

our liquid is lightning

to the collared sea

our fins have long deserted us

now only the primitive and uneducated drown in water

there is always talk

as coffee's aroma rises over

magnified radios and we skillfully

scoff obvious movements

allowing cancer to skulk unseen

through pageant's meandering sores

i wanna go back to new year's day

forgetting that even my name

was taken from tampered equations

i wanna go back to new year's day

and yank on the reins

of the mammoth flagpole

i wanna shimmy up the monuments

sit in ol' abe's lap

kiss the world and make it cry, sad captain

i wanna go back to new year's day

before cartel

before television

before hollywood

before extermination

before tammany hall

before gutenberg

before exploitation

before monarch

before currency

before sparking flint

before wooly mammoth

before cockroach

before ocean

before eve of eve

before the creature of the atom

what will it take

to understand there's nothing

nothing

up there but sleep

and a wild engine of dust

floating worms for a beam of terminal star lust