by: Paul Maziar
Elevating disjunctive play to the level of jagged music, inviting us to jam along, Paul Maziar’s poetry “[l]ooks nothing like a celebration/ But it is.” Meaning retreats like something spotted from the corner of the eye, each moment unfolding into the next as the poem creates and regenerates our engagement with it, calling us to “…look at the window/ Insert some new episodes”…
A Fine Mess
for Aaron
Making a huge leap
I walked with a zombie
Sticking out like a sore thumb
Drama?
Brain and mind comparatively
As we spoke
Talking pictures
How do you do
In a thought balloon
Not how do you think
But what
Get out of my garage
Wonderful evening
Make way for tomorrow
Put a little eyesight in it
Learn to think
In long distance
Words and images
Shoot the piano player
Into the great night
Above and beyond
Theory of Everything
for Sam
Sphere reflection is an event
Looks nothing like a celebration
But it is
After nine easy lessons
Chopin describes the night as calm
Will you join me on the beach
If he becomes a bore
They say Glenn Gould is pretty funny
People make mistakes
90% of the world’s population
Holding the onion
It weighs the same in space
At a glance
The zoo in the sky is approaching
The ground you fall in when you die
Pushing your luck
Or the envelope of the cosmos
Magpies Nest
for Allison
Trying to get out
Your mannerist expression
Easy go
Through the hoop
Give me the essentials guide
More nouns grown up
People paid to wipe marble floors in tweet light
Looks like somebody’s in control
But it’s just the swinging fiat of a super
All japes a welcome distraction
Comic history written in rime
Maybe don’t look up
Keep good measure
Say a ballpark away
At the Sands implosion
A traveler makes a big exit
His room is his room
He didn’t know he knew
Since it’s also for the birds
Coming and going
A kind of chaos
Let’s look at the window
Insert some new episodes
Regular old denizens in the grand oligarchy
Naming names
Legging it out
Catching the same passing moment
By abandoned towers
Rebar rusts over a turdy river brim
Good deal is
You get to get some sleep
Paul Maziar is the author or the chapbooks FIORI, Pneumatics, Little Advantages, and the forthcoming Geranium Days. He lives in Portland where he is a freelance writer for artcritical, and co-editor of Couch Press and Banqueted.
