Five Poems by Kevin Solez

All That Is Human

I’ve taken to rudeness—
You can have art or you can have morally pure artists, but never both—
because all that is human
is in the bejewelèd boxes
in the little grey curio cabinets
in the ichor
at birth.

Genius, maybe, endeavour and folly,
are the seasons of the human
flint, spark, and tinder
that Titanic, Dionysiac element.
“I think, technically, you may be ‘a fool,’”
said my friend.
Yes, no doubt.
cogito ergo erro.

Consider this:
noone taught me English poetry;
noone wanted to.
Craftsmen without the guild
can hammer your bronzes
with a smile, winking
because I owe none of this to anyone.

It arrived unassisted & duty free
Unchecked, unsupervised, unclean.
It is not flat.
Can you feel that?
The traction and friction.
The slow roll.

I’m professionally drinking coffee now.
I stare into the breeze
beneath the tower in belle Paris.
I watch the world go by in Krakow,
I’m in Moscow drinking hot amber
from a malachite cup.

apollo the sniper (a translation of iliad 1.1-21)

tell us that tale of faster, the son of the black mountain,
black hunter of the boar, and sailor on shiningship.

tell us of his deadly, murderous hatred,
a cocktail of testosterone and embarrassment.

that shit rolled uphill--
a million torments upon the rank-and-file

clobbered their dread warlords too young,
and made them carrion.

god did what he wanted.

it begins when they first fought
The son of fearless—that lord

of men—and the divine faster.
which god made them fight?

apollo. he in bitter anger at the lord

shot plague up and down the ranks,
evil, and people were killed

because the priest, goldman, was insulted
by the son of fearless.

goldman came to the fleet to free his daughter
bringing millions in ransom.

he bore in his hand the mark
of apollo the sniper

his golden scepter and begged everyone
especially the two sons of fearless—those joint commanders of the army.

“To you, sons of fearless,
and to the other armed warriors,

may the gods grant
from their mountain homes

that you plunder oldman’s
city and return home wealthy.

But release my beloved daughter!
to me and take this ransom,

because you fear god’s son,
apollo the sniper.” 

_Pastoral_

Heaven is Tobacco, Hashish, and Cherry Juice
Crack and Pomegranate Juice is the other place
And these are your katabases / apotheoses
The choice of ages
The fork in the pastoral pathway
Cherry juice the seasonal surplus of our Tityrus
He plays that pipe and tokes another
The acorn pipe readily made from porcine slop
Pop pop pop go the florettes of sage and the resin of Lebanon
Hop hop hop go the hares, his lazy quarry
The golden age acorns and cornel cherries are code
For how a shepherd makes a pipe
An acorn bowl and cornel stem
Some still live off this, what the earth gives of its own accord
Like Tityrus smoking and playing his pipe by turns
As the creek babbles and the sun snaps backwards towards the East.



Charley Burlock wrote about AI bots trained to mimic dead loved ones in The Atlantic, but imagine if it was written by Charles Bukowski!! I did:

The AI Companies Trying to Make Grief Obsolete"

I mourn for you, for your
Tiny injury
For your one bad feeling.

I thought you felt it on the gilded toilet
But you feel it at every moment
Before your demise.

Can you imagine being impersonated?
Something speaking to your widow
And your children:

“Hey, it’s me, Dad.
They scraped all text ever written by me
And make the app speak to you like this.

Eat your vegetables.”
The worst men have the best jobs
And the best men are off on one,

Bloated on this binge with me.
Kevin scraped _Love is a Mad Dog from Hell_
And made me speak to you, like this.

But I am long dead.

CanCon     versus     The Gun

  These furious winds will not blow.
They will not understand your poems       outside
the confines of this city         aux champignons.
They do not bloom in the dark     or root in permafrost.

  Pacific waves do not lap the prairie dust and
that peace of mind unnoticed in you        jangles the outside ear.
Affected and bovine the dissonance and surprise         come across as lies
in praise of that unlovable country           and its earnest manners.    
        Life isn’t fair—call an inquiry.
They do not believe life can be this way.       It is a fairy tale.
The gun is real—cold, hard, deathbringing lifegiver.       Their country is the gun.
                                                                                                                    Saskatchewan gas station run by a man
                                                                                                                    called Butt       vs.        The gun.
Their country is in the tension     of mortality.
“Is he going to kill me or am I going to kill him?”
are the parameters of thought.        All thought the gun.

“Am I to die or defend my family?”        The gun.
Dramatic lives.       The gun.       The stage.       The gun.
The play.       The gun.

Cold as black ice.        Pain like windblown ice.
Hard as dirt.      The gun.     The sight.
The trigger.      The silencer.

Growing in unseen chambers of the heart   and the pistols of flowers
our effortless peace permeates     the rolling acres of rape seed.
Our big sky bright eyes     innocent of evil    
        They comb the beaches and get their man;
        the Prime Minister makes a cameo.
scan the Western highways    tearless.

Kevin Solez is a writer, scholar, and teacher whose work has been published in Canada, the US, UK, and in Europe. He is editor of Pandemic Poems (Kendall Hunt 2020), one of the first records of artistic responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

Web: https://kevinsolez.ca
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kevinsolez.bsky.social