Artwork for Billy Cancel's poems

Four Poems
Billy Cancel

   that would be the trout’s ankles
& subsequently     your contact habit
a machine to prevent     lightning strikes
so you’re free to gaze      at the melody
intervening space softened by velvet
floral borders creeping advance
translated as thicket of prosperous
weeds          you came on like
     a test pilot through
this 9 o’clock town     ate all
the shark ’n’ tattie
s     then really
raised ned     but all that teeth &
tan won’t     bluff the rats too long     so
put the anchors on     bobby dazzler         we’re
      gonna be out of the city this may     touring
the self-referential      then after that
probably just chill     in meticulous notation of
what went down      before this all
split into      multifaceted
joy

~ ~ ~

   to that clusterscrew take the ankle express
if you need your batteries charging     flash-
jack-new-target     shall be there     kicking a
yellow dog should anybody ask     if aggregation
of fragmentary objects     is your thing you
could do much worse     tipsy fending off explicit
undesirable predators seeking     a reaction          our
     scrambling descent     improvised technical feat
anonymous transient blur across drastic tones dramatic
misreadings     were all
too luminous
dense     to be exhilarating an opinion shared by most
historians        am not going to act the wet dog     like
     some biscuit class around-the-way boy     & boil my
cabbage twice     bright shades punctuate our
thought-out compositions anyhow        this celestial
body needs some
gas & we are in a
fit of
mazes

~ ~ ~

   had eyes like piss holes in the snow
through desperation hour     eyes set at 8
o’clock during the grinning contest     it was
another day up the king’s ass     searching for
the clean upshot no clean-up shot     landscape
resistant to striving     controlled line & drip
aspirational at best     with the very sounds of the
tavern going on about me     realized was drinking
at the trough but     when devil’s half acre shows
in my kill box     & i am full of beans & rage     someone
is going to get a dry shave     so don’t agitate the gravel
mock-litany man     no one gets out of the transfer
continum upon 1 wing         fierce properties     gentle
     perspective because i know you     had some but the wheels
came off & all     turned to custard     have problems so
this is a gentle retelling of a familiar but     multi-layered
narrative           there is a 3rd man      open your face let’s
     blow this piss ball     oliver is in
town     osmosis
amoebas

~ ~ ~

   swivel eyes declares     pork all round the
pig’s ass     that don’t rotate me much
smear-press-spray-drag     are you
going to self-described undersurface
because     in sweet air     turnip snaggers
annoy the fuck out of me     unedited reality
slice not my idea of escapism     & all i see is
peter’s work     between protestant herring &
knock out drops     pastoral
     memory retrieval subject to      dazzle
camouflage
     requires neutralization from
every angle     before this all tumbles down to
grass      & we forget what came 1st the
imbalance or the slant           am hotter than a
     bad girl’s dream     yet can’t discern between
septic tank & cess pit     feeling bottle green egg
bound lousy give me the herbs     because she
has a vacancy on the top floor &     i am
too numerous to mention that     saturday
habit now has my back     teeth underground



Billy Cancel’s Comments

these poems are a sample of a shameful procession—JERKSWATER-STROBELIGHT HONEY-BIZARRO-CALAMITY-HOWLER which is an off-season micro-climate fired up by chance association, seed text, spliced narrative, gags, lyrical enquiry, psycho-geographical rambling & post-modern whatever-may-bump


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 48 | The Shame Issue | Spring/Summer 2016