Unclenched:  a passive fist’s manifesto

The hominid hand.  Its prehensile qualities (due largely to that remarkably opposable thumb) are legendary.  It is perhaps the only anatomically advantageous structure this animal possesses.  That oft-touted capacious cerebrum seems as often as not to allow itself to swell with a meaningless gas that marginalizes whatever intellectual potential it had in the first place.  Likewise, that pushed-in rostrum tucked up under the cranium and bent into an L-shaped labiolingual-laryngeal mess (that imparts to this animal the power of speech) seems rarely to be put to good use.

No, it is the manus hominis that has allowed this species to be so innovative.  Of course, as with those other two structures, it can be just as adept at destruction as construction, wielding weapons as skillfully as it does tools.  And when it is clenched into a fist, it is pretty much useless for anything other than fucking things up, which is why it is best to try to keep it unclenched as much as possible.

Published by Blue Jay Ink, Ojai, CA 2022

this is boomslang

Boomslang is the name of an arboreal African snake (Dispholidus typus) of the family Colubridae, known for its potent venom and rear-fanged jaw structure.It was also the label affixed to a widely-ignored poetic form championed by various disenfranchised and largely unpublished writers of the late twentieth century. The boomslang tongue can be vaguely traced back to its rather obscure roots in mid-1980s Long Beach (California) and even more tentatively to late-1970s Detroit. It was a malleable and difficult-to-define dialect often characterized by contra-diction, half-assonance, lexiflexion, and neologism. It was decidedly non-prosaic and generally ebbed and flowed in subtle to even elusive rhythms that followed a sort of unsung musicality. Very few examples have survived – and copies of these titles are now quite difficult to find (see Appendix B). Most of the authors have long since died or else descended deep into dementia, leaving Joseph Nicks as one of boomslang’s last remaining practitioners.

Published by Blue Jay Ink, Ojai, CA 2020

Can’t Forget The Motor City …

Yet another tattered and timeworn tale of the little guy trying to make his way in the big world, as told through a series of 40 poems that travel the long and yearning distances from 1960s/70s Detroit to 1980s/90s Long Beach, California and passing through the new millennium out into the Mojave Desert.

It is the story of a lifelong battle with doubt, despair, and dissonance in the struggle to sense acutely, think clearly, breathe deeply, and be useful. Along the way the reader will encounter factories, labor, lay-offs, classrooms, late-night readings and writings, cars, motors, wrenches, highways, terrain, binoculars & field notes, words & music, and the biosphere from which it all originally emanated.

Published by Blue Jay Ink, Ojai, CA 2018

Songs From The Dirt

When a few dozen of your poems take to rhyming, you’d better start calling them “lyrics” – and find some musicians FAST!

These are essentially the poems that were kicked out of the author’s previous book (Tales From The Otherground) for the heinous crime of rhyme. Together with a handful of recent poems written since Tales was published last year, they contribute to what basically stands as a companion piece to the former collection, having come from the same 30-year period.

Published by Blue Jay Ink, Ojai, CA 2015