I’s a b’y as goes to sea
a man a mast humanity
I’s the b’y whose catgut smile
realizes too late—O Liza!
I’s a b’y who goes jus’ see
this day a storied entropy
Hear me eyeless
in St-Fcko—I’s a quiet b’y
I’s a b’y my ship bedizened
Californiac argonaut at your service
meet your humble reborn
esquire Amor de Cosmos!
Hip y’r partner sashay tippled
Hip y’r partner sally forth
Vogon Twillicum
Merz-au-schvitzing all
’round the circus
Hold your fire Tannhauser Gate
Tow the line that maps your fate
O dis mountebank ’montillado
from here to Valhella varlets
toast a victory hack
Raise me sugar an’ paisley
cane design a kraken
hakin’ chick-pea bakin’
’round about de maelström
Listen Aye St-Fcko
fucks every and all aboard
hauling keel ass hooked me
to this grate
bloods up shit storm
aardvark in our wake
I’s a b’y who by your leave
O Cal O Sol O ultima Thule
strip tickle me breathless oh me
oh my oh so long
Hip y’r partner ’vast ’n ribald
Hip y’r partner sully down
Vogon Twillicum
Merz-au-Schitters all
’round the foc’s’le
Pole the flipside rose on point
woe to darken those betide
where each and every dreamer
sails this brig ship to perdition
I’s a b’y who goes jus’ see
a Man amassed hu-hu-Hu-man-ity
D.S. Black studied in The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa.
Born in Toronto, raised in Manitoba and Ontario, D.S. Black has since 1983 lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.
For many years Black was a poetry editor at Processed World, “the magazine with a bad attitude” and an early member of both San Francisco’s Anti-Economy League and the Cacophony Society. In the early years of desktop publishing, he edited (with G. Sutton Breiding) the ghostmodern anthology Memory Leaves and issued a number of poetry chapbooks via his Atlantis Express imprint, including Plate/Tectonic\City, Oil Black Humor, Mission Control, Police Statement, and Songs For a Lonely Commuter.
His many occupations include: paperboy, parking lot painter, cartographer, bookstore sales, telephone solicitor, math tutor, typist, printer’s devil, stevedore, furniture refinisher, toy sales, data processor, medical coder, proofreader, hockey jersey factory factotum, blueprint file clerk, library clerk, editor, videographer, medical experimentee, bank clerk, book reviewer, newspaper columnist, librettist, provenance investigator, bloggist, vlogger, zine-monger and publisher, rare and special collections materials acquisitor, entropologist, necrologist, epitaph scribe and voice over narrator.
“EYELESS’N ST-FCKO” is my homage to the Newfoundland folk song “I’s the B’y” (easily searchable on-line) which I learned in Grade 6 and have rendered here anew in my own idiolect - Baja-ouest Newfinese - a Cali-nadian mariner dialect. Enjoy! Here is my text:
