Zach Hamilton
3 Poetic Selections
by Zach Hamilton
1.\CY/BS \CIGARETTE YARN/ BUNK SYNAPSES
“The view was excellent, my mind had conquered ageless barriers between dream old voice: and rubber
and had definitely slipped and fell upon this new form of a human race, built
on top of basins of rubber and plastic. The factories built yarn.
There was a main source humming in
front of my eyes, down the hill, raising from out of the ground, resting in
plastic basins; a giant bubble or half sphere as well as
thirty four similar structures, glowing in hues of orange blurring
pollution that made the way only slightly into my retina as I walked.”
”PLEASE HURRY UP AND SHOW ME HOW HIGH THE
PRE_HISTORIC BLEED LINE IS>>> IN THE DARK>>> YES, I WANT
TO SEE HOW YOU WILL FIND ME IN HERE under all of these cigarettes strung together in new voice:>”
GUESS AGAIN,
”What about the pig feet’s?” It struggles to hide a jar of pig feet under a bundle of cigarette yarn.
NEVER ASK THIS QUESTION, human. It shackles the jar and it shatters.
Don’t look up… VIRTUAL MADNESS COMES OVER US IN THIS
DARK ORANGE CITY>
Now they are coming in their cleaning machines.
The buzz of their engines growls over the factory floor,
It smells like skin and paper and pig, I taste fear and touch wet glass.
Violet Glasses #1.2
Effervescent limestone
on my head wakes me to the
weight of it. Crashing through the geyser.
Makes me smell like mountains. I sniff my velvet.
So much moss,so much funny blue.
Stalactite dreams melting
down me.
Heavy headdress, lights a ruby (green)
Sweaty armpit(s) down the river (slope of time)
Hair at the end of
a rooster and then floating up through argyle as thoughts,
turtles perching in a smile-a-dactil.
and then stalagmites and stalactites. Rushing rapids
Rinse and repeat.
Wake up.
Walk home.
Foliage.
In and out
Dreaming/rinse and repeat
Walking/rinse and repeat
Winter.
Bone meal plexiglass
and snow in the stage–
this is what we wanted to be
with the limousine squat.
Home in everything.
From: Long Beach Weed
Secrets lie deep,
in the chest of gold coins.
Puget sound winds
trying death on empty subjects yes,
but generally haunted as the town may be: by spirits and demonic skin, ghouls and ghosts, aren’t all of the evil plans meant there. For others passing through, on an occasional weekend getaway, also in that place is an evil lurking far deeper, within the well water of the parking lot. A cursed man once sipped freely, a sprite young lad with no intention on leaving or staying around passed by, thirst on his tongue from the herbs and medicines of that locality, dripping with longing for something deeper soothing, found a pipe with fresh pure water pouring from with music and ballet. This stoned and dumb individual secret lingered there long over hanging the pipe in lusted thirst quenching grossness, unaware of that cruel devil he were ingesting in side of his cotton mouth. A girl strung around them at the time had more words than he, belonging to the curse upon these waters deep from in the well that made it so he would no longer leave this Olympia Washington for seven years or more.
The water had curse in it.
An Interview With Zach Hamilton
by Lawrence Gladeview and Stewart Grant
1. Your poetry has an abstract, almost stream of consciousness feel to it. Do you take a Kerouac-ian, spontaneous prose approach to writing, or are these piece edited?
Every piece I write, I write twice and then print or publish on line, then re-write again. If I ever take a break from a piece of writing it loses its gloss and I scrap it for parts, so to use those parts for other pieces. “Pave over it with sterile wax.”
2. Throughout literary history the use of substances such as opium and absinthe has been debated as to their place in the creative poetic process. Do you think that drugs, legal or illegal, are a legitimate muse?
I use drugs to visualize secret places I could normally not see,I like the kaleidoscopic patterns mushrooms produce, and I have not do pcp, mescaline, or d.m.t. But I love acid dearly. The patterns, man the patterns…Dear friends of mine have these open mics that they run where they serve “drugs” around. It creates this sort of atmosphere that “the lowest of the low” can function inside. I like this atmosphere for writing poems and reading poems. I write in the weirdest places, squat houses, abandoned and condemned warehouses, though, on the greyhound, in a graveyard in the middle of a town, stuck hitchhiking. I write on drugs, mostly uppers: coffee, 3c’s, d-amphetamines, Nodose RX, anything that will keep me alert. I am like that guy in Neuromancer, wandering around a strange hallucinogenic world popping speed pills in my mouth and fucking girls with razor blades for finger nails. Cigarettes and booze. Acid and mushrooms…I spend time with these later , after re-viewing my mind map In this stage of the writing process I coordinate myself through my stories. Thinking of them while high. Speed just helps with the first drafts, speed and rum.
3. These pieces both create very strong images despite the metaphysical language. Are these selections inspired by concrete places and experiences, or are they more of a capturing of ideas and concepts?
I spend a whole lot of time in strange, murky places living in Portland, Oregon. There is a whole plethora of these types of spots around the city, worn down by water leaks and grime, I’ll sit up in a cafe for like twelve hours working on one of these poems until it is perfect. I hope to inspire people so they will climb up into my mind with these works as steps.