Dale Jensen
Dale Jensen was born in Oakland, California, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and received a master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Toronto in 1973, with which he said goodbye to academia forever. In 1974, he embarked on a career with Social Security that lasted until 1999, when he took early retirement. He lives in Berkeley and is married to the poet Judy Wells.
His poetry, which is heavily influenced by the Surrealists and such cut-up writers as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, has appeared in such magazines, journals, and anthologies as Talisman, Lost and Found Times, Ur-Vox, Poetry East, Inkblot, Convolvulus, Dirigible, and many others. He published and edited the experimental poetry magazine Malthus from 1986 through 1989 and continues to very occasionally publish books through Malthus Press. He also has published seven books and four chapbooks of poetry: Thebes (1991), Bar Room Ballads (1992), The Troubles (1993), Twisted History (1999), Purgatorial (2004), Cyclone Fence (2007), Oedipus’ First Lover (2009), Auto Bio (2010), Yew Nork (2014), Amateur Mythology (2017), and Trump Tics (2020), as well as an ebook novella, Why I Moved to San Francisco (2017).
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Dead Horse Argument
no wt hati mad e adh or se
ic antke ep tra ckof ti me
e veny ours
sofol low me for a ver
now that i’m a dead horse
i can’t keep track of time
even yours
so follow me forever
WHAT MAD
CRACK
EVEN YOURS
LOW FOREVER
forever even that can’t follow
i track so now
keep yours i’m of
dead time a horse
fore verev enth atc antf o llow
it racks on ow
Are You Trying to Tell Me Something, Camera?
ominous of accompany completely background
sense unease over viewer
tenuous thumbs when first appear they heighten
tense the tease the fast curves of a mountain road
driver never time to stop the body
feeling dread builds up a wave impending dry wit
by virtue then a neighborhood of watch dog fangs
reeling after an eerie portrait and troubled fingerprints
morning wakes up in a hole on a golf course
the night a jet has off plane landed
his nose had weeks that follow
this to sweeten the mob drawing many years engine scream
kindness like a metal clasp
yearning breaks up line drama despair straddles fantasy
Haunted House (Coronavirus 6/15/20)
i can’t be a radio a person
i can’t even your front door
the biography of today’s sky
i remember the light
from your seventh story window
clouds floating on celestial oceans
your telephone’s hazy account of it
song of windows song of moons
song of laundry phoning itself and
gloves deputized by vagrant airplanes
i’m really here at the airport
i really am the airport here
here am really i the airport you
thought i’d really said but
it’s only the cattle from your sedan’s engine
haunted houses they define the streetline
cover up the keyholes with ectoplasmic tape
how long i’ve been stuck here is up to who knows who
the doctor with the cone over his beak is hammering
on everybody’s door today this plague
defines you until it is you i hear myself
but can’t tell where the noise is coming from
               so please               holler
Summer Wine
gh o stsp as sgl as sesof su mmerw i ne
toe ach o ther ont heir su mmere ve
w ho says the dece a sed
exi ston lyinw in ter
sto rmsco me th rough
e motio nspa as sover mo unt a ins
the irc oo lcl ear a irre ma insf ory ou
asy ou vent ureo uta ftert thef ur y
thet a teof thew in eis a lmo stm et all ic
li keso me thing tha twill la stfo re ver
ghosts pass glasses of summer wine
to each other on their summer eve
who says the deceased
exist only in winter?
storms come through
emotions pass over mountains
their cool clear air remains for you
as you venture out after the fury
the taste of the wine is almost metallic
like something that will last forever
O PASS SUN
TO EACH SERVE
SAY CEASE
EXIST ONLY
SOME
MOTIONS MOUNT
THE AIR
YOU OF FUR
THAT MOST
LOVE
exist the you almost is air
mountains over taste only of pass
the winter wine for emotions
their ghosts in cool summer wine
of glasses pass remains metallic clear
IS YOU AIR
O
THIN
GHOSTS
PASS
No Hats
my mother can remember which family that had were no hats
here and there said their prayers that they hauled up shrieking
sigh and it were aimed at your head
fear and mighty a ghost to his constant accumulations
what seen weird things hiding in the guidebook again
sparingly further would find instead of your intellect
shocked probably were if the next ball thrown were an entire planet
carefully although none of us knew who exactly was translating it
but she could still add still nerve
strictly been one of the face of the young man
she’d hoped was pleased to the thatch
bleeding that had walked own other people’s everything
which said nothing only moonglow
cut out and scream in the moonlight alive a thousand more years
Dale Jensen was born in Oakland, California, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and received a master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Toronto in 1973, with which he said goodbye to academia forever. In 1974, he embarked on a career with Social Security that lasted until 1999, when he took early retirement. He lives in Berkeley and is married to the poet Judy Wells.
His poetry, which is heavily influenced by the Surrealists and such cut-up writers as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, has appeared in such magazines, journals, and anthologies as Talisman, Lost and Found Times, Ur-Vox, Poetry East, Inkblot, Convolvulus, Dirigible, and many others. He published and edited the experimental poetry magazine Malthus from 1986 through 1989 and continues to very occasionally publish books through Malthus Press. He also has published seven books and four chapbooks of poetry: Thebes (1991), Bar Room Ballads (1992), The Troubles (1993), Twisted History (1999), Purgatorial (2004), Cyclone Fence (2007), Oedipus’ First Lover (2009), Auto Bio (2010), Yew Nork (2014), Amateur Mythology (2017), and Trump Tics (2020), as well as an ebook novella, Why I Moved to San Francisco (2017).