MARK SCHWARTZ

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: June 7, 2008:
MARK SWARTZ will run for San Francisco Supervisor (District 6)
contact:415.543.1285 or 415.267.3904
Mark Schwartz supports Chris Daly for Mayor of San Francisco

Final verdict in: Poetic license renewed. Mark Schwartz is a kick!...Joie Cook, San Francisco, CA

Mark Schwartz is a latter day animist, a savage in the saintly state, more goofy than Sufis, and will never condescend to nouvelle cuisine. He's more left than left in feeding the bereft, and his very wit is a pox upon yuppiedom. Where others need incline toward poetic licence, he fully falls in with poetic licentiousness, and had been known to string more whores along than Fellatio Alger at his hardest working. Some call him fool or hypocrite, but there is no denying the guy's got courage and is a hell of a lot funnier than Feminists & Moslems on Prozac and like the air, he's omni-present, indispensable and harder to see through every day. --Ronald F. Sauer

Mark Schwartz does not know how to write. He writes powerfully. As to the question of whether or not Schwartz writes with feeling, why do so many of these poems disturb one? They read like words of a village idiot. A global village idiot. With the confessional naivete of a child. Or of one who's been given a dose of something. Or himself has taken something, but the child within could not be zapped away. It's a disarming poetry. It's like someone sat him down and said, "Write something about yourself." And he wrote the first thing that came into his head, like, "I am that I am." One of the meanings of that now almost ego-desperate dictum from The Old Testament is that "existing exists so that it exists, that is continue, add to itself, stay present as endurance." Something of that quality is in Schwartz's poetry, precisely because it's absurdly naked like someone taking his or her clothes off for the sex act at the altogether wrong moment. Still, the nakedness is there. And an action or reflection of some kind has to take place. Tha't why Mark Schwartz can be said to write a provocative poetry. Read his books and you'll understand why that is so...Jack Hirschman San Francisco

It was a tie-dye day
and Kaufman was golden dowm the road from the park
it must have been the sun, the crowd, he beat
as he looked everywhere but at me.

I remember him waiting
as if for fog to lift from the over-plagued City
of homeless, of AIDS, of victims of long-ago lands
of Jones and Milk

he was bedshakes and earthquakes
and poetry stages' crowds repeating line
after Kaufman after Eliot

Schwartz shows, Spaghetti Factory huddles
and Kaufman slinks over, waiting for a drunk
and the Chelsea, three year running open
Kaufman and Lynne, elegant and alive
cutting-in to read, Moe on the side

Kaufman on the outside for a Mark Swartz reading
if only I'd told the messenger I'd be glad to see him
we lost him in our light weight
Bob Kaufman could have died after after that episode

now

it's cold

and in Judaic style, I turn
the page of the New York Times 180 degrees to the ground
noting the iddle to say Bob Kaufman
died of emphysema - and not lonliness !
                                     and not alcohol !
                                     and not old age !

the halls of Central Park, 42nd Street library, humming
of rollers and whispers of someone, maybe me gettinf shot.
maybe this means whiskey, or beer. God knows where.
Avoid East 5th Street and maybe I'll live to eat peanut butter
and Kosher jelly with bananas in a boycott against time.
Bob Kaufman, wherever you are, old friend, you live with me
black, black and taking photos of your room within the moon.

©Mark Swartz
from The Cafe Review

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday, May 17, 2002

Here above plentitude
are the homeless people
reading their People’s Tribune
and drinking cappuccinos
an arc of water in crystal rainbow
bathes their feet
in rivers ending in tributaries
far from the desert of the nomads
where salt lines the tongue
until sand crumbles in corners of eyes
“ will you wear my eyes”
asks the poet Bob Kaufman
in a drunk oblivion chewing a cop’s ear
while Micheline pisses on the cop’s feet
beneath the green corner building in North Beach
clowns wearing street clothes
dream in colored jingle bells
christmas lights and the red and green
of rain soaked streets
and the earthworm crosses the road

with Eric

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One thing that is good about the war
is that it took one’s mind off the earthquake
which took one’s mind off the drought
which took one’s mind off the homeless
which took one’s mind off of sex
which took one’s mind off.

with Jerry 1/16/91
From: http://www.sfcall.com/issues%202002/5.17.02/schwartz_5_17_02.htm

Mark Schwartz's San Francisco poems

Mark Schwartz's poem for Allen Cohen

Allen Cohen Tributes and Memories
BACK TO ALLEN COHEN POETRY