A VVAVE
for John Ashbery
They never stop talking about it–
and who can forget the straw-
berry stickup that rigs out
to be pointless if not inapt
to some Hitchcock plot.
Needlessly, very little
or naught fulfills
the American psycho
function in every sole,
unalloyed episode
of The Simpsons.
Homer (/ˈhoʊmər/;
Ancient Greek:
Ὅμηρος, Hómēros)
identic to ‘a hostage,’
purported to stand up
for, well, late-night ‘blind.’
Perhaps in need of ‘companion.’
As with Ray Charles–
another genius
tinkers out a type
of Encyclopedia–
blues, jazz, rhythm
diced, sizzled, stacked
into a peculiar mish-a
mash. To strike, beat; push,
stick, knock, pluck (as in
‘carpe’). ‘til the whole entire
enterprise,
Piggly~Wiggly score clearly whistles
out the still-copper-thumper for moonshine:
as in 'something majestic, of substance.’
Some [sic] idol or ‘thang’ of ‘Say what!–’
For example, one who might cut
her own thumb off
just to see it grow back on,
enduring any backward trail of exile, prohibition, expatriation
and whatever else kind of manicured diaspora or diapered dia-
rrhea you executively can throw at us as we take another time-
less trail of tears from SunRise with “Georgia on My Mind.”
B
This might sound like the jab of sacrilege. So be it.
This Liddle-light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Under a bushel or not, Thoth provides beyond 5-G
And whatever upgrades will be the self-same, thrice-great signal!–
R
So go watch a soap opera
on your 4-K Hi-Def flat screen
as the world turns another
multi-tasking, interruption-
filled, entertainment-fucked
u-turn. To achieve a greater?
T
Sorry. This broadcast
has been interrupted
to cast another nano
packaged nip-tucked
military industrial kom-
plex stone of what Whit-
man dubbed “the tyranny
of hidden, unequal terms.”
{DISCLAIMER: WALTNEVERSAIDTHAT}
Y
You can’t play that Gymnopédie
on trombone. Not even at Disney.
I found my first piano washed
like a toy ashore. Like Jonah.
Somewhere classified along the finger-
skinny-jean barrier islands of the Outer Banks.
Yes. NC. First in flight where Michael Jordan
not to mention the buckeye Wright Brothers
listened to a seal and so would paragon
the brainsick, gaga belief that we could fly.
Leopardi, as with Da Vinci, dreamt of flight
and now it’s everywhere like a seagull’s eye
above life’s exquisite delights of IKEA boxes
and brick facades that now we find our-
selves past the dilated brink of tedium,
disgust, the loaned, sharked, bloody Mary
haste of triple the aggravation–
how amour propre
my thoughts
as they bang, belt, bonk
against the same reliable Swiss-
Deutch air-bags which I can trust
never to detonate, deploy, blow out
according to plan. Though that’s not
what persuaded me when it comes
to believing in God, that there are gods
and whatever might be else here-there
and now since “Hiroshima and the moon
have thrust me into a world” that is most-
ly thought and paranoia: -noia, the suffix
linking to ‘the mind,’ a loanword from Homer
or atleast his time where–as ‘metaphor dropped’
down to the perfidious thunk of present time,
you’re commandeered without ditch
let alone hut for board, for bunk.
At 37, I’ve come to appreciate
whatever quarter I’m given–like Melville
during his seafaring clunker; Typee, Omoo
Mardi (Library of America), his log
of pre-memoir that I’m reading from a Cloud:
“in the midst of an appalling dream ”
which, for the crying lot of such Bar-
tlebys [sic] scriveners, deals out
for our real, actual, blockbuster lives.
A
It was Amazon followed by klout
and balls of Alphabet
who would digitize our 20-
20 version of Napalm
making way for Metaverse
to not only clear but decimate
the world-wide-web
notwithstanding what’s left
of any lot of rainforest(s).
decimate as in to select by lot
and kill every tenth man of a tribe
though ‘tribe’ we might now trans-
late for regiment. John Dryden de-
fines the word
as ‘to exact a tax of 10 percent
from the poor,’ lone rangers,
best minds, veteran cavaliers
to bank full pay to the groans
and bellows of their sun god
who in-turn would make way
for the very paradox of a tundra
stretching away for the flat line
of some million miles of tractor-
trailer trucks driven by ‘Big Macs.’
Too bad. Their too young, dumb,
mainlined on the venereal junk
of Nazi disease. A real disaster
or swindle for pigs who talk
so clean but behind the scene
are worse off than maggots
and fleas, driving Audis
and Mercedes, blasting
the tracks of the jungle
and Compton with subs
and woofers
but in L.A.
Houston troughs
loosely call us
‘Bastard, Nigger, Thug’
while quoting the sad
Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck
scipture of Mein Kampf.
D
For their squealing lot
Friedrich Nietzsche
is still ahead
of their tick-tocks.
Despite their happy
meal bought
time-travel glocke{s}–
past-present-future,
their hearts
have been shucked
off Thoth’s scale,
wholesale
to the Crocodile–
oof, all their Jacks
put back with a crunch
into Pandora’s box.
j
That Uncle Sam’s arctic gnomes
will find themselves
off plank
in the river Styx
that bubbles
with the heat
of coal
gushing
one by one
like individually
packed gushers
screaming
where
is
Mondo,
verifies and (yes) vouches for my own credit score
as to who I am and that I have sprung
from the faceless warden
that is a swan.
i
Michael’s just clocked in
for his third-late-night shift,
managing an old god’s con-
veyor belt of fear for which
he looks more the elm.
Yes, the elm about to fall
down by the river.
That he lumbers as my brother
who before even Cain slang
the first stone does not speak
well for raising the bar in bare
terms of human innovation
since Yoseph (the Dreamer)
went kerplunk, so quick
and ready to double down
and draw a fixed game of straws
for which, after some shady Lyft
in the age of silicon, this angel
is still projecting to drop
any light bearer unbeknownst
in a desert, even playing
the hedge
that, by blackmail,
everybody will watch.
Too bad that for everyone streaming
the maths fail to add up or even compute
for his Kabal, i.e. Illumanti scheme.
Unlike Lucky to Becket’s Ponzo
I’ve broken the collar and am dragging the mouse by the leash.
e
As Muldoon titled,
“The More a Man Has
The More a Man Wants.”
That is until the monarch gambles
and bets away all their charm
for the world to find them
the real gerbil, screaming
for how a unicorn
kicks out their pink balls
as a means to grow meek
with a camel’s toe of a hump.
b
To look like a fool
in the belly of a belly
of a belly, the c-section
womb
of a Russian doll
who prefers to pass
port as a French broad
flying first-class, platinum-blond,
wearing the corona of Starbucks.
h
Unlike Taylor Swift
I’ve been grounded
in a Rockledge complex
that off any green
reads for more ‘sand trap’
not that I’m screaming ‘bogey’
after being sharpied
to a no-fly list for, how to putt-
putt this–
putting a puzzle
of a puzzle
of a puzzle
back together–as Seidel writes
“with a little nosebleed in my heart.”
k
Such an eagle eye
promises to outsmart
if not bedevil S. themself
along with Rome’s red-
eye approach
of holy smoke
for screen
as they divide
and conquer,
divide and con-
quer ‘til the whole
world goes bust,
bust or bonkers.
L
To pin the halfway point
for a novel that never ends
and packs every punch
I can only guess
the chapters continue
to rapidly roll
and switch back
for proof & pudding
of some dead sea scroll,
a stream of language
flowing north
as does the New
and does the Nile.
It’s like finding
a three-dollar bill
that suddenly drops
into the actual
from the pop-
up pulp demesne
of “Tlön, Uqbar,
Orbis Tertius.”
Such is the scar
let message
I get as I sit
taking blow
after blow of my very own powwow.
Q
Seeing through the glass of their treachery, their blindness, their dark,
John–I believe I did the correct thing by sweeping them into the icebox.
How we all get a little too creative but things can’t get any worse.
After all, we can’t shock & awe our surroundings notwithstanding how
they torture us.
U
Today, it’s that kind of day. The Klones are out in force, hunting
for the snark. For forecast, it gets ugly then a little hirsute.
Not a button, feather or mark. Like an apple on the ground
One might wait by the curb, keeping an eye on things next to
the shadow of a dice. November tells it best. In almost a whisper.
W
The blue moon wants to be blonde.
You still don’t get it but what do I know
of this, having traveled thousands of miles
all the while speaking on the all too much
to leave the world, de capo,
perhaps a little beleaguered, more unsure
but sweltering chalk full of new currents.
C
As Friedrich writes,
“It is hard to be understood,
especially when one thinks
and lives gangasrotagati”
with the current of a river
out of which a half-empty carton
of triceratops eggs washes ashore
next to the skullcap of a smurf.
As for my whereabouts,
I won’t let out a hiccup
and so on another exodus,
a few crumbs dripping
from the poor, receptive soul
…
Someone will find out, someone will know beyond the knowledge of
how they’ve pinned such a tail on me.