Canto VII

a / b

your unlucky day—

your career ender—

gone bender

booze upright—

: Wooster won’t jive with you,

won’t watch the PM news,

won’t hold your hand,

divvy up the mortgage,

pay the oil bill,

resurface the drive—

Rapid Rewards Membership none entered

you’re a stay-at-home-dad

with no kids,

no AFLAC,

no summer house,

no Holy Matrimony—

pick up sticks

put up shut up

give up hands up—

tiger in your tank,

seal in your tub,

elephant in the living room

Will Work for Dough

Will Knead for Work—

false dichotomies

painful lobotomies—

milk toast tea biscuit

lemon curd lime turd

tea curd gin toast

lemon flirt pine tea

curd flirt biscuit bitch

tea gun runner

toe curd rifle

“Form 4684 w/ instr. rolled into cylinders

and chambered in your frikking, silver plated Mosby

Centennial shotgun pointed directly

at your guts, you S.O.B.”

think of the children

think of Mom & Sis

think about your obit

think about your pension

your life insurance policy

your side-by-side grave sites

so shady

your weed in the basement

smothered in horseshit

with blazing red buds

beneath 150 watt PAR CANS

Golf Pro? not a career

Surfer? not a career

President? not a career

Headhunter not a job for a wuss

House-husband not for the snippy

: do you really want to test your luck?

: pre-nup match up re-up

b / a

“The little fool, she spends all her time

writing. She’ll never be anything.”

“How do you know she wants to be anything?”

“Everyone wants to be something.”

You never get something for nothing.

Most agree that the lack of family cohesion

in this country is due to the male principle’s

unwillingness to confront conflicts and resolve

them. They always manage to mention Vietnam

as the ‘great lump in the stomach,’ where young

men learned mortality. They say, ‘don’t strike

me or be mean to me.’ As a result, they begin

to be dominated by their female counterparts.

Was she something? Must we all be some thing?

“Men are naturally selfish.”

“Yes, they marry virgins because they know those

girls will be easier to please.”

“The little fools.”

Coitus, a small bird flying into a mountain cave

never to return.

(Can I watch your clock?

I know it’s strange to want you, but I can never be

sure of myself until I possess someone.

Security is all I want—

can I ask you a question?)

Possession is nine tenths of something or other.

Dawn breaks and you listen for its shatter,

but there is none.

The station is empty.

Someone died

here last night.

Silence gives an illusion of peace.

You notice this the way ants hear footsteps,

and the night’s dreadful quiets off.

“Yes, well you know I’ll probably end

up with a man

who writes one poem

and gives it

to several women.”

c / b

you may sail to another shore,

if you wish

: push off in your hollow boats

and we will stand watch

and wait—

buckets of steamers

smell dirty

like the ocean at Port Canaveral

submarines slipping in and out

trawlers emptying bilge

you floating in it

mired in the flotsam

tar between your toes

scum in your hair—

suffering has nothing to redden the lips

as love

squeezing through beside the one

with stinkfoot even Odysseus yearned

for peace

for his plow

for his weaver

far from the walls of Troy—

none of the Achaeans

could know the god’s mind

nor could the god’s plan be fulfilled

w/o the schism of the marriage bed—

and none could succeed unless the archer

could be tricked

into returning

: maidens don’t waste your breath

Canto VIII

De vulgari eloquentia

whether an act of love or greed

to grant all earthly power

through breath and bone

(though Dante believed his good

intentions bore bad fruit)

Crispus’ da removed to Greece

evil began when jealousy unquenched

read reports of foreign entanglements

unknotted and nodded to executioners dispatched

such without theory have all fallen

when polymorphous present succumbs

in the throat of eternity

fossils covered by cloud spirits

Sears Pledge Bounce Tide

taste notwithstanding W Magazine

notwithstanding WW Daily kneeling

the pure products of America w/o

whose news we die we die

peanut shells litter the bar’s floor

where barrels of roasted goobers magically

dwell next to barnwood and nudes

shot glasses bottles and Jesus

all spread leisurely amongst believers

and infected souls alike

only in Baltimore in August

edging sideways past the aquarium

into the harbor and under the boats

tied so lightly to the shore sailors

waiting to rake oysters

drunk on stools beneath the swells

Fell’s Point drifting past Ft. McHenry

and the switchblades flashing

like Rockettes kicking NBC’s ass

where poetry is not the only consolation

and money not the only salve

our fate not reducible to treasury notes

even the Aztecs found something

estimable in men’s hearts besides beating

to the plow’s remorseless furrows

hasn’t fellowship more to offer than shorn

wallets more to propend than streaks

of manure tilled deeply to crust and corn

why go ahead baffled by love where dollars

dry and shoals of shad spoil

for our forks help is not fishy

helpings fed one by one to the less aristocratic

every moment when shortcuts bite

the hand space breeds eloquence

Una selva obscura

as spring comes on

watch the forest

darken under its canopy of leaves

analysts need analysts

what would poets need

: Dante rants

: the problem is you have to wait their deaths

before you can consign them to icy hell

over ouzo for that matter

: drink your enemies with grappa chaser

why does pastis turn water white

only the shape changer

could redo the coast of Liguria—

had Mary landed there instead of France

perhaps more beaches instead of rocks—

perhaps the Saracens would have avoided resorts

besmirched by bathing beauties

: only the shape changer

could understand Crispus and Absalom

and their strange fathers

: one resort on Cinque Terre

has Atlas elevating a balcony—

Monterosso

: you have to wait till the lying bastards

die before you can subject them

better to be a king subjected to the terrors of Dis

otherwise it’s war crimes on the first Tuesday

in November or whatever and the state

has 1 bad sky-high hurl after another

Peristalsis Against Fascism

hate is the space—

behind the waterfall

the rocks below—

what hate heaves

space empty : hate emptiness

hate makes its own space

Opera apropos of nothing has

not a frigg’n song to sing about Crispus

worse Crispus sunk to limbo

while his da rose to Martian prominence

court artists get a lot from each tile

where he’s concerned

plenty of detail in 2D

no noodling is too much here mosaic

: piddle here piddle there

and pretty soon you’ve got S. Sofia

monkeys giraffes penguins

rattlesnakes behind the eyes

should we have pinned

Constantine—

and would that have saved his son his wife mother

silver screws tied to white wires

and copper to black

hark the light from carbonized filament

hark the same thing from cotton

only the energy channeled

death to death life to life

Edison bulbs like gladiolas

sprouting from every ceiling

some kind of artsy-craftsy

nightmare where labor becomes dusk to dusk

dawning—

no spirit level no plumb bob

those fascists shot and hung

in the square were hard hunted

through wheat fields

bloodied

staring and not staring seeing and not

milky gaze superimposed on pastels’

glaze sharpend at edges

and swirled in the corner

simpering like V’s Venus

puddling in lilies nous

float like hyacinth like frogs on pads

or faeries on Stilton