Dead Poets Discuss Michael Jackson

"Michael Jackson in Disneyland
Don't have to share it with nobody else.
Lock the gates, Goofy, take my hand
And lead me through the World of Self."
-- Splendid Isolation, 1989, by Warren Zevon (1947-2003), Los Angeles, Calif.

The pure products of America
go crazy

... as if the earth under our feet were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

-- "To Elsie," 1923, by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), Rutherford, N.J.

Bad Smell

Stopped at the light
at Stella Link and South Braeswood,12:20 p.m.
With the windows rolled down
because it’s 80 degrees in the dead of winter.

It comes wafting in,
slowly, imperceptibly---on lil’ cat’s feet!---at first.
Then storms in, enveloping, and the whole world reeks of
Popeye’s Fried Chicken.

Crispy fried death:
There was a day
we really ate it up.

Election Day, November; 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes--nor
Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name--the still
small voice vibrating--America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board and inland--
Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:)
the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart
pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

-- Walt Whitman, from First Annex: Sands at Seventy

At the Frozen Edge of the Solar System

“Rock musician Bruce Springsteen is 58 …"
“Birthdays,” The Houston Chronicle, Sept. 23, 2007

So hand me down my walkin’ cane
And my travelin’ shoes
And my Smith & Wesson .44
And my EZ tag sticker
And if it’s not too much trouble
could you reach over there and hand me down
that can of WD-40?
Stuff always comes in handy.

And, um, hate to keep botherin’ you but ah how about fetchin’ me
that box of Grape Nuts? The big one. Right there.
Thank you so much.

'Cause I woke up this morning
on Pluto, but found a local station playing
Astral Traveling (from Thembi, Pharaoh Sanders w/Lonnie Liston Smith, ABC-Impulse, 1971),
“A gentle rain on the African veldt.”
But here’s no veldt here,
just miles of rock and ice
and the occasional "no smoking" sign.
And parentheses inside brackets inside parentheses,
but no clear order of operations.

The deejay claims Pluto’s no longer a planet
but still takes 248 years to circle the sun.
Which is why I’m going back to bed.

So could you please put all that shit back where it belongs?

(Sorry.)

Our Entry in the Houston Chronicle Art Car Parade Poetry Slam

Not to be uncivil, BUT:
We’d rather not hear or read another word (not one)
about the effin’ Art Car Parade.

Or any other of these twaddlin’ bourgeois diversions.

Because the secret wish of poetry
is to stop time ('ccording to Charles Simic).

So if we see you toodlin’
down the freeway
in your ART CAR,
with the plastic fruit and dirty drawers and whatnot
glued to the chassis,
and the entire 4th period art class
stuffed in the trunk,
you best move out of our way
because we’re late
for a shootout on the feeder road.

After that, there’s gonna be a
cockfight in the parking lot.

We don’t know much about cars.
And less about art.
All we know for sure is that we’re gonna die.
Maybe later tonight,
maybe in the Year of Our Lord 2027
(give or take a month).
And all the g-ddamn “poetry” and Art Cars and
Houston Chronicles delivered to our doorstep in never-ending sequence
won’t save our …

To be obvious about it.

The secret wish of poetry being to stop time, according to Jimmie Reed.

So you better take out some insurance on me.

Baby.



Ok, where’s our prize?