Imagining calories count less in the dark,
he snacks throughout the night continually.
He wiggle-walks across the sand to park
his BMI’s (yes, plural) by the sea.
He would splash in, were fear of pleurisy
less in his thoughts. A box of doughnuts jam
the milkshakes in the thermos near the ham
beneath the turkey biscuits in his hamper.
I am, he thinks, the people that I am.
I shall leave it to these thin sand fleas to scamper.
It was Spring, a time that Grungy Dinah pined
for love. Spring sprang sap-hazardly. Dawns lengthened.
Eves shortened. Adams appled. Fauns were fined
when caught flagrante delicto. Their lusts strengthened
poor Grungy Dinah’s dreaming that her own fate
involved one couple’s coupling, wherein she
was the female actor (actress?), and the ‘he’
was whichever ‘who’ three gins proclaimed her mate.
Not ‘whom?’ she pondered. Days and fortnights passed.
The winds of grammar wound their winding sheets
around her nouns and pronouns. Sap was sassed
till Spring wound down in Gunga Din defeats.
The question whether poetry still matters
is jejune this April as it ever may
become or was. Illogic in it shatters
all hope of answer. Fitful fey things pay
silly devils to say there’ll be hail to play
with in the desert, before poetry
begins (or stops) to matter to the free
and gloriously inequitable curse
of prose that’s lifted high enough to be
poetic tropes. It could always be verse.
I look at the shell, and let my preconceptions
replace themselves with others. There’s no way
I can see the shell for simply what it is.
I regard the shell and try to squelch my thinking.
As far as I succeed, it disappears.
I cannot find it. I stay unaware
of what I think I’m seeing when I see.
What does the shelled ghost of the fighting conch
think of when it tries also to see me?
‘Here’s a silver lining for you, when your faithful Fido dies:
you can ring us to come by and share your grief.
We’ll remove his corpse so quickly that you won’t be plagued by flies.
We will say a prayer if wanted, one that’s brief,
and remove Fido for burial, to your relief.’
(Once in our plant, he’s our raw material to render
with stewpot, saw, and industrial-grade blender.
Farewell, dear Pet! His soul flies to its maker,
leaving nothing of the canine’s bark or gender
in the meatballs we sell on.) Your Undertaker.
(reflecting on news story Spanish pets could be in meatballs)
‘Forgive me, for I know whom I unglue.
Scrod in Boston, gulled in London Colney.
The weight of troths plied knowingly untrue
stunt me while coughing, pulled through Horton’s colon
with broths he scarfed that glowed with snail-trail dew.
Scrod, again in Boston, on the train,
rate tape wrapped around the captain’s head.
Chips in Chipping Norton. Late-night curry
of Alsatian, sating after-hours drinkers.
Press-ganged pralines ending up as clinkers.’
(translated from the original New Bacterium as dictated by Escherichia coli O157:H7)
The affluent upper-middle-class imagines,
because they work hard, and are educated
as well or better than the super-rich,
that the two groups share a worldview. They are right:
‘deserving what one gets,’ and vice versa.
The upper-middle-class is disappearing,
(with the middle-middles and the lower-middles),
while imagining that the super-rich will notice,
and extend a helping hand to them. They’re wrong.
The rich clump them in the group they call subversives.
Competing countries had us in a bind.
Health activists complained about our glue
that gave our workers foot-death. Some went blind.
It looked like our old glory days were through.
After church one day while gazing at its steeple,
I saw, miraculous, and clothed in white,
a Royale Angel. ‘You’ve still got poor people,’
the angel said. ‘So use them. Rich man’s right.
They work ten-hour shifts. They don’t complain.
Where would they go? They’d starve without the jobs
that you control. They’re too down to feel pain
in ways that count.’ I love these captive yobs.
I call their Christian names at the Walmart store,
and know, when they fall sick, I can get more.
Cf. The New York Times article, As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester
Earth Tourist 