Monday, October 20, 2025

In Six Unprepossessing Stanzas




From the heavens I was long ago sent

To Thunderbolt the Firmament 

Several winters came and went

A human clotheshorse 

Taught me to squeak—

Now my favourite word is “lozenge.”


The only humanity I’ve ever known

Dandelion pappus windblown

Under the underpass, tunnel & cone

Forty dead shareholders 

Stacked in mutating ratcheted assembly

And the worst is still ahead of me…


The peopled gentry is—kith and kin— 

Like a hammerhead shark

You tear open the belly and watch 

All the grotty goods roll out.


The legendary Payola fiasco 

The Count of Lautréamont

In his Green Nehru Jacket

Doing wheelies at the rundown mini-mall

Apprehending very strong that 

There’s something troubling in the air, b’God…


It emboldened me that time

Back in I think ’65

When it took no time at all 

To make poor William F. Buckley

So awfully goldarn angry at me.


One of the men who was to be counted 

Among his pallbearers 

Told me that former Yippie activist Jerry Rubin

Died doing what he loved the most (pause) jaywalking.



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