On the Arrogance of Orators

On the arrogance of orators

Now Pericles demands
a chunkier burrito
a lambskin coat
an early thaw.


Jeering at daily tasks,
Pericles strokes his silk toga
and strides past old pals 
imperious.


He says,
do my chores, fools.


He says
get me a tortilla,
a silver tortilla
you monkeys.

Across the Golf Course

My balls keep rolling out like

quail-sized eggs toward a buried cup.

They slither while they pass

They slip away, away from where I’d hoped.

Pools of sorrow waves of joy 

are drifting through my G & T

Possessing and caressing me.

Nothing's gonna change my world.

Images of broken tees which

dance before me like a million carts

or cosmic holes-in-one across the universe.

The caddy, our driver, short-sighted, meanders

like a damaged bat inside a hamster ball

we tumble blindly as

we make our way across the golf course.

Nothing's gonna change my world.

You are so beautiful!

whipped buttercream chocolate frosting

Heartbreak Robot Mountain

When I look at my work in general, I see
a vast new territory
opening up for us
in commercial biomimetics.
Us, of course, is you,
my horse
and I, off course,
plotting our way to a point
of land I bought
for two billion clams
in bountiful south Alaska.
They call it Heartbreak Reboot Mountain.
I got it for zero chowder,
no interest 'til December.
Don’t ask me how I’ll give it back,
I’ll give the cheddar back, I swear
I can feel it; you;
this vast new territory
opening-up behind us,
slowly riding backwards, now,
enclosing what’s in front of us.

Essay on Marriage

These things remain up for grabs: The ancient nuptial ritual must never be an object of feminine lust. The ancient nuptial ritual will never output, never loop. In fits of dire reverence, feisty marriage experts may sing gnomic sonatas in local woodlots. Get used to it. The ancient nuptial ritual is sotto voce. The ancient nuptial ritual, if auto-replied to, will be broken open by a black blimp, with one white stripe, tethered to the tip of a wind-twisted pine. This piñata is called the night. Night happens in one centre of an archipelago of centres. The ancient nuptial ritual never consents, as I so willingly have, to italics.

How much is Carmen Electra paying you, per hour?

The ancient nuptial ritual avoids contact with strangers. It will never bless a child’s head with holy water, nor give an unlisted number over the phone. The ancient nuptial ritual will be unstressed in the back-woods, behind a warehouse, rotting crates mouldering back into earth. The ancient nuptial ritual will never recur, never reappear, never overshadow, nor be shadowed.

That reminds me of a parable.

If the ancient nuptial ritual will have it, a drunkard’s haunted hatchback will launch off a giant jump. It will spin end over end, descending, to end, wrong way up, in a smoking garland. By degrees, the vehicle will accede to night, ravished in the slowly vanishing light, till all that’s left is the stereo blazing an invisible trial of Love, O careless love. Is that the parable you were thinking of?

No.

Tell it.

Carmen Electra and Agamemnon exit the unicorn temple, reciting His sacred greeting. They sit on a modest heap of banana leaves. Agamemnon keeps reciting the sacred greeting. Carmen Electra plays with the strap of her sandal. She pulls up yellow grasses. A skunk stumbles past, its head in a bottle. Carmen Electra stares into the swelling reflection of clouds. With her rump, she can feel jagged rocks under  the stack of flimsy, half-decayed banana leaves.

In other words, the ancient nuptial ritual will be unable to attend the soiree this evening due to massively branching subroutines.

The trees in Hell will be spattered with massively branching subroutines as well. Yellow grass, farm implements, fire-hardened innuendos arriving inward on each black-inflected wing—Orestes, this thing is getting harder to control.

I tried to listen to some geese. Their noisy hooting and honking painted a portrait of the field between the woodlot and the house. The painting was hardly realistic—

Use me sparingly, Carmen Electra whispered. Consult a doctor if symptoms persist. 

Another photograph of me

Doing sit-ups, eating healthy, taking vigorous walks, sitting alone in the hospital dusk, filling and refilling the blank spaces in my settlement package…where was I? Well, the hearts of the Congolese people are calling for postcards from Vietnam. And yes, the dark, continental heart of man is ravaged with good intentions. And I’m all attention, pumping iron, regulating my breathing, getting fit for the big reveal. My doctor, Brenda, comes to light. She tells me, not unreasonably, “No more can’t be done.” Then leans closer, “What I do do, tends to expand the storage capacity of the human heart." She's leaning very close, "Everything does its part, but I can’t help expediting the process, taking the bit, so to speak, ticking this thing into hyper-drive—into art.” She hands me a colour postcard from poignant Indonesia. She says, “Are my methods unsound?” She thinks I can’t see she’s knocked up. I tell her, “I see no method at all.” And then the bleeping machine beside my bed leaps me inside the thumping left ventricle of Francis Coppolla, in the director’s chair, c. 1974 watching his expensive method actor pretend to understand the end of Heart of Darkness, which he hasn’t read. Maybe he can’t, because of the speed. As in life, and in the original, the long awaited conclusion comes as a let-down. The end does not work. And though spring hurricanes may destroy my sets, I welcome the ancient Marlon Brenda in me, calling-up from the depths, somehow, a more realistic pain. “The work does not end,” Marlon Brenda says slowly, Sicilian-shy, like the friend of a friend. And I dare not reply, “No-one expects the fat assassin, spouting epithets from the shadows, sporting a large black t-shirt to distract us from his pregnancy.”